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By Tammy Pondsmith, Senior Correspondent, Article 107 News — reporting on the facts before they happen

Here’s tomorrow’s breaking news, today: a politician will look into a camera with the moist sincerity of a soap-opera pharmacist and swear they “work for you.” Then—minutes later—they’ll attend a fundraiser where the chicken is dry, the donors are juicy, and the only “you” in the room is the second-person pronoun in a PowerPoint deck titled: “Voter Sentiment: How to Weaponize It.”

American politics isn’t “broken.” It’s operating exactly as designed: corporate backing pays the bills, media sells the drama, and voters provide the applause track. Politicians are both victims and exploiters of this arrangement, like a guy complaining about traffic while he’s double-parked, engine running, hazard lights blinking as if flashing lights are a moral argument.

This pattern is older than the Constitution’s paper cuts. In 1896, William McKinley’s campaign was turbocharged by Mark Hanna, who raised unprecedented sums by leaning hard on wealthy business networks—an early masterclass in “representative government,” sponsored by people who could afford representatives.

A few decades earlier, the Crédit Mobilier scandal served the nation a clear lesson: when big infrastructure meets weak guardrails, somebody tries to buy Congress like it’s a limited-edition stock drop. Railroad insiders used profits, discounted shares, and influence to grease the political gears around the transcontinental railroad—proof that “public-private partnership” can mean “public pays, private pockets, politicians wink.”

Then came Teapot Dome, the 1920s oil-and-corruption spectacular where federal petroleum reserves were leased out under suspiciously friendly terms, with Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall convicted for taking bribes—so historic he became the first former U.S. cabinet official imprisoned for crimes committed in office. If you’re wondering whether this was “an isolated incident,” please enjoy this complimentary pamphlet titled “History.”

By 1971, the influence game wasn’t just happening; it was getting a user manual. Lewis Powell wrote a confidential memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urging business to organize politically—courts, messaging, academia, the whole buffet. Imagine calling it “free enterprise” while drafting a plan to purchase the referee, the scoreboard, and the dictionary definition of “fair.”

And in 2010, Citizens United v. FEC widened the lanes for outside spending by holding that certain limits on corporate independent expenditures and electioneering communications violated the First Amendment. Translation for normal humans: the money already in the room got a bigger microphone, and the politician learned to speak in two dialects—one for voters, one for donors.

None of this works without media, the nation’s favorite panic dealership. The “divide Americans” part is not a conspiracy; it’s a revenue model with excellent quarterly earnings. In the 1890s, yellow journalism helped inflame public opinion about Cuba and Spain, sometimes exaggerating or even printing false stories to sell newspapers. The medium has changed, but the profit motive still wears the same cologne: Fear, with notes of Outrage and a lingering finish of Click.

In broadcast-era America, the Fairness Doctrine required certain broadcasters to air contrasting viewpoints on controversial public issues. The FCC repealed it in 1987, and partisan talk radio surged in the years that followed. When “balance” stops being required, “certainty” becomes the product—and certainty sells better than nuance because nuance can’t be screamed into a car stereo between two commercials for gold coins and male enhancement.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth politicians don’t want trending: if Americans stopped hating each other long enough to compare receipts, a lot of elected officials would have to run on their actual job performance, which is like asking a magician to do taxes. So they’ll keep the public in permanent emotional triage—culture-war sirens blaring—while the donor class quietly rewrites the boring, lucrative parts: procurement, regulation, taxes, and the fine print that turns public policy into private profit.

Politicians love to pose as victims of “the system,” and on some level they are. Money and media are currents strong enough to drag a career out to sea. But they’re also expert surfers. They learned that power doesn’t require solving problems; it requires owning the microphone and keeping the audience furious at the other half of the bleachers. The more divided you are, the less you notice that both teams’ jerseys say Sponsored by the Same People.

So yes, this is a pattern: Hanna’s money machine, Crédit Mobilier’s influence-for-shares hustle, Teapot Dome’s oil-slick bribery, Powell’s blueprint, Citizens United’s megaphone, and the media’s long romance with monetized panic. Different century, same play: buy access, sell outrage, keep office, cash out.

Article 107 News will now file next week’s headline: “Lawmakers Demand National Unity, Immediately Raise Millions by Warning It’s Too Late.”

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Tammy Pondsmith is Article 107 News’s Senior Correspondent and the only journalist with a press pass, a library card, and a punch card from the Banquet Hall of Broken Promises—one more fundraiser and the tenth entrée comes with a free conscience.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.