Fire the Democrats
Fire the Republications
Do Not Vote For Either of Them,
But do Vote for Someone else for that Seat.
Tell Your Friends
-------- Brooke Clarke 4 July 2011 -------
Democrats the same as Republicans on the big
issues
The Democrats and Republicans have
the same position about war, the economy, health care, justice. .
. . While running for office they tell voters what
they want to hear, but when in office they don't even try to
deliver on the campaign promises. Obama is a good case in
point.
In the 2012 2nd district Congressional race there are a number of
Democrats saying things that the people want to hear, and they may
even believe it themselves, but once in office they must follow
their party line. Even if they got elected without much help
from thier party, if they don't follow the party line they will be
replaced at the next election.
The two parties vote on party lines, not because of PAC or
SuperPAC money, but because of the higher dollar value support
they get from their respective national committees. This
shows up in Congressional votes that block bills and nothing gets
done.
For an independent to make a change it's not necessary to have a
majority. Instead only a few votes are required to give a
whole new complexion to Congress. A very small number of
independent votes can make all the difference in getting a bill
passed or blocked. This forces both parties to come up with
good bills and court the independent votes.
Constructing Public Opinion: How
Politicians and the Media Misrepresent the Public a
documentary by Media Education Fund (6 min YouTube,
small
format full length preview)
based on the book: Constructing
Public Opinion: How Political Elites Do What They Like and Why
We Seem to go Along With It by Justin Lewis (2001)
Added this as a new problem category after reading the first
chapter of the book "With Liberty and Justice for SOME: Who the
Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful" by Glenn
Greenwald (2011). It's very clear that the founding fathers
and pretty much everyone up until Watergate believed that the law
should apply to everybody equally and when it's didn't there was a
move to make that happen. If the law is not applied to
everyone equally then it becomes a suggestion to those who are
immune and so the Constitution no longer has any meaning.
Justice if for poor people, not the elite.
When Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon everything changed.
After a number of the top administration officials were found
guilty of felonies in the Iran-Contra arms for insurgents deal
they all were pardoned. While the Bush43 administration was
doing it's ad campaign to gain support for attacking Iraq they
brought up the fact that Saddam Hussein gassed his own
people. But they didn't mention that at that time the U.S.
was supplying him with weapons of war. The 1982 Boland
Amendment which explicitly banned any government assistance to the
Contras.
The Bush43 administration was carrying out wholesale wiretapping
of U.S. citizens in violation of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA). During the cold war it was
discovered by the Church Committee that the government was using
it's wiretap privilege not to catch communists, but rather for
political spying and that's where the FISA came from. They
violated: FISA, the Wiretap Act, the Communications Act and the
Stored Communications Act. As part of this illegal activity
the telecommunications companies (with the exception of Quest who
refused to break the law) were also liable to criminal
prosecution. So Congress passed a law in Aug 4, 2007
(emergency update to the FISA) granting them retroactive
immunity. As part of this the Bush43 administration
dismantled the Dept. of Justice (DOJ). The Bush43
administration went after QUEST by charging their CEO of insider
trading. Similar to their attack on Eliot Spitzer, i.e. they
find a place where someone who is correct in the big picture is
open to an attack on a much smaller issue.
In the case of Valerie Plame who was outed by the Bush43
administration because her husband was providing factual evidence
that they were lying about WMDs. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was found
guilty on two counts of perjury, one count of obstruction of
justice and one count of making a false statement to
Congress. But Bush43 pardoned him in 2007.
Michael McConnell (Mr. revolving door) joined the private sector
with the government in the area of security. On July 9, 2008
Congress passed The FISA Amendment Act of 2008 that gave the
telecom industry retroactive immunity for breaking the law.
Although he had promised to filibuster any bill that granted
retroactive immunity to the telecoms and instead voted AGAINST the
filibuster. AT7T spent a fortune supporting the Democratic
convention a couple of weeks after they were granted immunity.
During his campaign Obama talked of looking into any wrong doing
during the Bush43 administration, but as soon as he was elected
he's worked to block all attempts to bring any Bush43 official on
felony charges.
In July 2010 hedge fund manager Martin Joel Erzinger at Morgan
Stanley hit a bicyclist in Vail, Colorado and sped away. The
bicyclist suffered spinal cord injuries. Instead of being
charged with two felonies he receives a single misdemeanor charge
and paid a small fine and he paid the victem, but no jail time,
i.e. Too Big to Jail.
