tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75418876144163849572024-01-18T13:28:05.948-08:00A Proposed New Constitution by Al CarrollThis blog is about 15 proposals for a new US constitution, incorporating the best of the old and reforming the worst features; abolishing the electoral college; electing the Vice President separately; ending the role of money in elections; replacing the Senate with members of the general public; ending US colonialism; and renouncing war and requiring a declaration of war followed by a public before sending troops.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.comBlogger31125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-72206283639270933172016-01-18T08:35:00.000-08:002016-01-18T08:35:42.465-08:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 15, The Right to Privacy
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Article
15- The Right to Privacy</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<i>1. The right
to privacy, unless it can be shown to directly and obviously harm
others or affect national security, shall not be abridged in any way.
Private individuals shall not have their private lives divulged in
any form without their consent unless they commit felonies, or
failure to divulge such information can be shown to affect or harm
others in a direct and obvious way.” </i>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
A mix of
technology, commercial greed, and government intrusions threaten
individual privacy in unprecedented ways. Information gathered online
is routinely bought and sold without a person even knowing about it.
Using the excuse of terrorism, the government monitors billions of
emails and phone calls. The media is consumed with gossip far more
than journalism, leading to a nation where most know celebrity
affairs in detail but cannot name recent Supreme Court decisions that
affect their lives far more.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
A government cannot
un-invent technology. But a government can prevent disclosure, and
punish it by law, or allow lawsuits to make such revelations
unprofitable. Government and big business both too often divulge
private lives because there are no consequences for doing so. The
standards under which private information could be revealed must be
high, and failing to do so must somehow be shown to cause harm. An
examples of allowing public disclosure could include sex offenders
being on public registries, while a contrary example might be
disclosing someone as a closeted gay might threaten their life if
they live in a reactionary area, whether Saudi Arabia or South
Carolina.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Supreme Court
ruled decades ago there is an implied right to privacy in the
Constitution, leading to the legalizing of abortion. The courts have
repeatedly upheld this, even while a minority has successfully passed
hundreds of restrictions locally. This proposed article will make the
right to privacy explicit, guaranteeing abortion rights. The
anti-abortion lobby should learn the best way to limit abortion is to
make it unneeded, by making access to and understanding of birth
control universal. Even more, building privacy rights directly into
the constitution can guard against the many other intrusions we
increasingly see.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<i>2. Libel,
slander, or defamation of public figures is subject to the same
punishments and standards as for private individuals.” </i>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Currently it is
almost impossible to defame a public figure. Thus it is perfectly
legal to seriously claim Obama is a reptilian alien space overlord, a
homosexual prostitute, secretly the son of a Black Panther, or of
course the vicious open bigotry of the birth certificate/secret
Muslim hysteria. On the other side of the aisle, an industry of
deluded people using bad science claim GW Bush ordered or allowed the
murder of 3,000 people on September 11, trying to change an
enormously incompetent president into a traitorous mass killer.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The effect of
allowing such defamation is toxic to a democracy. Enormous energy has
to be devoted to refuting such idiocies, and perhaps a third of the
members of both parties adhere to such craziness. (To be fair, few
Democratic leaders pander to or promote such claims, while numerous
Republican ones do.)
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Entire political
movements are diverted, distracted, and ruined. The energy spent
trying to prove the loony conspiracy claiming GW Bush carried out or
allowed 9-11 could have actually done something useful, like stop two
ruinous wars. The effort spent on one theory on Obama after another,
each more grotesque or hate filled than the one before, could have
prevented the GOP from getting locked into a self-destructive cycle
based on the futile bigoted anger of a dying demographic.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Much of such
defamation is driven by partisan ideology or outright bigotry. But
much is also driven by the profit motive catering to ideologues,
ignorance, and lurid interest. Ending the profitability of
defamation can dramatically reduce it, and produce a far less
poisonous atmosphere for public debate.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<i>3. Private
information on public figures cannot be divulged without their
consent unless it can be shown to serve the public interest, or if
their private lives contradict their public opinions and actions.”</i></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i> </i>The Lewinsky
so called scandal (pick your silly name, Zippergate, Forni-gate,
etc.) was not unique. Bouts of outrage over sexual morality, much of
them feigned, go very far back. In the election of 1800, supporters
of both candidates invented stories of Jefferson and John Adams
consorting with prostitutes. Jefferson's relationship with his slave
Sally Hemmings, with her bearing him eight children, later became an
issue, one devastating to the future of America for the next half
century.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Most Americans do
not realize that <b>Jefferson was the strongest American anti-slavery
voice of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries</b>. He worked
steadily to abolish the slave trade for fully half his life. As a
colonial legislator, he was able to pass a law limiting the slave
trade in Virginia. In the earliest years of the new United States, he
was the one most responsible for barring slavery in future northern
states with the Northwest Ordinance. As president, he successfully
barred the entire overseas slave trade to the US. <b>Hundreds of
thousands of Africans did not perish in the Atlantic slave trade to
the US because of Jefferson.</b></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But after
Jefferson's relationship to Hemmings was exposed, he completely
reversed himself on slavery. Jefferson never spoke out strongly
against slavery again. He even sent military and financial aid to
Haiti's slave owners and led efforts to isolate Haiti after slaves
successfully revolted and overthrew their masters. Such was the
destructive effects of spying into a public figure's private life.
One can also point to a more recent example. Congressman Kevin
McCarthy was forced to withdraw from being the next House Speaker
because of outright blackmail, threats to reveal an alleged affair.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
One of the few good
things to come out of the Lewinsky noise was that it showed
conclusively <b>the public mostly does not care about politicians'
sex lives. Clinton actually came out of the affair more popular than
ever, and Republicans suffered great losses in the next election</b>
for pandering to the pretended puritanical morality of a hypocritical
small group. Only a quarter of the nation favored the impeachment,
which to the amazement of the rest of the world succeeded.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
We as a nation
don't care about the private lives of politicians, in the sense that
it affects most of our votes or raises or lowers our opinion of said
politicians. Some of us only care about what politicians do below the
waist in the same sense we do about celebrities, on the level of
gossipy interest and amusement. But none of us really need to know.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The only instance
in which the private life of a public figure should matter is if it
is shown to contradict their public stance. If an anti-gay rights
politician is a closeted homosexual, that is relevant. If a
politician has a straight affair with a consenting adult, that is
irrelevant. <b>Only if there is a crime involved, or a conflict of
interest such as the person being a lobbyist, should their private
life matter.</b> Their privacy should not end simply because they are
in public office. No one's privacy should be abridged unless doing so
directly and obviously harms the nation and society.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The standard for
public revelation for public figures must be high and strictly
defined. One must be able to show both direct harm to the public,
such as a private relationship being with a lobbyist on issues the
politician must vote on. The harm must also be obvious, with no
extended or vague claims, such as that breaking the marriage vows
make a politician less trustworthy.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Other public
figures such as celebrities, and especially those who simply have the
misfortune to be related to the famous, should not have their privacy
invaded. (I hasten to point out, obviously many celebrities put
themselves on display for publicity's sake, and this proposal does
not apply to them since they voluntarily disclose their once private
lives.) When media invade the lives of young and even underage
relations of celebrities and politicians, clearly it has gone too
far.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
All clauses of this
proposed article argue that journalism should actually be journalism
rather than gossip mongering, that government intrusions should end
at the front doors of private homes, and that businesses and
individuals who invade another's privacy will face lawsuits or even
jail time. Courts have previously argued for “the right to be left
alone.” This proposal seeks to make that a reality.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-4872212850687243042016-01-04T16:51:00.002-08:002016-01-04T16:51:45.018-08:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 14, Limiting Idle Wealth<br /> Article
14-Limiting Idle Wealth<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<i>1. Large
concentrations of idle wealth are inherently dangerous and inhumane.
All income from any and all sources greater than 100 times the median
national income and all wealth of an individual greater than 100
times the median national wealth shall be seized, unless it is
reinvested or donated to charity.” </i><br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i> </i>Wealth is
power and any accumulation of power is dangerous and undemocratic.
But the strongest critique of inequality is one that US conservatives
should heed because it speaks directly to the deepest beliefs of the
great majority of them:</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is un-Christian.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Inequality and
concentrations of wealth are against every Biblical principal, the
expressed word of Christ, and for that matter, against the central
precepts of most major world religions, and most minor ones too.
Christ raged against money changers in the temple. He intoned that it
was easier for a camel to be threaded through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter Heaven. For two millenia, the church has
maintained the idea of Holy Poverty, that the poor are especially
close to God, that the church should be especially concerned with
their fate, that we are all our brother's keeper, and that
materialism and attachment to possessions are unhealthy spiritually.<i>
</i>After all, Jesus lived an ascetic life, one concerned with the
fate of “the least of my brothers,” not a life devoted in any way
to financial profit or accumulating wealth.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Much of modern
conservatism ignores these central messages of Christianity, instead
being far more concerned with what people do with their genitals. To
paraphrase George Orwell, they are only Christians from the waist
down. Another portion of conservatism is devoted to putting personal
profit over the public good. Bizarrely, some libertarians and
conservatives admire Ayn Rand, whose philosophy inspired no less than
the Satanic Church. America as a nation could gain much by returning
to that original Christian message.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Wealth being power,
it is also dangerous unless limited, far more inefficient than its
admirers admit, and destructive to a nation and society to let it
gather and remain idle. In Latin America, there were wars and
revolutions fought for nearly two centuries over latifundias, huge
estates larger than most US counties, kept idle while much of the
public had no land at all, solely because the size of the estate
brought prestige to its owner.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But US elites have
long been even more conspicuous in their obscene displays. The public
saw William Randolph Hearst buy entire castles in Europe to be
reassembled in California. The Astors held a multimillion dollar
party at the height of the Great Depression. Elvis would charter a
jet just to get peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Aaron Spelling
lived in a mansion covering over 6 acres, with rooms devoted just to
wrapping presents. Michael Jackson had his own private zoo and
amusement park with roller coasters and carousels. Numerous CEOs
insist on private jets that cost millions to buy and maintain, while
downsizing their companies and keeping employee wages low. <b>Nike
CEO Phil Knight became an international symbol of inequality at its
most odious, accumulating over $24 billion while paying his
Indonesian workers 14 cents an hour</b> in unsafe sweatshop
conditions. (It took over a decade of protests and boycotts to bring
partial reforms to Nike.)</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Such examples are
part of a larger pattern. American elites have far more wealth and
pay compared to their workers, more than anywhere else in the world.
There is far more inequality in the US than in almost all other
developed nations. Only Russia and Slovakia are more unequal. <b>A
Japanese CEO makes slightly less than 70 times what one of their
workers do. In the US, a CEO makes over 350 times an average worker's
pay.</b> Such inequality even horrifies noted conservatives like
commentator George Will, who once said American CEOs are doing what
Karl Marx was unable to do, discredit capitalism.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Such concentrations
of power must be ended for the damage they do to society and
democracy. It is hardly a secret that money buys elections, and
elites purchase favorable laws written for them by a congress
dependent on their support. Barring the use of elite funds in
elections is not enough, for there is no practical way to end
lobbying without limiting or ending the right to petition. Remove the
excess wealth, any wealth that is not devoted to investment or
charity.<i> </i>That way elites will not have funds not only for a
lifestyle that holds the middle and working classes in contempt, but
to influence public sentiment any more than any other person.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i> </i>The standard
used for this proposal is very generous. A full 100 times the median
annual income of slightly under $27,000 is currently a little under
$2.7 million. 100 times the current median wealth of slightly over
$81,000 is slightly over $8.1 million. If any elites or their
apologists complain this is too harsh, let them try to convince a
waitress or bus driver that elites “need” more than $2.7 million
a year to live on, or “need” a home worth over $8 million.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
There is absolutely
no way that a CEO is worth 350 times more than an average worker. It
defies logic and basic morality. If anything, the pattern is the
opposite: Having more wealth makes one less capable, not more. For
the cushion of wealth makes one soft, out of touch with the world and
the people within it. It is also morally numbing. As one study
pointed out, the obscenely wealthy have far less empathy for the
average worker, the greater the wealth they have.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The effect of
penalizing idle wealth will not be to “punish success.” Most
wealth is either inherited or created by a combination of luck and
favorable government laws. Penalizing idle wealth spurs investment
and charitable donations. In Europe, the ideal of noblesse oblige
says that nobility must give one sixth of their income to charity. In
Muslim tradition, alms for the poor is one of the central pillars of
the faith, requiring the giving away of up to a tenth of not just
your income, but all your wealth.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But American elites
as a group are not very generous. <b>As income in America goes up,
the proportion given to charity generally goes down.</b> Phil Knight,
for example, had as his sole “charity” to have a sports stadium
and business school built at his old university named after him. Let
this proposal become the American version of noblesse oblige, an
obligation for elites to do good instead of self-aggrandizement, more
power, and ever increasing unequal wealth.</div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<i>2. All
attempts to conceal wealth to avoid taxes shall result in prosecution
as grand larceny, full seizure of not just concealed wealth but all
wealth, and long prison sentences which may not be suspended.
Separate white collar prisons, or other prisons that are less arduous
or harsh, are forbidden, and all white collar criminals must be
punished and imprisoned with all other prisoners.”</i></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>More than $21
trillion in concealed wealth is hidden overseas, about one and a half
the value of the entire US economy. And that's the low estimate. The
highest is $31 trillion.</b> American wealth is roughly one tenth of
that, $2.1 trillion.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Over $2 trillion in
untaxed wealth is a theft and crime that Pablo Escobar could only
dream about. Most hidden wealth is not from criminals, but from
“respectable” sources. <b>Nearly three fourths of the Fortune 500
top corporations routinely hide huge amounts.</b> Apple alone hides
over $180 billion. <b>American corporate criminals, were they to pay
up, owe the nation up to $620 billion. </b>That loss weakens the
nation and society, treats with contempt the average honest person
and the system we all live under. The wealthiest in America clearly
show they have always been the least patriotic of people.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Such concealed
wealth should be immediately declared by elites and taxed, so that
they may avoid having it all seized and then having to serve a
lengthy prison sentence. If they fail to, then the entire $2.1
trillion should be seized outright, and elites hunted down wherever
on the globe they hide out, and then imprisoned. Al Capone was
sentenced to 11 years in federal prison, serving much of that time in
Alcatraz, for evading income tax on perhaps $100 million. There is no
just reason similar elite criminals cannot serve similar sentences
for concealing similar amounts, and do equally similar hard time.
Elite thieves should be tracked down by the likes of the US Marshals,
no different than other criminals.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Treating wealthy
elites differently from other criminals once they are imprisoned also
must be ended. Some current white collar prisons have wooded parks in
them. Prisoners get routine net access and email. Most get generous
visits from family, with prisoners getting to choose a prison close
to their family. Some white collar “prisons” allow prisoners to
spend their days outside the facility. One in Pensacola even allows
prisoners to go to a local movie theater.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
This is obviously
unjust. Let the fear of hard conditions, including the fear of other
prisoners, become one more deterrent designed to make wealthy elite
criminals honest. Let us stop the practice of being soft on crime
when it is being done by those in $20,000 suits. Wall Street
criminals should face justice no differently than those on Main
Street.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-18169481692309798462015-12-01T19:19:00.002-08:002015-12-01T19:19:56.200-08:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 13, No Special Treatment for Wealthy Elites
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Article
13-No Special Treatment for Wealthy Elites</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<i>1. Government
assistance only goes to those in need and corporate welfare is
forbidden. No person or corporation, nor any trust or legal entity
used by a person or corporation, shall receive government assistance
or funding unless they make less than double the median national
income and possess less than double the median national wealth.” </i>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i> </i></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Quite a few wealthy
elites, and quite a few with passionate hatred for the working class,
argue that poor people receiving government assistance suffer from
dependency, laziness, and a lack of a moral code. The most hateful
depict those in poverty as leeches, bums, and bloated off of a few
hundred dollars a month in aid to live. Yet seemingly none or at
least few of the same people make the same argument about wealthy
elites, especially corporations. <b>If welfare supposedly is morally
harmful to a single mother, what about CEOs? Bankers? What about
entire corporations dependent on government? How is that not far more
offensive, obscene, counterproductive, and useless?</b></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Such an argument
must be turned on its head: Those with the wealth to already support
themselves get no government aid, ever. Only those in need do.<i> </i>The
Green Party platform has long included a variation on this proposal:
No corporate welfare, period. But their proposal does not prevent
wealthy or well off individuals from receiving such welfare. It also
prevents small business loans, which provide far more jobs than the
giant corporations. Blocking all corporate welfare would also include
loans or tax holidays to infant industries, where innovation most
often begins.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Government should
not be used to redistribute wealth upwards, from the middle and
working classes to the already wealthiest elites and others who are
at least well off. There should be means testing, and the simplest
test is that aid only goes to those in need, best measured by wealth
and income. It's best, though, to err on the side of caution. Thus
the proposed standard, double the median (not average) income and
median wealth as well. Since wealth and income in America are both
distributed very unevenly, using the average would skew the numbers
high.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Sports stadiums,
built at public expense that benefit already wealthy team owners,
would be barred in the future unless the team owners pay for them
entirely. Current team owners would have to repay every penny of
public money spent for stadiums on their behalf. Agribusiness
subsidies to not grow food come to an immediate end, unless they were
part of the shrinking number of small family farms. The auto industry
loans, both the entire US industry in 2009 and of Chrysler in 1979,
would also have been barred.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Incompetently run
industries should be allowed to fail, or the government buys them out
very cheaply at market rates and then either sells them off in
pieces, or make them publicly owned and run for public purposes, not
for profit. (For example, the US auto industry could have been put to
researching and making cheaper autos run solely on alternatives to
fossil fuels.) If the failure of an industry or large corporation
will cause huge job losses, obviously the best option would be for
the government to sell them off in pieces, but make a condition of
their sale that as many of the employees as possible keep their jobs
or receive pensions or generous severance. Any government assistance
should go to helping workers hold onto their jobs, or finding other
work or being retrained, not to rewarding wealthy elites for failure.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
British history
shows us many examples of the failures of “lemon socialism.”
There the state took over failing industries, and it usually only
benefited incompetent elites by bailing them out no differently than
welfare for capitalists. Workers at industries like coal and
railroads were not helped much. Huge cutbacks were still made, only
with government now being blamed and public ownership discredited.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The failed bailout
of the banks in the 2000s (failed in the sense that the public was
not helped, only the banks), and the successful bailouts of the
savings and loans in the 1980s (successful in the sense of greatly
lowering the cost of the bailout), would both have been barred with
this proposed article. The two options to save the banks and savings
and loans, as in other cases, would be to either seize them and make
them publicly owned, or seize them and break them up and sell them
off. A third option also exists, one better for the average
non-wealthy depositor, turn the banks into credit unions.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
What happened
instead was that <b>banks received an obscene secret bailout of over
$7 </b><i><b>trillion</b></i><b> (on top of the public bailout of
$700 billion), equal to half the value of the whole US economy. </b>Obama
and his administration, made up of executives from the likes of
Goldman Sachs, naively imagined banks would lend out their new
government money. Instead, much of it was lent back to the federal
government. These<b> banks received an insanely low interest rate of
0.01%, then loaned the federal government's own money </b><i><b>back</b></i><b>
to the government at 5% interest, making tens of billions. </b>The
economy recovered unevenly, no thanks to either federal or wealthy
elite practices.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
One more area of
assistance needs to be changed, aid to the elderly. Social Security
and Medicare must be means tested, much like Medicaid is now. Those
with more than double the median income or wealth do not deserve it.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<i>2. All
government loans or tax deferrals or holidays or other benefits to
corporations or business must be repaid, with interest at market
rates. All facilities built even partly to benefit or profit private
businesses or individuals must be paid for by those businesses or
individuals equal to the benefits or profits received.” </i>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Facilities includes
not just stadiums and sports complexes, but anything that benefits in
large part private businesses, from highways to the internet to
airports to the maintenance and regulation of public airwaves to
state subsidized education to train workers for private industries,
e.g. the nuclear power industry receiving most of its trained
workforce from the US military. Externalities, as pro capitalist
economists are fond of calling them, come to an end. For the layman,
an externality is anything whose cost can be passed along to the
public or the government, and the business avoids paying for it. The
practice comes down to “private profits, public losses.” It is
reverse Robin Hood at its worst. </div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
For a safer
environment for us all, ending externalities will be a godsend.
Mining and some chemical industries have as standard practice to
pollute without consequence, declare bankruptcy, and expect the
cleanup to be done by the government and paid for by the public. This
is a government benefit by any reasonable standard. Now companies
will be required to pay for their pollution, or better yet, avoid it
in advance as cheaper than paying for cleanup later.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The huge giveaways
to corporations come to an end. Amazon has benefited from no sales
tax far beyond reason. Ideally it should have ended as soon as the
company turned a profit, back in the 1990s, and began paying sales
taxes either to the states where the items were bought, or the home
of their shipping centers. Trucking and shipping companies should be
paying all of their part for the upkeep of the public highways.
Broadcast networks should pay for the market value of the public
airwaves, on top of the cost of regulation, as cable companies should
pay for the entire market value of the use of public bandwidth and
cost of regulation.</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Benefits also
clearly include government research that private industries profit
from. Companies would now have to pay back the government for the
cost of research. Intellectual property laws should also be severely
curtailed, though not ended entirely. A form of means testing would
keep the laws in place for artists such as independent filmmakers,
musicians, and authors, or those just starting out, but end such
protection for individuals once they attain a certain level of
wealth, and for all corporations. Thus while the struggling artist
remains protected, Hollywood and the recording industry are not.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Drug companies
would also lose their patents once they earn back the cost of
research. Industries with de facto or legally enforced monopolies,
such as cable networks and the football and baseball leagues, lose
such protections. For the consumer, prices will drop sharply.
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But the biggest
benefit to the public will be longer lives, since medical treatment
and prescription prices will be greatly reduced. For the entire US
public, the next biggest benefit will be a far more thriving and
representative democracy since elites will no longer be using
government to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-33074533147384656022015-11-05T19:10:00.000-08:002015-11-05T19:12:00.333-08:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 12, Ending Class Bias in the LawAlso at <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/user/Al%20Carroll">http://www.dailykos.com/user/Al%20Carroll</a>.<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"></span> </div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Article
12-Ending Class Bias in the Law</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: small;"><i>1.
All crimes must be punished. No president may pardon or give clemency
to any in their own administration, or the administration of other
presidents of their party, and all such previous pardons are
overturned. The guilty shall never be allowed to profit from their
crimes. The guilty must pay back all wealth from their crimes and pay
for all damage done to others.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">Class
bias, as much as racial bias, does great harm to American society and
persons. But unlike racism, class bias is rarely addressed in
America. It is far too often invisible or unspoken, an enormous
pretense made that classism does not exist or can easily be overcome.
</span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> There
is an enormous class bias in the legal system. A criminal (even an
unarmed one) who steals five hundred dollars from a convenience store
is far more harshly punished than a bank president embezzling
millions. White collar crime is far less punished than “street
crime.” Not only far shorter sentences, but white collar prisons
have a notorious reputation for soft treatment, just country clubs
with high fences where the well off do their time by working on their
tennis game.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> Such
bias goes all the way to the top. Corrupt presidents have only rarely
been punished, and far more often, false charges of corruption are
only used as a smear by the opposition. Nixon and Reagan were never
punished for their crimes, while dozens of faux scandals were
invented to smear Clinton and Obama. One Clinton administration
member was actually forced to resign over a single pair of low value
football game tickets. Notably, t</span><span style="font-size: small;"><b>he worst
thing each president did, Clinton choosing to not halt genocide in
Rwanda and Obama's drone assassination program, were not objected to
by most members of either party</b></span><span style="font-size: small;">. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> Presidents
have also misused their pardon power to prevent officials of their
own party and even own administration from being punished. Ford
pardoned Nixon, the man who appointed him, in what was widely
regarded by most as a corrupt deal that cost Ford the next election.
George Bush Sr. pardoned those convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal
for lawbreaking that later evidence showed he himself took part in.
Clinton pardoned wealthy campaign donors, de facto bribery in every
way but name. GW Bush gave leniency to “Scooter” Libby for his
part in leaking the name of a CIA agent, when some evidence points to
Bush himself leaking the agent’s name. This abuse must be ended.
