Congress & Corporate Welfare

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

New anti-welfare rules will go into effect in October. The welfare rolls will be reduced dramatically. Millions more will be driven into deep poverty. Millions more poor children will lose their mental potential to malnutrition, increasing the pool of the corporate-zombie and prison inmate labor forces for decades. Prison-running corporation stocks are already skyrocketing. Deep poverty is good for business.

Predator elitists everywhere are cheering the 4th Reich's Congress for their vision under the Bush-Cheney leadership.

Once again, the 4th Reich has cut costs and increased profits for the superrich, corporate hierarchies, and national-level politicians. Corporate welfare is at its highest level in recorded history. The Reichscongressamt gave itself another pay raise just last week -- richly deserved.

The Bush-Cheney Usurpation's super-voo-doo economics continues to make steady progress, driving more of the loser-poor and loser-middle-class into the abyss on the far side of the superrich. Social Darwinism is vindicated daily in the 4th Reich.

A strong superrich is a strong nation. Sporatic Congress-in-unison shouts of "Bring 'em on", referring to the nation's external and internal enemies, are now heard throughout the working day on Capitol Hill. As long as we have a strong superrich, nothing can touch us. Any Goths or heathen, crusading Muslims at our gates will be crushed. Impoverished Americans will always be a strong army for their superrich benefactors.

The special theatre staged by the Reichscongressamt to keep impoverished Americans happy with their lot in life can be seen in the Reichsmediaamt's publications throughout the country. For example, in yesterday's "New welfare rules designed to reduce rolls", by Richard Wolf of USA Today, losers everywhere learn how their selfless Congressional leaders struggled for five long years before they could pass the new anti-welfare rules.

In the photo above, Republifascist leaders are seen last year, congratulating their co-fascist wing of Democrats for solidarity on the new anti-welfare rules.

The Reichscongressamt's commission/omission track record on legislation for pro-Empire, pro-secrecy, pro-superrich, pro-privatization, pro-national-debt, pro-hard-science-suppression, pro-global-warming, pro-outsourcing, pro-PNAC, pro-war, pro-war-profiteering, pro-torture, pro-rights-killing, pro-citizen-surveillance, pro-justice-obstruction, pro-education-suppression, pro-911-truth-suppression, pro-tobacco-death-industry, and pro-pharmaceutical-death-industry subjects can no longer be questioned.

The Bush-Cheney Usurpation takes great pride in the loyalty and devotion of the Reichscongressamt.

All that negative and abusive rhetoric from irresponsible alt media and blogger sites about out-sourcing our wonderful politicians, corporate executives, and media mouthpieces to North Korea, Iran, and Haiti is exactly the kind of terrorist threat that we must kill wherever we find it. All three branches of the 4th Reich are working diligently to ensure that dissent is criminalized before Election 2006, when our glorious Reichsdieboldamt will once again deliver the votes that keep our superrich strong.

Sieg heil. Mission accomplished. Sieg heil.

Bank Data for Bush-Cheney

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

We've known five things about Bush-Cheney policy doctrines from near the beginning of their presidential usurpation.

(1) We've known that they lie about nearly everything. (2) We've known that they are psychopathic personalities, commonly misusing and abusing policy doctrine to gain objectives that are unstated, unconstitutional, and illegal, with no conscience for who is harmed in the process. (3) We've known that they put billionaires first, multi-millionaires second, and everybody else dead last. (4) We've known that extreme secrecy overlays everything they do, especially when public knowledge of what they're doing will immediately expose their treasonous unconstitutionalities and felony conspiracies against the rights of citizens in violation of federal statute, 18 USC 241. (5) We've known that Bush and his minions posture him as a commander-in-chief dictator who is above the law -- who is the law, by virtue of his self-proclaimed and phony war on carbunkles, unfriendly journalists, and terrorism -- making everything he does legitimate, no matter how treasonous, unconstitutional, and felonious his actions are to mere mortals and their irrelevant law.

Now -- given those certainties, why would anyone believe that the Bush-Cheney data-mining of national and international bank records is an innocent investigation of terrorist activities?

Given the no-oversight secrecy of the bank-data-mining operation -- and the partnering of Bush-Cheney's treaonous, constitutionally criminal, and felony-overloaded usurpation with international banking, one of the most corrupt industries in the history of man -- we have no way of knowing the extremes of illegality that Bushco and the bankers might have gone to.

We can suppose that bank-data-mining would be helpful to a genuine hunt for terrorists. But Bushco went to war in non-terrorist Iraq, largely, we suspect, to do anything to keep from finding bin Laden, while raking in the oil and war profits. Does Bush really have a $100,000 bounty out on anyone who accidently captures or kills bin Laden?

While bank-data-mining information might be helpful to terrorist-hunting, we know with certainty that the same information would be helpful to multi-billion-dollar corporations whose sleaze want to crush up-and-coming competitors. We know with certainty that bank data is one of the holy grails of corporate espionage. And we know with certainty that Bush-Cheney wouldn't hesitate for a micro-second to help their multi-billion-dollar corporate sleaze buddies against the rabble of lesser corporate sleaze.

What was the question again?

Here's a lollipop. Go play in your little sandbox. The big Empire fascists have imporatant work to do.

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Update, Friday 30 June 2006, 9:00am CDT

Yesterday, the US House of Fascist Thugs voted to condemn media sources who "leaked" information about the Usurper's five-year-old, treasonous, unconstitutional, and felony conspiracy operation to invade the personal privacy rights of Americans who do any business with banks. The vote was 227-183, with 17 Demofascist Treason Party thugs voting with the Republifascist Treason Party thugs.

None of the 17 Demofascist Treason Party thugs should ever again be elected to anything in this country.

This condemnation vote was the last straw for me. I'm now completely irrational about the Criminal Congress. The only news I want to hear about those rat-sucking, treasonous bastards concerns their imprisonments, executions, and corpses.

The American people should have available a petition titled, "Condemnation of the Treasonous, Unconstitutional, and Felony Conspiracy Activities of the US Congress".

The text of the petiton should list those blatantly criminal activities that we know about. Under their vote to unconstitutionally give unconstitutional war powers to Usurper Bush for his unconstitutional invasion orders of Iraq, we should make clear that we intend to pursue criminal prosecution of every assenting Congressional co-conspirator -- all 373 of them -- under 18 USC 241 for the felony murder of our soldiers in Iraq, and that we will pursue the maximum penalty given in that law for all convicted co-conspirators -- the death penalty. Felony murder forfeits legislative immunity.

Next, we the sovereign people should do whatever is necessary to rid ourselves of HAVA and the Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia treasons. Every product ever made or marketed by Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia should be destroyed outright. Back to paper ballots.

The Republican Party should be diselected into nonexistence in Election 2006.

As soon as practicable after Election 2006, we the sovereign people should get into a well-protected 2nd NCC (national constitutional convention), in which we end the Bush-Cheney Fascist Usurpation, rip its laws out of our legal fabric, rip its federal bench fascist thugs out of their jobs, heavily regulate executive branch agencies, meld an optimum system of direct democracy to a still-strong but heavily regulated representative government so that nothing even remotely resembling Bush-Cheney can ever again be perpetrated against us, and completely dismantle corporate sleaze corruption in every industry, local, national, and global.

For a starting point in rep govt regulation, see especially, "Bush-Cheney Trainwreck -- Undo", part two, "Renewal Objectives and Interactive Tools", 17 May 2006, on this blog.

Forward, Direct Democracy, 2.0

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006.

Direct democracy's (DD's) sovereign citizen lawmaking -- initiative and referendum -- is constitutional fact in 21 states (the I&R states) and thousands of "home rule" jurisdictions (city, county, borough, school districts, water districts, etc.). Additionally, many other states have various combinations of the DD governance components -- intitiative, referendum, and recall -- at the state level. In the US, DD is not the "pure direct democracy" of anti-democracy sophistry and propaganda. Citizen lawmaking in the US exists only in combination with represenative govt. Direct democracy (DD) citizen lawmaking (I&R) plus representative government -- DD/rep-govt -- is as American as government can get.

"That to secure these [unalienable] Rights," Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence (DOI), "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed." Those are governments of representatives dependent on consent of the governed, the sovereign people -- not governments of representatives giving consent of, by, and for themselves -- not governments of representatives who are sovereign over the people.

This very American concept of the sovereign people building and controlling representative government, which is clearly subordinate to the sovereign people, was widely held to be worth fighting for. And, of course, the sacrifices of ordinary Americans -- fighting, bleeding, killing, hating, and dying -- hallowed the DOI's conception of the sovereign people delegating just powers to their governments of public servants in the War of Independence, 1775-1783.

The obvious fact that the DOI's implied promises got the ordinary people fighting and kept them fighting -- it was continually read everywhere people would listen and posted everywhere that people might stop to read it -- was meaningless to the majority of the elites. That majority clearly saw the DOI as a Machievellian deceit that would allow their class to gain and hold social, economic, and political power is a new nation with astounding potential. From the new state constitutions, to the 1782 Articles of Confederation, to the 1787 Constitution, there is not one whit of evidence that the majority of elites ever intended to deliver the DOI's implied promises of founding principles.

