The Drainage Lines: Corporate Government, the Republic, and the Cost of Ruling the World

A continuation of The Loving Observer, The Faithful Mirror, The Witness to Creation, and The Curated Mind

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A Little Rambling to Do

I sat down today with a little rambling to do, and a question that's been sitting with me for a long time. I wanted to look at Donald Trump's actions through a lens a lot of people talk about but few people examine carefully: the United States corporate government versus the American Republic. Have his actions supported one and not the other?

Then two more thoughts came while I was talking. The first was short: American hegemony is not a service to the American people. The second took me a moment to say right. It seems to me that the global situation finds America decomposing, with the drainage lines running from America. What I mean is that the expenditures of our global role are costing America more than they cost the rest of the world.

Later, a fourth thought came, and I'll come back to it at the end because it holds everything together. These thoughts belong together. This article is my attempt to observe them honestly. I'm not trying to win an argument for one party. I'm trying to see what's actually there.

In this series I've built one framework from several directions. In The Loving Observer, truth was the only foundation, because a lie has nothing underneath it, and holding lies up costs energy and creates entropy. In The Faithful Mirror, service is the purpose of observation. In The Curated Mind, I learned that a system fed a partial picture will keep running over a gap it doesn't know is there. Today I want to apply all three to the country itself. If service is the purpose of observation, then service is also the purpose of government. So let's measure the government by that standard.

First, the Truth About the "Corporation"

Truth is the only foundation, so I have to start by checking the foundation of the question itself.

Many of us have heard the claim that the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 secretly turned the United States into a private corporation, "UNITED STATES, INC.," which replaced the original Republic. I've heard it for years. So I looked at what's documented.

Here's what's true. The 1871 Act combined Washington City, Georgetown, and Washington County into one territorial government for the District of Columbia, and it called that government a "body corporate for municipal purposes." That was ordinary legal language for a city government at the time; cities are still "municipal corporations" today. And Congress repealed that territorial setup just three years later, in 1874. The Act governed only D.C. It didn't change the Constitution or the nation.

Here's what's been rejected. Federal courts have heard the "corporation" argument many times, usually from people calling themselves sovereign citizens, and they've thrown it out every time. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals called these kinds of arguments frivolous and said they "should be rejected summarily" in a 2011 case, United States v. Benabe. Historians don't treat it as real history either.

I'll be honest: part of me wanted the story to be true, because it explains a feeling so many people have. But a story isn't a foundation just because it fits a feeling. If I built this article on the legal version of that claim, I'd be doing exactly what this series warns against: holding up something that has nothing underneath it.

What I can keep is the feeling under the theory, because that part is real and fair. It's the sense that the government has drifted into serving concentrated money and power instead of the people it belongs to. You don't need a secret 1871 corporation to ask that question. You can ask it with public data. So that's the honest version of my question:

Has this administration, in both terms, leaned toward corporate and concentrated interests, or toward the principles of a republic: the people's sovereignty, separation of powers, the states' role, and the rule of law?

Following the Money

When you want to know whom a system serves, watch where the resources flow. That's observation in its simplest form.

The 2017 tax law. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act dropped the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. In 2018, the top 1% of households got an average tax cut of about $51,000, while the average household got about $1,600. The Tax Policy Center also found that the richest households got a large share of their benefit from the corporate changes in particular.

The 2025 tax and spending law. This one is even clearer. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the lowest-income tenth of American households will lose about $1,200 a year, about 3.1% of their income, mostly because of cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. Middle-income households gain roughly $800 to $1,200 a year. The top tenth gains about $13,600 a year.

I want to be fair here: the middle did gain something. But the shape is plain. The ones with the least lost, and the ones with the most gained the most.

The lobbying boom. In 2025, spending on federal lobbying broke $5 billion for the first time, reaching $5.08 billion, up 14%, the biggest jump since quarterly reporting began in 2008. The firm with the closest ties to the administration, Ballard Partners, took in a record $88.1 million. Money flows where it expects a return. When that much money floods toward one place, it's telling you where decisions are being made and who expects to be heard.

Deregulation. Agencies reported 646 deregulatory actions against just 5 significant new rules in fiscal 2025. But honest observation means looking closer. The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center found that only 218 of those actions changed actual regulations, and many of those simply removed rules that were already obsolete. The headline number was inflated. And cutting rules isn't automatically corporate; it can free small businesses and ordinary people too. So I count this one as mixed.

The Other Side of the Ledger

Unconditional love as an observational principle means I don't get to look only at what confirms what I already think. So here's the evidence on the other side.

Tariffs against big business. The sweeping tariffs went directly against free-trade orthodoxy and much of corporate America. The administration framed them as a response to trade deficits that had "led to the hollowing out" of American manufacturing. Whatever you think of tariffs, that's not what the big corporations were asking for.

Shrinking the bureaucracy. About 317,000 federal employees left government in 2025, while about 68,000 joined. The Office of Personnel Management shows a net drop of about 264,000 since January 20, 2025. Supporters see this as cutting back an unelected class of administrators and returning control to people the voters actually chose.