Since the Spanish-American war of 1898 the U.S. has been an (now
the most) imperialist country in the world (Wiki).
After
the
fall
of
the
Iron Curtain in 1989 (Wiki) a
group called Project for the New American Century PNAC (now
called: Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI)) didn't want a "peace
dividend" (Wiki)
but rather saw this as a time to increase defense spending and (my
paraphrase) for the U.S. to become king of the jungle and take
whatever they want. Their 1997 policy statement called for a
regime change in Iraq. Clinton signed the Iraw Liberation
Act (Wiki)
in 1998, calling for regime change. This is where the
Eisenhower's warning about the Military Industrial Complex (Wiki)
has ended up. Note the driving force is not oil but rather
the idea that the U.S. can take whatever it needs by military
force.
Obama has continued the U.S. tradation of imperialist war
mongering by attacking Libya. No NATO county was attackes so
NATO has no cause to go to war with Libya. The UN Security
Council only called for a no fly zone, wihch involves RADAR and
jet fighters. So using bombs on Libya is far outside the
UN. That leaves Obama with "When our interests and values
are at stake", I don't see how that's a reason to start a war.
The key references are:
Against All Enemies (Wiki)
by Richard Clarke (2004) (Amazon)
- (Wiki)
Starting with Bush41 through Bush43 head of counter terrorism
The Price of Loyalty (Wiki)
by Paul O'Neill (2004) (Amazon)
- (Wiki) Sec of Treasury under Bush43 & member of the National
Security Council (Wiki)
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American
Empire (Wiki)
(2004 DVD) (Amazon)
by Julian Bond (Wiki) (My Review at
Amazon)
--------------------- secondary references---------------
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) (Wiki)
(Amazon)
by Naomi Klein (Wiki)
Why Leaders Lie: The Truth about
lying in international politics (2011) by John J. Mearsheimer (Wiki)
War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to
Death (DVD) (2007) (Wiki)
by Loretta Alper, Jeremy Earp For God's Sake: The Christian Right and US
Foreign Policy(2008) by Lee
Marsden - the Moral Majority and their like have a lot to
say about policy
Conservatives Without Conscience (2006) by John W. Dean - really about
conservative Christians and why they are
authoritarian. Dean is a Goldwater conservative who is
upset by what the Rebublican party has become.
Authoritarian
governments are identified by ready government access
to information about the activities of citizens and by
extensive limitations on the ability of citizens to
obtain information about the government. In
contrast, democratic governments are marked by
significant restrictions on the ability of government
to acquire information about its citizens and by ready
access by citizens to information about the activities
of government.
- Robert
G. Vaughn - American University page
xxxvi
Whil reading Conservatives Without
Conscience there was a reference to this free on line book, so
I've been reading it.
People can be ranked on an authoritarian scale. People
like me score very low, and people who are in the moral majority
score very high. But this is different than religious
belief and is a better predictor of many things. One of
the things people who score high on this scale do is fight wars.
But there is still a very high correlation between the Christian
Right (Wiki)
and high authoritarianism.
Christian Reconstructionism (Wiki)
and Dominionism (Wiki) have
a considerable influence on the Christian Right. This is
very similar to Islamism (Wiki) where
the religious ideals take over the political and judicial
sytems.
American Theocracy : The Peril and Politics of Radical
Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in The 21st Century
(2007) by Kevin Phillips
While reading The Authoritarians I
came across a description of this book and have it on order.
"religious conservatives have
taken control of the Republican Party, turning it into the first
religious party in U.S. history and endangering everyone else’s
rights, the future of the country, and that of the world.
How did this happen?"
Leo Strauss (Wiki)
- at Univ of Chicago, like Milton Friedman (Wiki)
Paul Wolfowitz was his student
Ayn Rand (Wiki)
In glossary of the book: Seal Team Six (2011) by Howard E.
Wasdin & stephen Templin they have:
CIA Christians In Action
Neocon Background (Where did the PNAC come from)
After
Neoconservatism by Francis Fukuyama (Wiki) - This gets to
the heart of the matter.
As Kristol and Kagan put
it in their 2000 book "Present Dangers": "To many the
idea of America using its power to promote changes of
regime in nations ruled by dictators rings of
utopianism. But in fact, it is eminently realistic.
There is something perverse in declaring the
impossibility of promoting democratic change abroad in
light of the record of the past three decades."
