Love ya', Nate, but you're way out of line here.
*Some* lawyers do as you describe, but not enough to "control" government, per se. If a meaningful proportion of the populace were to (1) educate themselves about how government functions, and (2) contact their elected representatives with meaningful and articulate advocacy and commentary, you might be surprised what they could accomplish.
Ask any legislative aide to a member of congress how many of their constituents bother to contact them about *anything*, and you'll understand the problem.
All the lawyers I know who've gone *into politics* do it. They have a singular skillset and only know how to apply *that skillset* to problems. Anything can be fixed by a new law and new arguments with other legal peers *in politics*. They rarely come up with smarter solutions.
As far as constituents contacting anyone in politics with meaningful and well articulated advocacy, have you tried lately? There's a wall of eternal BS form letters and protections against the masses that's amazing in its ability to stop communication from occurring when a constituency is millions of people.
You might get a personal note from a local politician but, and you know this is true, the only people getting even 5 minutes of real communication with the bloated Federal level representative power base, are those spending $15/plate for dinner.
I wrote a detailed letter to my *State* level Attorney General's office about a problem that's simple to define, easy to replicate, and easy to fix, that's allowing criminals to get away with quite a bit of stuff. I won't go into how I know, but here's the response to the four identical letters:
- DMV / County Clerk - two personal phone calls thanking me for reporting the problem, one from the elected Clerk himself. He said he immediately saw what was wrong and he can stop it at his office.
- State of Colorado DMV - no response.
- Local Sheriff - no response. Letter included information on how to catch two criminals and I didn't expect a response here because it would trigger an investigation and then they can't discuss it with me. Makes sense.
- State Attorney General - Form letter thanking me for reporting business to consumer fraud, which isn't at all what the original letter was about at all.
That's all LOCAL. Try that at the Federal level and see if you can send anything constructive to a Congresscritter and their staff even understand it.
I've got four or five letters from Congressional staffers that I should frame because they're so far off the topic I originally sent letters about, that they're beyond sad.
My favorite so far was a letter about, again, another easy to see, easy to reproduce, easy to explain, and concise letter about an FCC procedural problem. I got a form letter back from the Congressman's office thanking me for my letter and confirming the HDTV cutover dates. LOL.
If Congress and their staff are saying they don't get any feedback from anyone, perhaps they've cranked the form letter BS volume control well past 11.
I do know this. You pay that $15k and go to the dinner and there's going to be a staffer with a pen and paper standing there actually listening and writing down your concerns for a follow up.
Money talks, bull**** walks. And that's what I mean by "bought and paid". You don't pay, your letter will be sorted into one of the "form letter response piles" for whatever stupidity is airing on Cable News that month and that's he form letter you'll get. Getting heard? No. Not going to happen.
I don't doubt your assertion that *most* lawyers don't play. Most lawyers don't run for public office either. The ones that do, aren't even the best lawyers. They're usually the lawyers that couldn't hack it at their own profession.
Those are the lawyers we end up having writing laws. Who are listening only to $15/plate donors.
Think that's a recipe for utter stupidity on a massive scale? I think so.