Presidents should always be barred from pardoning their own party and
administration members, since it's a clear conflict of interest and a
way to protect their own criminal actions and associates.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> Wealthy
criminals are rarely punished equal to the crimes they commit. Bank
presidents and CEOs who embezzle or defraud routinely negotiate deals
allowing them to walk away with most of what they have stolen. The
list of scandals of the last 30 years is disturbingly long: The
Savings and Loan Scandals, BCCI, Worldcom, subprime loans, underwater
mortages, Enron, Bernie Madoff's Ponzi schemes, Lehman Brothers,
Cendant, MF Global, Fannie Mae, HealthSouth, Tyco, Allen Stanford,
Qwest, Arthur Andersen, Bear Stearns, IMClone, and Adelphia.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> All
the scandals named involved billions of dollars, sometimes tens of
billions. Punishment has been limited and rare. Only Madoff received
any substantial prison time, and that is because his victims were all
wealthy elites like Steven Spielberg. A good illustration of the
double standard was Martha Stewart, who got only a few months in a
cushy “prison” for insider trading that gained her about $45,000.
Her business also did not suffer, nor did most of her customers or
the public condemn her the way they would a petty thief, much less
one stealing $45,000. By contrast, most ex-convicts guilty of minor
“street” crimes have a hard time even finding minimum wage work.
Many are barred from some workplaces.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The principle this nation and society should follow is
simple: No one should benefit from crime. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Any
punishment should at least be equal to what was stolen or gained,
plus the harm done to victims. Full restitution should be standard
practice. That is even more important than prison sentences.</b></span><span style="font-size: small;">
The prospect of instant poverty will deter millionaire and
billionaire serial criminals. It will also end much of the worship of
wealth, the Mammon so common in mainstream America, a sickness that
in its most extreme form is no different from admiring gangsters just
because they are wealthy.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: small;"><i>2.
All fees, fines, and taxes must be progressive, based on ability to
pay. Regressive taxes, where the wealthy pay a proportionately
smaller amount, are expressly forbidden and must be immediately made
progressive.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: small;">Social
Security is one of the great accomplishments of American society and
government. It changed seniors from the poorest age group to the
wealthiest. But the way it was enacted and maintained is striking. To
keep the wealthy from opposing it, the </span><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Social
Security tax is among the most regressive in America. Only the first
$110,000 is taxed. Someone making $110,000 and Bill Gates, worth over
$60 billion, pay the same amount</b></span><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> Sales
tax, compared to taxes on sales of stocks, is regressive as well. The
single mother buying groceries to feed her family pays higher taxes
on most of her food, up to 10%, than the speculator who pays only
0.0034% when buying stocks. Until transaction taxes and sales tax
match, this is a formula for class warfare, wealth redistributed
upwards from workers to elites. Ideally, the transaction tax would be
between 0.5 and 1%, and so would sales tax. A great intended side
benefit would be its reducing speculation in the stock market, one of
the biggest reasons for instability in the economy since the start of
the century.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> Fines
for lawbreaking should also be tailored to income and wealth. A fine
of $500 devastates someone on minimum wage, and the unemployed have
no choice but to serve jail time. But to the wealthy, such a fine is
not even pocket change. In essence, many of the poorest go to jail
for lack of money, while the wealthy are not deterred from
lawbreaking. Were fines made progressive, on a sliding scale as
income tax is, the average cost of fines would decline for most. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Far better to make all fines a percentage of combined
income and wealth, say 0.5% of one’s annual income from all sources
and value of all property and other wealth for a traffic fine, or
one year's income and wealth for a fine handed down for a felony
conviction. Thus (in addition to prison time) someone making the
minimum wage with no other real assets would pay a $10,000 fine for a
felony, while someone making $1 million a year with $2 million in
property would pay $3 million in fines. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Both suffer the same just and equal fate, being reduced
to zero financially for their crime. An added bonus would be that the
law now has far more incentive to go after wealthy lawbreakers, when
now the reverse is true. Thus all the extremely wealthy lawbreakers
in the scandals listed before would have paid billions or tens of
billions in fines, exactly what they deserved, not a single penny of
profit from their crimes.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-1312893365105396242015-11-01T07:19:00.001-08:002015-11-01T07:19:45.401-08:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 11, Ending Institutional Support for Hatred
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Article
11- Ending Institutional Support for Hatred</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>1.
No government body, law, or regulation will sanction or reward racism
or ethnic hatred, religious bigotry, sexism, or other hatreds based
on linguicism (hatred or discrimination based on language) or
national or regional origin, whether intended or claimed to be
unintended.”</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
start of doctors' Hippocratic Oath is “First, do no harm.” For
most of American history, government deliberately did actively harm
nonwhites, and the US system was openly white supremacist. Besides
the obvious African slavery and genocide against American Indians,
the earliest immigration laws in the US restricted citizenship to
whites only. A racist immigration quota system was kept in place
until the late 1960s. Interracial marriage was banned and an
elaborate system of segregation put in place. Asians, starting with
Chinese, faced a series of Exclusion Acts. Native Hawaiians saw their
language banned as late as 1986, American Indians were punished for
speaking Native languages, and indigenous ceremonies were banned.
Social Security in the beginning did not cover farm workers or other
professions with a high number of Blacks, Latinos, and Natives. There
were special taxes aimed at Black businesses in the south, and
against Chinese and Mexicans in California (the Foreign Miner's Tax.)
Sometimes discrimination was simply petty, such as a ban on Manchu
hairstyles. Even most elementary schoolchildren know that nearly all
minorities faced bans or limitations on voting. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Some
of that discrimination continues today, with old fashioned
gerrymandering and voter ID laws squarely aimed at discouraging
minorities. Voting stations in inner cities are often old and
underserved, leading to long lines, or far away in rural areas with
mostly Blacks, Latinos, or Natives. At the same time, largely white
suburban polling stations are lavish and easy to access quickly. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Other
government sanctioned prejudices are far more recent than most
Americans realize. The US Department of Agriculture systematically
discriminated against Blacks and Natives, denied them credit and
disaster relief, had almost no minority employees, and delayed civil
rights claims </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>as late as 2004</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">.
The number of Black and Native owned farms dropped dramatically,
forcing many into low paying labor. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The state
of Georgia </b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b>currently</b></i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>
sells a special license plate that directly funds a white supremacist
group</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">, the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
There are numerous de facto whites-only college practices, such as
legacy scholarships and admissions, that continue today.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Government
must no longer and never again be an institution for inequality or be
used by the bigoted to enforce their prejudices. This must be
safeguarded not only because of a long odious past, but because of an
equally ugly present, and a potentially ugly future. A number of
current presidential candidates call for a wall on the border with
Mexico, and some states have passed laws against the mythical threat
of Sharia law. A tide of intolerance could return, as it did </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>after
September 11 when 80,000 males from 24 Muslim nations were forced to
register with the government</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">. (Supposedly
done to prevent terrorism, not a single suspect was caught from this
profiling.) This article will act as a safeguard. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>2.
Nor shall any government fail to provide redress for longstanding
discrimination based on the previous.”</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Those
who would try to use the previous clause to undermine government or
public efforts to end hatred and the harm it brings must be blocked.
One could easily see the ignorant, willfully blind, or maliciously
racist or sexist trying to use this article to claim Affirmative
Action or Title IX (aimed at preventing discrimination against women
in education) must end. Such an argument is not just false, it is
bigoted. Anti Title IX or Affirmative Action arguments assume that
all better jobs or benefits naturally “belong” to white males and
that women and minorities have inferior abilities.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> This
clause goes beyond the previous one. The government is committed to
not only never causing or worsening bigotry, but to actively ending
such bigotries. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>3.
Any person or institution taking part in or promoting discrimination
based on the previous will result in that person or institution's
permanent inability to receive government jobs or benefits, including
licenses, grants, subsidies, retirement including pensions and Social
Security, tax deductions or credits, eligibility for public
assistance, student or business loans or credit.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">Much
like proposed Article 10, a bigot's First Amendment rights are not
being infringed upon by this proposal. All that is changing is that
such prejudices will no longer be supported by the state and public
money. A Klansman should not be a cop. A neo Nazi should not be
allowed to be a soldier. A Nation of Islam member should not be
teaching history at a public high school. For obvious reasons it is
dangerous and destructive to allow them to do so. Those dedicated to
the destruction of a large part of the people of this nation should
not benefit from its institutions, or be allowed to use those
institutions to harm others.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> By
extension, the state and the public have the right to deny benefits
to members of the public based on their harmful actions. The obvious
precedent is drug laws. Federal law does not allow those with drug
convictions to receive federal student loans. One way this proposal
could be immediately used is to end public money going to groups
trying to “cure” gays of being homosexual.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Simply
having a private bigoted opinion will not result in being cut off.
But being a member of a hate group, media or other corporation
promoting and making money off hatred, or actively promoting
discrimination and hatred either as an individual, or part of a hate
group or corporation promoting hatreds, should lead to sanctions from
society and government against you. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
biggest benefit to society will not be from preventing a militia
terrorist from getting military training, or even from keeping
racists off police forces. The biggest gain will be from blocking
corporations from profiting at public expense when they spread
stereotypes. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Hollywood and news media will be
punished by this article far more than the far right, for they do far
more harm and spread far more hate.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">
Politicians also will face sanctions, for they will lose public
funding for a pattern of preaching bigotry. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Contrary
to some claims, changing behavior can and often does successfully
change even the deepest of bigoted opinions. Ending many forms of
legal segregation showed that. Whites who previously feared or hated
minorities discovered the world does not end when one shares the same
lunch counter. The percentage of Americans holding bigoted opinions
has dropped sharply. Where nearly nine-tenths of the public opposed
interracial dating and marriage in the 1960s, today less than a fifth
do. Racism can go the way of feudalism, as a system and mindset we
have to explain to students used to exist.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-59975603652198167272015-10-28T08:01:00.001-07:002015-10-28T08:01:22.587-07:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 10, Nonprofits and Public Ownership for the Public Interest
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Article
10- Nonprofits and Public Ownership for the Public Interest</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>1.
National defense industries, healthcare, prisons, education, and news
media must be nonprofit or publicly owned. No business, corporation,
or individual can profit unfairly from federal, state, or local
governments or public resources and must pay fair market value for
all previous resources, subsidies, and research.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">So
much of the worst in American (and all of human) society and history
has been driven by the profit motive. So much of US (and state, and
local) government practice is corporate welfare, reverse Robin Hood
at its worst. From billions for stadiums built for sports teams at
the local level to trillions for the Defense Department
internationally, government in America often funnels money upward,
from the working and middle classes to wealthy elites, and from
public lands to private elite hands.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> This
is naked class warfare, both the cause of and maintenance of deep
inequality. Wealth redistribution upward shows that those who
maintain government should be run like a business could not be more
wrong. (Businessmen also generally have terrible records as
presidents.) Some matters are far better left to public management
rather than private, done by the state with no private intent or to
make a profit because doing so harms us all and is morally repugnant
and unjust. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> But
since partisans of capitalism are generally unmoved by moral
arguments, here is another consideration: </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>businesses
are far less competent at public enterprises</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">.
They tend to think in terms of individual profit for the next
quarter, rather than the long term public good. Public parks are one
obvious example. No one would reasonably want national parks opened
up to strip mining, or the crassest commercial theme parks. Both
would lose the parks' great value, aesthetic, public, environmental,
and even long term economically, for purely short term profit.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Fire
departments are an example we have learned from hard experience
should not be private. Early American fire departments were, and they
were notorious for incompetence and thievery. When your home caught
fire, private fire departments demanded payment before they would put
out the fire, negotiating with you while your place burned. Often
they stole everything they could in burning homes, even looting
neighbor's homes. Competing private fire departments even got into
brawls over who would fight the fires, so lucrative was the theft.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Intelligence
gathering is another area where privatizing has long been a disaster.
But unlike the previous examples, America has yet to learn that
lesson. The CIA looms so large in American consciousness, it will
surprise many that the US had no national intelligence agency until
the Cold War. Lincoln relied on the Pinkerton Detective Agency for
intelligence during the Civil War. (They also became notorious for
violent union busting.) Pinkerton routinely over estimated
Confederate troop strength by 200-300%. US generals like McClellan
then often refused to engage the enemy, prolonging the war. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> In
Iraq and Afghanistan, some of the torturers in prisons like Abu
Ghraib likely were private contractors who were unaccountable to US
or other law. Some CIA agents volunteered for Iraq for six months,
resigned, and then worked for private intelligence companies for
several times their previous pay. Besides being overpriced, a high
turnover and lack of experienced agents and analysts almost certainly
made mistakes that cost American, Iraqi, and Afghan lives, prolonging
and worsening both wars.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
Iraq and Afghanistan Wars gave us still more examples of the folly of
privatizing war, relying on mercenaries, the most infamous being
Blackwater, later rebranded XE. Blackwater mercenaries opened fire on
an Iraqi crowd, massacring dozens. A drunken Blackwater guard also
killed no less than the bodyguard of the Iraqi Vice President. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Certainly
conventional troops do commit atrocities. But they at least face
military law, whose inadequacies are because of the protection of an
old boys network. (Often, enlisted and junior officers get punished
with prison, while senior officers get their careers ended, but no
prison time.) Private mercenaries have far fewer laws to govern them,
sometimes none. They are often not bound by military codes nor local
laws, and rarely prosecuted, even for atrocities.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Equally
disturbing, and most importantly for American society, mercenaries
and “contractors” (actually support troops) came to outnumber US
troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Without mercenaries, Presidents
Bush and Obama would have had to withdraw far sooner, or bring back
an incredibly unpopular draft. The public turned against both wars
after five years, and so few Americans were enlisting that both the
army and marines missed their recruiting goals for years at a time.
</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Relying on mercenaries allowed both presidents
to ignore public opinion and keep the wars going over half a decade
more. </b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">This proposed article by banning
mercenaries will end future unpopular wars sooner.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Nations
and empires who relied on mercenaries were always undone by them. The
Praetorian Guard often chose who would become the next Roman Emperor.
Mercenaries in the Thirty and Hundred Years Wars prolonged and
worsened both wars. Looting became one of the main ways to pay them,
attracting the worst criminal elements into these armies. The French
Foreign Legion had an appalling histories of atrocities in Algeria,
Vietnam, and within France itself during the Paris Commune uprising.
The Spanish Foreign Legion was equally notorious for rapes and other
atrocities during the Spanish Civil War and helped put Falangist
fascism into power, a dictatorship that killed half a million
Spaniards over 40 years.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The US
defense industry, in Eisenhower's famous phrase the
military-industrial complex, itself was one of the main drivers of
the Cold War, then the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, and now the current
undeclared wars on terrorism in lands from Colombia to central Africa
to Yemen to the Philippines. It is also socially and environmentally
destructive to the US itself, far out of proportion to its size. The
need for war or the threat of war to maintain an American empire
distorts our democracy and society, giving us such movements as
neoconservatism and government such as Homeland Security with its
massive spying. Removing the profit motive will dramatically shrink
all of that. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Even
if one is unmoved by the moral arguments, one should acknowledge
another matter: for profit defense industries are enormously
inefficient and wasteful. Weapons routinely cost double or triple
original estimates. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Some combat planes cost
more than if they were literally made of gold.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">
Some military planes, like Howard Hughes' Hercules or “Spruce
Goose,” were never in combat at all and barely able to fly.
Hercules was the most costly and worthless plane in history. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> By
contrast, state owned defense industries produced one of the most
reliable and low cost of modern weapons, the AK-47, compared to the
far worse US commercially made M-16. (The M-16 jammed so often, US
soldiers in Vietnam often used them to hold up tents.) Israel's
defense industries, easily among the world's very best, have a large
part entirely state-owned and much of the rest produced in
partnership with the state. In the beginning Israeli weapons were
almost entirely produced by collective enterprises. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Prisons
are one more area that must remain ruled by and for the public
interest. Private for profit prisons give the owners incentives to
lock up as many as possible. The need for profit also cannot help but
endanger not only the prisoner and the prison guard, but the general
public in the long run. Abusive prisons where costs are cut to
increase profit will worsen the rate of repeat offenders.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Private
for profit healthcare has given the US terrible a far lower life
expectancy compared to other industrial nations, especially for its
cost. The worst of these US health industries are drug companies,
charging up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single
prescription. Typically drugs cost a tenth in other nations compared
to the US. The next costliest nation is Canada, about half that of
the US. Two horrifying side effects are that many Americans are over
medicated because of the desire for profit, and many more Americans
stop or never seek treatment because they cannot afford drug prices.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Public
school education is funded unequally in America, with school
districts based on income. For profit education private schools
reproduce from young ages the inequality and elitism that undermines
democracies. Contrary to public perception, US public schools have
been getting steadily better for a third of a century. For example,
the US dropout rate is now less than one in fourteen, where in the
1970s it was over half. Most of the problems in public schools are
problems of economic inequality brought in from outside the schools. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
generally acknowledged best type of schools in the US, Catholic,
notably don't have profit as their prime motive, only education.
Parochial schools would not be affected by this proposal, only elite
institutions. This includes elite private universities, mostly
attended by wealthy elites, who receive far more public money per
student than public colleges. This corporate welfare add to elite
institution graduates dominating most of the upper levels of
government. Taking away public giveaways and making them nonprofits
will end their old money bias, and at least weaken their hold on the
federal government.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>2.
No journalist, commentator, or others presenting themselves as
experts in politics, history, law, society, health, medicine, or
science can make more than five times the median national income, and
any excess income must be donated to charity or it will be seized by
the federal government.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">Much
of the worst actions of the media is driven by profit. This includes
not just deliberate falsehoods, but fearmongering, deception,
propagandizing, and hostility to empirical thinking and evidence. It
was not always so. Believe it or not, as recently as the 1970s, news
divisions at major networks were expected to be public services.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
problem is not ideological, for the most part, since some of the
worst offenders don't even believe what they preach. To take the most
obvious example, Rupert Murdoch does not agree with much of what his
network and papers argue. It simply suits his business model to sell
an ideology of fear and anger to a declining demographic.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
simplest cure, again, is to remove the profit motive. Media should be
nonprofit. A salary cap will help drive out those who harvest fear
for the sake of lucre.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Media
is enormously class biased in America. When watching a “news”
channel one is typically watching multi millionaires who work for
multi billionaires. Thus the inevitable class hostility and hatred
directed against the poorest. Think how often there are calls to drug
test those on welfare. Now try to think of any instance of a call to
drug test CEOs and bankers on corporate welfare. Media figures have
little idea of what it is to be homeless or work for minimum wage.
</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The best media today is that which is
nonprofit, PBS, NPR, and BBC. The worst news media is the most
profitable, Fox.</b></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> There
is an equal need for an end to vast industries of outright hustlers
trading in not just fear mongering but pseudo science, from global
warming deniers to anti vaccine conspiracists, conspiracy theorists
of every kind, and an entire industry of faux medicine, today's
equivalent of snake oil that sells by the tens of billions. Faux
medicine kills, by the thousands, preying on the desperate who turn
to it instead of tested treatments. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Pseudo
science kills not just people but democracies. An industry of
deliberately false science has convinced two fifths of Americans that
global warming is not real. A separate industry of conspiracy
theorists long ago ceased to operate with vanity presses and xeroxed
pamphlets and today has entire networks peddling conspiracy thinking.
Much of 1960s counter culture protest was dissipated chasing phantom
Kennedy conspiracies. Much of the outrage against the Iraq and
Afghanistan Wars was wasted over claims of phantom missiles on
September 11, made by those who seem to have never passed high school
science classes. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> All of
the above are still perfectly free to state their opinions. They will
simply be unable to profit from them. There is a precedent, in laws
that prevent those who commit crimes from benefiting from them. In
New York, it was nicknamed the Son of Sam law. The same principle
used against mass murderers can and should apply those who make their
living by serial lying, that they cannot profit by doing so. Let them
show empirical evidence, and if not, no profit. The number of
websites claiming JFK was killed by UFOs will shrink rapidly if there
is no ad revenue to be made from it. So will faux medicine if there
is no profit in it.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>3.
All journalists, commentators, and others presenting themselves as
experts for mass news media will be fined every time they lie in
their articles, broadcasts, or public statements. No person or media
outlet can profit from lies or falsehoods and shall be fined at least
equal to all profit, money, or benefits made from lies or
falsehoods.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">The
nation's constitution should not be a defense for falsehoods. Media
and media figures should be accountable for what they say and write.
Those who argue for free speech of any and all kinds often ignore the
fact that </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the First Amendment does not
sanction defamation, libel, or slander. It does not protect
incitement to murder nor callous recklessness that leads to mass
panic</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> (commonly known as “no right to shout
fire in a crowded theater.”) That fact makes the US more free, not
less. Neither should the Constitution or American society sanction
and allow profit from the deliberate and knowing spread of
falsehoods.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> For an
opinion is different from a fact, despite the mushy solipcist's claim
that everything is an opinion. The simplest way to toss solipcism to
the side is to ask the believer to point a loaded gun at his toe and
fire. Let him then tell us that his bloody foot and limp is just an
opinion.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Facts
are black letter realities, and their truths are often simple
Cartesian logic. Most often, either something is or is not true. An
opinion brings in interpretation, hopefully backed by solid evidence.
For example, an opinion is that capitalism or socialism is superior
to the other, or a third system superior to both. It is not an
opinion that capitalism is less than 500 years old, it is fact. It is
a blatant falsehood that “free markets” have always been around.
The fallacy is a mere ideological propaganda claim, known to
non-dogmatic scholars in the social sciences as the naturalizing
tendency of capitalism.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Falsehoods
in journalism undermine the central purpose of journalism, and should
not be allowed anymore than one should teach in math classes that two
plus two equals five. What is just punishment for one posing as an
expert spreading deliberate falsehoods, or lazily passing them along
without checking or because it suits their ideology? Fines should
equal any and all profit made from lies, including salary, royalties,
and advertising revenue, plus the market value of all free publicity
gained by falsehoods. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Again,
no one is proposing interfering with anyone's mythical “right” to
be a serial liar, only their profiting from destructive lies. To give
it an old fashioned analogy, one could still hand out books with
falsehoods for free. You just can't sell the book to make a profit. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>4.
The agency in charge of judging lies and falsehoods by journalists,
commentators, or experts for the mass media must be entirely of
respected historians for matters of history and politics, respected
legal scholars for matters of law, and respected scientists or
doctors for matters of science, medicine, and health, and shall be
nonpartisan, with no member affiliated with any party.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">A
completely nonpartisan and expert agency is needed to judge and
enforce these new laws. Otherwise the agency would inevitably become
censorship by one party or ideology upon all others. Thus the need to
be very specific, written within the new Constitution and not within
ordinary or easily repealed law, in who would make up such an agency,
and in what they judge. It must be made up of experts in the
particular fields, the most highly regarded in those fields, not
partisan hacks nor self deluded amateurs. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> If
defamation, libel, and slander can be punished without harming
freedom of the press, then why not this? If a judge or jury can
assess such matters, why not an agency with members far more trained
than the general public? In fact, </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>we do have a
model for such an agency in the current existence of fact checking
sites online</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">. The great majority of these
sites have laudable records as badly needed resources. What this
article simply proposes is that such assessments add financial
penalties so that none profit from willful or ideologically driven
lying.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-22878588545420499982015-10-22T17:46:00.002-07:002015-10-22T17:46:22.162-07:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 9, Referendums
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Article
9- Referendums and Recalls</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>1.
