| | There is corruption and there is flawed ideology. To a certain degree they can be viewed separately. Reading Fred's post above makes it clear that the ideology is what is killing us - the acceptance of big government. Once the populace is willing to accept big government, those carney hucksters will keep finding ways to more efficiently grow the government in support of their ideology, and if they are corrupt they will keep tweaking the system to make their thievery more and more efficient and hidden.
It will take education and lots of time to have a populace that will force a small government ideology on our politicians. Or a crisis and the right leader arises and connects with what is left of those who understand and value liberty to a significant degree (lots of 'ifs' in this one).
Significantly reducing the corruption doesn't bring as big a reward, but it would help a great deal since replacing crooks with honest and well-intentioned politicians would move the struggle more firmly into the big versus small government debate. Now, the Washington scene is fogged over with people pretending to this or that ideology just to be able to stay there long enough to line their pockets and makes it much, much harder to have effective focus on the key issue.
Significantly reducing corruption could be done in a fairly short period of time and without a complete change in the population's ideological awareness. First, it is always a mistake to think that a major problem in Washington will get fixed by Washington. Foxes and hen houses? This is where the states should have an agency (this would require a constitutional amendment) that was like the FBI, but only focused on constantly surveiling elected federal officials and their appointees for evidence of corruption. To take office, these people would have to agree to having all conversations and all contacts and all financial records examined by this special agency which would be funded by contributions from the states (apportioned by population), and administered by a rotating committee of, say, 12 States Attorney Generals.
Given current events, what with the IRS screwing with people at the behest of the administration's ideological war on Conservatives, and NSA's drive to snoop on millions of Americans without any probable cause, and the Justice Departments willingness to spy on the press... well, it's past time there was an independent agency with a strong bite, that was aimed at preventing abuse of the law and thievery, an agency that was run by the state governments.
An arrest of a congressman or two, a senator, a cabinet official, a high level department heads... these would have a chilling effect on federal shenanigans, but even more important would be the change in the public's perception of the federal government as all powerful and unaccountable, and on that idiotic view that whatever the federal government does is probably for the best, or well-intended, or beyond our control.
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