Seahawks4Ever wrote:Case in point; Senator Patty Murray senior senator for Washington State. She started her political career as "mom" in tennis shoes, first she was elected to the legislature focusing on children's issues. She parlayed that job into knocking off Sen. Slade Gordon and has been in congress ever since. She is now worth 25-30 million dollars, possibly more.
How does such horse hockey happen?? It happens because the U.S. Congress passed a law that said that they can pocket ALL of the money left over from their election/re-election. That was severely UNETHICAL at the very least but no current members of congress are ever going to repeal that law as it benefits both republicans and democrats. You would think that members of congress who are already wealthy would support such a repeal, but nooo they will do no such thing. To me, THAT is the "swamp". But, the swamp needs to be fed and that is where the denizens of K Street come in. I.E. lobbyists.
We agree on this totally. A Tennis shoe wearing mom was coopted to the swamp and is now a multi-millionaire. just SAD.
We are going to have to agree to disagree on just how much or IMHO little the Trump Administration is "fighting" against the "swamp" and how much (or little) they are part of the problem. The corruption is running rampant in the Trump Admin. because President Trump simply picked about the most corrupt or at the very least extremely unethical people not only for his cabinet but also for just about every single federal agency. I mean, if they are not corrupt in many cases they are unqualified.
Now you have touched on one of my peeves with the government. Let me lay out the problem and then see if you agree with it or not.
1. There are numerous agencies in Washington DC and the Secretaries of these agencies need to be confirmed by the senate along with many deputy secretaries, etc. Very few "Good" people want to go through that colonoscopy of scrutiny.
2. When one party has their candidate win the Presidency, they have a lot of slots to fill in a very short transitionary time period so they go back to the same tired well that they've always gone to. Those people who have been confirmed before and will pass through the guantlet of the senate.
3. So if you have a different president but the same people running the agencies in the executive branch who are also probably skimming off K street connections, what real changes are going to happen in the Govt?
Granted, the secretaries are rarely in the same agency from administration to administration but they have the same cronies not only at the top of these agencies but also many layers deep in each agency.
Now I know you say that the cabinet and people he's appointed are either corrupt or unqualified but that is exactly the problem I pointed out above. Unqualified are the people who haven't made a career of Govt. and the corrupt ones are the ones who have made govt. a career. Its a catch 22.
Now, I give credit to Trump trying to change the crony culture by nominating new blood but that has done two things.
1. Turned his own party against him because he's not playing the swamp game and rewarding the cronies with govt. jobs.
2. Opened himself up to ridicule from the opposing party for not getting stuff done.
What would really help is if the Democrats quit delaying the 180+ confirmation hearings for the appointments that Trump has made.
I am no "leftist" lapdog and I certainly despise HRC but I really think you ought to broaden your research instead of only listening to the Sean Hannity's and Alex Jones of the world and have your eyes opened. There are many many republicans saying this not just sour puss loser democrats.
Both the Democratic and Republican political party's have been rotting from the head right on down to the state and local level.Both have been complete SELL OUTS to highest bidder no matter who that bidder was. We all can agree who have been left out, the middle-class and small to medium businesses.
I have had a saying for years, the Reps and the Dems have been playing "good cop / bad cop" on the American people. Who the good cop and who the bad cop represent is all about PERCEPTION. If a person's political leaning is center/right the good cop are the Republicans and the bad cops are the Democrats. That means that a person whose politics are center/left the good cop are the Dems and the bad cops are the Reps., you get the idea.
Do you find any irony in the sentences I highlighted above? You point to crony republicans who in your words are sell outs, good cop/bad cop getting over on the middle class as stalwarts to reinforce your claims because they don't like the outsider who is trying to change the swamp. Given my soap box as to what is wrong with the insiders in D.C. maybe you could consider who you are listening to.
Just as Lincoln said though, you can't fool all the people all the time and as many in the populace realized that in reality the Republicans and Democrats were working together it has led to many going way over to the right, some in to radicalism and many going way over to the left again some in to radicalism.
That's what happened last election. People are catching on. That's why Bernie did as well as he did and why Trump was elected over 16 other swamp monsters. The only reason Bernie did represent the democrats is because it was rigged against him. That said, even Bernie succumbed to the swamp. While he was collecting donations for his campaign he was negotiating for stump speaches for hillary and plane rides, etc. Guess what happened to his campaign donations when he stopped the campaign.
What we need to do is get out in to our communities, real democracy starts locally (all politics is local) and work together with our neighbors, in fact, we need to get to know our neighbors, like it was when our parents and grandparents were growing up. This "demonizing" of the "other side" is very unhealthy for our Republic and that is the reason some were able to manipulate weak minded citizens into believing wild unsubstantiated innuendo meant to disrupt our democratic process. Believe me, they were disparaging the Trump campaign every bit as much as the Clinton campaign, each side believes it was "only" their candidate and if they would open up their eyes and ears they would realize it just wasn't so. But some or should I say many don't want to admit or even accept that this is so.
If that was true then the "Community Organizer President" Obama would have had all this fixed. Instead he sewed more division in this country than what I've seen since '68 with the race riots.
No foreign entity or foreign interests or even evil domestic players could mess with the integrity of our election process if BOTH the main political party's were not totally corrupt themselves. The quicker mot Americans understand and accept this the quicker WE THE PEOPLE can take action! We do have that RIGHT, the RIGHT to ALTER and/or ABOLISH any government that becomes so corrupt that it no longer works for or answers to the American People. If we are not there yet, we are VERY CLOSE.
First, that if is too big an if. We both know that both existing parties are corrupt, but again, in order to get the corruption out, we need to get "unqualified" people - citizen politicians - to go in and do it the right way. Those people who can not be swayed by K street money and lobbyists.
Second, what are you going to do? Take up arms against the most powerful army in the world? I think it is possible if the division keeps being promoted in exchange for clicks and ratings. Maybe you want to elect an outsider but that has now been done and no one likes it because he doesn't do things like the cronies do.