5. Sure I Take Donations From The Rich, But I’m Really For The Little Guy
Being a politician is like being a tightrope walker. The difference is
that most people want to see the politician fall. While tightrope walkers have
to balance their bodies, the politicians have to balance a couple of things. On
one end of their balancing poles is the money to conduct an effective campaign;
on the other ends are the votes they need to get elected. Here’s the problem.
Rich people have the kind of money a politician needs for campaigning, but not
enough votes to get them elected. The poor and middle class have the votes to
get a politician elected, but not enough money to conduct an effective
campaign. (Although, I have to hand it Bernie Sanders, who recently ran an
effective presidential campaign with only money from the poor and middle class.
But this is rare.) So, what are politicians to do?
Well, typically what happens is they take the money from the rich and
promise them certain favors, usually covertly, once they get elected. Then, to
actually get the votes they need, they pander to the poor and middle class,
promising to do great things for them after they take office. In either case
they are engaging in a Quid Pro Quo. In the former case they are exchanging
favors for money. In the latter case, they are exchanging benefits for votes.
So, what’s the problem?
The problem is that a politician does not pay back those rich donors or
those poorer voters with their own money. They use taxpayers’ dollars for that.
You see, the government does not EARN money by providing a service like a business
does. They TAKE money by force via taxes. Now of course the government does
provide services to the nation with that money, such as protection via the
military or the police, building roads to ease travel across the nation, and
having courts where disputes can be settled peaceably. But since the money used
to pay for those services is taken by force, we have to be very careful about
how many things we task the government to do lest we find ourselves taxed to
death.
In a dictatorship, the leader gets to decide what powers he wants and
how much to take from the citizenry. But in a Democratic Republic such as the
United States of America, the people get to decide those things. This is
accomplished in two ways. We have a Constitution that limits the scope of the
federal government, and we have the right to freely vote for the people who
will represent us in the White House and the Capitol. Theoretically, the people
will vote for representatives that will effectively carry out the mandates set
forth in the Constitution without going outside its bounds. But because of the
tightrope walking politicians engage in, that doesn’t always happen. Some rich
people want laws favorable to themselves, even if they are not Constitutional,
and are willing to pay for them. Other people like getting “free” stuff from
the government and are willing to vote for it. These forces put a lot of
pressure on politicians to go outside the bounds of the Constitution to ensure
they have the necessary money and votes to get elected. Typically, they will
justify their actions by saying, “I can’t do any good for our nation if I don’t
get elected.” Thus, a politician starts down a crooked path that only tends to
get more crooked the further he or she goes.
So, we need to ask the question: will we citizens continue to vote for politicians
that hand out favors and goodies thus requiring them to walk that tightrope, or
will we begin to vote for principled politicians who want what’s best for the
country as a whole so they can scurry back down to solid ground?
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