Ralph Nader is famous for saying that there is not dime's worth of difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. Although I agree with the general sentiment, I do concede that there is a difference between the two parties, about $0.11 worth. That issue is not the most pressing problem. That problem is the unelected portions of our system that actively work against the citizen/taxpayer and any agenda arriving in Washington to cut out the entrenched deadwood. It's actually a small spectrum of choices that are presented to us but in a system as large as ours, shifts along that spectrum can amount to billions of dollars and affect thousands of lives for better or worse.

As much as it disgusts me to say, I think that we're in a predictable electoral cycle. After entrenched unelected power and its elected lackeys have an embarrassing string of failures, we elect some new “leadership” promising us a challenge to this entrenched deadwood. All too easily, the deadwood gains control of the new “leadership”, disappointment follows, and we're left with a choice between buffoon like lackeys that failed prior to this administration or the sold-out remnants of what promised to be new “leadership”. Voter apathy ensues and the buffoons wind up back in power, leaving those whom we do not vote for in power alongside them and usually reaping in lots of our tax dollars!

We do not vote for organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Health Insurance Association of America, or the American Bankers Association.

Yet these entities and entities like them are able to wield huge resources to influence our government. Opensecrets.org estimates $2,558,205,882 was spent by lobbyists for the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate Lobbying Clients between 1998 and 2006. You might be outraged at the Bush/Paulson Bailout last year, but when you look at those numbers can you really be all that shocked? Do you really think all that money would be spent greasing Republican and Democrats palms if it did nothing? When it was revealed that Paulson and Goldman execs met in Moscow, Russia to discuss the impending Bailout and how they were going to get the taxpayer to foot the bill, can you look at that amount of money spent and act surprised that they were confident they would get way with it?

What passes for Health Care in this country has been a problem for most of my adult life. In the above mentioned time period, the Health lobby spent $2,298,865,053 to influence policies that keep profits and infant mortality statistics right where they wanted them.

We don't vote for these people. They don't even have to answer to “the Democracy of the Market” (you know where we vote with our dollars), because a lot of these situations are not Perfect Competition as defined by Adam Smith. These are Oligopolies, Monopolies and Controlled Monopolistic Competitions that are spending lots of money (in some cases while subsidized) to keep the playing field exactly where it is. As a matter of fact, it doesn't get more Protectionist than what Bush, Paulson and company pulled last year.

We didn't vote for the “Fellowship” of Douglas Coe either. Though until recently, we taxpayers were subsidizing the C Street Center Boarding House. Now elected Representatives and Family members Bart Stupak-D and Joe Pitts-R (who has been allowed to write parts of the current Health Care proposal he has no intention of voting for) have been through elections. But the “Family” itself has not and remains a very secretive organization. This is a secretive organization inside Washington D.C. who can count among those whom it influences many powerful social conservatives in Congress. By the way, that same Douglas Coe who started this organization is on record as saying that he seeks “a personal commitment to Jesus Christ, comparable to the blind devotion that Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Pol Pot demanded from their followers”.

My senator, John Ensign, was among their followers. One of the reasons I no longer bother contacting his office is that I don't think I can say anything to influence someone who either believes that or even wants to be around people who believe that.

We didn't vote for any newspaper editor. These are private publications and of course they can hire anyone they want to and institute any editorial policy they wish. Even if they are owned by a megalomaniacal and (by Christian standards) blasphemous old man, they have rights nonetheless. Sun Myung Moon started the Washington Times in 1982 “in order to make propaganda”. This is also a man who has openly declared himself to be the second coming of Christ and held a coronation ceremony in the offices of our legislature with elected representatives of both parties kowtowing to him as he crowned himself!

Now that's not an indictment of a conservative bias in the media at large. For that I'd have to rehash Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent. Dr. Chomsky went to a lot more detail than I can in this column, but I've found the basic themes of the book (Propaganda model, the 5 filters of our news, what we find when we compare linespace/airtime, etc.) to be proven true, especially over the past 8 years. Part of the more enjoyable part of him being proven right is the hard times newspapers are having right now competing with online news. Mainstream newspapers and media outlets have been putting out an inferior product for a long time now. They deserve to close. When I can read the mainstream brownnosing of President Obama's trip to China in the mainstream media and then go online to the financial press and read how the whole issue of currency manipulation was avoided, the editors of the mainstream news media prove Chomsky right!

Not that it matters, ABC News, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times (let alone the more farcical propaganda outlets Washington Times, Fox News, NewsMax, etc.) have no danger of losing their grip on the public receiving their version of current events.

My whole point is that a mere election is going to do nothing to “vote the bums out”! Not these bums. And that's because we never voted for them to begin with!