by Jim Marrs
FIRE CONGRESS
Our government, partially modeled after that of the Greeks, once flourished as a republican democracy. Yet, under recent authority, our government has devolved into a dichotomy of socialism and capitalism—melding public ownership and private ownership. Capitalism brings wealth to individuals who work hard while socialism brings wealth to those in control, who lie to get elected; for example, “No new taxes”—G.H.W. Bush, 1988; “Change you can believe in,” Obama, 2008. In virtually every case, capitalism yields more wealth for an individual than needed. To resolve the discrepancy between those who have too much and those who have nothing, the capitalists invented charity, a product of religious morality.
The globalists devalued individual charity decades ago by suppressing the free exercise of religion and by replacing private charity with government charity. Those who promised the most charity to the people got elected to public office. This leads to a nation where a majority of nonproducers are in charge of the producers. As a growing number of people realize that life is easier as a nonproducer, more and more people strive for jobs as nonproducers. In the end, there are fewer people left to produce. This is the ultimate failure of socialism, and appropriately accounts for the collapse of Soviet communism.
America’s elected Congress has allowed more and more nonproducers to live off the largesse of fewer and fewer producers. Today, adding government retirees, the disabled, Medicare, and Social Security to the welfare recipients, there are more Americans living off the government than paying into it.
Although no compassionate person is advocating cutting programs to those truly in need, the national budget must be trimmed and Congress appears unwilling or unable to do so.
In 2009 and 2010, a plan was offered to send an indelible message to Congress that the taxpayers want serious change—fire Congress. Many believe that such a plan may be the only way to effect real change in government. Several websites and organizations sprang up advocating voting out every incumbent in Congress. To borrow famous words, generally attributed to Mark Twain: “Politicians are like diapers; they need to be changed often and for the same reason.”
Anticipation for drastic change has been coming for decades. Wright Patman, who was chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency for more than sixteen years, predicted in 1941 that the public would demand a drastic change in Congress due to its monetary policies. Patman said, “I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money…. I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with the Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue.”
In early 2009, Rasmussen Reports, a firm that distributes public opinion polling information, reported that corporate CEOs were the least favorably regarded professionals among a list of professional groups that included bankers, lawyers, and small business owners. But in September, Congress took the honor of being the least favored. “Seventy-two percent (72%) view them unfavorably,” stated a Rasmussen news release. “There’s some intensity in that perception, too. Only four percent (4%) have a very favorable view of congressmen, while 37 percent view them very unfavorably. Even 56 percent of Democrats have an unfavorable view of Congress although their party controls both the House and the Senate. Of course, their opposition pales next to the 86 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of adults not affiliated with either party who have an unfavorable opinion of Congress. But then voters are evenly divided over whether a group of people randomly selected from the phone book would do a better job than the current Congress.”
As Obama’s promised “Change we can believe in” failed to materialize in 2009, a movement to throw out Congress began to gain strength. The website for an organization called Kick Them All Out reads, “Presidents have no Constitutional authority to do most of the things they claim they can do. They can only ask the Congress to do what they want. The Congress could have stopped everything that’s happening; the wars, the Wall Street takeover, the trillion-dollar defense budget they just passed. Our so-called representatives have sold us out so many times it makes my head spin and what do we all do? We not only let them keep their jobs, but you watch, they will most likely give themselves a raise, like they always do.
“The Congress critters work for us, not the central bankers and transnational corporations. What would you do if you owned a company and none of your employees listened to you, they lied to you, didn’t do the jobs you gave them to do, and in fact, were actually working for your competition and selling your company down the river as fast as they could? I don’t think you’d keep them on and give them a raise! Well, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing, only in this case, your company is our Federal Government, and your employees are the 435 members in the House of Representatives and the 100 members of the Senate, virtually all of them working for the transnational corporations (the competition) and they have already achieved a hostile takeover of our government on every level and are using the powers of our own government against us in order to take over our entire nation. What the heck happened to that thing called ‘the wisdom of the American people’? You don’t reward employees that betray you. YOU FIRE THEM [original emphasis]!”
The Kick Them All Out website offers free posters of the famous Uncle Sam painting by James Montgomery Flagg. But in this rendition, an artist has changed the slogan to read “I want you! To kick them all out! Do your patriotic duty and show Congress who the boss is!”
A similar group from Texas is calling to empty Congress of its incumbents. Formed by Houston native Tim Cox, the group is called GOOOH (Get Out of Our House) and, as of 2009, had two thousand members in Houston and a hundred thousand outside the city. According to one Houston TV station, ABC affiliate KTRK, the group might succeed in its goal as a poll conducted by the station showed 47 percent of respondents reported they were no longer aligned with a political party. Some observers feel this number may be reflected in other parts of the country and signifies a movement away from the two-party system.
