Direct and Extreme Democracy In Civil Society

Extreme Democracy (ED) is a set of technology- and sociology-bound political concepts being developed in hopes of changing the nature of representation. ED advocates want citizen activists to have a greater role in governance, mostly through digital technologies that can bring together dynamic, ever-changing, issue-driven majorities (as opposed to traditional, rigid, party-line, ideology-driven majorities). They want the representative govt -- the repocracy, rule by representatives, new word to take away their false claims to democracy -- to become more responsive to citizen consensus.

Unfortunately, the ED advocates don't want this to be direct democracy (DD), which is rule by the people through constitutionally-defined governance components decided by binding referendums. In various US states, there are eight constitutionally-defined DD governance components. (See this blog's sidebar essay, "Executive Summary of Direct Democracy".)

The eight DD governance components are the greatest corruption-fighting package ever devised by ordinary people in the history of humankind. It was secured into the many state constitutions by the greatest democracy movement that has ever occurred: the Reform Era, circa 1898-1918. Many tens of millions of politically sophisticated Americans were directly involved. Their collective level of political sophistication so far exceeded that of today's national civil society as to be a face-flushing embarrassment for any ethically normal person with sufficient historical information.

The predators' Reform Era corruption machines promptly ran in unconstitutional controls of citizen-proposed law, taking away much of the corruption-fighting power that the citizens had won. We'll come back to that.

The eight DD governance components include the election of representatives. There's nothing mystical about elections that set them apart from referendums. Elections are nothing more than binding referendums, voted by all eligible citizens in a given jurisdiction, as all referendums are. This lack of distinction between elections and referendums becomes very important in breaking down the wall of sophistries and vacuous arguments that predator elitism uses so deftly to help them keep down the sovereign people's DD.

In fact, in the genesis of American DD, in the early 1900s, there was one primary purpose that came through in the DD literature. (DD was most often referred to then as 'Direct Legislation'.) Its primary purpose was to achieve the genuine representative govt that the sovereign people had been promised in the Constitution -- and that political corruption had robbed away.

Contrary to predator elitism's propaganda, sophistries, and vacuous arguments, the purpose of DD was not to set up a "pure democracy" to weaken representative govt, but rather to set up citizen checks and balances on govt to strengthen it against the treasonous corruptors within and without. (See especially, The National Economic League, 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.)

Strangely enough, DD's primary purpose in the early 1900s is exactly the intent of the Extreme Democracy political philosophy today.

One of the ED movement's leaders, Jon Lebkowsky (in his online book, "Extreme Democracy", section "What is Extreme Democracy") misstates DD to require that "all people must be involved in every decision in order for the process to be just and democratic." He then turns this specious falsehood into a straw man, which he easily knocks down to show that the ED political philosophy is vastly superior to DD political philosophy.

Lebowsky has not done his homework on the legal realities of either American DD or Swiss DD. (He seems not to know that DD is a legal reality in the US, or that it exists as an intrinsic part of the Constitution's guaranteed "republican form of govt" in 23 active I&R states.) In both nations, DD's citizen lawmaking -- formulation of new law with the initiative, or veto of legislature-made law with the referendum -- is not involved with every "decision".

In the US, thousands of unchallenged, legislature-made laws go quietly into the books every year in the 23 states in which the citizens possess DD's veto-referendum. In Switzerland, there is an informal 90-day rule. If the sovereign people have not brought a veto-referendum within 90 days of a measure becoming law, it's understood that they have given tacit approval to the law.

Of course, the sovereign Swiss possess the constitutional amendment initiative (CAI -- the most powerful governance component in the nation), which has the power to write law directly into the constitution, indirectly wiping out any law that has become harmful by making a correcting law. There are 17 active CAI states in the US, and here as there, the CAI is the most powerful governance component in the nation..

Most DD advocates, excluding the "half-DD" elitism-fascism shills, but including especially myself, would love to see the Extreme Democracy concepts active in the civil societies of the I&R states. The ED concepts amplify participation in the democratic processes, which would include the DD processes. They also would help activate each I&R state's civil society to organize the national citizen action groups (CAGs) that we desperately need now to combat the Bush-Cheney Usurpation with our sovereign people's power. Additionally, the ED concepts would be invaluable aids to future Online Citizen Institutions (OCIs), much more below.

Unfortunately, ED is not a good fit for DD civil societies. It could be beneficial, if its advocates could temporarily limit its leadership analysis, but it's not clear that the ED political philosophy can function without its full-blown leadership principles.

ED's leadership analysis is attractive and commonsensical. It accounts for the rise of individual leaders in any horizontal, nonhierarchical organization (NHO), which, of course, ED sees itself generating. ED's leadership analysis says that individuals who are naturally talented, effectively active, lucid, and cogent will be identified as issue-related leaders in the NHO, and will be followed by others. It says that such leaders will acquire more power than others to affect decision-making in the NHO.

Such NHOs, of course, were also the products of any local or state-level DD campaign before the advent of -- arrggg -- money as free speech. The DD NHOs grew out of the processing needs of individual I&R and recall petitions. People who supported the issue got together and campaigned the petition into the next election/referendum.

Naturally, advocates of a future national DD system want to see DD NHOs become permanent fixtures in and around the needed OCIs, which will protect citizen business against govt intrusions, vote in agendas for their state or regional jurisdictions, develop and process I&R and recall petitions in wikis and other modules, create a deliberative and amendment "floor" for discussion of the petitions, vote amendments up or down, vote finished petitions into the formal state or national govt's lawmaking process, coordinate most of the petition campaign's activities, and ensure that state or national govt actively complies with any law passed by the people.

Oddly enough, all of that is on a par with, but a step up from, ED political philosophy. It's on a par with, because ED draws its technological buttresses from "Web 2.0". It's a step up, because it carries with it the sovereign people's power. Done right, the sovereign powers would preclude govt from ignoring citizen-made law -- as it frequently does now -- or from using its arbitrary rulings and corruption machines to unconstitutionally delay, alter, and/or reject legal citizen action.

For a good Web 2.0 analysis, see Tim O'Reilly's "What Is Web 2.0" on the "O'Reilly" site. For ED adaptations, see Lee Bryant and David Wilcox, "Some Lessons From Web 2.0 for Participation and E-Democracy", on the "Headshift" site. For how state govts unconstitutionally ignore and/or trash the sovereign people's citizen-made law, see especially, Elisabth R. Gerber's 2000 book, Stealing The Initiative: How State Government Responds To Direct Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Prentice Hall.

However, the deep-pockets corporate funding now possible in I&R petition campaigns -- since the absurd, corruption-mongering, 1988 SCOTUS decision that deemed money to be free speech in politics -- has made some DD organizations very different from what all DD organizations were previously. The presence of big money, to buy petition signatures and to run expensive PR campaigns for I&R and recall petitions, automatically requires and brings managers, giving the organization an hierarchical structure.

