Lobbying Influences

Whenever a pool of money is under the care of people that only pay lip service to the charge they have been given to be good stewards of, special interests are going to have THEIR way in how that money is used.

This is why our founding fathers designed a bill of rights and constitution with checks and balances to provide and maintain the pursuit of freedom for all it's citizen's to succeed or fail within the rules of law. This system of governance can only succeed however if it's citizens have a healthy skepticism of the largess of it's government. Rules of law, the meting out of justice and the defense of our liberty and safety, are usually reasonable expectations of government. When the government intrudes in our economy however, we have to exercise extreme caution. The shifting of assets through legislation can provide those with significant financial interests and resources in our economy to exert tremendous pressure on our legislators.

Capitalism is a rough and tumble system that provides great reward for those that can assume risk. It can also be brutally fair in it's dispensation of that reward and failure. Of course when this system is skewed to reduce to risk of some and not others, fairness flies out the window. This is so often why well meaning legislation ends up adding layers of government bureaucracy while at the same time making it more expensive for the individual to comply with. Of course large companies don't like this either, but they usually have the legal and financial resources to absorb many of these extra costs. It is so important to scrutinize every piece of legislation, but the average citizen has very few resources and even less time to do this when the sheer size of these bills make it difficult for even the legislators that vote to know what's in them, let alone their unintentional consequences.

Our founding fathers were weary of this and consistently wrote about the dangers of the government becoming so large that it would become a self-serving institution. Regrettably, this is where America finds itself today.

I seriously doubt the framers of our constitution wanted it's elected officials to treat their government service as a lifelong occupation and this is where the rub lies. The self perpetuating nature of government bureaucracies and the legislators that cow-tow to the lobbying influences that keep them employed.

Our government has to be responsive to the concerns of it's citizens to be sure, but it doesn't work very well for the average Joe who can only influence it's politicians at election time. The government was designed to work for the people, not the other way around. The sheer size of our government today makes it virtually impossible for the everyday citizen to have much influence.