Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete F.
And the root cause is the increase in political funding allowed by the Citizens United decision
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The root cause is greed for power and money. The politicians don't have to accept bribes. They have been accepting bribes for centuries. It's not some new phenomenon. The politicians were doing it in this country well before citizens united. The Progressive agenda, for example, is the accumulation of power into a centralized system of government in order to be able to do whatever Progressive politicians want to do in spite of legal or constitutional restrictions. Their method is the rewriting of the Constitution by legislative and judicial fiat rather than by constitutional amendment.
Laws cannot prevent corruption if the laws are not followed. The corruption of the American system of government did not depend on Citizens United. The politicians have been as eager as economic power brokers to participate in that corruption--actually they have probably been more responsible since they had the civil power to maintain the constitutional order. As one of our Founders said, the Constitution was made only for a moral people and wouldn't work for any other kind.
If Citizens United invites corruption, it only does so if the politicians are corrupt. Corporations, since Citizens United, have "contributed" to both parties. Amazon donated more to Democrats than to Republicans. I suspect that corporations will give more to those who they think will win. I find it telling that the centralization and growth in power of government parallels the centralization and power of corporations. The same corruption of politicians can be influenced by the centralization of groups other than corporations, such as huge labor unions.
The constitutional distribution and separations of power made it far more difficult to create broad networks of control over the individual people of this country. But if the constitutional order is breached, corruptible gatekeepers in our units of government, can sell out the people in order to maintain power and expand their wealth. The Progressive centralization of power has steadily made it easier for those gatekeepers to control greater areas and greater numbers of people. And it has made it easier to centralize economic power into fewer and larger businesses to work in tandem with more centralized and powerful government peopled by corruptible politicians.