Members of the public may propose referendums to pass new laws,
recalls to remove for illegal or corrupt actions the President, Vice
President, member of Congress, Supreme Court Justice, or any
appointed official, or bring an end to wars or operations involving
US troops.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">A
referendum, done right, can be direct democracy at its finest. The
public directly proposes and passes laws, completely bypassing both
the Congress and the President. Referendums at their best show a
public more far sighted than elected officials that may depend on
elites for their office and fear angering them.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b> There
have been over 500 national referendums in recent history in 56
nations. The region with the most national referendums by far is also
the most democratic, Europe. </b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">Two nations
account for over 300 of national referendums worldwide, Australia and
Switzerland. Outside of those two nations, the most common reason for
a referendum was to approve a new constitution or other change of
government, especially after an overthrow, independence, or to
prevent or end a period of turbulence. In a few cases, nations do
have purely nonbinding referendums that simply force a legislature or
president to consider an issue.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> There
are not any federal referendums in the US. But 24 states allow
referendums within them. Most of these states are in the west, the
best known being those in California. Puerto Rico has also held four
referendums on their status, and they are perfect examples of doing
them wrong. Each time, a pro status quo government worded the
referendums to be confusing, hoping to defuse sentiment for
statehood. Interestingly, sentiment for the status quo still keeps
dropping, and for both statehood and independence it keeps rising,
along with voter turnout on the issue. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> California
also provides some very good lessons in these problems. The most
destructive of their referendums was Proposition 13, which not only
rolled back taxes, it required a supermajority to raise taxes. It
took several decades to undo the damage done by Proposition 13.
Clearly, using a referendum for routine matters such as tax rates is
a misuse, as is something as fitful and undemocratic as requiring a
supermajority for a minor matter.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> California
also faced one of the more despicable examples of a witch hunt posing
as populism, where Lyndon Larouche's organization of conspiracy
theorists and bigots managed to stealthily force a proposition which
would have quarantined AIDS patients. It's worth pointing out the
measure was defeated by almost 3 to 1, and many of the signatures
were gathered by a consultant later convicted of fraud.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
final example of abuse of referendums or plebescites is in fascist,
communist, and other dictatorships. Dictators use them to claim to
represent the will of the people. But very few people are fooled by
such claims. Everyone can see that a dictatorship's elite proposal
from above, with no debate or dissent allowed, is the opposite of
actual direct democracy. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Recalls
certainly have a better history. Most recalls in recent US history
have been successful, mostly at the local level, mayors or town
councils. Most efforts to recall governors have failed. Meacham of
Arizona was recalled for an ugly history of racism, and Blagojevich
of Illinois for corruption. The worst example of a successful recall
was Gray Davis of California, orchestrated by officials in Enron, who
were later convicted on other criminal counts. Enron officials
ordered rolling blackouts across California, leading to Davis being
blamed for a nonexistent power crisis. The recall overturned an
election less than a year before. The simplest way to avoid such a
debacle on a national level is to allow recalls only for lawbreaking
or corruption. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> A
recall can and should be used to remove corrupt officials.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>
Recalls could have removed Nixon far sooner and kept Reagan from
avoiding responsibility for the Iran Contra Scandal.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">
Recalls could have been used against partisan Republican leaders
misusing the impeachment process against Clinton for the ludicrous
matter of lying about oral sex. Recalls could have been used to
remove the five partisan Supreme Court judges who halted a valid
recount of the 2000 election. Had recalls been around in the 1850s,
they could have been used to remove the judges in the Dred Scott
decision, possibly making the Civil War less likely.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b> Referendums,
had they been around at the federal level, could have ended the
Vietnam War far sooner.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> The public opposed it
by 1968, yet Nixon kept it going five years longer. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>A
similar referendum could have ended the Iraq War as early as 2006</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">,
when the public first opposed it. There would have been tens of
thousands of American soldiers still alive, many more not amputated
or otherwise wounded, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese,
Cambodians, and Iraqis surviving had the public been able to directly
order these wars stopped. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>2.
A referendum or recall vote happens 30 days after the certified
collection of valid signatures of ten percent of all voters.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">A
30 day period is long enough to allow for informed debate and avoid a
rush to judgement, but short enough to avoid a buildup of cynicism
and disgust for the process. Ten percent is a high enough threshold
to prevent most fringe groups of conspiracists or bigots from getting
a measure on the ballot. Recall that Larouche's people had to use
fraud.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Of
course there are some groups large enough to succeed in still doing
so. Birther conspiracy theorists were and are over 10% of the public.
In that case, all a ballot initiative would do is rouse the anger of
the public against them, as Larouche's people did in California.
Referendums that sanction prejudices are explicitly barred by the
clause below. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>3.
No referendum may overturn, contradict, or limit anything in either
constitution, and such efforts must be done instead by constitutional
amendment. Nor shall referendums or recalls be funded by
corporations, nor any private contributions except for individual
unpaid volunteer work. Referendum advertising must be equally funded
both pro and con, must be publicly funded only, and subject to
reasonable limits.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">One
of the arguments against referendums, and populism of any kind, is
“What if segregation had been up for a vote?” It always was, and
segregationists had to use force to impose it. For over a century
racists used massive violence and intimidation to maintain separate
and unequal divisions. Referendums are barred from being used for any
form of government sanctioned prejudices by other proposed articles
to this proposed new constitution.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> What
would be best for elections would also be best for referendums and
recalls. Publicly funded elections only, so that corporations and
wealthy elites cannot hijack them and do not have a greater voice
than the average person. Neither side should be given an advantage
financially. The time frame for recalls and referendums must be
limited for the same reason as for elections, to prevent the
overload, the burnout and cynicism and unnecessary waste that long
election campaigns currently produce.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
founders, Madison especially, hated the idea of direct democracy.
That is one of the strongest arguments for it, for we have been
living with the destructive results of their limits on democracy for
over two centuries. </span>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-54948670461567097532015-10-07T10:59:00.000-07:002015-10-07T10:59:12.600-07:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 8, Renouncing War
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Article
8-Renouncing War</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>1.
The United States shall not go to war except in self-defense, and
permanently renounces wars or acts of military aggression.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">War
is not healthy for living things, not just people, but democracies. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
historical record is clear: </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Most Americans
have long opposed most wars most of the time.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">
Yet Americans keep getting maneuvered, pushed, pulled, prodded, lied
to, deceived, conned, forced into, or propagandized into one
destructive and often useless war after another.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
Constitution was supposed to require wars be preceded by a
declaration of war from Congress. The military was put under civilian
command, and the US military for most of its history was very limited
in size. Even as late as the 1930s, the US Army was only 140,000 men.
Many of the founders argued strongly against a standing army of any
kind as leading to tyranny.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> So how
did we wind up with a very large powerful permanent military, and the
dangerous industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about? How do US
troops keep getting sent to nations many Americans have never even
heard of, much less believe it important to invade them?</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> It was
not always this way. Up until the 1890s, the main wars the US fought
were against American Indian tribes. The big exceptions were wars
against Britain (1812), Mexico (1845), and the Civil War, the last
one begun by Confederate aggression. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> But
there were a series of invasions, called filibusters, that most
Americans don't know about today. These were private armies,
mercenaries, led by American warmongers willing to invade other
nations on their own to gain profit, territories, or power. Often
they hoped to drag the US into wars, get nations or pieces of a
nation taken away and made into part of the US. Filibusters invaded
Canada and their allies provoked the War of 1812. They also invaded
California and Texas many times. They gained an ally in slave owners
who wanted to make Texas a slave state, and so they provoked the war
with Mexico. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> This
was not what most Americans wanted. Congress passed half a dozen
neutrality laws over 30 years making it illegal for private citizens
to invade another nation. The laws proved difficult to enforce
because of the size of the US and slow communications over great
distances at the time.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Public
anger and horror over the huge loss of life in the Civil War ended
these private invasions, and US wars with other nations. Even “Indian
wars” declined. US Grant had a Peace Policy that reduced battles
with Native tribes by three fourths. But by the 1890s, the Civil War
generation had died off and war enthusiasts like Teddy Roosevelt led
a new push for empire and territory.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The US
took Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Samoa by force. Self righteous
scientific racists like T. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson insisted they
knew how other nations of mostly nonwhite people should be run more
than the people there themselves did. Between 1890 and World War II,
US troops invaded ten Latin Americans countries over 30 times,
sometimes taking over a nation for up to 20 years at a time, other
times installing a dictatorship to run the nation on US orders.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
Cold War saw American invasions in Latin America and Southeast Asia,
dozens of US sponsored overthrows of governments, assassinations of
national leaders, and outright genocide and democide in Cambodia and
Indonesia, respectively. This has been done by US presidents on both
ideological sides, Lyndon Johnson as well as Reagan, Obama as well as
both Bushes. The only two US presidents in the last 125 years to not
overthrow a non-aggressive nation's government were FDR and Carter.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b> Since
World War II, there has not been a single declaration of war by
Congress. </b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">Though there have been dozen of
nations attacked by US invasions or bombings, there have been only
three authorizations to use force; the notorious Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution, Bush Sr. receiving authorization (which he said publicly
he did not need) for the Gulf War, and GW Bush's for the Iraq and
Afghan Wars. The last has since been stretched by Obama to claim it
covers him in warring against ISIS. Congress, including both parties,
agreed to Obama's claim and declined to even meet to discuss any kind
of an authorization, much less a declaration of war. (For the Korean
War, Congress only authorized funding. Truman relied on a UN
resolution as his military authorization.) Congress's failure is the
strongest argument for making war more difficult, and demanding the
public hold veto power over the start of wars or bombing other
nations.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Political
and media elites have the contemptuous habit of leaving the public
out of war decisions. Both parties are guilty of it. There is the
saying that “partisanship stops at the water's edge.” What this
means in practice is that </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>congressmen from</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">
</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b>both</b></i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b> parties
are expected to support a president's wars without reservation or
criticism.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> For the only criticism accepted of
wars by most of Congress or much of the media is that the president
is not warlike enough, not willing to go to war on a hair trigger or
bomb just to show dissatisfaction or crush other nations' leaders
should they show independence. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> For
quick invasions and interventions, bombing campaigns or missile
strikes, the public will briefly rally around a president by instinct
and then move on, as long as there are no heavy American losses. For
longer wars, the same stampede effect is used, often preceded by
heavy propaganda to promote fear of the latest “greatest threat
ever.” Then once the war starts, public opinion is ignored. Nixon
and GW Bush both publicly said they ignored antiwar demonstrations,
the biggest in America's history. Media elites also often ignored
public opinion, or caricatured demonstrators as atypical when they
came from across the spectrum of American opinions and backgrounds.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> We
should seek a model in Japan. After World War II, the nation looked
at its shameful history, renounced warfare as an instrument of
policy, and forbade armed forces used except for self defense. The US
should do the same. On this issue even many Republicans and
conservatives agree. For all the calls for wars by right wing media,
they are out of touch with their own base. Most Americans of all
ideologies and backgrounds want fewer wars, and never without just
cause. Build such a stance directly into a new constitution.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>2.
The United States, its government, agencies, or agents shall never
try to overthrow another nation's government again unless directly
attacked by said government.”</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> It
must also be made far harder for the president to send troops, bomb
other nations, or by any other ways try overthrow other governments,
including in secret. Many Americans are aware that the US has invaded
other nations or overthrown other governments. But most do not know
just how often.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> In
Latin America alone, over a dozen nations were invaded by the US.
Nearly three dozen nations had their governments overthrown by the
CIA, or attempted overthrows, bought, stolen, or disrupted elections,
and hundreds of assassinations of government leaders. Castro alone
survived hundreds of attempts on his life. This pattern includes
overthrows or attacks on nations that might surprise many people,
like the CIA orchestrating the firing of Australia's Prime Minister
in 1975, or stealing Italian elections for over 30 years.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> This
has continued in recent years, under both parties, with assassination
orders, drone attacks from Colombia to Pakistan, interference in
elections in Venezuela, recognizing a coup in Paraguay, and a
potential next president, Hillary Clinton, whose election advisers
played a role in the coup in Honduras. This must end. Any nation the
US is not at war with, the US should never try to overthrow, with
presidents explicitly forbidden to try.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>3.
Unless under direct and immediate attack, the United States shall not
go to war or deploy troops without an official declaration of war by
Congress. Unless under direct and immediate attack, the declaration
of war by Congress must then be approved by a vote of the American
public within 30 days. Failure to get approval by the American public
makes the declaration of war overturned.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">It
must be made far harder to go to war. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The only
effort Congress ever made to control presidents' warmaking was the
War Powers Act.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> In theory a president has two
days to tell Congress about an invasion or attack, and 60 days to
withdraw. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>It has never worked. Presidents
ignored it</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">, even argued it to be
unconstitutional, and </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Congress never used the
act</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Wars
need to be made very difficult to start and far easier to stop, when
right now the reverse is true. Unless the American nation, armed
forces, embassies, bases, or other installations are being directly
attacked, or citizens are needing rescue, the President shall be
absolutely forbidden to deploy troops. Congress must declare war
first. Period. Always. End of discussion. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Without
exception also, a declaration of war must be followed by approval by
the public. A 30 day period is best since the rush to judgement and
sometimes public hysteria is often very brief. A 30 day period is
deliberately intended to give enough time for opposition to wars or
bombing campaigns to build.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>4.
The US President can deploy troops to rescue US or other citizens and
must prevent genocide or other large scale atrocities. But the
president must report to Congress on such action within 7 days and
Congress must approve the deployment of troops within 30 days.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">The
one exception to the proposed article is to prevent genocide, other
atrocities, or mass humanitarian catastrophes. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>As
a nation which itself committed genocide against American Indians</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">,
by the Trail of Tears, by outright systematic genocide in California
during the Gold Rush, by deliberate starvation tactics when
slaughtering the buffalo, and by the slave trade of both American
Indians and Africans,</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b> the US should have a
special commitment to ending, limiting, or preventing genocide
elsewhere, </b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">if possible.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>
</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">One cannot stop genocides entirely. But
genocide or other mass atrocities can often be limited, and many
people can be rescued. It is inhumane and morally callous to not try.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> And
often American presidents have not even tried. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Three
US presidents deliberately avoided trying to end or limit genocide
at least three times, during the Holocaust, in Bangladesh in the
1970s, and Rwanda in the 1990s.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> Most
Americans have not been taught about these moral failures. Scholars
do know, and we need to teach and reach the public on this issue far
more. In Rwanda's case, Clinton himself has admitted his wrongdoing,
that he could have easily saved 300,000 Rwandans by sending in as few
as 5,000 troops. For both the Holocaust and Bangladesh, one tenth of
the lives lost could have been saved, but were not. In both those
cases, the far more effective way of halting genocide than militarily
would have been to publicly denounce it, offer refuge, and declare
the guilty would face war crimes trials.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> One
may understandably ask, why the US? Why not other nations too? The
obvious answer is we don’t control other nations, only our own. But
we can and should ask other nations to work with us to halt
atrocities when possible. In practical terms, </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>less
than half a dozen nations have the military power to end atrocities
in other parts of the world</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">, though perhaps a
dozen other nations have the power to stop or help stop regional
wars. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> This
already happens with peacekeeping forces around the world. It is not
too widely known, and some may scoff because they don’t know this.
But the United Nations does stop or shorten most wars most of the
time. The obvious recent failure was the Iraq War. It was an
exception, one caused by deliberate obstruction and falsehoods by GW
Bush's administration. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The UN currently keeps
the peace in 15 nations, and has caused a 40% drop in wars in the
past 20 years.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> Limiting wars, and certainly
halting or limiting genocide, are vitally important humane, ethical,
and (take note, conservatives) Christian goals. These also agree with
most Americans' sentiment. Many Americans sincerely believed in some
of the wars fought because they genuinely wanted to help others and
opposed dictatorships and atrocities. The new constitution should
reflect that, and limit US troop actions to only that and self
defense.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>5.
The US government is forbidden to go to war or use war as an
opportunity to enrich in any way any American businesses,
corporations, or individuals. Family members of government officials
shall not be exempt from military draft, nor sheltered in special
units, or in any other way.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">“The
flag follows the dollar” in Smedley Butler's words, is one of the
main reasons for war. Wars are often fought to enrich the already
wealthy. Few things unite people on all sides of the ideological
aisle in disgust as much as undeserved advantage and profit in
wartime. The profit motive must be removed from warfare, and
businesses and persons forbidden from getting wealthy often literally
over the dead bodies of servicemen.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> It is
also true that there are few congressmen's children in wars, less
than a single percent during the Iraq and Afghan Wars. The class bias
in who was drafted during Vietnam was especially notorious. So were
special “champagne units” set up to shelter children of privilege
from the draft. This must not be repeated or allowed.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-26803810603186376822015-09-30T16:07:00.001-07:002015-09-30T16:07:42.588-07:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 7, Ending ColonialismAlso at <a href="http://alcarroll.com/"><span style="color: #2288bb;">http://alcarroll.com</span></a> and <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/user/Al%20Carroll"><span style="color: #2288bb;">http://www.dailykos.com/user/Al%20Carroll</span></a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Article
7-Ending Colonialism</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>1.
The United States recognizes the great wrongs done by genocide
against American Indians, apologizes fully, and shall always strive
to make amends. All federally recognized American Indian tribes are
forever sovereign, defined by their treaty or other legal
relationship to the United States, with rights to decide their own
government and laws, and to enforce those laws on all residents and
visitors within their territory.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Most
scholars know what happened to American Indians was genocide. The
number of deniers in universities is as low as it has ever been. Many
historians and especially anthropologists and archaeologists used to
think of Natives as curiosities to be studied. Today many are
Natives, and non-Natives often think of themselves as allies.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> But
you would likely not hear the same honest answer, genocide, by asking
much of the general public, or looking at what is taught in public
schools. I've taught over 2,000 college students in the past ten
years. Public school students are mostly given the Thanksgiving story
about Natives, and not much else. Not one in a hundred ever hears the
word genocide. Many students are taught that Columbus was actually a
friend to Natives. It is hard to be more appalling and dishonest.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> In
Germany, the nation admits the wrongs in their history. They teach
extensively about the Holocaust in their public schools. Having an
American admission of genocide, an apology, and a vow to work to
always change these wrongs, needs to be written into the new US
Constitution itself. Then no one can ever deny it again. Our schools
will have to teach it, much like having MLK Day forces them to teach
about civil rights. Teaching the truth makes a repeat of past wrongs
much harder, and just as important, difficult to deny present wrongs.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Honesty
and self-rule are the best form of reparations. Native tribal nations
should be sovereign by right.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> By
international law, sovereignty cannot be abrogated or taken away, and
is permanent. Tribal nations are defined by their treaty or other
legal relationship to the federal government. But the Supreme Court
defined that relationship as domestic and dependent. One result is
that non-tribal members often cannot be prosecuted under tribal law,
leading to a number of abuses. Squatters occupy reservation lands.
Even legal residents who are non-Native cannot be punished in tribal
courts. Worst of all is the high number of crimes committed by
outsiders, especially rapes that were until recently not punished
because of lack of jurisdiction. Recognizing tribal sovereignty over
all who come onto reservation lands is long overdue.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Most
Americans do not know about how Native sovereignty was taken away
with the start of reservations, and only partly returned with the New
Deal for Indians and by the efforts of Native activists. Most do not
know how Termination tried to end all reservations in the 1950s, that
dozens of tribes were targeted, and that some still suffer from that
awful time. There are also dozens of tribes awaiting recognition that
deserve to be federally acknowledged, sometimes decades overdue.
Often they are hampered by a lack of written records because
scientific racists like Walter Plecker in Virginia systematically
destroyed or altered every document he could. There are also dozens
of dubious outfits posing as tribes clogging up the recognition
process, often taking advantage of an unwary public financially.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Recognizing
tribal sovereignty in a new constitution can change all of that. A
repeat of Termination becomes impossible, and those still denied
recognition from those days retrieve it. The recognition process
would be decided by tribal nations, not Washington, with the greatest
weight given to the opinion of those tribes most related to those
applying. Some reservations might choose to split, since they are
today made up of several tribes forced together by federal agents.
Other tribes split by treaties into multiple reservations might
choose to unite.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>2.
All American Indian tribes have permanent and absolute rights to
their current reservation lands, forever. All federal lands, or lands
reacquired by American Indian tribes, that are within their
historically recognized boundaries or protected by treaty will be
part of their reservations. All sacred sites of federally recognized
American Indian tribes shall be returned immediately, or protected by
federal partnership if requested by tribes.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Tribal
governments are today legally “domestic dependent nations” thanks
to Supreme Court decisions. This needs to change. Having a tribe's
right to their homeland needs to be written into the constitution
itself, to make it inviolable, permanent, and not just protect it,
but also make it easier to get homelands returned or bought. Some
tribes are making efforts to buy back their homelands. But often
these efforts are blocked by state governments. Where the federal
government at times works with and protects on behalf of tribes,
state governments are traditionally those most hostile to American
Indian nations.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> State
efforts to limit a tribe's rights to land or anything else should be
entirely and permanently blocked, since the constitution makes it
clear Indian relations are purely a federal matter. All the Five
Tribes remember that during the Trail of Tears states led the effort
to drive them off their homelands. In recent times, both California
and New York had bouts of anti-Indian sentiment led by their
governors.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Federal
lands within a tribe's recognized traditional homeland should be
returned. The best known example is the Black Hills, Paha Sapa to the
Lakota. Lakota have been pushing for their return for over a century,
repeatedly turning down monetary offers. For sacred sites especially,
there should be a strong effort to return them to the tribes'
jurisdiction, and if the tribe does not have the means to protect
them, then do so by partnership with the federal government.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> There
are also many reservations that are endlessly fractionated, divided
up again and again, starting since the Dawes Allotment Act. This
makes jurisdiction, law enforcement, and economic development far
more difficult. Returning control of all lands within traditional
recognized territories can end these problems.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>3.
Native Hawaiians are recognized as a tribe by the US government and
shall have a reservation with a sovereign government with relations
with the US government and rights equal to an American Indian tribe,
and shall see their sacred sites returned. Nothing in this article
shall be construed as denying or abridging Native Hawaiians' right to
pursue the return to being an independent nation as they were before
the illegal overthrow and seizure of their nation.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Pacific Islanders are America’s other indigenous
peoples, America’s other original tribes. Not enough people know
the history of the Hawaiian kingdom's illegal overthrow. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Their story is somewhat similar to that of American
Indians. Anglo-Americans came to the islands, bringing disease that
wiped out much of the people. They took over most of the land for
their own profit, starting plantations that brought in exploited
workers, only mostly Asians rather than Africans. When Hawaii’s
Queen Liliuokalani tried to halt them, the plantation owners
overthrew her with the help of US Marines. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The
Hawaiian language and religion were both banned. Hawaii became a
state in an illegitimate vote. No Asians and few Hawaiians could
vote</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">, and most who voted for statehood were
white servicemen who were very recent residents.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The Hawaiian sovereignty movement is very strong today,
overturning the language and religious bans and reviving the language
with their own schools. Most Native Hawaiians would like to see the
Hawaiian nation be independent again. One proposed measure is the
Akaka Bill, in congress since the 1990s. This would give Hawaiians
status like an Indian tribe. They would have a reservation, tribal
government, and government to government relations with the US. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">This proposed article goes farther. All sacred sites,
taken away and sometimes used as bombing ranges, are given back.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>4.