Pure rep govt does not grant political equality to all citizens. Instead, it absurdly makes the public servants of the ruling elite vastly superior to sovereign civil society. It does not allow the sovereign people to speak for themselves. Instead, its charlatans, demagogues, and psychopaths get to legitimatly speak lies for, and in the name of, the majority of civil society. It does not allow sovereign civil society to directly elect all of its representatives. Instead, it maintains arbitrary corruption grounds called "the Electoral College" and "the independent judiciary" so that individuals in the highest reaches of power are appointed by the elites and insulated from the sovereign people. It does not allow the sovereign civil society direct access to lawmaking. Instead, it makes whatever convoluted, loop-holed, and unenforceable laws best suit its corruption-on-corruption-in-corruption for profits and power. It does not allow sovereign civil society to freely alter the details of their governance. Instead, it protects all of the arbitrary mechanisms that ensure the power of the psychopathic few against the welfare of the many with vague Constitutional provisions and elites-controlled amendment procedures. It does not prevent violations of citizen rights by zealous majorities, greedy corporations, the corrupting superrich, or government itself. Instead, it is the facilitator for rights violations by all of those societal elements -- for the benefit of the superrich, their corporate predators, and the predator politicians themselves.

The pure rep govt of the national Constitution is a profound disconnect between our DOI's founding principles and the elites' corruption machines that have dominated citizen life since the accumulation of wealth during the Civil War -- and the misuse of that wealth for political purposes.

All rights, freedoms, and liberties -- including especially the rights and powers of DD's citizen lawmaking -- limit illicit gains of profits and power. The country's central political conflict is not between left and right. The central political conflict is between the superrich of the class-race elite and the ordinary people's rights, freedoms, and liberties. It is Hamilton vs. Jefferson throughout our history, right into today.

To the class-race elite, any democracy is excessive democracy. And so we see today the great crippling of the electoral system with the Diebold-ES&S-Sequoia, hack-o-matic vote counting software. Any democracy is excessive democracy.

In the US, anti-democracy sophistry and propaganda portrays DD as a misguided effort to intentionally weaken rep govt. Oh, no -- not weaken rep govt. It's one of the emotional triggers that the elites hope will prevent people from examining the evidence. Examined, however, the evidence shows that nothing could be further from the truth.

DD origninated in the Reform Era's drive to strengthen rep govt against the corruption machines that were making rep govt a farse. Reform Era citzens who supported DD, and there were many tens of millions of them, wanted -- demanded -- the strong rep govt promised in the Constitution. It was clear to those citizens that corrupt rep govt could only be made just if the sovereign people checked and balanced the three branches of govt with sovereign citizen lawmaking, brought to bear when needed. (See especially, The National Economic League's 1912 book, The Initiative And Referendum: Arguments Pro And Con By A Special Committee Of The National Economic League. © 1912, J.W. Beatson. Published at Cambridge, MA: Caustic-Claflin Co., Printers.)

In 1912, SCOTUS formally and legally ended predator claims that pure rep govt is the only legal and proper government. The predators, on their corruption machines, demanded that SCOTUS rule that citizen lawmaking violates the Constitution's guarantee of a "republican form of government" in the states. They argued that pure rep govt was the only republican form of government. They asked SCOTUS to pretend along with them that the historical examples of republics mixing citizen lawmaking with rep govt did not exist. They asked SCOTUS to sanctify their corruption machines. SCOTUS didn't play nice. The Court ruled that, based on the history of republics, the mix of rep govt plus any and all direct democracy governance components is a republican form of govt intrinsic to the Constitution.

See especitally, Robert G. Natalson's 1999 issue paper for the Independence Institute, Are Initiatives & Referenda Contrary to the Constitution? See also, David B. Magleby's 1984 book, Direct Legislation: Voting On Ballot Propositions In The United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

The people, SCOTUS said indirectly, are free to fight corruption with their own sovereign law. It's as it should be, in a constitutional republic. After all, the 400 years of DD/rep-govt in Republican Rome, BCE, gave the world the Greco-Roman culture -- a culture whose accomplishments still yield many important legacies, including direct democracy.

The sovereign people are free to check and balance their public servants in the three branches of govt, which, in times of wide-open and pervasive corruption -- e.g., the Guilded Age of the late 1800s, and now -- conspire with each other to reject as much of the Constitution as possible, especially the checks and balances between the three branches. When powerful, arrogant individuals in the three branches of govt collude to overwhelm the Constitution and place themselves above the law, only the sovereign people can hammer them back into their places as public servants under the law.

The people were able to gain enough leverage during the corruption fighting of the Reform Era, circa 1877-1918, to hammer the public servants back into place. However, the public servants did not stay hammered. The people mistakenly walked away from their wins with no institutions in place to control future corruption. Predator elitism's corruption machines snapped back quickly.

By the end of WW1, infused with wealth beyond imagining, the predators collapsed social justice for women and children, gaining cheap labor and driving the 1920s business boom. They bought out US national government, running one wild-eyed, money-mongering scheme after another until their corruptions collapsed the stock market in 1929. Flashing their collective psychopathic personality, demonstrating a complete lack of concern for the lethal harm that their corruptions had done to ordinary people around the world, they waved fops at the people and drove their destructive, money-power-first policies on for another three-plus years, steadily worsening the Great Depression into 1932. As with psychopathic murderers everywhere, they did not stop until they were incapacitated -- by Election 1932 and FDR's presidency.

We'd better get a firm grip on that historical lesson. If we fight the corruption machines today -- if we don't sit on our hands waiting for govt to save us -- we'd better remember that predator elitism is never defeated. The past failures of greed teach no lessons to the greedy -- ever. Give them any latitude, and they will build up from their corporate fascism, plan for thirty years, and then march their fascist despotism right back over the top of us to grab their obscenely excessive profits and power again.

In 1934, Nebraska citizens stepped around the corruptions of party politics and created the first nonpartisan unicameral legislature. Citizens used their initiative powers and rights to reduce their corrupt partisan bicameral to a demonstrably incorrupt nonpartisan unicameral, whose first session was in 1937. It is the only nonpartisan institution anywhere in American state government. Its 69 years of straightforward success adds nonpartisan representative government to the American mix and to the corruption-fighting legacy of direct democracy's I&R citizen lawmaking.

See especially, "The History of Nebraska's Unicameral Legislature", on the legislature's site, at http://www.unicam.state.ne.us/learning/history.htm

In Nebraska, as in 22 other active I&R states, the people can speak for themselves through the initiative and referendum processes. They have no need for a bicameral's House of Representatives or its corrupt majority of predator politicians. Our hopefully pending Constitutional renewal should make that a fact of political life in all states.

As soon as FDR was gone, the US homegrown corporate fascism began eroding everything that the nation had worked for in terms of social justice. The Nixon Era, the Reagan Era, and now the Bush Era have all been high points of American and globalized corporate fascism, each of them eroding social justice as much as the traffic would bear -- to maximize profits and power to the superrich, their corporate predators, and the predator politicians themselves.

The Bush-Cheney Usurpation, null and void from its inception under the principles of constitutional government and the rule of law, is nothing less than a 3-branch fascist despotism. Its interbranch collusions have lifted the fascist depotism above the law, obstructing justice for any of the criminal, Bush-Cheney players.

We have lost our constitutional republic, at least temporarily and possibly forever. Those of us who see the needed remedies that will get our nation back into the hands of the sovereign people are dismayed at the people's historical and civics ignorance, political incompetence, support or indifference for Bush-Cheney, and lack of impulsive organizing to bring their power to bear against this blatantly criminal and treasonous government.

We know that the fascist corruption machines can easily handle any recovery attempts that we might make within the institutions of pure rep govt. We know that the Reform Era legacy of DD's citizen lawmaking, plus the move to nonpartisan representative government spearheaded by Nebraska, is the answer.

Party politics will not get our country back. They are among the corruption machines that took it from us. The horizontally organized, nonhierarchical power of direct democracy is far greater than any political party.

So we look to the founding principles -- not of the Constitution, but to the Declaration of Independence. Those principles are the basis for the DD and nonpartisan rep govt that we collectively developed in the early 20th Century -- and that we need now to help us get our nation back.

The following text is in the sidebar here at DD Revival, under the title, "Executive Summary of Direct Democracy". Comments are not possible in the sidebar, so this post is being used to create a comments section.

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Executive Summary of Direct Democracy, 2.0

The 7 Governance Rights

Our patriot founders fought the 1775-1783 Revolution for the extraordinary rights of Americans implied in the Declaration of Independence. Those seven fundamental governance rights are --

(1) Individual citizens have the right to be politically equal with all other citizens.

(2) The sovereign people have the fundamental right to speak for themselves, in their voting majorities.

