Special Interest Groups

The Undermining Of Recruitment Of Qualified, Outstanding Candidates For Government Service Careers By Trump Administration

The most tragic aspect, above all others, of the Trump Presidency is the undermining of recruitment of qualified, outstanding candidates for government service careers.

We need the best people in the younger generation to wish to serve in the diplomatic corp, and in the various government agencies that serve our population.

But instead, young people are looking elsewhere than government careers, and not only because of Donald Trump, but also because of the Republican Congress, which is out to make government service a type of work that people will not get adequate compensation and benefits, and also respect.

The Republican Party is anti government, except for their elite, privileged group which knows how to make deals with corporations and special interest groups, like the National Rifle Association and the oil and coal industries, and the pharmaceutical industry, and many others, who care not a whit for the public good anymore than the GOP.

So therefore, the goal is to avoid regulation, and convince people who are committed to such regulation, to be forced out and replaced by party hacks and industry goons.

So we are seeing massive resignations early of people who might have stayed longer in their government jobs, and the word is out, to avoid government service at all costs in the future.

This will undermine our government in both domestic and foreign policy, and make America a backward place, going back to the Gilded Age and 1920s mentality, as the Republicans and their allies, and our disgraceful President, work to destroy all of the New Deal and Great Society and Barack Obama legacy as well.

This is a setback which will affect most Americans for the rest of their lives, even if Trump were to leave office soon, as the Republican Party would be no better under Mike Pence or Paul Ryan in the short term.

But this is why it is essential that the Democrats, against great odds, must win control of both houses of Congress in 2018, and convince millions of young people, women, racial minorities, labor, and educated suburbanites, that Donald Trump and the Republican Party are anathema to the long term prosperity and security of the United States.

The hard work of changing this country back to the way it was before the 2016 election must be at full speed and with great earnest!

The Senate In Crisis A Century After The 17th Amendment

The US Senate was a very undemocratic institution a century ago, controlled by special interests, including the oil, steel, banking and other trusts and monopolies, and its membership selected by the vote of corrupt state legislatures across the nation.

The Senate was exposed for its faults and corruption by David Graham Phillips in his article in 1906 in Cosmopolitan Magazine, which has been reprinted in 2012, an article of 108 pages, a small book, exposing the corruption of Senate Majority Leader Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island. This was followed up by other articles in muckraking periodicals, exposing the corruption of other US Senators.

These articles motivated a reform movement, leading to the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, establishing popular vote elections for the US Senate. It did not mean that every Senator elected was brilliant, or a positive force, but at least the people had the final say on who would represent them, as in the US House of Representatives!

Now, a century later, the US Senate is in paralysis, greatly due to the abuse of the filibuster system, which now requires 60 Senators to end a filibuster, while it used to be even worse, 67 before reforms in 1975. The filibuster was originally utilized to stop civil rights advancements, but now it is used to prevent any action on many nominations and many bills, effectively hamstringing any progress or change on anything controversial.

But also, it is clear that special interest groups, similar to those a century ago, but more such groups and more widespread, have made the US Senate captive again.

And with growing differences in population in coastline states, as compared to states in the interior, we are finding the concept of each state having two US Senators, whether they represent millions of citizens, or just hundreds of thousands of citizens, becoming one where states with few people, are able to stop what the majority of the American people want!

Four Democratic Senators, scared to death of the National Rifle Association, end up refusing to support the end of the filibuster on extended background checks on gun sales, and yet these Senators represent small populated states (North Dakota, Alaska, Montana, Arkansas) which represent only about 5.4 million people, out of a national total of 309 million people, meaning they represent 1.6 percent of the people, in a nation in which up to 90 percent, including gun owners, want extended background checks on gun sales.

We allow the 49th 48th, 45th, and 33rd states in population to hamstring the rest of the nation, absolutely insane when one thinks about it, and this is not just true on one issue, but many!

This problem of small populated states,the abuse of the filibuster, and special interest groups (including major corporations) is a situation which threatens resolution of ANY major issue facing the nation in the 21st century, unless, somehow, some kind of reform of an outdated system of the 18th century is brought about, which is extremely unlikely!