US citizens and nationals of American Samoa, Guam, the Marshall
Islands, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Washington DC have
full local self-rule, and shall vote in federal elections and have
federal congressional districts.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Puerto
Rico has a larger population than over twenty US states. Yet its
people have never voted in federal fall elections. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>American
Samoa, Guam, the Marshall Islands, the US Virgin Islands, and even DC
have been denied the vote or local self-rule because of an anomaly.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">
They are legally designated as territories or a district rather than
a state. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">For this is a civil rights issue at heart. Not by
coincidence, </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>all of them are mostly made up of
people who are not white. </b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">49 of 50 US states
have white majorities, all except Hawaii. Four territories and one
district all have populations with nonwhite majorities. Puerto Rico’s
peoples are mixed, but the majority of them have Black or Native
ancestry. Samoa, the Marshall Islands, and Guam are made up largely
of Pacific Islanders, though the military almost outnumber Chamorros
in their own homeland. The Virgin Islands is Black majority, as was
DC for much of its history. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">All these territories and the federal district have
often been treated like colonies. Money and resources flow out of
them. Many of the people are poorer on average than most of the rest
of America. They have often had little to no say in their own
destiny. Puerto Rico saw several independence movements crushed, and
citizenship was forced on them against their wishes. Chamorros had no
self-rule at all for more than 60 years.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Even
</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the nation’s capital had no local self-rule
until the 1970s</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Both
Puerto Rico and DC have seen statehood blocked because the major
parties don’t want to add a state that will vote for the other
party. The Kingdom of Hawaii was its own nation for over 70 years
before being illegally overthrown, annexed, and then an illegitimate
statehood vote held. Most Native Hawaiians and Asians could not vote,
and most of the mostly white voters were very recent residents, US
servicemen. The great majority of Native Hawaiians want to see the
occupation end.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Puerto Rico was actually granted the start of self rule
by Spain in March 1898. In April 1898, the US invaded and occupied
it. The US imposed citizenship upon Puerto Ricans in 1917 despite
unanimous opposition from Puerto Rican leaders. There were armed
uprisings in the 1930s, assassination attempts against Truman and
members of Congress in the 1950s, and a bombing campaign against US
rule in the 1970s. Today independence has the support of 5-10% of
Puerto Ricans. In the 1950s independence sentiment, which used to be
almost universal, started to decline for two reasons: Puerto Ricans
began to depend on the mainland economy, and </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the
colonial government passed a gag order, throwing anyone in jail who
spoke for independence.</b></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The US Virgin Islands were bought from Denmark in 1916,
out of fear that Germany would try to take them. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>USVI
stayed under direct US control until 1968, with Virgin Islanders not
allowed any say over their fate</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">, including US
citizenship imposed in 1927. About a third of the local elected
legislature favors independence. A group of independence activists,
the VI 5, were jailed on dubious charges of the murder of tourists in
the 1970s.<br /> Guam was taken over by the US during the Spanish
American War. They had no local self rule at all until the 1960s. For
several years there have been plans for a vote on independence,
statehood, or keeping the status quo, continually delayed. Part of
the problem is that servicemen threaten to dominate any vote. Most of
the island is a military base, and servicemen almost outnumber
Chamorros. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> All
the islands were all either independent nations or are distinct
cultures in their own right. Their claims have legitimacy, whether or
not you agree with them or if you argue they are impractical. Only DC
can vote for presidents, but none of these territories or the
district have a vote in Congress like the states. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Over
5 million Americans are denied some voting rights and their own
congressmen because of these hold overs from colonialism.</b></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> All of
these peoples, American Indians, Native Hawaiians, Chamorros,
Samoans, Virgin Islanders, and the people of DC, deserve
self-determination and a full voice. The fact that they do not have
it shows continuing system wide racism. Most of the American public
does not know these histories, and that must end.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Let
American Indians be truly sovereign on reservations and have them
expand to include as much traditional homelands as desired. Let
Native Hawaiians have status as a sovereign tribe, and pursue
independence. Let Guam, Samoa, and the Virgin Islands finally vote in
federal elections, and let all of them plus Washington DC finally
have voting congressmen to represent them. It should be a source of
shame to the US that this has continued as long as it has.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-68004113427595338652015-09-27T15:15:00.002-07:002015-09-27T15:15:38.844-07:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 6, Limiting Corporate PowerAlso at <a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a> and <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/user/Al%20Carroll">http://www.dailykos.com/user/Al%20Carroll</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Article
6- Limiting Corporate Power</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>1.
All rights in this and the previous constitution, as well as under
all American laws, are limited to human beings only. A person under
US law is defined as a living human being only. Corporation rights
and powers may be severely limited by any and all governments,
whether federal, state, city, country, special district, or American
Indian tribe.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
Fourteenth Amendment may be the most misused and abused of all
amendments. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Intended to guarantee rights for
former slaves, it has mostly been used to give corporations almost
unlimited power. </b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">Two decades after the
amendment passed, the courts ruled in </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Santa
Clara v Southern Pacific</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> that corporations
were persons under the law, that as collections of individuals it was
a legal useful fiction to pretend they were a person.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Corporations
have rights no living person has. Corporation can be immortal,
meaning they never have to worry about estate taxes. They pay a far
lower income tax than most people do. There are limits to how much
and when they can be sued, and corporation management are largely
protected from lawsuits for their actions. Of course the greatest and
most controversial right given to them is from the </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Citizens
United</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> ruling. Corporations can spend
unlimited amounts on political campaigns, as long as it is done
through a third party. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> This
ruling showed the class and ideological bias of the court at its
worst. Condemnations of it range across the political spectrum, from
Ralph Nader to John McCain. This ruling has frequently been compared
to the </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Dred Scott</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> or
</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Plessy v Ferguson</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">
decisions both for the devastation it causes American society and how
infamously it will be remembered in history. In opinion polls, up to
three quarters of Americans want to see it overturned, across all
parties and political beliefs. Two dozen states have their campaign
finance laws affected by the ruling. Sixteen states have called for
constitutional amendments to overturn the ruling.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> But
this ruling is just the final end product of a court always designed
and usually working for the most elite class interests. There is some
documentation that the judges in the original </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Southern
Pacific</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> case did not intend their ruling to
go that far and set as broad a precedent. Corporations are so
powerful that many people don’t realize there was ever a time when
their power was limited.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Even other elites worried about corporate power.
</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Corporate charters in British colonial and
early American times were limited.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> They had
only so many years of existence, had to serve the public interest,
and were often chartered with a narrow purpose. One of the proposed
amendments for the Bill of Rights was limits on corporate power.
Andrew Jackson, before the civil rights era when little attention was
paid to the Trail of Tears, was often held up as a popular hero for
his successfully breaking one of the most powerful corporate
institutions, the Bank of the US.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>2.
A corporation must serve the public interest and its life span shall
be limited. Any corporation shall be permanently dissolved if they
break the law more than five times. No business, corporation, or
individual can escape fines, punishments, or legal judgments by
declaring bankruptcy, holding companies, shell companies, or any
other diversion, evasion, or tactic.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Corporate
crime in America is far more serious than many realize. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Corporate
crime is the cause of more deaths than street crime</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">,
each year over 60,000 workplace deaths alone. Add to that one
corporate scandal after another, each of them mostly or entirely
unpunished, BCCI, Enron, Worldcom, subprime mortgages, underwater
loans, etc., etc. The scandals are increasing in numbers, scale, and
in how rarer punishment is becoming. Hundreds went to jail for the
savings and loans bank scandals of the 1980s. Almost no one was
jailed for the last banking scandal. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> In the
documentary </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>The Corporation</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">,
the film makers followed the logic of declaring corporations to be
persons. If a corporation were a person, what would its personality
be? They concluded the characteristics of a corporation define it as
a sociopath. It cannot have empathy for others and acts without
concern for anyone else. It is deliberately amoral, and defined as
such for the purpose of self- interest alone. In fact if a
corporation were to act morally (for reasons other than self interest
in its public image) it almost certainly would face lawsuits from
shareholders for failing to pursue maximum profit.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
power of the public over any and all corporations should be absolute.
If a company pollutes, force it to clean up. If a corporation makes a
destructive or defective product, let it be punished the same as an
individual. For a time there was a movement towards “three strikes”
laws for crime. Why not five strikes laws for corporations? If
corporations break the law five times, they can be dissolved.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Let
there be no more legal loopholes used to escape punishment.
Bankruptcy was intended to let companies and individuals fail at
business but still be able to start over. It was not and should not
be there to avoid punishment for crimes. Combine this Proposed
Article 6 with Proposed Article 11, which requires all crimes be
punished and all criminals cannot evade punishment. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Corporations
that kill through negligence, incompetence, or greed deserves the
corporate death penalty, the end of their existence. </b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">The
nation and the world will be far better off.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>3.
The right to collective bargaining by unions or other workers shall
not be limited more than other civic or lobbying groups, nor subject
to government recognition.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Unions are the most democratic institutions in America.
They are the most representative of their membership. That is part of
why are often demonized by those opposed to them and why so much
effort has been expended to crush the labor movement.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It is not widely taught in public schools, but America
has one of the most violent histories of class warfare anywhere in
the world. Not simply “class warfare” as used today, where even
bringing up class issues gets one labeled a Marxist. (Full
disclosure: I am a traditional Catholic. That means I believe in
social justice, and that capitalism is a sin.) From colonial times
until the Great Depression, unions and strikes were often crushed
with great brutality. Companies often used private armies, or had the
police or US Army break a strike with violence. Two of the most
notorious examples include the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, broken
by killing over 100 strikers. In the West Virginia Mine Wars in the
1920s, the largest armed uprising since the Civil War saw a company
army of over 5,000 kill over 20 miners with not just guns but
mortars, and their own air force.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The reason why today we do not often hear of violent
strikes, or many strikes at all, is that after World War II the US
government learned to be a better strike breaker. During the Great
Depression the Wagner Act was passed. It recognized union rights to
exist, to bargain collectively, and to strike. But it also required
unions to submit to being government recognized to be seen as
legitimate.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The Taft Hartley Act, passed during Cold War hysteria,
went much further. Any perceived radicals in a union can get it
stripped of recognition. Companies can dictate when unions hold their
elections, and unions have to give 60 days’ notice before striking.
Company spies by law cannot be kicked out of a union, and
strikebreakers' jobs are protected. A National Labor Relations Board
is stacked with anti-union officials. Even were it to rule in favor
of unions, it has little power, and so many workers are fired for
joining unions or speaking out against abuses. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Over
400 union locals are stripped of recognition each year. </b></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Imagine how difficult organizing would be on any other
issue were these same practices happening to others. How powerful
would the National Rifle Association be if it lost 400 chapters a
year? How well would any organization on either side of the abortion
issue do if the other side could decide when it holds elections,
given 60 days to prepare for campaigns, and that organization could
not remove spies in its midst or people hired to break their group
up?</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.49in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">None of these union busting practices should be legal.
Let unions be treated by the same standards as any other civic,
lobbying, or interest group. Anyone who joins a union should be able
to. Apparently </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>over half of Americans wish
they were part of a union</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">. But under 10% of
Americans actually are. These are mostly government workers such as
cops, firefighters, and teachers. Only public pressure on governments
keep them from being as abusive to their workers as private
companies.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Unions
were what turned the US into a middle class nation.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">
For one generation after World War II, unions helped spread
prosperity to those people most responsible for it. But since the
1970s inequality has grown sharply, to where it is now as bad as
before the Great Depression. Unions can reverse that, and doing so
would be good for the nation as a whole and business as a whole. An
economy is much more vulnerable when it depends mostly on the
spending of the well off.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-14548935517017218822015-09-23T18:58:00.001-07:002015-09-23T18:58:18.981-07:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 5, Voting Guarantees Benefits
Also at <a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a>.<br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Article
5-Voting Guarantees Benefits</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>1.
All eligible voters must vote. Failure to vote results in inability
to receive all government benefits until the next election, including
licenses, grants, subsidies, tax refunds, eligibility for public
assistance, student or business loans or credit.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> One
must seek ways for the most disaffected to join the political
process. The flip side of the last clause of Proposed Article 5 is
making them see it is in their self interest to vote, once a more
representative democracy is in place. Obviously eligibility for
public assistance does not affect children. They should not be
punished for their parents' or guardians' actions. Instead those most
affected are those least likely to vote; college students; the young,
by tying driver's licenses to voting, as Proposed Article 3 also
does; and the lower income who are more likely to receive tax
refunds. A number of nations like Australia successfully use small
fines to increase voter turnout. But in the US this likely would
simply lead to the unemployed serving a few days in jail since they
could not pay the fine.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>2.
Those with strong and longstanding religious, philosophical, or
political beliefs against voting are not required to vote if they
state their longstanding beliefs.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> There
are some faiths who avoid deep political involvement, the Jehovah's
Witnesses in particular. Anarchists also often refuse to vote based
on their convictions. The Six Nations of the Iroquois do not consider
themselves citizens of the US. But where most American Indians
consider themselves dual citizens, of both the US and their tribal
nation, the Iroquois insist they are Iroquois citizens alone, bound
by treaty to the US. Thus they join the military as foreign
nationals, and Iroquois who vote in US elections are stripped of
Iroquois citizenship.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> All
these deeply held beliefs against voting should be respected and not
penalized. The law should also not place much of a burden upon proof
of their belief, just a simple statement. But those who lazily
proclaim they don't want to vote deserve no such consideration. </span>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-15877983060722149992015-09-19T18:18:00.000-07:002015-09-19T18:18:29.472-07:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 4, Ending the Buying of Elections
Also at <a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a> and <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/user/Al%20Carroll">http://www.dailykos.com/user/Al%20Carroll</a>.<br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Article
4-Ending the Buying of Elections</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>1.
All elections shall be publicly funded only. Private contributions or
donations to or on behalf of a candidate or party, except for unpaid
volunteer work, are outlawed. Corporate donations of any kind are
forbidden. Business and corporate owners and management are forbidden
from intimidating, pressuring, or influencing in any way their
employees, punishable by long prison sentences.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Money
is the true engine of American politics, and that should change. Few
other democracies have as elitist and plutocratic a ruling political
class as the US. There have only been two US presidents who were not
wealthy men at the time they were elected, Lincoln and Truman.
Congress is a millionaire's club. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> This
is not true in most of the rest of the world. Most other democracies
elect people who are truly representative, rather than elites. Poland
and Bolivia elected labor union leaders as presidents, Lech Walesa
and Evo Morales. Hungary had a playwright president, Vlaclev Havel.
Brazil and Uruguay have former guerilla leaders who fought against
dictators, Dilma Rouseff and Jose Mujica, the latter donating most of
his salary to charity. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> But
when the US wants to see “outsiders” run for office, the only
ones able to are multi billionaires, Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, and
Michael Bloomberg. The number of wealthy dynasties in US politics are
legendary, the Adams, Roosevelts, Kennedys, Rockefellers, and
Bushes.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Jesus
righteously intoned that it was easier to thread a camel through the
eye of a needle than for a wealthy man to get into heaven. It would
almost be easier for a working class man to be the king of either
Heaven or Hell than to get elected to office in America.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> For
</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the need for money to win office acts as a
filtering process.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> Since one must win over
the very wealthy to be able to run, candidates depend on them utterly
for sponsorship and patronage. In turn, one must give donors what
they want. The idea that money equals speech is defended by elites
today, both in the media and in the courts. If money is speech, the
average man is shouted down by the giant egos and wallets of
plutocrats. The moneychangers have driven the priests out of the
temple and demand high admission fees to receive blessings and
salvation.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> In
2012, the presidential campaign was the first multi billion dollar
one, and 2016 will certainly be even worse. This must end. Let
campaigns only be publicly funded outside of volunteer work. The
billionaire should not have more of a voice than any one of his
workers. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Britain has had limits on campaign
spending ever since 1883.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> The reason for it
is obvious. They knew the corrupting influence of money even more
than the US, with the outright buying and selling of offices turned
into an art form.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> In its
place we should see the government provide an equal amount of air
time, adjusted for its market value, to each party. This air time
must be to each party that has candidates, not just major parties.
The two party monopoly should end, and most of the public wishes it
to end.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> This
should not be as expensive to the public as it might seem. For one
thing, Congress can limit how much is to be spent, and few in the
public will have an appetite for expensive campaigns. For another,
all networks shall be required to provide this for free, since they
make billions every years from the use of public airwaves and
bandwidth. The only substantial expense will likely be from online
advertising. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
government should also provide servers for the posting of online
websites in equal measure for each of the candidates. If parties wish
to set up sites to present their beliefs and proposals and recruit
for their parties, that would be allowed by law. But party websites
campaigning for their candidates, outside of a brief mention of who
they are, would not be. Individuals wishing to set up websites,
non-commercially, to promote or argue against candidates, parties,
proposals, or platforms, would not be affected by this Proposed
Article 4.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
billionaire or any other boss must also be prevented from
intimidating in any way how his workers vote. Announcing or
threatening layoffs or the targeting of workers who disagree with a
boss over a candidate, party, or law should be seen as the civil
rights violation it is.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>2.
Campaigning and advertising for all general elections are limited to
the period of six weeks before election day. Campaigning and
advertising for all primary elections are limited to the six weeks
before the general election period.”</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Few
things discourage interest in politics more than ridiculously long
campaigns. Primary campaigning begins a year and a half before the
general election, and at times candidates declare their runs two or
three years in advance. Yet the common wisdom is that only the most
partisan voters pay attention. Most of the public does not follow the
election before Labor Day. This clause will limit all advertising to
begin no earlier than the start of August before a November election.
Great Britain has even stricter time limits on campaigning with no
loss of democracy. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>3.
No election, whether federal, state, county, city, special district,
American Indian tribe, or of unions, civic groups, lobbying groups,
or private clubs, is valid unless more than half of its citizens or
members vote. If less than half of citizens or members vote, there
must be immediate new elections with different candidates.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> If
most of the public does not show up, an election is not a valid
representation of the public's wishes. This clause works best with
Proposed Article 2, where the elections would only be every four
years when the president and congress are chosen. Much of the public
has a de facto boycott on elections, especially local ones. Forcing
parties to field new candidates gives the public a way to state their
dissatisfaction with the candidates they have been given. </span>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-101723919981555062015-09-17T14:26:00.000-07:002015-09-17T14:26:11.640-07:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 3, Guaranteeing the Right to Vote
Also at <a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a> and <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/user/Al%20Carroll">http://www.dailykos.com/user/Al%20Carroll</a><br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Article
3-Guaranteeing the Right to Vote</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>1.
The right to vote for all citizens of legal adult age is absolute and
cannot be denied, limited, barred, blocked, or suppressed, whether by
deliberate attempts or unintended outcomes. All current such attempts
are ended. Any law with the outcome, even unintended, of denying the
vote to members of a particular ethnic group, age group, economic
background, or party, shall be immediately void.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Many
cynics will tell you that voting solves nothing. They are only half
right. Believing voting is a magic bullet is false, for it is only
one solution among many, one to be combined with others. Such a
belief in voting alone as being the mark of a democracy almost turns
voting into an empty ritual, part of what scholars call civic
religion. But truly free and representative voting can and has solved
much. For </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>if voting were truly completely
useless, American elites would not spend so much effort to stop it</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">,
centuries of trickery, exclusion, and often insane levels of
violence.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> At
first voting was incredibly limited in the US, not only by gender and
race but by a high property requirement. In some states, more than
nine tenths of white males could not vote at the time of the
constitution. It took two generations for the majority of poor white
males to sometimes be able to vote. Even that was later limited by
poll taxes aimed as much at stopping poor whites from voting as
Blacks. The Fifteenth Amendment was supposed to protect Black voting
rights. It took enormous violence, over 50,000 deaths after the Civil
War and a corrupt and then indifferent Republican Party to intimidate
the Black community into not voting, something that was not reversed
until as late as the 1970s in some areas.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Besides
the millions of Americans still living in the US colonial empire (see
Article 7) </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>over 6,000,000 Americans today are
legally barred from voting, over 3%</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> of the
total. The excuse for taking away their vote is that they have
criminal records. Since the “justice” system is incredibly
unequal and racist, this falls almost entirely on minorities. Though
almost two thirds of American criminals are white (since two thirds
of Americans are white) two thirds of those locked up in prisons or
on parole are Black or Latino. A Black or a Latino are far more
likely to be charged and imprisoned, and for longer, than a white
committing the exact same crime.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
laws deciding when ex convicts can vote are incredibly uneven. In
some states, voting returns automatically after a set period. Other
states require a formal pardon, and the process can be a quick
formality or very drawn out and difficult. In six states, all in the
south, felons are barred from voting for life. Stealing a car at 17
means one will never vote their entire life. In three states,
Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia, one out of five Blacks cannot vote.
In Florida, the majority of Black males cannot vote. Being blatantly
racist, this is simply unjust. The right to vote should return
automatically when one pays one's debt to society. For lesser
nonviolent felonies, it should not be taken away at all. Having the
vote available to some prisoners could aid their rehabilitation, were
it to become one more thing a parole board could look at as a sign of
a genuine attempt to reform. (Those imprisoned for drug possession
should not be in prison at all. Proposed Article 15 will end the Drug
War as a violation of the right to privacy.)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> There
are a wide range of attempts to limit voting, old fashioned voter
suppression by other names. Voter ID laws could block up to 9% of all
voters from voting, mostly minorities and the poor. In some states
there are laws or attempts to make it more difficult for college
students to vote. Others are putting in place shorter absentee voting
times or harder requirements. Many states make it difficult for
Americans overseas to vote. Some states like Texas require a ballot
to be applied for within the state before leaving and then the ballot
sent from overseas by mail. In some nations with poor postal systems
that means one needs to vote many months in advance.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
right to vote as a part of Proposed Article 3, or a constitutional
amendment, stops all these attempts. It is already widely proposed.
173 congressmen have already signed on as co-sponsors, including 11
Republicans. Two counties and a city, with a combined population of
two million, have also passed resolutions in support.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>2.
Any official who deliberately or unintentionally makes voting more
difficult shall be immediately removed, their decisions voided and
actions reversed. Deliberately blocking others from voting or
blocking voting recounts shall always be prosecuted and punished as a
felony.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Having
very partisan officials in charge of elections, election
commissioners or Secretaries of States, almost guarantees partisan
outcomes. Besides requiring election committees to be entirely
nonpartisan, as Proposed Article II does, one needs both to remove
the incentive to cheat and provide punishment if someone does.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Removing
the official will be the punishment. Automatically voiding and
reversing their decisions removes any incentive. Blocking voting or
recounts needs to be a felony punished harshly. While the civil
rights acts do punish for killing someone to stop them from voting,
there is no punishment for such crimes as a riot that partly blocked
the Florida recount in 2000 or those who sent false voter
registration information in Wisconsin in 2012.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>3.
Voting days shall be national holidays, with a paid day off for
workers only with proof of voting.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
average voter turnout is much lower than most people think. Most
references to US voter turnout are to presidential elections and
claim the typical turnout is 1/2 to 3/5 of all eligible voters.
(Notice also that using “eligible voters” as a standard rather
than “all voters” leaves out the many who never vote.) </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The
actual average voter turnout is under 10% for all US elections. </b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">For
local elections, especially special districts set up for water or
community colleges, turnout is routinely under 1%. Compare this to
other democracies. Almost all nations have turnouts of at least 2/3.
Most have turnouts over 90%. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The US is almost
unique in its high voter apathy</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> and disgust
of an enormous part of the public.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Some
members of the media elite such as George Will argue low turnout is a
sign of contentment. Such a view could only come from the very
sheltered or willfully blind. Turnout is lowest among those who have
the least reason to be content. The poorest vote least of all,
minorities much less than whites, the young less than the old, and
the less educated much less than the most educated. If contentment
were why voters did not vote as Will claims, the wealthy never would
vote, and the poor always would. The reality is the exact opposite</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The
reason why poor and minorities vote much less is obvious. They are
being smart, or at least realistic.</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> They know
they are not being represented, and see no reason to waste their
time. To get them to vote, one must not only make a system which will
represent them, as Article 2 does. One must also give them other
incentives.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> A
waitress or construction worker has little incentive to vote if it
means they lose money by taking off time when they could be working.
An eight, ten, or twelve hour shift of physical labor makes it
difficult to go and wait in line. Partisan election commissions don't
make it any easier. There were many accounts in the last several
elections of waiting up to ten hours to vote in inner cities while
suburban voters were done in minutes.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> One
way to boost turnout is to make election days national holidays. Most
other democracies have their elections on either Sundays or make them
national holidays. But since many working class people work weekends,
and many others see Sunday either as a day for church or for relaxing
watching pro sports and having a barbecue, Sunday is not ideal. A
paid holiday gives workers incentive, being paid for a day's work for
showing up to vote that hopefully is done in a short time. Failing to
vote would mean one is not paid for your holiday off.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>4.
The voting age is lowered to sixteen for any US citizen proving their
maturity by holding a job, driver's license, or living on their own.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Some
nations allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote. </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>5
nations in Latin America, 4 in Europe, and 2 in Asia allow voters
under 18</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">,
</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;">sometimes conditioned on employment. Why
not? If they are taking on the responsibilities of adults, why not
reward them as adults, with adult powers such as voting? The intent
here is not just to reward them for adult behavior, but also to
establish the voting habit early. In the Philippines, there are mock
elections in high schools. Thus their voter turnout is much higher. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Tying
voting to driving is another way to give them incentive to vote.
