How did we lose it?
How do we take it back?

Prior to April, 1913 the Republic "worked." It worked because the nation functioned, like it was supposed to, as a Republic and not a socialist democracy. It worked because, while a few handfuls of career politicians quietly filled their pockets with bribes from special interest groups that they called "political contributions"—most Congressmen and Senators were still basically honest, and ran for public office to give something back to their country.

No career politician—regardless of their political party affiliations—will remain honest to the tenets of the Constitution once they become institutionalized. Once elected officials believe they are above the laws they create, they become a danger to the people they have sworn an oath to protect and they need to be removed from office.

That's why the American people have tried so hard at State level (where the Constitution says the eligibility of candidates for federal office is determined) to implement term limits. As long as our elected officials feel they are obligated to their voter constituency, they will remain loyal to their oath of office. When their loyalty shifts to the special interest groups that fill their campaign coffers, they will have sold out to a new constituency that is counterpoised to the will of the voters who actually cast the ballots that elected them.

The special interest groups want a "global" America. The American people don't. The midterm elections will turn on the issue of illegal immigration and securing our national borders. How do I know this? Because the president's popularity rises and falls on that issue. Not on oil. Not on Iraq. And not former Congressman Mark Foley's propensity for young men. Illegal immigration and the theft of jobs in a shrinking job market. And, because of illegal immigration, the shrinking paychecks that are associated with too many available workers and not enough jobs. As a citizen taxpayer, this disturbs me. As a taxpaying businessman who wants to see this nation remain the strongest economic power in the world, I resent even more the political shell game on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation's capital.

The United States is a nation in crisis. This crisis is so severe it demands the full and immediate attention of the President and the Congress of the United States—today. But, Congress is too busy today. They are fighting to get reelected so they can give the voters two more years of empty, unkept promises. What we get instead is corruption. We get a Congressman with a freezer full of "cold cash," who was caught in a FBI sting—and was then shielded by the Democratic Party which should have demanded his resignation from Congress. We get the US Senate Minority leader who "earns" $1.1 million from selling land gained from a special interest group through political favors, that he then "sold" to his business partner in a community shell game to keep his name out of the public limelight as he used his high office to pressure a Las Vegas zoning board to rezone the land, thus enabling him to make an exorbitant profit.

Corruption and graft are the order of the day in politics. Its so prevalent that it no longer shocks us. And, as in the case of Louisiana 2nd District Democratic Congressman William J. Jefferson, he's still running for reelection—and, it appears, he will be reelected. What's wrong with us?

Have we have become so insensitized to special interest groups giving politicians envelopes of cash that we believe its okay? It's not okay. It's bribery. Politicians, who need that money to buy the media-bulldozers they need to overwhelm any challengers for their jobs, voted themselves a "graft pass" by making campaign contributions legal. Congressmen and Senators—on both sides of the aisle—amass war chests in the millions of dollars to guarantee their reelections. If the candidates did their job to the satisfaction of their voter constituents, they should not need millions of dollars to get reelected. Serving the public honestly and truthfully for two, four or six years should be enough to earn them another two, four or six years.

Federal law limits the amount of money individuals can legally give to a candidate for public office. What it must do is limit how much the candidate can spend—and ban special interest groups from spending any money whatsoever to influence the vote during an election year—with severe criminal penalties imposed on the heads of any advocacy group who violates the law since what these PAC groups are attempting to do is steal an election to assure that their political agenda will be implemented by the winners. That is, after all, why special interest groups contribute millions of dollars to candidates. Nobody contributes money because they are patriotic and believe in free elections. They are buying the influence of those they support.

If every candidate could spent, say, only $50,000.00 on his or her primary or general election campaigns (and any advertising by anyone on his or her behalf would count towards the total), then challengers would have a fair shot at knocking off any incumbent who fails to faithfully serve his or her true constituency—the voters. Can it be done? Yes. Not easily, but it can be done.

How did we lose control?