It was the absurd privitization of the people's business. Hear the corruption machines screetch, "privitatize everything". See SCOTUS run, fascist whores all.

Obviously, the ED leadership analysis cannot apply to individuals within hierarchical political organizations (HPOs). The hierarchy provides the leaders, not the grassroots group. So DD loses the ED leadership analysis that was once its reality. It loses that reality to elitist-fascist encroachment -- for now. It's about when grassroots are not grassroots. ED would also suffer in such supposedly grassroots HPOs. ED's natural leaders could easily become disheartened. In the end, ED leaders will probably eliminate HPOs from any ED operations.

Many of us who advocate an optimum, fully independent, DD system melded to the national repocracy believe that money is not legal free speech. (Bribery is done with money, and bribery is illegal. If money were actually free speech, then bribery would have to be legal.) We insist that the SCOTUS deeming of money as free speech in political affairs is nothing more than the whorish legalization of bribery for the benefit of the elites. We generally agree that the 1988 SCOTUS ruling should be reversed with a Constitutional amendment and that the political uses of money should be heavily regulated, along with the anti-people, anti-democracy, anti-Constitution federal bench and all other fascist-thug corporate and political party intrusions into politics.

If we can make those things happen, the Extreme Democracy leadership analysis for NHOs will be applicable. Well -- as long as the NHOs are truly and fully independent of govt controls. Pie-in-the-sky for now.

Here we both, DD and ED, run into the teeth of repocracy's corruption machines.

Clearly, a DD system that is underhandedly controlled by govt cannot be a nonhierarchical organization. Govt, in its intrusive controls, makes itself a hierarchy in every state-level, American DD organization. Citizen leaders may think that they are leaders, and they may be seen as leaders by their peers initially, but govt control denies them independent leader status and diminishes any related powers considerably.

You cannot effect decision-making within the NHO if the decision-making is severely limited or taken away from you by govt. If the Secretary of State says that your initiative petition's ballot language is unacceptable and that he has (unconstitutionally) re-written it in accord with some (unconstitutional) statute, you, as the leader who carefully crafted the original ballot language, have been cut off at the knees. The Secretary of State's (unconstitutional) action may have adverse effects on your continuing leadership among the NHO's individuals, and your status reduction might disorient and adversely effect the entire NHO and its objectives.

Fact is, such unconstitutional actions are open to, and practiced by, every I&R state govt. The rabble are kept down and the profits and power of the elites remain unlimited. So it has always been. So it must always be, according to the predator elites. Constitutions and statutes have always been, and will always be, subordinate to the natural law of wealth and power. Well -- as long as we the sovereign people continue to allow and invite the predators to butcher people for profits and power, while they're whispering sweet nothings into our ears.

(How stupid can a sovereign people be? Take a close look at Americans. Tens of millions of world-class fascists and Constitution-hating religious freaks. Tens of millions of neo-progs who whole-heartedly ache for the war-crimes-against-humanity-profiteering, torture-murder-gulag-boosting, anti-Islam-crusading, tax-cutting-for-the-superrich-whoring, American-jobs-offshore-outsourcing, anti-14th-Amendment-liberties-Alito-protecting, super-voodoo-economics-middle-class-crushing, tobacco-death-industry-muletraining, environmental-wreckage-engineering, unsafe-food-supply-canning-and-exporting, Diebold-hack-o-matic-vote-counting-racketeering, warrantless-wiretapping-cheerleading, Democratic Party corruption machine to hurry up and save them. Think we don't deserve the hatred of freedom-loving peoples around the world? Think again.)

Beginning immediately after constitutional DD provisions passage, most of which happened in the early 1900s, the constitutional criminals in the state legislatures began their own backlash. They began writing and passing statutes directing many different types of unconstitutional and arbitrary controls for citizen-proposed law. Constitutional criminals in the executive branch, especially Secretaries of State and Attornies General, have unconstitutionally acted in accord with those unconstitutional statutes. Constitutional criminals in the judicial branch have joined in with their own, uniquely judicial unconstitutionalities, in accord with the state's unconstitutional statutes.

It's a gauntlet of unconstitutional and arbitrary contols that applies to every citizen-proposed law in every I&R state. However it is only selectively applied so that civil society doesn't connect the dots.

Citizen-proposed law that is offensive to money-power is stopped -- or worse, passed and turned into a nightmare of anti-DD, anti-people, and anti-public-education machinations, as was the case with California's Prop 13, limiting property taxes, in 1978.

Citizen-proposed law that is NOT offensive to money-power sails right on through, demonstrating that the system works.

It's been a successful strategy, helping to keep the people from noticing the unconstitutionalities, for over a hundred years.

There are many variations on the theme, but the two most common groups of unconstitutional acts against citizen-proposed law are separation of powers violations and binding judicial review of proposed law.

The separation of powers violations occur when executive branch officials perform legislative or judicial branch functions that are NOT specified in the state constitution. The Secretary of State may be directed to write or re-write the ballot language provided for the proposal by the citizens submitting the petition. Writing the ballot language is a legislative function, not an executive function. What the ballot language says is important legislatively. It may very well be a factor in any subsequent court action that must interpret the citizen-proposed law's meaning -- and subtle, misleading language written by an executive branch official could easily result in an unfavorable court ruling.

Another popular trick in the separation of powers variation is to empower the Attorney General to deem that a particular citizen-proposed law is not clearly written or conflicts with the standing laws of the state, and must therefore be rejected. The rejection action is unconstitutional on two counts. First, no executive branch official is permitted to reject a bill of law proposed in accord with constitutional provisions, regardless of whether that proposed law comes from the legislature or from civil society. Second, such an executive branch official's binding judicial review of a proposed law would be unconstitutional even if done by a judge. No constitution, state or federal, defines the judicial power to include binding judicial review of proposed law. Binding judicial review can only be applied after the measure has been signed into finished law.

The only way for such cross-branch acts to be constitutional is for them to be specifically ordered in the state constitution, as exceptions to the separation of powers provisions. The Nebraska constitution's separation of powers provision is typical --

The powers of the government of this state are divided into three distinct departments, the legislative, executive and judicial, and no person or collection of persons being one of these departments, shall exercise any power properly belonging to either of the others, except as hereinafter expressly directed or permitted.

With regard to citizen-proposed law, there are no cross-branch acts specifically permitted in any of the I&R state constitutions -- with the sole exception of Massachusetts. I&R constitutional provisions there so heavily contradict other constitutional provisions -- in their creation of arbitrary elite controls of citizen proposed law -- that all Massachusetts I&R, since its inception in 1918, has been, and will continue to be, unconstitutional. Only a statewide constitutional convention will have the comprehensive power needed to sort it all out and eliminate the contradictions.

