esquire.com – In the clamor of a presidential race, which this year is even more distracting because of a clamorous and vulgar talking yam, a lot of important information gets drowned out that ought to be part of the presidential race in the first place.

For example, the good folks at the Brennan Center have been studying the effect of the era of deregulated influence-peddling on local elections. Now, it long has been axiomatic around this shebeen that the real mischief gets done at the lower levels of government because subletting public officials at that level is a much more economically efficient method of getting things done. The Brennan Center folks actually studied this phenomenon and, yes, it’s even worse than you thought.