'Helping hands' help themselves

The word “help” is so uplifting, conveying our best humanitarian values. How odd, then, to see it used in this New York Times headline: “Banks’ Lobbyists Help in Drafting Financial Bills.”

I’ll bet they did! We all know how altruistic, beneficent and kindhearted Wall Street lobbyists are — when it comes to helping themselves, that is. The article explains that a small army of high-dollar influence-peddlers are not merely asking our lawmakers to free big banks from pesky rules that limit their reckless greed, but instead the lobbyists are helping to write the laws themselves.

There’s that word...