The most common unconstitutional stunt outside of the separation of powers violations is the binding judicial review of proposed law -- done by judges who absolutely, positively know exactly how unconstitutional their binding review is. Nonetheless, this unconstitutional stunt accounts for most of the delays and rejections of citizen-proposed law.

If state officials or judges pulled either of those stunts -- separation of powers violations or binding judicial review -- on legislature-proposed law, they would be impeached and removed before dinner. But the unconstitutional stunts are SOP for citizen-proposed law. It's how the people are kept down and the corruption machines kept well-lubricated.

And, please, no more specious arguments, claiming that there is some sort of viable distinction between legislature-proposed law and the citizen I&R petition. Both are proposed law, pure and simple.

The I&R petition proposes that a law be passed, not that an executive agency policy or judicial ruling be passed. The I&R petition, once approved by the sovereign people, becomes law, not anything else. The law that the approved I&R petition becomes is open to binding judicial review as law, just as is any law passed by the legislature. The I&R petition is a legislative function within the legislative power of govt and, purely, proposed law.

And let's be clear. There are two different levels of constitutional crime being committed here.

First, the criminal legislatures begin the felony conspiracy against rights with their unconstitutional statutes. The moment that any two or more individuals comply with any one of those statutes, the unconstitutional statute becomes an anti-law regime. (Every individual who is legally trained can identify an anti-law regime and knows that every application of it yields another felony conspiracy against rights, plus other crimes.) The moment that the unconstitutional statute is complied with by anyone, it becomes part of a conspiracy against citizen rights, violating the federal statutes, 18 USC 241 -- felony conspiracy against rights by anybody -- and 42 USC 1983 -- civil deprivation of citizen rights by state officials. Felony forfeits legislative immunity. Any legislator who voted for the unconstitutional statute is a co-conspirator and can be criminally prosecuted in federal court, despite being an office-holder. State felonies have also been committed, depending on the state.

Second, state officials and judges are perfectly capable of choosing to comply, or not to comply, with statute instructions that direct them to violate the fundamental constitutional law of their state's and nation's sovereign people. If they choose to violate the fundamental constitutional law, then they become individual perpetrators of crimes and torts, including conspirators against rights.

When the constitutional criminals reach outside the state's constitution to delay, alter, and/or reject citizen-proposed law, the dollar and human costs are incalculable. The harm that the constitutional criminals do is far beyond the delays, alterations, and/or rejections of a potential better governance for their sovereign civil society. They also further the people-abusive and costly corruptions that the citizen-proposed law would have ended. They give those corruptions more time to run before the corruptions can possibly be ended. They cripple I&R rights by deterring citizens who have good ideas from coming forward in the future. They betray, defile, and violate the rule of law, which is probably the single most important founding principle of our nation.

Additionally, in violating the state and national constitutions to do their political evil, they both violate citizen rights and their oaths to protect the rights of citizens. The two together are an act of treason, as defined for the secessionist state legislators in the 1860s.

As things stand now, the unconstitutional and arbitrary controls of DD in the I&R states are the predator elites' first line of defense against any state or national limiting of their corruption machines or their illicitly-gained profits and power.

Predator blocking of state-level good governance policies that are offensive to money-power turns out to be an excellent way to prevent those same policies from gaining national traction. Citizens in many I&R states have tried to pass initiatives ending regressive personal income taxes, and replacing them with progressive sales taxes. Of course, sales taxes to support state services would cost the luxury-item-buying elites a lot more money. State govts have unconstitutionally and arbitrarily thrown out all such attempts, one way or another, over decades of time.

It is very important for this simple fact to register in your brain. Compute this. The hundred years of lawlessness in violation of their sovereign's fundamental-law constitutions by officials and judges in roughly half of our state repocracies have been knowingly participated in by the leadership of both major political parties. Both majors have been increasingly involved in creating the new unconstitutional statutes that provide variation on the theme of controlling citizen-proposed law, keeping the unsuspecting people down and the predators' profits and power unlimited.

No rebuilding of either political party will save us from the predators. Both political parties are front-rank predators.

To make things worse, to grab we the sovereign people with another come-along that drags us past dealing with the unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous state govt interference, we now have Extreme Democracy advocates painting this pretty picture of how leadership develops in a nonhierarchical civil society. All we have to do is to put that leadership notion to work at the grassroots, they say, and we'll have civil society's best and brightest showing us how to overcome the bad guys.

Intentional or not, ED is a string-'em-along, jerk-'em-around. It glosses over, covers up, and looks past the unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous actions by state govts in their control of citizen-proposed law.

We need to see the truth and reality of the current unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous state govt system first. We need to understand the progression of constitutional amendments that will be required to clean up I&R law in each state. (For an in-depth discussion of this topic, see the SOTR, Chapter 4, "Violating Constitutions" -- all of it. It's on the DDL site at http://ddleague-usa.net/SOTR4.html ) We need to find ways to criminally prosecute and bring civil lawsuits against any public official or judge who uses the old unconstitutional statutes to block our clean-up.

The national Constitution guarantees a republican form of govt in the states. In the I&R states, the republican form of govt is constitutionally defined as the combination of DD's citizen lawmaking and representative govt. That definition is completely legal and constitutional, per a 1912 SCOTUS ruling.

When state officials or judges unconstitutionally interfere with citizen-proposed law, they violate their citizens' rights to the federally-guaranteed republican form of govt. Such acts violate the federal statute, 18 USC 241 -- felony conspiracy against rights. Felony forfeits all immunities. Co-conspirators can be criminally prosecuted in federal court, regardless of being incumbents or sitting judges.

The unconstitutional acts that control citizen-lawmaking also violate the federal statute, 42 USC 1983 -- civil deprivation of federal rights by state officials or judges. Co-conspirators can be sued in federal court.

Each constitutional violation by I&R state officials and judges to control citizen-proposed law also violates various state laws.

In the upramp to every general election, state officials and judges somewhere use the gauntlet of unconstitutionalites to keep down the civil society's attempts at good governance. Election 2006 is no exception. This has been going on since the early 1900s. We the sovereign people are still collectively ignorant of what has been done to our constitutionally defined lawmaking. We need to collectively understand. We need to correct the situation.

However, if the 1-party, 3-branch, fascist despotism in Washington DC has its way, we are already too late. Their tentative locks on our privatized and easily hacked electoral system, the US District Attorneys and many of the US District Courts, and the Department of Justice and its central role in the obstruction of justice for all of the despotism's players may mean that the state govt constitutional criminals are as untouchable as are the national govt's constitutional criminals in all three branches. It's all tentative now, but it will become permanent if we allow it to continue much longer.

