The Barney Frank Quandary

Every time I start to get hopeful and optimistic that Americans are starting to wake up to the tragic satire that has become Washington, D.C., I get a reality check.

I hear or see Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. Barney Frank, frankly, is a disgrace. He personifies all that is wrong with American government. He is morally and behaviorally unfit for elective office at the lowest level of American society — city council, board of education, party selectman or dogcatcher.

Yet, he has served in the House of Representatives of the United States since 1981!

I know he "serves" a safe Democratic district in Taxachusetts. You don't have to remind me. I know it's a state that also perennially re-elects the equally inept and brain-addled Ted Kennedy to the U.S. Senate. You don't have to remind me. I know Massachusetts has a long history of electing reprobates like Gerald Studds to Congress.

It just seems to me that even residents of Massachusetts would prefer not to have a walking, talking cartoon representing them for 28 years — someone who once allowed a homosexual call-boy ring to be run out of his House office and home. This can't be good for the future of the Democratic Party, let alone the image of the state.

Frank is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. As such, he presided over the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacle that touched off the mortgage crisis, which, in turn, set off the economic calamity besetting the entire country and the rest of the world.

Rush Limbaugh calls him "the banking queen." I heard him also refer to Frank as Elmer Fudd. (Actually, Barney Frank sounds more like Sylvester the cat.) And Elmer Fudd has more redeeming qualities than Frank does. For one thing, Elmer Fudd is funny. There is nothing funny about Frank — at least not Frank in a position of power.

If you look up the word "arrogant" in the dictionary, you might well see a picture of Frank next to the definition. If you look up the phrase, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely," in Bartlett's Quotations, again you might see an illustration of Frank as proof positive.

I wonder how it must feel to be represented by Frank.

Are the residents of his district proud of him? Does he truly stand for their views, their demeanor and their values?

How did the Boston area go from John Adams and Samuel Adams to Barney Frank in just 200 years? It's shocking to think about it. It reflects badly not only on New England, but on all of America. We've lost almost everything that made this country great, and it will never be great again with the likes of Frank in Congress.

Candidly (notice I didn't say "frankly"), I don't want to be part of an America that seats people like Frank in the U.S. Congress. I don't want to hear his tirades against seven-figure bonuses for officials of AIG when he knows they were specifically approved in legislation and sponsored by his good friend and colleague, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn.

And what about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the institutions practically run by Frank? Aren't these government corporations paying executives more seven-figure bonuses on top of the way Frank and company approved bonuses of double-digit millions, even after a federal regulator's report blamed "an arrogant and unethical culture" at the institution for manipulated earnings that led huge executive bonuses?

Where was Frank's incoherent outrage back then? Where is that familiar unrighteous indignation now as millions more is about to be doled out to executives of this discredited agency?

Do we really want Frank running businesses and micromanaging the economy when he has never run so much as a Popsicle stand in his life? (In fairness, of course, there was that homosexual call-boy ring.)

I don't want to put too much at Barney Frank's feet. He's just a sleazy, immoral, inarticulate windbag. But, somehow, I just won't believe America is ever again on the right track as long as people like this are permitted to sit in Congress.

If and when he does go, I'd hate to be responsible for the cleaning bill. But, of course, I will be.

Joseph Farah's newest book, "None of the Above: Why 2008 Is the Year To Cast the Ultimate Protest Vote," is available now. To find out more about Joseph Farah and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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