by John Young
http://www.wvwnews.net/downloads/audio/john_young/jy20070721.mp3
Welcome to Western Voices, I’m John Young of European Americans United. Over the past few weeks, the American people have been locked in a pitched battle against special interests to preserve their nation. A piece of proposed Senate legislation that the President refused to call by its true name of amnesty promised to instantaneously grant legal status to tens of millions of illegal aliens in our borders. Such legislation is insane on its face, and absolutely http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=825 in its intent.
These past weeks, European Americans spoke with a united voice, and the bill lost a crucial vote. Congratulations are definitely in order! Nevertheless, fully thirty-five of our 100 Senators voted for this legislation, and that is after senators received literally hundreds of thousands of faxes, emails, phone calls and letters from angry constituents. So these thirty-five Senators are hardcore supporters of a genocidal plan to replace European Americans in their own country. And without our united voice, the legislation would have sailed through without a hitch. I am not going to get into the details of the immigration debate per-se in the program today. Instead, I am using it as an illustration to prove a much larger point: too many of our elected officials owe their loyalty to something other than the people who elected them.I’m not going to be Pollyannaish about this. As a whole, politicians even in the best of times are not a particularly wholesome lot. Even if I could wave a magic wand and pass all the laws I wanted to correct the deficiencies of the status quo, politicians would still require short leashes and careful scrutiny. Political life, as a whole, has certain qualities that by default will disproportionately attract the sorts of people who are most easily corrupted. This is one of the largest weaknesses of a representative democracy, and it requires that the people exercise vigilance to keep it in check.
Of course, “We the People” have not been vigilant for the past hundred years or so, at least. In a recent program, I described how our http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=786 has been used to keep our nation and our people in a state of continuous debt. That travesty was foisted on our people back before most of our grandparents were born, and in spite of its universally evil effects and even esteemed legislators calling our attention to it, we have allowed it to persist. This is not a surprise. Our founding fathers were keen observers of human nature, and Thomas Jefferson described the average person’s tolerance for evil in the Declaration of Independence thusly: “… all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
Over the past hundred years the evils we have suffered are beyond counting. Not only have we been saddled with fiat currency coupled with Ponzi-scheme social welfare programs and deficit spending that is ultimately guaranteed in and of itself to reduce our reproduction below replacement levels as it has in Europe, but we have been hit with immigration programs specifically intended to hasten our demise as a people.
ALL of our Constitutional rights, given to us by our Creator, however we conceive of that entity, are now subject to so many conditions and exceptions that they are hardly recognizable. Who, having read the First Amendment, could imagine a world in which churches are restricted from the world of politics in order to remain tax exempt? But that’s the way it is. Who, having read the First Amendment, could imagine a world in which it is a crime for me, as an individual, to run an ad in a paper criticizing a politician’s voting record? But that’s the way it is. Who, reading the Second Amendment, could imagine a world in which many arms suitable for self-defense are outright prohibited and the exercise of the right to actually bear arms is restricted by thousands of laws and conditions? But that’s the way it is. Who, having read the Fourth Amendment, could imagine the massive electronic surveillance and identification infrastructure now existing in this country under CALEA and similar laws?
Like I said, the infringements are innumerable. But what they all have in common is that they stem from politicians who owe their allegiance and ability to get elected to some entity other than US. There are three axes to this problem. The first is that our population is such that it is difficult to meet a candidate first hand and actually talk with him or her. This leads to politicians ultimately becoming a group of people separate from us, that in many cases even lives under a different set of laws and privileges than we do. Many of them live in well-guarded compounds and are escorted by heavily armed and armored body guards, and most of them are millionaires who don’t even shop for their own groceries. They typically leave office much wealthier than when they started, collecting millions of dollars in annual salary from lobbying firms. Thus, more often than not, our political class is completely out of touch with the people they are supposed to represent.
The second axis to the problem stems from the first. Because our
politicians represent so many people that they cannot really know (or be known by), they have to become known to us through media, both in the form of media reporting and advertising of various sorts. This presents two problems. The first is that large media in this country –- every major network, every cable or satellite television channel, every newspaper of any size, textbook companies and the whole nine yards — are owned by just a handful of companies. On top of this, this major media establishment is so detached from reality that it often isn’t even aware of its own biases(1). Our media is ultra-leftwing, with only 7% of reporters in the news business self-identifying as conservative(2). This sort of bias makes it extremely difficult for politicians to have favorable media coverage if they fail to toe the line set by media moguls like Mel Karmazon, Sumner Redstone, Norman Pearlstine and Harvey Weinstein. This means that the only way a politician can get a message to us without having to be filtered through a narrowly self-interested media is to pay for advertising of various sorts.
