Why don’t Politicians change the system for the better?
Their self-interests preclude it.
Politicked
Politics is FRIGGIN rigged
Politics is fueled by institutionalized bribery. Our government is no longer by the people, for the people. Powerful lobbyists, corporations and wealthy people with deep pockets exert a large degree of control over those in office, drowning out the voices of all others.
It’s highly questionable if anyone can view America (and many other countries) as a true democracy any longer.
The Political System has taken a turn down elitist lane and we’ve become a country (and world) led by a small dominant class comprised of powerful members, economic elites who exert total control over the general population — an oligarchy. Politicians represent the rich and powerful, not the average human. Policies are formed by corporations and special interest groups rather than by politicians properly representing the will of the people.
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Sadly, money has become the criteria for who makes it as an elected official. Politicians are rewarded not for their ability to govern, but by their ability to fund raise. Instead of listening to the people, they pander to multinational corporations. This creates an environment where policy is not shaped by the needs of the people, but by the corporations who fund our representatives.
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We now live in a world where huge, multinational corporations can effectively make unlimited donations to campaigns through Super PACs, which do not have to report the source of their funds. This is institutionalized bribery.
This rigged system gives us mediocre and polarized politicians stuck in gridlock and beholden to special interests.
Election Day is a work day
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Many felons can’t vote
6.1 million Americans can’t vote this year because they’ve been convicted of a felony. 2.2 million of them are African American; in Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia more than 1 in 5 black adults can’t vote.
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You can’t vote for the Federal Reserve
Its seven governors are appointed by presidents to 14-year terms. Even worse, the Federal Open Market Committee, which controls interest rates, is made up of the seven governors plus five members who are presidents of the regional Federal Reserve Banks. The regional presidents are chosen in a process that’s largely controlled by banks.
Corporate America is more powerful than politicians
As John Dewey, one of America’s most important pro-democracy philosophers, wrote in 1931, “politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.” This could be seen most clearly in the 2008 Wall Street bailout. Not only did the biggest banks have the power to destroy the U.S. economy in a way no politicians ever could, they easily forced the entire political system to stop everything and give them what turned out to be trillions of dollars.
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voting is rigged
The problem is neither party really wants to get anything done because all their campaign contributions (That it takes to run for any kind of office) come from the same big business lobbyists.
Both parties are the two heads on the same political snake, and the snake only represents the interests of big business and the wealthiest of people. You vote to show your displeasure but the solutions to so many of our economic problems are easy to implement, and regardless of the party in charge, they don't want to do anything except get re-elected. Power changes between the parties has become status quo. One simply blames the other until they switch sides, and we are the losers.
The United Nations (UN)
Decades before George H.W. Bush claimed to have coined the expression "new world order" during a fishing expedition near Kennebunkport, FDR claimed that the term "United Nations" suddenly came to him while shaving. In his eagerness to share his epiphany, FDR supposedly barged in to tell Churchill the news while the British Prime Minister was naked and dripping wet from his morning bath.
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As diverting and weird as that mental image might be, FDR's little story is a patent lie. The fact is that the United Nations organization, both in concept and in name, was being discussed two years before America was maneuvered into World War II.
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On December 8, 1939, the U.S. State Department, working with a grant provided by the Rockefeller Foundation (Go figure), commissioned the Council on Foreign Relations (a group with huge influence in policy-making circles) to create a "Committee on Post-War Problems." It was through that committee that the Roosevelt administration devised its grand military strategy, including the creation of a permanent United Nations organization following the war. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the war itself was seen by Roosevelt and his handlers as a means to create that world body.
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On December 28, 1941, just weeks after Pearl Harbor – an attack of which FDR had detailed advance knowledge, and which he permitted in order to open the "back door to war" – FDR suggested to Winston Churchill, a guest at the White House, that the anti-Axis coalition call itself "the United Nations." Churchill agreed. The following New Year’s Day, FDR and Churchill formally introduced that name and the concept of "collective security" when they unveiled the Atlantic Charter.
Oddly enough, every time the prince of peace rears its ugly head, some convenient crisis materializes.
In 1951, Americans were growing disenchanted with the costs and burdens of UN-centered "collective security"; fortunately, as Secretary of State Dean Acheson later recalled, "the Korean War came along and saved us."
Sure, more than 50,000 Americans died, along with hundreds of thousands of Koreans and Chinese, in a pointless and endlessly protracted conflict – but that’s just the price that must be paid in order to keep Americans "engaged" in the world.
The same can be said of 9/11, the "Pearl Harbor for a new century" that has given rise to the longest combat engagements in U.S. history – the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which, like every war since our nation entered the UN, have been conducted on the purported authority of the president, fortified by UN Security Council resolutions, without a constitutional declaration of war.
Americans, especially those who choose to enlist in the military, simply have to endure such outrages, according to Schlesinger. After all, "We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood, as well as in words and money."
The fearful master; a second look at the United Nations
by Griffin; G. Edward