Usurping Delegated Trust.

“All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must either be delegated or assumed. There are no other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.” Thomas Paine. The Rights of Man.

During the last election cycle the Koch Brothers spent in excess of four hundred million dollars. The money was used by super PACs in an attempt to influence elections across the United States. These men, like many others, use their position and resources from the private sector as an instrument to make adjustments to our government and reshape society at large to suit their own self interests. They game the system by lobbying sympathetic legislators and through advertising used to generate disingenuous and irrelevant informational attacks against people running against those who would serve their own interests.

We allow our democratically elected officials some flexibility to legislate based on their wisdom and experience while giving deference to the will of the people they are there to represent.  That is how our government was intended to work at least. For any elected official to accept any measurable favor from a sphere of influence outside these guidelines creates a situation fertile for a kind of third part coup d'état. The existing government still stands, but is manipulated behind the scenes in both broad strokes and in a slow methodical process intended to ultimately suit the interests of those with the means and position wield such influence.

For any outside party to seek influence in the halls of government, for any reason, is not how our government was intended to operate. We elect our representatives and delegate power to them with the expectation that they will work for the common good. It is idealistic to assume that this will always be the case, but now we see entities such as the Koch brothers using their status and resources to assume power through control of those we have assigned with the public trust. The Supreme Court made this matter worse with the ruling over Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This one ruling has reshaped our political system and corrupted the ideal put forth by our founding the founders of a representative government of duly elected people charged with the duty of representing the interests of those who delegated that trust onto them. A select few are attempting to usurp power for their own purposes, and like when our country was founded, it is up to we the people to deal with it.