Spineless Demos -- Redux

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

There seems to be a consensus in the blogosphere that the election of enough Democrats in November to take back Congress will result in meaningful investigations, which in turn will lead to impeachments and removals.

No need, says the consensus, to talk about impeachments and removals directly -- might turn off too many voters. Instead, we can just trust that the evidence of impeachable crimes is so strong that, once the opposition is in power, the impeachments and removals will automatically spring from "meaningful investigations".

My suggestion that we quickly circulate a standard-form "tough-love pledge" for candidates to sign -- one that specifies the candidate's willingness to actively work for impeachments and removals AND willingness to actively work for a tough, new "Independent Prosecutor" law to cut through the DOJ obstructions of justice and get down to the business of criminal prosecutions, especially for felony rights violations under 18 USC 241 -- gets harshly snuffed by the consensus. Unnecessary, they say. Might turn off too many voters, they say. Might result in the election of too many Independents, they say.

I doubt that the consensus is the result of any rigorous examination. I suspect that it is the result of some seriously wishful fuzz-think.

The spineless Democrats of our current national government did not self-extract their own spines. They had to have been coerced and compromised by the same money-power forces that caused the Supreme Court to create the unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous decision in Bush v. Gore, 10 December 2000, and its consequent Bush usurpation of the presidency, an unconstitutional anti-law regime.

That's 'treasonous' on the established precedent of the treason findings for the seccessionist state legislators of the 1860s who also violated the Constitution, who did not protect their citizens' rights under the Constitution, and who violated their oaths to uphold the Constitution.

The Bush v. Gore anti-law regime is not some little golly-shucks accident. It is a huge, grind-it-out felony conspiracy against the rights of all Americans to have a president who is elected in accord with the Constitution. It violates 18 USC 241., felony conspiracy against rights. Felony forfeits all immunities -- judicial, executive, and legislative. Do the felony crime, do the time. Under 18 USC 241, convicted co-conspirtors can be sentenced for up to ten years in federal prison.

Under the rule of law, there are no get-out-of-felony-free cards for high station in life. Those cards are only availabie when the high-station-in-life perps are protected from prosecution by "accessories after the fact", as defined in 18 USC 3. When accessories after the fact protect felons, they perpetrate felonies, punishable by nalf the maximum sentence prescribed for the original felony. When accessories after the fact are in a different branch of government than the original felony's perps, Constitutional checks and balances are violated.

As the creator of an unconstitutional anti-law regime, the decision in Bush v. Gore means that everything done by Bush under color of law since his usurpation of the presidency -- laws signed, emergency orders promulgated, appointments made, executive branch policies promulgated, etc. -- are unconstitutional, felonious for their denial of citizen rights, and treasonous. It's a trainwreck of horrendous dimensions.

The initial 18 USC 241 felony conspiracy against rights, Bush v. Gore and the usurpation of the presidency, includes as co-conspirators the Supremes, Bill Clinton, his AG, a chunk of Clinton's DOJ hierarchy, Bush-Cheney, their AG (Ashcroft), and much of Bush-Cheney's DOJ hierarchy. They are all constitutional criminals and felons-in-waiting. Their only proper place is in federal prison.

In the unconstitutinal anti-law regime of the usurped presidency, each and every act done by Bush under color of law is its own 18 USC 241 felony conspiracy against rights -- in addition to whatever crimes each act perpetrates. The felony conspiracy against our soldiers' rights to be sent to war only on the expressed order of Congress includes the Bush v. Gore felony conspiracy against rights.

We can hold the Supremes responsible for knowing, even as they were sewing together the national shroud of Bush v Gore, that their unconstitutional blocking of the Florida electoral process would lead to its original felony conspiracy against rights, its anti-law regime, and its long-lived tangle of unconstitutional illegalities done by the presidential usurper, Bush, under color of law.