This leads to the third axis of the problem where our representatives don’t represent us: advertising isn’t cheap, so money has become the mother’s milk of politics. The infrastructure required in order to bring oneself favorably to the public eye on the scale of our elections is nothing short of massive. In some states, a run for the Senate requires reaching millions and millions of people. A run for the House of Representatives requires reaching about 700,000 people.
A recent Senate race between Harold Ford, Jr. and Bob Corker in Tennessee cost an astonishing $18 per vote, or an aggregate of $33 million. And that’s Tennessee. Imagine what similar races would cost in California or New York. Spending for the 2004 election cycle, not counting primaries, topped $4 BILLION dollars. This money goes to pay image consultants. (Like feminist Naomi Wolf trying to reform Al Gore into an “Alpha Male.”) It goes for public relations firms. It pays for advertising experts. It pays for focus groups, polls, local and regional offices and all kinds of stuff. Political infrastructure is much more massive than commercial infrastructure since unlike a brand like Coke or Pepsi that can persist for decades, an election cycle requires a candidate to win over half of the voters within one or two years, and often much less. So elections see a gargantuan amount of money spent in a very short period of time. Thus, politicians hunger for money. Dangle a big check and they salivate like Pavlov’s dog at the ringing of a bell. They can’t help themselves.
Thus we have politicians who are enslaved by two things: the dominant media and money. Favorable media coverage at no cost to the politician is very worthwhile from a campaign perspective. So it is no surprise that many politicians take their orders from the great masters of the lie and don their fascistic ideological straightjackets. And money, at least within certain parameters, allows politicians to go straight into your mailbox, telephone, television and even have supporters knock on your door. Of course, we all know the Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. Thus the politician’s acceptance of money from a donor limits the range of views he will advertise to fall within the guidelines imposed by his donors.
You might think that the donor’s list for political campaigns would be dominated by individual citizens in a representative democracy. But you’d be wrong. As one example, in the 2006 election cycle, waiters and waitresses contributed a total of $900 to campaigns nationwide while the restaurant industry as a whole contributed $7 million during the same election. Who do you think got the Senator’s ear: the waitress, or the restaurant industry? My point is that, unless you are quite wealthy, the only way an elected legislator will hear your voice is if you exercise it in concert with enough likeminded folks that the legislator fears being unelected in spite of his best campaign efforts. Sometimes even that isn’t enough to scare a politician, though. You see, in a quid-pro-quo for favorable treatment in legislation, many industry groups, lobbying firms and special interests reward their pet politicians with lifetime multi-million-dollar deals after they get unelected.
For example, Chris John, who was a Democratic representative from 1997 to 2005 has been hired by the New York Mercantile Exchange to lobby Congress, and he also serves as the managing director of Ogilvy Government Relations, a large lobbying firm. It kind of makes you wonder how objective Chris John’s consideration of legislation relating to commodity exchanges was when he was serving in Congress. Mr. John is not unusual. William Cohen was in the Senate from 1979 to 1997 before serving as Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton. He then created his own lobbying firm, The Cohen Group, that lobbies on behalf of Bechtel, Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors. Pretty convenient that he was on the Senate armed services committee and was the Secretary of Defense, huh? Even more convenient is the fact that his little lobbying enterprise employs everyone from former ambassadors like Marc Grossman and Cameron MacKenzie to former National Security Council staffers like Brendan Melley and Mara Rudman. Are you starting to see the incestuous relationship between government personnel, legislators and lobbyists, and how they all sort of interchange through a revolving door? This is all, of course, perfectly legal. But the fact that it is legal doesn’t change the nature of what it is: Corruption with a capital C.
So if you have ever wondered … when 80% of the American people favor an absolute moratorium on ALL immigration … WHY our Congress doesn’t reflect that … now you know why. To put it right out in the open, our Congress and its inhabitants are FOR SALE to the highest bidder. While there are a handful of solid legislators out there like Ron Paul, the vast majority are nothing more than debased whores who sell out their country to anyone with a handful of silver. In fact, they are worse than prostitutes because they invent all manner of clever justifications that try to make it appear that they are actually serving our best interests when they are doing anything but that. Our Congress, as a whole, is so incredibly corrupt at this point that we would get more honest representation by randomly selecting them from a jury pool rather than by election.