This is the repocratic system that ED wants its toothless political philosophy to alter into a governance of cooperation between representatives and civil society.

"The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will." Frederick Douglass said that about his people regaining their freedom in the 1860s.

Citizens in the 23 active I&R states won their political equality and freedom with the passage of their constitutional DD provisions in the early 1900s. They promptly lost that equality and freedom as quickly as their state legislatures could pass statutes that instructed officials and judges to unconstitutionally and arbitrarily control citizen-proposed law.

It's way past time to regain our equality and freedom. The DD toolkit of eight governance components can be used in many ways to force the issue. It can't be done in the present climate of political unsophistication, but if small groups get started working with the toolkit, the civics lessons will flow like water. (See especially, "Open Letter To Susan--Making Bush-Cheney Null & Void", 12 September 2006, on this blog. )

When we've got the DD systems fully independent of reprocratic interference, then the Extreme Democracy political philosophy and analysis of NHO leadership will be useful.

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Update -- Tue 26 Sep 2006, at 4:45am.

There seem to be fewer online resources each year that compile information on I&R petitions that are rejected by state govts.

BallotWatch, a site maintained by the I&R Institute, had comprehensive coverage of state-level I&R petitions, including delayed and/or rejected petitions, until a few years ago, when the IRI site was placed under the control of the USC School of Law. The decision to eliminate the BallotWatch reports of individual petition-handling, whatever the rationale, was a bad one for we the sovereign people and a great one for the unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous public officials and judges of the I&R states. There are no coincidences in politics.

However, BallotWatch's convenience-store for powerful constitutional criminals is not yet airtight. In July 2006, somebody at BallotWatch published a piece in PDF format titled, "Early Look At 2006 Ballot Measures". It contains a section titled, "Removed and Struck Down", covering just that one narrow sub-category of arbitrarily controlled petitions. In its September recap of I&R ballot measures, the door is slammed shut, and there is no information regarding delayed or rejecte petitons.

Here's an extract from July's "Removed and Struck Down" --

In June, the Colorado Supreme Court removed an initiative intended to deny government services to illegal immigrants on the grounds that it violated the rule that a measure concern only a single subject. In March, the Florida Supreme Court took a redistricting off the ballot also on single subject grounds. “State courts are aggressively wielding the single-subject requirement to deny voters the ability to vote on important policy issues. The Colorado decision is particularly problematic because the Court reasoned that multiple purposes behind the measure meant that it encompasses multiple subjects,” said IRI director and University of Southern California professor Elizabeth Garrett.

In South Dakota, Secretary of State Chris Nelson (R) refused to place two initiatives on the ballot even though petitioners submitted the required signatures. Both initiatives would have repealed existing laws, one authorizing the state’s video lottery and the other a tax on cell phones. The measures were disqualified on the grounds that only a referendum could be used to repeal an existing law — initiatives can only be used to propose new laws. Interestingly, when the legislature originally passed the laws being challenged, a clause was attached to each declaring that they were “necessary for the support of state government,” making them not subject to a referendum.

In Missouri, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D) refused to count the petitions for TABOR and eminent domain initiatives after questions arose about the petition process. The TABOR petitions were not counted because the pages were not numbered sequentially by county. The eminent domain petitions were not counted because the ballot title on the petition pages was “insufficient.” This was a Catch-22 for the petitioners since they used the ballot title that had been approved by the Secretary of State, but was declared insufficient by a circuit court after the petitions had already been circulating.

All of the state govt actions described in this extract are unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous. Until we have CAGs that reach across state lines looking for such constitutional criminals, we will be largely ignorant of what is being done to us by the elitist corruption machines.

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(Last modified, Sat 30 Sep 2006, at 7:35am CDT.)

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

Truthout Wipes Out Town Meeting

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

The Truthout Town Meeting community has been ripped out of the Truthout site and the Internet -- without advance warning, and without subsequent explanation.

It's one less organizing tool for those working to restore our constitutional republic. One less organizing tool for those working against the corruption machines that have altered our nation into some sort of fascist FUBAR.

"... We are supported by our readers alone. And those readers are the only people to whom we're beholden.

"If I can point to one thing that defines Truthout -- that makes us unique -- it's that we have accepted these readers as our sole supporters. And while that interdependency may occasionally be a bit stormy, it guarantees that whatever issues arise will be worked out between our organization and the community that we serve. ..."

-- Marc Ash, Truthout Exec. Dir.

(still posted on the Truthout site

as of Wed 20 Sep 2006, at 6:00am.)

Yeah, well -- not so much, no.

The Truthout hierarchy disappeared the site's community blog, "Town Meeting", sometime before 6:00am, Saturday, 16 September 2006.

I don't know how many members the community had. It might not have been huge. But I do know that it was a vibrant, well-behaved community.

I also know that the community was beginning to respond to my arguments for remedies outside the failed status quo, remedies outside the pure rep govt that locks the people out of their own governance, remedies outside the corruption machine of Democratic Party politics.

In one of my Town Meeting comments, Wed 06 Sep 2006 -- "... Party politics is not going to get our nation back. The horizontally organized, nonhierarchical power of direct democracy is far greater than any political party."

I don't know whether anti-Democratic-Party views in the Town Meeting community had anything to do with the Truthout hierarchy's decision to just disappear Town Meeting. I do know that the disappearance of Town Meeting was a naked display of power slammed against the Truthout community.

I sent a short, polite email to Marc Ash, about 6:20am last Saturday morning. He hasn't answered. He and his hierarchy are obviously too important to account to the community that they want you to think they serve.

To me, it stinks like the rat-bastard corruption of party politics -- Democratic Party politics. They're trying to sell the old sophism, "This failure of govt was all YOUR fault. YOU have to elect better representatives. WE are rebuilding the Democratic Party so that YOU can elect better representatives. Of course, it will take a long time to rebuild, but stay with us, it is YOUR future."

Pure sophistry. It's their fault, not ours. And it is impossible to elect any better a brand of criminal to the politically criminal culture of US national govt, a criminal culture micromanaged by the corruption machines of party politics. It's impossible, because the corruption machines dictate who the candidates will be and only profit when they put the corruption-pliable criminal into office.

I'll never be able to deal with Truthout again -- and I will advise everyone who will listen of their past treachery and consequent lack of trustworthiness. I would not trust anything that appears on the Truthout site without wide-ranging, multi-source collaboration, regardless of the author's name. I'll get my news and views somewhere else.

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Update -- Wed 20 Sep 2006, at 7:45am -- Turns out that Marc Ash replied to some queries about Town Meeting's abrupt disappearance. They're very lame replies. See the comments on the excellent post by Stargazer51, "Truthout No Longer A Place To Share The Truth", on his blog, "The Independence Party", Mon 18 Sep 2006.

