Lexington
莱克星顿
The seniors’ club
资深人士俱乐部
Jul 31st 2008
From The Economist print edition
America’s longest-serving Republican senator has been indicted
为美国服务最久的共和党参议员被起诉
THOMAS JEFFERSON once asked George Washington why he had agreed to a two-house Congress. Washington, noting that Jefferson had poured his tea into his saucer in order to cool it, said that he had answered his own question. “We pour House legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.” But the father of the nation never imagined that the inhabitants of his cooling chamber might try to pocket the silverware and run off with the teapot.
托马斯杰斐逊有一次问乔治华盛顿为什么他同意两院议会.华盛顿注意到杰斐逊把自己的茶倒入碟中冷却,就说其实他的行为已经回答了自己的问题.”我们需要把众议院的立法放入参议院这个碟中冷却.”但是美国国父却绝对没有想到他的这些资深成员现在却想侵吞掉银器,和茶壶同流合污了.
On July 29th Ted Stevens, the senior senator for Alaska and the longest-serving Republican in the upper house, was indicted on seven counts by the Justice Department. The department accuses Mr Stevens of falsely reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars of services he received from an oil company that had helped to renovate his home. He denies all the charges.
在7月29日,阿拉斯加资深参议员,在上院服务时间最长的共和党人Ted Stevens,被司法部指控犯有七项罪行.司法部指控他在装修房屋时从一家石油公司接受了价值几十万美元的服务.他否认了所有的指控.
The “services” seem paltry given the billions of dollars at stake in oil deals. His house is hardly a mansion: one newspaper talks of “peeling paint and an overgrown backyard”. Mr Stevens’s loot included some furniture and a stove. The interesting thing about the Stevens case is not what it tells us about suspected corruption but about everyday political life in Mr Stevens’s intersecting worlds, Alaska, the Senate and the Republican Party.
考虑到石油生意动辄几十亿的规模,这个”服务”似乎微不足道.他的房子并不豪华:一家报纸曾说它”油漆脱落,后院杂草丛生”.Stevens先生的赃物包括几件家具和一个火炉.Stevens案有趣的地方并不是它涉嫌贪污,而是它说明了Stevens先生的政治圈子,即阿拉斯加,参议院,共和党内这些有趣世界里的政治困境.
Mr Stevens has used his decades in the Senate-he first arrived there in 1968-to pour billions of dollars into his home state: so much money that Alaskans refer to him as “Uncle Ted”, talk of “Stevens money” and joke about changing the name of the currency to “the Ted”. The state is littered with tributes to his powers, such as the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. There is even a federal penitentiary named after him.
Stevens先生在参议院工作了几十年-他第一次来到这里要追溯到1968年-为他的州争取了几十亿美元:数量如此庞大,以致于阿拉斯加人称呼他 “Ted叔”,常常谈论”Stevens的钱”,甚至开玩笑说应该把通货名称改为”Ted”.阿拉斯加州内到处是对他功绩的赞颂,比如说Ted Stevens安克雷奇国际机场.甚至还有一个联邦监狱是以他的名字命名的.
Alaska likes to think of itself as the “last frontier”-a place where rugged entrepreneurs carve a living out of an unforgiving landscape. But in fact it is a quasi-welfare state. Alaska has been number one in per capita federal spending for more than 16 years, with $13,800 being spent on each Alaskan in 2006. Much of the state’s economy-particularly oil and fishing-is based on making money out of government-controlled land and sea. Each of its 680,000 inhabitants gets an annual payout from the state’s oil fund of $1,654.
阿拉斯加总认为自己是”最后一块未被开发的地方”-远离罪恶大陆雄心万丈的企业家,在这个州创造自己的生活.但实际上它已经是一个准富裕州了.阿拉斯加的联邦人均支出居全国第一已经不只16年了,2006年它的联邦人均支出是13800美元.该州经济的绝大部分-尤其是石油和捕鱼-都是在政府控制的陆地上和海洋里赚钱.680000名居民每人每年都会从州石油基金中得到1654美元.
Mr Stevens puts up a vigorous defence of his activities. Alaska is a unique state with unique needs, he argues: a geographically isolated and sparsely populated giant of a place that was only admitted to the Union in 1959, it needs government money in order to pump-prime the private economy. But Mr Stevens’s model of development had created an inbred class of politicians and businessmen who spend their lives doing favours for each other.
Stevens为他的种种行为进行了强有力的辩护.阿拉斯加是一个有独特需求的独特的州,他说:阿拉斯加地理上被隔离,领土广阔人口稀少,直到1959年才进入联邦,因此需要政府资金来鼓励私有经济.但Stevens先生的经济发展模式却产生了联系紧密的政客和商人集团,这些人的一生都在为彼此大开方便之门.
Mr Stevens was first appointed to his Senate seat by the then-governor, Walter Hickel. The junior senator, Lisa Murkowski, was appointed by her father, Frank Murkowski, when he left the Senate to become governor. (She has since been re-elected.) These hereditary politicians-and dozens of smaller players in the state capital, Juneau-are all hand in glove with the state’s big industries, particularly oil. Some local politicians have even taken to wearing baseball caps embroidered with the letters CBC-for “Corrupt Bastards Club”. The scandal that is consuming Mr Stevens is also consuming lots of local politicians, including his son.