Proposed Article 5 has a voter losing licenses, including your
driver's license, if one fails to vote. The threat of losing their
driver's license would spur voting habits to change, to be adopted
early in life. A 16 year old knowing that they could lose their
license if they don't vote will develop the habit early.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-10198926789267048302015-09-13T11:19:00.000-07:002015-09-13T11:19:14.454-07:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 2, Insuring Greater DemocracyAlso at <a href="http://www.alcarroll.com/"><span style="color: #2288bb;">www.alcarroll.com</span></a> and <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Al%20Carroll"><span style="color: #2288bb;">http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Al%20Carroll</span></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Article
2- Insuring Greater Democracy</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>1.
The Electoral College is abolished. The President shall be directly
elected, with the winner being the candidate receiving the most
votes.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> There
probably is no part of the original constitution more disliked than
the Electoral College, more regarded as archaic, useless, arbitrary,
and pointless. Yet it persists, for it is politically useful to
elites as a way to nullify and undermine broader populist democracy.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> As
described in the Introduction, the college was intended by the
founders to be a veto against the public. If they elected the “wrong”
man, the electors were to ignore the voters and choose the “right”
man, one who would serve the wishes of elites. The other restrictions
already in place to keep out populists made this unnecessary. Only
rarely did electors vote contrary to what the voters of a state
wanted. Even that was fixed in the 1970s by laws in some states
requiring electors to vote the same as a state's popular vote.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> So why
does it continue? The college, like the US Senate, gives far more
power to small population and mostly rural states. A lightly
populated state like Wyoming gets three electoral votes, when based
on its population it should get a fraction of one. Since rural voters
tend to be more conservative, conservatives get an exaggerated sense
of how conservative the nation is, and are overrepresented in the
college. The big concentrations of electoral votes in a few states
also makes it useful for political elites and the highly paid
consultants they use to target those states.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
college has an anti democratic effect in other ways too. If you don't
live in a swing state, you are mostly ignored by major parties'
campaigns. That depresses voter turnout. If the other party will win
in your state by over ten percentage points, why bother showing up at
all? As much as 45% of the voters of a state are told their vote does
not count. So the majorities in one state by one party are further
exaggerated. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Congressmen
and other officials running for office from the smaller party in the
state are also far more likely to lose when they could have won. A
Democrat running in largely Democratic Austin in the largely
Republican state of Texas, or a Republican running in largely
Republican Orange County in largely Democratic California, could lose
where they might have won. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Another
distortion is that small groups in big Electoral College states have
far more influence than they should. How much have US relations with
Cuba been dictated by a small group of Cuban-Americans in South
Florida? </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> This
college is an incredibly unpopular institution and its fall is
guaranteed by any future constitutional convention. In its place is
the simple solution wanted by nearly everyone and practiced by almost
every democracy in the world. The president will be the candidate who
receives the most votes.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>2.
The Supreme Court shall never, by any decision including indirectly,
decide who shall be President.”</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Elections
like 1876 and 2000 must never be repeated again. In both cases, a
corrupt party blatantly stole the election and suppressed minority
votes during the election, and even more after. In both cases, the
Electoral College negated the popular vote. In both cases, five
justices of the court sanctioned and actively intervened to maintain
the results of these corrupt elections.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> This
clause removes the courts from elections, leaving the matter entirely
to the executive branch. Clause 5 of this article, further down,
guarantees election boards shall always be nonpartisan, and shall
never decide to favor one party or ideology, and shall never exclude
minority votes as happened all across the south in 1876 and in five
states in 2000.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>3.
The Vice President shall be nominated separately by each party and
elected separately from the President, and also serves as the
Secretary of State.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
Vice Presidential candidacy is more a punchline than anything else.
It has given us such awful and almost universally despised
politicians as Aaron Burr, John Calhoun, Andrew Johnson, William
Marshall (who actually refused to become president when Woodrow
Wilson was in a coma), Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Dick Cheney, and
Sarah Palin. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Of 47
VPs, the only ones to be highly regarded by both historians and the
public while VP were just two, Truman and Mondale. Truman headed a
campaign to halt waste in wartime industries and Mondale was the
first activist VP. A failure rate of over 95% for over 200 years is
incredibly high even by the worst of government standards. As VP John
Garner said, being VP is “not worth a warm bucket of piss.” He
did not say spit, that was cleaned up by later writers.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
office needs to be changed. The VP is chosen by a single person when
they should be chosen by the voters, first in the party primaries and
then in the general election. The office needs to be more than an
empty formality, a person who spends most of their time at funerals
or on make-work commissions to look busy.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Make
the VP also the Secretary of State. That is where one would acquire
the skills most needed to step into the office of the presidency
should something happen to the president. Require the parties
nominate their VPs separately, and let the voters choose them
separately. Then there would no more Andrew Johnsons, disasters who
became president, originally chosen just to help the party ticket.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>4.
The Senate shall be 100 adult citizens chosen at random each year,
representative of the adult American public by age, gender, race and
ethnicity, religion or lack of, and income or social class.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
Senate is a millionaire's club. This is no exaggeration. It has
always been a vocation sought after by wealthy retired men almost as
a hobby after a life in business or law. This must end. Let the
Senate represent the American public directly, be chosen at random
from the public itself to act as a check against any and all elite
led efforts or laws.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Look
at the makeup of the Senate today in 2015.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> 93
whites, 4 Latinos, 2 Blacks, 1 Asian.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Average
age of 62. 80 men, 20 women. Average income of over $1 million.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> 52
Protestants, 27 Catholics, 11 Jews, 7 Mormons, 1 Buddhist.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Now
look at the makeup of the Senate under this proposed plan:</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> 62
whites, 17 Latinos, 13 Blacks, 5 Asians, 2 American Indians, 1 Arab.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> 51
women, 49 men. Average age of 54. Average income of $35,000.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> 51
Protestants, 22 Catholics, 16 atheists, agnostics, or unaffiliated, 2
Jews, 2 Orthodox Christians, 1 Mormon, 1 Buddhist, 1 Hindu, 1 Muslim,
and 3 who won't say what their faith, or lack of it, is. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Clearly
our current system leaves out the voices of most women and ethnic and
religious minorities. Atheists and the unaffiliated especially are
completely silenced, unable to be elected because of the hostility of
those bigoted against them. But </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the most
striking silencing of all is of working class people</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">.
Even the upper middle class rarely get elected.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> A
completely random process for choosing senators from the adult
general public can easily be designed by statisticians. Having a
senate chosen at random from the public guarantees the public shall
always be represented. It turns the public into itself the fourth
branch of government and a check on the power of the other three
branches.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> No
doubt the more elitist and downright snobby will sneer at the thought
of a waitress or truck driver in the halls of congress. No doubt many
of those same people will pat themselves on the back, and never
consider that to your typical member of the political or economic
elite, the readers looking down on a waitress themselves would be
sneered at by elites.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Those
who sneer at the hard working and less educated are contemptible</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">,
unlike the ones they look down on. Not having a degree does not make
one stupid, and equally important, it does not take away from wanting
to do what is right, and having basic common sense. The recent
documentary </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Schooling the World </i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">makes
a very strong case for how education can often be used to make a
person less ethical, more materialistic, and less tied to their
community. The famed </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Lies My Teacher Told Me</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">
points out that, believe it or not, more education makes one more
likely to support wars, not less. Education can be used to liberate,
as Paolo Freire famously formulated. But it can also be used to
pacify and make the public submissive. Education must teach critical
thinking, or it produces unthinking robots.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Having
wealth in many ways makes a person less capable</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">.
They are sheltered from day to day struggles. They don't know what it
is to have to choose which bill to pay, to go without, or to see
one's children go without. It is elitist to sneer at those on public
assistance as “lazy” when truly </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the
laziest people are those who let their wealth do their work for them</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">.
It is also ignorant of the facts to not know the wealthy receive far
more public assistance than the poor, or willfully blind to refuse to
admit so. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>A
nation should never try for change solely from above, imposed on
those below</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">. Those below must have a veto. A
senate made up of 100 John and Jane Does rather than Rockefellers
provides that.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>5.
Redistricting shall only be decided by nonpartisan committee, and
gerrymandering to favor one party or dilute minority voting power is
forbidden.” </i></span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Redistricting
is today done by the most highly partisan people possible. State
legislatures decide voting districts, and they generally do so openly
to favor their own party as much as possible. For over a generation
after the civil rights era, it was also quite common for districts to
be set up to weaken or exclude minority voting power. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> A good
example of partisan redistricting is Austin. Politically, Austin's
voters are quite similar in their outlook to San Francisco's. The
Republican state legislature gerrymandered Austin out of its own
congressman, dividing it up into parts of six more conservative
districts. By one gerrymandering effort alone, nearly a million
Americans are not represented in the House.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> But
perhaps the most notorious examples of partisan electioneering have
happened in Florida and Ohio. Florida's Secretary of State Katherine
Harris purged eligible voters, mostly Black, and halted a recount to
help her own party. Ohio's Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, himself
Black, disenfranchised a number of minority voters, and then refused
to cooperate with investigations into his actions. Neither person,
nor indeed any politician, has any business as an authority to decide
who can vote. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Less
known, but just as unjust, is how partisan election rules keep out
third parties. When John Anderson ran as an independent candidate for
president in 1980, eventually getitng 8% of the vote, his campaign
spent much of their time and limited funds overcoming the many
barriers to getting on the ballot in each state. Anderson at one
point had over a quarter of voters supporting him. State barriers
trying to exclude him were not the only reason he did not do nearly
as well as he could have. But they had a crippling effect on his
campaign.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Voting,
and insuring that everyone eligible can vote as easily as possible,
should not be up to partisans with a stake in keeping out voters of
other parties. It should be as nonpartisan and uncontroversial as
health or fire departments. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>6.
Congressional representatives' terms are changed to four years,
elected in the same elections as the President.”</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Most
of the public does not show up to vote for midterm elections. These
votes, and the people chosen by them, are illegitimate because most
of the public is not represented. That must change.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Blaming
the voters themselves is pointless. Voters often show up depending on
how much they have been conditioned to show up, and the media does
not do so for midterm elections. The media pays far more attention to
the presidency than all other offices combined, but there is no law
that will change that. Instead that attention must be harnessed so
that a majority will always turn out to elect their congressmen.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
terms of the two houses are almost reversed by this proposed system.
Today senators are wealthy elites with a longer term than a
president, and they represent mostly small population states.
Congressmen serve only two years, and while still well off, have
slightly higher numbers of the upper middle class than senators. This
new system makes the new House the upper house, with longer terms and
still likely more well off economically than the Senate. </span>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
new Senate will be mostly working class and mid and lower middle
class. While there will still be some from the upper middle class, it
is unlikely to have more than a single member of wealthy elites.
There likely will even be several members of the Senate each year who
were unemployed at the time of being chosen, and a fair number of
retirees and housewives. With a new Senate every year, it will
represent the mood, beliefs, and priorities of middle America better
than any past congress ever has, or could. With nonpartisan
redistricting, the House will look much more like America as well.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> That
is as it should be. This will be the most direct form of democracy
seen since town, village, or tribal meetings, a populist one that can
and will block elite actions that harm others or the nation. </span>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-833157129675174802015-09-02T16:03:00.003-07:002015-09-02T16:05:12.453-07:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 1, Continuing and Expanding the Original Constitution and its AmendmentsAlso at <a href="http://www.alcarroll.com/">www.alcarroll.com</a> and <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Al%20Carroll">http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Al%20Carroll</a><br />
<br />
Article 1-<br />
Continuing and Expanding the Original Constitution and its Amendments<br />
“1. All articles and amendments from the previous Constitution of 1787 remain the final law of the land, except as changed by the following articles or later amendments.”<br />
As just described in the Introduction, the original constitution does not deserve reverence. It was elitist, conceived in secrecy, passed by undemocratic means, and deliberately designed to insure economic elites will also hold political control. This proposed constitution does not seek to take away what was good and right in the original amendments to the original Constitution. The Bill of Rights, and amendments such as the Reconstruction Amendments and the Right to Vote for Women remain incredibly important.<br />
The original constitution is another matter. It is purely a document of power, who has it and can wield it. It is not about rights or democracy, but designed to limit rights and democracy. The amendments stay protected. The First Amendment is the most cherished part of the entire constitution, protecting freedom of speech, assembly, petition, and religion. It also blocks established state churches, one of the main causes of religious repression and wars partly or wholly begun or justified using religion. The lack of an official state church is one of the main reasons the US is one of the most devout nations in the world, with an incredible diversity of faiths. There are dozens of Southern Baptist denominations alone.<br />
The Second Amendment is the most controversial of all the amendments. It is best left alone, for any attempt to alter it would at least occupy and perhaps split apart the entire convention. Not only that, crime has been dropping for several decades already, including gun crimes. Most gun deaths are suicides, and they along with some gun crimes can be reduced by restricting guns to the mentally ill, felons, or those under restraining orders, by ordinary law.<br />
The remaining amendments include rights against self incrimination, to a speedy trial, equal protection in the Fourteenth Amendment, an end to slavery, suffrage for women, presidential succession, and an end to poll taxes and literacy tests. It would be difficult to understate the importance of these rights to individuals and to expanding rights. All these amendments besides the Bill of Rights are ones most of the founders would have opposed. These amendments are almost all very real defeats of the original elitist intent of the founders.<br />
"2. This and all future constitutional conventions must be representative of the US public, by gender, race and ethnicity, and religious faith or lack of. Its members must be respected intellectuals drawn from education, religious institutions, civil rights groups, non-governmental organizations, labor, business, military veteran groups, consumer groups, and scientists. No current or former elected officials or appointed cabinet members or presidential or congressional advisers or staff are allowed. This and all constitutional conventions must be in full view of the public, every word said by every delegate at the convention scrupulously recorded."<br />
The original constitution was by, for, and of elitists, entirely white males, mostly very wealthy slave owners, speculators, and professional politicians. Any and all future constitutions, including this proposed one, must not be. They must include everyone, every last social group, every last group of important representative institutions. To fail to do so means the document is not legitimate, and deserves not to be seen as such.<br />
Look at the background of the original 55 founders:<br />
41 had been members of the Continental Congress. 35 had legal training (not all practicing.) 18 were speculators in land or stocks. 14 were plantation owners, 26 owned slaves including 1 slave trader. There were only 2 small farmers. The only other good traits of the founders were 5 who were doctors or scientists.<br />
All 55 were white. All 55 were male. 49 were Protestant (28 of them Episcopal), and only two Catholics. Three of the most important, Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, were Deists, believers in God who did not belong to any church.<br />
Now look at a hypothetical convention of 100 delegates who represent a cross section of America under this proposal:<br />
62 whites, 17 Latinos, 13 Blacks, 5 Asians, 2 American Indians, and 1 Arab. 51 women and 49 men. 51 Protestants, 22 Catholics, 16 atheists, agnostics, or unaffiliated, 2 Jewish, 2 Orthodox Christians, 1 Mormon, 1 Buddhist, 1 Hindu, 1 Muslim, and 3 who won't say their faith.<br />
Obviously there were would be no plantation or slave owners, though likely a few speculators or lawyers. Most of the membership would be drawn from institutions devoted to public service, and no office holders. The only thing the two conventions would share might be roughly equal numbers of scientists and doctors.<br />
Such a convention would be far more devoted to the public good than the founders ever were. The chances of anti democratic and elitist institutions like an Electoral College being repeated are extremely remote. Ideally the delegates would seek consensus on as many issues as possible, and deliberate obstructionists would be few, as they are intellectuals more than ideologues.<br />
The most constructive way to run a convention would be to limit the time to several weeks to give the delegates impetus to finish decisively. Immediately hold an informal nonbinding straw poll to see which proposals have the most and least support. All proposals with less than a third support get tabled until the end, perhaps never voted on at all. Those with the highest support are voted on, in that order. This would create momentum to hopefully carry forward the proceedings, and help solve the more difficult and contentious issues.<br />
Such a convention must also have rules in place to bar filibusters entirely, strictly limiting the amount of time speaking by one person, establish quorums easily, and bring votes quickly. For the truly intractable issues, a model can be found in how historic treaties like the Camp David Accords were negotiated. When two sides disagree strongly on an issue, those who are not part of either group and with the least stake or emotion tied up in that issue act as go betweens, seeking out common ground and finding solutions neither side had tried or thought of before.<br />
This and any other possible future conventions must be out in the open for all to see, with no more secretive deliberations as the original convention had. The media must be there to observe but not interfere or agitate, and the public there to observe, much like the visitors' gallery in Congress today. Secrecy and elitism create and guarantee mistrust, rightfully so. Recent history shows us the public greatly distrusted NAFTA and GATT for perfectly valid reasons, as gatherings of remote elites designed to undermine democratic institutions out of sight from the public. This convention must be accessible. Every word at it must be recorded for historic reasons as well. There is much we do not know about the original convention because of the walls of secrecy those elitists hid behind.<br />
"3. Each of these following articles must be voted on and approved separately by two thirds or more of those voting to become the law of the land."<br />
The public should not be forced to vote an entire document either up or down, accepting those parts they disagree with in order to have those parts they do agree with. This is what the original founders did (except it was to other elites, the special state conventions and not the public) and it further shows how anti democratic their methods deliberately were.<br />
The vote should also be a supermajority, two thirds or more, to become the highest law in the land. Passing by narrow majorities would be rightly seen as contentious, undermine any consensus these new laws deserve to be our constitution, and probably foreshadow a great deal of conflict.<br />
One of the best examples is the abortion issue. There are few countries where abortion is a more divisive issue than the US, and that is precisely because of how it was done. The Supreme Court declared abortion bans to be unconstitutional based on an implied right to privacy. In most of the rest of the world, abortion bans were dropped by a vote. Thus the issue felt more resolved to most of the public. Had the court not acted, an abortion ban may well have dropped anyway, state by state. I hasten to point out, this proposed constitution includes the right to privacy in Article 15, protecting abortion rights among other things.<br />
<strong>This vote must be held by the public, and not by legislatures</strong> as the current constitution requires. Needing approval by the state legislatures gives far too much power to elected elites of small population and mostly rural states, far out of proportion to their population. It is deliberately anti democratic, as the founders yet again intended.<br />
If two thirds of the public nationwide vote for these articles, that gives them legitimacy. But would that not ignore the original constitution? Yes, and that is half the point. The founders did precisely the same, ignoring the original Articles of Confederation. The original Articles state they are “...perpetual; nor shall <strong>any</strong> alteration at <strong>any</strong> time be made in <strong>any</strong> of them; unless such alteration agreed to in <strong>Congress</strong> of the US and confirmed by legislatures of <strong>every</strong> State.” As pointed out in the Introduction, on both counts, the constitution was illegally adopted, not agreed to either by Congress or state legislatures during the ratification process.<br />
If the founders could ignore the original Articles, we as a nation can and should ignore the founders and the constitutional requirement, based on the precedent the founders themselves set. A two thirds supermajority will create enormous pressure on the federal government: Accept these new constitutional articles we have just approved, overwhelmingly, as now the highest law of the land.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-17066351134118217092015-08-19T16:29:00.000-07:002015-08-19T16:29:01.211-07:00Resuming the articles from A Proposed New Constitution. I begin by reposting the Introduction.<br />
<br />
From <a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a><br /> This and all articles at it may be reposted in full or in part freely under Creative Commons.<br />
Introduction to A Proposed New Constitution<br />
<br />
America’s constitution is a sacred cow. Some cows should not be worshipped. For nothing should be so revered that one cannot question it, and blind worship is always to be avoided. <br />
<br />
There is, among those on both the political left and right, what can only be called widespread <strong>constitution worship.</strong> Most on both sides hold up the constitution the way a vampire hunter in the movies holds up a cross to ward off vampires. Everyone from the most stoned pot smokers to gun toting militia groups calls on the constitution as support for causes, beliefs, and attitudes they hold dear.<br />
<br />
This constitution worship is every bit as blindly enthusiastic as it is unknowing of the actual history of the constitution, and how and why it was adopted. For this, most people are blameless. People cannot be faulted for what they were not taught, or more often, falsely taught. I made the same argument in <em>Presidents' Body Counts</em>, and others, notably James Loewen in <em>Lies My Teacher Told Me</em>, argue likewise.<br />
<br />
For the founders themselves did not think much of the constitution. Jefferson wanted a new constitution every twenty years. Other founders disagreed, largely because they were not sure the constitution would last twenty years. For the founders, it was a pragmatic even temporary measure, not holy or intended to be permanent. Constitution worship did not become a regular feature of American society until near the start of the twentieth century, in part as a way to assimilate immigrants.<br />
<br />
I often tell my students that America is great not because of the constitution, but in spite of it, and especially in spite of the founders. The constitution itself is clearly at the root of many of our worst problems in American society today. If it were up to the American public, the following solutions would have become law many decades, even half a century or more, before today:<br />
<br />
1. Abolishing the Electoral College.<br />
2. Ending the buying of elections.<br />
3. Limiting the time campaigning for office, as they do in Great Britain.<br />
4. Ending wars quickly in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Each war continued over half a decade after the American public wanted to get out.<br />
5. Reforming the office of vice president, widely regarded with contempt by most, and<br /> producing candidates that even most voters of the same party as the presidential candidate did not want.<br />
6. Ending corporate welfare and other wasteful spending.<br />
7. Ending most foreign military aid, and support for tyrants and dictators around the world.<br />
8. Limiting the power of the Supreme Court.<br />
9. Ending the political monopoly of wealthy elites.<br />
10. Guaranteeing privacy from government intrusion.<br />
<br />
Each of these proposals have widespread bipartisan support and are hugely popular across the political spectrum by great majorities. But none of these proposals, not too surprisingly, have majority support among elected political elites, economic elites, or the leadership of either party.<br />
<br />
The constitution itself is the biggest barrier to solving these problems. Not one of these problems have been, or ever could have been, quickly solved, precisely because the constitution makes it difficult. Most of these problems require a constitutional amendment, something made deliberately long and difficult by the founders. A few of these could be solved temporarily by ordinary laws, which could then be easily overturned next election.<br />
<br />
So why not go to the root of these problems? Why not a new constitution?<br />
<br />
Constitution worship is the reason. Most Americans have been so heavily propagandized to think of the US Constitution as undeniably great and downright sacred, something you just don’t question without being seen as un-American. <br />
<br />
What is pretty comical is to see the most idealistic of leftists, who are deeply cynical of everything else that is elitist and coming from powerful and wealthy institutions, become like a fundamentalist when the constitution is brought up. What is equally comical is to see populist conservatives or libertarians become enamored of government power when it is enshrined in a document written by, after all, Deists and Enlightenment thinkers who did not trust organized religion or nobility. Both are smitten by constitution worship.<br />
<br />
There are two obvious ways to deal with that. One is to challenge the holy stature of the constitution. Write the true history, which most historians and political scientists already know is not a noble one, but one of elitists hijacking a popular revolution.<br />
<br />
The other solution is to keep what is best about the old constitution while adding to it. Propose a new constitution and a new constitutional convention, but make one of the first proposals to keep the best of the old document.<br />
<br />
For <strong>the best of the constitution is not the original document at all. The best part is the amendments. The original document is not about rights and all about power</strong>, who has it and how they can wield it, and that it will always remain in the hands of elites. The amendments are what most rightly revere. Keep the amendments, and amend the original document of power to spread the power to the mass of people, and add more amendments to limit the power of elites, for good.<br />
<br />
That is what this proposed constitution tries to do. It adds to the best of the document, keeping all the original constitutional amendments with Article 1. The rest of the articles serve the same purpose as amendments. <br />
<br />