Examples of corruption are so numerous that I won’t waste your time with it today or depress you unnecessarily. Instead, I’ll give you some cold figures to work with. As of 2005, there were 4,013 lobbying firms who were registered JUST for lobbying Congress over appropriations matters. Since all appropriations bills start in the House, that’s basically ten lobbying firms — not individual lobbyists but lobbying FIRMS – for every Representative. And that is just on the matter of appropriations. The entire environment that surrounds our legislative process is more like a circus bazaar or a slave auction where legislators are sold to the highest bidder than a true deliberative body of people dedicated to uncovering the truth of matters or the real solutions to problems facing our nation. So now you know why our Congress doesn’t represent us, and why it is hard for regular people to make much of a difference in the legislative steamroller. And you also know why so many decent European-Americans have just thrown up their hands and written off politics as a lost cause.
But it is NOT a lost cause. Our recent immigration victory is proof of that. There are straightforward solutions to our problems with media monopolies and institutionalized corruption. In the first case, legislation to reform media ownership that limits the number of media outlets that can be owned by a single company would work wonders. The Great Masters of the Lie who own all 200 channels on television, have gobbled up radio stations, own major Internet providers and even publishing companies are stretched mighty thin. The aggregation of media companies into huge conglomerates serves to allow a handful of people with interests other than our own to control a LOT of media. But if those individual channels, radio stations, newspapers and so forth were actually owned by 2,000 companies rather than by five, the Great Masters of the Lie would be spread too thin to maintain any control over content.
There are a number of organizations already working on such legislation. In the meantime, the FCC has voted to allow even greater consolidation of control. This means fewer people controlling more media outlets. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group has a form on their website allowing you to petition the FCC to reconsider that vote. Filling out this form is easy, but with very few people contacting the FCC, your voice can make a difference. To use this form go to https://www.uspirg.org/action/media-internet/independent-voices and register your opinion in favor of independent media with the FCC. There is a link you can click in the written version of this program.
Another promising avenue is expansion of the FCC’s low-power FM radio station licensing that licenses small stations that can fit in the corner of a bedroom and have a coverage area of only a few miles. This will allow many more voices and a greater diversity of opinion and content that is free from control of the media conglomerates. Legislation is already pending in Congress to remove some of the restrictions on Low Power FM radio licensing that had limited it to rural areas, and would allow hundreds or maybe even thousands of new non-profit Low Power FM radio stations to be licensed. Maybe some of the charities operated by our local chapters could start such radio stations.
The legislation you want passed in order to expand the choices of media outside of the standard fare is the Local Community Radio Act (H.B. 2808 and S.B. 1675). It was introduced on June 21, so it is hot off the press. In the interests of full disclosure, the bill is being pushed by a who’s-who of George Soros’ congressional lackeys, who want to empower Low Power FM radio as an alternative to conservative talk radio since Soros’ other projects, like Air America, simply fail in the marketplace of ideas. But once passed, it would also enable US to get some stations as long as we complied with FCC standards. This is the sort of legislation that doesn’t get many people excited in either direction, so a few calls to your representatives and senators may just make this reality.
To deal with the problem of money in politics, rather than John McCain’s Soros-sponsored so-called “Campaign Finance Reform,” what we need is Public Funding of Elections. Due to a variety of Supreme Court decisions, the current method of funding campaigns cannot be significantly reformed or curtailed. But it CAN be supplemented with additional campaign financing methods. The most promising method is called “Clean Elections.” Clean Elections candidates receive public funds for their campaigns and can accept NO other campaign funding whatsoever. Thus, at least in theory, Clean Elections candidates are accountable only to the taxpayers who funded their campaigns. This does nothing to stop the sort of backroom deal where former legislators retire into platinum parachutes as lobbyists, but it certainly takes the funding pressure off the front end. Most importantly, a person running as a Clean Elections candidate already has a ready-made issue against a conventionally funded opponent: one is funded by special interests, and the other isn’t. This can put a lot of pressure on conventionally funded candidates. Even better, Clean Elections funds are usable in primary elections where sitting legislators can be very vulnerable indeed.
And the good news is that legislation to create and fund Clean Elections for the Senate has already been introduced in the Senate by Arlen Specter and Dick Durbin as the Fair Elections Now Act. Representatives Tierney and Platts will be introducing a similar bill in the House. Again, in the interests of full disclosure, a lot of far left and minority groups like the NAACP support this legislation, and some people have denounced it as “welfare for politicians.” But this is a case where what would help minority groups would also help us, because just like African Americans, we are not represented in Congress. Likewise, the cost of public funding of elections pales in comparison to all the pork that legislators currently throw into spending bills in order to get it back in campaign donations, and we get a more honest system. So this legislation would be good for us.
