By Nathan Barton

As we watch and listen to the politicians, from the dozen or so presidential candidates still left or emerging (Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Carson, Paul, Sanders, Clinton, Biden, McAfee, Johnson, etc.) to the people running for General Assembly or other Legislature and even to tribal and local government offices, we need to remember: politicians lie.  It does not matter WHICH party they are affiliated with, WHICH political philosophy they espouse.  They lie: usually deliberately and sometimes by mistake or error.

Eight years ago, the man now sitting in DC said: “”I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America.”

Yet, the last seven years saw this man and his minions bring, and try to bring, MORE power into the White House than at any other time in history, issue MORE executive orders, ignore MORE legally-passed laws, attack MORE parts of the Constitution and bill of rights, even launch MORE drone attacks and kill MORE innocents in the Greater Middle East than did Bush in his full eight years, or any other president, no matter how progressive.

And despite congressman after congressman, senator after senator, legislator after legislator, running campaigns in which they promised to “protect and restore freedom” and “cut taxes” and “cut spending” and “fight against executive overreach” and all those other promises, what we saw the legislatures and Congress do is spend MORE money, take away MORE freedom, write blank checks to their respective executive branches for MORE control and MORE bureaucracy and MORE spending and even MORE and MORE taxes.  We saw the legislatures and Congress fail to hold their executive branches accountable, not just for carrying out their duties assigned by law, but not even accountable for BREAKING the laws; for polluting rivers, for poisoning water supplies, for smuggling weapons to criminals inside and outside the borders, for paying billions to tyrants and terrorists, for violating security laws and allowing enemies access to vital secrets, for failing to protect even their own employees from terrorists while blaming Americans for the terrorist attacks and even condemning loyal and law-abiding Americans AS terrorists.

The plain and simple truth is that no matter WHO is elected in November, things will not change.  The incumbents will use the same old lies (and the same old excuses) to keep their seats.  The newcomers will lie and prepare their excuses for why they will not even seriously attempt to keep the promises that they are making every day for the next ten months.  And sadly, enough people will believe their lies to keep most of them in office, and send others of the same kind to Denver, to Pierre, to Salt Lake, to Tallahassee, to Pine Ridge and Rosebud and Ignacio,  to the county courthouses and other places and especially to DC: Rome on the Potomac.

And they will spend the next two and four years stealing MORE money, and MORE liberty, and (though they will swear up and down not) MORE security, and MORE peace.  Because they LIE, and cannot change.

Don’t waste your money, your resources, your time, donating to campaigns for ANY of these people, urging everyone to vote, to cry out.  Spend your time and money preparing to protect yourself, your family, your friends, your property, and if you can your tisopaye, community, neighborhood, from what the politicians and their thugs: bureaucrats and police and gangs and cartels; will do to you with their “new mandate” for power “from the people.”  Make your OWN hope and change, and seek in every way to reduce the power of government, ignore it and live without it as much as possible, and prepare to make do as it waxes and destroys – and ultimately fail.

Make 2016 the year in which we stop believing the lies and encourage people to join us in not believing them.  The first three weeks of this year have already shown the lies and the deeds have not changed: that government continues to corrupt what were once good people and make evil people more evil.  Tell the truth, live the truth, and be prepared to protect you, your loved ones, and all you hold dear against worse than the last two, four, and eight years and decades have brought.