The government of this country, at all levels from the cities to the federal government, is corrupt. Mayors and council members, county commissioners and select"men," governors and legislators, presidents and congress members - all of them are for sale to the highest bidder:
"Always vote for the incumbent county commissioner; the road's already paved to his door."
"An honest politician is one who stays bought."
"Invest in America - buy a Congressman!"
Once upon a time, there were no organizations with enough money, power, and immunity from the law to corrupt the processes of the United States government. That's changed now. Large corporations have enough power and enough money to buy anyone they want to - and if the politician won't get bought, or won't stay bought, there's always the Wellstone Solution.
Corporations, you see, have slowly but surely bought the courts and manipulated the law to the point where they are effectively immune from prosecution for their crimes or redress for their actions. The examples of this are too numerous to list, so I'll just give two. Remember the Exxon Valdez? Exxon still hasn't cleaned up its mess from that disaster. And did you know that DynCorp, a subsidiary of CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation), is still being given multi-million dollar government contracts, despite the fact that they openly bought and sold sex slaves in Bosnia during the campaigns there?
Being elected to a government office these days is so expensive - mainly because of the need to purchase media advertising - that no one can be elected, especially at the national level, without millions of dollars to spend. Where do those millions come from? Think about it. People and corporations who make campaign contributions ultimately demand a return on their investment.
There are thousands of examples out there, maybe even millions, but let's look at just one. The Associated Press reported on January 16, 2007, that TXU, the state's biggest utility company, gave $400,000 to Gov. Rick Perry's campaigns. In return Gov. Perry signed an executive order to speed the construction of 11 new highly polluting coal-fired power plants. Gov. Perry is an "honest politician" (see definition above); he's so solidly in favor of pollution now that he he has called Al Gore's mouth the leading source of carbon dioxide.
The more a corporation invests in a candidate, the more it wants back from him or her after the election. The result is that the big corporations own the government officials they've invested in, top to bottom. Abe Lincoln called this a nation "of the people, by the people, and for the people." It's turned into a nation of the wealthy, by the powerful, and for the corporations. How bad is it? Read this commentary on our election system.
That makes me angry, and I pledge to work for the elimination of that corrupt system. At the very minimum, campaign finance reform - real campaign finance reform - is necessary; and we won't really solve the problem until we have complete public financing of all political campaigns, with contributions by anyone but private individuals completely banned.
One other thing - I'm sure you've heard the old saying, "Follow the money." Where does the money go in this system? Some of it stops in the candidates' campaign accounts, sure; but the overwhelming majority of it winds up in the pockets of the media corporations - for all the advertising candidates have to do to get elected. Cleaning up the election process will also require that the Congress look into the incestuous relationship between the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the ever more bloated media megacorporations like Rupert Murdoch's kingdom.