The Political Spectrum

Paul raises fair points in his previous post, I didn't want to be read as impuning the motives of any member of Congress, because I do believe that each of them (even ones I disagree with) do attempt to act in their best judgment and do what is best for the country.

My point was that we should try to whenever possible call a spade a spade. Duncan Hunter likely does have principled motives for opposing the Intelligence Reform Bill, however, it is my opinion that the publicly expressed motive and the privately held motives may in this case be different. There is a well known theory of regulation know as the "capture theory," which contains several elements: the first is that firms/agencies capture the regulatory process because each firm/agency has a lot at stake; second, is that while the public as a whole has a lot at stake, any one person has only a very small stake and so has little incentive to invest resources in affecting the regulatory process; third, there are few firms/agencies relative to the overall public, thus the costs of organizing to be effective is greatly decreased and; finally, firms/agencies have the incentive and the opportunity to successfully invest resources in lobbying Congress/regulators for favorable legislation/regulation. In this case, simply substitute DOD for the firm and Congress for the regulatory process. Now does this mean that the people involved are not acting from the purest motives, no, clearly it doesn't account for that at all. The theory simply recognizes what in some cases can be verified factually, which is that DOD and other agencies have captured specific members of Congress, (House and Senate Armed Services Committees) and are highly successful at controlling both the regulatory, oversight, and budget processes and ultimately have become experts at preserving their own self-interests, which in this case includes control over the intelligence budget.

Again, I reserve judgment on the ultimate issues to those who know them better than I. It may well be that the Pentagon is the best place for the entire intelligence operation. Further, it may well be that the Pentagon is the best place for the money to go first as they have the resources and experience necessary to most effectively allocate it to protect us both at home and abroad. All I was trying to say was that there is more here than meets the eye, and that those factors shouldn't be lost when evaluating what our elected officials are doing in Washington.