Fed up with the bully pulpit and the Elites

Just who are the 'Elites' in America?

Mostly they self-identify into a few broad classes: Political, Media, Business and Military.

They are the self-important 'know-it-alls' who are willing to sacrifice liberty, freedom and the Nation to their beliefs that they are the best ones suited to run the world. They are the wannabe ruling class who are always ready to tell you what is good for you, and then use the power they have at hand to try and force that to come to pass. You see they 'know' things and are way smarter and more powerful than you, and they... they 'know' what you want... if you would just let them give it to you.

Take Yuval Levin's link to ABC News and a video clip of Sen. Obama at a Planned Parenthood meeting answering a question on sexual education for children. I'll point out what struck Yuval at The Corner at NRO, and it is extremely telling about Sen. Obama in that portion of the video at about the 3:10 mark:

The one thing that I want to insist on is that, as I travel around the country, the American people are a decent people. Now they get confused sometimes. You know, they listen to the wrong talk radio shows or watch the wrong TV networks, um, but they’re, they’re basically decent, they’re basically sound.

- Sen. Barack Obama, 18 JUL 2007

What that leaves out are the appreciative audience twitters and scattered laughs after 'they get confused sometimes' and 'listen to the wrong talk radio shows'. The audience likes those remarks and do believe that *you* are confused and that *you* listen to the wrong talk radio programs. Way to be for the 'little guy'... the 'they' out there, Sen. Obama, that you talk about as if it is a microbial colony that you are not apart of. Come on in and join the gene pool, Senator. That passage is *not* something that demonstrates that he wants to reach out to the American people, and, just before that, he tells you how he sees the President's role in this just before that excerpt:

You know I... eh...eh... the longer I'm in this race for the Presidency, the more I realize that so much of leadership is about using the bully pulpit to frame the issues in a way that allows us to draw on the best impulses of the American people.

Now C-Span has the dating of that term back to President Theodore Roosevelt and he had a slightly different outlook on the American people than Sen. Obama has, to say the least. On 20 MAR 1912 he gave an address at Carnegie Hall on "The Right of the People to Rule", and it was captured by Thomas Edison and is provided as audio at Project Gutenberg, and I will use the transcribed text at the T.R. site, with the opening paragraph as follows:

THE great fundamental issue now before the Republican party and before our people can be stated briefly. It is, Are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves? I believe they are. My opponents do not. I believe in the right of the people to rule. I believe the majority of the plain people of the United States will, day in and day out, make fewer mistakes in governing themselves than any smaller class or body of men, no matter what their training, will make in trying to govern them. I believe, again, that the American people are, as a whole, capable of self-control and of learning by their mistakes. Our opponents pay lip-loyalty to this doctrine; but they show their real beliefs by the way in which they champion every device to make the nominal rule of the people a sham. I have scant patience with this talk of the tyranny of the majority. Wherever there is tyranny of the majority, I shall protest against it with all my heart and soul. But we are today suffering from the tyranny of minorities. It is a small minority that is grabbing our coal-deposits, our water-powers, and our harbor fronts. A small minority is battening on the sale of adulterated foods and drugs. It is a small minority that lies behind monopolies and trusts. It is a small minority that stands behind the present law of master and servant, the sweat-shops, and the whole calendar of social and industrial injustice. It is a small minority that is to-day using our convention system to defeat the will of a majority of the people in the choice of delegates to the Chicago Convention.

Yes, a minority that cannot get the most votes, games the system and then pays lip service to ideals of liberty and freedom and then go on to say how wrong-headed the American people can be. President Theodore Roosevelt did come from an Elite family, Elite upbringing and had an Elite stature. While going on safari may be considered an idle of the rich, he also went hunting through various parts of the US from desert sands to the rugged northwest to his trips in the Adirondacks near old familial haunts. He had the money to indulge himself, but that did not stop him from forming up the Rough Riders or becoming the Mayor of NYC to confront the Democratic political machine there. He did not want to be Vice President, but accepted it as a service to the American people. Of course, when in office he took a view that would offend many 'strict construction' views of the Constitution held today, and the attitude of the idea of States rights being a 'fetish' is on that would also be abhorrent to more than a few today... even with the federal government slowly marginalizing and removing duties from the States and the people contrary to Amendment IX and X. Those views he goes over in Chapter X of his autobiography, thus making President Theodore Roosevelt a man who would come to trust the power of the people to rule, only once he was out of office.

