Complaints about the loss of American democracy are common. Many see the present administration as a power hungry group stomping on ancient rights. Others saw the last administration similarly. Some view both and most of their predecessors as all ratcheting up control.

Many arguments about expanding federal power are cogent, but the debate has been going on since Jefferson and Hamilton. The overall effect has been minimal compared to the genuine erosion of representative government at all levels that has occurred over the past few decades.

We are not a democracy, we are a republic with representative government. We choose our leaders and they call the shots. And we’ve been making it harder for them to function as our representatives for years.

Our attitude is schizoid. We trash politicians in general forgetting they reflect we who chose them. The cop-out is mush from both left and right, claiming either corporate dominance or blaming the media. Some believe this produces a lower grade of elected official. One clear result is elected officials who more closely resemble student government than genuine governance.

The following examples of this functional breakdown were all reported just last week:

-State Representative Jonathan Paton, (one of the brightest by the way) will chair hearings in the legislature concerning Arizona Child Protective Services. The hearings will be closed to the public because by law CP cases must be kept private. Legislators may review them, but they can’t talk about them.

Why not? The law clearly benefits the bureaucracy that may have blundered more than it benefits those the bureaucracy blundered in not protecting. There could be discussion of the issues in a specific case without naming anyone. Our representatives can’t discuss this with us because, no doubt heavily lobbied by the multitude of government lobbyists on state and local payrolls, they abdicated their responsibility to us by restricting themselves.

-From the Interior Department a wire story that one of the “political” appointees was “leaking” information about proposed regulations to the businesses proposed to be regulated.

Had a career bureaucrat done so to environmental groups, they’d be called “whistle blower.”

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough political appointees —  those chosen by somebody who won an election - to control the herds of bureaucrats at all levels who have their own agendas never submitted to any form of voter review.

-In Chicago, a high level official was indicted for helping fix City jobs. The heat has been on the old machine so big that I’m told someone actually got a high-end post by simply applying. “We don’t want nobody nobody sent” will now be replaced by the National Search and gypsy bureaucrats. The power again moved from those beholden to those elected to the Catberts in Human Resources, who will now manipulate the process for THEIR cronies.

-The Legislature attempted to open the process involving who got the lucrative contracts for traffic schools. Currently they’re picked by local courts. The Legislature wanted more competition by giving those ticketed a choice on which outfit. The courts, with media support, complained and gave all the usual pro-monopoly arguments. Nowhere in all this did I hear “competitive bid.”

-An initiative passed forbidding the Legislature from altering any measure passed by initiative. Voters last year passed a minimum wage initiative that failed to exempt organizations hiring the disabled. The AG maintained there was no way the Legislature could legally fix this problem, which tells you restricting them was a stupid idea in the first place. It got fixed by allowing the State Industrial Commission to arbitrarily redefine “employment.”

Follow closely. Your elected representatives may not alter any dumb idea the voters pass, but an unelected body can by a total stretch of their imagination.

No one of these is earthshaking, but connect the dots and you’ll see a small part of the extended path to political impotency for those we elect with a commensurate accrual of power by those we don’t.