Anger at Oil. I played hooky from this blog yesterday, following my maxim that if you have nothing to say, say nothing. Besides, I was out taking pix for my Newark fotoblog. Actually, I do have notes about low-priority topics I could have dipped into, but wasn't in the mood for anything not reasonably incendiary. What could be more incendiary than gasoline prices? (And, for much of the country in this still-cold period, heating oil.)
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Yesterday's survey on the website iWon.com asked about a tax on oil companies' excess profits.

Five months ago, a majority of iWon users (61%) supported the federal government imposing a windfall profits tax on oil companies. We’d like to know what you think today.

Do you support imposing a windfall profits tax on oil companies?

79% - Yes
14% - No
7% - I'm not sure

Congress is scurrying to quell public rage over outrageous gas prices, because Republicans fear that there is finally an issue over which the public is so incensed that they might actually manage, this November, to breach the carefully erected walls that the major parties have raised to protect incumbents from overthrow at the ballot box, mainly by gerrymandering almost all Congressional districts into "safe seats" for one party or the other. But in a winner-take-all, two-party system like ours, a loss for one side is an equal gain for the other.

In the House, currently there are 232 Republicans, 201 Democrats, and one Independent (Socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is, for purposes of organizing in the House, a Democrat). There is one vacancy due to the death of Congressman Bob Matsui [who was a Democrat]. In the Senate, there are 55 Republicans, 44 Democrats, and one Independent - James Jeffords of Vermont (who is practically a Democrat).

With a difference of 30 seats in the House and 10 in the Senate, the November elections need only produce a Republican loss of 16 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate to shift effective control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats (17 in the House and 7 in the Senate to be secure from the "independence" of the two independents). Can this actually happen, tho? Wikipedia shows the difficulty of the challenge.

In the 2000 Congressional Elections out of the 435 Congressional districts in which there were election[s], 359 were listed as "safe" by Congressional Quarterly. In all of these 359 there was no uncertainty as to who would win. The results a week later confirmed that very few House races were competitive. The 2000 House election resulted in a net change of only four seats (+1 for the Democrats, -2 for the Republicans and the electing of an additional independent). In total 98% of all incumbents were reelected, and this was not unusual.

So why are Republicans even worried, if they enjoy a majority 4X the total change the House experienced in 2000? Because people are mad.
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They're mad about gas prices and oil-heating prices — which should be a 'hot' topic again by the November election.
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They're mad about a war sold to them by lies, not least of which was the suggestion that the war would be a cakewalk and 'our boys' would be home in a matter of months, having been greeted as liberators by joyous Iraqis showering them with flowers (not Improvised Explosive Devices).
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They're mad about the Hurricane Katrina emergency not being handled right — and huge numbers of people's FEMA benefits are already running out, long before they have recovered, been returned to their homes, or been successfully resettled in new communities, with new jobs.
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And some are even mad that nothing ever changes except for the worse.
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The Republicans promised us in their 1994 "Contract with America" that they would agitate for 12-year term limits for both Houses of Congress so that Congress would periodically be stirred up by new people and fresh ideas.

Citizen Legislature Act

Summary:

This resolution provides for consideration of two joint resolutions which propose amendments to the constitution limiting the number of terms members of the Senate and the House of Representatives can serve. The first joint resolution ... limits the number of Senate terms to two [total of 12 years] and the number of House terms to six [likewise a total of 12 years]. The second joint resolution ... also limits Senators to two terms [12 years], but it limits members of the House to three terms [6 years]. Under the terms of this resolution, the joint resolution ... will be debated first and the first amendment in order will be a substitute consisting of [the second proposal].

Exactly 12 years later — now — the Republicans elected in 1994 have not voluntarily retired, have they?
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Now a corrupt Republican power structure entrenched far longer than the 12 years the "Contract with America" swore by is being exposed as a bunch of crooks. And 67% of the public feels the country is headed in the wrong direction under the Republicans.
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Still, the numbers are stacked against massive change in November. The only real hope for massive change within the current geographical bounds of the United States* is if the courts strike down the gerrymandering that has eliminated real competition from the bulk of congressional districts. The only current hope of court action is a Texas case, Jackson v. Perry, which is considering the constitutionality of the gerrymandering that recently-deposed House Majority Leader Tom DeLay pushed thru the state legislature. It has yet to be decided, and even if it should impel state legislatures to stop misusing their power to entrench the state majority party of the day in that state's congressional delegation, it would not compel redistricting before November.
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So, is there really any way the electorate can oust incumbents? Or have we lost our democracy beyond retrieval?
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We sometimes hear talk of an "imperial presidency", in which the President seems to regard himself as a temporary emperor not beholden to the people. What I had never heard, however, is this:

The [conservative] Heritage Foundation did much of the heavy lifting in raising concerns about Democratic imperiousness in Congress ["Democrats had controlled Congress more or less continuously since 1932"]. It published "The Imperial Congress" in 1988, a book that cited chapter and verse on the myriad ways one-party domination undermined executive authority, bloated the budget with special interest provisions, crippled national security and threatened our very system of government.

The only difference today is that it is Republicans who feel imperial, not answerable to the riff-r... people.
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November should give us a good indication of whether the ballot box can give us that periodic popular revolution that the Framers of the Constitution envisioned, or only the bullet will suffice. The Framers would understand that too. After all, George III didn't have a term limit, did he?
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* Things would probably change slitely in the Democratic direction if Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands were brought into the Nation as the 51st state, and would surely change enormously if we annexed Canada or Britain. But geographic enlargement of the Nation is not even on the radar of either major party. They are too pedestrian, utterly lacking in vision.

Where are today's Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Adamses?
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Tom Paine would be, well, pained, to see what has become of our Revolution.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,395.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:11 PM