Washington DC: a Potemkin Village

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse has an excellent analysis of why things never seem to change and improve, and what We The People are up against in attempting to make our voices heard in DC.  It’s not a pretty picture, but at least we can be part of the community that helps others to open their eyes.  Here’s a significant extract:

We send politicians to stop the madness of government, but nothing changes.  Why?

Washington DC is a Potemkin village.  We focus on the visible but the constructs that impact us do not originate from the false façade.  There’s something behind that façade, and what we see is…. entirely… a façade.  That’s why sending the politicians doesn’t change the outcome.  To get to the core of the issue, we must first stop looking at the Potemkin village and instead look behind it.

Legislation, rules, regulations and laws are not written by congress.  The paperwork comes from the assembly of legal and lobbyist foot soldiers on K-Street.  That’s where the ink is put to the paper and the legislative outcomes first originate.  K-Street is where the corporations, multinationals and financial organizations control the process.

If the corporations behind the DC façade want to shift the money, they proactively write the rules, regulations and laws that steer the actual policy outcomes to their financial target or destination.  Their wealth expands and they reward the participants, the politicians.

Most of the entry level politicians are oblivious to where the corporations have proactively moved; however, a few of the politicians -- the leadership groups -- know exactly where the destination of the legislative intent is going.  The latter are tenured in the power structure behind the façade.

Two private domestic corporations, completely unaffiliated with the constructs of constitutional government, known as the RNC and DNC, require membership in order to participate in the pretense of American democracy.  The same financial entities that fund the K-Street operation, fund the private political clubs.

We The People, voters, are engaging in their construct to send ‘representatives’ into a political construct that is a façade.  The financial entities on K-Street, those who position wealth and generate the rules to maintain it, are the same financial entities that fund the mechanisms of the two private corporations (RNC/DNC).

The United States system of government is now operating to maintain this construct of common benefit. . . .

Read the entire posting here.  And I always learn something browsing through reader comments below the article.

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Legislation 101: Who is writing the legislation?

 

Who is writing the legislation? It’s not your Congress critter. At Conservative Treehouse, Sundance explains, and his entire posting is essentially Legislation 101 for voters:

. . . Recap: Corporations (special interest group) write the legislation. Lobbyists [K Street] take the law and go find politician(s) to support it. Politicians get support from their peers using tenure and status etc. Eventually, if things go according to norm, the legislation gets a vote.

Within every step of the process there are expense account lunches, dinners, trips, venue tickets and a host of other customary financial waypoints to generate/leverage a successful outcome. The amount of money spent is proportional to the benefit derived from the outcome.

The important part to remember is that the origination of the entire process is EXTERNAL to congress.

Congress does not write laws or legislation; special interest groups do. Lobbyists are paid, some very well paid, to get politicians to go along with the need of the legislative group.

When you are voting for a Congressional Rep or a U.S. Senator you are not voting for a person who will write laws. Your rep only votes on legislation to approve or disapprove of constructs that are written by outside groups and sold to them through lobbyists who work for those outside groups.

While all of this is happening the same outside groups who write the laws are providing money for the campaigns of the politicians, they need to pass them. This construct sets up the quid-pro-quo of influence, although much of it is fraught with plausible deniability.

This is the way legislation is created.

If your frame of reference is not established in this basic understanding you can often fall into the trap of viewing a politician, or political vote, through a false prism. The modern origin of all legislative constructs is not within congress.

“we’ll have to pass the bill to, well, find out what is in the bill” etc. ~ Nancy Pelosi 2009

“We rely upon the stupidity of the American voter” ~ Johnathan Gruber 2011, 2012.

Once you understand this process, you can understand how politicians get rich.

Much more at the link here.

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