Chapter 9: The Politicians

 
 
 

The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson - and I am not wholly excepting the administration of W.W.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a letter of November 21, l933 to Col. Edward Mandell House.


 


 

        The control over the government that FDR referred to was exercised, in the 19th century,  primarily by bribing legislators. In Tragedy and Hope Professor Quigley states that the passage of civil service legislation in the 19th century resulted from the efforts of the Wall Street interests. According to Quigley they wanted these laws to deprive the political parties of the ability to reward their supporters with government jobs and thus make the parties more dependent on Wall Street money.
        In the 20th century they have also adopted more indirect methods, although bribery in somewhat more sophisticated forms, is still widely used. Today the bribes are likely to be a high paying job when an official leaves government employment, campaign contributions, or the assurance of media support. Most Americans are aware of the fact that campaign contributions are attempts to gain the support of a candidate for the policies of the organization or individual who made the contribution. This is not, in itself, a bribe. If I believe that a candidate will be a good legislator and his opponent will not then there is nothing wrong with me contributing to his campaign in the hope that he will be elected. The same cannot be said if the contributor is a corporation or a trade union. In the case of the corporation the money given is the property of the owners of the corporation and it is probable that many of them do not favor the candidate who received the money and actually favor his opponent. In the case of labor unions, the members, in most cases, were forced to pay their dues and many of them do not favor the candidate who receives a contribution from their union. Even when the payment of dues is strictly voluntary many members would not choose to see some of their money used to support this candidate.
         It is unquestionably true that legislators who receive large contributions from individuals or organizations sometimes repay this favor with their votes in Congress. The decision to do this is made by the legislator and when he does this that contribution is converted to a bribe. If the legislator does not repay that contribution with a vote the contribution cannot be considered a bribe. In this case it is quite possible that he will receive no more money from that source.
        Liberals are very much in favor of campaign finance reform. Their sincerity in this matter can be judged by their reaction to revelations that other liberals have not complied with existing campaign finance laws. They do not call for these people to be prosecuted but instead call for additional laws to govern campaign financing. If they do not favor enforcing the laws we have now what reason do we have to believe that they will respect new laws?
        The new campaign finance laws supported by liberals generally include a ban on all corporate contributions and rather low maximums on individual contributions. They usually do not favor any restrictions on contributions from labor unions, who contribute far more to liberal candidates than they do to conservative candidates. This is a bald-faced attempt to allow liberals to benefit from campaign finance reform. But even if contributions from unions were subjected to the same restrictions proposed for corporate contributions, liberals would still benefit greatly from such campaign finance reform.
        If only individuals were permitted to make such contributions and the maximum contributions they could make were severely restricted, it is quite possible that liberal candidates would not be able to raise as much money as their conservative opponents. Both liberals and conservatives would have much less money to spend in their campaigns. In this case the power of the media to influence elections would be greatly increased. Since the traditional media is not only overwhelmingly liberal but is perfectly willing to distort the truth in support of liberal objectives, liberal candidates would derive a great advantage from such campaign finance reform. If  the media, as I contend, is biased in favor of liberalism because it is controlled by the planners, this type of reform would not only increase the power of the planners but would also save them a lot of money. There is thus a great deal of similarity between this type of campaign finance reform and the establishment of the civil service system by the Hamiltonians in the late 19th century.
        As voters we are often presented with a choice between a liberal Democratic candidate who is very liberal and a Republican candidate who is equally, or only slightly less liberal. If you are interested in politics you may also be aware that whenever a liberal Republican is challenged in the primary elections by a conservative Republican the state Republican party will often, and the national Republican party will almost always, support the liberal candidate. They may not endorse the liberal candidate but they will provide him with money and party functionaries will campaign for him. Why is this so? In my opinion it is due to the fact that the planners possess a great deal of influence with the party's top leadership. It is not difficult to see how they could exercise this influence. The planners, or more likely some of their lackeys, simply point out to the party leadership that they possess the ability contribute or withhold large contributions to the party and to individual candidates and they prefer to see a certain percentage of liberals on the party's slate or even liberal candidates in specific districts or states. This, to me, is the most logical explanation of the behavior of the Republican party in such instances.
