politicians and government officials- self interest or public?

Question

Do politicians/government officials make their decisions to serve self interest or public interest?
I know that it depends on the politician/government official, but overlooking that. could you give examples/reasons too?
thanks in advance :)

Answer 1

Ask the township supervisors son who nearly killed my brother in a crash. The township supervisor and his son own a business.The son drove into a 90 bend speeding"under oath" in the inside lane,therefore causing my brothers friend to try to avoid the accident and they hit head on. The chief of police wrote a bogus police report blaming the driver my brother was with. The guy was driving a f250 superduty work truck.The cop was buddies with both of them and the supervisor is who the police call on their cb to make the superior decision. The cop didnt call in any real investigators or never tested the criminal for alcohol.
Under oath in front of a judge, the driver of the f250 admitted to speeding and didnt really remember what happened.He wasnt hurt at all though during the wreck.They had only theories of the way they thought the wreck happened.The judge said the whole thing was scandelous and ludicris,and the cop didnt do any of his job.My brother suffered extensive injuries.Skull fracture/titanium plate and screws,broken femur,tibia,pulmonary clapse,blood transfusion,just to name a few. He suffers from lifelong injuries.No charges were ever filed against the criminal that almost killed him because his dad was a business man and township supervisor. On top of this, 9 days before the cops deposition he died of natural causes.And now the criminal changed his story for the scandelous insurance company saying he wasnt at fault.Now my brother,the innocent person with lifelong injuries , has to deal with the scandelous insurance company. Its been 4 years and the criminal has still gotten away with his terrible crime,not to mention perjury and obstruction of justice.But being as his dad/business partner is the township supervisor he can get away with whatever,no matter if it ruins someone life. He has even totaled his brand new 4 door full size truck into a telephone pole after the accident that nearly killed my brother. He is a danger to the road and every adult that has known this criminal says he is a complete alcoholic.Him being an alcoholic is just hearsay though because obviously he is above the law and even if he was drunk, the cop covered the matter up. Talk about corruption.It doesnt get anymore corrupt then them.

Answer 2

Of COURSE they do what's best for THEM!!

They're human and *all* humans do what is best for them. This isn't a bad thing, it just means the best system would account for this.

Since we know that politicians are going to do what will get them re-elected, we should make sure that they have as little money to spend as possible and as little power to regulate as possible. The more money they have, the easier it is to buy votes by giving away taxpayers' money and acting like they did some huge favor.

The more power they have, the more corruption there will be (corruption is simply the trading of gov't power for contributions to the politician).

Take away government power and you will see politicians working for the people...at least more than they do now. However, it is in the politicians' best interest for the government they run to get bigger and to spend more so the trend is always toward more intrusive government.

The only way to stop it is to vote for people who promise to do LESS instead of people who promise to do more. Whenever you hear a politician promise you something for "free," he's just padding his own job security at the expense of someone else and pretending that that is compassion.

Answer 3

This is a very broad question. On average, I would say it's a little bit of both.