WorldNetDaily.com, a conservative online website headquartered in Washington, D.C., offered its readers the opportunity to send actual “pink slips” to specific members of Congress, warning that “if they vote for more spending, socialized medicine, cap-and-trade legislation and a hate-crimes measure” they would not be reelected in 2010. World Net Daily claimed to have distributed as many as three million slips in a two-week period. “I believe this campaign, already tremendously successful beyond my wildest expectations, can have a real impact on politicians whose first priority is getting re-elected,” said WND’s editor and CEO Joseph Farah.
Slightly less radical groups are trying to shake up the status quo through legislation. The Fire Congress Meetup Groups effort looks for members to join “more than two hundred thousand Americans and impose ‘de facto’ term limits on all U.S. Congressmen and Senators, regardless of party affiliation or whatever they promise…. Kick them all out, so the new ones finally hear us,” stated the Fire Congress’s website. One Internet wag recommended, “Limit all U.S. politicians to two terms—One in office, one in prison.”
Term limits is another idea that has been brought up in the past as a means to curtail congressional power. Though credible legislators have made such proposals in the past, the very people affected by the change—the members of Congress—have always voted the bills down.
U.S. Term Limits (USTL), headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, claims to be the leader of what the organization’s creators describe as the largest grassroots movement in American history. According to the USTL website, the organization has placed term limits proposals into fifteen state legislatures. “[E]ight of the ten largest cities in America adopted term limits for their city councils and/or mayor, and 37 states place term limits on their constitutional officers,” state
d USTL literature. “American politicians, special interests and lobbyists continue to combat term limits, as they know term limits force out career politicians who are more concerned with their own gain than the interests of the American people…. Remember, every town councilman wants to be a congressman; every congressman wants to be a senator; and every senator wants to be president.”
At WeShouldFire Congress.com, the message is the same. “It’s time we send the message straight to Congress—do your job or you’re fired!” states literature on the website. This site raises money to place billboards across the nation urging voters to fire Congress.
All of these organizations and websites implore Americans to vote for America, not a political party. Though the imperatives from these organizations resonate with many voters, when election time rolls around, many voters will continue to vote for the same old faces and political parties.
The question naturally arises, why don’t more progressives and independents run for public office? It would seem as if the progressives or independents would receive votes from those dissatisfied with Congress.
Yet this does not occur because progressives and independents are tied down trying to survive in a society in which the love of money has superseded the love of their fellow human being. To be specific, to win public office in any large city or state, a candidate must have television and radio broadcast time. Purchasing this time is expensive and often media outlets want cash in advance for political ads. Additionally, there are the costs of producing a professional-looking and effective ad. This is an expense that goes far beyond hand-painted posters and yard signs. It can run into the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars.
If candidates still want to succeed, they must ally themselves with one of the two major political parties and look for corporate or political action committee (PAC) money. This need for a huge stockpile of cash prevents most honorable and honest people from competing in the political campaign process. Most candidates, especially at the local and state level, simply do not have the kind of money it takes to produce and air an influential advertisement.
George Green once raised campaign funds for Jimmy Carter and was asked to be Carter’s campaign finance chairman. “I remember being flown to Aspen in a private jet and then being asked to be the Democratic Finance Chairman for the Carter election,” Green said in a 2006 interview. “I remember then saying I was a Republican and then Paul Volcker [former chairman of the board of governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve System and North American chairman of the Trilateral Commission] leaned over and said, ‘That’s okay, kid. It doesn’t matter, we control them both.’”
Based on Green’s words as well as the evidence detailed earlier in this work, it should be clear now that the same secret society globalists control both the Democratic and Republican parties. This may be why people often call our members of Congress “the best representatives that money can buy.”
“The biggest problem in our government is corporate power, and with that, the huge amount of resources and political power taken by the military. Until we deal with those issues, we will go nowhere in this country on health care, the environment, social justice or anything else of importance,” said Harvey Wasserman, an author, a journalist, and an energy activist. “People should now understand that while it’s been monumentally important to finally have an African-American as president (a woman will come next), it’s now more important to have someone who is not a Republican or a Democrat, and who is committed to the welfare of the public rather than that of the corporations.”
One possible way to curtail the abuses on the election process would be to outlaw TV ads for prospective candidates, which would in many ways take money out of the equation. This would allow interested voters to learn about candidates through debates, newspaper articles, or printed flyers outlining candidate positions and policies. Political candidates would get radio and TV airtime through talk-show or journalistic interviews open to all candidates. Such interviews could open political debates to alternative ideas and less mudslinging.
