Editor’s note: The IJ is reprinting some of the late Beth Ashley’s columns. This is from 2018.

My husband — bless his heart — is my biggest fan. Lately, he decided to put together a collection of political columns I’ve written over the years.

He thinks that one such column — headlined “Democracy being sold to highest bidder” — written Feb. 19, 2006, is still relevant. So do I — so he urged me to run it again.

Here it is:

Things in Washington, D.C., have never seemed worse.

Bill Moyers, newsman, TV filmmaker and respected commentator on American values, spoke at the Marin Center, telling audiences that the power of government has passed from our elected representatives into the hands of corporations and lobbyists who pass out money.

Money, he said, is “choking democracy to death.”

For well over an hour, he spoke in his familiar Texas twang, but with a rapid, unaccustomed urgency. He described the tangled web of influence peddling that has corrupted many of the politicians we put in Washington.

On the night I heard him, he got a standing ovation.

A retired Novato doctor said Moyers’ speech was the best he had heard in the multiyear history of the Marin Speaker Series.

A woman from San Anselmo called it “absolutely fabulous.”

“(He) showed that the America we hold so dear has turned into a greedy make-the-rich-richer scheme that is promoting a real class system in this country,” she said.

In politics, Moyers told his audiences, “There are no victimless crimes; you and I pay when big money interests buy off our legislators.”

He insisted that everything he told us had already appeared in dribs and drabs in the press, but his job was “connecting the dots.”

His statements jibed perfectly with those of Rep. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, who came to Marin for a fundraiser. Sanders, an Independent, said that in today’s Washington, all congressional committees are controlled by the majority Republicans. Lobbyists write the laws they want and bring them to the committees for passage. Committee chairs respond with, “The office of the Republican National Committee is located at such and such an address. If you write a big enough check, we will be glad to pass your law.”

Nobody wants to believe this is true, but Sanders is wildly admired in Vermont, and Moyers ranks as one of America’s most trustworthy people.

Moyers said that, while the Republicans have upped the ante considerably, Democrats began playing the money game years ago. When he was in the White House, President Bill Clinton sold overnight stays in the Lincoln bedroom.

In speeches Monday and Thursday, Moyers told stomach-turning tales of legislators compromised by lavish gifts and gobs of money. Among other things, he blamed the ever-rising, obscenely high costs of running for office.

He said when the Medicare drug bill was well on its way to passage, with such real benefits for seniors as permission to buy lower-cost prescriptions from Canada, the pharmaceutical industries rolled out the heavy artillery. Passage of the bill was held up until 3 a.m. so legislative arms could be twisted against it.

Moyers said Tom DeLay, well out of camera range on the floor of the House, offered a congressman $100,000 if he would change his vote, and when the congressman refused, DeLay threatened to give the $100,000 to the man’s opponent in the next election.

It would be impossible to recapitulate in this brief space Moyers’ encyclopedic indictment of the venal swamp he says Washington has become.

His solution: political campaigns run at public expense. He said $10 a voter would underwrite a decent campaign for national office.

To make such a change would require a huge battle, he said, “but I hope you’ll sign on for it.”

Well, sure. Ten dollars seems a cheap price if we can get our government back — if we can rekindle our faith in government of the people, by the people, for the people, and not just for the ones whose palms are outstretched for donations.

What do you think? Have things changed that much?