Having expanded that power base of the Executive branch, taking a 'if the Constitution doesn't prohibit it, I can do it' attitude contrary to the Constitutional proscriptions in Amendments IX and X, and then citing the problems that those wishing to restrict liberty and freedom will cause when THEY get a hold of that self-same power makes the warning all the more clear: he thought he could be trusted with this power in the office, and forgot that the office holds the power, not the individual temporarily occupying it. The 'bully puplpit' or wonderful speaking platform taken as an advocate for something, then morphs from explaining a President's position to one of telling the American people why they should support this or that legislation. Instead of explaining policy and implementing it within the bounds of the office we get Presidents pushing to change the political landscape to suit their whims. That is a change from the 'stewardship' approach of T. Roosevelt: no longer is the President just maintaining things, the President becomes an advocate of change and wishing to change or alter what should remain in stewardship to be passed on as little changed as possible.

That is Elitist.

President Theodore Roosevelt only learned the wisdom of the founders *after* he left office, not while he was in it. And the moment a candidate who would attack *him* shows up and seeks to utilize the power of the Presidency in ways that *he* doesn't like, does Theodore Roosevelt begin to need to announce the supremacy of the American people in the process of government. Apparently there is 'advocacy' that is 'good' in the mind of one man that may not like when 'advocacy' he considers 'bad' to use the same tools he created to work its ends. Of course he was also seeking office to make sure that his 'good' advocacy would win... and try to marginalize that 'bad' sort.... just like Sen. Obama wants to help those 'confused' American people.

The political Elites are the easiest to pick up: they so continually announce their Elite status that it is hard to miss. Do I have problems with Sen. Obama's opponent, Sen. McCain? You betchya! One of my earliest posts looked at the things that really points to Sen. McCain being at the bottom of his hole and not learning to stop digging. Took me a scant few minutes to put down the things I detested about his positions, his past political works and his Elitism. His anti-pork views? Say, when he was heading up the Armed Services Committee to draft expenditures, why didn't he do much to stop the porking up of those bills? That stuff got worse through the 1990's and then so bad that it would be a problem in the billions of dollars by 2004. The logistics and war reserves necessary for modern operations were inadequate when we needed to operate in Afghanistan and Iraq, and those problems date back over a full decade.

Pork in the budget is not *just* the granting of political favors and cronyism with the public's funds, although that is horrific enough to want it ended. No, all that pork requires programmatic oversight which is NOT added into such appropriations. So agencies not only have to care for their own projects, but then have to stretch their staff (legal, admin, financial, contract) thinner to cover for the pork. That means that the necessary jobs don't get proper oversight. That can run as much as 10% to 15% of the appropriation in necessary agency logistic support to ensure the funds are appropriately spent and accounted for. And that money comes from normal operations to meet the actual duties of the agency.

To be 'anti-pork' means far, far more than not asking for earmarks: it requires the recognition of the bad public policy they are and the threat to the public good by inadequate oversight that those funds cause.

The 'Maverick' stance is to take the 'I didn't ask for any' position, while not doing a damned thing to end the practice, so that you can still use those items being added in by others to grant political favors. Needless to say, I have problems with that. Sen. Obama is on the high pork fat diet and now points to the infrequent twinkies as his commitment against pork... that is after having the whole hog on the Luau. So your choice is: a man who wants to grant political favors by asking for them or one who wishes to grant them by denying a few.

Now I've gone over the larger theme of the status of Elites before, hitting the military Elites or pundits, before. Mostly that is from the outside, although of late there are a number of high ranking personnel who found themselves without backing for their jobs who left the Pentagon to complain about what they saw as wrong-headed policy. Mind you, many of these people left because their way of fighting war from the 1980's and 1990's couldn't address the needs of 2001 onwards. That internal political fight for this or that weapons system then moved from the Rings of the Pentagon to national television, with those who recently left being critics of policy. Because their pet projects went away. And if you look at their last active service deployments in the field, in combat, you begin to understand why they found themselves out of place: they were out of place. Of course a man like Gen. Wesley Clark was already out of place when he was in the field and deployed, and I'll take this from my previous article:

First up is this lovely little item from The Quarterly Journal, No. 1 March 2003 (p.103):

