The Role of Politicians in an Oligarchy…

…is to wrangle voters for oligarchs then enact policies to make the rich, richer.

This is clearly indicated by jobs for the families of politicians and the way that politicians are rewarded post-career.

The Clintons had a 100 million dollars a few years after leaving the White House.

Seven figure lobbying jobs are routine for Senators after their legislative career. Before that, their families are taken care of, and most of them somehow become multi-millionaires.

The same is true for high ranking bureaucrats. Timothy Geithner, who helped bail out Wall Street was giving six figure speeches almost immediately after leaving his post.

If you want to know who someone works for, look for who pays them.

You pay lawmakers far less than the rich. They do not work for you.

I would estimate that this is true of well over 90 percent of American politicians.

When Russ Feingold was defeated for re-election to the Senate, he took a job as a university Professor. Now this isn’t a terrible fate, and I’m not crying for him, but being the only person to vote against the Patriot Act and not, in general being corrupt, cost him at least a million dollars.

A year.

Americans seem to believe that people act in their self-interest (and should do so) and then, contradictorily, believe their politician should be willing to give up millions to do the right thing.

This is true, by the way, of Obama. His State department effectively immunized bankers for criminal acts by letting them off with fines (fines that did nothing to harm the money they had earned through illegal acts). His number one priority this last year has been the TPP trade deal.

Obama’s presidency oversaw the rich getting even richer, most of the population getting poorer, and there being fewer jobs per capita which pay less. These are his economic results, and they are not accidental.

The good things you can have in an oligarchical government are the good things of which the oligarchs approve. Oligarchs want workers to be interchangeable. Nonsense about gays or transgenders or whatever is bad business.

So are unions. So are good wages.

None of this is to say that you’ll never get thrown a bone, as with Obama’s sponsoring of overtime. But a clear-eyed look at Obama’s record (or Clinton’s, or Bush’s, or that of any Congress in the past 30+ years) indicates that policies were meant primarily for the benefit of the few, not the many.

Politicians wrangle voters for oligarchs, who pay them well for the service. They then pass bills and regulations which help those oligarchs, because it is those oligarchs who give them almost all their money.

If a politician does not do this, and gets into a position of potential power, the attacks are unrelenting.

For an example, please read the media coverage of Corbyn; note also how much he is attacked by Labour party politicians, EVEN as the vast majority of Labour party members support him (and that support has increased since he won the leadership.)

Corbyn didn’t take the money. For decades he didn’t take the money. He didn’t become a Blairite, even though he had every reason to believe that by not doing so, he was condemning himself to a life as a bank bencher, who would never get rich.

Whether you agree with Corbyn’s beliefs or not, THAT is integrity.

The vast, vast majority of politicians in the developed world are not just corrupt, they are your enemies. The actions they take impoverish and kill you in exchange for wealth and favors from the rich.

A man like Obama or Bill Clinton (or, in the future a woman like Hillary Clinton) is far more likely to ruin your life than Osama bin Laden ever was. Bill Clinton pushing through Welfare “Reform” harmed millions of the poorest weakest people in America. The repeal of Glass-Steagall allowed the financial crisis to happen.

Unless you are an oligarch, or a retainer who is on the gravy train, people like Clinton, Obama, Blair, Cameron, and Thatcher are your enemies. They are a direct threat to your well-being, welfare, and even life.

The first thing anyone who wants to be realistic about politics and power needs to realize is this fact. They are enemies.

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