Reddit reviews Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist

1. http://www.amazon.com/Capitol-Punishment-Washington-Corruption-Notorious/dp/1936488442
   
2. The Democrats would not benefit from campaign finance reform all that much more than the Republicans would, they just support it more. Also, Mitt Romney was a terrible candidate.
   
3. The first job of the supreme court is to preserve the democratic process. Often, this conflicts with unrestrained speech. The Court has always found it proper to constrain speech in a variety of situations (clear and present danger, slander, etc.). They certainly have the right to constrain speech to achieve their first duty.
   
4. Stop being petty.
   
   I think the bigger problem here is that when people can run campaigns financed by such a select few donors, they don't need much popular support for their positions to get elected. They don't need party support. They don't need to compromise politically. They're entirely dependent on a small few people who they can please by holding the line on a small few positions. Hence, the stalemate and political warmongering we see in Washington.
   
   (I'm not one of the experts here, just an independent blogger with opinions.)

For more information on the darker side of lobbying I suggest you pick up Jack Abramoff's new book Capital Punishment wherein he outlines many of the techniques used by sleazy lobbyists such as himself.

For instance he could never directly give money or gifts to a congressman, but if you take that congressman to dinner and hand him two checks, then it can be classified as a fundraiser event. And no, generally lobbyists don't write the legislation themselves - that's what the people they're working for do, haha.

According to one of their own, they're the guys who grease palms to get shit done buy the US government.

Nice! I like that movie, guess I'll get the book... http://www.amazon.com/Capitol-Punishment-Washington-Corruption-Notorious/dp/1936488442

cue, the US has more land area arguments so it's ok for monopolistic companies to be raping us. Every single person who thinks that taxes and rates aren't as high as they are for many products and services should read Capitol Punishment.

I will begrudgingly take this bait and respond. Better late than never I suppose. Your argument, as I understand it, is that a political system is strengthened when it rebuffs attempts by outsiders to come into it, and that most importantly, that system should not allow these outsiders to bring their influence to bear, so as to avoid distraction from what you call the "actual political issues."

However, there seem to be two flawed premises in your argument. The first involves the reality and desirability of an isolated nation-state. In today's global economy, strict isolationism will only lead to death of the nation-state. Even isolationism limited to immigration bans would be devastating to a national economy. Just last fall, Alabama farmers faced significant crop spoilage when the state passed a very harsh immigration bill (mirrored on SB 1070 but reaching even farther). On the desirability front, you say that our acquiescence to assimilation is based on the "modern religion of equality and tolerance" which leads me to believe that you reject both. The problem with cultures that similarly reject these notions is that historically, this had led to violent conflict and war (i.e., WWII or Rwanda) that inevitably destabilizes the nation-state far more than the disruption caused by a struggle for tolerance through equality. Indeed, this often causes the end of that manifestation of the nation-state.

Your second premise involves what you call "actual political issues." The problem is that what constitutes an "actual political issue" very much depends on whom you ask. I consider a state's treatment of its prisoners and the rights restored to them upon release to be an incredibly important political issue, but others may say that this is not something politicians should debate while our national economy is in the midst of a recession. You state that one such issue is, "Why is there a class of people who, generally speaking, is likely to remain impoverished in our current system, even with such social milestones as affirmative action..." But, in proposing this as an actual issue, you've already answered both of the questions you think are superfluous--"The white man holding the black man down" and "The black man taking welfare handouts from the white man." These three questions cannot be separated so simply. For example, Michelle Alexander recently wrote a book, The New Jim Crow, in which she argues that the nation's drug laws were instituted as a way to replace Jim Crow. She explores all three questions through her book, including offering thoughts about how to solve our current prison population crisis and its effects on largely inner-city minority groups.

The real reason that American politics exist the way they do is a multi-faceted answer with several components (many of which I don't even understand). One component involves the state of lobbying in Washington (Jack Abramoff, one of Washington's most famous lobbyist, just wrote a book about it); another component involves the 24-hour news cycle that give politicians an outlet to quibble things that would not be given space in a daily/weekly periodical. Yet another component has very much to do with the focus of modern American politics on ruling through fear (see David Garland's book, The Culture of Control). There is no single factor that leads to modern American politics, and no single step that will magically transform our democracy toward something resembling Spartan government.