At this point, it is easy to foresee that casualty aversion is not only a governmental problem. Hence, as Weinberger states, fighting in the current context will require a high level of public support. This assumption, largely driven by the U.S. experience in the Vietnam War, directly involves the public as a major actor in this debate. Charles Reiss, in February 2001, related elements of the Future Strategic Context for Defence to this: "The armed forces, both in peacetime and on operations, will come under greater public and pressure group scrutiny." Through this type of attitude, governments seem to project casualty phobia onto the public, and treat it as if it is a weakness in the nation to be fought. The media are the other foci of attention for these concerns in governments. Reiss mentions "the pressure from public opinion and the media for minimum casualties" This is perfectly illustrated by the declaration of U.S. General Wesley Clark after the Kosovo campaign: "When you start to lose these expensive machines (aircraft), the countdown starts against you. The headlines begin to shout, `NATO loses a second aircraft,' and the people ask, `How long can this go on?' Therefore, although governments recognize casualty aversion, they tend to attribute the pressure behind the phenomenon to the media and the public.

Yes, governments and the media project a lack of will to fight on the public... not the other way around. Fun, isn't that? Say how do you like being told by the government and media what is or is not your will to fight? Remember that there are those that want 'zero casualty warfare' in which flowers are strewn instead of bullets, and everyone sits in the campfire and sings together... while someone else sneaks up and slits your throat, I guess. I never could fathom that. But at least they are HONEST in the fact that they are pacifists and that 'no war is just'... or at least semi-honest, since they want all those 'black, brown and other people of color' to be freed, but then complain when that freedom must be paid for. They probably thought the best way to disarm someone out to kill you is to sit down at a conference table with coffee and donuts and figure out exactly when and how harshly you will be killed.

The need for the MSM to fill air time drives news, that news acquisition cycle then presses public servants who are trying to supply information to the people to ask for those things the MSM is interested in and that gets supplied and hyped. Anything else that tries to be supplied gets filtered out: the MSM acts as 'gatekeeper' telling you what it wants you to know... and then asks pundits to pontificate on those things it wants you to know. And the rest of the information? Kept behind the gate, so that the public has to work to find out what our public servants are trying to tell us about. And when those exact, same servants actually can get a word out that discredits the MSM message?

Why that is 'showing political bias'!

And the 'gatekeeping' that advocates a position isn't?

Gen. Wesley Clark would have something far worse on his hands, however, as after having a 'death free' mission, and again I will excerpt and cut off a transition to the conclusion on the military/government/public interface:

Now, since the good General Wesley Clark was involved, lets take a bit of a look at some further things from that same study (pp.105-106):

At first, the public seems to be the favorite source to which to attribute casualty aversion. Nevertheless, this is an assumption that is too easy to make. For example, several studies exist stating that the public is not casualty averse at all. In The Myth of the Reactive Public, Kull and Ramsay conduct an in-depth analysis of surveys done during recent conflicts. The results of this study are simple: the public is much more robust regarding casualties than initially expected. In particular, they reach this conclusion for the Gulf War, the crisis in Mogadishu, and the attack against the U.S. Marines barracks in Lebanon in 1986. After the images of the incident in Somalia were seen, the public wanted more U.S. involvement and retaliation. Likewise, U.S. public support reached its peak when severe losses occurred in the Gulf War and in the days following the terrorist attack in Lebanon. Dealing with the Vietnam War, Jeffrey Record comes to this surprising conclusion: “In retrospect, it is amazing that public support remained as strong as long as it did, given the war's geographic remoteness and the predominantly abstract quality of declared U.S. war aims." Initially, the polls were clear: the public did not respond by demanding an immediate withdrawal. Furthermore, they describe the misperceptions of the public with regard to the number of casualties. Their starting point for this study was a PIPAsurvey in 1999, where American people estimated that 172 U.S. soldiers died in Bosnia, whereas the U.S. actually had no casualties. This survey envisaged different scenarios of degradation. Each time, the public responded with a large majority demonstrating a will to reinforce or to retaliate. A similar survey by PIPA, in 1999, leads to the same conclusions.

Ah, the American people not only think that freedom can be bought with casualties but EXPECT IT! Even when there are ZERO actual casualties, the common folk of the US think that we have paid a price for freedom in blood. And do note that the incidents in Somalia and Bosnia and Kosovo are AFTER the end of the Cold War. Fascinating stuff, isn't it?