This overoptimism about postwar transitions to democracy
helps explain the Bush administration's incomprehensible
failure to plan adequately for the insurgency that
subsequently emerged in Iraq. The war's supporters
seemed to think that democracy was a kind of default
condition to which societies reverted once the heavy
lifting of coercive regime change occurred, rather than
a long-term process of institution-building and reform.
. . . the neoconservative position articulated by people
like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they
believed that history can be pushed along with the right
application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in
its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when
practiced by the United States.
Movie: Arguing
the World bio on neocons Irving Kristol is William
"Bill" Kristol's father.
Movie: Ayn Rand: In Her Own Words.
DVD: Speaking Freely: Vol. 4:
Chalmers Johnson
In 1991 the U.S. said we've won
the cold war, but that's not true, we both lost. So the
U.S. started acting like Rome, building empire.
Imperialism leaeds to Militarism.
A country can have either domestic democracy or foreign
imperialism (Wiki),
but not both. Imperialism is a form of tyranny (Wiki).
An example is Iraq today.
When Iran revolted aginst the puppet dictator the U.S. had put
in power in 1989 we lost our military bases in Iran. When
Saudi Arabia forced the U.S. to close (Wiki)
the military base used for the Gulf War (Wiki)
in 2003. That left the U.S. without a major base in the
region. Johnson says getting a new base was one of the key
reasons for the attack on Iraq in 2003.
In his farwell address George Washington said in paragraph 26 (Wiki):
26 It is important,
likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free
country should inspire caution, in those intrusted
with its administration, to confine themselves within
their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in
the exercise of the powers of one department to
encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment
tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments
in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of
government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that
love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which
predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to
satisfy us of the truth of this position. The
necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of
political power, by dividing and distributing it into
different depositories, and constituting each the
Guardian of the Public Weal against invasions by the
others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and
modern; some of them in our country and under our own
eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to
institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the
distribution or modification of the constitutional
powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected
by an amendment in the way, which the constitution
designates. But let there be no change by usurpation;
for, though this, in one instance, may be the
instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by
which free governments are destroyed. The precedent
must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any
partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any
time yield.
Neither the Democrats nor the Repbulicans want to restore the
balance of power (Wiki: Seperation
of Powers) between the Legislative, Judicial and Executive
branches. They want to use the presidential powers for
their own benefit.
G.W. Bush instituted signing statements (Wiki)
which amounts to an unconstitutional line item veto.
Dianne Feinstein (Wiki) is on the defense subcommittee which
funds the military.
Politicians are highly motivated to get campaign money (either as
part of an election campaign or as lobbying for a bill in
process). All the key players in the federal government have
been bought and paid for. Constructing Public Opinion: How
Politicians and the Media Misrepresent the Public a
documentary by Media Education Fund (6 min YouTube,
small
format full length preview)
based on the book: Constructing
Public Opinion: How Political Elites Do What They Like and Why
We Seem to go Along With It by Justin Lewis (2001)
60 Minutes: Jack
Abramoff: The lobbyist's playbook- he says
(paraphrased) that it should be against the law for anyone
who works in government to leave and work for any business that
has dealings with politics. That's to say stop the revolving
door. Even promising a staffer a job when they have
completed their current assignment puts that staffer in the pocket
of the K street lobbyists.
These words and the concept behind the Democrat and Republican
parties relate to a 2-axis system (economic and social freedoms)
that no longer is relevant to today's world. The Democrats
and Republicans for the past three decades have similar views on
things like war, defense spending, health care, social security,
etc.
The book The Authoritarians makes it clear that how the lawmakers
behave depends more on their Authoritarian and Social Domination
scores than on their party affiliation.
The Economy
The economic system determines how goods are allocated.
The Soviet Union (U.S.S.R) was based on a Marxist (Wiki) economic
system: "to each according to his needs". The guns on the
Berlin wall were pointing toward the Communist side to keep their
people from escaping, they were not pointing outward to prevent
people coming into the country. There was no motive for
anyone so things just got worse. In order for central
planning to work smoothly there can not be any unexpected events
and so where socialism is the governing policy individual freedoms
are not allowed. This system failed.
The U.S., starting with Ronald Reagan, adopted Milton Friedman's (Wiki)
free market (Wiki)
capitalism. "To each according to his ability". The
result has been great for those few individuals who have become
extremely rich, but bad for society as a whole. This system
failed during The Great Depression ( 1929 until W.W.II).
Laws were enacted to regulate the banks, but these laws were
repealed in 1980 and 1999 leading to the current depression.