What of the first solution to ending constitution worship? Tell the true history of the constitution, uncensored, without the heavy doses of patriotic propaganda that leave out its elitist nature. That story has already been told many times in the fields of history, political science, etc. But to help the curious and open minded, and for the less patient, let me summarize the history of the adoption of the constitution. To do that, one has to go back to the American Revolution.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>The American Revolution was not a real revolution at all. It was just an independence movement.</strong> In actual revolutions, elites are overturned, killed off, imprisoned, or forced to flee the country. America's elites, plantation owners like Washington and Jefferson, were actually strengthened. They no longer had to listen to British authorities. Many scholars, the best known being the eminent Charles Beard, argued the real motive for the founders' rebellion was economic. The British Empire was run by mercantilism, which required colonies to trade only with the mother country. The founders wanted primarily more profit from free trade, not political freedom.<br />
<br />
But there were many in the middle and working classes who wanted a true class revolution. There had been class warfare in the earlier English Revolution, Roundheads who were middle class and anti nobility, and the Levelers, primitive versions of communists who wanted to level off the wealth anyone could have. In the American Revolution, there were anti elite groups like the Sons of Liberty, and populist rabble rousers like Samuel Adams, George Mason, and most of all Thomas Paine.<br />
<br />
There was a populist wave of the American Revolution before it was hijacked by the largely elitist founders. The Massachusetts Revolution of 1774 happened a year before the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The public took control of Massachusetts courts, forcing judges and the Governor and Lieutenant Governor to resign. They overthrew every county government in Massachusetts. That is why the British were occupying Boston in the first place at the time of Lexington and Concord. <br />
<br />
This was just the start of a populist revolution. <strong>There were over 90 Declarations of Independence before Jefferson's</strong>, from counties, cities, and states. Most were based on George Mason's in Virginia. Jefferson's was simply an elite attempt to seize control of a popular uprising. There were popular uprisings, attempted class revolutions within the elite-led revolution. There were mutinies within the US Army, in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Congress was forced to use a draft, bounties, even the promise of slaves to gain recruits.<br />
<br />
After the war, there were early experiments in anarchism, socialism, and other revolutionary notions for that time. For a year, Pennsylvania tried shutting down the government entirely. Pennsylvania also tried outlawing the collection of debt, a form of wealth redistribution. Slavery ended in seven northern states. One out of eight slaves in the US were freed. New Jersey even gave women the right to vote. First done in 1776, it stayed on the books until 1807.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Aristocracy and feudalism were ended in the US.</strong> Noble titles, primogeniture, and entailment (the wealthy being able to seize public property) all ended. <strong>There was enormous confiscation and redistribution of wealth during and after the revolution.</strong> (Try telling that to a Tea Party member.) Most British loyalists and many aristocrats, whether they sided with the colonists or with Britain, lost their property. Established state churches in nine of the thirteen colonies were abolished. These were all fairly radical changes, and many Americans wanted to go even further.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>American elites’ fear of class warfare created the US Constitution.</strong> The most pivotal event was Shay’s Rebellion. Farmers in western Massachusetts tried to stop foreclosures on their farms, so they shut down state courts. Jefferson called this, “liberty run mad.” Washington called it, “anarchy and confusion.” What horrified the founders was not the size of the rebellion. It was minor, with few deaths. The fact that it took so long to break the rebellion worried them. And at the same time, the French Revolution was going on. They feared this minor rebellion might grow into a similar class revolution. All the radical experiments in wealth redistribution added to that fear. The founders called the convention in direct response to Shay's Rebellion.<br />
<br />
The constitutional delegates had a low opinion of the public. They believe people without wealth were just one hungry belly short of becoming a howling mob, that working class people were selfish, unreliable, and easily misled. They wanted the nation to be run by “men of quality,” the very wealthy, and argued the wealthy must be protected from the general public above all else. <strong>“Those who own the country ought to govern it,” as John Jay argued.</strong><br />
<br />
The Constitutional Convention was secretive. There were no notes taken, except Madison's, done at the end of the day in his room, against the wishes of the convention. <strong>The public was barred. So were the press. The delegates</strong>, just like Colonial Congresses before them, <strong>took oaths of secrecy to keep debates from the public.</strong> There was almost no debate on expanding the power of the government. The elite delegates already agreed in advance on most questions.<br />
<br />
The US Constitution was and is deliberately anti democratic, designed to look like a democracy without actually being one. Great power was given to the president. The assumption was Washington would be the first, and the clumsy Electoral College put in. Electing a president was deliberately made cumbersome to stop anyone not as admired as Washington from being elected. <strong>The founders did not want competitive elections, but presidents chosen almost by acclamation.</strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Ratifying deliberately excluded opponents of the constitution. Special state conventions, not legislatures or the public, ratified the constitution.</strong> Even so, as word leaked out, the public turned against this document that most were not allowed to vote on. Elites at the special state conventions began to get nervous. Votes against the constitution were highest in Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Rhode Island. The Massachusetts convention only ratified after Governor John Hancock was promised (falsely) he would be the first president or vice president.<br />
<br />
In Virginia, George Mason and Patrick Henry successfully pushed for the Bill of Rights as a condition for ratifying. The first presidential election was planned without New York, North Carolina, or Rhode Island. New York actually prepared to secede and become their own country. Federalists in New York City then threatened to secede from New York. The New York convention backed down and narrowly ratified.<br />
<br />
North Carolina's convention defeated the constitution and held out a year before a new convention ratified. Rhode Island was the only state to hold a “popular” vote. (Not only minorities and women, except in New Jersey, were barred. There were property requirements to vote in every state.) The constitution was defeated in the state by a 10-1 margin, a good indication of what most of the public thought. Washington was actually elected without Rhode Island voting in the presidential election. <br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Ratification took three years of enormous elite effort <strong>against</strong> the general public.</strong> Ben Franklin owned most newspapers in the US. An economic boycott was used by wealthy elites to shut down many of the other papers opposing the constitution. <br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>The original US Constitution, minus the amendments, has a deliberate <strong>anti</strong> democratic structure.</strong><br />
1. The Electoral College means there has never been a direct election of presidents. Originally it was intended to be a veto by elites vs the general public. If they elected the “wrong” person, the electors were there to overrule the public. <br />
2. The US Senate is the most undemocratic part of the system. Wyoming has 75 times greater representation than California. Until the 20th Century, senators were chosen by state legislatures, not voters. (Some Tea Party leaders want to return to that.) <br />
3. The Supreme Court almost always defends wealthy elites. <br />
4. The winner take all/majority rule system is less democratic than parliament systems in most other nations. It leaves small groups unrepresented, cripples newer or smaller parties. <br />
5. There is no mention of rights in in the original constitution whatsoever, except a stricter definition of treason.<br />
<br />
And <strong>the US Constitution was illegally adopted</strong>. The Articles of Confederation's Article 13 states “…Articles of this Confederation…shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time be made in any of them; unless such alteration agreed to in Congress of the US & confirmed by legislatures of every State.” On both counts, the constitution is illegal. Neither Congress nor state legislatures ever confirmed it, only special state conventions.<br />
<br />
Obviously I am not suggesting resistance to the current constitution, or ignoring it. That argument leads to chaos, and only militias and sovereign citizens on the fringe embrace that. There is a legal concept which says even if a law was adopted by faulty means, it remains the law if it has been in force for a good length of time. My point was simply, when one hears that this is a nation of laws, remember that the founders ignored the highest law in the land, the Articles of Confederation. Being elites, and very elitist, they just went ahead and did it. <br />
<br />
Imagine a modern parallel to what the founders did. Imagine the wealthiest elites writing a document only they had any say in, and only allowing themselves to vote on it, and then declaring it the highest law in the land. That is what the founders did, and this is precisely why the original constitution deserves no reverence.<br />
<br />
Instead, let us resolve to craft a new constitution that preserves the best of the old, the amendments, and adds to it with a far better system of government and drastic limits on elite power.<br />
<br />
Unlike the original convention, any new constitution deserves, needs, and requires as much popular input as possible. While the proposals that follow were written by me, many of these proposals have been made in other forms before. Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, proposed some parts of several of these articles, as have others. It is depressing, and proof that reform is needed more than ever, that none of his proposals were adopted in spite of public support. The call for a new constitutional convention is ongoing.<br />
<br />
<strong>These proposals, and any proposals, need to come from you, the general public. Send in your suggestions, criticisms, counter proposals, arguments and debates. Spread the word anywhere and everywhere you can. This cannot be done without you.</strong><br />
<br />
The only real arguments for continuing the current constitution are stability, and a view of the American system based more on romanticism than actual history.<br />
<br />
These are the proposed new articles' titles. In the coming weeks, I will post one article a week in full, with explanations and arguments for them.<br />
<br />
Article 1- Continuing and Expanding the Original Constitution and its Amendments<br />
Article 2- Insuring Greater Democracy<br />
Article 3-Guaranteeing the Right to Vote<br />
Article 4-Ending the Buying of Elections<br />
Article 5-Voting Guarantees Benefits<br />
Article 6- Limiting Corporate Power<br />
Article 7-Ending Colonialism<br />
Article 8-Renouncing War<br />
Article 9- Referendums and Recalls<br />
Article 10- Nonprofits for the Public Interest<br />
Article 11- Ending Institutional Support for Hatred and Discrimination<br />
Article 12-Ending Class Bias in the Law<br />
Article 13-Ending Special Treatment for Wealthy Elites<br />
Article 14-Limiting Idle Wealth<br />
Article 15- The Right to Privacy<br />
Al Carroll<br /> Assistant Professor of History<br /> Northern Virginia Community College<br /><a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-82885717210175067262015-08-10T17:03:00.001-07:002015-08-19T16:36:15.525-07:00Survivors: Family Histories of Surviving War, Colonialism, and Genocide<a href="http://alcarroll.com/survivors-family-histories-of-surviving-war-colonialism-and-genocide/">http://alcarroll.com/survivors-family-histories-of-surviving-war-colonialism-and-genocide/</a><br />
<br />
Introduction to a collection of essays from my students.<br />
<br />
History is all around us. I constantly tell my students and readers that all of us, quite literally, make history every day. Our actions, those of “ordinary people,” create the history that will be taught tomorrow. I am a passionate believer in family history, oral history, and genealogy. All three are central to what I teach and the methods I use to teach. For those of us who teach at the college level and especially in humanities and social sciences, there are incredible resources, namely our own students.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Like many history professors and historians, I believe strongly in history from below, the practice of teaching, researching and writing from a bottom up view rather the history of elites. Getting students to know their family history and oral history is an important part of my practices. Oral history, and history broadly speaking, tie the individual to their family and community. That community includes both the local area and the nation, both the nation they live in and the nation(s) their family is from. I include nation to mean what Benedict Anderson famously defined it as, a community of like minds united by common language and culture. Nations can be political units, ethnic groups, or some mix of the two. One can speak of nations within nations, such as American Indian tribes.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Family histories also remove any sense of history being remote. Hearing stories of family members right in the center of major events, often literally struggling to stay alive, makes issues like war and peace, colonialism, and power struggles between nations or between elites and those struggling to get out from under their domination…suddenly such issues seem very immediate, and so real.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Northern Virginia Community College serves four of the most northernmost counties of Virginia, Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William, essentially the suburbs of Washington, DC. In one study after another, Loudoun County, the one I teach in, is ranked the wealthiest county per capita in America, followed by Fairfax. Average income per family in the county tops $100,000.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">One might not think of these communities as home to refugees from dangerous and traumatized nations. Such a thought would be wrong. These counties are home to survivors of the most heinous kinds of atrocities.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The volume you hold in your hands was largely written by the children and grandchildren of these survivors, often telling the stories of their elders and loved ones describing why they fled brutality of the kind no one should ever have to bear. In most cases, the students did not know of these hardships and atrocities first hand, as they only experienced them from hearing about them from their immediate family member. In other cases, the stories have been passed down, carefully preserved for several generations. In still other cases, these students heard of their family member’s experience for the first time because of writing these student papers. While all of these stories are important to preserve, it is the last type I am most proud of having a role in, helping to build ties between generations.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There are few places in the US that can compete for diversity with Northern Virginia. That fact surprised me when I first moved here, not expecting to live in a small Virginia town and yet be able to go to Afghan, Burmese, Indian, Peruvian, Salvadoran, and Thai restaurants within a population of fewer than 20,000. I quickly found myself teaching with this incredible resource, students from such a variety of ethnic and national backgrounds.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">One might not think of Virginia suburbs as a center of multiculturalism, but one would be wrong. Less than two decades ago, the counties of Northern Virginia were overwhelmingly white, with also a longstanding Black presence going back to the earliest colonial times. It was in Virginia that some of the most restrictive racial purity and control laws were passed after Bacon’s Rebellion. Most of the Native presence had also been erased or removed over a century before American independence. In a treaty in 1646, the English took most Virginia land, forcing Indians to pay tribute. The Native population dropped over 90% from war and disease and all Indians legally became subjects of the Crown. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Virginia’s colonial laws enforced white supremacy. All white males had to be armed, but no nonwhites could be. No white servants or workers could be hired by nonwhites. Natives and Blacks were both classified as “Negroes and Other Slaves.” All white women bearing mixed children were heavily fined, and the children sold into slavery. Most women found guilty could not pay the fine, and so faced a prison sentence instead. All nonwhites were barred from office, testifying in court, and voting, and each racial group could only marry in the same racial category. Some of these restrictions lasted until the 1960s.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Other minorities largely were not in Virginia until recently. But today over 160 ethnic groups call Northern Virginia home. One in ten Virginians are foreign born, and one in nine Virginians speak a primary language that is not English. These numbers are likely several times higher in Northern Virginia than in the rest of the state. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Having Washington DC nearby has made Northern Virginia a magnet for well-educated immigrants. The medical centers also draw a high number of highly skilled immigrant doctors and other medical professionals. Research centers also bring in many highly educated scientists and other scholars. And contrary to the image many immigrant haters have of immigrants as poor, these skilled immigrants are precisely why Loudoun and Fairfax Counties have such high standards of living.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There are stories of survivors all around us, and their stories are of the utmost importance to tell. The genesis of this book came from a US History I class I taught. I became determined to gather these stories after a young Sudanese student’s essay told the story of her grandmother <i>escaping from slavery.</i> Not slavery as in exploitation, or the silly hyperbole of a conservative complaining about high taxes, but literal slavery, an African woman being bought and sold in the late twentieth century, abused and without rights, and finally having to escape in as dramatic a fashion as any Black American slave over 160 years ago.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">That student, though, declined to have her story included, and ethically we must respect her wishes. About half of the students I approached are not included in this book. Many had moved on in their academic careers after the semester and their college email addresses were no longer in use. Others, for personal reasons, fear, shame, or worry about affecting relatives, did not want the stories they told to become public. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Among the stories students told to me in family histories for class, but not included in this collection:</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A Peruvian student told the story of his uncle taking part in anti-insurgent campaigns, and his uncle’s memories of guilt following his part in the execution in the field of a rebel commander.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A student told of his ancestor’s life on death row before being executed for murder, and the family’s shame at being related to him. Some family members still refuse to speak of it decades later,</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A survivor of the civil war in Burundi turned in a family history describing a relative who had to flee for their life to the United States.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A Salvadoran student described her father fleeing El Salvador following the civil war of the 1980s. It was after the military dictatorship, so he did not fear reprisals from death squads, but from others in his village for being in the military.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A Guinean/Togoan student describing her grandfather’s life as the village leader, married to multiple wives.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A Ghanan student described her grandfather being arrested by the British for being part of the independence movement.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A Japanese-American student listened to the story of her aunt’s experience in the US internment camps in World War II.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A student with one Choctaw parent and one Mexican-American described the family traditions on both sides and the prejudice he’s faced.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A student from southwestern Virginia describes a small community’s accounts of themselves as Cherokee descendants who had to hide their ancestry from outsiders for many generations. This student is pursuing an anthropology degree, and I strongly urged her to study her own community.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Here in this collection we have other stories of surviving civil war, of seeing families torn apart and then reunited, loved ones lost, atrocities witnessed, relatives that had to flee, and the survivors that brought their children and grandchildren to the US. We have stories of living through long periods of colonialism and still uncertainly not knowing if your people will ever be independent. We have stories of outright genocide, entire peoples in Cambodia, Greece, Poland, and Rwanda facing whole or partial extinction. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And finally we have the stories of American Indians here in northern Virginia, who have faced both colonialism and genocide, and whose descendants are still in this land in spite of everything done to the contrary. After almost entirely being driven out of Virginia in colonial times, today one meets similar, if not exactly the same, Native people if one knows where to look.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The immigrant stories confound the stereotypes that bigots have of them. Most immigrants to the United States, both the families in this collection or elsewhere, are not from the poorest of the poor. Most are middle class in their home countries. Northern Virginia especially tends to draw quite a few highly educated immigrants, both in the faculty and in the student body and the students’ family members. One frequently meets the offspring of immigrant doctors, business people, and high level bureaucrats.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The American Indian stories also confound many people’s expectations of the area. Most of Virginia’s American Indian population began to be ethnically cleansed as far back as the earliest colonial times. Most every Virginian and other Americans knows the (largely false) legend of Pocahontas and her dealings with Jamestown. What far fewer know is that, upon her death and that of her father Powhattan, the English colonists began an ugly war that, along with disease, killed nine tenths of the Powhattan Confederacy in one generation. The Anglo-Cherokee War and the French and Indian War wiped out or drove away nearly all remaining Native people in the state. As mentioned before, Virginia passed a strict series of racial purity laws, the first in what would become the US, barring interracial marriage or even contact, and classified all Indians in a rigid racial hierarchy.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There are today eight very small state recognized tribes in Virginia, collectively less than 8,000 people on less than 2,000 acres. The ranches near where I grew up in Texas each had more land individually than those eight communities do altogether. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Yet Natives in Northern Virginia persist and thrive. Most Natives in northern Virginia came to the DC metro area for work, the same as many others. One Lakota I knew in graduate school works in the Department of the Interior, as does a Choctaw student who attended my class. The latter gave me the gift of a White House proclamation for Native American Heritage Month. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But the Native population of Virginia is shifting. As in much of the rest of America, the Native population of Virginia is increasingly from Latin America. It seems likely that the largest numbers of Natives in the area are not Mattaponi, Renape, or Cherokee, but Ayamara and Quechua from Bolivia and Peru, Pupile from El Salvador, and Maya from Guatemala and Mexico. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If one wants to go to Native powwows, the closest are at Washington DC universities. Virginia state-recognized tribes are mostly further south and east in the tidewaters region or close to Richmond. But the largest Native dances to be seen in northern Virginia are diabladas (devil dances, as the first Spaniards called them) and morenadas (dark skinned dances), both performed by Bolivian and Peruvian heritage groups in the area at festivals in the summer. These celebrations have both mestizo (mixed ancestry) and Indian people, but the latter are by far the majority. Both dances are indigenous to the Andes, though some theories claim the morenada has an Afro-Bolivian origin.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The structure of this collection is to group these accounts based on the experience of their family member, war, colonialism, or genocide, plus a separate category for American Indian accounts. Each account also has introductory historical background material on the nation of origin. The appendices include the release form each student signed, as well as the guidelines give to all students in my classes writing a family history paper. Each student’s bibliography is at the end of the essay. In some cases, the essay has no bibliography, reflecting when I had not yet required them for student family histories. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There are a number of recurring themes in these essays. One of the most prominent is gratitude that America is a haven for refugees. Another is how many of these students appreciate the struggles and discrimination that their mothers and grandmothers went through as women. Finally a number of these students describe their family member literally facing down evil. In a few cases, the family member largely avoided the great struggles going on in their nation, and that also is worthy of note.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">More than a few works on oral history point to the limitations of the genre. Someone wanting exact data, of the kind put out by government and other institutions, should not rely on oral history. For analysis at a macro level, an average untrained person does about as well as one would expect. Some interviewee accounts are astonishingly insightful, while others may not know very much. These persons herein reflect very much the societies that produced them, and sometimes an oral history account may even show that person lazily reproducing falsehoods. One example that particularly stands out in this collection is a student’s family member’s story of “sex slaves” held by a rebel group during the Salvadoran Civil War, likely a government-spread rumor.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But for a micro view of personal and societal attitudes, worldview, and detailed daily life, oral history is outstanding. Oral history is often a study of memory, how these events are transmitted and remembered by members of a population, rather than exact reproduction. The mind does not record events like a camera or tape recorder. For studying what participants feel about what they went through, their perceptions and how they pass them along to family and other loved ones, oral history is ideal.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There certainly is room for many more studies like this one. At just one community college, teaching perhaps 2000 students over the course of five years, I found eleven families of wartime survivors, five of modern day colonialism, and five families with members who survived genocide, plus an almost equal number of survivors who chose not to be published. Had I chosen a different focus, there were any number of other collections that could have been gathered. Indeed, I argue and hope that other professors and even secondary high school teachers reading this should seek to gather family histories. Not just of the families of survivors such as these, but also military veterans, activists, immigration histories, studies focused on a particular ethnic group, and women’s history are all possible collections that could be gathered by teachers at schools.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Ideally, I would like to see the writing of family histories become standard practice in all US history survey courses, as well as other history classes. I could easily see a professor gathering veterans’ accounts either for an antiwar collection or for remembrance of service, or a combination of the two. Ethnic studies certainly could benefit from gathering students’ accounts. Most of the Latin American student essays were gathered in my Latin American classes, as most American Indian essays were in my American Indian classes. Some students chose to share their family experiences with their classmates, making events like the Salvadoran Civil War and Iranian Revolution seem every bit as real as any newsreel. I could also easily see women’s studies courses requiring every student to interview their grandmothers about their lives when younger to see the dramatic differences in women’s lives. Imagine students hearing about the days when abortion was illegal but sexual harassment was not.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Remembrance is important. Teaching about it is even more so</span></span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-89849410765389397692014-11-29T17:45:00.002-08:002014-11-29T17:45:34.902-08:00Proposed New Constitution, Article 9, Referendums and RecallsFrom the forthcoming <strong>A Proposed New Constitution.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a></strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Article 9- Referendums and Recalls</strong><br />
<strong>1.Members of the public may propose referendums to pass new laws, recalls to remove for illegal or corrupt actions the President, Vice President, member of Congress, Supreme Court Justice, or any appointed official, or bring an end to wars or operations involving US troops.</strong><br />
<br />
A referendum, done right, can be direct democracy at its finest. The public directly proposes and passes laws, completely bypassing both the Congress and the President. Referendums at their best show a public more far sighted than elected officials that may depend on elites for their office and fear angering them.<br />
<br />
There have been over 500 national referendums in recent history in 56 nations. The region with the most national referendums by far is also the most democratic, Europe. Two nations account for over 300 of national referendums worldwide, Australia and Switzerland. Outside of those two nations, the most common reason for a referendum was to approve a new constitution or other change of government, especially after an overthrow, independence, or to prevent or end a period of turbulence. In a few cases, nations do have purely nonbinding referendums that simply force a legislature or president to consider an issue.<br />
<br />
There are not any federal referendums in the US. But 24 states allow referendums within them. Most of these states are in the west, the best known being those in California. Puerto Rico has also held four referendums on their status, and they are perfect examples of doing them wrong. Each time, a pro status quo government worded the referendums to be confusing, hoping to defuse sentiment for statehood. Interestingly, sentiment for the status quo still keeps dropping, and for both statehood and independence it keeps rising, along with voter turnout on the issue.<br />