(3) The sovereign people have the fundamental right to be their own sovereign masters, democratically and directly electing all of their public servant representatives.

(4) The sovereign people have the fundamental right to remove any elected representative, for cause, without interference from government.

(5) The sovereign people have the fundamental right to control the output of legislation by formulating their own, by vetoing law made by government, and by affirming existing law in such a way that government is barred from amending it -- at every jurisdictional level, without interference from government.

(6) The sovereign people have the fundamental right to alter details of their governance, without interference from government.

(7) The sovereign people have the fundamental right to protect themselves from themselves by establishing the powers within government to administratively, legislatively, and judicially prevent zealous majorities, greedy corporations, the corrupting superrich, and government itself from violating individual and minority citizen rights, as given in the constitution and laws.

The predator elites were willing to bait the people into fighting for the DOI's rights, but they were not willing to deliver on their implied promises. All evidence -- the war-time state constitutions, the 1782 "Articles", and the 1787 "Constituton" -- shows that the DOI was pure deceit, pure Machiavellian deception, on the part of the majority of the American elites.

The elites greedily wanted as much social, economic, and political power as they could make off the backs of ordinary Americans. They were not about to give the rabble the rights that would limit elites gaining and increasing the profits and power that belonged only to the elites.

The elites were true to their class, not to their nation.

The 8 DD Rights

Ordinary Americans had to live with the ever-ratcheting corrupiton machines until long after the Civil War. Then the corruption machines became so oppressive, to so many people, that it raised the citizen backlash known as the Reform Era. The urban Progressives crashed into the systemic problems of the elites' half-republic.

Ordinary people had known from the beginning -- no citizen lawmaking, no republic. But they had been overwhelmed by the elites' sweet-talking liars. Then, in the butcheries of the Guilded Age, they saw that Aristotle's "false good" of giving too much power to the rich had turned into Aristotle's "true evil" of destructive constitutional encroachments by the rich.

True Progressives of that period didn't try to stop corruption by playing inside the box of the elites' corrupt rep govt. They didn't waste their time rebuilding some mega-corrupt political party that was demagogically promising to end the corruption machines and save the republic. They went outside the corrupt rep govt box and rammed DD's citizen lawmaking down the elitist throats of at least 19 state constitutions, arguably more.

The Reform Era was the greatest democracy movement of recorded history. Many tens of millions of ordinary Americans demonstrated that we the sovereign people have the power to rip the guts out of the corruption machines. They devised the greatest corruption-fighting package ever created by ordinary people against elitist domination and butchery of ordinary people for profits and power.

The eight DD rights sort themselves into three categories --

Administrative functions:

(1) The people's direct election of all representatives; done in open, fair, and peer-reviewed referendums called 'elections' (most Americans have been so propagandized into ignorance that they do not recognize "elections" as being either referendums or direct democracy), and

(2) the people's recall of a public official's election who has violated the public trust or simply offended too many citizens; done by petition process.

Legislative functions:

(3) The people's constitutional amendment initiative, to propose amendments to our consitutions without government interference; done by petition process;

(4) the people's statute law initiative, to propose statute law without government interference; done by petition process;

(5) the people's statute law veto, now known as the "referendum" (should be changed to the "remand" to minimize confusion), to reject statute law made by representative government; done by petition process; and

(6) the people's statute law affirmation to bar government from amending a law that the people do not want changed; done by petition process.

Consultative functions:

(7) The legislature's statute law referral to the people's referendum, and

(8) the legislature's constitutional amendment referral to the people's referendum.

The worst of the state-level corruption machines promptly disappeared into the smoke and mirrors of national govt. It looked like the people had won.

And then the civil society's political sophistication failed them. They made a horrendous mistake. They too-quickly turned away from their wins, returning to their own pursuits. They left no citizen institutions to watch over what they'd won.

The elites quickly, quietly, and deceitfully created their own "Take-Back Era".

In every I&R state, they overwhelmed the people's wins with unconstitutional statutes, using "separation of powers" violations and unlawful "binding judicial review of proposed law" to delay, alter, and/or reject citizen-proposed law that was offensive to money-power. Those unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous manipulations of citizen-proposed law continue to this very day, largely undiscovered.

However, the Reform Era DD legacy for corruption fighting lives on, locked away safely in the constitutional law of many states, where no representative can go. The greatest corruption-fighting package ever devised is just sitting there -- ready for us to clean up and use today.

Note, please, that the "Unity America" action plan -- a plan for springboarding off regional and national citizen action group (CAG) organizations to come -- incorporates use of the CAI in 17 states to reduce corrupt bipartisan bicamerals to relatively uncorrupt nonpartisan unicamerals. This assertion of our sovereign DD rights will take us a long way toward getting our country back.

It would make civics lessons flow like water across the country, increasing the people's political sophistication back toward what it was during the Reform Era.

The 17 target states are Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and South Dakota.

The "Unity America" action plan is outlined in the post, "Open Letter To Susan--Making Bush-Cheney Null & Void", 13 September 2006, on this blog.

When we become sophisticated enough, and have gained control of our arrogant and corrupt governments, our sovereign citizen lawmaking will allow us to resolve our many critical political problems. One of the first should be the abolishing of the unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous Federal Reserve system. See especially, "The Fed -- Jekyll Island Monster", 07 July 2006, on this blog.

No sustainability economy will be possible until the private corporation Federal Reserve and its treasonous "fractional reserve banking" usury are dead and gone forever. The Fed is the overarching corruption machine that makes every other in the globalized, omnibus corruption engine possible.

(Last modified, Wed 27 Sep 2006, at 11:45am CDT.)

Wingnuts Out To Snuff The Voting Rights Act

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

It's the Rove White House shotgun approach. Just snuffing the electoral system with Diebold hack-o-matic, nuclear-bomb, vote-counting software and a wide array of Democratic voter derailments -- including felony conspiracies in violation of 18 USC 241 to destroy voter registrations and absentee ballot requests, to use "caging" to eliminate Democratic voters from the rolls, and to just let Katrina rip New Orleans to shreds -- is not enough. Now the Criminal Congress branch of the fascist despotism has been engaged to snuff the venerable Voting Rights Act.

From the "Civil Rights Coalition for the 21st Century" yesterday, on their site, "civilrights.org", the piece "Important vote on the Voting Rights Act reauthorization hi-jacked":

The nation's most successful civil rights law, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), which has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress for over 40 years and has been reauthorized four times by both Democratic and Republican presidents, was derailed today in the House.

A small group of House Republicans, including Lynn Westmoreland, R.Ga., hijacked an important vote to renew key protections in a law that has changed the face of American politics. ...

This, from the Republican Party and its good little goosesteppers, whose mega-corrupt, treasonous, anti-constitutional abominations, and felonies against our laws merited diselection into nonexistence beginning with the Bush-Cheney Usurpation in December 2000.

The Civil Rights Coalition piece continues.

Civil rights groups said that despite significant progress made during the last four decades, there is no question that barriers to full and equal minority voter participation remain.

"Many of those trying to derail the Voting Rights Act represent states with the most egregious records of discrimination in voting-- discrimination that continues to this day," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

RenewtheVRA.org, a collaborative of national organizations with strong experience protecting minority voting rights, which includes LCCR, the NAACP and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the ACLU, commissioned a series of reports that detail continuing threats to voting rights in the states covered by the VRA's expiring provisions.

Read more.

It should be clear to everyone outside the anti-rights despotism, their parasites, and their servile that all governmental institutions and agencies, as well as the Democratic Party corruption machine, are corruption-compromised beyond recognition and hope.

Nothing will change in the anti-rights picture until the people stop sitting on their hands, waiting for government to save them. Every right that the rat-bastards of money-power's fascist despotism can limit or snuff means extra profits and extra power for the superrich, their corporate sleaze, and their predator politicians. Both parties. All three branches.

We the sovereign people are the only help that is coming. The direct democracy rights and powers, legacy from the Reform Era corruption-fighting of a hundred years ago, will help us do the job to end the despotism and prevent its future recurrence. But it is all on us. No blueblood, no great political leader, no revamped Democratic Party is going to swoop in and turn off the corruption engine.

It is all on us -- at the grassroots, at the netroots. Get used to it. Getting it done will be messy, hard work. It's going to cut into your liesure time. It's going to cut into your cocoon. It's going to put you in face-to-face groups with strangers. It's going to challenge your people skills. It's going to bury your big, fragile ego in cooperation and democratic doings. Get used to it. We're all we've got.

Do something. Start now, please.

Direct Democracy Rights

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

I've frequently laid out these eight direct democracy rights in earlier writings. Most recently, they were included in the piece, "Extraordinary Rights Of Americans".

Collectively, the DD rights give the people the power to minimize corruption. Those who depend on corruption to make their excessive profits don't like the DD rights. To them, any direct democracy is excessive democracy -- and that includes fair elections.

Pre-revolution Americans, adults in the 1760s and 1770s, demanded "the tradtional rights of Englishmen" from the abusive British govt. That demand was the ordinary people's driving force of the gathering revolution.

