Getting started.

It is my goal to get people to realize that we, the American People, are not powerless to influence our government. We all know that we can vote and have some say in things when the Big Day arrives. I'm not here to appeal to you to get out and vote. I don't have to, you already know. What I want to talk about here is us and our relationship to government.

The Founding Fathers set forth the idea that our government, our nation, was to derive legitimacy and authority from the people and not from an elite few of wealthy and powerful men that sit in judgment of us from lofty positions of power and authority. We, the populace, are the legitimizing force of government on all levels.

That's the theory, any way. I put forth to you that this is no longer the case. Truthfully, I can not say that it ever really was the case. The ideal is something we have sought but often failed to reach. Slavery, Jim Crow, Woman's Suffrage, Civil Rights. These are all examples of how we failed to be what we ought to be but sought to become that.

What I see today is the explicit removal of the role of the people in government. It's so very easy to identify certain targets like corporate and professional lobbyists. Other ways of taking our true franchise from us are not so obvious, like budget cuts in the educational systems. With your help I want to delve deeper into the ways in which the American People are being deprived of their legitimizing authority and how it is being handed over to an American Aristocracy.

For the People.