(07-05-2022, 07:56 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote:

(07-05-2022, 02:12 PM)americus 2.0 Wrote: Sometimes you say things much better than I do. This is one of those times. As for cleaning up DC, a lone wolf can't do it. Trump exposed them but that's about it. 

DeSantis is not as openly ballsy as Trump but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it's what they do quietly or behind the scenes that makes them more effective. If he runs for and wins POTUS, unless or until he can get a group of solid Republicans behind him who are as committed as he might be (we don't know that would be his goal) to clean out the sewage, and do it smartly, DC will keep on as always. Trump wasn't smart about it by any stretch of the imagination. If he had been he would still be in office. But then he wouldn't be Trump so....

There are just way too many of them who would be threatened by any real clean up effort to let it happen. Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, whatever. Not to mention lobbyists, special interest groups and corporations.

To the first bolded sentence, that is a great point. To the second, I seriously don't think enough people understand that this is the problem in DC. The politicians just follow the money. Same with the science. Cleaning up DC means separating the politicians from the corporations, and it's going to be hard because we can't see who's who.

There have always been corporations, corporations have always hired lobbyists, and there have always been special interest groups.  None of these things are bigger or badder than they were before.  
Being a politician will always be a privileged profession and privileged people will always pay generously for a modicum of attention from a politician.  Do you think Trump was somehow immune from this? Who did he hire as Secretary of Education and why? 
You're literally never going to get money out of politics.  No country ever has.  That doesn't mean the ones with the most money win, it just means you need a certain amount of money to play.  It was ever thus.

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