Legislature must follow rule of law

The true value of the corruption convictions of Anderson, Kott and Kohring and the corruption allegations against Stevens and Young is actually quite low. Furthermore, Alaska anti-corruption efforts, though sincere, are quite superficial. They’re as effective as just using towels and mops against a bathtub overflowing while not turning off the faucet.

Here’s why. Anybody can find out the following about corruption.

1. Imperfect human beings are incapable of complete honesty and of untouchable indifference to temptation. Consequently, no human can ever be trusted to wield unsupervised or unfettered government power.

2. Every instance of corruption always takes the form of out-of-the-ordinary favors given special interests by government officials.

3. Special interests have historically used lobbying to manipulate public decisions by government officials. Lobbying tools are begging, slanted or incomplete information, manipulation of prejudice or ignorance; bribery, blackmail and character or physical assassination.

4. Government officials use their power to force underlings to cover up corruption.

Thus, it is self-evident that lobbying is the focal point for any and all corruption. Yet our politicians commonly assert that lobbying is part of the fabric of democracy and “lobbyists serve government decision making by supplying vital information on complex issues. Moreover, lobbying is mainly regulated by just requiring declarations of who lobbyists represent and their compensation, and criminalizing vote-buying and officials accepting bribes. So what drives this contradiction?

Casual study of government history reveals these factors that underlie vulnerability of government to corruption.

1. The human imperfections of government decision-makers and the people they govern are what make any form of government necessary.

2. The less a population majority willingly cares about civic participation, the more despotic and centralized decision-making power and government is forced to be. Such centralization makes government more vulnerable to the personal imperfections of officials while simultaneously increasing the necessity for public trust in those officials. See Benjamin Franklin’s last Constitutional Convention speech.

3. The need for, and the influence of, lobbyists is directly proportional to how centralized decision-making power and government is in practice — regardless of public desire.

4. True direct access by all of those governed to any leaders under any form of government is impractical.

5. U.S. founders used power-sharing and authority checks to decentralize decision-making power and government. Furthermore, they arranged citizen representation to make the natural problem of contending factions solve undue favoritism in political decision-making. See James Madison’s eloquent explanation of this in the “Federalist Papers No. 10.” However, their genius is defeated when citizens don’t willingly organize themselves into, and mentally contribute to, factions to be represented; but instead employ lobbyists to escape the work of citizenship.

6. Making rule of law superior to rule of men (basically, executive judgment government) is historically one of the most successful devices for decentralizing decision-making power and government. History testifies that any centralization of power through rule of men naturally creates vulnerability to corruption and special interest lobbying.

That Alaska Constitution framers comprehended all this is clearly revealed in the wording of Article II, Section 12. The Legislature is commanded to formulate rules of procedure to bind themselves to, rather than to leading opinions and prejudices. In other words, it commands them to use rule of law philosophy to govern the conduct of lawmaking itself.

This same section also commands the Legislature to “regulate lobbying.” That this command is attached to the command to formulate rules of procedure, instead of putting it elsewhere in the Alaska Constitution, shows the framers recognized of how vital controlling lobbying is for good lawmaking.

So, are there any Alaska Legislature uniform rules to regulate lobbying as the Constitution expects? No! Nor is there a rule requiring legislators to refresh and upgrade their understanding of government theory and the devices/processes that make government succeed.

Yet education is humanity’s most powerful procedure to get people on the same page and competently working together. These omissions naturally breed corruption.

Furthermore, the Legislature even openly violates its own rules. For example, Rule 18 is violated by each house letting its Rules Committee chairman alone determine the daily bills list to undergo final voting. They refuse to apply Rule 53 to legally amend the rules to legitimize this “efficiency.” Thus, they mock our political heritage by dismissing rule of law philosophy and the use of a committee to decentralize power.

Electing “good people” won’t help when ignorance and perverted political traditions sabotage potential workable government.

Stuart Thompson is a Wasilla resident.