If they are rarely showing up, then they are not shaping the debate or likely doing anything but voting, assuming they are not merely having minimal quorums and

If they are rarely showing up, then they are not shaping the debate or likely doing anything but voting, assuming they are not merely having minimal quorums and slacking on that as well; this inherently cedes all initiative and the public debate, and is a huge loss of power. Imagine a president who didn't bother to give speeches, travel, propose new legislation, or do much beyond veto occasional legislation. How much power would he have? Darn little. And they then lost most of that. > Can you explain why you think the quote about 432 landowners is a lie and what it's trying to trick people into thinking? It is a lie because it is implying that most or all of them are aristocrats and implying 'private individuals' is a synonym for them and trying to get the reader to not notice that technically 'individuals and corporations' != aristocrats and in fact many or most of them likely are not because of the massive decimation in aristocratic wealth, while not even trying to make the case for that; it is pure begging the question, it cannot add any evidence to the claim the aristocracy still controls as large a fraction of national wealth as it ever did (at best, you could reason backwards - 'assuming they are still wealthy, then a large fraction of those 432 must be aristocrats').