2nd Am Rev – current corruption –> lobbying, assoc. issues ~ cut & paste my files
Current corruption –> lobbying, Assoc. issues
However, we’ve now had 200 years of experience with the elected and appointed leaders of our central government stiff-arming their American ‘electors/voters’. During that time, legislating outside the immediate view of the American has allowed public allow a huge and constantly increasing number of individual lobbyists and well-funded special interest groups to glean favors and exemptions from our elected officials.
As lowly un-elected citizens, the severely-limited political power of ordinary Americans is frustrating to every citizen. But the effects of this historic constitutional problem have become devastating during the last half of the 20th century, as mass communications technology – radio, film, television, cable news, social media – has allowed corporations and the uber-wealthy to dominate the public discourse and relentlessly manipulate public opinion thru the 24-7-365 news cycle. This has turned America into two weaponized factions who have turned their furry back on one another. Just how effective disruptive this has been was recently communicated by Congressman Marco Rubio, who commented that it was:
“impossible to govern when half the country hates the other half”.
The answer to my ‘thought-provoking’ question that is supported by facts, and troubling in the extreme. We are seeing a very detrimental and non-democratic relationship btw the ‘elected’ and the electoral process in a country devoted to democratic principles. Instead of a newly elected Congressman or Senator being primarily concerned with their job performance as judged by those who elected them, these elected representatives have developed a laser-like focus on raising money for their next election, so they can retain their current government position or move on to a more influential one.
?? MAYBE MOVE TO DIFFERENT TOPIC/PAGE ??
Most of the text has already used into Intro, Ch 1 or 2, or stand-alone lobbying essay
Aside ~ Back-to-the-Future ~
Interjection: Madison’s concern in 1787 was about the anti-democratic effect of majority factions only involved the number of people in a faction; Madison and the other Founding Fathers paid little or no attention to the nature of the people in these special interest groups. Many of these factions may have been a statistical minority, but some – those with inordinate wealth, political connections or great fame – had a huge disproportion influence, so much so that they effectively represented the very same supermajority that the Founding Fathers so feared.
In the two-plus centuries since our Constitution was written, we can clearly see that the abusive use of political power by the uber wealthy and/or politically influential individuals have always, and continue to interject their unmitigated power into our democratic system.
While they represent only 0.1% of the population, entrenched political, hereditary or moneyed groups exert extraordinary and disproportionate by order-of-magnitude influence over the working of federal government. This is often more effective at tipping the scales away from the fair and free exercise of democratic principles than the votes of 70, or 80, or even 90% of the population.
We see this today when the uber wealthy use their billions to leverage political influence over the federal government by financing political campaigns, followed by the endlessly lobbying that includes a bottomless pit of money made available to members of Congress, the White House and Cabinet members if they agree to ‘play ball’.
This obviously provides an unfair advantage to their special interest groups (e.g. Wall Street, big banks, big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, NRA, arms dealers, international corporations, etc.) at the expense of the people and our democratic process. The result is backroom deals and many other perversions of our democratic process that until relatively recently, included “earmark” in unrelated legislation that bestow great wealth or a non-competitive advantage to an individual or group.
The result is our current and most undemocratic “pay for play” system that results in “the best damn government that money can buy!”, as well as our modern equivalent of class warfare – political unrest and divisiveness earlier referred by Congressman Marco Rubio where half of us hate the other half.
It seems that our Founders were extraordinarily successful at preventing any possibility of ‘mob rule’ by locking the front door to Washington, DC, while unintentionally leaving the back door, cellar door, both sides doors and all the windows open for the uber-wealthy and politically powerful to get in unimpeded and have unfettered access and influence over the politically powerful. This specific constitutional configuration did indeed stop the rare event of ‘mob rule’ while unintentionally creating a “money rule” coup in relation to an inappropriately-politicized federal government.