We lost control of the government during the era of the robber barons—between 1862 and the 1896—with the discovery of oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania on Aug. 28, 1859 and the Credit Mobilier of America scandal in 1872 over the building of the Union Pacific railroad when selling influence became a way of life in Washington and over half of Congress was taking bribes from powerful millionaires who wrote the laws they wanted and needed to build and safeguard their financial dynasties at the expense of the taxpayers.

The Credit-Mobilier Scandal was the biggest scandal to hit Washington based on the number of Congressmen and Senators who accepted bribes in the form of stock in the sham company. Congress gave Credit-Mobilier $100 million in startup funds and 20 million acres of right-of-way. Then Congress enacted legislation to allow the railroad to sell bonds equal to their debt. President Ulysses S. Grant's vice president, Schuyler Colfax, who was the Speaker of the House when the bribes were handed out, was forced to resign from office to avoid impeachment. So was Grant's Secretary of War, W.W. Belknap. At the same time, the robber barons: John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and bankers like Andrew Mellon were spreading their largess on Capitol Hill, bringing about the first of a long list of campaign contribution reform laws that, ostensibly, were designed to limit the practice when, in reality, the laws simply legalized political bribery by mandating a "contribution code of ethics" that supposed nobody wanted nothing for the millions of dollars passing from the hand of a lobbyist to the outstretched hand of the politician—or his tax exempt PAC group or trust. And of course, that nobody on Capitol Hill used their influence to enact legislation needed by the new "money" constituency who replaces the voter constituent as the entity that Congressman or Senator "works for" the day after each election.

We lost control of the US government the first time we learned that a politician accepted a bribe from a special interest group and we failed to impeach the politician, and then throw both of them in prison. Political contributions are bribes. Always. Nobody gives thousands, if not millions, of dollars to a political candidate without the expectation of something of more value in exchange for the money. The worst example occurred between 1907 and 1913 when the Money Mafia wrote the legislation that created the privately-owned Federal Reserve System on Dec. 23, 1913. They also instigated the illegal ratification of the 16th and 17th Amendments—which they needed to be certified as "ratified" when the Federal Reserve Act was debated on the floor of the US Senate in the spring of 1913 because as long as the States controlled the Senate, no central bank would ever be legislated into existence in the US Congress. When the States were removed from the equation of power, and the Republic died, the Money Mafia could buy the votes they needed to enact any legislation they needed to protect their empires. And, of course, because the American people were expected to repay the largess of our increasingly utopian government from their own pockets, a federal income tax was necessary—although it was prohibited by the Constitution. The 16th Amendment, which was flawlessly ratified by only six States, solved that problem. (Thirty-six States had to flawlessly ratify the income tax resolution for it to be construed as legally ratified.)

From the presidential election of 1912 in which JP Morgan and the Money Mafia financed every candidate to assure Woodrow Wilson's victory until Ronald Reagan won in 1980—nor since—not an ounce of truth has come out of the Oval Office. Each president has been nothing more than a marionette for the two factions of the Money Mafia—which is engaged in a tug of war over the strings of governance. Whichever money faction controls the White House manipulates agenda.

A few days ago—a day or so before he signed the Border Fence Act into law—President George W. Bush told the media that he did not view "immigration" as a major issue in this election cycle. However, his illegal alien amnesty bill is hopelessly stalled in Congress—and will never see the light of day in its present form. Why? Because even if the president doesn't think its an issue this time around, everyone running for office knows its vote killer for moderate or conservative office holder who votes for it.

Because Bush signed the fence legislation—and only because the American people believed their government was finally taking steps to protect their jobs—GOP candidates, who were trailing their Democratic opponents in scores of races across the country only days ago, have now pulled dead even—or ahead—of their opponents.

In all but three US Senate races, GOP incumbents who are up for reelection are safe. Lincoln Chafee [R-RI] will lose his seat. So will Mike DeWine [R-OH]. Rick Santorum [R-PA] has pulled close enough to mundane Democratic challenger Bob Casey [D-PA] to save his job, but the race still too close to call. In addition, about a half dozen institutionalized GOP congressmen who backed Bush's amnesty program will lose their jobs. The voters will fire them because they have been less than candid with their real constituents—the people who voted them into office. Unfortunately, for them, its too late for mea culpas. The American people have wised up that Congress does not work for the people who elect them, they are loyal only to those who fill their campaign coffers.

