Government processes that enable elite rule

To develop a solution to our root cause, we must look at exactly how the power elites and the political parties continue to control government today. The two major government processes that enable their control are the following.

1. The ruler selection process – how our government decision makers are chosen

2. The governing process – how governing decisions are made

We must understand how these processes actually work in the real world, not the indoctrinated official versions of how they are supposed to work.

Elites invest money and receive benefits

Figure 3-1 illustrates these two processes at their highest level. In the diagram at the top of Figure 3-1, you can see that the elites are major suppliers that provide the inputs to the processes. The processes create the outputs or results. Notice that the outputs of the Ruler Selection Process become some of the inputs to the Governing Process. The outputs of the Governing Process benefit the elites, special interests, businesses, and citizens.

The major activities at the bottom of Figure 3-1 describe the process steps of how the inputs are used to create the outputs. To understand how the processes work, I will step through each of these activities. 

Figure 3-1

1. Activities of the Ruler Selection Process

The six major activities performed in the Ruler Selection Process are shown near the bottom of Figure 3-1. In the first activity, the elites and the political parties they control select the candidates for the critical political races such as the President and the important seats in Congress. In the second activity, the elites and their special interests provide campaign financing and political advertising for their selected candidates.

Special interests include PAC's, super PAC's, large corporations, business associations, industry coalitions, unions, farm groups, groups promoting a political ideology, foreign governments, and even groups within our government like the military. There are also other special interest groups such as religious groups, environmental groups, veterans' groups, and rights groups. However, the relevant special interests that influence campaigns through funding and that influence laws and federal spending through lobbying are owned or controlled by the elite.

Elections require funding because they are so expensive. Elections are expensive because the political parties are competitive as the stakes are so high for each party, literal control over trillions of dollars. Over $14.4 billion were spent in the 2020 federal election to persuade voters to vote for the candidates of one party or the other. The Democratic Party, their groups, and their candidates spent $8.4 billion and those of the Republicans spent $5.3 billion. Of this, $5.7 billion (about 42%) was spent on the Presidential race alone and $8.7 billion (about 58%) was spent on congressional races. $2.8 billion was spent on the top 10 Senate races alone. That equates to $280 million per Senator on average for those top 10 races. [1]

The money election comes before the general election

According to Lawrence Lessig, the first two activities of the Ruler Selection Process should be called the "money election." In the money election, the elite choose the candidates that we can vote for in the general election. As politicians must perpetually run for office, they must keep the elite campaign funders happy. Lessig put it in this way. [2]

The United States … has two elections, one we call the general election, the second we should call the money election. In the general election, it's the citizens who get to vote. … In the money election, it's the funders who get to vote. The trick is, to run in the general election, you must do extremely well in the money election. You don't necessarily have to win. But you must do extremely well. And here's the key: there are few relevant funders in USA-land. …

Obviously, this dependence upon the funders produces a subtle, understated, camouflaged bending to keep the funders happy. Candidates for Congress and members of Congress spend between 30 and 70% of their time raising money to get back to Congress or to get their party back into power.

Figure 3-2 [3]

The elite funders

Who are the voters in the money election? The elite and their special interests, which they own and control through their boards of directors and executives. They want laws and government spending to benefit them. The list in Figure 3-2 shows political contributions for political parties, candidates, and electioneering communications from each special interest sector for the 2020 election cycle. The top three sectors contributed billions of dollars each to the political parties and the campaigns of politicians while others contributed hundreds of millions of dollars each. [4]

The elite are not the 1%. They are the very wealthy and powerful, the 1% of the 1%. In the 2020 election, the top 100 individual donors contributed 69% of the money to Super PACs. The top 0.5% of Super PAC donors donated 93% (8,033 individuals, which were 0.005% of the registered voters). [5]

Key takeaway: The power elite and their political parties choose the two candidates that you get to vote for in the important races and often determine the winner by the amount of campaign funding they invest. [6]

The general election

The next two activities in the Ruler Selection Process are the voting by citizens in the primary and general elections and the voting for President by the Electoral College. Voting is heavily influenced by political advertising paid for by campaign funding from the elites, by advertising paid for by the special interests and businesses of the elites, and by dark money political advertising by the elites that may or may not be declared.

The two majority party leaders control Congress

Once all the seats in Congress are filled, in the fifth activity of the Ruler Selection Process, the political party with the most seats in each chamber (referred to as the "majority party") takes control of that chamber. The party selects its leader behind closed doors after which its politicians elect the chosen leader by vote. [7]

The Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader (also called the Senate Floor Leader) make all of the important decisions in their chamber of Congress. They create their party's strategy for which bills the party wants and how party seats will vote for each bill. The Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader determine which members serve on each committee. Members may serve on multiple committees and subcommittees. Committees determine which bills are reviewed, the bills' wording, and which die in committee.

According to Congress, it works like this. [8]

Party leaders determine which members serve on each committee. The majority party always has a majority of members on each committee. The majority party names the chair of each committee based on seniority, power, loyalty, and other criteria. Committee chairs have substantial power: They schedule hearings and votes and can easily kill a bill if they choose.