Something New - Nashism
John Nash (Wiki)
proved the idea that Adam Smith (Wiki) was
wrong about capitalism, i.e. "There's an invisible hand (Wiki)...).
This is the basis of the Repbulican (Milton Freeman) hands off
form of Capitalism. But Adam Smith was wrong as John Nash
has shown.
There's two factors controlling what happens, first there's the
classic Adam Smith idea that everyone is out for himself, but in
addition there's an overriding benefit to be had by doing not what
is in one's own self interest, but also what's in the interest of
the group. This is well illustrated in the bar scene in the
movie A Beautiful Mind (IMDB).
The Constitution is big on individual freedoms maybe to the point
that they hurt society as a whole. An example of this is the
number of lawyers per capita (1 in 265 people in the U.S., only 1
in 1230 in Denmark).
A new system (Nashism) based on both doing what's in the best
interest of a group (there can be many different groups) and at
the same time doing what's in your own best interest would be a
much better solution. For example a single payer health care
system (Wiki)
makes more sense than any other option. It amounts to a very
large insurance system. This is a case where by joining the
group you get a personal benefit. But since it's an
insurance polity there will be limits on what's covered so those
with more money can hire a private doctor to treat something that
will not be covered for group members.
This potentially has the advantage of capitalism in motivating
people and the advantage of socialism in helping those in need.
Work
The Puritan Ethic (Wiki: Protestant
Work Ethic "Hard work and frugality were thought to be two
important consequences of being one of the elect; thus,
Protestants were attracted to these qualities, seeking to be
obedient to God to whom they owed their salvation.") It's
commonly paraphrased as "work hard and you will be
rewarded". The economic system is based on this idea, that
wages are paid for "work". But work can be accomplished in
a number of ways. For example:
by humans (Marx thought wealth comes from the labor of
humans)
by animals other than humans (draft animals are still used
in places where tractors are not viable)
by machines using energy
Luis B. Kelso promoted the idea
that workers should be paid in capital (stock of their company)
in addition to being paid in money. His "two factor theory
of economics" used 1. Labor and 2. Capital. But his
"Capital" factor maybe should have been called "Energy".
That's to say the main thing doing work in today's world is
energy not humans or animals or "capital".
Starting about 1800 more and more of the "work" done has been by
machines. The source of their energy has been primary by
burning something (wood, coal, oil). The economic systems
to not account for this change.
The Constitution has provision for the federal government to print
money. Through very unethical means including bribery, etc.
Federal Reserve System (Wiki)
came about even though it was being opposed by a majority of the
people and a majority of Congress (the Federal Reserve Act vote
was 23 Dec 1913 (Wiki)
while many Congressmen were off on Christmas break). The
central bank has been responsible for most (if not all) the
depressions in the history of the U.S. The Money
Masters (Google
Video) (3h:35m).
There are a number of ethical problems in government and they all
need to be fixed. A number of them show up in this
congressional report:
House Committee on the Judiciary
Majority Staff Report to Chairman John Conyers, Jr. Jan 2009
Reining in the Imperial Presidency:
Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the presidency of
George W. Bush (pdf)
A big problem with lawmakers with
high Authoritarian scores is that they don't care at all about
equality and just give lip service to freedom.
Social Security & Health Care
The Social Security system is what's called a Ponzi Scheme (Wiki),
Multi Level Marketing (MLM) schemes also use the Ponzi
method. The idea is that those who are new pay money to
those who have been there longer. This works as long as the
number of new people is greater than the number of old people,
i.e. in a growing economy. But a growing economy is not
sustainable.
In Social Security it's not the case that you pay in money and you
get back what you paid in plus some interest, rather what happens
is that you get back all of what you paid in within a few years
(ask someone you know who is getting SS income the total they paid
in and their monthly benefit and do the math). So the
comment by Bernie Sanders about the current surplus does not mean
much. The SS system depends on the current workers to pay
the benefits of those who are getting benefits, i.e. a Ponzi
Scheme that can only work if the workforce/economy is
growing. But nothing can grow forever.
If the workforce/economy decreases then within a few years there
will not be enough money to pay the benefits. This is now
happening in Europe, Japan, etc.
I think it's a good idea to remove the cap on SS tax as Sanders is
proposing, but I question if that's enough. I also agree
that privatizing SS is a huge mistake, how many people do you know
who can retire on their 401k benefits? I think what's going
to happen is they will raise the age when you can start to get SS
benefits and remove the cap on SS tax. This is going to be
more acceptable than cutting benefits for those already getting
them.