Americans Fail To Keep Republic

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

Civil society: dominated by historical ignorance, political indifference and incompetence, stupidity, and greed -- rejects need to organize National CAG (citizens action group), and remains fragmented, easy mark for predators' corruption machines.

National govt: 1-party, 3-branch, presidential usurpation and fascist despotism with massive support from civil society for the unconstitutional, treasonous, felony murders of US soldiers in Iraq under 18 USC 241, plus an international torture-murder gulag, in violation of the Constitution's fundamental law of the Geneva Conventions, involving felony murders of detainees under 18 USC 2441.

Constitution: made FUBAR by presidential usurper Bush, executive branch agencies under both Clinton and Bush, Congress, federal judges, the Federal Reserve, the superrich, and the Business Roundtable CEOs.

Rule of law: FUBAR.

Citizen rights: FUBAR

War dead since 1775: dishonored and disgraced by Constitution-killing and warmaker fascist govt and fascist civil society.

Election 2006: Republicratic Fascist Party of America and Empire Central Banking Ministry already throwing celebration party for Election 2006 win by Diebold hack-o-matic software. Bill "we talk pussy" Clinton appointed Party toastmaster-for-life by the Great Usurper Bush himself.

North American Union: launch of the new-nation "United Corporations of Canusmex" now set forward to 01 December 2006, just in time for the Christmas rush. Usurper Bush and the NAU's Ministry for the Superrich expect you to shop til you drop.

Open Letter To Susan--Making Bush-Cheney Null & Void

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

Usurpation is the exercise of powers by an agent which have not been delegated to him by the principal. In a constitutional republic like the United States of America, acts by officials are legitimate only if they are consistent with and based on a constitution, a body of laws which are superior to all subsequent statutes and other acts of officials, which embodies all delegations of power, and which may recognize certain rights to further define the limits on the powers delegated. It is a fundamental principle that all acts of officials not derived from the delegated powers of the constitution are null and void from inception, not just from the point at which a court may find them unconstitutional.

--Constitution Society, "Abuses and Usurpations".

On 12 September 2006, After Susan had read last week's post -- "Homegrown American Fascism", 05 September -- she emailed a simple-sounding query that cuts to the heart of what has to be done.

> Stephen, I have been thinking for some time that having
> the Bush presidency declared null and void from inception
> would be the only way to right the wrongs created with
> every breath these criminals take. But feared, as you
> cite, the '10 years of litigation.' We simply don't have
> time. Is there a way to enjoin them from further activity of
> any sort, to demand answers to questions without the state
> secrets or national defense BS being trotted out, to recall
> our senators and or congressmen, etc ?

Susan --

We have a tricky, nearly impossible situation here. But don't worry about the ten years of litigation. Perhaps I was moving too fast and did not explain my thinking well enough. The ten years of litigation, perhaps much more, will be what it takes to rip the Bush laws out of our legal fabric. Every statute that he has signed is an unconstitutional anti-law regime, not a law. Every time one of those monsters is used to control the outcome of a situation, a felony conspiracy violation of citizen rights and 18 USC 241 occurs. Each one of those will be open to litigation, and I'm not sure that there is a statute of limitations that covers any anti-law regime. We could have criminal prosecutions and lawsuits coming out of the woodwork for decades.

But that happens AFTER we rip the Bush-Cheney Usurpation out of our national govt. Ripping the Usurpation out will be almost impossible, but, I insist, possible. I'll be sketching the broad outlines of the near-impossibility. Don't stress. There are probable answers for everything. Well -- you can stress a little. Our success will be hard-won, if at all.

Technically, all we need to do to have the Bush-Cheney Usurpation ruled null and void is a US District Attorney -- any US District Attorney -- to call a grand jury and persuade them that a criminal violation of 18 USC 241 and Constitutional law has occurred. The persuaded grand jury issues a criminal indictment. The US District Attorney takes the indictment to "his" US District Court. The judge rules to hold a hearing or go directly to trial. A normal criminal prosecution ensues, with due process, and everyone's Constitutional rights are protected -- even the Usurper's, ethical moron, fascist constitutional criminal, felon-murderer-in-waiting, war criminal, knee-jerk liar, and abject traitor that he is.

Assume that the judge rules that a presidential usurpation occurred 20 January 2001 and that the Bush presidency is null and void from that date. Appeal process is fast-tracked -- seems reasonable that it would be -- and the case winds up in SCOTUS.

If we did not anticipate this situation, if the current rack of fascist thugs are still in charge of SCOTUS, if we haven't already impeached, removed, and criminally prosecuted the worst of the SCOTUS thugs, we're sunk. If we have impeached, removed, and criminally prosecuted the worst of them, we'll have set up a stiff deterrent to the next crop making any unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous ruling. But we're still not out of the woods. The next crop, faced with killing the king of the class-race elite, might choose to fall on their swords anyway -- free the king to be king, and take our punishments.

So, we will ask ourselves, what sort of climate of opinion is most likely to keep a pack of predator elitist judges from sacrificing themselves for the king. It's history. We've been here before. It's guilt by association -- family, friends, alma mater, judicial institution -- and the threat of worse to come after the immediate targets are disposed of. It is the unspeakable fear of taking down all those you love because of your actions. And, mark my words, nothing short of this will crack the nut.

How do we set up such a guilt by association climate of opinion? We hit them the exact same way they hit us from their beginnings in 2001. Shotgun approach. So many things happening at once that we completely dominate their lives. So many things happening at once that they cannot keep track of everything.

Out of our regional and nationwide citizen organizations, we use the 18 CAI states (states in which citizens have the "constitutional amendment initiative" petition process) as a spearhead to continually do good, pro-democracy, pro-people, and anti-elite things. The civics lessons will flow like water.

(1) We reduce corrupt, partisan bicameral state legislatures to relatively uncorrupt, nonpartisan unicamerals on the successful 1934 Nebraska model, adding in clean-money campaign financing. Legislatures reduced by two-thirds. 1000 to 2000 unemployed predator legislators on the streets within a year, all helping to create The Fear in the other rotten-to-the-core predator politicians. Unicamerals cooperate with consensus findings of their civil societies. Reduced cost, increased efficiency (single topic bills, no omnibus confusions -- easily vetoed by the people's referendum petition process if the legislation is bad), corruption reduced to microscopic levels (there's no "conference committee" to put in the fix for the dominate predators behind closed doors).

(2) We go on a binge of rebuilding state law so that state govts cannot unconstitutionally delay, alter, and/or reject citizen-proposed law -- criminally prosecuting those state govt officials and judges who insist on using the old unconstitutional statutes against our clearn-up efforts. They've been doing that to us for over a hundred years. When the people understand what the predators have done to their honest efforts to resolve critical political problems in favor of good governance, the people will be really pissed off. That could happen, if we manage to get their thumbs out of the sucking mouths. (See thumb. Suck. Oh yeah, this is good. Let's just do this all day long.)

