Backward, Into The Future
By TIMOTHY EGAN
NYT
After gaining control of much of the world’s copper supply, the 19th-century robber baron William A. Clark set out to buy a seat in the United States Senate. Openly, he went about bribing Montana legislators, $10,000 a vote, the cash paid in monogrammed envelopes.
Mark Twain called Clark “as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag,” but the senator did not show any shame. “I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale,” he said.
It was corruption such as this that led to the 17th Amendment, which allows direct election of senators by the people, not state legislators. And it was stone-hearted, Gilded Age titans like Clark who prompted this populist movement in the West.
Curious, then, that one of the truly regressive ideas of the radical conservatives now seizing control of the Republican Party in the West and elsewhere is a bid to repeal the 17th Amendment. The Republican nominees for the Senate and House from two mountain states backed this Paleolithic idea before winning the party nod.
(Original here.)
NYT
After gaining control of much of the world’s copper supply, the 19th-century robber baron William A. Clark set out to buy a seat in the United States Senate. Openly, he went about bribing Montana legislators, $10,000 a vote, the cash paid in monogrammed envelopes.
Mark Twain called Clark “as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag,” but the senator did not show any shame. “I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale,” he said.
It was corruption such as this that led to the 17th Amendment, which allows direct election of senators by the people, not state legislators. And it was stone-hearted, Gilded Age titans like Clark who prompted this populist movement in the West.
Curious, then, that one of the truly regressive ideas of the radical conservatives now seizing control of the Republican Party in the West and elsewhere is a bid to repeal the 17th Amendment. The Republican nominees for the Senate and House from two mountain states backed this Paleolithic idea before winning the party nod.
(Original here.)
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