We can hold the Supremes responsible for knowing that what they were doing was felony that forfeited judicial immunity, felony for which they could be criminally prosecuted at any time, regardless of their life appointments to the federal bench. Felony has always, and must always, forfeit judicial immunity. When it does not, when judges are free to commit felonies against our laws, then the rule of law is a fiction and the government is a despotism.

Bush v. Gore and the Bush-Cheney Illegitimacy is not a golly-shucks accident that can be dismissed by the Supremes cautioning that the decision should not be used as precedent. It is a big, whopping deal that can be used as precedent by any future Supreme Court to violate separation of powers and intrude into the political process election of a US president.

Whatever money-power did to extract the spines of Democrats was not aimed at the extraction on a few. We don't have what Ian Welch at "The Agonist" calls "Vichy Democrats", implying a few rotten apples in the barrel. We don't even have what I've been calling the Republican wing of co-fascist Democrats, implying the same thing.

What we have is a whole silent barrel of rotten-to-the core, spineless Democrats.

They didn't volunteer. They didn't do the spine- extractions themselves. And they don't keep their silence because they're confused.

Just what the hell will it take for a majority of we the sovereign people to see that Election 2006 cannot mend the Democrats by itself? Even if we somehow perform the miracle of neutralizing the Diebold hack-o-matic vote-counting software.

The Democrat politicians are so utterly compromised now that they will be yanked around by money-power just as easily after Election 2006 as they are right now.

Nazi Hayden at the CIA -- with his NSA wiretapping chit and well-documented anti-Constitution views? No problem, boss, we'll just run a little theatre to make the people think that there's a real 2-day tussle going on between Repubs and Demos.

Feingold, sitting on a tall stack of impeachable Bush crimes: We should maybe by gawd look into this and perhaps even consider a censure. Way to be, Russ. Auto-marginalization equals 100 percent. Strong signal to spineless demos everywhere for all time.

If you think that majorities of Democrats in the House and the Senate -- undominated by growing and threatening citizen action -- will change anything now, you just don't understand our massively corrupted governance. You're living in a bubble.

The Democrat politicians and the DNC are working for themselves. They still think that they're self-employed. Their useless, unfocused message is that they stand for everything -- they've got something for everyone.

If they were working for the people, their message would be a clarion call of utter simplicity -- (1) bring down the Bush-Cheney abomination, (2) rip the Bush-Cheney anti-law regime's unconstitutional statutes out of our legal fabric, and (3) make significant constitutional changes to ensure that nothing like the dual-party, three-branch, Bush-Cheney despotism can ever again be perpetrated against the American people.

It's the message that Kos and Armstrong missed in their recent book, Crashing the Gate.

How could they have missed something so fundamental and apparent? The reason is important. As with the Democrats, the DNC, and most Americans, Kos and Armstrong are still caught in seeing governance itself from the government's point of view. They see democractic markers all around them, but governance itself they see only as what is done vertically by hierarchies of politicians and government.

As soon as they and others begin seeing governance from the people's point of view, the world will change for them. When they see and notice horizontal governance done by nonhierarchical citizens in referendums, the world will change.

We all see elections. But very few notice that the reps are elected in referendums. Elections are just one of the eight people's governance components done in referendums. (See Extraordinary Rights Of Americans", posted on DD Revival, 24 May 2006.)

Seeing governance from the people's point of view is easier said than done, of course. Nearly everything you've read about US governance in your entire lives has prompted you to see it from the government's point of view. The people's point of view is pejoratively branded 'populism', 'socialism', or 'communism'. In our ideology-driven party-line voting, such labels are poisonous emotional propaganda triggers, keeping most people from examining the evidence. Cut through the ideologies, however, drop the labels and go looking for governance from the people's point of view, and, suddenly, you're seeing it with the eyes of democracy.

Seen with the eyes of democracy, the massive corruption of our Constitutional governance demands that growing and threatening citizen action dominate the activities of politicians.

