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IMHO, your conspiracy theory on this subject is based totally on emotion. You strongly desire to believe that e.g. members of the US Congress or Senate are "inept fools". One could quantify exactly how much money per annum being a member of Congress or Senate is worth, and it is huge. The actual salary is dwarfed by the total amount. Inept, stupid people don't just continually fall into money as you need to believe-sure, they are hammered by the MSM for being "inept" just like they call Mozillo "inept".
As far as I am concerned, I have seen way too many laws and tax breaks passed for "special interests".
I feel most congressmen are whores, paid to do the bidding of the payer.
Any politician failing to "play the game" is economically forced to yield his power to one who will.
I do not subscribe to the concept that Members of Congress are inept fools... but I do think they are prostitutes, driven by lobbyists.
The Congressman does what he has to do in his environment to survive.
Unless the people organize a uproar, the lobbyists get their way.
This is the reason we can "justify" things like the Kelo vs. New London crap while simultaneously holding people who share music liable for criminal copyright infringement - even when we promise "justice for all" in exchange for "I pledge Allegiance".
Bit by bit the people are taxed more and more to pay for the largesse of the organizations represented by the lobbyist.
Yes, we have a good government system... but we the people MUST be vigilant. We aren't. We are allowing others to enslave us.
Steve
BrianT
Thank you. One of the downsides of writing in things that talk about real issues is that they are often filled with conspiracy theory nutjobs. Politicians probably dream of having the power that people sometimes give them credit for.
This just reminded me of a story I read that some of the Taliban in Afghanistan thought that we had a kind of "smart dust" that they could get on them and we could then track them from the dust. That would be pretty interesting, wouldn't it?