(3) We organize immense boycotts against a few, immense, mega-corrupt, anti-social corporations -- and we bring one after another down mercilessly. And we do not let up until we have our constitutional republic back, with new limitations Constitutionally set for corporations and the political use of wealth.

(4) We set up online wiki sites to carefully craft one, certainly no more than a few, stand-alone, first-wave Constitutional amendments that we intend to force through a cowed Congress. The first one will be for a national level, fully independent, sovereign citizen lawmaking system (I&R-R -- initiative and referendem plus recall petition system) melded into representative govt. That first, most important one will give us the power to handle tyrannies on a flow basis and to resolve critical political problems that have been escalating for all the years since WW2. (Citizen lawmaking is the only hope we have. Period. With the sole exception of Switzerland in 1891, no governing elite has ever voluntarily shared power with its civil society.) We have the basic samples of such an amendment in the constitutions of 18 states -- those that have both the constitutional amendment and statute-creating initiatives, plus the veto-referendum and the recall. Many of those state constitution provisions are heavily flawed, but we've had a hundred years worth of action with them to look into now, understand the flaws, and write up our corrections in one big, effective package.

With this most-important amendment, we capture the promise of the Declaration of Independence for "consent of the governed", which we still do not have two-plus centuries on. We write it so that ratification of national citizen-proposed law, constitutional or statute, is done by binding referendum of the people, with approving double majorities required for passage.

Double majorities are the Swiss legitimacy steamroller for national citizen lawmaking. Double majorities are, first, an approving majority of all those voting, and, second, a majority of states in which there are approving majorities of voters. The Swiss copied it from the US Congress. (It might have been the only truly good thing to ever come out of the US Congress, excepting the years of the FDR administrations.) To the Swiss of 1891, the US House represented the people, and the US Senate represented the states. Took both houses to pass a law. Eureka, said the Swiss, that's the way to pass our citizen-proposed law too.

All of this presupposes that we can grab back our electoral system from HAVA, the Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia criminals, and all the Secretaries of State, Republifascist and Demofascist, who own the hack-o-matic vote-counting system. Another possible stand-alone, first-wave Constitutional amendment might have to be one that rips HAVA out of our legal fabric and sets Constitutional requirements for fair elections.

(5) We can run an alternative fuels project. Multi-faceted, one of its most imporatant facets will be biodiesel and hydrogen production from algae feedstock. Research by the mid-1990s had already proven that algae biodiesel can be produced in sufficient quantities to replace ALL of our national transport fuel needs -- without cutting into the land required for our food production. Our first priority should be the development of "home production" algae feedstock units and the required mini-biorefineries needed to create the biodiesel fuel for a family's cars, farm tractors, winter heating, and whatever. Small-scale, local fuel production is right there, within our grasp. We have the technology. Our dependency on petro fuels is a stupidity of the first order. Success in this project means cutting the PNAC neocons and their globalized corruption machines off at the knees.

This is the action plan that I refer to as "Unity America".

There are many other anti-elites, anti-corruption, pro-people projects we can run. The only thing in the world that we're lacking is ORGANIZATION. I'm so ashamed to be an American that I could just puke about ten times a day. What the hell have all the Americans been doing? What the hell have they been thinking? Fascist Nixon should have had this country's citizens permanently organized and hunting down every systemic problem on the political landscape. Reagan should never have happened. Bush-Cheney should never have happened. Send me a million dollars, and I'll promptly move to Canada. This place doesn't need congenital patriots and thinkers. It needs 300 million psychiatrists -- minimum. And when I vacillate on this tangent, organization to resolve critical political issues seems so unAmerican as to be impossible. OK -- concentrate. Reverse vacillation.

OK -- recap.

(A) We start with our shotgun approach beginnings to take down many anti-democracy elitist wrongs. The good news is that this can be begun by smallish organizations in the 18 spearhead states -- and, that their activities will draw more and more citizens into the ORGANIZATION. This sets up the climate of opinion that we are coming for all the rat bastards, and that any defensive moves of theirs means that we take down every thing and every one they connect with. We'll have politician buddies coming out from under every rock in the republic. Just as soon as possible, we impeach, remove, and criminally prosecute as many SCOTUS thugs as we can get to. With luck, the first rack will be the four surviving Bush v. Gore criminals. But there are many unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous SCOTUS rulings to be prosecuted. We haul those out one at a time -- overlapping, but separate and distinct. If they slip away from one, we will have learned some lessons to make it more difficult for them to slip away from the next one. Nail SCOTUS. Bring The Fear.

(B) Every incoming president names a new rack of US District Attorneys. Every federal DA out there right now owes his job, his wingnut allegiance, and his personal loyalty to Bush-Cheney. Task One is to find one who thinks that Bush-Cheney has betrayed the conservative cause and brought the wrath of the people down on the Republican party. Our citizen ORGANIZATION and shotgun approach aggressions should easily persuade many of the conservative-not-neocon DAs that this is the case.

We might already be there without the shotgun aggressions, but finding that particular federal DA will take -- wait for it -- citizen ORGANIZATION -- clear across the country. If we don't know precisely what we're doing, precisely who we're asking to kill the king -- a tandem of US District Attorney and US District Court Judge -- we'll be buying into more trouble than we can afford. We'll need study groups in many, many districts analyzing DAs and the racks of judges from which THE judge will be picked. Those study groups will have to be comparing notes with each other at wiki and bulletin board web sites.

(C) The citizen ORGANIZATION needs to be done before or just shortly after the November elections. The Republicrat Fascists and the people had better be able to see it coming before the elections. My head hurts from all the reasons that we need the predators and the people to see that massive ORGANIZATION coming before the elections. The massive ORGANIZATION is JOB ONE.

Questions? Fire away. Send one million dollars. I'll answer from Canada.

Stephen Neitzke
Direct Democracy League
http://ddleague-usa.net

DD Revival -- The Blog
http://ddrevival.blogspot.com

Homegrown American Fascism

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

Historians and complex system theorists agree that the development of fascism is a complicated societal process. Clearly, the US elites and civil society have managed to accomplish that complicated process.

Most of our national governments, with very few exceptions, have been of, by, and for the class-race elite. Dating from our 1789 beginnings, those sworn to uphold our constitutions have chronically represented and benefited the class-race elite and themselves -- at the expense of we the sovereign people.

For over two hundred years, Hamilton's First Law of Government has dominated : "Money-power first, ordinary people last -- no matter what the law says".

