Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven took one year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure. The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc. If you email everyone you know an email and ask them to forward it to everyone they know, in three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message.The one thing about the history of justice in America is, “The People Demanded It”.
A few years ago local news channels all across the country were babbling about prostitution on Craigslist. They made it out to be a really big deal. Eventually, local prosecutors started allying with local police to set up stings to target prostitution specifically on Craigslist. They mostly went after the women but some jurisdictions targeted the men. Many sad stories come from this but none that really served the interests of society. Eventually state administrators began mobilizing over the issue and eventually pressured Craig Newmark into charging access to certain sections and then finally shutting them down altogether. Did this end poverty for women? Did this end the demand for sex from women? Did this do anything at all of any good for anybody? Well, now everybody knows about Craigslist. My point is that legal change does come about not from what the root of social problems are but from public mandate stirred up by media. Just try calling the police about prostitution now. They won’t come out or investigate. The public doesn’t care anymore and neither do they. The new hot issue is child sex trafficking, a truly despicable crime, but rare and not nearly so pervasive as child sexual abuse by their own family.
Regarding the issues of corruption in government, you will never get government to amend laws to regulate themselves beyond what law already states. Besides, that is not the real problem in America. The real problem in America is corruption in local government. The collaboration of police, prosecutors and judges is a cycle that feeds a prison economy. In any county court room you will see that the people being prosecuted are mostly poor and people of color. Same distribution as in the jails and prisons. The other major problem in America is cycling between corporations and government positions. High ranking officers in Monsanto should not be appointed to high ranking positions in USDA and FDA. The unfair advantage big agrichemical lobbying has on government oversight results in a food economy that is poisonous but profitable. This, of course, directly impacts health care costs and Big Pharma industry. The third most important problem in America is corporate influence on the media. The appeal to lust and fear fuels what gets published and produced which fuels a consumer economy. For capitalism to work fairly the public needs to be informed with the truth, not beguiled by lies and red herrings.
In my opinion, fretting over the largesse of congressional representatives is a red herring. The deeper issue is corruption at all levels. The root problem is inequality. A little inequality is natural and necessary. We call that diversity. Radical inequality results in conflict and deep resentment. What is happening in America is that the complacency of the middle class which tacitly condoned the extreme poverty of marginalized groups is now being inflamed as the economic infrastructure is decaying. The rich are still absurdly rich and the poor still locked into poverty prison, it is the middle class that are losing their careers and homes which are what identified them as land owning elites. Restricting congressional representatives would do nothing to redistribute economic power among the masses.
The real issue is conflict of interest between profit and people. Representatives of the people should not be allowed to take positions where they directly influence the interests of profit motivated corporations. This country was founded on an effort to relieve profiteers from regulation by the church and the constitution specifically allowed for that separation. Government oversight of business without directly impeding profit was implied but never made explicit as economist Adam Smith predicted the “invisible hand” of competition would naturally cause the market to self regulate. He presumed that the public mandate would be for high quality, low cost goods and services. He could not possibly have predicted the manipulations of nature that have made it impossible for anyone to be truly informed about potential hazards of goods and services in this modern world.
I think corporations have polluted the air, soil and water of the entire world and the people have consumed it because we didn’t know not to. Now that we know modern technology has disastrous side effects there is a frantic effort to preserve lifestyle as we know it. If you really want a fairer and more just America try to get an amendment to the constitution restricting corporate to government cycling of high ranking officials. Keeping the people divided from the profit would reduce corruption of justice and that seems to be what this movement really cries out for.
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