        In some cases this policy is carried to ridiculous extremes. In Arizona, a few years ago, a man named Evan Meacham challenged, in the primary election, the candidate supported by the state party apparatus. He won the primary and the governorship and the state legislature, firmly controlled by Republicans, impeached him on trumped up charges and railroaded him out of office. The Secretary of State (who in Arizona succeeds the governor) was a very liberal Democrat. This whole affair was probably orchestrated by the state party rather than the national party. Simply put, the leaders of the state Republican party preferred to see a liberal Democrat in the governor's office rather than a Republican who would not take orders from them.
        There was a similar situation in Virginia a few years ago but I suspect that in that case the leadership of the national Republican party was involved. Col. Oliver North won the Republican primary and the right to run against the Democrat incumbent Senator Robb. When it appeared that North would defeat Robb the Republican party leadership put up a Republican party hack to run as a thirdparty candidate in a successful effort to defeat North.
        Incidents such as these indicate very strongly that the planners possess a great deal of influence over both parties and therefore we seldom get a real choice when we vote. Influencing the leadership of the two major parties is not, however, the only way in which the planners  influence the actions of our government. The planners exert a great deal of influence on the actions of our government by virtue of the number of people from their spheres of influence who serve as political appointees in the executive department. I have previously mentioned that, according to Professor Quigley, the Council on Foreign Relations was created as a front for the Morgan interests. This is equivalent to saying that it was created as a front for the Round Table group in the U.S. The CFR, in common with all fronts, was intended to be an organization that would openly promote the agenda of people who controlled its activities even as those people remained out of view of the public.
        Membership in the CFR is by invitation only and membership is considered a mark of prestige, not only by liberals and people associated with the establishment but also by a great many Americans who have no such affinity with its aims. Its members include primarily lawyers, politicians, corporate executives, and educators. The membership is overwhelmingly liberal but there are a few conservative members whose presence is intended to indicate that it is not an idealogically oriented organization.
        The CFR serves somewhat the purpose of an employment agency for newly-elected presidents who must fill a great many appointed posts in government. Since the CFR was created not only liberal presidents but also conservative presidents have used it in this way. Of course the number of conservative presidents who have served since the establishment of the CFR is a very short list indeed. By the very loosest definition of a conservative it would include only Harding, Coolidge, and Reagan.
        The presence of a large number of CFR members in upper and middle level government posts gives the planners a strong voice in determining government policies, both domestic and foreign. In recent years the planners have followed a similar policy in environmental matters. They have used their money to influence the policies of many non-governmental environmental groups. The leaders of these groups are often appointed to government posts where they promote the environmentalist agenda of the masters. Environmentalism has become a major item of the planners agenda in the last two or three decades. This is not because the planners are particularly interested in the environment but because environmental law can be used to greatly increase the authority of the government, which is, of course, another way of saying it can be used to abridge the rights of individuals.
        Many judges in state and federal courts have also done a great deal to advance the agenda of the planners. When we think of judges promoting liberalism we usually think of the U.S. Supreme Court and it is true that Supreme Court judges have done much to promote liberalism and erode the constitutional protection of the rights of individuals. It is possible however that district court judges and state judges have done more harm than those who sit on the Supreme Court. These judges rule on many more cases than the Supreme Court and in many cases their rulings are not appealed simply because pursuing justice in our courts is an extremely expensive affair. Thus it is probable that their rulings affect more individuals than do the rulings of the Supreme Court. Many of these judges do not hesitate to use their judicial power to legislate, that is to say they issue rulings that permit actions by individuals, or by the government, that are prohibited by the constitution and existing legislation and vice versa. There will be examples of this and other judicial mischief in the chapter on the environment so I will not offer any examples here.