Making agencies answer to an elected president. In Trump v. Slaughter (June 29, 2026), the Supreme Court held that a president can remove officers who carry out executive power, like FTC commissioners, at will. The argument for this is a republican one: power should run back to someone the people can vote out.

These are real points, and I want them on the table.

The Method Matters as Much as the Goal

This is where the picture gets complicated, and where I think the most important lesson sits.

A republic isn't only about what gets done. It's about how. The Constitution splits power on purpose so no single person holds all of it. And here the record pulls the other way.

Government by order. President Trump signed 225 executive orders in 2025 alone, more than the 220 of his entire first term, and 291 by 2026. Every executive order is a decision made by one person instead of by the people's representatives in Congress.

Emergency powers. The tariffs I just described as anti-corporate rested on declared "national emergencies" under a 1977 law called IEEPA. On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that the law doesn't give the president power to impose tariffs, because the power to tax belongs to Congress under Article I of the Constitution.

Think about what that means. A goal that sounded like it served working people was pursued with a method that skipped the people's branch of government. And who stopped it? Small businesses and twelve states that sued, and courts that listened. In my view, that was the strongest moment for the Republic in this whole story. The system of observation worked: one branch watched another and corrected it.

At the same time, the Court in Trump v. CASA (2025) limited nationwide injunctions, which narrows one of the tools citizens have used to check executive actions all at once.

So here's my honest read on the structure. Some actions challenged corporate positions and the bureaucracy. But much of that was done by gathering power into one office, and a republic depends on power being spread out and watched from every side. In The Loving Observer I wrote that honest observation has to be mutual and run 360 degrees. Power that only flows one direction isn't being observed. It's just being used.

American Hegemony Is Not a Service to the American People

Now to the thought that came to me in the middle of all this.

I've said throughout this series that service is the purpose. In the Law of Correspondence: the observer sustains its reality through service to the observed. A government is an observer of its people. It exists to serve them. So the honest question about America's global role isn't "Is America powerful?" It's "Does that power serve the American people?"

Here's what the numbers say.

In fiscal year 2026, the United States spent $965 billion on national defense. In the same year, it spent $1.052 trillion just on net interest on the national debt. We now pay more to service what we've already borrowed than we pay for the military itself. Defense spending rose by about $49 billion that year alone.

And it's getting heavier. The Congressional Budget Office projects that interest will take 19% of all federal revenue in 2026 and 26% by 2036, becoming almost double defense spending by then. Over the next ten years, about 66 cents of every borrowed dollar is projected to go just to paying interest.

Meanwhile, the big defense contractors keep up their presence in Washington. Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and RTX each spent roughly $14 to $16 million lobbying in 2025.

The Drainage Lines

This is what I was reaching for when I said the drainage lines run from America.

Picture a body that keeps sending its blood outward to hold up a structure around it. The structure might be impressive. But if the blood doesn't come back, the body weakens from the inside. The cost of global dominance is paid by Americans: in taxes, in borrowing their grandchildren will pay interest on, and in what doesn't get built at home. The benefits, where they exist, flow unevenly. A lot of them go to finance, contractors, and the companies that operate worldwide under the umbrella of American power.

I want to be fair to the other view, because truth demands it. People who defend America's global role argue that it pays citizens back in ways that are hard to see. The dollar's status as the world's reserve currency helps keep our borrowing costs lower. Secure sea lanes keep trade moving. Deterrence may prevent wars that would cost far more. These are real arguments, and I can't put an exact dollar figure on them, and I don't think anyone honestly can. That itself is part of the problem: when the benefits can't be measured but the costs can, it's easy to keep spending on faith.

And here's something I noticed about this administration. The "America First" message partly agrees with me; it questions foreign commitments and asks why America should carry the world. But the spending record doesn't match the message. Defense spending kept climbing. And two tax laws added to the debt whose interest now costs more than the military. The words point inward. The money still drains outward, and upward.

Truth, Feedback, and Entropy

This brings me back to the center of my framework.

In The Loving Observer, I said that a lie has no foundation, so keeping it standing takes constant energy, and that drain is entropy. In The Curated Mind, I said that a system fed a partial picture keeps running over a gap it doesn't know is there.

A nation works the same way. When the people get honest feedback about where their money goes and who it serves, they can correct course. When the feedback is dishonest, or simply incomplete, the system keeps spending energy holding up a picture that doesn't match reality. Each side tells the story that flatters it. Tax laws get sold as relief for working families while the official numbers show the lowest earners losing ground. Global spending gets sold as protection while interest quietly overtakes it. Even the 1871 corporation story, well-meant as it is, is a kind of dishonest feedback: it points people at a myth instead of at the documented record they could actually change.

Every one of those gaps costs energy to maintain. That's the decomposing I felt. It's not a single villain. It's entropy from feedback that isn't honest.

Separating Our Interests: Finding the Vantage Point

As I kept talking, one more thought came, and I think it ties all of this together: if the American people can separate their interests from the global interests, they would have a better understanding of what's going on at this time.