It was a straight-across adoption of English predatory elitism by American elites aping English elites. English elites had been crushing the rights of Englishmen for profits and power since the Magna Carta. Their's was the natural law of wealth and power. It outranked any law made by nations, and the American elites loved it. The 18th Century gentlemen of the elites, English and American, lived the unexamined life of bigoted, predator elitism.

The elites' predation on ordinary people has been a growth industry over time. With the Civil War's accumulation of great wealth, predator elitism went from being simply unconstitutional, illegal, and undemocratic to being anti-Constitution, anti-law, and anti-democracy. Big oil -- with its in-house banking, insurance, transportation, and political corruption industries -- led the way.

The Gilded Age, c.1870-1914, held the beginnings of the American corruption machines' entry into the globalized corruption engine, topped then and now by the central banking cabal. US shipping, oil, banking, munitions, and insurance industries led the way for the US entry.

Note that the US came out of WW1 as the richest, most industrialized nation on the planet -- its major corporations loaded with and for corruption.

And then the Interwar Period, c.1918-1939, promised our elites globalized profits at unprecedented levels. German industrialists taught American superrich how to stack tangles of international corporations so that cash flow could be masked from investigators.

Rebuilding the German war machine for WW2 demanded secret cash flow. American superrich and their corporate sleaze were quick learners -- as we know from the Krupp revelations and many other sources, following WW2. (William Manchester's 1968 book, The Arms of Krupp, is the research starter kit.) The big winners were the international central banking cabal, American superrich positioned to profit from war, and the German-cum-Nazi industrialists. (Documentary evidence shows that Bush's grandfathers, Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker, were Interwar and WW2 players for the German industrialists. War profiteering is a Bush family tradition.)

The Interwar Period is also one of the primary growth periods of homegrown American fascism. By WW2, American fascism was so menacing that the FDR administrations legislated against it. However, the attempted legislative suppression was ineffective. As soon as FDR was gone, the corporate centers of American fascism moved right back into the globalized corruption engine. We're now back to and beyond the superrich and corporate corruption plus fascism that crippled us through the Guilded Age and then again through the 1920s and early 1930s.

Now we have the legacy of Interwar Period fascism building in the full-blown fascist despotism of the 2-party, 3-branch, Bush-Cheney Usurpation.

The elevation of GW Bush by SCOTUS in Bush v. Gore created a presidential usurper, not a president. The SCOTUS decision -- in violation of the Constitution's Article 2, paragraph 2 -- is so far beyond the Constitution as to truly make it nothing more than Bush's "goddamned piece of paper". Bush v. Gore also violated the rights of all Americans to have a president elected in accord with the Constitution, thus violating 18 USC 241 -- felony conspiracy against rights. Further, Bush v. Gore failed to protect the rights of Americans as given in the Constitution and laws and is therefore an act of treason -- as defined for the secessionist state legislators of the 1860s. Bush v. Gore is unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous.

Contrary to fascist thug Scalia's retort, "Change the Constitution, or get over it", there are no Constitutional or statute changes required for us to criminally prosecute and imprison the SCOTUS thugs for Bush v. Gore. We have all the Constitutional and statue law we need. All we have to do is to remove the obstruction of justice anchored by fascist thug Gonzales and his DOJ hierarchy of good little goosesteppers.

The first thing that we have going for us is the fact that usurpation is null and void from its inception, independent of the date of any judicial ruling on its unconstitutionality.

Usurpation is the exercise of powers by an agent which have not been delegated to him by the principal. In a constitutional republic like the United States of America, acts by officials are legitimate only if they are consistent with and based on a constitution, a body of laws which are superior to all subsequent statutes and other acts of officials, which embodies all delegations of power, and which may recognize certain rights to further define the limits on the powers delegated. It is a fundamental principle that all acts of officials not derived from the delegated powers of the constitution are null and void from inception, not just from the point at which a court may find them unconstitutional.

--Constitution Society, "Abuses and Usurpations".

The only legal uncertainty remaining is whether the Bush-Cheney Usurpation was null and void from the date of SCOTUS' unconstitutional ruling, 12 December 2000, or from Bush's taking of the presidential oath, 20 January 2001.

Whatever, all actions taken by Bush under color of law from the relevant date of his usurpation are null and void, plus unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous. That's every law signed, every regulation promulgated, every Emergency Order signed, every treaty negotiated, every judge and ambassador appointed, every treaty and judgeship confirmed by the Senate, every invasion order issued, every pardon signed by the fascist mutt -- everything.

Most of those actions created unconstitutonal anti-law regimes that create felony conspiracies against rights in violation of 18 USC 241 every time they are applied. Both the felonious initial actions and the compounding felonies of the consequent anti-law regimes will have to be criminally prosecuted and litigated. This could take a decade or longer.

We shouldn't let anything except our political ignorance, stupidity, and greed stop us from those prosecutions and litigations. They will be an essential part of rebuilding our nation, or, ignored, they will be an essential part of our nation's death.

No sniveling. Where there's a will, there's a way. We the sovereign people have the intrinsic power to create the way into, through, and beyond the criminal prosecutions and litigations called for by the 3-branch Bush-Cheney Usurpation.

No waffling. As with German and Italian fascism in the early 20th Century, the Bush-Cheney Usurpation is pure fascism. It demonstrates a strong-man leader, extreme secrecy, controlled media, fraudulent elections, judicial rulings clearly violating the Constitution, negation of the rule of law by all three branches of government, obstruction of justice for political and corporate leaders, the making of ex post facto law to immunize political and corporate leaders from past crimes, redefinition of established law for corruption and ideological purposes, redefinition of commonly understood language terms to avoid legal retribution (e.g., 'torture' to mean only treatment resulting in severe organ damage or death, and 'terrorist surveillance' to mean the interception of any communication or bank activity done by US citizens), the making of unconstitutional law to limit rights, suppression of Constitutional rights for profits and power, misuse of policy and law for unstated intentions, cronyism and corruption, sham national security obsessions, warmaking for profits and power, supremacy of the military, sham nationalism for the masses while leadership creates policy to benefit the transnational and stateless superrich, hard science made politically relative, anti-intellectualism outside the political and corporate elites, suppression of critical thinking in public education, intermixing of government and religion, enemies and scapegoats obsessions, destruction of undesirable minority population and cultural centers (e.g., Warsaw ghetto and New Orleans), male chauvinism and suppression of women's rights, and corporation protection extremes including lassez faire economic policy and suppression of labor's rights and power.

Fascism is not only a form of absurd, predator elitism governance, it is a national trait. Just as there was something inherently fascist about significant numbers of early 20th Century Germans and Italians, so there is something inherently fascist about significant numbers of late 20th and early 21st Century Americans. History will damn the American people for their fascism and fascist war crimes just as it damns the German and Italian peoples for theirs.

