"Mayhem" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Mayhem

Thomas Jefferson said the United States probably would need a revolution every twenty years. We’re long overdue. Our country has been taken over by bureaucrats and special interest groups who have gird-locked government operations in their favor, the former to have lifetime job security and the latter to soak up the gravy. Both have an interest in maintaining the status quo; progress is an anathema to them.

Somewhere in the back of my brain is the notion of the rule of mayhem. It was, as I recall, a catchall law to cover behavior that wasn’t otherwise defined or which didn’t elicit a harsh enough punishment. Methinks we need a political mayhem law, one which punishes in draconian fashion those elected, appointed, and hired government types who act against the public interest.

I’m thinking not only of the corrupt pols, those who put money in their own pockets or in the pockets of friends, but also the doctrinaire judges who follow the letter of the law when doing so violates the purpose, and of the idiot bureaucrats who apply rules that defy common sense and decency. The news is rife with such stories and we never hear that anyone but the public suffers. No one is fired, they’re rarely even reprimanded, and they should be jailed.

Especially when it comes to elections. I’m thinking of the judge in San Diego who ruled invalid the ballots of the people who wrote in the name of mayoral candidate Donna Frye but who didn’t blacken the oval that denoted that they were writing in a name. He said it was the law. It may have been, but when you deny people their vote, as was so clearly their intention, it’s as wrong as wrong can be. Heat the tar, pluck the chickens.

And for Katherine Harris, the Florida elections commissioner in 2000, who prevented tens of thousands of likely Democrats from voting and who invalidated thousands of more for hanging chads when their choice was clear. She should have been charged with treason.

As should be Kenneth Blackwell, the Ohio Secretary of State, who blatantly blocked thousands of Buckeye voters from registering and discouraged tens of thousands of others from casting their ballots by supplying too few voting machines, causing lines four hours long.

Accountability seems to be an anathema in our society, at least as it is applied to the people who hold power. They cause mayhem and should be punished appropriately.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.