Money and Lawyers in Politics

(LFC Comments: This is the second part of Mr. Edstrom’s three essays on politics.)

Money & Lawyers in Politics

Written by Warren Edstrom of Knox County

Money is neither good nor evil. It is a tool and will accomplish what its
owners wish it to accomplish. One of the ways the political parties use money for
control is by accumulating most of the money at the party level. Candidates
can seldom raise enough to run a successful campaign so they depend on the
party to help, but there are strings attached.

While moderating a recent candidate night one of the contestants said: “If
you take money from a special interest group, they will own you. That’s why
I don’t take their money”.

Now wait a minute. The Republican and Democrat parties are arguably the
two most powerful special interest groups in the world. Yet the candidate willingly takes
their money and does their bidding.

Where or who the money comes from is also a big issue. There are two kinds of big
donors. First, those who already agree with you on values and principles and know you
will promote certain legislation out of your values. These are “Values” donors. Second,
those who will want to influence your vote based on their own selfish concerns. These
people will probably not agree with your values, but hope to persuade you with
campaign cash. They cannot legally offer you a bribe.

This is where the lobbyist comes in. A lobbyist functions as a go between in a bribe.
They are usually past elected officials or political insiders who have moved on to
greener pastures. They know the workings of the system and know how to subvert the system for the benefit of their clients. If it did not work, they would not do it. By the way
they are almost all lawyers.

Yikes 3

There are currently 33,000 lobbyists in Washington D.C. That is 61 lobbyists per representative. Is it any wonder they do not have time for the average citizen? We cannot walk into their office with a briefcase full of cash. As you can see “we the people” do not have much to say in the system as it exists today.

Let me give you a little background on how we got here.

The founding fathers of this great country created a Constitution and Bill of Rights that
are timeless. They established rules and principles that they knew would hold the
country together, in good times and bad, and would hold up to the tests and trials of
time. There was one caveat to ensure that the society would flourish: we must have
principled, moral people in public office.

We have slowly drifted away from these documents with the intention that our
modification of them would solve some problem, change things for the better, just to find
that our good intentions had bad consequences. We changed the way our Senators
would be selected, from being appointed by the state legislatures, to being elected by
popular vote. This change removed the interests of the states from being brought to
bear on the federal government.

We now have state sovereignty legislation pending to try to rectify this situation. If we
would have trusted the wisdom of the founders, we would not have been in this
circumstance and the Federal Government would not have so much sway over our
individual states. Add to this the lower moral values of our society have contributed to
the ease with which our politicians take payoffs in exchange for their votes and lie with
impunity.

We are facing a time when the Federal government in Washington is grasping at all the
power they can get, and we have a willing Congress that hopes to use that power to
aggrandize them, gain more power and stay in office for life. They exempt themselves
from the burdens they place the backs of citizens. They vote themselves benefits and
great retirement packages, for life, at the same time many Americans are watching,
helplessly, as their retirement accounts dwindle to almost nothing.

This problem is not the fault of one party. They both are corrupt and play good cop bad
cop with us from one election cycle to the next. The people see this out of control
government, whose loyalty is not to the American people but to the special-interest
groups and lobbyists that finance their campaigns, and wonder “Where do I fit into this
equation?”

Out of this frustration the people have come to believe that they have been silent too
long. The trust we have given our leaders in Congress and in our State capitols have
been betrayed by people and organizations that have their own self-interest at heart.

To this we must say, “ENOUGH”.



Categories: Free Speech Zone, Uncategorized

Tags:

12 replies

  1. I have observed that costs for internet degree pros tend to be a terrific value. For instance a full Bachelor’s Degree in Communication from The University of Phoenix Online consists of Sixty credits from $515/credit or $30,900. Also American Intercontinental University Online comes with a Bachelors of Business Administration with a full education course element of 180 units and a price of $30,560. Online learning has made obtaining your college degree much simpler because you can certainly earn your current degree from the comfort of your home and when you finish working. Thanks for all the tips I have really learned from your web-site.

  2. Howdy! Do you know if they make any plugins to help with SEO? I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good results. If you know of any please share. Cheers!

  3. I absolutely love your blog.. Very nice colors & theme. Did you create this site yourself? Please reply back as I’m looking to create my own personal blog and want to learn where you got this from or what the theme is named. Appreciate it!

  4. There’s definately a great deal to find out about this issue. I really like all the points you made.

  5. Pretty! This has been an incredibly wonderful post. Many thanks for supplying these details.

  6. 797637 923390Thank you for your info and respond to you. auto loans westvirginia 832326

  7. 872332 541103Hey there! Good post! Please inform us when we will see a follow up! 436389

  8. 17652 75317Outstanding weblog here! right after reading, i decide to buy a sleeping bag ASAP 596562

  9. 991306 199290I like this web internet site its a master peace ! Glad I detected this on google . 836145

  10. 1326 84714As soon as I discovered this internet web site I went on reddit to share some with the enjoy with them. 541532

  11. 462132 168750Aw, i thought this was an really great post. In concept I would like to invest writing in this way moreover – taking time and actual effort to manufacture a quite great article but exactly what do I say I procrastinate alot and no means apparently go completed. 211525

Leave a Reply

Discover more from Lobbyists for Citizens

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading