The KTAO Project - Lick Them All Out of Congress

By Bruce McDonald

posted 05/11/08

Exactly How Will The KTAO Project Work?

For this project to succeed, we all need to be very clear on what the point of it is, which is to cast our votes to accomplish something significantly more important than deciding which party controls Congress. The point of this project is to use the power of our vote to rid our government of the two most corrupting influences, corporate special interest lobbyists and all the career politicians responsible for turning our government over to them. No incumbent will lift a finger to help. They ALL need to go or we will never get back OUR government.

WE are going to rid our government of these two influences by casting our votes in an unprecedented, unified fashion in order to clean out the entire House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate by simply refusing to vote for any incumbents in the 2008 election! Instead, we are going to use our votes to elect 435 NEW representatives for the House and roughly 33 New Senators armed with the mandate to amend the Fourteenth Amendment so it’s absolutely clear its intent is not to protect “artificial corporate persons.”

At the same time, we will see to it that every State has an initiative on the ballot allowing us to approve amending every State Constitution in the same way. Until this action happens, we can’t legally prevent corporate lobbyists from interfering with OUR government, which means nothing of any consequence will change. Our government will continue to work primarily for the wealthiest among us, through their corporate lobbying interference.

If we don’t eliminate these two primary corrupting influences and create a publicly controlled and funded political process that outside private interests can’t manipulate with their vast amounts of money, our government will remain one Of the Few People, By the Few People and For the Few People. If we want our government to represent us, we need to participate aggressively enough to uproot the people that it is currently representing and make it absolutely clear we are no longer going to stand for it!

Election Process 101: Members of the House of Representatives get a two-year term in office and members of the Senate get a six-year term. Elections for the entire House of Representatives occur every two years. The Senate is staggered into 3rds. Every two years, only 1/3 of the Senate seats are up for election. There are currently 435 members of the House and 100 members of the Senate.

There are two sets of elections every two years. One is called the Primary Election. One is called the General Election. The Primary Election is held so each political party can choose the person they want to represent them in the General Election. For example, the Democratic Party may have six people competing for their candidate for president. The Primary gives all Democrats the opportunity to choose which person they want to represent them for president in the General Election. The Primary Elections provide the same opportunity for every political party to do the same thing. The General Election, on the first Tuesday of November, every two years, is when everyone gets the opportunity to choose among all the final candidates.

NOW HERE’S WHAT WE NEED TO DO . . . It’s very simple. We just refuse to vote for any incumbent. You’re free to vote for anyone else, so you can still use your vote to influence which party controls the Congress. We may lose a few good people in the process, but it’s the price we have to pay in order to clean out the den of thieves that our government has become. Any good ones can certainly run again if they want. When they get back in, they will stand a far better chance of making a difference than they do now. So you need to see this as doing the “good ones” a huge favor. As it stands now, we’re just throwing them into a pack of wolves.

The Primary Election is critical. This is when everyone must pledge to set aside the conditioned urge to vote for “the guy that stands the best chance of winning.” This is what they count on you doing because it virtually guarantees incumbents stay in office. We must simply make sure there are plenty of alternatives to the incumbents on the ballot. This would produce unprecedented, sweeping change in our government. If we did this, we would experience the true power of our vote, something we can only experience when we are united. Virtually overnight, the entire House of Representatives would be free of all the corrupt politicians!

We all need to take a big step back and look at what we’ve been doing. We’ve been following the lead of the people causing all the problems in the first place; the sitting politicians, and the two-party political machine, controlled by the corporate special interests. The entire political process is a tightly controlled performance. They use the grand drama of opposing political parties in order to create a system that appears to be democratic but in reality produces very minor changes. When we participate in the grand battle over the control of Congress, the most we ever really accomplish is shifting a few seats one way or the other. It looks like we can change the direction of our government, but nothing significant every really changes.

The truth of the matter is, after the dust settles from the big battle, nearly all the same people are still there with grins on their faces. They’re grinning because they all know it’s just a performance that leads right back to business as usual. When we cooperate with their program we make it very easy for those in power to stay in power and keep doing what they’re doing. Voting out incumbents would wipe the grins off all those faces real fast! That alone should be reason enough to follow this plan!

We really have to wise up about the election process and stop participating in the way they expect us to. If everyone would agree to KICK THEM ALL OUT, it will effectively throw a huge wrench into the machine. If we do this, the people in control won’t get back very many familiar faces. Instead we’ll give them an entire Freshman House of Representatives and a nice handful of Freshman Senators. Suddenly the well-oiled machine will have to shift from automatic into manual. This, my friends, would be a very good thing. We desperately need the momentum of this awful machine to slow down considerably.

If we do this in just one election we’ll send our new representatives into an environment that is not nearly as corrupt, with an undeniable awareness that WE CAN and WILL vote them out if they don’t enact the critical legislation we want. If we don’t see them using the powers we give them to restore the checks and balances required to protect the public interest, we vote them ALL out next time. If we make it that simple, the “good ones” will be motivated to control the “bad ones” or they ARE ALL OUT the next time. Everyone in the Congress should be “working together” to protect our interests. If there are some bad apples, it’s the responsibility of the “good apples” to reign them in. Not the other way round.

I recently saw a Congressional calendar, which showed our representatives were only in session something like 22 weeks out of the year. That means we don’t have any representatives in Washington 5 months out of the year! Here’s a charming thought. What if we use a few months of that wasted time and require the new people to attend an orientation about how our government is supposed to operate. We hire the finest professors, constitutional scholars, historians, economists, etc., and actually teach everyone about the job we’re hiring them to do. We need to impress upon them that they are working for us not corporate special interests! Right now, we leave the orientation to all the corrupt politicians and corporate lobbyists. It’s just nuts! It’s like letting the inmates control the prison.

Now if you’re feeling some apprehension at this point, I can tell you that virtually every concern I’ve heard about what may happen if we do something like this, is a concern about something that’s either already happening or something that really isn’t a very good reason for not doing this. For example, worrying about them tampering with your vote . . . they are already tampering with our votes. Worrying about loosing experienced leaders . . . that’s like worrying about loosing experienced pickpockets that you’ve become accustomed to cleaning you out every day. So please, look at the fears that arise and ask yourself if it’s a good reason to keep things as they are.

For those of you who fear that this course of action will somehow jeopardize your party’s chances of winning, it really won’t change anything in that regard. If we all agree not to vote for incumbents, both parties will be on equal ground. Everyone will still vote for candidates that represent their preferred party, so the outcome should be identical.

Unless we express the power of our vote in this way, nobody will ever take us seriously and nothing will ever change. We claim we want change and threaten to kick them out all the time but until we demonstrate that we will do it, by actually doing it, we may as well just stop wasting energy complaining and debating about all the problems and corruption. We should just make our peace with it and let the wealthy folks continue to do what they want with the world. After all, they know what’s best don’t they?

If we aren’t going to do the one thing we can "actually" do about it, what’s the point? If we don’t act soon with something major like this, it’s going to be too late. We need to take this action and send the message that we are DEADLY SERIOUS and WE ARE IN CHARGE! It’s amazing that nobody has ever tried to organize everyone around this course of action before now. It’s the only way we can EMPOWER OUR VOTES. It’s simply the most obvious, doable, and powerful thing we can do to demand our government refocus its duties back to protecting the public interests rather than corporate special interests.

"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men (and women) to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke

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