When Jefferson wrote our founding principles into the Declaration of Independence (DOI), he held up a mirror to the rights that Americans had really wanted for decades. Those were rights far beyond the traditional rights of Englishmen. They were, in fact, the extraordinary rights of Americans -- and they were, by God, worth fighting for.

Vox populi, vox dei, echos out of the ancient Roman Republic. The voice of the people is the voice of God. God's voice is not the voice of deceit, not the voice those most likely to vote, not the voice of charlatans or demagogues -- but the full voice of all the citizens, sometimes measured in consensus, somethimes measured in ballots. It was a key part of Roman gravitas, and it was a widely known concept to ordinary Americans in the pre-Revolution years.

Seven extraordinary governance principles can be derived from Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. The eight DD governance rights that give voice and process to those extraordinary governance principles stand legitimized in many state constitutions.

None of those DD rights are written into our national constitution. None of the eight DD rights is peacefully available to the people at the national level. The political dynamic that springs from our Constitution even limits the DD right of electing representatives. The rabble are not to be trusted. Only the right people must be allowed to elect presidents and vice presidents. The Electoral College is made of the right people. By definition, whatever corruption they perpetrate is right.

The pure representative government that springs from the Constitution was, and is, counter-revolutionary.

One of the breathtakingly powerful argument-sets supporting the necessity of our having all eight DD governance rights at every jurisdictional level in the nation is the 1863 emancipation of slaves -- and its murderous aftermath.

The emancipation's underpinning was the DOI's statement, "all men are created equal", leveraged against the Constitution's freedom of and from religion -- which negated the Bible's unexamined condoning of slavery in its historically pre-modern societies. In the early 1860s, Jefferson's 1776 extraordinary rights of Americans reached out of the Declaration of Independence and into the Constitution -- and drove the emancipation.

However, the mega-corrupt, pure rep govts, state and national, would not begin to protect African-American rights. Few made any effort at all. And without the eight direct democracy governance rights promised in the DOI, African-Americans were politically helpless.

Grant, as president, gave up trying to protect African-American rights in the early 1870s. The KKK ran freely above the law and murderously out of control. African-Americans paid with their lives -- living while black, tortured while black, dead while black.

Then, the mega-corrupt major political parties staged their ballot-count and Electoral College fraud in Election 1876. To break the political party gridlock, major players of both parties got together and made an evil deal. They mutually promised no enforcement of the recently passed 15th Amendment (the right of blacks to vote) in return for ending Reconstuction in the south, and in return for putting Republican Rutherford Hayes into the White House. It was the much-ballyhooed, falsely bi-partisan, "Compromise of 1876".

It was no "compromise" at all. It was a business deal paid for with African-American lives.

Of course, the promise of no 15th Amendment enforcement remained secret for a long time. Publicly, the great "Compromise" resulted in the re-uniting of elites North and South -- to make tons of money together. Publicly, it ended the hardships of Reconstruction. Privately, it gave the KKK unlimited freedom to do whatever they wanted to African-Americans.

It was another murderous treason against the nation -- brokered by the major political parties and maintained by pure representative government -- for the benefit of the superrich, their corporate sleaze, and the predator politicians.

Is this starting to sound familiar?

Presidential administrations of both parties were true to their no-15th-Amendment promise for over 60 years, until well into the FDR presidency. African-Americans were denied the right to vote with all sorts of restrictions. They were left politically helpless throughout the South. This, while white supremacists of the KKK shot, lynched, burned-out, and tortured to death any African-American who annoyed them. This, while the white supremacists of the KKK shot, lynched, and burned-out hundreds of African-Americans in each of their phony, "race riots", staged in many US cities into the 1920s and 1930s.

The Civil Rights Act of 1965 marks a tremendous change in the nation's legal climate regarding African-Americans. But, in 2006, we're still not done with bigoted hate crimes. The über-bigots of the white supremacy groups still have hatred enough to represent lethal threat.

The superrich still have contempt enough for all the rabble. Their PNAC-driven and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq, their war crimes and crimes against humanity, and their torture/murder gulag, fueled by "rendention" and secret CIA prison camps are blatant, lethal contempt. Less blatant, but just as lethal are the 400,000 American lives lost every year to nicotene poisoning; the million-plus American lives lost every year to untreated atherosclerosis, while EDTA chelation, the safe preventative and cure, is actively suppressed by the medicrat sleaze and pure rep govt predators, while doctors rush the public into unnecessary $100,000 open-heart surgeries and other unnecessary procedures: and the millions of poor children who lose their minds' potential to malnutrition every year.

The societal losses, so that predators can have more profits and more power, are immeasurable and unconscionable. This is species-juvenile governance.

Without fully independent, sovereign citizen lawmaking melded to a properly regulated representative government, all ordinary people are politically helpless.

The bigots have shifted from lynching's political intimidation to more subtle denials of voting rights -- read, Diebold hack-o-matics and Rove-style orchestrations of dirty tricks -- but, subtle or not, the major political parties are still keeping the rabble down and keeping the right people up. We have more than enough reasons to ban political parties from any governmental activity. We have more than enough reasons to create a completely nonpartisan representative government.

The corruptions and fraud grow with every technology. Black, red, white, latino, whatever, are cross-pressured out of politics by unkept promises and blatant corruption. Those who remain -- the servile to this massively failed system of governance -- are voting-manipulated until there is no truth, no certainty, nothing even approaching a fair election of representatives.

Had all eight DD governance components been a part of our Constitution in 1787 -- as they should have been, given that American patriots had just fought a Revolution for them -- our own Aftrican-Americans might have been emancipated long before 1863. There might not have been a Civil War.

There sure-as-hell would NOT have been the murderous, hundred-year aftermath of the 1863 emancipation -- while elites South and North got together to make obscenely excessive profits.

So here they are. These eight DD governance rights are already standing legal facts of constitutional law in many US states, thanks to the citizen action groups of the early 1900s. The DD rights are a legacy from the Reform Era, hands down the greatest democracy movement of recorded history. Their mix with representative government is a republican form of government intrinsic to the Constitution, according to many of our highest courts in Reform Era rulings, and later. They need to be cleaned up in the I&R states, where they are unconstitutionally controlled for the benefit of the predators. They need to be made fully independent of state govt interference. But they are sitting there, safely locked away in constitutional law, ready for our use against today's mega-corruption.

The eight DD governance rights are the greatest anti-corruption package ever constructed by humankind. We shouldn't squander the legacy.

We shouldn't wonder that the predators will tell any lie, break any law, spend any amount of money, or divide any civil society against itself with the vilest depravities to prevent even one nation more than Switzerland from gaining the DD rights.

The American DD governance rights self-organize into three categories.

• Administrative functions:

(1) The people's direct election of all representatives; done in open, fair, and peer-reviewed referendums called 'elections', and

(2) the people's recall of a public official's election who has violated the public trust or simply offended too many citizens; done by petition process.

• Legislative functions:

(3) The people's constitutional amendment initiative, to propose amendments to our consitutions without government interference; done by petition process;

(4) the people's statute law initiative, to propose statute law without government interference; done by petition process;

(5) the people's statute law veto, now known as the "referendum" (should be changed to the "remand" to minimize confusion with referendum-the-vote), to reject statute law made by representative government; done by petition process; and

(6) the people's statute law affirmation to bar government from amending a law that the people do not want changed; done by petition process.

• Consultative functions:

(7) The legislature's statute law referral to the people's referendum, and

(8) the legislature's constitutional amendment referral to the people's referendum.

Some Notes.

First, get over the anti-DD propaganda that the Constitution's authors are our "founding fathers". Our founding fathers are the war-hallowed patriots who put their lives and meager family fortunes at risk, 1775-1783, so that they and their progeny would have the direct democracy rights promised in the Declaration of Independence.

We are a nation of dual foundings. The 1787 Constitution's authors are the founding elitists of the unconstitutionally ratified political dynamic that buried the DOI's direct democracy rights in Machiavellian deceits and over-vague provisions to be adjudicated by class-driven judges. They nailed us with an elites-favoring governance that strips us of five of the eight DD governance rights for which our patriots fought and died in the cause of Independence. Using the Roman Republic's 400 years as the eternal model for 'republic' -- with its sovereign citizen lawmaking mixed with rep govt -- the Constitution's authors gave us an elitist half-republic, when a full republic had been promised and fought for.

The Constitution's authors usurped the extraordinary rights of Americans given to us in the Declaration of Independence and hallowed on our battlefields. The Constitution's authors were elitist bigots keeping the rabble down -- true to their class, not to their nation. They were counter-revolutionaries in service to the class-race elite and the opportunity of all elites to get obscenely excessive social, economic, and political power at the expense of the ordinary people.

The slavery that the Constitution's authors re-instituted had only one face for them -- immense profits for elites, South and North.