Stevens先生的参议员职位最初是由时任州长Walter Hickel任命的.年轻参议员Lisa Murkowski是由她的父亲离开参议院担任州长后任命的(自那以后她再次当选).这些世袭政客-还有诸多在州首府朱诺活动的小角色-与阿拉斯加的大工业,尤其是石油业都联系紧密.许多当地政客甚至喜欢戴绣有字母CBC的棒球帽-意思是”贪污的混蛋俱乐部”.现在困扰Stevens先生的丑闻也同样困扰着许多地方政客,包括他儿子.
The Stevens affair poses some awkward questions about the Senate. Its seniority system gives extraordinary power to people who can get in early-perhaps because they have a family name like Kennedy or a powerful patron-and then stay around for as long as possible. This gives a disproportionate amount of power to people from small states with non-competitive political systems (Mr Stevens was chairman of the Senate’s most powerful arm, the cash-dispensing Appropriations Committee, for seven years.) It also encourages states to keep voting for incumbents and incumbents to hang on until they drop. The current Senate contains 26 people who are 70 or over.
Stevens丑闻也说明参议院有些不无尴尬的体制问题.它的年功序列制度给一些可以很早进入参议院落的人极大的权力-也许是因为他们姓肯尼迪,也许他们有势力很大的赞助人-然后他们会在位子上能待多久就待多久.它同样会给一些来自不怎么需要竞争的小州的人大得不合理的权力(Stevens先生是参议院最有势力的委员会,负责现金分配的拨款委员会的主席.)它还会鼓励各州继续选本州的现任参议员,鼓励现任者在位子上待得尽量长.当前超过70岁的参议员有 26名.
It also poses yet more problems for the Republican Party in an election year. Mr Stevens’s indictment gives the Democrats a chance to resurrect the corruption charges they used so effectively in 2006. It also gives them a chance to raise the question of hypocrisy. The Republicans have always claimed to be the party of limited government and fiscal restraint. But when it comes to their own constituents they are all for handing out free money.
这个案子也揭示了大选之年共和党的一些问题.Stevens案会使民主党再次祭起他们在2006年屡试不爽的法宝-贪污指控.它还会使得民主党指责共和党的虚伪.共和党总宣称自己的支持小政府和财政紧缩的政党.但一旦细查它的党员,就会发现严重的贪污问题.
Baked Alaskan
四面楚歌的阿拉斯加人
Is Mr Stevens’s disgrace proof that people have had enough of all this? There are some encouraging signs. Alaskans once named Mr Stevens “Alaskan of the century”. Now they seem ashamed of what he stands for. Even before this week, he was stuck in a close re-election race against his Democratic rival, Mark Begich, the mayor of Anchorage, and also facing a primary challenge from a disgruntled Republican. Sarah Palin, the Republican governor of Alaska, has made her name campaigning against the state’s corruption and nepotism.
Stevens先生遭受如此耻辱是否说明人民已经受够了？很有这种可能.阿拉斯加人曾经称Stevens先生为”阿拉斯加世纪人物”,但现在却为他所代表的一切而感到羞耻.甚至在本周之前,他就在改选中与他的民主党对手,安克雷奇市长Mark Begich缠斗不清,在初选中他还面临着对其不满的共和党人的挑战. 阿拉斯加共和党州长Sarah Palin,在竞选中就声明她要对抗州内贪污和任人唯亲这两个问题.
Mr Stevens has also become a national symbol of out-of-control spending. His voluble support for a $400m “bridge to nowhere”-in fact, to a sparsely populated island where his friends owned land-helped to create a huge backlash against “earmarks”, particularly among fiscal conservatives. Tom Coburn, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, tried to divert the largesse from Alaska to Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. John McCain is a long-standing campaigner against pork-barrel spending.
Stevens先生已经成为胡乱花钱的全国典型.他喋喋不休地要求给阿拉斯加4亿美元经费-花在这个他的朋友占有土地的地广人稀的半岛-很多人反对此类” 专项拨款”,尤其是财政保守派当中. 俄克拉荷马共和党议员Tom Coburn希望将这笔巨款用于受卡特莱娜飓风袭击的新奥尔良.John McCain一直以来都反对政治分肥的行为.
Mr Stevens managed to roll over the objections to his bridge in the Senate. “I will put the Senate on notice-and I don’t kid people-if the Senate decides to discriminate against our state, to take money from our state, I’ll resign from this body. This is not the Senate I came to.” It would be nice to think that Mr Stevens is right for once about his last point. But the Senate is pretty hard to shame. Mr Stevens’s successor as chairman of the Appropriations Committee is Robert Byrd, a 90-year-old Democrat from the pork-gobbling state of West Virginia.
Stevens先生成功地压下了参议院当中的反对声音.”我希望参议院注意-不开玩笑-如果参议院歧视我们州,把我们州的经费拿走,我会向这个机构辞职, 这不是我想像中的议会.”Stevens先生关于参议院的最后一点还是很对的.但是参议院是一个很不知羞耻的地方.下任拨款委员会主席,Stevens先生的继任者,是90岁的民主党人Robert Byrd,他来自贪婪的西弗吉尼亚.
译者：xsj191 http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=13117&extra=page%3D1