Retrogression Blues

'One step forward, Two steps back', is a familiar cliche of complaint. I'd say it was apropos of our political leaders, except it's too mild to apply. Our guys and gals in Washington appear to live by 'One step forward, Two steps back, and while we're at it, let's take another Two backward.'

How does this manifest itself in our lives? Figuring out the labyrinthian processes in Washington are beyond me, but I can hazard a guess, and here it goes:

A bill gets passed - say one that will allow stem cell research to move forward, benefiting throngs of victims to a sadly wide and expanding menu of afflictions. Let's postulate this bill has been opposed by a certain segment of the population on some grounds or other - in this case we can posit fundamentalist religious beliefs as the motivating factor.

The opposition organizes successfully enough to pay for legal challenges to the new rule. They achieve an injunction against implementation of the rule. That will give them time to twist the arms (figuratively speaking) of vulnerable politicians(included elected judges) and build support for overturning, or drastically modifying the rule.

Now, faced with this opposition, what do the originators of the bill do? They compromise. In addition to the compromises already made in the passing of the bill. This is done through the process of mapping out how the rule will be administered. Rest assured by the time they are done, stem cells will only be available under circumstances that are rare at best.

What's worse, during this process of tinkering and 'tweaking', measures may be introduced through legal action that weren't even there in the first place. New interpretations of general passages that will now be refined into legal action. This may be taken so far that the bill will now allow less research into stem cells than before the bill was even passed. The modified rule may actually prohibit actions that weren't specifically prohibited before.

So, here's what we have: as far as the general voting public is aware, they have approved a bill that will stimulate stem cell research, ultimately benefitting the health and welfare of all citizens. But what they actually get is a bill that does very little, or at worse, undermines the whole concept.

Voters may never know until they see another bill up for a vote which does the same thing the old bill was supposed to do. They may wonder why another rule was needed. After all, isn't this fixed already?

Then again, given the persistence of voter memory in this country, they may never notice. Sort of a national, political, Alzheimer's. The kind of disease that no amount of stem cell research will ever solve ...