by Tom Laughlin

With our new website resurgence, it’s time to restructure our various sections or pages. Just as I changed from Tom’s Outrage of the Week to Tom’s Column because just being shocked, sickened, and outraged by what is happening every day in every corner of not only our country, but the world, is not enough.
  We must have some way we can do something about it.
  On the surface it’s clear everyone has been so desensitized to the violence and criminal corruption that permeates every knick and cranny of government, industry and public institutions, from the White House to the tobacco industry, from Congress to the drug companies that are ripping off 15 million senior citizens who desperately need medicine to live, and on and on and on, that we now take the latest three or four blood baths or scandals that will flood us anew every time we turn on the television, or pick up a paper, we take them for granted. Ho Hum! So, Clinton and Sandy Berger, the Chief of National Security, took $300,000 directly from a top ranking Chinese Army Intelligence General and Janet Reno and the Democrats in Congress cover up the most destructive act of espionage in American history. Who cares? It’s now routine stuff. Openheimer, Rosenbergs and Pollard created such a public outcry those in power moved swiftly and decisively to brand them as traitors and punish them. Not any more. Not since the White House and Congress have raised corruption to a level of criminal activity, including treasonable activity, for profit never before known in America’s history.
  So why isn’t there public outrage? Is it because we don’t care?
  I don’t think so.
I agree that when times are so good and everybody is rolling in comfort – except the 47 million Americans who are uninsured, among others – people aren’t angry, and generally people that aren’t angry don’t care. While there is certainly an element of truth to this hypothesis as to why criminals in office can get away with such serious crimes in such an open and blatant fashion, I don’t believe that’s the real reason there’s no public demand for change.
  I believe the real reason is that we all know that there’s not a damned thing we can do about it.
  When I ran for President in 1991 (and that’s a whole separate story), I wrote a pamphlet entitled Two Americas: Two Systems of Government; Two Systems of Justice; Two Systems of Education; Two Systems of Health Care and Insurance; Two Systems of Economic Opportunity; and Two Systems of Accessibility and Accountability of People in Power.
  The main thrust of that pamphlet, which sold out or disappeared instantly every time we reprinted it, was that America is no longer even close to being a democracy or a representative republic. Though the country was built on the absolute ball bearing principle that all power, all sovereignty, was to be in the hands of the people and not in any group or collection of people, that’s absolutely gone. There is no longer even the faintest possibility of you and I, the average American citizen, having anything whatsoever to say about virtually anything in our life, only those who have money, lots of money, have any chance to control any part of any legislation whether in Washington, the State Capital, City Hall, or the local Board of Education.
  Access is for sale. Availability is for sale. Input and control over legislation and the enactment of rules and regulations that govern all of us is available only to the rich and powerful. Heck, if you got $300,000, and of course much more was funneled than that, you can not only have access to get huge concessions and contracts, you can actually block criminal investigations into treason, and cover-up the activity of multi national corporations like Loral and Hughes.
  In short, we’ve become a Plutocracy – government by the wealthy; a nation ruled by a wealthy elite or a ruling class.
  There’s no sense pussyfooting around it. There’s no sense trying to phrase it lightly. America has become a Plutocracy. An Oligarchy – a nation governed by a small group of people – and that ain’t you and I.
  Amazingly enough, the conservative right wing Dwight D. Eisenhower in his last address at Columbia University not only warned us, but actually predicted that the greatest danger to the sweetness of what is America would come from the military industrial complex. “Right with Ike” never had a truer more deeper meaning.
  And we know it.
We know its futile to get worked up without anything going on in government. From the littlest corner of government, to the White House, from the smallest local politician to the President of the United States, we have come to expect the worst and have become indifferent when it happens. Heck! The President of the United States can have a young emotionally disturbed manipulative psychopath give him a blow job in the Oval Office while conducting official business Ö and that’s okay. Everything is okay today. (Yes, I should have been politically correct and said oral sex, but my anger at seeing the most precious birthright I, my children, and my grandchildren could ever have being arrogantly stolen from us right before our eyes takes away any desire I have to be polite or politically correct.)
  I believe the real reason for the indifference, for the lack of caring and outrage, is not that we don’t care and aren’t angry about what’s going on – it’s because there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
  So you and I want to stop the giant corporations and special interests from continuing to rip us off and take away our freedom, including our economic freedom, so we really want serious tax reform, or we really want to take our country back from the campaign contributors who have bought and paid for our White House and Congress. (As the wise man said, “It’s the best Congress money can buy.”) The real question is, if there was something we could do about it, if your little voice, if your phone call or letter could truly make a difference, would we care?
  I believe we would Ö and to that end I’m going to make a major commitment.
  I have been a serious student of this problem for over a quarter of a century – which is why I made the film “Billy Jack Goes to Washington” in the first place. I made it because I wanted people to see how thoroughly malignant a cancer of corruption had spread in the US Senate and House – the same cancerous corruption that has caused people like Warren Rudman, Bill Bradley, Bill Cohen, Tim Penny and others to quit because, in the words of Warren Rudman, “this place is so corrupt it can’t function anymore.”
  In Billy Jack Goes to Washington we proposed a solution that would provide the greatest, most radical and effective end to the corruption by big donors and special interest groups -- a solution that would be a gigantic step towards restoring sovereignty and political power back to you and I. A solution not one single candidate has thought of or is proposing, even the one truly good guy out there, John McCain, who has devoted his entire being to ending the Plutocracy of America by running on a platform of radical campaign reform.
  In addition to the solution in Billy Jack Goes to Washington, I have worked very hard to develop other things that you and I can do to take government back from the rich and powerful, and restore power back to the people.
  Next week I will share with you the things I think we can do – no, MUST DO – in order to save everything our Founding Fathers, our grandfathers and fathers fought and died for. Not to mention all the incredibly heroic women who also gave their lives that this nation based solely on the principle of all power in the hands of the people, to be exercised solely for the benefit of the people, might live.
  Next week: How we can work together to restore all Power Back to the People.
  Plus! Our answer to these extremely unreliable and politically polls, so easily manipulated just by the questions you ask, and whom you ask – the weekly “What do you think” vote.