Hoo boy…
The Detroit News conservative pundit and cartoonist Henry Payne has an op-ed with such comically convoluted (il)logic that it deserves public derision. His piece, “‘Pasha’ Dingell and the rise of Washington power” basically implies that Dean of the House John Dingell has secured his power through massive contributions from corporations and their lobbyists. He then goes on to say that Congressman Dingell has created “massive regulatory bills” that “have reduced consumer choice and marginalized small business”. The implication is that Congressman Dingell has essentially been paid off by the very corporations that he is somehow harming.
Back home, Democrats like Dingell position themselves as populist protectors of the common man. But in truth, the massive regulatory bills that they write inside the D.C. beltway have reduced consumer choice and marginalized small business — while favoring big corporations that can afford the lobbyists necessary to navigate the capital’s thicket of rules.From auto mpg rules to utility emissions caps to that mother of all regulations, Obamacare, Washington politicians now oversee vast swaths of America’s economy thought unimaginable when Dingell took office in 1956.
Payne uses the term “small business” but the regulations that he decries are far more an issue for large corporations than small ones — the very corporations with the resources to donate large sums of money to politicians and the ones with the influential lobbyists that Payne writes about. In other words, Congressman Dingell has shown great veracity and consistency in working to protect Americans through environmental and other regulations, despite having corporations contributing to his reelection campaigns. He’s the antithesis of the paid-off politician, something that Payne’s piece shows clearly despite his efforts to suggest otherwise.
What blows my mind is that people like Payne actually get paid to spew these absurdities.