Another good way of culling out greedy or financially sponsored politicians is to vote for the candidate with the least money. This person may not be any less susceptible to corruption, but it is a sure sign the individual has not sold out for campaign funds. As Bernard Baruch, the financier and political consultant to Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, once advised, “Vote for the man who promises least; he’ll be the least disappointing.”
Once the incumbent politicians have been turned out of office and a new crop arrives in Washington, the public must scrutinize their every move. The public must force them to consider term limits and to do away with their private retirement funds. Place Congress on Social Security and watch how fast it is cleaned up and well funded. Only when Congress members act suitably for the public should they be voted back into Congress.
This is not a revolutionary idea—it’s the way the system is supposed to work. Unfortunately, this system is predicated on the idea that there is an alert and educated electorate and that the voting mechanism is honest and fair.
POLL WATCHERS AND PAPER BALLOTS
ZOMBIES DON’T VOTE. ONLY about half of the eligible electorate cast ballots in recent presidential elections. In 2008, this dismal record was turned around when 62 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, the highest turnout since the 1960 campaign between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. Though this percentage looks impressive, one must consider the average voter turnout in comparable European nations: Italy, 93 percent; Germany, 81 percent; Spain, 77 percent; and the United Kingdom and Ireland, 75 percent.
The comedian W. C. Fields once said, “Hell, I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.” Nowadays, people still don’t vote for anyone—they simply pull the lever or touch the screen for their political party, holding little regard for the issues or the quality of their party’s candidate. This method of voting may be due to the fact that far too many voters feel that neither of the two candidates in an election stand for their ideals. Instead of voting for a person, many voters feel they must vote against the lesser of two evils, which still means they are voting for an evil. “Once you don’t vote your ideals…that has serious undermining effects. It erodes the moral basis of our democracy,” opined unsuccessful presidential candidate Ralph Nader.
Consider the presidential election of 2004. Voters had the option of the Republican candidate George W. Bush, the scion of a rich family and a member of the secret society Skull and Bones, or Bush’s cousin, Democratic candidate John Kerry, the scion of a rich family and a member of the secret society Skull and Bones. Most informed and thoughtful people did not consider this much of a choice.
What could be worse than having two bad presidential choices? Not even being able to choose between the two. President Franklin Roosevelt said, “Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves—and the only way they could do this is by not voting.” But then, Roosevelt had no way of knowing that voters could be disenfranchised by computers and voting machine fraud.
As Boris Bazhanov notes in Memoirs of Stalin’s Former Secretary, Joseph Stalin once proclaimed, “I consider it completely unimportant who…will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.”
Until very recently, votes were cast with paper ballots under the watch of poll watchers—someone appointed by a candidate, a political party, or supporters/opponents of a particular measure to observe the election procedures in a given precinct, watching for any voting irregularities. Watchers and voters may not converse within the polling place, nor are watchers permitted to interfere with the orderly conduct of the election or influence any voter.
Poll watchers have largely been outmoded by electronic voting machines, which are fundamentally just computers. The Help America Vote Act was signed into law by President Bush in 2002. It was intended to streamline and improve voting met
hods, such as eliminating the punch-card ballots that had caused so much trouble in the 2000 Florida election, setting standards for the training of poll workers and upgrading to electronic voting machines. But effecting these changes was left up to the individual states, which resulted in varying interpretations and effectiveness.
There has been a great deal of controversy over the use of electronic voting machines that display ballots and record and tabulate votes. Advocates of using machines claim such machines are fast, accurate, and easy to set up for disabled and non-English-speaking voters. Yet there are problems with the machines. Critics claim voting machines have many technical problems that could lead to inaccuracy and hacking. The touch-screen models are a special concern since some models do not provide a paper record of the votes, which might be necessary in the case of a manual recount.
Researcher Bev Harris, founder of the national nonpartisan, nonprofit elections watchdog group Black Box Voting Inc., wrote, “Our voting system, which is part of the public commons, has recently been privatized. When this happened, the counting of the votes, which must be a public process, subjected to the scrutiny of many eyes of plain old citizens, became a secret.”
In 2003, Bev Harris obtained internal memos from Diebold, which used to be one of the major manufacturers of electronic voting systems. Some of the internal memos documented that uncertified software was being used in its voting machines and that Diebold programmers intentionally bypassed the certification system. She posted the memos on the Internet. Though Diebold claimed Harris’s action constituted copyright infringement, a California U.S. district judge forced Diebold to relent in October 2004, when the judge ruled that Diebold had abused its copyright privileges while trying to suppress the embarrassing memos.