Second, the last two DD components, the legislature's referrals to the people, are badly abused. State legislatures frequently stage theatre to playact how they're unable to pass a bill that has great pro-people provisions in it. Then they pawn it off on the people to pass in a referendum. When someone outside the good ol' boys corruption club gets around to reading the fine print, the pro-people provisions pale in comparison to the anti-people, pro-predators provisions that again rape and butcher ordinary people for profits. The people have cut their own throats, making constitutional law for the corrupt psychopaths who use that law to butcher the people. Treasonous deceit by another mega-corrupt state govt widens and deepens the multi-branch abyss between rich and poor -- again.

But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Those same now-abused referrals are worth their weight in gold if we can turn the legislatures into pro-people institutions. Then the referrals become a part of top-down lawmaking that can truly benefit the people. Contrary to popular opinion, professional lawmakers can be good for the people. We see the phenom in Swiss lawmaking routinely. The 1999 Swiss constitution, probably the best on the planet, was done after a two-year deliberation by the people on provisions written by their pro-people Parliament.

See my States DD Chart for which US states have the leguslature's statute law referral. Not all do.

Forty-nine of the fifty states have the legislature's constitutional amendment referral. Delaware is the only state in which the sovereign people are prohibited from voting their consent on a constitutional amendment. In Delaware, only the predator politicians are allowed to alter the state's constitution. How freaking insane is that? How much does that contradict the DOI's promise of "consent of the governed"?

Third, the statute law affirmation is constitutional law in only one state -- Nevada. But it's track record shows that it is a valuable adjunct to the sovereign people's ultimate authority.

The provision has only been used by Nevada citizens five times since its inception in 1908. Its last use, in 1990, put the society's predators on notice that Nevada citizens will not tolerate the violation of human rights.

In 1990, after about two years of gathering noise in Nevada's corrupt legislature, the predator politicians moved on a bill to outlaw abortion in violation of Roe v. Wade. A few small women's organizations, aided by Republican legislator Sue Wagner, filed a petition for a statute law affirmation, what Nevada calls a "referendum on existing state law". If approved, the petition would freeze in place the then-current Nevada laws on abortion -- which were a balancing act between permitting abortion and counseling to avoid abortion, and widely approved of in Nevada civil society.

Most importantly, approval of the petition would mean that Nevada's abortion laws were put permanently off-limits to the legislature. Only a referendum by the all the voters could amend the abortion laws. It's called a "see us first" provision. The legislature could write amendment language and refer it to the people for approval, but they could do no amending or repealing on their own.

The petition quickly gained more than enough signatures to qualify it for the Election 1990 ballot.

As the election neared, the CSM (corporate sleaze media) trumpeted all sorts of deceits and anti-DD propaganda about how the people would reject this attempt to violate the political system given to them by the magnificient and omniscent "founding fathers". The CSM scum pond sloshed every day with new anti-abortion statements by pillars of the community and polls of galactic importance, showing overwhelming support for the anti-abortion cause.

In the coffee shops, bars, sports clubs, hair dressing salons, church basement "socials", and wherever else citizens gathered informally, the CSM became a huge source of entertainment and laughs. I was a Reno resident at the time. As the election neared, the people's sense of who and what they believed became more focused and sharper. Clearly, the majority sided with women's rights.

The "referendum on existing state law" was approved by 63.5 percent of those voting. 201,004 voted yea. 115,707 voted nay.

For weeks after the election, the CSM just vibrated with disbelief and predictions that representative government would collapse. The anti-DD propaganda became more intense in the post-mortem than it had been before the election.

What actually happened, however, was that the overheated emotions of extremists on both sides of the abortion issue simply evaportated. The legislature's predators moved on to other, quieter corruptions. And, suddenly, the civil society was ticking along again, taking care of its families and rightful business as usual. The peacefulness, the lack of hourly stress and strife, was palpable.

The sovereign people and their DD governance right of the statute law affirmation had settled the issue. Women's rights under Roe v. Wade were not violated. The Nevada balancing-act abortion laws, still one of the best compromises known for all concerned, stood unmolested by ideology and corruption.

Fourth, the CAI -- the constitutional amendment initiative -- is the most powerful of the DD governance components. It is held by the citizens of 18 states. It rightfully puts the sovereign people's law straight into the constitution, where predator politicians cannot alter it. It is the hallmark of the people's sovereignty.

It says, We are the sovereign people and this is our law. Those of you whom we elect or appoint to office are public servants, not public masters, because you cannot formulate law and put it directly into the constitution. All you do legally is done with powers that we delegate to you, none of which gives you sovereignty, regardless of your deceitful claims to "representative sovereignty".

It's not just a reality for the 18 states having the CAI. The people's sovereignty, our power to put law directly into the constitution, based on binding referendums, is legal reality in every state constitution except Delaware's. In Delaware, the sovereign people are buried by representative usurpation. Citizens are barred from giving their rightful, direct consent to constitutional amendments.

The sovereign people are also barred from directly consenting to constitutional amendments to the national Constitution. How freaking insane is that? How much does that contradict the Declaration of Independence's "consent of the governed"?

(Modified Tue 20 Jun 2006, 9:15am)

Anti-Direct-Democracy Propaganda

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

After my experiences through the past two days with a thread of comments on the Truthout blog -- written in response to my "diary" cross-posting of "Bush Wiretapping In 1936 Nazi Germany" -- I had an apostrophe, you know, epiphany. It was unavoidable. The realization slammed home. The lib-progs (liberal-progressives) collectively turn off at the mere mention of the terms, "direct democracy", "populism", or anything related.

Initial comments to my diary cross-posting were very civilized. The anti-trollish rules on the Truthout blog are apparently well-enforced. There's a better cut of commenters there. But there was a change in the weather as soon as I began discussing the need to use DD outside the box of our mega-corrupt, pure rep govt.

There was no querying about why I hold my DD/rep-govt views and no discussion that indicated any examination of evidence pro or con. There was no expression of anything logical or reasonable. There were a couple of off-the-mark comments about demands to and by local and state govts for impeachments, but no grip on my discussion of people-handled solutions. Then there was just silence.

It could only have been a result of emotional-level turn off.

To me, this indicates that the 200-plus years of money-power shills planting anti-DD propaganda is the root cause. From the "Federalist Papers" on, the anti-DD propaganda, sophistries, vacuous arguments, convoluted polemics, spin, and out-right lies have been a major activity of the predator elites.

Collectively, we the sovereign people cut through that propaganda barrier in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Many tens of millions of Americans came to the conclusion that the prevasive corruption of their times negated the representative government that they wanted. They saw that the people are the only effective check and balance on governments wide open to corruption. (Never more true than today.)

They increased direct democracy from merely electing representatives to formulating citizen law, vetoing legislature-made law, and stepping out of government's "impeachment" cronyism to recall the elections of those who violated the public trust. Parts of those democracy increases went into the constitutions of 26 US states, 1898-1918. It was the Reform Era, the greatest democracy movement of recorded history.

Elites fought back hard. In all the states with direct democracy's I&R (initiative and referendum), they passed "administrative law" statutes that directed public officials and judges to violate the state and federal constitutions so that I&R could be controlled by the right people -- and the rabble kept down. Their unconstitutionalities -- "separation of powers" and "binding judicial review of proposed law" -- are so subtle and seemingly authoritative that the criminality is generally undiscovered yet today.

And, of course, the elites went right back into the hunt for effective anti-DD propaganda. They started with what worked for the "gentlemen" of the 1780s. Any sophistry / spin / bad-argument that worked was resurrected. Much of what worked in the 1780s was already time-tested. Much of it began working again in the 1920s.

There is no puzzle here. The Revolutionary War Era college education was the "classical" education of Greek and Roman texts studied in the original Greek and Latin. Anyone passing such an education through elitism's filters -- as did most of the college-educated "gentlemen" of the 1750s to 1780s -- would have seen that direct democracy had always allowed the people to limit the social, economic, and political power of the elites.

Conversely, seen through elitism's filters, the absence of direct democracy had always allowed the elites to gain obscenely excessive profits and power. The multi-branched abyss between populous rich and populous poor at the fall of the Roman Empire has probably never been equaled in any later society -- although the current US society is steadily approaching that overall situation.

I conclude that the anti-DD machinations of the elites, 1920s to now, dominate the emotional non-thinking of most Americans. I conclude that online lib-progs, as with the religious right and other right-wing extremists, are emotionally set against DD as any sort of governmental option -- especially at the national government level.

The remedy, if there is one, is to begin a project to use logic and reason to take apart the irrational, anti-DD propaganda -- bad argument by bad argument. It won't be earth-shaking. We only have to open some minds to a willingness to examine evidence and to react cerebrally, not emotionally.

I've suspected for a long while that such a project would be necessary. Writings of mine from 1999 to 2003 are laced with sections on the bad arguments of anti-DD propaganda. Still, it took a few months experience with the lib-prog blogs to turn the suspicion into reality.

The project is necessary. Pro-direct-democracy and pro-people logicians wanted, preferably with legal training or philosophy of law backgrounds.

