Christian Renaud's Blog

The Washington Game

As far as I can determine, the rules of the Washington game are as follows:

1) Find an industry or company currently thriving

2) Threaten said industry with special taxation, regulation or 'investigate them as a monopoly'

3) Sit back and receive millions and millions of 'campaign contributions' from said industry or company lobbyists to go away and not pursue special taxation, regulation or investigation.

4a) If the campaign contributions are insufficient to pay for your psychiatric drugs or racism-amplifying drinking spree, then follow through with the threatened taxation, regulation or monopoly-penalties.

4b) If contributions are sufficient, create a ruling that requires that said industry come back again in 3-4 years, wallets open (neatly coinciding with re-election campaign cash needs) to answer for these accusations.

5) When you've drained the industry/company of resources sufficiently, create a law that contradicts other laws already on the books, effectively making it a non-winnable game.  When the industry/company subsequently reaps profits or goes bankrupt due to the regulatory/legal change, then claim that the company acted unethically/inefficiently (and never admit that the regulatory contradiction had any bearing on the outcome), then hotly stampede for the government to 'correct this flaw in the free markets' and create a government-driven replacement.  Remember, government is never the 'disease'. Government is always the 'cure'.

6) Once taken under the 'governmental wing', then subsidize the shit out of said industry with taxpayer dollars to prop them up.  They receive tax incentives, stimulus packages, or other financial largess from the government, creating a supplicant relationship to their patron Congresscritters, which in turn they turn around a large percentage of in donations to their patron politicians.

7) Start searching for the next pot of money to go drain.

For example: Healthcare, Financial Services (specifically banking) Technology Companies, Hollywood (MPAA), Energy Companies.  Related lobby firms here. 

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."- Ronald Reagan

Innovation Occlusion

Early in my career, I had the opportunity to work in cardiovascular research and development.  Among the many projects I worked on, one was a coronary-artery bypass graft for situations when an individual's primary coronary arteries would become occluded, or plugged, with plaque.  This is called vascular occlusion, and will kill you if not caught early.

We have innovation occlusion in this country, and we did it to ourselves.

Here are two examples from last week alone:

First: The United States House of Representatives passed the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, now in front of the Senate and headed quickly to the willing signature of the President.  For those of you not monitoring it, the Act changes the current patent approval system from 'first to invent' to 'first to file'