        And finally the agenda of the masters is advanced, perhaps unwittingly in many cases, by some career government employees whose jobs are covered by the civil service laws. Most government employees are covered by the civil service laws and most of them work at ordinary jobs that are very similar to jobs in the private sector. There are many of them however, and especially in certain agencies, who have the authority to make and enforce regulations that have the force of law. There are many more who have the responsibility of enforcing both laws and bureaucratic regulations having the force of law. Among both of these groups there are many who pay little attention to the constitutional rights of Americans and, in some cases, the laws they enforce are themselves definitely unconstitutional. Most of these people will be found in the agencies that exist primarily to enforce laws because it is in the enforcement of laws where the rights of the individuals often clash with the authority of the state. These agencies include, but are not limited to, the IRS, the FBI, the BATF, the EPA, and OSHA. The Waco massacre and the killings at Ruby Ridge are the two best-known examples of outrageous behavior of government officials but there are hundreds more that have received little or no publicity.
        Do you know that the government can confiscate your property if you are suspected, not convicted, not even charged with, but simply suspected of committing certain crimes? And if you are not subsequently charged with committing any crime you can get your property back only by convincing a judge that you have committed no crime. Furthermore the people who confiscated property in this way often do not even have to account for the manner in which they dispose of it.
        If, for example, you go out of town for the weekend and your teen-age son has a party in your house and someone at the party is caught selling drugs, the government can confiscate your house and you probably will not get it back even though you may have forbidden your son to have a party in your absence and you have never even heard of the person who was caught selling drugs. If a landfill becomes a superfund cleanup site and your garbage was collected and deposited in that land fill ten years earlier the EPA can sue you for the entire cost of the cleanup.
        Federal employees have, in many cases, engaged in unconstitutional behavior that has led to the death of innocent people and they are seldom, if ever, held accountable. There are cases where they have not even lost their jobs for behavior that should have resulted in murder charges being filed against them. The chief reason that they can avoid being held accountable for their actions is that the media takes little or no notice of these incidents or actively assists in covering them up.
        All of these activities advance the agenda of the planners by increasing the raw power of the state and depriving individuals of their rights. In most of these cases the civil service employees probably have no intention of advancing the agenda of the planners and are probably unaware of the existence of either the planners or their agenda. They are probably motivated solely by a desire to rule other people but it is the power of the planners in the courts, the government agencies and the media that allows them to avoid punishment. Thus all of these activities increase the power of the state over individuals which is one of the objectives of the planners.
        The presidential election of 1912 provides a particularly obvious example of the manipulation of the American political system by the planners.  In 1908 Theodore Roosevelt, who had served the balance of McKinley's term and  had been reelected in 1904, declined to run again. He supported William Howard Taft for the Republican nomination. Taft was nominated and won the election. In 1912 Roosevelt, professing disappointment in Taft's performance, sought the Republican nomination and was defeated by Taft. By this time the Republican party was becoming widely perceived as the party of the financial interests by many Americans. The Democratic party, on the other hand had attracted support from many populists, agrarians, and other progressives.
        In Shadows of Power, James Perloff quotes a man who was present at a 1912 meeting of Democratic party leaders in New York as saying that Bernard Baruch brought Woodrow Wilson to the meeting, "leading him like one would a poodle on a string." Wilson received an "indoctrination course" from the party leaders and agreed that, if elected, he would support the creation of the Federal Reserve System, support the establishment of an income tax, lend an ear to advice should war break out in Europe, and lend an ear to advice on selecting his cabinet. Wilson campaigned as the champion of the American people in their struggle against the entrenched financial interests. The Democratic party in general came out in favor of several progressive policies.
        Roosevelt, claiming to have been cheated out of the Republican nomination, formed a third party with himself as the party's presidential candidate. He conducted a vigorous campaign and finished in second place in the three way race. Representatives of J.P. Morgan accompanied Roosevelt throughout the campaign to furnish him with money whenever he needed it. The Rockefeller interests supported Taft.