After Mexican president-elect Felipe Calderon denounced the border fence as "deplorable" and even though outgoing president Vicente Fox assured the Mexican media that the fence would never be built, the Mexican government still filed a complaint with the UN, charging the United States with racism for attempting to keep Mexican citizens out of the United States. Why? Because Fox—and by extension, Calderon—were assured by those who pull the strings of governance, that Mexican nationals would have access to the American job market even as the Money Mafia was transferring America's factories to Mexico and quietly transforming the three Americas into a hemispheric trade union to serve the new consumers of the 21st century at the expense of the United States.

How do we take our government back?

We lost control of our elected officials through apathy and greed. As long as there appeared to be something in it for us, or for our own personal political philosophy, we didn't really care what our Congressmen, Senators—and President—did, or what special interst group was buying their legislative vote.

Since Bill and Hillary Clinton sold out the American people in 1993 by signing NAFTA into law, and setting the foundation for the North American Union, America has awakened from its stupor and are wisely asking themselves: "How do we take our country back from the Money Mafia?"

As a nation, we have been subjected to a myriad of congressional and senatorial abuses of power, extreme lapses of ethics and malicious dishonesty, cloakroom intrigue, criminal coverups, and sexual misconduct that would land any of us in prison or, at the very least, end our careers in disgrace. Republicans—who are the more moral political animals—resign from office when their misdeeds surface. Democrats deny their guilt as they stonewall investigations into their ethical lapses. While conservative Americans vote their GOP transgressors out of office because integrity matters, Democrats vote their wrongdoers back into office because the far left socialist agenda is far more important to them than the questionable ethics of one person.

The American people need to realize this is their government. Collectively, we are the boss and the government is the servant. I know it doesn't appear to be the case based on how government has flipflopped their role in the eyes of the public. We have allowed the spin machines of the two major political parties to divide and conquer the electorate. With a people divided, the politicians rule. We need to take our government back. But, how do we do it?

Its actually easier than you think—and easier than the politicians who currently hold an upper hand on the electoral process think—we we, the people, act as a nation and not as a million fractionalized special interest voters groups. Our "advocacy" in the past has been to "vote for the other guy," or we "punish" our "party" by sitting out elections rather than forcing office holders to live up to their campaign pledges. Human nature being what it is—if they can—politicians will continue to vote themselves the right to accept K Street bribes camouflaged as campaign contributions. And, as long as we allow them to, they will also continue to enact what the liberal media—who never reads the laws that are promulgated—calls "campaign finance reform laws" that are actually designed to make it more difficult for political newcomers to run against the tenured incumbents, thus making it even more diffcult for the voters to get rid of them.

The best way to take government back is force your political party's elected officials to do what they promised when they campaigned for office, or face a recall. Most citizens don't realize they have that right. And, if that "right" isn't clearly defined by your State legislature, or has been muddied by the courts that suggest that the right of the people to recall an elected official, or to limit the number of terms he or she can serve interferes with the politicians right to seek office, the Constitution of the United States provides the States with the sole discretion to determine how and when members of Congress serve. First and foremost, they serve at the discretion of the voters.

We elect our Congressmen and Senators based on the promises they make when they are campaigning. If they break their campaign promises, they have broken their "contract" with the voters. The voters, constitutionally, have the right to terminate their agreement with that legislator rather than leave a person without ethics in an office they could not have won had they been honest with the voters

If your State does not have a clear and unambiguous recall law that allows the voters to fire deceptive legislators when their duplicity is exhumed from the dung heap of political rhetoric, you need to circulate a petition to create a statewide ballot initiative allowing the electorate to recall any federal congressman or senator who breaks his or her campaign promises. In fact, the voters should force their legislators to sign contracts with the voters affirming their positions on issues and agreeing to resign from office if they break their word. And, when challenged, if the politician does not step down, then steps should be taken immediately to remove and replace him. After all, they work for us. When you hire an employee who fails to do his job according to his or her job description, what do you do? You fire them. So? Fire them.

 

 

To: Bill Barnstead