The government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer exists, nor has it for

generations. We the people are able to elect only those who are preselected for us by a few ultra wealthy and highly manipulative wealthy elitists who control U.S. and global politics from behind the scenes. For many years those who occupy the key positions in U.S. politics have been preselected. U.S. politicians are promoted by a small oligarchy, then directed and expected to do the bidding of the ultra wealthy few who facilitate each key politicians rise to positions of power. From the earliest days of our nation, our founding fathers feared, spoke of, and wrote about, the potential and reality of the United States government falling into the control of a highly wealthy and wickedly self serving oligarchy. Todays situation of political control by a few, was foreseen and forewarned of from the earliest days of our republic. Americans have repeatedly been warned by the very presidents of our nation, that both political parties have been controlled and directed by a small group of ultra wealthy who manipulate power from behind the scenes. It is not their wealth, but their intent to enslave humanity which is troublesome. Such control by a few has been consistently spoken of and written of by those renowned Americans who would most assuredly know -the past Presidents of these United States. (Political Parties) serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests. However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion. George Washington Farewell Address (1796) The Farewell Address (17 September 1796)] Full text at Wikisource There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution. John Adams the second (17971801) President of the United States; husband of Abigail Adams Letter to Jonathan Jackson (2 October 1780), "The Works of John Adams", vol 9, p.511

Yes, we may all congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing a close. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. The best blood of the flower of American youth has been freely offered upon our country's altar that the nation might live. It has been, indeed, a trying hour for the republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war corporations have been enthroned

and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudice of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the war. God grant that my suspicion may prove groundless. Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in Journal of United Labor; Vol 8, no. 20; Nov. 19, 1887; pg. 2 The bosses of the Democratic party and the bosses of the Republican party alike have a closer grip than ever before on the party machines in the States and in the Nation. This crooked control of both the old parties by the beneficiaries of political and business privilege renders it hopeless to expect any far-reaching and fundamental service from either. Theodore_Roosevelt "Platform Insincerity" in The Outlook, Vol. 101, No. 13 (27 July 1912), p. 660 Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests, which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. President Theodore Roosevelt "The Progressive Covenant With The People" speech (August 1912) The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy. Woodrow Wilson, Section II: What is Progress?, p. 35. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom. Woodrow Wilson, Section VIII: Monopoly, Or Opportunity?, p. 185. The dominating danger in this land is not the existence of great individual combinations, that is dangerous enough in all conscience, but the combination of the combinations, of the railways, the manufacturing enterprises, the great mining projects, the great enterprises for the development of the natural water-powers of the country, threaded together in the personnel of a series of boards of directors into a "community of interest" more formidable than any conceivable single combination that dare appear in the open. Woodrow Wilson, Section VIII: Monopoly, Or Opportunity?, p. 186.

We are at the parting of the ways. We have, not one or two or three, but many, established and formidable monopolies in the United States. We have, not one or two, but many, fields of endeavor into which it is difficult, if not impossible, for the independent man to enter. We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men. Dr. Thomas Woodrow Wilson (28 December 1856 3 February 1924), 28th President of the United States (19131921). From Section IX: Benevolence, Or Justice?, p. 201

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. The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight with the Bank of the United States only on a far bigger and broader basis. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 32nd President of the United States (30 January 1882, A letter Franklin D. Roosevelt to Col. Edward Mandell House (21 November 1933); as quoted in F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1928-1945, edited by Elliott Roosevelt (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950), pg. 373.

Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing. Franklin D. Roosevelt Simple Truths message to Congress (April 29, 1938). [7] [8]. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. Dwight D. Eisenhower, farewell address, 1961

Other national leaders. "The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover

of a self created screen....At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties." New York City Mayor John F. Hylan, 1922. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hylan

We go about the world, fighting to spread democracy and tell them how to live, but we really don't have a democratic system... The laws have been made to make it very difficult, because the Republicans and the Democrats aren't looking for the competition, they want to monopolize it. So in many ways, we are less democratic than some other systems, where they have multiple parties, and more people represented than they're able to be represented here. Dr. Ronald Ernest Paul Interview by Laura Knoy on NHPR, June 5, 2007 [20], (born August 20, 1935) is a physician (M.D.) and a Republican United States Congressman from Lake Jackson, Texas, and candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, in 2008 and 2012. It's a mistake to think that poor people get the benefit from the welfare system. It's a total fraud. Most welfare go to the rich of this country: the military-industrial complex, the bankers, the foreign dictators, it's totally out of control. [...] This idea that the government has services or goods that they can pass on is a complete farce. Governments have nothing. They can't create anything, they never have. All they can do is steal from one group and give it to another at the destruction of the principles of freedom, and we ought to challenge that concept. Dr. Ron Paul, Texas Congressman, Current Presidential Candidate TV interview, 1987 [58] The bankers will favor a course of special legislation to increase their powerThey will never cease to ask for more, so long as there is more that can be wrung from the toiling masses of the American PeopleThe struggle with this money power has been going on from the beginning of the history of this country. Peter Cooper, open letter to President Grant, June 1, 1877.

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. You ask for votes for women. What good can votes do when ten-elevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000 and only one-eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000? Have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice? Letter published in the Manchester Advertiser (3 March 1911), quoted in A People's History of the United States (1980) page 345. Helen Adams Keller (June
27, 1880 June 1, 1968) was an American writer and social activist; an illness (possibly scarlet fever or meningitis) at the age of 19 months left her deaf and blind.

To a Woman-Suffragist
The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labour. Surely we must free men and women together before we can free women. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands -- the ownership and control of their lives and livelihood -- are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind are ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. How can women hope to help themselves while we and our brothers are helpless against the powerful organizations which modern parties represent and which contrive to rule the people? They rule the people because they own the means of physical life, land, and tools, and the nourishers of intellectual life, the press, the church, and the school. You say that the conduct of the woman suffragists is being disgracefully misrepresented by the British press. Here in America the leading newspapers misrepresent in every possible way the struggles of toiling men and women who seek relief. News that reflects ill upon the employers is skillfully concealed -- news of dreadful conditions under which labourers are forced to produce, news of thousands of men maimed in mills and mines and left without compensation, news of famines and strikes, news of thousands of women driven to a life of shame, news of little children compelled to labour before their hands are ready to drop their toys. Only here and there in a small and as yet uninfluential paper is the truth told about the workman and the fearful burdens under which he staggers.
Helen Adams Keller

Conversely, a sustainable economy is de-centralized and locally-focused, relying on small, well-managed local banks; food supplies which are grown, financed, and distributed locally; community ownership of land and resources; local commerce and industry; and above all, financial transparency. Among the myriad advantages of categorizing economic systems in this way is the immediate exposure of federal election campaigns as unequivocally by, for, and about centralized financial systems which offer the illusions of choice and change. No sincere proponent of a sustainable economy has the slightest possibility of emerging victorious in a country where centralized financial systems furnish, finance, and in the current milieu, manage electoral outcomes. Or as Aaron Russos documentary America From Freedom To Fascism underscored, voting in a national election is essentially making a choice between two crime families who are ostensibly at war with each other but will always join forces when their mutual interests are threatened. Catherine Austin Fitts, Author, Speaker, Founder of www.Solari.com ; as written in , Economics 101: A Curriculum 2006