That's an observation principle. In The Loving Observer, I said distance matters. Stand too close and you can't see the shape of a thing; stand in the wrong place and your view is bent by what's in front of you. To see honestly, you need a clear vantage point.

Right now, most of us look at the world from a tangled position. We're told that what's good for global markets, for multinational companies, and for America's role as the world's power is automatically good for us. Sometimes it is. But the data in this article shows the two aren't the same thing. The lowest earners lose while global capital gains. Interest and defense grow while needs at home wait. When our own interests are mixed up with global ones, we can't tell which is which, and so we can't give honest feedback about either.

Separating them doesn't mean turning our backs on the world. Service still reaches outward; that's the Law of Correspondence. It means first seeing clearly where we stand, so that what we give is a choice and not a drain we never noticed. You can't serve the observed honestly if you can't see yourself honestly.

What I Conclude

Here's my evidence-based view, as plainly as I can say it.

The 1871 "corporation" theory doesn't hold up as law or history. But as a picture of captured government, a government drifting toward serving concentrated money, it points at something real.

On the money, the record leans clearly toward concentrated wealth and corporate interests. The lowest earners lose, the highest gain the most, and lobbying is at an all-time high.

On structure, the record is mixed. The administration has challenged some corporate and bureaucratic power and pushed agencies to answer to an elected president. But it has done much of that by concentrating power in one office, through record executive orders and emergency declarations, at Congress's expense. The best moment for the Republic came when citizens, states, and courts pushed back.

So my answer is this: this administration has served concentrated economic interests more than it has served the sovereignty of the people, and its populist goals have often used methods that weaken the separation of powers the Republic depends on.

And on the global role, measured by service: more and more of what Americans pay goes to past borrowing and to holding up global power, and less comes back to the people who pay it. By the standard I hold, that isn't service. The drainage lines are real.

Questions I'm Still Holding

I don't want to close the loop too neatly, because honest observation keeps going.

1. Is a strong president who answers to voters more republican than an independent bureaucracy, or less, if Congress keeps handing over its own powers? 2. Can we honestly measure, household by household, what America's global role gives back compared with what it costs in interest and defense? 3. If a government truly took service as its purpose, what would it change first: who benefits from tax law, how lobbying works, or how much of our blood we send outward?

And the first step is the one I keep coming back to: separate our interests from the global interests, and look again. From that vantage point, the drainage lines become visible, and what's visible can be corrected.

In all thy getting, get understanding. Understanding brings harmony, and harmony brings stability. A republic is only as healthy as the honesty of its feedback, and only as strong as its service to the people it belongs to.

Sources

1. United States v. Benabe, 654 F.3d 753 (7th Cir. 2011) 2. District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 (overview): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_Organic_Act_of_1871 3. Tax Policy Center: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/three-numbers-know-about-tcja-2018 4. Tax Policy Center: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/most-taxpayers-benefits-come-mainly-tcjas-individual-provisions-rich-get-much-their-tax-cuts 5. Congressional Budget Office: distributional effects of the 2025 reconciliation act: https://www.cbo.gov/interactive/2025-reconciliation-act 6. Thomson Reuters summary: https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/news/cbo-analyzes-distributional-effects-of-budget-act/ 7. OpenSecrets: lobbying record in 2025: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2026/01/lobbying-firms-took-in-a-record-5-billion-in-2025/ 8. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs: https://www.reginfo.gov/public/pdf/eo14192/Final_Accounting_for_Fiscal_Year_2025_under_EO_14192.pdf 9. GW Regulatory Studies Center: https://regulatorystudies.columbian.gwu.edu/behind-2118-billion-evaluating-eo-14192s-deregulatory-accounting 10. Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (2026), Supreme Court opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1287%5F4gcj.pdf 11. Federal News Network: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/11/317000-feds-have-left-the-government-this-year-surpassing-opms-goal/ 12. Office of Personnel Management: workforce changes data: https://data.opm.gov/explore-data/analytics/workforce-changes 13. Trump v. Slaughter (2026), Supreme Court opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-332_qn12.pdf 14. Federal Register: https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/executive-orders 15. Congressional Research Service: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11398 16. Trump v. CASA (2025), Supreme Court opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a884%5F8n59.pdf 17. USA Spending summary of Treasury data: https://www.usaspending.us/blog/fy2026-federal-spending-final-numbers 18. TFTC, from Treasury statements: https://www.tftc.io/federal-interest-expense/vs-defense 19. IBTimes: https://www.ibtimes.com/us-spending-more-debt-interest-defense-annual-bill-just-hit-105-trillion-3808762 20. House Budget Committee summary of CBO's February 2026 baseline: https://budget.house.gov/imo/media/doc/cbo_baseline_february_2026.pdf 21. OpenSecrets: top lobbying spenders, 2025: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-spenders?cycle=2025

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This article was written with AI assistance and reviewed by Ronnie Patterson. Figures come from the sources listed above.

By Ronnie Patterson. Narrated with AI assistance.