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Originally Posted by mookiemookie
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And here I was thinking we already had that to some extent. In truth, I'd prefer to hear a senator addressed as "the gentleman from Wal-Mart". At least it would be honest.
Unfortunately, there is very little that can be done about this kind of thing in the present system, or any existing large-scale system for that matter. As long as the government has the power to legislate and regulate freely, there will always be people with the means to co-opt or obtain that power, and they won't be any of us.
We already have the solution to these kinds of problems and it's been under our noses for over 230 years - simply eliminate the incentive for business or any cooperative to try to gain control over the power of the state. As long as any significant group is intent on getting power from the government it will eventually succeed.
Lobbyists are a universal pain because their job -their very means of support - is to convince people involved in government legislative, judicial, and executive processes to see things their way, and they will use any methods necessary to do so.
Officials of state, on the other hand, have a lot more to worry about than one agenda. They have a lot of issues to review, evaluate, and vote on, and they must also be concerned with how they are doing in the polls. There are few examples of any representative or senator putting as much thought into a position they hold as the people who lobbied for it, and this is true regardless of platform.
The solution I mentioned is that the Federal government is simply not supposed to have that much power to fight over. That's why its powers were enumerated in the Constitution, and it is why we have the First, Second, and Tenth Amendments. It is also why we have a Bill of Rights, checks and balances, and a difficult Amendment process. It is
supposed to be difficult for the Federal government to gain power.
The Supreme Court has often ruled laws and acts that were not strictly constitutional as being so because some kind of workaround that wasn't covered was used. The most infamous of these is the interstate commerce clause. The Federal government has the power to regulate interstate commerce and it was always supposed to, but since the term interstate commerce itself wasn't strictly defined in the constitution it was left open to interpretation and all manner of things have been passed under the dubious premise of being concerned with "interstate commerce".
Another favorite workaround is the block or categorical grant. The Federal government doesn't actually have the power to give money to states because that isn't an enumerated power, but states have the power to petition the government for available grants, and grants also get squeezed through interstate commerce, amongst other things.
Obviously, this is not how this is supposed to work. If the Constitution were drafted with the intent of making the Federal government powerful it would have included a "whatever-power-you-may-need-here" clause or a "consult-founding-related-papers and provide-your-own-interpretation" clause, but it didn't. It goes out of its way to do the exact
opposite in the 10th Amendment, which basically states; "If we forgot anything, you can't do that, either."
Even so, it didn't take long for people to figure out how to get around it. Special interests will always beat the government if they try, no matter where they come from. Our only saving grace is that they are also competing with each other.
I'd prefer that they just be absent from the process entirely. Why should one comparitively small and wealthy group of people get to make laws for the whole nation? Take away the government's freedom to invent power for itself and you won't have that anymore. A well-written, limiting, and ironclad constitution that can
only be changed through a difficult amendment process is our best defense against the plutocracy that has been building for the past two centuries. We just didn't get it quite right the first time
Those of you who have grander visions for government need not have any fear. There are still powers reserved to the states and to the people, so if you have some enlightened theory on governance you are free to practice it at all lower levels of government. I'm sure it will succeed marvelously and we'll all be flocking to your golden streets in short order. In the meantime I think we should at least be free to choose what kind society we live in to the maximum extent possible and I see 50 perfectly good states and over 3000 counties as a decent start.
Why even worry about campaign financing and all this other Washington nonsense? If there's no puppet then we don't have to worry about who's pulling the strings.