I received a pamphlet in the mail yesterday from Representative Jeff Fortenberry, Congressman for my district in Nebraska, declaring a sort of public seminar about the promise of ethanol and other alternative fuels and the benefits that putting public support into this would bring to this state.
Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, progressives: it's an endless parade of men and women in expensive tailored suits getting up and telling us what they want us to support.
Or is it?
Every single politician is a shill for somebody.
Following me? Good. Not following me? Flip, maybe it'll clear up.
The problem is, when we hear our representatives talking - even the ones we respect - it's NOT them talking.
Who donated the money that gave them the campaigning muscle that got them into office?
These are public offices. Yet the amount of money one must throw around in order to gain access to that office, let alone run for it, is simply stunning. Most politicians get a great deal of that money handed to them by third-parties: corporations, religious groups, the list is a mile long.
Nothing comes without a price.
Corporations as individuals expecting special treatment in the form of exclusive contract handouts, entire industries asking for national policy to be changed just so they can make bigger profits, and others. The more virulent strains of the Religious Right have long been asking for (and getting) certain concessions made to them that allow them to abuse the trust of their congregations and spew forth messages of hate across the airwaves.
And the politician who accepts money from a third-party, be it Focus on the Family, the NRA, or the Teamsters, has no choice but to speak for that party: he has tied his own hands. You scratch my back, I scratch yours.
In so doing, he has abrogated the moral and ethical right to hold that public office: he no longer represents the people who voted for him, but the privileged few who have bought his own vote on policy. How can he? To put it in the terms of the Xtian Right, it is literally a deal with the devil. "We'll give you all the money you need, but we want your vote on these issues to go this way."
This is the core of Washington. It is the source of the massive military-industrial complex that has kept America in a perpetual war economy since World War II and is bankrupting our country on so many levels today. This is how the Religious Right found its niche in politics (by fleecing the flock to buy political decisions). It is the source of every single scandal in this administration, from Halliburton to Guantanamo to Medicare and the pharmaceutical industry, to the tax cuts, to this new minimum wage bill that threatens to take us back to levels of poverty this country has never seen before.
This is why I call every politician a shill - show me ONE who didn't accept a donation, or a favor, or something of pecuniary interest, from a third-party knowing it would come back to bite him on the ass later.
I believe that makes a fairly firm definition for corruption. Your so-called representatives have sold you out.
The sad part is, by and large, we accept this. We even play along with it.
Now think about this: have you ever thought about it in this way? Or do you just accept that "this is the way it is and it's not going to change"? Because I don't, and I wanted to share that with you today.
That conference/seminar that my representative is calling? I'll go. I will pay a small fee (and it is small - $8), for the privilege of hearing a swollen corn industry ask for public support to expand itself further, through its bought-and-paid-for mouthpiece. And I will think forward to the next elections and consider that, as the system currently stands, all I'm really voting for is which set of third-parties I want to hear for the next term, and what face represents them.
I don't believe it has to be that way. I believe that I shouldn't have to lobby my own interests against the interests of the private corporate sector (or out-of-state churches) in order to be represented fairly in the national government. And I believe that, while it won't eliminate the corruption running rampant, a viable solution is to make the system change.
Why should I have to have a seven-digit income, from any combination of sources, in order to hold a public office? And why should I have to mortgage the responsibilities of that office, in order to hold the power?
Why should my ability to hold a public office depend on the size of my bank account, instead of on the will of the people I represent?
Loosen the grip of cash on public office, and maybe then we can start finding real answers to the issues that put the world at risk today.