<br />
California also provides some very good lessons in these problems. The most destructive of their referendums was Proposition 13, which not only rolled back taxes, it required a supermajority to raise taxes. It took several decades to undo the damage done by Prop 13. Clearly, using a referendum for routine matters such as tax rates is a misuse, as is something as fitful and undemocratic as requiring a supermajority for a minor matter.<br />
<br />
California also faced one of the more despicable examples of populism, where Lyndon Larouche's organization of conspiracy theorists and bigots managed to stealthily force a proposition which would have quarantined AIDS patients. It's worth pointing out the measure was defeated by almost 3 to 1, and many of the signatures were gathered by a consultant later convicted of fraud.<br />
<br />
The final example of abuse of referendums or plebescites is in fascist, communist, and other dictatorships. Dictators use them to claim to represent the will of the people. But very few people are fooled by such claims. Everyone can see that a dictatorship's elite proposal from above, with no debate or dissent allowed, is the opposite of actual direct democracy. <br />
<br />
Recalls certainly have a better history. Most recalls in recent US history have been successful, mostly at the local level, mayors or town councils. Most efforts to recall governors have failed. Meacham of Arizona was recalled for an ugly history of racism, and Blagojevich of Illinois for corruption. The worst example of a successful recall was Gray Davis of California, orchestrated by officials in Enron, who were later convicted on other criminal counts. Enron officials ordered rolling blackouts across California, leading to Davis being blamed for a nonexistent power crisis. The recall overturned an election less than a year before. The simplest way to avoid such a debacle on a national level is to allow recalls only for lawbreaking or other corruption.<br />
<br />
A recall can and should be used to remove corrupt officials. <strong>A recall could have removed Nixon far sooner and kept Reagan from avoiding responsibility for the Iran Contra Scandal.</strong> Recalls could have been used against partisan Republican leaders misusing the impeachment process against Clinton for the ludicrous matter of lying about oral sex. <strong>Recalls could have been used to remove the five partisan Supreme Court judges who halted a valid recount of the 2000 election</strong>. Had recalls been around in the 1850s, they could have been used to remove the judges in the Dred Scott decision, possibly making the Civil War less likely.<br />
<br />
<strong>Referendums, had they been around at the federal level, could have ended the Vietnam War far sooner.</strong> The public opposed it by 1968, yet Nixon kept it going five years longer. <strong>A similar referendum could have ended the Iraq War as early as 2006, when most of the public first opposed it.</strong> There would have been tens of thousands of American soldiers still alive, many more not amputated or otherwise wounded, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Iraqis surviving had the public been able to directly order these wars stopped. <br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>2.A referendum or recall vote happens 30 days after the certified collection of valid signatures of ten percent of all voters.</strong><br />
<br />
A 30 day period is long enough to allow for informed debate and avoid a rush to judgment, but short enough to avoid a buildup of cynicism and disgust for the process. Ten percent is a high enough threshold to prevent most fringe groups of conspiracists or bigots from getting a measure on the ballot. Recall that Larouche's people had to use fraud.<br />
<br />
Of course there are some groups large enough to succeed in still doing so. Birthers were and are over 10% of the public. In that case, all a ballot initiative would do is rouse the anger of the public against them, as Larouche's people did in California. <strong>Referendums that sanction prejudices are explicitly barred by the clause below.</strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>3. No referendum may overturn, contradict, or limit anything in either constitution, and such efforts must be done instead by constitutional amendment. Nor shall referendums or recalls be funded by corporations, nor any private contributions except for individual unpaid volunteer work. Referendum advertising must be equally funded both pro and con, must be publicly funded only, and subject to reasonable limits.</strong><br />
<br />
One of the arguments against referendums, and populism of any kind, is “What if segregation had been up for a vote?” It always was, and segregationists had to use force to win. For over a century they used massive violence and intimidation. Referendums are barred from being used for any form of government sanctioned prejudices by other proposed articles to this proposed new constitution.<br />
<br />
What would be best for elections would also be best for referendums and recalls. Publicly funded elections only, so that corporations and wealthy elites cannot hijack them and do not have a greater voice than the average person. Neither side should be given an advantage financially. The time frame for recalls and referendums must be limited for the same reason as for elections, to prevent the overload, the burnout and cynicism and unnecessary waste that long election campaigns currently produce.<br />
<br />
The founders, Madison especially, hated the idea of direct democracy. That is one of the strongest arguments for it, for we have been living with the destructive results of their limits on democracy for over two centuries.<br />
<br />
-------<br />
Al Carroll is Assistant Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College and the author of numerous articles and books, among them <strong>Presidents' Body Counts</strong> and the forthcoming <strong>A Proposed New Constitution.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a><br /><a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a></strong>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-25490438065311578622014-11-28T11:48:00.001-08:002014-11-28T11:48:16.772-08:00Proposed New Constitution Article 8, Renouncing WarFrom the forthcoming <strong>A Proposed New Constitution.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a></strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Article 8-Renouncing War<br /> 1. The United States shall not go to war except in self-defense, and permanently renounces wars or acts of military aggression.</strong><br />
<br />
War is not healthy for living things, not just people, but democracies.<br />
<br />
Most Americans have long opposed most wars most of the time. Yet Americans keep getting maneuvered, pushed, pulled, prodded, lied to, deceived, conned, forced into, or propagandized into one destructive and often useless war, bombing campaign, or overthrow of another government, one after another.<br />
<br />
The constitution requires wars have a declaration of war from Congress first. The military was put under civilian command, and for most of its history was very limited in size. <strong>Even as late as the 1930s, the US Army was only 140,000 men</strong>. Many of the founders argued strongly against a standing army as leading inevitably to tyranny.<br />
<br />
So how did we wind up with a very large powerful permanent military, and the dangerous industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about? How do US troops keep getting sent to nations many Americans have never even heard of, much less believe it important to invade them?<br />
<br />
It was not always this way. Up until the 1890s, the main wars the US fought were against American Indian tribes. The big exceptions were wars against Britain (1812), Mexico (1845), and the Civil War, the last one begun by Confederate aggression.<br />
<br />
But there were a series of two dozen invasions, called filibusters, that most Americans don't know about today. These were private armies, mercenaries, led by American warmongers willing to invade other nations on their own to gain profit, territories, or power. Often they hoped to drag the US into wars, get nations or pieces of a nation taken away and made into part of the US. Filibusters invaded Canada four times, and their allies provoked the War of 1812. They also invaded California, and Texas five times. They gained an ally in slave owners who wanted to make Texas a slave state, and so provoked the war with Mexico.<br />
<br />
This was not what most Americans wanted. Congress passed seven neutrality laws over a period of 45 years making it illegal for private citizens to invade another nation. The laws proved difficult to enforce because of the size of the US and slow communications over great distances at the time.<br />
<br />
Public anger and horror over the huge loss of life in the Civil War ended these private invasions and US wars with other nations for a time. Even “Indian wars” declined. President Grant began a Peace Policy that reduced battles with Native tribes by over three fourths. But by the 1890s, the Civil War generation had died off and war enthusiasts like Teddy Roosevelt led a new push for empire and territory.<br />
<br />
The US took Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Samoa (and for half a century, the Philippines) by force. Self-righteous scientific racists like T. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson insisted they knew how other nations of mostly nonwhite people should be run more than the nations themselves did. <strong>Between 1890 and World War II, US troops invaded ten Latin Americans countries over 30 times</strong>, sometimes taking over some nations for up to 20 years, at other times installing a dictatorship to run these nations on US orders.<br />
<br />
The Cold War saw American invasions in Latin America and Southeast Asia, dozens of US sponsored overthrows of governments, assassinations of national leaders, and outright genocide and democide in Cambodia and Indonesia, respectively. This has been done by US presidents on both ideological sides, Lyndon Johnson as well as Reagan, Obama as well as both Bushes. <strong>The only US president in the last 125 years to not invade, bomb, or try to overthrow another nation's government was Carter</strong>.<br />
<br />
<strong>Since World War II, there has not been a single declaration of war by Congress.</strong> There have only been three authorizations to use force, the notorious Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Bush Sr. receiving authorization (which he said publicly he did not need) for the Gulf War, and GW Bush's for the Iraq and Afghan Wars. The last is now being stretched by Obama to claim it covers him in a war against ISIS. Almost all congressmen in both parties agreed to Obama's claim and declined to even meet to discuss any kind of authorization, much less a declaration of war. Congress's failures are the strongest argument for making going to war more difficult, and demanding the public hold veto power over the start of wars.<br />
<br />
Political and media elites have the contemptuous habit of leaving the public out of war decisions. Both parties are guilty of it. There is the saying that “partisanship stops at the water's edge.” What this means in practice is that both parties support a president's wars without much reservation or criticism. For the only criticism accepted of wars by most of Congress or much of the media is that the president is not warlike enough, not willing to go to war or bomb just to show dissatisfaction or crush other nations’ leaders.<br />
<br />
For quick invasions, bombing campaigns, or missile strikes, the public will briefly rally around a president by instinct and then move on, as long as there are no heavy American losses. For longer wars, the same stampede effect is used, often preceded by heavy propaganda to promote fear of the latest “greatest threat ever.” Then once the war starts, public opinion is ignored. Nixon and GW Bush both publicly said they ignored antiwar demonstrations, the biggest in America's history. Both the Vietnam and Iraq Wars continued half a decade after public opinion turned against them. Media elites also often ignore public opinion, or caricature demonstrators as atypical when they came from across the spectrum of American opinions and backgrounds.<br />
<br />
After World War II, Japan looked at its shameful history, renounced warfare as an instrument of policy, and forbade armed forces used except for self-defense. The US should do the same. On this issue even many Republicans and conservatives agree, and originally were opposed to the US bombing Syria. For all the calls for wars by right wing media, they are out of touch with their own base. Most Americans of all ideologies and backgrounds want fewer wars, and never without just cause. Build such a stance directly into a new constitution.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>2. The United States, its government, agencies, or agents shall never try to overthrow another nation's government again unless directly attacked by said government.</strong><br />
<br />
It must also be made far harder for the president to send troops, bomb other nations, or by any other ways try overthrow other governments. Americans are aware that the US has invaded other nations or overthrown other governments. But most do not know just how often.<br />
<br />
In Latin America alone, over a dozen nations were invaded by the US. <strong>Dozens of nations faced coups or coup attempts against their governments by the CIA, or bought, stolen, or disrupted elections, and numerous assassination attempts</strong> of government leaders. Castro alone survived hundreds of attempts on his life. This pattern includes some that might surprise many, like the CIA orchestrating the firing of Australia's Prime Minister in 1975, or disrupting Italian elections for almost 30 years.<br />
<br />
This same pattern continued in recent years, under both parties, with drone attacks from Colombia to Pakistan, interference in Venezuelan elections, recognizing a coup in Paraguay, and a likely next president, Hillary Clinton, whose election advisers played a role in Honduras’s coup. This must end. Any government the US is not officially at war with, the US government should never try to overthrow.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>3.Unless under direct and immediate attack, the United States shall not go to war or deploy troops without an official declaration of war by Congress. Unless under direct and immediate attack, the declaration of war by Congress must then be approved by a vote of the American public held 30 days later. Failure to get approval by the American public makes the declaration of war overturned.</strong><br />
<br />
It must be made far harder to go to war. <strong>The only effort Congress made to control presidents' war making was the War Powers Act.</strong> In theory a president has two days to tell Congress about an attack, and 60 days to show cause or withdraw. <strong>It never worked.</strong> Presidents ignored it, even argued it to be unconstitutional, and Congress never used the act effectively.<br />
<br />
Wars need to be made very difficult to start and far easier to stop, when now the reverse is true. Unless the American nation, armed forces, or installations are being directly attacked, or citizens need rescue, the President should be forbidden to deploy troops. Congress must declare war first. Period. End of discussion.<br />
<br />
Without exception also, a declaration of war must be followed by approval in a referendum. A 30 day period is best since the rush to judgment and sometimes hysteria is often very brief. A 30 day period is deliberately intended to give enough time for opposition to wars or bombing to build. This clause would not come into effect if under direct attack, and so does not endanger Americans, only arbitrary use of military power.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>4. The US President can deploy troops to rescue US or other citizens and must prevent genocide or other large scale atrocities. But the president must report to Congress on such action within 7 days and Congress must approve the deployment of troops within 30 days.</strong><br />
<br />
The two exceptions to proposed clauses above are to rescue citizens under immediate danger, and to prevent genocide, other atrocities, or humanitarian catastrophes. <strong>As a nation which committed genocide against American Indians by the Trail of Tears, by systematic genocide in California during the Gold Rush, by deliberate starvation tactics of slaughtering the buffalo, and by the slave trade of both American Indians and Africans, the US should have a special commitment to ending genocide elsewhere, if possible.</strong> One cannot stop genocides entirely. But genocide or other atrocities can often be limited, and many people rescued. It is inhumane and morally callous to not try.<br />
<br />
Often American presidents have not even tried. The US government deliberately avoided trying to end or limit genocide at least four times, during the Holocaust, Bangladesh in 1971, East Timor in 1975, and Rwanda in 1994. Most Americans are not taught about these moral failures. Scholars know, and we need to teach and reach the public far more. In Rwanda's case, Clinton admitted his wrongdoing, that he could easily save 300,000 Rwandans. For the Holocaust, East Timor, and Bangladesh, one tenth of the lives lost could have been saved, but were not. A military response is not always needed. In all three cases, the more effective way of limiting genocide would have been to publicly denounce and isolate those carrying it out, offer refuge to the victims, and declare the guilty will face war crimes trials. In the case of the Holocaust, US bombings could have cut off or at least slowed the number of trains delivering victims to death camps.<br />
<br />
One may understandably ask, why the US? Why not other nations too? The obvious answer is we don’t control other nations, only our own. But we can and should ask other nations to work with us to halt atrocities when possible. <strong>In practical terms, only five nations, the US, UK, Russia, France, and China have the military power to end atrocities in other parts of the world.</strong> In practice China has never acted to halt humanitarian catastrophes. Sometimes nations like India have the power to stop regional atrocities, as India did when it halted genocide in Bangladesh.<br />
<br />
Halting or preventing wars is already done with peacekeeping forces around the world. It is not too widely known to many Americans, and some may scoff because they don’t know. But the United Nations does stop or shorten most wars most of the time. The obvious recent failure was the Iraq War. It was an exception. <strong>The UN currently keeps peace in 15 nations, and caused a 40% drop in wars in the past 20 years.</strong> Limiting wars, and certainly halting or limiting genocide, is a vitally important humane, ethical, and (I argue to conservatives) a Christian goal. It is one which also agrees with most Americans' sentiment. Many Americans sincerely believed in some wars the US fought because they genuinely wanted to help others and opposed dictatorships and atrocities. The new constitution should reflect that, and limit US actions to only that.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>5.The US government is forbidden to go to war or use war as an opportunity to enrich in any way any American businesses, corporations, or individuals. Family members of government officials shall not be exempt from military draft, nor sheltered in special units, or in any other way.</strong><br />
<br />
“The flag follows the dollar” in Smedley Butler's words, is one of the main reasons for war. Wars often enrich the already wealthy. Few things unite people on both side of the ideological aisle in disgust as much as undeserved advantage and profit in wartime. From shoddy guns and shoes in the Civil War to formaldehyde beef in the Spanish American War to no bid contracts in Iraq and cost overruns in defense contracting at times over 300% ever since the start of the Cold War, the list of abuses is long. The profit motive must be removed from warfare, and businesses and persons forbidden from getting wealthy often literally over the dead bodies of servicemen.<br />
<br />
It is also true that there are few congressmen's offspring in wars, less than a single percent during the Iraq and Afghan Wars. The class bias in who was drafted during Vietnam was especially notorious. So were special units set up to shelter sons of privilege from the draft. This must not be repeated.<br />
<br />
------<br />
Al Carroll is Assistant Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College and the author of numerous articles and books, among them <strong>Presidents' Body Counts</strong> and the forthcoming <strong>A Proposed New Constitution.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a>.<br /><a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a></strong>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-1191597062802887312014-11-27T13:32:00.001-08:002014-11-27T13:32:09.021-08:00Proposed New Constitution Article 7, Ending ColonialismThis is an excerpt from <strong><em>A Proposed New Constitution</em></strong>, a call for fifteen articles to be adopted in a new constitutional convention. Currently, dozens of states have called for a new constitutional convention for a variety of causes, as well as proposals from scholars such as Larry Sabato, Andrew Burstein, Nancy Isenberg, and myself.<br /><strong><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a></strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Proposed Article 7- Ending Colonialism<br /> 1.The United States recognizes the great wrongs done by genocide against American Indians, apologizes fully, and shall always strive to make amends. All federally recognized American Indian tribes are forever sovereign, defined by their treaty or other legal relationship to the United States, with full rights to decide their own government and laws, and to enforce those laws on all residents and visitors within their territory.</strong><br />
<br />
Scholars know that what happened to American Indians was genocide. The evidence is overwhelming and hard to deny. The number of deniers teaching in universities is as low as it has ever been. Today many scholars are themselves Natives, and non-Native scholars often think of themselves as allies aiding Native causes.<br />
<br />
But you would likely not hear the same answer by asking much of the general public, or looking at what is taught in public schools. I've taught over 2,000 college students in the past ten years. Public school students are mostly given the Thanksgiving story about Natives, and not much else. Not one in a hundred ever hears the word genocide. Many students are taught that Columbus was actually a friend to Natives. It is hard to be more appalling and dishonest.<br />
<br />
In Germany, the nation admits the wrongs in their history. They teach extensively about the Holocaust in their public schools. Having an American admission of genocide, an apology, and a vow to work to always change these wrongs, needs to be written into the new US Constitution itself. Then no one can ever deny it again. Our schools will have to teach it, much like having MLK Day forces them to teach about civil rights. Teaching the truth makes a repeat of past wrongs much harder, and just as important, difficult to deny present wrongs.<br />
<br />
Honesty and self-rule are the best form of reparations. Native tribal nations should be sovereign by right. By international law, sovereignty cannot be abrogated or taken away, and is permanent. Tribal nations are defined by their treaty or other legal relationship to the federal government. But the Supreme Court defined that relationship as domestic and dependent. One result is that non-tribal members often cannot be prosecuted under tribal law, leading to a number of abuses. Squatters occupy reservation lands. Even legal residents who are non-Native cannot be punished in tribal courts. Worst of all is the high number of crimes committed by outsiders, especially rapes that were until recently not punished because of lack of jurisdiction. Recognizing tribal sovereignty over all who come onto reservation lands is long overdue.<br />
<br />
Most Americans do not know about how Native sovereignty was taken away with the start of reservations, and only partly returned with the New Deal for Indians and by the efforts of Native activists. Most do not know how Termination tried to end all reservations in the 1950s, that dozens of tribes were targeted, and that some still suffer from that awful time. There are also dozens of tribes awaiting recognition that deserve to be federally acknowledged, sometimes decades overdue. Often they are hampered by a lack of written records because scientific racists like Walter Plecker in Virginia systematically destroyed or altered every document he could. There are also dozens of dubious outfits posing as tribes clogging up the recognition process, often taking advantage of an unwary public financially.<br />
<br />
Recognizing tribal sovereignty in a new constitution can change all of that. A repeat of Termination becomes impossible, and those still denied recognition from those days retrieve it. The recognition process would be decided by tribal nations, not Washington, with the greatest weight given to the opinion of those tribes most related to those applying. Some reservations might choose to split, since they are today made up of several tribes forced together by federal agents. Other tribes split by treaties into multiple reservations might choose to unite.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>2.All American Indian tribes have permanent and absolute rights to their current reservation lands, forever. All federal lands, or lands reacquired by American Indian tribes, that are within their historically recognized boundaries or protected by treaty, will be part of their reservations. All sacred sites of federally recognized American Indian tribes shall be returned immediately, or protected by federal partnership if requested by tribes.</strong><br />
<br />
Having a tribe's right to their homeland needs to be written into the constitution itself, to make it inviolable, permanent, and not just protect it, but also make it easier to get homelands returned or bought. Some tribes are making efforts to buy back their homelands. But often these efforts are blocked by state governments. Where the federal government at times works with and protects on behalf of tribes, state governments are traditionally those most hostile to American Indian nations.<br />
<br />
State efforts to limit a tribe's rights to land or anything else should be entirely and permanently blocked, since the constitution makes it clear Indian relations are purely a federal matter. All the Five Tribes remember that during the Trail of Tears states led the effort to drive them off their homelands. In recent times, both California and New York had bouts of anti-Indian sentiment led by their governors.<br />
<br />
Federal lands within a tribe's recognized traditional homeland should be returned. The best known example is the Black Hills, Paha Sapa to the Lakota. Lakota have been pushing for their return for over a century, repeatedly turning down monetary offers. For sacred sites especially, there should be a strong effort to return them to the tribes' jurisdiction, and if the tribe does not have the means to protect them, then do so by partnership with the federal government.<br />
<br />
There are also many reservations that are endlessly fractionated, divided up again and again, starting since the Dawes Allotment Act. This makes jurisdiction, law enforcement, and economic development far more difficult. Returning control of all lands within traditional recognized territories can end these problems.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>3. Native Hawaiians are recognized as a sovereign tribe by the US government and shall have a reservation with a sovereign government with relations with the US government and rights equal to an American Indian tribe, and shall see their sacred sites returned. Nothing in this article shall be construed as denying or abridging Native Hawaiians' right to pursue the return to being an independent nation as they were before the illegal overthrow and seizure of their nation.</strong><br />
<br />
Pacific Islanders, Hawaiians, Chamorros, and Samoans, are America’s other indigenous peoples, America’s other original tribes. Not enough people know the history of the Hawaiian kingdom's illegal overthrow or US takeover of these islands. <br />
<br />
The Hawaiian story is similar to American Indians. Anglo-Americans came to the islands bringing disease that wiped out much of the people. They took over most of the land for their own profit, starting plantations that brought in exploited workers, only Asians rather than Africans. When Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani tried to halt them, the plantation owners overthrew her with the help of US Marines. The Hawaiian language and religion were both banned Hawaii became a state in an illegitimate vote. Few Asians or Native Hawaiians could vote, and most who voted for statehood were white servicemen who were very recent residents.<br />
<br />
The Hawaiian sovereignty movement today is very strong. It overturned the language and religion bans and started Hawaiian schools. Most Native Hawaiians want to see the Hawaiian nation be independent again. This part of the proposed article might be a first step, giving Hawaiians a sovereignty recognized by law, and constitutionally backed. Just as for American Indians, all Hawaiian sacred sites taken away (some actually used as bombing ranges) are given back.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>4. US citizens and nationals of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Washington DC have full local self-rule, and shall vote in federal elections and have federal congressional districts.</strong><br />
<br />
Puerto Rico's people are a mix of Taino Indian, African, and European, both by blood and culture. The island has a larger population than over twenty US states. Yet its people have never voted in federal fall elections. Samoa, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and even DC have been denied the vote or local self-rule because of a leftover status from colonial conquest. They are legally territories or a district rather than a state.<br />
<br />
All of them are also made up mostly of people who are not white. 49 of 50 US states have white majorities, all except Hawaii. These four territories and one district all have populations with nonwhite majorities. Puerto Ricans are mostly mixed. The people of Samoa and Guam are Pacific Islanders, though the military almost outnumber Chamorros in their own homeland. The Virgin Islands is Black majority, as was DC for much of its history. Today DC has no racial majority, with many Asians and Latinos.<br />
<br />
All these territories and the federal district are often treated like colonies. Most of the people are poorer on average than most of the rest of America. Resources often flow out of them. They have often had little to no say in their own destiny. Puerto Rico saw several independence movements crushed, and citizenship was forced on them against their wishes. Chamorros and Virgin Islanders had no self-rule at all for about 60 years. Even Washington DC had no local self-rule until the 1970s.<br />
<br />
Both Puerto Rico and DC have seen statehood blocked because the major parties don’t want to add a state that will vote for the other party. All the islands were all either independent nations or are distinct cultures in their own right. Only DC can vote for presidents, but none of these territories or the district have a vote in Congress like the states. Over 5 million Americans are denied some voting rights and their own congressmen because of these hold overs from colonialism.<br />
<br />
All of these peoples, American Indians, Native Hawaiians, Chamorros, Samoans, Virgin Islanders, and the people of DC, deserve self-determination and a full voice. The fact that they do not have it shows continuing system wide racism. Most of the American public does not know these histories, and that must end.<br />
<br />
Let American Indians be truly sovereign on reservations and have them expand to include as much traditional homelands as desired. Let Native Hawaiians have status as a sovereign tribe, and pursue independence. Let Guam, Samoa, and the Virgin Islands finally vote in federal elections, and let all of them plus Washington DC finally have voting congressmen to represent them. It should be a source of shame to the US that this has continued as long as it has.<br />
<br />
--------<br />
Al Carroll is Assistant Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College and the author of numerous articles and books, among them <strong><em>Medicine Bags and Dog Tags</em></strong>, <strong><em>Presidents' Body Counts</em></strong>, and the forthcoming <em><strong>A Proposed New Constitution</strong></em> and <strong><em>Ira Hayes: The Meaning of His Life</em></strong>.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a>.<br /><a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-14025460926739009562014-11-24T11:35:00.005-08:002014-11-24T11:35:37.493-08:00Proposed New Constitution Article 6, Limiting Corporate PowerFrom the forthcoming<strong>A Proposed New Constitution.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a></strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Article 6- Limiting Corporate Power</strong><br />
