Sometimes I despair of politicians. I assume that they’re so partisan, so greedy, so quick to favor their rich buddies, that no progress can ever be made., or maybe not cynical enough. Because sometimes one of their faults – partisanship – temporarily overwhelms all their others, but in a good way. There’s a wonderful example of that at the moment.
As everyone knows, there’s a widespread issue with corruption in government. Politicians lining their own pockets at the expense of the nation. You don’t have to take my word for it – or even trust your own intuition. There’s good quality research which shows that the stock portfolios of House Representatives outperform the broader market by a stunning 6% per annum. Senators do even better with an average outperformance of 10%. That’s better that Warren Buffett. That makes George Soros look like a dummy. It’s corruption, plain and simple.
So politicians will never change the rules, right?
Wrong! Astonishingly, that seems to be wrong. Republicans so bitterly hate Nancy Pelosi, that they want to use her slight problems with a Visa bill to have a thwack at her in election year. So they want to bring in a clean government bill complete with a ‘Pelosi Provision’, which would make what she did illegal … but might also clean up government too. It might actually fix the problem of all those senators grooming their stock portfolios when they should be looking after the country.
They’re doing the right thing for the wrong reason – but it’s still the right thing to do. It’s a win, for you, for me, for the United States. A minor miracle.