The Real "Cesspool on the Potomac"

Over the past 20+ years, I have been a political wonk of the first order. Talk radio is my go-to source for news and entertainment. I have seen countless unbelievable things in local, state, and federal government. As an insider on multiple political campaigns and a two time candidate myself, I have an above average knowledge of the inner workings of the campaign process. With everything I have seen, the one thing that baffles me the most is how the biggest supporters of President Trump believe that somehow he will be able to "drain the swamp".

The federal government is not just the heads of the three main branches of government. There are hundreds of agencies with tens of thousands of unelected bureaucrats who are unaccountable to anyone other than their bureaucrat bosses. A vast majority of these employees stay in their jobs regardless of which party controls Congress and the White House. Many of these agencies have rulemaking authority...rules which carry the force of law.

These agencies are writing more laws every day than Congress. The EPA has been very efficient at doing this over the past few years, but they all do it. What really should enrage the citizens is that most of these rules violate the Tenth Amendment. The only thing scarier than unelected agencies making laws is when these agencies work together.

The federal government has far exceeded their constitutional authority by using fear, a lack of constitutional knowledge among the people, and the expense in both time and money that lawsuits require to expand their control of citizens. Land of the free? Hardly. There is very little that a citizen can do that doesn't require the permission of government in one way or another. Licences, taxes, fees...they are all ways that government allows you to do anything you want to do.

Drain the swamp sounds good on a bumper sticker. Sadly, that job is far too big for one person. Even more so when you consider that there are millions in that swamp whose livelyhoods depend on that swamp, so they will do everything they can to keep that swamp exactly where it is.

Is it even possible to drain the swamp? I honestly don't know, but the more we try, the more we get back to the freedoms the founders intended.