No matter how extreme any near-future catastrophe, including collapse of the national economy in WMD attacks, a bird flu pandemic, financial-industry-triggered global depression, or eruption of one or more of the 3 western-states super volcanoes (all way past due in their natural cycles -- one would be a near-extinction event for the human species, worldwide), there is no hope for pro-people help from the lib-prog community until their emotional rejection of DD/rep-govt has been reversed. In the anarchy following such a catastrophe, the lib-progs would be out to resurrect the Democratic Party.

The importance of the current emotional rejection of DD/rep-govt by the lib-progs should not be underestimated. There are a number of populous ideologies ready and waiting for national or global anarchy -- so that they can take power. Any one of them would re-introduce another anti-people elitism that will simply plunge us back into the same old, deep doo-doo. We'd be right back to the species-juvenile super-competition among elites for who gets to butcher the people next. Civil society would again be the private food chain of some favored few.

The threat of such a future is even wrapped up in the nebulous "consensus" of the World Social Forum -- a horizontal consensus waiting for the arrival of the behind-the-scenes vertical hierarchy..

Species-mature governance will not happen until an optimum system of sovereign, fully independent, direct democracy is mixed with a well-regulated and nonpartisan system of representative government.

Let the project begin. Watch for the series, "Direct Democracy vs. Sophism 101".

Bush Wiretapping In 1936 Nazi Germany

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

OK, is everyone clear? The presidential usurper, GW Bush, thinks that he is the dictator here and that the Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper. He thinks he is above the law by reason of his self-proclaimed and phony War On Terrorism. He thinks that our Constitutional governance is his despotism. The majority of the US Supreme Court agrees. The majority of Congress, including many treasonous Democrats, agrees. And some significant fraction of the lower federal bench agrees.

"Judge Defers Decision on U.S. Wiretap Suit", By Jui Chakravorty, Reuters, 12 June 2006.

DETROIT (Reuters)—A federal judge on Monday deferred making an immediate decision on a request that the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program be halted as a violation of law.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit in January, asked U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor to stop the White House from intercepting international phone calls and e-mails without a warrant in its fight against terrorism, saying it violates Americans' free speech and privacy rights. ...

Taylor deferred any ruling. Another hearing is scheduled for July 10.

(Published by Baseline, 13 June 2006.)

No matter how undefined Taylor's intention right now, she is obviously setting up the situation so that any ruling in this case can come after Election 2006.

Any US federal court judge who can look squarely into the face of the December 2000 presidential usurpation -- and its grossly treasonous, unconstitutional, and illegal 2-party, 3-branch despotic ruination of our nation since -- and DEFER a ruling on the grossly treasonous, unconstitutional, and illegal wiretapping done by the goosesteppers at NSA on Bush's order should be deported to 1936 Nazi Germany.

If Taylor's ruling on this case comes down in favor of Usurper Bush's claims to be above our law, she will be part of the felony conspiracy against citizen rights, as defined in 18 USC 241, for the warrantless wiretaps admitted to by Usurper Bush. Warrantless wiretaps can only be done in violation of our Constitutionally guaranteed personal privacy rights and in violation of FISA, and Taylor knows it. On conviction as a co-conspirator in the felony violation of 18 USC 241, she can be fined and imprisoned for up to ten years, and she knows it. Felony forfeits judicial immunity, just as it does executive and legislative immunity -- and she knows it.

But she also knows that she is above, and will be protected from justice under, our laws. The treasonous, unconstitutional, and felonious obstructors of justice at Strassemadchenführer Gonzales' Gestapo will protect her -- as they protect all of the other fascist thugs in the Bush Usurpation.

Direct Democracy Blogging In The Netroots

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

Even a short time spent barging around in the blogosphere demonstrates that a DD/rep-govt blogging community is sorely needed here. We need cross-country organization to help clean up the unconstitutional and arbitrary control of local- and state-level I&R. Governments constantly perpetrate felony conspiracies against I&R rights and citizen-proposed law in the states. They get away with those felonies because they are not being watched anywhere near closely enough. We're just flat not organized enough to do the watching and reacting, let alone the proactive stuff that should have been done decades ago.

The blogosphere gives us -- the DD/rep-govt community -- the best set of organizing and action-item tools available anywhere in our society.

We could do all the needed organizing and consensus-finding in face-to-face meetings, Internet bulletin board communities, and email discussion lists. But we'd still be short, compared to what we can do in the blogosphere.

The half-again that we can gain in the blogosphere is in the built-in connections with the MSM (mainstream media) and the BAM (blogatomic media -- never did like "BSM", blogstream media, bullshit media). Those connections are becoming more populated, more complicated, and more sophisticated every month. The political, economic, environmental, alt-fuels, sustainability models, and anti-war facets of our society are plugging in more and more to the blogosphere -- for many different reasons. Google now provides a separate service for searching just the blogs. We need to pay attention.

We'll have more access to more Americans if we take care of business in the blogosphere.

The most-visible majority of reform-minded netroots junkies today are "progressives", rushing back to the Democratic Party, with little baby half-step thoughts of reform done from inside the system. They've lost track of those of us 1960s denizens of change who took our shiny new educations on top of military experience inside the machine and were ground up like hamburger. They've lost track -- again -- of money-power's corruption engine and its enormity. But forget you if you try to warn them off or want anything different than what they want. Most of their minds have clanged closed, emotions-triggering propaganda flies around and rules, and few are interested in examining the evidence.

Our DD/rep-govt talk of working outside the system, of breaking out of their hermetically-sealed box of corrupt-to-the-max pure rep govt, is little more than ignorant, unAmerican, alien sedition to most of them.

How dare we talk of changing the magnificinet, omnipotent founders' work? (As if that change hadn't already been made constitutional law in 34 states and thousands of "home-rule" jurisdictions over the past hundred-plus years.) How dare we suggest that we, the only nation to have democracy right, go over to the direct democracy that the magnificient founders loathed and hated -- and that history has proven can't work here? (Despite the fact that it's been working here very well, thank you, for over a hundred years -- despite corrupt state govt's unconstitutional and arbitrary delay, alteration, and/or rejection of any citizen-proposed law offensive to money-power.) How dare we waste their time?

Now, if it wasn't for that sticky business with Jefferson's founding principles in the Declaration Of Independence -- where all our DD/rep-govt components are clearly made the inviolable rights of all Americans for all time -- today's progressives would be right up there in the cat-bird's seat, along with super-slime mouthpieces like David Broder.

Today's "progressives" -- mere shadows of the Reform Era Progressives -- are the only positive-reform netroots in the blogosphere now. Their reform heart is good, but they are snarled in place, inside the pure rep govt box, making nice with the Democratic Party corruption monster, and going nowhere.

They will be valuable once the corruption engine cuts them off from a hundred different directions -- again -- and they realize that corruption-busting can only be done outside the box, out on the DD turf, as history amply proves. For now, it must be enough for us that they are pioneering Internet citizen organizing for political matters, and we should pay attention.

Anyone tuned to DD/rep-govt at the state and local levels knows that rep govt is made as good as it can be ONLY when DD has the traction to prevent rep govt's corrupt actions. We've seen a trend in small govt toward more refusal to acknowledge DD's constitutional authority, in more unconstitutional actions to arbitrarily control citizen-proposed law. Many citizens have been frustrated enough by such cross-pressuring to withdraw from politics.

Come back. We've got the power to clean up the unconstitutional, arbitrary, small-govt gauntlet. We just haven't been appyling the power to the right places. I've some pointed suggestions, and we can talk.

To save our state and national constitutions' worthy cores, and the rights and liberties they house, we need to think and work outside the corruption box, out on the DD turf. We've got to amplify our voices with cross-country organizations -- just as the Reform Era citizens did over a hundred years ago. More strength in numbers, for many reasons.

DD/rep-govt political junkies are needed in the blogosphere. Show up. Do what you can.

I started my blog to encourage re-tooling from consumers to citizens, as a platform for political philosophy topics, and to aid the crushing of Bush-Cheney. But I'm expanding on those themes.

DD blogs, it now seems to me, should also be voices for state- and local-level political issues. If the site's lead blogger is located in Montana, then his/her blog should cover Montana state and local issues. If the lead blogger is in Florida, ditto. If in South Dakota, ditto. So on and so on.

First, in the I&R states, we should spotlight the I&R campaigns in which petitions have already been filed. We should say which are good for the people, which are bad for the people, and why. We should say which are good for the corrupt elitist slime, and why.

The I&R Institute site still provides a good shortcut to basic info on the filed petitions in each state. You can still go to IRI, at http://www.iandrinstitute.org/ -- click on "Ballotwatch" in the horizontal nav-bar in the header, scroll way down to the US map, click on, say, California, and then, in the left column, click on "Elections Division". Now you're on a state govt page where the main mission is to baffle you with bullshit. The fewer of us who figure out how to access information, the fewer problems for them. You'll have to be pretty thorough in your exploration of this "Elections Division" page's links.