        According to Professor Quigley the Morgan and Rockefeller interests were engaged in a mighty struggle for control of the Republican party. As a result of this dispute the Democrats, according to Quigley, were able to win the election by attracting the support of the populists, agrarians, and other left-wing factions. This does not fit comfortably with Quigley's own statements that the Morgan-Rockefeller axis controlled both major parties both before and after 1912 or with the fact that Wilson aggressively promoted every aspect of the planners' agenda in his two terms as president. If one is to accept Quigley's explanation of the election of 1912 it is also necessary to believe that the Morgan and Rockefeller interests persisted in their struggle to control the Republican party to the point where they lost control of the government.
        It seems much more probable to me that the whole election of 1912, including Roosevelt's third party effort, was orchestrated by the Morgan-Rockefeller interests for a very definite reason. The Morgans, the Rockefellers, and the nation's financial interests in general were closely associated with the Republican party in the view of many Americans. The Morgan-Rockefeller interests had, a few years previously, created the Round Table group in the U.S. as a step toward their goal of world domination. Their strategy involved close cooperation with the various left-wing organizations. By insuring the success of the Democratic party, which was now supported by most of these left-wing groups it would have the perfect political vehicle with which to move the government in the direction of a more authoritarian society. By working through the Democratic party it would be far easier to hide their activities from the view of the public. By promoting Roosevelts third party effort they enabled Wilson to win the election with a little more than 40% of the votes cast. The planners would have controlled the government no matter which of the three parties were successful but it was far easier to promote left-wing policies with the Democratic party in power than it would have been with the Republican party in power. Perhaps even more important to the planners was the fact that Wilson's victory created the perception, at least among Americans who did not look closely at the matter, that the majority of the American people favored the policies that Wilson campaigned on.
        Once elected Wilson did indeed push the agenda of the planners, which included creating the Federal Reserve System, creating an income tax, involving the U.S. in the war, and the creation of the League of Nations, among other things. After the war the American people returned the Republican party to power for 12 years and opposed many of the items of the planners' agenda. They opposed recognition of the U.S.S.R., U.S. involvement in the League of Nations, and the establishment of a peacetime version of the wartime War Industries Board. As I have previously stated the planners then created and maintained the Great Depression in an effort to force the American people to accept the fascist and socialist measures the planners wanted.
        The reader may already have noted the similarities between the election of 1912 and the election of 1992. By 1992 the Democratic party was closely associated with liberalism and liberalism was losing popularity among the American people. Bill Clinton thus made every effort to portray himself as a new Democrat, meaning one who was not a doctrinaire liberal. President Bush still enjoyed great popularity as a result of his role in Desert Storm and as late as the end of 1991 was widely regarded as unbeatable. Ross Perot entered the race as a third party candidate. Perot was essentially a single issue candidate and the issue was government spending. He quickly gained a large following, revealing the fact that this was a very important issue to many Americans. Perot's supporters included many, particulary among working class Americans, who would normally vote for Democrats. Early in the campaign Perot let it be known that he was planning to abandon his candidacy because Clinton had convinced him that he, Clinton, shared Perot's concern with government and would deal with it if he won the election.
        This ploy was intended to insure Perot's Democratic supporters that they could rely on Clinton to cut government spending and therefore they could feel free to vote for Clinton to forestall a Republican victory. Then Perot returned to the race and ran what could best be termed a non-campaign while continuing to stress the need to reduce government spending. On election day Perot gathered 20% of the votes cast and Clinton won the election with about 43% of the votes cast. It is almost certain that most of Perot's votes would have gone to Bush had Perot not been in the race and there can be little doubt that in that case Bush would have won.
