“.....our legislatures on all levels are whores of whoever pays for their (re)election campaigns.”
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And that’s why TERM LIMITS is the perfect solution against the corruption in our government.
The reason term limits won’t work here is the same reason they didn’t work in ancient Rome. (Many of their offices did have limits of terms of various sorts.)
Representatives of the people there saw each office as a stepping-stone to greater office, and better opportunities for power and money. So, a tribune of the plebs, for instance, would step up to the office of censor, or somesuch, with their eye eventually on Senator—and Consul, if they’re really ambitious.
The potential progression here is easy to see: Representative, Senator or Governor, President...then “lobbyist,” which is the office of an insider who hands out bribes to the rest.
The system is broken beyond repair. We plebs just have to accept this.
/By the way, the single lesson history teaches is that nothing changes, because people don’t change. We are the same self-absorbed, ignorant, sports-addled fools as the Romans of the late Republic. And another set will replace us long after this nation is gone to dust.