Who wants privileges and gets them by controlling government policies and programs?
Who corrupts government and channels its spending for their own gains?
Who gets laws passed that favor them and hurt the rest of us?
Who uses media to persuade the public to support policies that benefit them and not the public?
Who generates massive government spending and the accompanying debt for their own narrow interests, thereby robbing the rest of us?
Who creates and funds think tanks and foundations whose work is to produce studies that support policies that direct massive spending that ends up in the pockets of a very few and benefits the public by nothing?
Who robs us through government?
Who constrains our liberties through taxation, regulation and laws that replace our spending by government spending?
Who pours money into political candidates who become their puppets and vote for the government spending that benefits these donors?
Who controls the votes of the politicians that direct our taxes to their companies and persons?
The answers to all of these questions are the same: INTEREST GROUPS or SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS. And what are they?
“Interest group, also called special interest group or pressure group, any association of individuals or organizations, usually formally organized, that, on the basis of one or more shared concerns, attempts to influence public policy in its favour. All interest groups share a desire to affect government policy to benefit themselves or their causes. Their goal could be a policy that exclusively benefits group members or one segment of society (e.g., government subsidies for farmers) or a policy that advances a broader public purpose (e.g., improving air quality). They attempt to achieve their goals by lobbying—that is, by attempting to bring pressure to bear on policy makers to gain policy outcomes in their favour.”
Whatever form of government exists, it has taxing and spending power, and the taxing power is augmented greatly when and if it has the power to borrow. The question of the form of government (democratic, republican, fascist, socialist, communist, populist, aristocratic, monarchical, totalitarian, theocratic, mixed, etc.) has to do mainly with the degrees of and forms of control exercised by the rulers and the people being ruled. However, no matter what the form, there will be interest groups seeking and gaining control so as to benefit themselves.
Who today are these interest groups? Who are the predominant ones? What programs and policies do they advocate so as to benefit themselves, limit our liberty and steal from us? These are our enemies.
One way to begin to address this question specifically is by industry donor group, such as in this list of the top 50 interest groups giving to members of Congress. The assumption is that donations are intended to influence legislation. It will surprise you to find that Bernie Sanders was the top recipient of such funds. He promised more government spending, and more government spending means more money flowing to the special interest groups.
Another way is to look at the billionaires who donate to campaigns, under the assumption that money buys influence and influence achieves laws and regulations that favor special interests.
Party programs contain boondoggles. Climate control is a gigantic boondoggle, now going under the name of Green New Deal. Medicare for All is another giant boondoggle, preceded by health measures that benefited insurance companies. All government spending sourced by debt issues benefits Wall Street security dealers and feathers the FED’s nest. The Pentagon is a giant special interest that diverts enormous resources to military spending. Within government are embedded bureaus that are special interests, such as the Department of State and the CIA. These are examples.
Any politician who attacks the embedded special interests is going to generate counter-attacks by the affected groups. This is the reason why Trump finds himself sustaining new attacks continually. It’s because he has been cutting regulations, withdrawing from treaties that benefited special interests, and gone up against many special interests. He has his favorites, he has made his share of mistakes, but he has alienated many special interests. The enemies Trump has within his own government are people who are standing up for special interests because they’re bought and paid for by these groups, and they’ve dedicated their entire ways of thinking to unquestioning loyalty to these same groups. Draining the swamp is an enormous job, and it cannot be done without chopping down the special interest groups. They are the enemy.
10:07 am on September 10, 2020