One of the expenses of the SS system is providing Medicare to
retired people. This would be much more efficient if the
whole country was on a single payer health care system, but Obama
sold us out and took that off the table right from the
start. I predict that the Obama Care plan will increase the
health care insurance rates of working people a lot when the plan
is fully phased in. That's when you the reader of this web page
can fire the Democrats and fire the Republicans by voting for
anyone else. This is most important in the House of
Representatives and Congress.
Approval
The polls show that the approval
rating of the U.S. Congress is very low (maybe the lowest
possible?). See: Congress’
approval problem in one chart
at The Washington Post 11/15/2011 where The IRS, lawyers,
Nixon during Watergate, Banks, Oil & Gas Industry, BP During
the Oil Spill, Paris Hilton all have a higher approval rating.
It took a lot of searching to find anything with an approval
rating as low as congress.
Congressmen have the lowest rating and are tied with car
salesmen.
The message here is to fire them all and elect a completly
new congress.
The Solutions
Fire the Democrats
and Fire the Repbulicans
The first step is to vote for
another canidate rather than vote for either a Democrat or
Republican. They need a clear message that they no longer
are responsive to what the people want.
New Political Party
A new political party is needed
based on a multi-axis concept rather than the 2-axis
economic-social concept (Wiki:Nolan
Chart) that's long been obsolete. The axis might be
based on freedoms such as: freedom from war & terrorism,
unreasonable searches and seizures, right to a speedy and public
trial, by an impartial jury (i.e. things that have been taken
out of the Bill of Rights by the Patriot Act), assembly,
association, movement, religion, speech, press, thought,
privacy, to bear arms, of
women to vote, Scientific, Academic, Economic. Many of
these should not be "Free" but rather balanced between the needs
of society and the individual. The Constitution leans
toward individual freedoms over the needs of society.
Ending the
Purchase of Congress
Campaign Finance Reform (Wiki)
is one of the first things that are needed to decrease the outside
influence on Congress. There are other things that also need
to be done to prevent the revolving door (Wiki),
Regulatory capture (Wiki)
and a host of other Ethics Violations.
Congressional Reform Act of 2011
This was sent to me as an email and it looks like a good idea.
1. Term Limits. 12 years only, one
of the possible options below.
A. Two Six-year Senate terms
B. Six Two-year House terms
C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms
2. No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a
salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out
of office.
3. Congress (past , present and future) participates in Social
Security.
All funds in the Congressional
retirement fund move to the Social Security system
immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security
system, and Congress participates with the American people.
4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all
Americans do.
5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.
Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
6. Congress loses their current health care system and
participates in the same health care system as the American
people.
7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on
the American people.
8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void
effective 1/1/12.
Ending War
For many decades the office of the
President has taken over the right of Congress, as spelled out by
the Constitution, to declare war. Although the people want
to end war, Congress is powerless to do this for a number of
reasons. First, the industrial-military complex wants war
and so there are campaign contributions and lobbying money that a
Congressman stands to loose if he votes to stop war. Second,
it's almost impossible to pass any legislation when both houses
are split 50-50 on party lines. Campaign Finance Reform
needs to come first.
Ethics Reforms
This involves a number of areas.
Monetary Reform
American Monetary Institute has
put a lot of effort into this topic and needs Congressional
support.
Note: The economic system must ve viable assuming no growth.
The problem with Corporate Personhood (Wiki)
will take a constitutional amendment. (maybe just the 14th,
but maybe also others)
There are two groups of representatives, Congress with 2
seats per State, and the House of Representatives which is
supposed to represent the people. The Constitution says
regarding the House of Representatives: ""The Number of
Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty
Thousand." and since the population was then
3,929,000 that meant 131 seats. The Current U.S.
population is 312,000,000 or with the 1960 cap of 435 seats
that means each house representative has 717,000 people
instead of the 30,000 called for in the Constitution.
This may mean that representatives are no longer representing
people and instead are only representing big money groups.
Under Bush43 the office of the president has it's own form
of imperialism (Wiki:Reining
in the Imperial Presidency) and the Obama administration
has not only continued it, but expanded it. But the "War
Powers" need to be removed completly from the presidents
office and returned to congress for all cases, even
emergencies and the suggestions in the Conyer's report Reining
in the Imperial Presidency need to be reviewed.
The Supreme Court is no longer being fair, but rather has
become partisan. We need to improve who they work.
