Libertarians and the corporate whores have destroyed the concept of "government as a service" and extolled "efficiency" and privatization. We no longer ask what we can accomplish as a society because we get mired down in cost and "payfors" that are not relevant to a sovereign currency issuing government that mostly pulls its funding from its backside in limitless quantity as needed.

We also have come to a collective consensus that corruption is normal and permissible. We pay some of the most politically powerful people on the planet what a mid-level retail manager can make and then accept that they magically become wealthy within a few election cycles on such mediocre salaries, as long as they are on our "side" of the ever shifting ideological standard of parties.

Until we can figure out how to block any income not directly related to their employment and then pay what moral and effective leaders should make ($1 million should be the target for a President with at least half of that as a "starting wage" in Congress.) we will continue to take a back seat to their donors.

These are people who have considerable control over multi-billion dollar industries and their leaders who average above fifteen million in earnings. To say that politicians are outclassed would be an extreme understatement, especially when new to the job. It shouldn't come as a great surprise to find that our representatives have very little background in economics or science in spite of their ability to effect both drastically for all of us.

That such underqualified representatives would take consul from their wealthy donors is hardly a revelation. I've looked into the intellectually vacant eyes of some of these people while trying to convey simple accounting methods to them and seen the vast gap between their assumptions and reality. Knowing that reality will never win because it doesn't pay them as well is disconcerting to say the least.