        During his four years in office Bush had promoted the planners' agenda, including politically-motivated environmental policies and a large tax increase. Why then would the planners go to great lengths to assure Clinton's election? The reason is simply that their policies could be more successfully promoted with Clinton in the White House. The cost of health care had been carefully built up to a major crisis during the campaign and after Clinton's election there was a tremendous push to nationalize the whole of the health care industry. The planners wanted socialized medicine because it would increase the national debt and soak up some of the super abundance of investment capital while at the same time making the citizenry more dependent on the federal government.  When the bill to socialize health care failed the stock market went through the roof. This bill lost by one vote but had Bush won the election it would never have gotten off the ground.
        In the 1996 presidential election the Republican candidate was Bob Dole, the choice of the party leadership. Early in his campaign Dole came out in favor of a 15% cut in income tax rates. This would have made him very popular with voters but he quickly dropped the call for a tax cut rather than promoting it enthusiastically. Perot again entered the race and siphoned off a good deal of Dole's support.
        Ever since 1992 we have seen a steady succession of revelations of impeachable offenses by Clinton and his subordinates. There were probably at least a dozen such offenses after Clinton came to the White House, each of which was individually far worse than the accusations against Nixon that led to his resignation. Most of the Republicans in Congress, with a few notable exceptions, not only failed to support the effort to investigate these offenses but actually assisted the effort by Democrats and the media to cover them up or brush them aside. At the time of this writing the election of 1998 has been held and the Congress is considering impeachment proceedings against Clinton. It is almost a virtual certainty that he will not be impeached.
        Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned in the face of charges that seemed to be a flimsy frameup. Agnew had been the Governor of Maryland, an office that has often been associated with corruption in the past. It is entirely possible that he had actually been involved in wrongdoing while he held that post. If this was the case why would he not have been charged with an actual offense instead of a trumped-up charge? It may be that such actual offenses, if indeed they existed, involved other people whose reputations the Justice Dept. did not want to ruin. In any case, Agnew, who was known as a conservative, was forced to resign before Congress really began to pressure Nixon.
        The joint House-Senate committee, controlled by Democrats, proceeded to build a very dubious case against Nixon and, with the help of quite a few Republicans he was forced to resign. I am by no means a supporter of Nixon but what he was accused of doing was of less consequence than what many presidents in the past have done. This does not excuse any behavior of his but it does beg the question of why the media cooperated so completely with the Democrats in the effort to oust Nixon. Nixon and Agnew who had won election by a true landslide, were, thus, both forced out of office and replaced by Gerald Ford, a liberal Republican.
        Now compare that situation with the presidency of Bill Clinton. Clinton, his wife, and his staff have been proven guilty of worse charges than those levelled against Nixon. In addition to these proven offenses they have committed many other wrongs that might not be provable in a criminal action but are certainly grounds for impeachment and removal from office. Mrs. Clinton and Ira Magaziner were proven to have perjured themselves in federal court regarding the Health Care Task Force. The White House used the FBI to attempt to frame the chief of the White House travel office to justify their dismissal of him even though they had the power to simply fire him at their discretion. Al Gore solicited campaign funds from his office. The White House obstructed justice in the investigation of Vince Foster's death. The White House interfered with the investigation of the RTC of the Whitewater affair and punished at least one of the investigators. The president and the Democratic party accepted millions of dollars in campaign contributions from foreign nationals and some of this money actually came from the Chinese government. The White House arranged for the payment of well over $500,000 to Wesley Hubbel who performed virtually no services for this money and then refused to testify about Clinton's activities. Clinton created a National Monument on land that contained one of the two largest, known deposits of low sulphur coal in the world. This meant that that coal could not be mined and the other large deposit of such coal is controlled by the Riady Group, which had made large campaign contributions.
         The foregoing is only a partial list of what Clinton has done since becoming president but even these offenses dwarf anything Nixon, or Agnew for that matter, did but a Republican Congress has joined the Democrats in the most massive coverup of presidential wrongdoings that the nation has ever seen.
        This has been a very abbreviated consideration of political affairs in the U.S. in the 20th century but I hope it will be enough to induce the reader to examine them carefully in the future.

Continue with Chapter 10 Managed Poverty