What comprises the swamp?  A few of my thoughts on the subject of corruption and counterproductive waste—and please excuse the redundancy:

• Representation—A number one problem is that under the current federal Congressional election process (as modified since our founding), almost universally we no longer select and elect qualified people known to us (citizen statesmen), but instead select from those who pander for our votes and are almost universally subsidized and promoted by special interests and partisan groups. Read about Article the First. This was not how our founders conceived the system or what we had at the beginning. Currently, for the most part our representatives are self-serving and obligated to special interests rather than truely representing the best interests of the general welfare and upholding our Constitution. I suggest that a good rule of thumb is that we must stop electing people who promote themselves for public office, but instead find people known to us from our midst who represent our common interests and elect them to office. Of course this could not work under the current situation where we no longer have small districts, or the Senatorial election process as changed due to the 17th Amendment.
• Employees and agencies of the government that have an agenda and operate independent and often at odds with the official leadership, such as in opposition to the chief executive.
• Globalist/One World organizations that significantly influence domestic policy through members who work for government. This includes organizations such as Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, World Affairs Council, Aspen Institute, Le Cercle, Brookings Institution, Club of Rome, the Atlantic Council, World Economic Forum, and World Government Summit to name some.
• Voter fraud is rampant and Congress has the Constitutional authority to stop it; create national criteria (including voter ID), eliminate early voting, provisional ballots and other mechanisms to minimize fraud. See these suggestions
• The current practice in Congress whereby to get on a committee, be a committee chairman, or party leader—one must pay a fee each year (such as $20 million to be the House Speaker), where such money is generated from lobbyists and paid to the political party. See the book DRAIN THE SWAMP by Ken Buck, page 38
• The entire lobbying industry (any honest lobbying should be in the public forum with We the People able to attend and participate in the discussion).  Any private lobbying of a public official should be a crime.
• Congressional representatives initiating and passing legislation of their own making (or that of lobbyists) that have not been sought or vetted by the general public or their constituency.
• Insider trading in the stock market of government officials (need to put the teeth back into the Stop Trading on Confidential Information Act).
• Sweetheart business deals domestically and internationally for government officials and relatives of such.  (need something domestically, similar to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act)
• Public Sector unions – elected officials currently approve union agreements for which they will not have to be held accountable…if any union agreements are made, these should be approved by the electorate—not unaccountable elected officials.
• Earmarking – tacking on special benefits to bills (that have no relevance to the main legislation) in order to buy legislator(s) votes for a bill
• Gerrymandering – artificial redistricting of a congressional district in order to promote a partisan political outcome. A formula (undoubtedly a computer software application) should be developed and implemented that would develop the boundaries for congressional districts during reapportionments that takes into account population densities, city and county boundaries and would be independent of political manipulation.
• Court/legal process in general is overly complex and procedural to facilitate more the need for attorneys rather than the rule of law..
• The federal courts routinely exceed their Constitutional authority – We need to police the federal courts from judicial overreach; impeach justices that attempt to legislate from the bench, and stop federal courts from hearing cases in regard to social issues that rightfully are within the jurisdictional responsibility of the various states.
• Litigious society and general legal framework of modern society does not promote fairness, it promotes a dependence on lawyers, skyrockets legal costs and medical costs through malpractice insurance, etc.
• Federally insured student loans – since initiated, these have skyrocketed tuition rates, prompted countless people to incur debt taking counterproductive and unproductive curriculum rather than develop marketable skills.
• All Federal social programs – any welfare programs should be at the state or local level and to the degree possible administered by private charities and the people. All federal welfare programs are counterproductive to helping the poor and exceed the enumerated powers of the federal government as stipulated in our Constitution.
• Legislative rules, pay to play for committee assignments, behind the doors legislative process, and the current Filibuster rule.
• Ideological control of public education has transformed the learning process into an indoctrination process, which is contrary to the best interests of the general welfare and dumbs down the education process.