With the Bush-Cheney Usurpation, the fascist thugs masquerading as public officials and judges have created treasonous, despotic governance wholly beyond the Constitution. Our constitutional republic is half dead.

The Usurpation's Criminal Congress used HAVA to privatize the electoral system into the hands of cyber-criminal corporations Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia. The corporate take-over of elections has deleted vast chunks of democracy from the nation. It ensured that the Bush-Cheney Usurpation could hi-jack Election 2004 and probably Election 2006, while they remove US governmental power to their new darling of fascism, the North American Union of Mexican, US, and Canadian predator politicians, unchecked by any of the three civil societies.

Latest claims for the NAU -- and its central banking cabal currency, the "Amero" -- is for launch in 2007. If Bush plays his cards right, he'll still be the American fascist dictator in 2009. And whatever corruption engine mouthpiece is US president will be Bush's subordinate.

The collapse of checks and balances between the branches of US government is near-total. The Attorney General and his DOJ hierarchy obstruct more justice than they deliver, making any governmental criminality safe for the perpetrators. The felonious and treasonous criminality in all three branches is immune from any legal recourse -- until we rip Gonzales and his goosesteppers out of their jobs.

The hundreds of felony co-conspirators who share the guilt of violating our soldiers' rights -- as defined in 18 USC 241 -- to be sent to war ONLY at the expressed order of Congress continue to hold public office, military command, and federal judgeships. Bush's unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous order to invade Iraq is lost in civil society's political ignorance, stupidity, and greed.

The guilty co-conspirators -- including the 373 congresspersons whose October 2002 votes feloniously gave away their Constitutionally assigned legislative function of declaring war, in violation of the 1935 SCOTUS ruling in Schechter Poultry Corporation v. US (295 U.S. 495), and whose felony forfeits legislative immunity -- are guilty of the felony murders of over 2600 American soldiers. Per 18 USC 241, all convicted co-conspirators can be sentenced to life imprisonment or to death.

The co-conspirators should have been criminally indicted en masse within hours after Bush's illegal invasion order, March 2003. It is a horrendous national disgrace against our stated rule of law. We will never live it down.

The felonious Iraq invasion not only yields crimes against humanity and war crimes in the deaths of many tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, it has also manufactured terrorist activity that would not have been otherwise and that will go on for decades.

The unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous invasion of Iraq is forever a marker of the American civil society's political ignorance, stupidity, and greed at the time. The illegal invasion happened only because we allowed the Bush-Cheney Usurpation to come into existence after SCOTUS' clearly unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous decision in Bush v. Gore, 12 December 2000.

Forget your whiny excuses. We collectively allowed Bush-Cheney to come into existence, when we should not have. Our collective ignorance of usurpation and the related principles of republican governance was and is unconscionable.

Some Usurpation-defying federal judges have recently ripped away the Bush assertion of dictatorial power. One of them ruled that 'commander-in-chief' applies only to the military, and that civilian rights and the Constitution are beyond any presidential fiat.

The federal bench rip-away of dictatorial powers has the Usurpation's fascist thugs in a tizzy. With more moves than a nest of cockroaches, the Usurpation's thugs race this way and that, sternly defending their felonies with great media fanfare, spewing fallacious and vacuous arguments to loyalty-oath audiences as if there is no such thing as logical analysis, manufacturing anti-Constitutional ex post facto immunities in the Usurpation Criminal Congress, and making obvious CYA deals with anybody -- especially state government election officials -- who might offer protection from the law and from the increasingly enraged people.

But the stonewalling, whitewashing, and coverups become thinner by the month.

Nixon's fascist thugs proved the dictum -- Politics-as-usual tapdancing doesn't play well to the law, or to an enraged civil society.

Still, the Bush-Cheney Usurpation's politics-as-usual tapdancing has been jacked up to whorish strip-tease, bumping and grinding to Bush-terrorist percussion for the hot and sweaty servile, flashing 9-11 like scanty-clad, jiggling breasts on a stage threatening to go dark at closing time.

Oh, no, don't let the stage go dark. Keep the dancers up there. Let them usurp, wiretap, war, and jiggle their way back and forth forever. We love this show.

Worry. The cheering audience makes a cacophony of echoes from the Nixon and Reagan thugs and their money-grubbing corporate sleaze; howlings from three-branch Bush-Cheney thugs and their money-grubbing corporate sleaze; loud burblings from Vichy Democrats who ache for the power to wiretap, war, and jiggle back and forth forever; and screeches from medieval religious freaks who think that the Bible and the Koran are more lawful than the US Constitution. All of them are tone deaf, and none of them understand 'closing time'.

We've passed into a very dangerous era. Our nation may perish in the political ignorance, stupidity, and greed of our allowing the Bush-Cheney Usurpation to take power in January 2001.

There's no help coming. Everything is on we the sovereign people.

The rampant conviction that the Democratic Party taking Congress in Election 2006 will somehow save us is nothing more than an extension of the society's political ignorance, stupidity, and greed that gave Bush his presidential usurpation. Both major political parties are corruption machines in service to globalized fascism's multi-machine corruption engine. The corruption engine is too big for some small percentage of reform Democrats to shut down or to even cripple.

We need to end this Usurpation nightmare. We can and should diselect Republicans until the Republican party ceases to have political influence. But we can't end the 2-party, 3-branch fascist Usurpation, or its unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous anchor, the Federal Reserve -- or prevent the Usurpation's recurrence in some future nightmare -- unless and until we renew the Constitution.

We don't have to do the needed renewal all at once, but we need to do it. We can think our way into a successful process.

We might crash a bunch of corrupt state legislatures down to nonpartisan unicamerals on the successful 1934 Nebraska model, using state-level constitutional amendment initiatives. Citizens in 17 states could start that process tomorrow.

We'd have to find ways to criminally prosecute and sue any public official or judge who attempts to use the massively unconstitutional state I&R admin laws to stop us. They'll undoubtedly hit us with those "separation of powers" violations, as well as with the treasonous, binding judicial reviews of proposed law that they've been getting away with for over a hundred years. No US constitution defines the judicial power to include binding judicial review of proposed law.

One way or another, we can break a bunch of mega-corrupt, partisan bicamerals down to relatively incorrupt, nonpartisan unicamerals.

Putting a thousand or more predator politicians in the unemployment lines should get the attention of the national fascist thugs. Then a short series of standalone Constitutional amendments to set up fully independent and sovereign citizen lawmaking can be forced through a Congress isolated from their corruption engine protectors. More to come.

The status quo is massively failed. The system is broke. The worthy core of the Constitution, and our rights and liberties housed there, need preservation. But the Constitution's systemic problems must go. We the sovereign people must have fully independent citizen lawmaking to check and balance corruption-prone representative government. And representative government, corporations, and the political uses of wealth must be heavily regulated.