The three-pronged starting point is (1) a standardized "tough-love" pledge for candidates, backing impeachments and a new "Independent Prosecutor" law, (2) process began for a stand-alone Constitutional amendment requiring that all new Constitutional amendments be ratified by national referendum, and (3) process began of reducing about 10 corrupt state legislatures from paritisan bicamerals to nonpartisan unicamerals with CAI's (constitutional amendment initiative, petition process) on the successful 1934 Nebraska model.

Without citizen action to dominate the politicians, we are just begging for more catastrophies to be piled on -- by the Bush-Cheney Illegitimacy and by the bought-out, sold-out Democrats.

But that is the way it has been with American bubbleers for-freaking-ever. Catastrophe piled on top of catastrophe ad nauseum until, finally, the bubble goes pip. It happened in the Reform Era, when horse and buggy citizens fought the good fight against massive corruptions that were butchering them for profits and power.

Somehow, the Bush-Cheney wall-to-wall corruption-butchering of citizens, institutions, international sensibilities, and world peace -- for profits and power -- just has not been massive enough yet to pip the bubble. Now, it looks like we let them pile on one more world-butchering, deceitful catastrophe -- Election 2006.

No help from the blogosphere in sight. Engine of organizing potential and parallel-processing human resources beyond anything civil societies have ever known -- lying fallow in seriously wishful fuzz-think. Snarled at the netroots by still-unrecognized agents provocateur -- diahrea-mouthed cheerleaders for go-nowhere yakity-yak, but also highly skilled trolls, flaming anyone who has action-item ideas offensive to money-power.

No pip in sight.

Just money-power predators, Repubs and Demos, who see civil society as their very own food chain, laughing all the way to the stateless, global bank.

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Notes

1. Bringing down the Bush-Cheney abomination can be more quickly done in the election of an impeachment and removal Congress, Election 2006. However, no changing of the top names after either Election 2006 or Election 2008 will alter the nature of money-power's despotism. That abomination is here to stay until we re-write the Constitution and, consequently, build a new political dynamic -- through the 2nd Nat'l Constitutional Convention. See "Bush-Cheney Trainwreck -- Undo", Part Two, Renewal Objectives & Interactive Tools, posted on DD Revival, 17 May 2006.

2. I've not written my suggestion for a tough-love pledge yet, but it's coming. And you don't have to wait for mine. Write up your own and get it on a blog. We'll talk. If you're curious about past uses of tough-love pledges and their successes with candidates and their constituencies, read Randy Shaw's 1996 book, The Activist's Handbook: A Primer For The 1990s And Beyond, University of California Press, Berkeley.

3. "Consent of the governed" -- not consent of the totally corrupt representatives -- is key to the next wave of citizen action (2nd Nat'l Constitutional Convention). The first thing needed for "consent of the governed" is a Constitutional amendment specifying that all future Constitutional amendments be ratified by national referendum, preferably with "double majority" approval. The double majority is an approving majority of all those voting, plus a majority approval of those voting in a majority of states. It maintains the integrity of simple majority decision-making -- no two-thirds majority approval that is really a one-third minority veto -- and is the legitimacy mechanism used in Swiss national lawmaking since 1891. This stand-alone Constitutional amendment should be part of the three-pronged beginning of citizen action dominating the activities of politicians.

4. A starting-point discussion of why and how to reduce corrupt bicamerals to nonpartisan unicamerals -- and in which states -- is also in "Bush-Cheney Trainwreck -- Undo", Part Two, Renewal Objectives & Interactive Tools.

5. An overview of state-level governance done by the people since 1904 -- with initiative, referendum, and recall petitions and their approving referendums -- can be found in, M. Dane Waters, ed., The Initiative And Referendum Almanac, Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2003. The book includes I&R history and regulations for each I&R state, as well as essays on what has been accomplished with I&R.

Modified Tue 30 May 2006, 1:05 p.m., CST.