All that hard work to cater to the MSM and its voracious news appetite for death during conflict, to stage a campaign that saw zero US deaths and the reward is: the public thinks people died, anyway. The public EXPECTS that actual military conflict will have a casualty toll on it and only the most far Left of individuals believe otherwise... right up to the point they want 'humanitarian missions' to do one thing or another. Deaths in the National interest are to be avoided, yes, but that civil sword cannot remain unbloodied to that end... which is why the far Left is so ready to expend lives in things not to the National interest, because that furthers their anti-Nationalist ends. Incidents like Blackhawk Down in Mogadishu, or the Marine deployment in Lebanon show that when the Nation expends lives in places of questionable National interest, the Nation comes to take a dim view of them. That is because the Presidents involved did not believe in their commitment and to assuage their 'good faith' they expended lives to no good end and diminished the public's respect for them and the armed forces, while emboldening our adversaries. If either of those Presidents had committed to going after those involved, Hezbollah in Lebanon or al Qaeda with warlord support in Somalia, then we would not BE in Iraq or Afghanistan. And Hezbollah would be a footnote of a nasty group that got hunted down until they fled to Syria crying about 'being oppressed' by the US, which would be a lovely Leftist talking point, like what is happening to FARC these days.

This problem with 'peacekeeping' is glossed over by the military pundits and the MSM, both in the Elite structure pushing a worldview where these things are supposed to 'help', while actually rewarding those who caused the problems in the first place. And yet we hear a drone of 'peacekeeping missions' and 'humanitarian missions' and rarely, if ever, the cost in lives of those missions that would require the full commitment of not only the President and Congress, but the American people, as well. And that 'bully pulpit'? Worked great in Yugoslavia for President Reagan, no? So wonderful for President Clinton in the Balkans that those hard problems that have been there for centuries have been fully resolved, right? How about President Bush (41) and that grand coalition with National backing against Iraq, that solved everything by 1992, right? And, say, since nearly every President since Woodrow Wilson has been dabbling in Haiti, just how close is that poor Nation to having things worked out there? That 'bully pulpit' has been so often deployed it is on castors and sits in the wings to be wheeled out every few years...

What comes with the pulpit, however, is the vision of a Priest, most often celibate, talking about the evils of fornication and how you really shouldn't be doing it, except to provide children which is your duty. It is all 'fire and brimstone' the first time through, but by the tenth time it is a polite yawn and check your watch and just what is on for dinner tonight? That 'bully pulpit' has the same problem: it is effective when utilized rarely. But it has seen so many sermons on the same subject that, really, we pay more attention to commercials on the need to floss daily than we do to Presidents on just *why* this or that program or project is vital to the Nation, and you'll get higher taxes to get it, too. The commercials, at least, are short and often pithy, when we don't hit the 'mute' button for them. Sort of like you do with Sen. McCain preaching about the low pork diet, and then making sure the bacon is properly distributed at the pot luck dinner after the anti-pork sermon.

'Fireside chats' with the American people were all well and good from FDR, but he had the novelty of the technology to play upon and showing that he was 'modern' by using that means to effectively communicate. Sen. Obama by hosting a number of anti-American, bigoted blogs loses his ability to show that he understands the medium and that by opening the floodgates you can expect the raw sewage to come out with the rainwater. And if he can't learn to Google 'McCain AND disabilities', then just what the hell is so hip and modern about the guy? Not that the MSM won't eat up that drivel. Sen. Obama is no modern day FDR, nor is Sen. McCain a latter day TR: neither are willing to address the extreme problem of an activist Presidency that the American people don't want.

Gov. Palin does address that, to a degree, but she is on the VP side of things. So, unless she has a stout cluebat to batter Sen. McCain about the head and shoulders with, you can expect him to do asinine things to give up his 'principled positions' to get 'bipartisan support' in which he gives up 90% of his loaf to get 90% of their loaf, which then becomes law. See, he stood for 10% of something he believed in! So 'maverick'.

While politics isn't the cure to many things, it can be the cause of them. Take the latest 'sub prime crisis' du jour of the crisis brigade. Dean Barnett does a lovely job rounding up the mess at The Weekly Standard, and we get to see the heady mix of irrational regulators pushing asinine policy leading to bad loans to NINJAs. That is a term that does not refer to black-clad martial artists stealthily killing those that oppose them... we should be so lucky! No this refers to the class of people who were getting sub-prime loans at the urging of politicians being paid money from the political arms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It is a wonderful term! Here are the NINJA loan seekers:

No Income, No Job or Assets

That was the 'new class' of potential homeowners who would benefit by easy money policy backing insane lending practices pushed by wealthy political machines by both Fannie and Freddie which are backed by Federal funds and get political appointees who have no other qualification than a President likes them. Gotta love that oversight, no? While Sen. Obama has been a beneficiary of the political largesse of Fannie and Freddie, being #2 on the recipient parade for them after Sen. Chris Dodd, who was sitting in the Senate when these awful rules were drafted to allow for Presidents to put plum jobs in those institutions to political cronies? And not complain about it, save in the Pork upon the Pulpit way? It is a part of the 'broken culture of Washington' and who hasn't done a damned thing to fix it? If you said Sen. McCain, then grab some bacon!