As I mentioned earlier, I can completely understand people being disillusioned about our political system because their cynical feelings are solidly grounded in factual reality. But at the same time you cannot divorce yourself from a system and expect it to change. In order to change it, you must be part of it.
When I say to be a part of the system, I am not speaking about becoming a Kool-Aid drinking Republicrat or Demopublican. I am talking about closely looking at candidates and proposals at every level and voting for the best candidate whenever possible, and the least of two evils otherwise. Sometimes the best candidate has a small chance of winning. In this Presidential election, EAU has endorsed Ron Paul. While I sincerely doubt he shares our views on matters of race, he shares our views on the Federal Reserve system, Second Amendment, and U.S. sovereignty among others. Of all the candidates out there, he would clearly be the best for America. We will be publishing more about Ron Paul in the future, but for now, you can go to www.ronpaul2008.com to learn how to best put your individual efforts behind this excellent candidate.
Too often, people vote for whomever they think has a chance of winning, and thereby create a self-fulfilling prophecy by eliminating the best candidates from consideration. This is how we end up with choices between people who take their orders directly from the neo-con cabal like George Bush and people who are essentially card carrying Communists like John Kerry. Do you really want a choice, in 2008, between two George Soros-funded lackeys like John McCain and Hillary Clinton? Would it be any different if the choice were between a stooge like Giuliani and a person like Obama who has no clearly articulated philosophy at all? The time and place to change that dynamic is during primary season when just a few votes can make a huge difference. This is the time to pull out the stops and throw support behind a candidate like Ron Paul. This is the time when YOU can make a difference. If you don’t like Ron Paul, take a look at Tom Tancredo, who at least is strong on the immigration issue even if he has drunk the neo-con Kool Aid on the war.
You can forget Giuliani and McCain because they’re already in the tank, and I’ve seen nothing to convince me that Romney has anything on the ball. The Democrat side is unfortunately an utter wasteland, but keep an eye out for others entering the race.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, even if they don’t win, the issues brought to the fore by primary candidates often need to be championed by the winning candidates in order to build the coalition needed for victory. Thus, whether Ron Paul wins or not, and I certainly hope he does, putting all out effort into supporting him in the Republican primary will force other primary candidates to address some the issues central to his campaign. Either way, our agenda is moved forward, even just a tiny bit.
The point is to examine candidates carefully and pick those who will advance the greatest portion of our own agenda. Nobody is going to give us the whole ball of wax all at once. But by looking on from the sidelines we are certain to continue getting nothing. Instead, as Frank Roman described, we need to grab what we can incrementally, take each increment as a victory, and build on it.
Another part of being part of the system is getting in touch with elected and unelected officials as needed. MOST Americans never contact their officials. They are too busy idolizing worthless trash like Paris Hilton to bother picking up the phone. That’s okay, because that makes YOUR call, YOUR Email and YOUR letters count that much more. Even for a senator or representative who is already owned by a special interest, a lot of letters and calls makes him nervous and can cause him to adopt at least a wishy-washy position on something he would otherwise have opposed or supported fully.
The Apostles of Epic Evil thought they had the Amnesty/Surge bill home free. YOUR calls and letters made a big difference. This proves that ENOUGH public noise can actually get through all the lobbyists. On much less contentious issues like what I’m discussing today, just a handful of people — a couple of hundred — can make a positive difference.
So your action items for this upcoming week are:
1. Contact the FCC and ask them to reconsider their vote to weaken media centralization rules.
2. Contact your Senator and ask him to co-sponsor both the Fair Elections Now Act, and the Local Community Radio Act.
3. Contact your Representative and ask him to do the same. It is important that you contact BOTH of your senators AND your representatives.
These issues … are easy to support, and your voice can make a big difference. So make those calls and write those letters. You WILL make a positive difference and advance our cause just one step further. Every forward step we make, even a small one, will make the next one both easier and bigger.
This has been John Young with Western Voices. Thank you for joining me again today.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/12/3/215106.shtml Vernon, Wes, quoting Bernard Goldberg “CBS’s Goldberg Exposes Leftist Media Bias”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/143lkblo.asp Barnes, Fred, “Liberal Media Evidence”