The Lying Liars Who Lie

 I have considered myself fairly intelligent...no genius of course, but smarter than the average bear.  But I have constantly questioned what is going on in Washington, D.C.  Why do those we hire to represent us seem to work for someone else?  For that matter, why do our local newpapers seem so intent on angering half of their potential readership?  But, now that I have read J. B. Shurk's article at the American Thinker entitled Liberating Ourselves from Dystopia, I can see that I have been pretty stupid. Shurk explains exactly what is going on, indeed has been going on for a long time, at least since the late 1890s. And his explanation fits all the facts.

More Americans grasp how the U.S. government actually works. Large corporate interests pay off politicians and bureaucrats to advance their financial interests. In return, those politicians and bureaucrats are responsible for creating new problems for the American people that can be exploited to justify spending huge sums of money — the bulk of which falls into the laps of the large corporate interests.

The pharmaceutical industry, for instance, would love for lawmakers to mandate that Americans purchase and use their products in perpetuity. Big Pharma then pays hospitals, research scientists, and medical doctors to push its products. It privately funds public health agencies, while rewarding ostensibly objective bureaucrats with research grants and promises of future lucrative employment. Through its lobbying arms, Big Pharma fills the campaign coffers and family foundations of elected officials and works hand in glove with lawmakers to craft legislation that simultaneously expands Big Pharma's profits and lawmakers' personal stock portfolios. Lawmakers who refuse to play this corrupt game end up becoming the electoral targets of all those extra dollars in industry profits, and the stick-or-carrot system effectively works to eliminate ethical politicians, while elevating criminals. It's plain old bribery and extortion, and it is how Washington, D.C. operates.

So, politicians dream up crisis after crisis to keep the public scared out of their wits which keeps them voting, while they actually take campaign cash from major donors and corporations. And those oare the people they actually work for. Our republic thus becomes a lie. The politicians lie. The corporations lie. The donors lie. And we pay for it.

What is to be done, I am at a loss.  But one must first recognize the problem, before one can develop a solution.  Right now, corporations and government are too intertwined.  The twitter files show this in dramatic detail.  And the revolving door between government and the private sector is old news.  One thing is clear though: the cost of todays campaigns are astranomical.  The donors who pay for these campaigns surely want something for their money.  They don't give out of the goodness of their hearts.  So, somehow, we need to get the money out of politics.  Also, Congress, both the House and Senate should not be able to take campaign money from outside their respective districts.   That would limit the power of pacs, unions, corporations, and even political parties.  But it would increase voters power, putting it back where it belongs.