Therefore, through two people, the Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader, the majority party controls each chamber of Congress and makes the key decisions regarding our laws.

Key takeaway: The political parties are in control of our government and make the key decisions.

Political appointments round out party control

In the sixth activity of the Ruler Selection Process, the political party in control through the President makes political appointments, giving out up to 9,000 jobs as political favors to reward people who helped his party's campaigns and who are loyal to his party. [9] These appointments include executives over federal departments and agencies, the majority of the leaders of the legislative branch agencies and entities, federal judges including Supreme Court justices, and new members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Through political appointees, political parties have power over the management, operations, and regulation decisions of the entire government.

2. The governing process

Once the Ruler Selection Process is complete, the government is under the control of only three people, the President, the Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader. Those three people are controlled by their political party, allowing the elite to control governing decisions through the political party in control.

In activity 1 in Figure 3-1, the President's party creates laws through executive orders. (Did you think the President actually wrote them himself?) In activity 2, the majority party creates laws in Congress through the Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader. If the two chambers are controlled by different political parties, then little is accomplished except for approving the budget that benefits the elite and their businesses and other special interests. In activity 3, the Supreme Court can validate or nullify lawsuits to create new law, often according to the political mix of justices and the desires of their political party. In activity 4, political appointees manage all of the government departments and agencies, implementing the law (or sometimes ignoring it) according to the wishes of the President's party.

Inputs to the Governing Process

Naturally, the elected and appointed officials from the Ruler Selection Process become the rulers in the Governing Process as shown in Figure 3-1. In addition, laws, policies, and federal spending can be legally influenced in any number of ways besides campaign donations and campaign advertising. Here are the major ways that legislators are induced to cooperate.

• The elites and special interests invested about $3.5 billion in lobbying in 2020 and those are only the legal amounts that were disclosed. [10] That averages over $6.5 million per legislator per year for lobbying alone.

• Future job offers are common. In the current political system, thousands of individuals take or are appointed to "revolving door" positions in government giving them the ability to take advantage of relationships and knowledge gained during their time in office to serve their non-government employers. In 2019, Public Citizen reported that 59% of former members of the 115th Congress (serving from 2017 to 2019) who had lost their seat and who had moved to a private-sector job were working as lobbyists, consultants, or for a similar group that influences government decisions. [11] About 1,000 ex-politicians work for just 20 lobbying firms to influence the 535 members of Congress! [12]

• The percentage of Congressional staff working in Washington DC has steadily diminished since 1977. Conversely, during that same time, the percentage of members of Congress who became lobbyists steadily increased. In addition to advising members of Congress, lobbyists took on the workload previously performed by Congressional staff. In 1976, about 5% of exiting members of Congress became lobbyists. By 1990, it was around 20%. In the early 2000's, it had doubled to 40%. [13] And now it is almost 60%. [14]

• Other common ways of influencing key politicians include donations to the politician's trust account, high-paying fees for speaking and consulting, and other undisclosed personal benefits after the politician's term ends.

• Elites also influence elected politicians of both parties behind the scenes through executives of large corporations and by funding think tanks, foundations, federal advisory committees, and government policy-planning networks.

Outputs and customers of the Governing Process

The primary outputs of the governing process are laws, policies, and administrative decisions, which determine who pays taxes and who receives the trillions of dollars spent each year by the federal government. Behind almost all bills are hidden agendas – benefits for someone other than us, the people. While every bill is packaged with the appearance of some ideological value-based benefit for us to win our votes, much of the money and benefits of every bill go to the special interests and businesses of the elite instead of us.

The pork and earmarks in giant omnibus bills are just one example. Omnibus bills are many small bills combined into one huge bill often with thousands of pages. The 2008 omnibus appropriations bill contained 11,610 earmarks. The fiscal 2009 appropriations bills included 11,914 earmarks. [15] The 2022 $1.5 trillion spending bill included about 5,000 earmarks split about 60/40 between Democrats and Republicans. [16] Typically, earmarks would not be approved by Congress or the President if considered separately. They are usually piggybacked onto the appropriations bill because it must pass to fund government operations. This corrupt practice is used by both parties to reward special interests in the member's district or those providing campaign funding.

Other benefits received by the elites' business interests are government contracts and direct subsidies disguised as necessary for the public good. Others are simply corporate welfare. For example, a 2002 farm subsidy bill cost $180 billion over 10 years to benefit large agribusinesses that were already very profitable. [17] About $4 billion per year is spent financing the purchases of weapons by foreign governments to the benefit of our military contractors. There are about 2,000 such subsidies a year.

A Cambridge University study that covered 20 years of policymaking by the US government found that the elites, their businesses, and their special interests are the primary influencers and beneficiaries of government. [18]

Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. (Bold emphasis added.)

That is as simple as it gets. The power elite and their special interests including their businesses get what they want in government policy and the rest of us get very little. They are the primary customers of government, not us.

They control the laws and policies in the United States through both of the major political parties. If they didn't get a good return on their investment, they wouldn't invest $14.4 billion in an election and another $3.5 billion a year in lobbying! Politics is all about the money. Politics is an elite business transaction. The elites are the owners of government, not us.