• Government (state, local, federal) monopoly of tax funds for public education are furthering the waste and consequent destruction of quality education for students. True universal school choice is an essential we need to repair our education system.
• The federal courts that have used stare decisis and other methods to destroy the law and undermine our Constitution and the rule of law.
• Virtually all federal government agencies, the bureaucracies, and regulatory agencies that fall outside the enumerated powers in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8.
• Minimum wage laws (unconstitutional price control) and other restrictions on an individual marketing their labor and is counterproductive in helping the poor.
• Private property use restrictions, zoning, impact fees, redevelopment agencies, and other government programs negatively impacting the ability of low-income citizens from acquiring and improving owner occupied private property.
• Government and public education indoctrination regarding secular humanism, global warming, CRT, and other debatable ideological theories as being settled fact.
• All federal programs that provide funding to business/industry (corporate welfare).
• Destruction of the concept of We the People, selecting our representatives as furthered by the 17^th Amendment, the Apportionment Act of 1911, and the Primary Election System.
• The Federal Reserve (which likely is unconstitutional in the first place), as currently operated, continually inflates/devalues the dollar annually by about 3 to 4 percent—and who profits from the increased money supply as it certainly not being used to pay down out national debt.
• Grossly oversized government--increases the opportunity for fraud and waste in large bureaucratic organizations as promoted by government that has top management distant from the end users. Unlike the economies of scale of many types of industry, the only benefit of large-scale government agencies is to increase waste, fraud, and government power over we the people.
• Productive efficiencies inherent in mass production of goods do not apply to providing government services to individuals and families—in fact the reverse is true.
• Politicians, not We the People, dreaming up legislation—which invariably profit special interests, not the general welfare.
• Politicians and special interest groups (rather than We the People) promoting candidates for public office.
• No fault divorce nullifies the marriage vows and promotes the dissolution of the family unit.
• Davis-Bacon Act – initiated as a discriminatory act against minority contractors, it needlessly increases the cost of government contracts.
• Failure to assess success of a government program, keeping it going despite negative (counterproductive) results, and then doubling down to make matters worse.
• Electing politicians in the first place—we should not be considering people who promote themselves for public office. Rather, we should redevelop a system whereby the local citizenry can determine the qualifications needed for a representative and then select from their midst suitable people of known character for the job.
• Politicians come up with hair brained ideas that turn into legislation, ideas which common sense of We the People would not have supported or promoted in the first place.
• Government/political solutions make matters worse than letting We the People sort it out.
• A media/press predominantly controlled by a half dozen large corporate entities that have ideological/partisan goals, most of which are counter to this nation’s founding values.
• Since the abandonment of the Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code) in 1967, the entertainment industry has had an unrestricted ability to ignore community standards of decency and promote societal decay in the public forum.
• One must assume any career bureaucrat is part of the swamp. To remain a career bureaucrat, and especially for those who seek advancement, few if any escape compromising to either keep their job or get ahead as they view and accept waste of resources, and yield to political pressure in order to protect their jobs.
• And simply the pressure to conform, go along to get along and not be ostracized, fired, or even destroyed for differing from the politically promoted view or exposing corrupt practices places one as part of the swamp.
• And of course there are so many ways politicians and “public” servants find to make financial gains that are inappropriate, but often acceptable for being a compliant member of the swamp.
• All social programs that help subsidize the poor, who are able bodied rather than looking at the problems keeping them from having access to a job capable of providing needed subsistence.

The swamp is pervasive and those who gain the most financially and are in power would have it that all would to one extent or another, compromise their integrity, accept the bennies and be part of the swamp—that is how evil works.

Every society has limited resources; to squander those resources on counterproductive or ineffective endeavors is to limit the potential of that society. This pervasive corruption is destroying our nation and utterly obliterating the concept of Self-Government by We the People. This is a brief outline on how we got from our founding to the current system to where we are now.