NOTE: This column was written by Ross Talbott’s brother, Harry Talbott.

Lord Acton has been quoted as saying, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Most of us have heard this statement, but we have not stopped to think how corruption affects our lives. So we vote corrupt politicians back into office.

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Knowing about corruption should drive us into action to do everything we can to end it, but it does not seem to.

My purpose in this column is to make you very angry about corruption and give you a means to deal with corruption. Here is how to teach your kids what corruption does to them, for they will pay a huge price for the evil that is in the political system today.

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In most nations, people have no means to end corruption, but in the United States we do. I will explain how this is done, but first let me explain how corrupt members of Congress are different from you and me.

They exempt themselves from laws that they impose on the rest of us and do so at our expense. They have free health care and we pay for ours, either through insurance or directly.

They can retire with a large pension after only one term in office. The rest of us have to work 40 or more years. They exempt themselves from Social Security, a program they have looted of all the trust money that was supposed to come to retired persons.

They have access to powerful people who can reward them considerably for decisions that benefit the powerful, who they really represent. When they leave office, they usually leave as very wealthy people.

You can’t lie to them, but they can lie to you.

They will not impose spending limits, and have created a government debt that is so large it can never be repaid. Your children and grandchildren will be expected to pay it. Because of undisciplined debt, your kids will probably be living in poverty.

They have cut the nation loose from constitutionally mandated, gold-backed money and have substituted a dollar that becomes worth less every day.

They have given us by some reckonings about 16 million laws to live by. The Constitution is about 38 pages long. It is still the law of the land. Each law is estimated to have spawned 10 or more regulations. Many of these laws give special privilege to some, and the rest of us pay the price.

They have given us a tax code that is almost impossible to comply with.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “When the people fear their government there is tyranny. When the government fears the people there is liberty.” Unless we fix the government, our children will live in fear of the government, and we may never regain our freedom.

If we don’t use the tools our founders gave us to get our freedom back, our kids will live in poverty in a police state. You would not want them to hate you because you did not take the measures to make them free.

I recommend at this point you memorize the Bill of Rights from the U.S. Constitution. You will then understand that we have the only bottom-up government in the world. It is literally a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

We have the ability to remove the corrupt (most of them) public officials from office, on a regular basis. All corruption in the United States is caused or allowed by only 545 people. They really are responsible for everything, because under our system they have the power to stop it or make it happen.

Who are they? They are the 435 members of the House of Representatives, the 100 Senators, the nine members of the Supreme Court and the president.

The ultimate power has been placed in the hands of the people of the United States, who can remove all but the Supreme Court at any election. If we the people know and exercise our constitutional powers, we can once again be the home of the brave and the land of the free.

Harry Talbott is a fruit rancher in Palisade. He is subbing in for his brother Ross, whose column, Out On A Limb, appears on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month.