On the California page, the current ballot measures are found by clicking on the red button, "Vote 2006", sub-titled, "Voter Information Guide". (Easy stuff, once you've outlasted the blizzard-of-bullshit array of cute buttons with no clear clues as to what they link to.) Once on the "Voter Information Guide" page, the most complete info is accessed by clicking on "Ballot Measure Summary" in the left column.

Second, DD blogs in the I&R states should write about any issue that should be turned into a citizen-proposed law -- a citizen-formulated initiative -- a petition. This is a good gig for "guest authors". Watch the local newspapers and contact anyone who is passionate about an idea that should go into citizen lawmaking. Tell 'em you'll publish whatever they write on the issue, and to not be afraid, because you'll give them whatever editorial help they might need.

We should say whether the hot-button issue's petition can be a statute initiative or whether it must be a constitutional amendment initiative so that the people are protected from the meddling of corrupt politicians.

Until further notice, every citizen-proposed law should go straight into the state constitution, no matter how seemingly trite or trivial. Any citizen lawmaking in the statutes that is offensive to money-power will be immediately amended or repealed by the mega-corrupt legislature. Things will change for the better until we're on the other side of the 2nd NCC (national constitutional convention).

Third, DD blogs in the I&R states should write about any depraved law passed by the mega-corrupt, partisan bicameral. Such depraved laws deserve to be vetoed.

Of course, we should have reduced all of the bicamerals to nonpartisan unicamerals in about 1944, when the Nebraska nonpartisan unicameral had about 7 years of successful operation behind it -- and when the society's social justice of the FDR years was about to disappear into the corruption of corporate sleaze. 20/20 hindsight is aggravating The corporate sleaze now control EVERY state legislature. There is not a one of them that is anything less than mega-corrupt.

The citizens in I&R states are not doing anywhere near enough to veto the depraved law grinding out advantages for the superrich at the expense of ordinary people. The multi-branched and speedily growing abyss between rich and poor starts at the state level. The failure to veto is anchored, I think, in ignorance and indifference.

DD blogging, I think, has the potential to change that ignorance and indifference. The more "contributors" that each DD blog can pull together in its "team", for expert and/or passionate coverage of different topics, the better.

Vetos are also possible in non-I&R states. All the state legislatures, except Delaware, REFER constitutional amendments to the people to be voted up or down in a referendum. Many states allow referral of statute law to the people's referendum. Both referrals for the corrupt legislatures are almost always topped by something that the people want for themselves, but almost always underpinned by provisions that directly aid the superrich, the corporate sleaze, and the predator politicians at the expense of ordinary people.

This double-doping of referrals, getting the people to cut their own throats with inviolable constitutional law has become a vile legislative cliché. Blogs in the non-I&R states should unload on such dirty tricks and their corrupt authors.

Two more-general topics.

Fourth, the DD blogs should be emphasizing any and all corruption connected to the state's national, state, or local representatives. Corrupt individuals make the climate of corruption. They are treasonous felons against the nation and in violation of the public trust. The climate of corruption is mostly Republican -- and I personally want those rat-bastards so diselected that the Republican Party ceases to exist. But the climate of corruption spans both parties, and we shouldn't hesitate to slam Democrats.

Corruption kills rep govt, turning it into little more than despotism.

Fifth, the toughest one of all, is state govt expenses. This is not state expenditures. This is narrow-focus state govt expenses. What public funds are the rat-bastards spending on themselves and their buddies? How many govt salaries are paid to PR flacks? How many public university presidents are looking the other way while subordinate financial officers illegally pay bonuses to faculty, staff, and visiting lecturers? How many airplanes have the predator politicians given away to their corporate buddies? How many new carptets decorate their buds' corporate offices? Where have all the new computers gone? For that matter, where have all the old computers gone?

This is the toughest topic, because state govts have been hiding the detailed information for so many decades that it's something they've actually become good at.

Nonetheless, state govt expenses are a major chapter in state govt corruption. Find some "citizen expert group" or two who are looking at state govt expenditures and income. Such organizaitons can give us a starting place on what the state govt is doing to hide the information on its expenses, what it is doing to reject all requests for the information, and, ultimately, what it is that they're spending on themselves and their buddies.

Coverage of those five topics will connect the DD blogs with local politics. IMO, it's still the best political connection in the republic.

If I ever get to where my blog's team of contributors -- who? what? -- is covering my original intentions plus the five state & local DD/rep-govt topics for Oklahoma jurisdictions, I'll be a happy man.

CA-50 -- 1st Netroots Strategy Failure

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

CA-50 back to the Repubs.

Playing out the Dem/netroots politics-as-usual strategy, with nothing radical said or done to impinge the good names of the treasonous Republican Party or treasonous Vichy Democrats, is now an established LOSER.

Waving sniff-sniff hankies at Repub "ethics lapses" does not fire up the millions of withdrawn, unregistered voters. Milquetoast "get the vote out" registration drives only drive the withdrawn further underground. And this "special election" to replace a convicted Republifascist felon -- Duke-a-rooney-dooney Cunningham, what a great-good ol' boy -- was as easy a motivation as possible to bring out a landslide of unregistered voters. The ever-waffling Democratic Party will not see any easier a voter registration situation from here to the other side of Election 2006. Blow off the unregistered AND let Bilbray define the major issue as illegal immigrants? The massiveness of the political incompetence reaches parsecs off-planet.

The Repubs went into the Bilbray win with a 15 percentage-point edge in voter registrations. What?

Did anyone in the Dem/netroots camp dig out the numbers for how many unregistered voters there were in San Diego county ahead of yesterday's election? Did anyone worry about why the Busby campaign wasn't bringing out a landslide of new registrations?

Did a clue glimmer in the back-brains of the Dem/netroots political operatives that the DIEBOLD HACK-O-MATIC SYSTEMS MIGHT BE A PROBLEM?

The Diebold hack-o-matics counted 100 percent of the votes in San Diego county yesterday. The progressive blogs that address the issue and CNN's Lou Dobbs want Diebold shut down. Big deal. The national despotism has the power of the Machiavellian HAVA. The despotism's DOJ thugs swarmed all over San Diego county polling places yesterday to make sure that the Diebold hack-o-matics were everywhere.

How many polling places have to be touch-screen hack-o-matics with no paper trails for the Rove White House to win CA-50 for Bilbray by 4 percentage points?

Did a clue glimmer in the back-brain of Dem/netroots political operatives that polling places with touch-screen hack-o-matics were probably lost anywhay? And that the voter registration had to be massive for the polling places with paper-trail machines? Just to off-set the Repub hacks sure to happen on the touch-screen machines?

If such a clue did glimmer, it was udoubtedly dismissed. Mustn't think bad thoughts. Strategy dictated that nothing radical enough to bring out the unregistered would be said or done. Strategy dictated that this contest would be played politics-as-usual by some twisted code of the Dem/netroots being a loyal opposition.

There would be no dwelling on the Bush-Cheney USURPATION of the presidency in December 2000, or on the usurpation's felony conspiracy against citizen rights -- to have a president elected in accord with the Constitution -- in violation of 18 USC 241. Mustn't point out that felony forfeits all immunities -- judicial, executive, and legislative. Mustn't go around calling the Supreme Court a pack of unconstitutional felons-in-waiting. Mustn't point out that Clinton-Gore, their AG, and a bunch of their DOJ hierarchy are co-conspirators in this felony, deserving ten years in federal prison. Mustn't point out that the Bush-Cheney usurpation makes all Bush-Cheney actions done under the color of law null and void, beginning with 10 December 2000 and continuing right through today.

Mustn't point out that the invasion of Iraq was unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous -- beginning with its felony conspiracy in violation of 18 USC 241 against our soldiers' rights to be sent to war only on the expressed order of Congress. Mustn't point out that there's nothing in the Constitution that allows Congress to give away its specifically-assigned war powers to a president. Mustn't point out that the president was not given war powers in the Constitution for many damned good reasons. Mustn't point out that the co-conspirators in this felony conspiracy against rights includes 373 senators and members of Congress, Bush-Cheney, many minions, many generals and admirals, and one lower-court federal judge.

Mustn't make the unconstitutionally-waged Iraq war, the lies that drove it into existence, its war crimes and crimes against humanity, its torture/murder gulag, or its unbelievably vile war profiteering any sort of issue whatever. Might turn off the voters.

Oh,no -- wrong strategy. Don't do anything to turn off the voters.

We'll just pretend that everything within the massively criminal Bush-Cheney despotism and the massively criminal Repub culture of corruption and corporate sleaze is on the up-and-up. Just politics as usual. No worries. Just get out the vote and vote for our candidate.

Just vote this whole freaking 2-party, 3-branch, corporate-sleaze CORRUPTION right back into the national disgrace of our nation.

Whew. The bullshit coefficient is way up there. And the unregistered are sharp enough to know it. Back to the rabbit holes. Nothing up here worth fighting for. Back to the crack and meth. Back to the raves. Back to the slice of the pie that didn't get away.