Now to forestall those that support Sen. McCain, may I point out that even he DID oppose that sort of thing and brought forth a bill or two on Fannie and Freddie, and that he has been ineffective in actually doing anything about it? That 'bipartisanship' is just how often Sen. McCain can compromise principles of his party and that of conservatives just so that *he* can say that he did that. That is not 'effective bipartisanship', but it is a huge problem in showing that his wanting to 'compromise' doesn't equate to actual and effective legislation or addressing the 'Washington culture'. Just like pork.

Whatever Sen. McCain's fixed principles are... yeah, he has written a lot about his background and experiences, but just what is it that he is following is anyone's guess. It isn't classical liberalism of the freedom and liberty for the individual sort. He answered that question years ago with McCain-Feingold. And McCain-Lieberman.

He isn't about economic conservatism, that would put forth that regulation stifles competition and ingenuity and makes it harder for small businesses to unseat large ones to create creative turmoil amongst companies. Sen. McCain loves regulation and talking about the crooked people on Wall Street so much that he has forgotten that the average American now has investments in stock and bond vehicles that were previously not open to the common man by the actions of a very few people leading a few companies to do that over three decades ago. Regulating Wall Street is telling you what you can do with your money within the limits set by the federal government. And its role from the Constitution in that area is...?

Really, when the US deregulated the telephone market prices plummeted, services increased and a plethora of new companies emerged. When the US deregulated the airline industry you got start-ups like SouthWest who could actually try new business models. And the cost of air travel dropped like a rock. And if you want to complain about Freddie, Fannie and AIG, then look to the self-same Congresscritters that have been courting lobbyists and taking cash to change the way loans are made. Hey, how about some regulations for Congress? Those members sure as hell ACT like they are a big business these days.

Sen. McCain brought the military conservatives over to him with his attitudes on Iraq and they have forgotten his votes in the 1990's to support military cuts, which harmed logistics and end-strength to the point of two US Army Divisions going to their lowest readiness levels since Vietnam in 1999. That same Senator then turns around and asks why we don't have more people in the Armed Forces in 2003? But so many just want to 'forgive' him or say that those things are 'unfair' because Sen. McCain has no crystal ball. Which is why you keep a robust military around: you don't know what the hell the future is going to bring and it costs far less to need it and have it than to need it and NOT have it.

So when someone figures out the guidebook that Sen. McCain is reading from, let me know. Remember, Teddy Roosevelt had a number of misgivings about the use and application of Presidential power when he was out of office. He did, indeed, go after Wall Street - monopolies and oligarchies. That is a good thing as it shook up the market and stopped it from having unassailable areas by start-ups. Too much regulation puts those fortifications back in place. Just look at how Big Media have lobbied Congress to make the copyright into near perpetuity via legislation enacted into law. Good job, that, stifling the content of creativity to the common man. And protecting Mickey Mouse and giving the Disney Company the right to erect barriers to creative entry into the marketplace.

My problems with Sen. Obama are fundamental - he takes money from crooks, associates with domestic terrorists and racists, and then bottles that in shiny, new authoritarian bottles of 'home and change'.

Got it?

Sen. McCain complains about the past vintages, but is more than willing to sign on to letting those be poured into the mouth of the body politic because he abstains, donchayknow? And when he wholeheartedly signs up to quota systems and supporting things like the Legal Services Corp. to expend public funds to bring suits against the government on behalf of Leftist interests? Or to stop low power FM broadcasting for local communities that get no service from those bands locally? Or to try to make free political opinion something that should be controlled by the FEC? Or the 'gunshow loophole' to keep track of who goes to gunshows? Or that the federal government has an interest in local cable right-of-ways doled out by local governments? Illegal alien amnesty? Why don't we just help those nice folks from MS-13 become all nice and legal with a sham 3-day 'processing period' for mountains of paperwork. They are 'all God's children' after all....

