manipulating government has developed into a reliably high-margin -- and thus high-rate-of-success -- enterprise

Not only is our country on the wrong track, but in an article by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, lobbying is becoming so profitable that investors want in too. Presumably, you can now make money investing in the lobbying firm that represents you to government so that your own interests are advanced. Perpetual motion machines may not work in physics, but it seems that politics is now breaking all the rules.