As far as I can tell, the vague stories concerning bribery and corruption in the Senate before the 17th Amendment (17A) was ratified are what’s left of the propaganda that the Progressive Movement had arguably been using since the 1820s to help kill state sovereignty by giving misguided voters the power to elect federal senators.
And after Progressives won control of the Senate through 17A, the final hurdle to overthrowing the constitutional republic is to take control of the Oval Office by eliminating the electoral college by likewise giving low-information voters the power to vote for president.
The bottom line is that corrupt politicians don’t fight for control of DC because they want to control the US Mail Service (1.8.7), one of the very few powers that the states delegated to the feds which affects intrastate commerce. As evidenced by Justice Marshall’s words below about Congress’s limited power to lay taxes, corrupt politicians fight for control of DC so that they can abuse 10th Amendment-protected state powers and steal state revenues revenue associated with those powers, criminal activity which the corrupt feds have been cheating the voters with for many generations imo.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Regarding the 16th Amendment (16A), the Supreme Court had historically clarified that Congress is prohibited from laying taxes in the name of state power issues, essentially any issue which Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.
And since one of the likely reasons that the Founding States established the federal Senate was so that senators could defend their states by killing House appropriations bills which wrongly stole 10th Amendment-protected state powers and state revenues associated with those powers as mentioned above, the problem with 16A is this. The 16th Amendment just made it easier for the corrupt senators elected by the popular vote of the 17th Amendment to turn around and help the corrupt House rob the voters who elected them by laying constitutionally indefensible federal taxes on them.
Are we having fun yet?
What a mess! :^P
Want to educate our friend Amendment10 about the "vague" stories about pre-17th amendment bribery that he claims were "propaganda"?
Reminds me of the left claiming stories of dead people voting are just "right-wing propaganda" made up for the purposes of suppressing minority voters.