That is Sen. McCain's version of 'federalism', don't mind that it doesn't look like any form of 'federalism' under any definition of the term.

Sen. McCain loves to complain NOW about things he has been a part of for more than 20 years.

I have a problem with that.

What really gets me is the 13 month (or whatever the attention-deficit disorder length is for conservatives) or so cycle that conservatives have with Sen. McCain. He will join with the opposition, stab you in the back until we get the pitiful 'Et, tu, Brute?'

Then he will strut around, make merry for a few months, condescend to help you out, lift you up... and then join in a new backstabbing complete with 'Et, tu, Brute?' on the part of conservatives.

That has been going on since his first votes not to sustain President Reagan's vetoes on a number of bills. By the third time around it was pathetic. And now the co-dependency cycle works itself around, he puts Gov. Palin on the top spot and... well... I can feel it coming. Will it be immigration? Taxes? Backing out on his pro-drilling conversion and joing the Gang in the Senate? And he will do that just in time for the Feiler Faster Thesis to be in gear for Sen. Obama who will be on his upswing from the dregs and start to overhaul Sen. McCain who will be doing his strutting thing and trying to reach out, again, because, you know, 'he is the best we can do'.

If I don't vote Cthulhu it is because I will do something truly Evil.

I will write in Gov. Sarah Palin for President.

Because SHE is the best being offered this go-around, even where I disagree with her, and depending on the rules for the counting of these things in the States, that just *might* start to change the vote count for the Elector sent to the Electoral College. All it takes is a few of those and the actual election, in the EC. And then we will see *just* how dirty the 'maverick' will fight... to keep his VP out of the top spot.

Yeah, I'm willing to do that.

The hell of it is, that doesn't show up until the votes are counted.

And like President John Quincy Adams said, I will know that I voted for the RIGHT PERSON and to hell with the rest of those wanting me to be 'partisan', I will sleep well at night knowing I voted for the right person even if she LOSES. It is what my country asks of me.

Truly, only Cthulhu could inspire such Evil so that even if It loses, It wins.

Sounds like fun! Plus it is the right thing for me to do and uphold my end of the Constitutional bargain. Who would have thought that something pointed to by so many as a great good, could actually end up being an evil process? Oh, they are the 'partisans'... but then so am I. For my Nation.

Because I have had it with the tyranny of the Elitist minorities and the Big Business that is Congress.

And I distrust anyone with a Sen. or Rep. in front of their names save for a very, very, very few. You want the source of the problems in lending and Wall Street now showing up? Look for the Sen. or Rep. label and you will have hit the rotten fish in the rotting barrel. Remember that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, Pol Pot, and the rest of that crew had lovely controlled and regulated economies. And that those Western Nations getting over regulated, France, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, et. al. all have declining populations, are importing north african and middle eastern islamic populations, face a dwindling work force and all have extremely well regulated economies. Where else can you get the doctors to all walk out for a month of paid vacation and let people die in the hospitals but in a well regulated economy?

I want the power basis of the US to shift to a more representative one and BREAK the power of Congress to act as a Big Business. You want to get rid of the bad fish? Get a bigger barrel and add in a lot of small predators. Soon it will be *all* small predators beholden to YOU. I support the 1:30,000 maximum House under the Constitution, as the best answer for corrupt democracy is lots more democracy and let the rotting extremities of government get chewed away by it. I can't get to there from here through Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain. But Gov. Palin just might understand that concept. She sure as hell has a better chance than anyone else in the race, that is for sure.

Let us join together to dilute the power of the Elites in our government.

You can't get that through reform.

You can get it through vital and diverse democracy.

Just like the founders wanted.

I like that vision of America, where our Congresscritters are beholden to the 30,000 adults in their district.

And more people will realize the power of their vote is not diluted and become deluded with the system, as is happening now with our Fascist and Communist trends towards regulation and diminution of liberty and freedom.

I want my fellow citizens to control this Nation for good or ill, and to take power from these Elites and their huge money supplies and face them with the inordinate task of having to try and bribe a good portion of 10,000 Members of the House. They couldn't hide that. And certainly not from local voters where each and every single vote counts.

You know, local democracy?

That is what the 'reformers' are against.

Accountability for everyone, save them.

And lets put the 'bully pulpit' in the storage attic for a few decades... and find some people who can govern, not rule the Nation.