Blogosphere & Direct Democracy

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

Digby's experience this past weekend in LA, attending his tribal gathering to watch Laughing Liberally, is helping me get right with the blogosphere. It's giving my blogosphere views some better resolution, some sharper focus.

It's clear now that there are huge, essential accomplishments happening around the snarled-in-place netroots. It's clear now that the bloggers' dancing faster and faster with the minutia of current political intrigue -- with little or no big-picture time or remedies -- is serving some good purposes.

Gathering a local liberal tribe for face time is a huge and essential part of doing democracy. It was one of the factors that wagon-camp families noticed in the late 1870s, as they gathered on southern and western plains to organize the National Farmers Alliance to fight "crop-lien" racketeering with co-op economics. (Lawrence Goodwyn is the guru of those times.) Those wagon camps helped organize about a million early populists into the beginnings of the Reform Era's corruption fighting.

The Reform Era's cap, the urban Progressive movement, made the Reform Era the greatest democracy movement of recorded history. With the direct support of many tens of millions, citizens in 26 states forced direct democracy -- beyond the mere election of representatives -- into their elitist state constitutions. They then turned and fought money-power in state and federal courts, winning judgments that the mix of direct democracy and representative govt is a little-r republican form of govt intrinsic to the Constitution.

Constitutionally-defined direct democracy is one of history's great legacies to a later civil society, sitting there in many state constitutions, just waiting for us to clean it up and use it to fight today's mega-corruption. Money-power is so worried about that constitutionally-defined legacy that they have spent a lot of money and scheming to plant anti-DD propaganda bombs everywhere possible, ever since.

The great DD legacy would not have happened without the face time of prarie wagon camps, building into the organized efforts whose agonizing losses of freedom to money-power's racketeering triggered urban empathy and the Progressives.

In Digby's Sunday piece, "Laughin' With Yo Homies", he remarks, "We're starting to take ownership of the Party, I think. Good for us."

Agreed, that taking ownership of the Democrtic party is good for the liberal movement. Having possession of a major party is better than trying to run reform from a third party -- a third party that the two corruption monsters can gang up on.

Fact remains, the Democratic Party is one of the gigantic corruption monsters. Do I need to make the case? Nah.

I'm very skeptical about this nascent progressive movement out of the netroots getting any more ownership than what the corruption monster wants them to think they have. I'm deeply convinced that ownership is now -- and will be, well past Election 2006 -- more illusion than fact.

Still, it's leverage that can be put to good use.

The trick is putting it to use for objectives beyond a warm and fuzzy-wuzzy trusting of candidates based on their bald reform promises. Campaign reform promises are among the most hackneyed of bad political jokes on the American people. Newly elected incumbents have a wide range of ways to reneg on, shift the meaning of, and/or collapse the need for whatever campaign reform promises they made. And when they do such things, the people who voted for them are left with empty sky. What to do, oh, what to do?

However, when newly elected incumbents pull the standard operating bullshit of tossing away campaign reform promises, and the people are holding a signed promisory note -- a "tough-love pledge" -- that commits the incumbent to work for his/her promises or be on the receiving end of the constituency's wrath at the next election, then the people have a sky filled with vengence.

I'm convinced that every candidate supported by netroots votes should sign a tough-love pledge before Election 2006. If they waffle, they were never a genuine candidate to begin with.

This is where we come back to my original turf -- the direct democracy turf roundly scorned by lottsa netroots members. One even parrotted Clinton's famous predator-cliché at me -- "There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America".

Don't change a thing, Turncoat Clinton trumpeted. Money-power's corruption engine has everything set so that it works best for everybody. The superrich get obscenely excessive riches and the poor get nothing. They'll thank us later for being so wise.

Sure, we know that the end of corruption is just one or two elections away, don't we? We know that the corporate financial sleaze ripping hundreds of billions of dollars out of the society with tricks out of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Modernization Act of 1999 will immediately stop after we win an election or two, don't we? We know that the outsourcing industry will suddenly give us back our premium jobs after we win an election or two, don't we? We know that the corporate pharmaceutical sleaze will suddenly stop windfall profit-taking at the expense of millions of lives after we win an election or two, don't we?

You know that I can run out this question set for the rest of the day, don't you?

Have you completely lost your minds? Corruption inside the box of pure rep govt is owned by money-power. They have the money and the power. We have no power that can stop them -- inside the box.

Electoral power is gone with the wind of the Diebold hack-o-matic vote-counting software. Even if we manage to win that back, and win Elections 2006 and 2008, we are still putting up some few incumbents who, history proves over and over, can be coerced, bribed, or murdered for the greater glory of the corruption engine.

Get onto the direct democracy turf -- outside the pure rep govt box -- and, suddenly, the game changes. Out here on this turf, there's not enough coercion, bribery money, or murderers to handle the assignment. A carefully protected 2nd NCC (national constitution convention) is possible. Changing the political dynamic from the pure rep govt owned by the corruption engine to a mix of pure rep govt and direct democracy's eight, fully independent, horizontal, non-hierarchical, governance components means righting the wrongs and fixing outside the box what can't be fixed inside the box.

Out here on the DD turf, we have the power to end the Bush-Cheney despotism in all its three-branch glory. We have the power to prevent money-power from ever again perpetrating such a thing against us. And, if they should come up with new tricks to stick it to us, we will have the power to quickly finish whatever they start.

Right now, we've none of that.

But there's the blogosphere, struggling into political reality. It's not all good, but it's a start.

Even if the blogosphere progressives don't get it this time around -- even if they don't anticipate the corruption engine moves during and following Election 2006 and wind up losing the war again -- it's very likely that the blogosphere progressives will still be standing when Election 2006 is over. They'll likely have a still-growing organization and a growing sense of the importance of their tribal gatherings. They'll likely still have a sense that they can get Democratic Party ownership, if they just move their tactics to outside the box and onto direct democracy's turf.

Maybe then, in just one more loss to the corruption engine, they'll be ready to stop squandering the Reform Era's great DD legacy.

Election 2004 Stolen

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

Re: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., "Was The 2004 Election Stolen?" (Title is a hot link to the article on the Rolling Stone site.)

Around the blogosphere, many are asking why Kennedy waited two years to compile and present this mega-jolt. I'm asking why it wasn't presented to us 18 months ago by the slimebag politicians who are supposed to be preserving our Constitution and our rights.

This is one of the ten most important political pieces of the Bushco Era. We'll be unavoidably living with it through and past Election 2006. If you're anywhere outside the fascist despotism, its corporate sleaze, and Fox News you should be studying this piece for a long time.

Kennedy writes --

"... After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004 (12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes (13) ...".

There are more felony conspiracies against rights, as defined by federal statute 18 USC 241, hiding in Election 2004 than even those of us who look for rights violations could have dreamt. I predict that we will see many spineless Democrats within those felony conspiracies.

Figure on many updates here.

--------------------------------------------

Update: Sun 04 Jun 2006, 8:55 a.m. CST

From Kennedy's detailed discussion of the Ohio illegalities, it's clear that the US District Attorney system is useless to we the sovereign people. It is now in the business of obstructing justice for those political hacks who are willing to act as parts of felony conspircies against our citizen rightts to vote -- in violation of 18 USC 241.

Federal laws were clearly broken in Ohio during the ramp-up to Election 2004. The US Attornies in Ohio clearly should have called grand juries and presented indictments to their federal courts. Felony conspiracies against rights, as defined by federal statute 18 USC 241 are as serious as any other felony. They are crimes against the state and the nation. Felony forfeits all immunities -- executive, judicial, and legislative. Do the crime, do the time -- unless, of course, you're inside the treasonous Bush-Cheney Usurpation and above the law.

The Bush-Cheney appointments of US District Attornies have provided a solid umbrella of protection for rights-violating political hacks of the Republican Party -- from Ohio's Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, down.

Especially Blackwell -- his not being in federal prison right now is an outrage.

Now we know. When the Attorney General and the Department Of Justice hierarchies are felonious, obstructing-justice parts of a treasonous despotism -- as they have been since the Bush-Cheney Usurpation of December 2000 -- they become directly employed in the continual fighting of citizen rights. They have a vested interest in collapsing the right to vote. They are especially vicious fighters against the rights of citizens to vote the treasonous Usurpation out of office.

This is not constitutional governance. This is fascist thuggery masquerading as constitutional governance.

The US District Attornies, subordinate to the political-hack US Attorney General, is a broken system. It won't fix itself -- and money-power's corruption engine, which now clearly includes the bulk of the Democratic Party, obviously intends that the system remain exactly as it is. It is a working cog in the anti-Constitution, anti-checks-and-balances machine of the Bush-Cheney Usurpation.

Only new Constitutional provisions, meshing with an optimum system of changes, can fix the US District Attornies system. We can't get into a carefully protected 2nd NCC (national constitutional convention) quickly enough.