How often have you heard this phrase: “powerful members of Congress.”  It gets under my skin.  It sometimes makes me seethe. I saw it on the front page of yesterday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch dealing with the President’s State of the Union address:

The prospects: Democrats in Congress have proposed raising the requirement to 60 billion gallons of 2030.  Some experts say big reductions in gas usage won’t happen unless Bush orders much higher fuel economy standards, which powerful members of Congress would resist.

[By the way, I’m not trying to single out the Post-Dispatch. This is just an illustrtion.  Almost every media publisher across America also uses this phrase] 

So there it is.  Some members of Congress are more “powerful” than others.  What does that mean?  Does it mean that they go to the gym more often so that they have big muscles?  Or does it mean something more sinister?  And if it’s a sinister thing, why is it so nonchalantly placed on the front page of the newspaper as though it’s not a scandalous thing?

There’s nothing in the Constitution that would give any clue to the mania of “powerful member of Congress.” To the extent that belonging to a particular political party makes one “powerful,” the Constitution is totally silent about political parties.  The “power” of Congress should not be determined by reference to who belongs to what club.  When it comes down to voting on issues, each member of Congress has the same number of votes as every other member of Congress.  And it can’t really be party politics to which the Post-Dispatch is referring in this case, because the allegedly “powerful members of Congress” who would “resist” meaningful energy policy changes are Republicans, who have recently been voted into the minority status.

Here’s why use of this term by journalists makes me angry: “Powerful members of Congress” are the recipients of lots of corporate money.  Huge corporations have locked onto the reality that certain members of Congress, more than others, respond favorably and predictably to the receipt of money.  If you pay them, they will be your puppets.  And see here. If you pay them a lot of money, they will throw around some of that money so that some of their peers will also become your puppets.

I don’t remember learning about “powerful members of Congress” in my grade school or high school civics classes.  I do remember lessons where we recited the Pledge of Allegiance and we became teary-eyed when we spoke about a Constitution that none of us really understood much.  But we did learn this much: our country is supposed to be about fairness.  We would have been surprised to learn, even as grade schoolers, that some people are more equal than others. 

Whenever a corporate media outlet nonchalantly refers to “powerful member of Congress” an important story is being buried, a story that is usually much bigger than the thing ostensibly being discussed.

Here is how I would rewrite that small paragraph for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

All members of Congress know that we need to reduce the amount of gasoline we use as a national security measure.  The following members of Congress [name them] have resisted efforts to protect our national interest by reducing gasoline usage.  They are receiving huge amounts of money from oil companies [specify the amounts received by each resisting member of Congress].  They are accepting such huge amounts of money from the very same corporations that will be affected by their votes on energy issues.  That is how many members of Congress are considering critical energy legislation: accepting huge piles of money from oil companies while then pretending to be objective.  They want us to write about them as “powerful members of Congress.” We will not do that.  Instead, we will tell you, dear readers, that those members of Congress are corrupt and that the entire campaign finance system needs to be revamped before we will have any honest deliberations about oil usage or any other important issue.

Or how about this option (Option 2):  Never again refer to these people as “powerful members of Congress.”  Instead, refer to them as “corrupt politicians who feed out of the oil industry trough.” 

This is really a simple issue to understand.  To illustrate, imagine that there is a close play at first-base.  While the umpire is considering whether the base runner is safe, the base runner walks over and hands the umpire $10,000.  Therefore, this is not one of those complex issues that newspapers refuse to write because it will “bore” the readers. It is a national tragedy affecting every citizen in a personal way.  It threatens the American way of life in a dramatic way. If big-time daily newspapers can’t figure out how to convey the importance of this issue, they should stop calling themselves “newspapers.”  Instead, they should call themselves “The Daily Go Buy Something You Probably Don’t Need Pamphlets.”

I know that my proposed rewrite of the Post-Dispatch article is sheer fantasy.  It would never happen with a big city newspaper owned by a big for-profit corporation. Not yet. 

We should be shocked to learn that inequality can be bought. We should be astounded that a major newspaper doesn’t give a damn about inequity and that it would quarantine off big stories rather than deal with them.  Let’s do something about it!  It doesn’t have to be this way. 

Not until we start financing our political campaigns with public tax money instead of private corporate money that directly benefits the giver. See here for more about what you can do about this urgent problem: