Individual Interest vs. Public Interest: Playing by the Rules

"Only little people pay taxes," Leona Helmsley said once upon a time. Has anything changed since then? No!

I hate politics. To me, politics is about taking care of your own interests (or those of your particular group) at the expense of the public interest. In my view, political behavior and self-interested behavior are the same thing. Whether it is the Republicans in the House of Representatives voting unanimously against the recent economic stimulus legislation so that the Democrats will have to take all the blame for it if it fails or the several nominees to top jobs in the Obama administration who have had to admit (after being caught) that they had not paid their full share of taxes, politicians are greedy, self-serving SOBs.

So are the bankers and the others in the financial industry who accepted taxpayer-supported bailouts and then distributed the money to their executives as bonuses. After all, those guys did such a great job, didn't they? And then there are the auto industry executives who ran their companies into the ground, the financial advisors like Bernie Madoff who bilked investors out of billions of dollars, and the oil companies who love to rip off consumers, etc. When I think of it, I wonder why I bother to complain so loudly about politicians.

Of course, we won't even talk about the news media, which try to keep the nation in a constant state of turmoil to satisy the 24/7 news cycle and rejoice (as unobstrusively as they can manage) when they have a disaster to report on. And if they don't have a real disaster to talk about, they always seem to be able to invent one: "Does the Obama family use enough dental floss? Are they at risk of periodontal disease? Should we be worried about this? We'll have more on this emerging story in the next half-hour."

And while we're at it, I am angry with all the greedy people in this country who just couldn't buy enough, spend enough, and borrow enough to keep up with their neighbors and are now alternately whining about how much they're suffering and patting themselves on the back for every small step they take toward acting the way financially responsible people have done all along.

On the other hand, I do have some sympathy for the people who sell space bags and self-storage units. They have been fulfilling a genuine need to provide storage options for people with too much stuff, and now they are probably going broke. In fact, companies that rent self-storage units to the public have all sorts of difficulties, ranging from finding units filled with fertilizer (stinky!) to others filled with illegal drugs. But it can get worse. One woman found a mummified baby in a self-storage unit, and others have contained cremation urns with the ashes of someone's dear departed. And then there are the people who try to live in their self-storage units. What's so strange about that? Self storage. Get it?

Okay, let's be serious. It seems to be human nature to not want to live by the rules that "regular" people live by, and it seems to be an equally human trait to deplore other people's greed and lack of responsibility. Who didn't wince when Leona Helmsley allegedly drew a distinction between herself and the "little people," who had to live by the rules and pay their taxes? But isn't that what people like Timothy Geithner, Nancy Killefer, and Tom Daschle must think, too? (Maybe we just won't mention Bill Richardson and his corruption investigation.) And Geithner got away with it! Those financial guys can get away with anything!