By Bill Shein
January 16, 2009

I’ve long fancied myself an expert on American government. My bookshelves are lined with scholarly tomes about U.S. history and politics; dense treatises examining esoteric political theories; guides to using words like “tome” and “esoteric” and “treatises” to seem smarter, and hundreds of books about why cats do the kooky and hilarious things they do.

(The cat books are unrelated to the subject at hand, but full disclosure seems appropriate. Keep reading.)

Sadly, to be considered an expert in American government is no feat. Polls routinely show that far too few of us know such basic facts as the number of years in a senator’s term (six); who has the power to declare war (Congress, not the president); or the number of branches that make up the federal government (four).

But as the last word of the previous sentence makes clear, it turns out that I am not an expert at all, but rather, an idiot. A complete moron. Someone who probably runs barefoot on icy sidewalks while carrying scissors and balancing a scalding-hot beverage on his head.

My stupidity explains why I thought we had only three branches of government: Executive, legislative, and judicial. Because last week – when not busy removing bread from my toaster with a knife – I learned that there’s a fourth branch made up entirely of big corporations.

The tip-off came in the first sentence of a Wall Street Journal story that was remarkable, even to an idiot like me: “A Senate bill aimed at giving strapped homeowners more leverage in renegotiating their mortgages cleared a hurdle Thursday when Citigroup Inc. dropped its opposition.”

In the article, Democratic senators Charles Schumer of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois practically fell to their knees while praising Citigroup. Durbin said, “I want to congratulate Citi for being open-minded about this ... and playing a major leadership role.”

The legislation in question would allow bankruptcy court judges to modify mortgage terms to give homeowners who file for bankruptcy protection a chance to stay in their homes. But the issue here, aside from requiring banks to do more to reduce foreclosures (which will ultimately save them money, by the way), is that the U.S. Senate couldn’t proceed until Citigroup said it could.

Now, keeping in mind that I’m a total idiot – right now I’m chewing on shards of glass and I don’t even know why! – I thought that Congress made the laws, not big banks or multinational corporations. Nor did I think that the Constitution required legislation to get past Citigroup before becoming law.

Besides, wasn’t it just six weeks ago that the government saved Citigroup with a “rescue package” of $45 billion in cash and $300 billion to guarantee its bad-mortgage debt? Wouldn’t that make irrelevant Citigroup’s opinion on just about anything related to mortgage finance?

Yet Citigroup still gets to run the show. That can only mean that a “corporate branch” is written into the Constitution somewhere, right? In very small writing? Perhaps backwards and upside-down, so you have to hold the Constitution to a mirror to see it?

Look, I’ve now been revealed as little more than a simple man who reads books like “Mr. Whiskers’ Guide to Krazy Kat Kookiness” and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cat Shenanigans” and has little knowledge about the constituent parts of our government. So, from now on I’ll keep quiet while the big banks block or approve legislation, funnel another $350 billion in bailout money into their well-tailored pockets, (a.k.a. “strengthening their balance sheets”), and continue to provide America with the “leadership” that the now-even-larger Democratic majority in Congress can’t seem to muster.

Ironically, if the publishing business wasn’t also controlled by a few huge corporations, perhaps we’d learn about this fourth branch of government in our civics textbooks. I’m no conspiracy theorist, but it sure seems convenient how that worked out, eh?

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Bill Shein’s sarcastic outrage is surely a sign of his low I.Q.