About once a year I like to go off and think about life in general. Something everyone should do at some point. This is to help me decide where I want to focus my energies for the next year. I suspect this would be similar to a process many go through if they are sincere about making resolutions that they will follow.

But my contemplation bends to the political and what are the real problems and what are the best ways to solve them. This being another election year, such contemplations for me take on more gravity.

This year more than ever, my mind honed in over and over on one issue and one issue only: money in politics. No matter how serious other issues are – and climate change will eventually consume the human race – nothing is as serious as money in politics. From there do all the other problems flow.

All politics are bent by money and those who provide that money for the politicians. The rich buying politicians has always been a problem, but today the amount of money and the fear of getting beat over the head by that money has so driven the public discourse as never before since the worst Supreme Court decision ever – Citizens United.

The cost of running for office even at a low level has skyrocketed. The maldistribution of money in society puts much of the “discretionary” money (money not used for basic living needs) concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. Thus in order to run, a politician must go to fewer and fewer people much more frequently. When I give $20 or so, I do not expect it will buy me access, but were I to be able to give say $50,000 I might expect a favor or two.

So the fewer people that can hand out more money will expect some return such as favorable votes on specific issues. Issues that also bubble near the top such as environment (see West Virginia), climate change, fairness in wealth distribution, education, infrastructure, taxes so on and so forth. With the wealthy out there buying the votes ahead of time, the outcome of votes on these issues becomes a foregone conclusion.

Thus before anything of any substance can ever get done again we must once again get the rules back to where a small group of people can not stack the deck in their favor. But those who benefit by the current rules are certainly not going to vote for new rules that would take away their benefits. So expecting Congress to do anything that will change the current rules is a waste of time.

Thus changing the rules set up by the Supreme Court may be forced to take a route outside of the normal approval by 2/3 of both houses of congress. Move To Amend.org is one group that is fairly well organized and picking up steam. If you want to see this major problem fixed, this may be a good place to get started.

At one of Chuck Grassley’s town halls, he was asked by a constituent how much he was influenced in his votes by the contributions he got. Grassley stated with a straight face that he was not influenced at all. I broke out laughing in a loud guffaw. Seriously, Chuck you expect us to believe that when someone hands you a $10,000 contribution you would vote against them?