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Those smarmy-looking carpetbaggers who came in to roll the rubes undoubtedly made it clear to the pols that they would be fine whether they ever won another election or not.

A few years ago I looked at some property in another state. The RE listing agent told me that the big landowner in the area (a logging company which periodically sold off clearcut former forest for development) was known to show up in the state capitol with hundreds of thousands in cash whenever he wanted favorable legislation passed to circumvent the "environmentally friendly" state's anti-development laws.

Also, I used to live in another state where the local board of supervisors pushed through one subdivision and other irresponsible development (the aquifer that supplied water to this desert area was being rapidly depleted) after another. The brother of one of the bos members was the largest commercial real estate developer in the area. Another bos member was the local roofer who put roofs on all of the new tract houses. Couldn't have been any dirtier but no one did anything.

My point is that the U.S. sure appears to be riddled with corruption at the local government levels that no one addresses and which means that local residents have almost zero power. These folks in the linked article have the right idea--I hope it works out for them.