<strong>1.All rights in this and the previous constitution, as well as under all American laws, are limited to human beings only. A person under US law is defined as a living human being only. Corporation rights and powers may be severely limited by any and all governments, whether federal, state, city, country, special district, or American Indian tribe.</strong><br />
<br />
The Fourteenth Amendment may be the most misused and abused of all amendments. Intended to guarantee rights for former slaves, it has mostly been used to give corporations almost unlimited power. Two decades after the amendment passed, the courts ruled in <em>Santa Clara v Southern Pacific</em> that corporations were persons under the law, that as collections of individuals it was a legal useful fiction to pretend they were a person.<br />
<br />
Corporations have rights no living person has. Corporation can be immortal, meaning they never have estate taxes. They pay far lower income tax rates than most people do. There are limits to how much and when they can be sued, and corporation management are largely protected from lawsuits for their actions. Of course the greatest and most controversial right given to them is from the <em>Citizens United</em> ruling. Corporations can spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns, as long as it is done through a third party.<br />
<br />
This ruling showed the class and ideological bias of the court at its worst. Condemnations of it range across the political spectrum, from Ralph Nader to John McCain. This ruling has frequently been compared to the <em>Dred Scott</em> or <em>Plessy v Ferguson</em> decisions both for the devastation it causes American society and how infamously it will be remembered in history. In opinion polls, up to three quarters of Americans want to see it overturned, across all parties and political beliefs. Two dozen states have their campaign finance laws affected by the ruling. Sixteen states have called for constitutional amendments to overturn the ruling.<br />
<br />
But this ruling is just the final end product of a court always designed and usually working for the most elite class interests. There is some documentation that the judges in the original Southern Pacific case did not intend their ruling to go that far and set as broad a precedent. Corporations are so powerful that many people don’t realize there was ever a time when their power was limited.<br />
<br />
Even other elites worried about corporate power. <strong>Corporate charters in British colonial and early American times were limited.</strong> They had only so many years of existence, had to serve the public interest, and were often chartered with a narrow purpose. One of the proposed amendments for the Bill of Rights was a limit on corporate power. Andrew Jackson, before the civil rights era when little attention was paid to the Trail of Tears, was often held up as a popular hero for his successfully breaking one of the most powerful corporate institutions, the Bank of the US.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>2.A corporation must serve the public interest and its life span shall be limited. Any corporation shall be permanently dissolved if they break the law more than five times. No business, corporation, or individual can escape fines, punishments, or legal judgments by declaring bankruptcy, holding companies, shell companies, or any other diversion, evasion, or tactic.</strong><br />
<br />
Corporate crime in America is far more serious than many realize. <strong>Corporate crime is the cause of more deaths than street crime, over 60,000 workplace deaths alone</strong>. Add to that one corporate scandal after another, each of them mostly or entirely unpunished, BCCI, Enron, Worldcom, subprime mortgages, underwater loans, etc., etc. The scandals are increasing in numbers, scale, and in how rarer punishment is becoming. Hundreds went to jail for the savings and loans bank scandal of the 1980s. Almost no one was jailed for the mortgage scandals.<br />
<br />
In the documentary <em>The Corporation</em>, the film makers followed the logic of declaring corporations to be persons. If a corporation were a person, what would its personality be? They concluded the characteristics of a corporation define it as a sociopath. It cannot have empathy for others and acts without concern for anyone else. It is deliberately amoral, and defined as such for the purpose of self- interest alone. In fact if a corporation were to act morally (for reasons other than self interest in its public image) it almost certainly would face lawsuits from shareholders for failing to pursue maximum profit.<br />
<br />
The power of the public over any and all corporations should be absolute. If a company pollutes, force it to clean up. If a corporation makes a destructive or defective product, let it be punished the same as an individual. For a time there was a movement towards “three strikes” laws for crime. Why not five strikes laws for corporations? If they break the law five times, they can be dissolved.<br />
<br />
Let there be no more legal loopholes used to escape punishment. Bankruptcy was intended to let companies and individuals fail at business but still be able to start over. It was not and should not be there to avoid punishment for crimes. Combine this Proposed Article 6 with Proposed Article 11, which requires all crimes be punished and all criminals cannot evade punishment. A corporations that kills through negligence, incompetence, or greed, deserves a corporate death penalty, the end of its existence.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>3.The right to collective bargaining by unions or other workers shall not be limited more than other civic or lobbying groups, nor subject to government recognition.</strong><br />
<br />
Unions are the most democratic institutions in America. They are the most representative of their membership. That is part of why are often demonized by those opposed to them and why so much effort has been expended to crush the labor movement.<br />
<br />
It is not widely taught in public schools, but America has one of the most violent histories of class warfare anywhere in the world. Not simply “class warfare” as used today, where even bringing up class issues gets one labeled a Marxist. (Full disclosure: I am a traditional Catholic. That means I believe in social justice, and that capitalism is a sin.) From colonial times until the Great Depression, unions and strikes were often crushed with great brutality. Companies often used private armies, or had the police or US Army break a strike with violence. Two of the most notorious examples include the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, broken by killing over 100 strikers. In the West Virginia Mine Wars in the 1920s, the largest armed uprising since the Civil War saw a company army of over 5,000 kill over 20 miners with not just guns but mortars, and their own air force.<br />
<br />
The reason why today we do not often hear of violent strikes, or many strikes at all, is that after World War II the US government learned to be a better strike breaker. During the Great Depression the Wagner Act was passed. It recognized union rights to exist, to bargain collectively, and to strike. But it also required unions to submit to being government recognized to be seen as legitimate.<br />
<br />
The Taft Hartley Act, passed during Cold War hysteria, went much further. Any perceived radicals in a union can get it stripped of recognition. Companies can dictate when unions hold their elections, and unions have to give 60 days’ notice before striking. Company spies by law cannot be kicked out of a union, and strikebreakers' jobs are protected. A National Labor Relations Board is stacked with anti-union officials. Even were it to rule in favor of unions, it has little power, and so many workers are fired for joining unions or speaking out against abuses. Over 400 union locals are stripped of recognition each year.<br />
<br />
Imagine how difficult organizing would be on any issue were these same practices forced on others. How powerful would the National Rifle Association be if it lost 400 chapters a year? How well would any organization on either side of the abortion issue do if the other side could decide when it holds elections, given 60 days to prepare for campaigns, and that organization could not remove spies in its midst or people hired to break their group up?<br />
<br />
None of these union busting practices should be legal. Let unions be treated by the same standards as any other civic, lobbying, or interest group. Anyone who joins a union should be able to. <strong>Over half of Americans wish they were part of a union.</strong> But under 10% of Americans actually are. These are mostly government workers such as cops, firefighters, and teachers. Only public pressure on governments keep them from being as abusive to their workers as private companies.<br />
<br />
<strong>Unions were what turned the US into a middle class nation</strong>. For one generation after World War II, unions helped spread prosperity to those people most responsible for it. But <strong>since the 1970s inequality has grown sharply, to where it is now as bad as before the Great Depression.</strong> Unions can reverse that, and doing so would be good for the nation as a whole and business as a whole. An economy is much more vulnerable when it depends mostly on the spending of the well off.<br />
<br />
-------------<br /> Al Carroll is Assistant Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College and the author of numerous articles and books including the forthcoming <strong>A Proposed New Constitution.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a><br /><a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a></strong>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-19002988279519560892014-11-23T20:42:00.003-08:002014-11-23T20:42:49.076-08:00Proposed New Constitution Article 5, Voting Guarantees BenefitsFrom the forthcoming <strong>A Proposed New Constitution.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a><br /><a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a></strong><br />
<br />
------<br />
<strong>Article 5-Voting Guarantees Benefits</strong><br />
<strong>1.All eligible voters must vote. Failure to vote results in inability to receive all government benefits until the next election, including licenses, grants, subsidies, tax refunds, eligibility for public assistance, student or business loans or credit.</strong><br />
<br />
One must seek ways for the most disaffected to join the political process. The flip side of the last clause of Proposed Article 5 is making them see it is in their self interest to vote, once a more representative democracy is in place. Obviously eligibility for public assistance for children is not affected. They should not be punished for their parents' actions. Instead those most affected are those least likely to vote; college students; the young, by tying driver's licenses to voting, as Proposed Article 3 also does; and the lower income who are more likely to receive tax refunds. A number of nations like Australia have used small fines to increase voter turnout. But in the US this likely would simply lead to the unemployed serving a few days in jail since they could not pay the fine.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>2.Those with strong and longstanding religious, philosophical, or political beliefs against voting are not required to vote if they state their longstanding beliefs.</strong><br />
<br />
There are some faiths who avoid deep political involvement, the Jehovah's Witnesses in particular. Anarchists also often refuse to vote based on their convictions. The Six Nations of the Iroquois do not consider themselves citizens of the US. But where most American Indians consider themselves dual citizens, of both the US and their tribal nation, the Iroquois insist they are Iroquois citizens alone, bound by treaty to the US. Thus they join the military as foreign nationals, and Iroquois who vote in US elections are stripped of Iroquois citizenship.<br />
<br />
All these deeply held beliefs against voting should be respected and not penalized. The law should also not place much of a burden upon proof of their belief, just a simple statement. But those who lazily proclaim they don't want to vote deserve no such consideration. <br />
<br />
-------------<br /> Al Carroll is Assistant Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College and the author of numerous articles and books including the forthcoming <strong>A Proposed New Constitution.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a><br /><a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a></strong>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-34520890605398187672014-10-25T10:48:00.000-07:002014-10-25T10:48:00.157-07:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 4, Ending the Buying of ElectionsFrom the forthcoming <strong>A Proposed New Constitution.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a><br /><a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a></strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Article 4-Ending the Buying of Elections</strong><br />
<strong>1.All elections shall be publicly funded only. Private contributions or donations to or on behalf of a candidate or party, except for unpaid volunteer work, are outlawed. Corporate donations of any kind are forbidden. Business and corporate owners and management are forbidden from intimidating, pressuring, or influencing in any way their employees, punishable by long prison sentences.</strong><br />
<br />
Money is the true engine of American politics, and that should change. Few other democracies have as elitist and plutocratic a ruling political class as the US. There have only been two US presidents who were not wealthy men at the time they were elected, Lincoln and Truman. Congress is a millionaire's club.<br />
<br />
This is not true in most of the rest of the world. Most other democracies elect people who are truly representative, rather than elites. Poland and Bolivia elected labor union leaders as presidents, Lech Walesa and Evo Morales. Hungary had a playwright president, Vlaclev Havel. Brazil and Uruguay have former guerilla leaders who fought against dictators, Dilma Rouseff and Jose Mujica, the latter donating most of his salary to charity.<br />
<br />
But when the US wants to see “outsiders” run for office, the only ones able to are multi billionaires, Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, and Michael Bloomberg. The number of wealthy dynasties in US politics are legendary, the Adams, Roosevelts, Kennedys, Rockefellers, and Bushes.<br />
<br />
Jesus righteously intoned that it was easier to thread a camel through the eye of a needle than for a wealthy man to get into heaven. It would almost be easier for a working class man to be the king of either heaven or hell than to get elected to office in America.<br />
<br />
For the need for money to win office acts as a filtering process. One must win over the very wealthy to be able to run. Candidates depend on them utterly for sponsorship and patronage. In turn, one must give donors what they want. The idea that money equals speech is defended by elites today, both in the media and in the courts. If money is speech, the average man is shouted down by the giant egos of plutocrats, armed with wallets that a thousand average men cannot match. The moneychangers have driven the priests out of the temple and demand high admission fees to receive blessings and salvation.<br />
<br />
In 2012, the presidential campaign was the first multi billion dollar one, and 2016 will certainly be even worse. This must end. Let campaigns only be publicly funded outside of volunteer work. The billionaire should not have more of a voice than any one of his workers. Britain has had limits on campaign spending ever since 1883. The reason for it is obvious. They knew the corrupting influence of money even more than the US, with the outright buying and selling of offices turned into an art form.<br />
<br />
In its place we should see the government provide an equal amount of air time, adjusted for its market value, to each party. This air time must be to each party that has candidates, not just major parties. The two party monopoly should end, and most of the public wishes it to end.<br />
<br />
This should not be as expensive as it might seem. For one thing, Congress can limit how much is to be spent, and few in the public will have an appetite for expensive campaigns. For another, networks shall be required to provide this airtime for free, since they make billions every years from the use of public airwaves. The only substantial expense will likely be from online advertising, easily limited.<br />
<br />
The government should also provide servers for the posting of online websites in equal measure for each of the candidates. If parties wish to set up sites to present their beliefs and proposals and recruit for their parties, that would be allowed by law. But party websites campaigning for their candidates, outside of a brief mention of who they are, would not be. Individuals wishing to set up websites, noncommercially, to promote or argue against candidates, parties, proposals, or platforms, would not be affected by this Proposed Article 4.<br />
<br />
The billionaire or any other boss must also be prevented from intimidating in any way how his workers vote. Announcing or threatening layoffs or the targeting of workers who disagree with a boss over a candidate, party, or law should be seen as the civil rights violation it is.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>2.Campaigning and advertising for all general elections are limited to the period of six weeks before election day. Campaigning and advertising for all primary elections are limited to the six weeks before the general election period.</strong><br />
<br />
Few things discourage interest in politics more than ridiculously long campaigns. Primary campaigning begins a year and a half before the general election, and at times candidates declare their runs two or three years in advance. Yet the common wisdom is that only the most partisan voters pay attention. Most of the public does not follow the election before Labor Day. This clause will limit all advertising to begin no earlier than the start of August before a November election. Great Britain has even stricter time limits on campaigning with no loss of democracy.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>3.No election, whether federal, state, county, city, special district, American Indian tribe, or of unions, civic groups, lobbying groups, or private clubs, is valid unless more than half of its citizens or members vote. If less than half of citizens or members vote, there must be immediate new elections with different candidates.</strong><br />
<br />
If most of the public does not show up, an election is not a valid representation of the public's wishes. This clause works best with Proposed Article 2, where the elections would only be every four years when the president and congress are chosen. Much of the public has a de facto boycott on election, especially local ones. Forcing parties to field new candidates gives the public a way to state their dissatisfaction with the candidates they have been given.<br />
<br />
-------------<br /> Al Carroll is Assistant Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College and the author of numerous articles and books including the forthcoming <strong>A Proposed New Constitution.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a><br /><a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a></strong>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-91961151539694042382014-10-23T13:46:00.002-07:002014-10-23T13:46:39.854-07:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 3, Guaranteeing the Right to Vote<strong>From the forthcoming A Proposed New Constitution.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a></strong><br />
<strong>Article 3-Guaranteeing the Right to Vote</strong><br />
<strong>1.The right to vote for all citizens of legal adult age is absolute and cannot be denied, limited, barred, blocked, or suppressed, whether by deliberate attempts or unintended outcomes. All current such attempts are ended. Any law with the outcome, even unintended, of denying the vote to members of a particular ethnic group, age group, economic background, or party, shall be immediately void.</strong><br />
Many cynics will tell you that voting solves nothing. They are only half right. Believing voting is a magic bullet is false, for it is only one solution among many, one to be combined with others. Such a belief in voting alone as being the mark of a democracy almost turns voting into an empty ritual, part of what scholars call civic religion. But truly free and representative voting can and has solved much. For if voting were truly completely useless, American elites would not spend so much effort to stop it, centuries of trickery, exclusion, and often insane levels of violence.<br />
At first voting was incredibly limited in the US, not only by gender and race but by a high property requirement. In some states, more than nine tenths of white males could not vote at the time of the constitution. It took two generations for the majority of poor white males to sometimes be able to vote. Even that was later limited by poll taxes aimed as much at stopping poor whites from voting as Blacks. The Fifteenth Amendment was supposed to protect Black voting rights. It took enormous violence, over 50,000 deaths after the Civil War and a corrupt and then indifferent Republican Party to intimidate the Black community into not voting, something that was not reversed until as late as the 1970s in some areas.<br />
<strong>Over 6,000,000 Americans today are legally barred from voting, over 3% of the total.</strong> The excuse for taking away their vote is that they have criminal records. Since the “justice” system is incredibly unequal and racist, this falls almost entirely on minorities. Though almost two thirds of American criminals are white (since two thirds of Americans are white) two thirds of those locked up in prisons or on parole are Black or Latino. A Black or a Latino are far more likely to be charged and imprisoned, and for longer, than a white committing the exact same crime.<br />
The laws deciding when ex convicts can vote are incredibly uneven. In some states, voting returns automatically after a set period. Other states require a formal pardon, and the process can be a quick formality or very drawn out and difficult. In six states, all in the south, felons are barred from voting for life. Stealing a car at 17 means one will never vote their entire life. <strong>In three states, Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia, one out of five Blacks cannot vote. In Florida, the majority of Black males cannot vote.</strong><br />
Being blatantly racist, this is simply unjust. The right to vote should return automatically when one pays one's debt to society. For lesser nonviolent felonies, it should not be taken away at all. Having the vote available to some prisoners could aid their rehabilitation, were it to become one more thing a parole board could look at as a sign of a genuine attempt to reform. (Those imprisoned for drug possession should not be in prison at all. Proposed Article 15 will end the Drug War as a violation of the right to privacy.)<br />
There are a wide range of attempts to limit voting, old fashioned voter suppression by other names. <strong>Voter ID laws could block up to 9% of all voters from voting, mostly minorities and the poor.</strong> In some states there are laws or attempts to make it more difficult for college students to vote. Others are putting in place shorter absentee voting times or harder requirements. Many states make it difficult for Americans overseas to vote. Some states like Texas require a ballot to be applied for within the state before leaving and then sent by mail. In some nations with poor postal systems means one needs to vote many months in advance.<br />
The right to vote as a part of Proposed Article 3, or a constitutional amendment, stops all these attempts. It is already widely proposed. 173 congressmen have already signed on as co sponsors, including 11 Republicans. Two counties and a city, with a combined population of two million, have also passed resolutions in support.<br />
<strong>2.Any official who deliberately or unintentionally makes voting more difficult shall be immediately removed, their decisions voided and actions reversed. Deliberately blocking others from voting or blocking voting recounts shall always be prosecuted and punished as a felony.</strong><br />
Having very partisan officials in charge of elections, as election commissioners or Secretaries of States, almost guarantees partisan outcomes. Besides requiring election committees to be entirely nonpartisan, as Proposed Article II does, one needs both to remove the incentive to cheat and provide punishment if someone does.<br />
Removing the official will be the punishment. Automatically voiding and reversing their decisions removes any incentive. Blocking voting or recounts needs to be a felony punished harshly. While the civil rights acts do punish for killing someone to stop them from voting, there is no punishment for such crimes as a riot that partly blocked the Florida recount in 2000 or those who sent false voter registration information in Wisconsin in 2012.<br />
<strong>3.Voting days shall be national holidays, with a paid day off for workers only with proof of voting.</strong><br />
The average voter turnout is much lower than most people think. Most references to US voter turnout are to presidential elections and claim the typical turnout is 1/2 to 3/5 of all eligible voters. (Notice also that using “eligible voters” as a standard rather than “all voters” leaves out the many who never vote.) <strong>The actual average voter turnout is under 10% for all US elections. For local elections, especially special districts set up for water or community colleges, turnout is routinely under 1%.</strong> Compare this to other democracies. <strong>Almost all nations have turnouts of at least 2/3. Most have turnouts over 90%.</strong> The US is almost unique in its high voter apathy and disgust of an enormous part of the public.<br />
Some members of the media elite such as George Will argue low turnout is a sign of contentment. Such a view could only come from the very sheltered or willfully blind. Turnout is lowest among those who have the least reason to be content. The poorest vote least of all, minorities much less than whites, the young less than the old, and the less educated much less than the most educated. If contentment were why voters did not vote as Will claims, the wealthy never would vote, and the poor always would. The reality is the exact opposite.<br />
The reason why poor and minorities vote much less is obvious. They are being smart, or at least realistic. They know they are not being represented, and see no reason to waste their time. To get them to vote, one must not only make a system which will represent them, as Article 2 does. One must also give them other incentives.<br />
A waitress or construction worker has little incentive to vote if it means they lose money by taking off time when they could be working. An eight, ten, or twelve hour shift of physical labor makes it difficult to go and wait in line. Partisan election commissions don't make it any easier. There were many accounts in the last several elections of waiting up to ten hours to vote in inner cities while suburban voters were done in minutes.<br />
One way to boost turnout is to make election days national holidays. <strong>Most other democracies have their elections on either Sundays or make them national holidays.</strong> But since many working class people work weekends, and many others see Sunday either as a day for church or for relaxing watching pro sports and having a barbecue, Sunday is not ideal. A paid holiday gives workers incentive, being paid for a day's work for showing up to vote that hopefully is done in a short time. Failing to vote would mean one is not paid for your holiday off.<br />
<strong>4.The voting age is lowered to sixteen for any US citizen proving their maturity by holding a job, driver's license, or living on their own.</strong><br />
Some other nations allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote. <strong>5 nations in Latin America, 4 in Europe, and 2 in Asia allow voters under 18</strong>, sometimes conditioned on employment. Why not? If they are taking on the responsibilities of adults, why not reward them as adults, with adult powers such as voting? The intent here is not just to reward them for adult behavior, but also to establish the voting habit early. In the Philippines, there are mock elections in high schools. Thus their voter turnout is much higher.<br />
Tying voting to driving is another way to give them incentive to vote. Proposed Article 5 has a voter losing licenses, including your driver's license, if one fails to vote. The threat of losing their driver's license would spur voting habits to change, to be adopted early in life. A 16 year old knowing that they could lose their license if they don't vote will develop the habit early.<br />
---------<br /> Al Carroll is Assistant Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College and the author of numerous articles and books including the forthcoming <strong>A Proposed New Constitution.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a><br /><a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a></strong>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7541887614416384957.post-53360275550306316602014-10-12T16:35:00.001-07:002014-10-12T16:35:16.751-07:00A Proposed New Constitution Article 2: Insuring Greater DemocracyFrom the forthcoming <strong>A Proposed New Constitution</strong>.<br />
<br />
Article 2- Insuring Greater Democracy<br />
<strong>“1.The Electoral College is abolished. The President shall be directly elected, with the winner being the candidate receiving the most votes.”</strong><br />
<br />
There probably is no part of the original constitution more disliked than the Electoral College, more regarded as archaic, useless, arbitrary, and pointless. Yet it persists, for it is politically useful to elites as a way to nullify and undermine broader populist democracy.<br />
<br />
As described in the Introduction, the college was intended by the founders to be a veto against the public. If they elected the “wrong” man, the electors were to ignore the voters and choose the “right” man, one who would serve the wishes of elites. The other restrictions already in place to keep out populists made this unnecessary. Only rarely did electors vote contrary to what the voters of a state wanted. Even that was fixed in the 1970s by laws requiring the electors to vote the same as a state's popular vote.<br />
<br />
So why does it continue? The college, like the US Senate, gives far more power to small population and mostly rural states. A lightly populated state like Wyoming gets three electoral votes, when based on its population it should get a fraction of one. Since rural voters tend to be more conservative, conservatives get an exaggerated sense of how conservative the nation is, and are overrepresented in the college. The big concentrations of electoral votes in a few states also makes it useful for political elites and the highly paid consultants they use to target those states.<br />
<br />
The college has an anti democratic effect in other ways too. If you don't live in a swing state, you are mostly ignored by major parties's campaigns. That depresses voter turnout. If the other party will win in your state by over ten percentage points, why bother showing up at all? As much as 45% of the voters of a state are told their vote does not count. So the majorities in one state by one party are further exaggerated.<br />
<br />
Congressmen and other officials running for office from the smaller party in the state are also far more likely to lose when they could have won. A Democrat running in largely Democratic Austin in largely Republican Texas, or a Republican running in largely Republican Orange County in largely Democratic California, could lose where they might have won.<br />
<br />
Another distortion is that small groups in big Electoral College states have far more influence than they should. How much have US relations with Cuba been dictated by a small group of Cuban-Americans in South Florida?<br />
<br />
This college is an incredibly unpopular institution and its fall is guaranteed by any future constitutional convention. In its place is the simple solution wanted by nearly everyone and practiced by almost every democracy in the world. The president will be the candidate who receives the most votes.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>“2.The Supreme Court shall never, by any decision including indirectly, decide who shall be President.”</strong><br />
<br />
Elections like 1876 and 2000 must never be repeated again. In both cases, a corrupt party blatantly stole the election and suppressed minority votes during the election, and even more afterwards. In both cases the Electoral College negated the popular vote. In both cases, five justices of the court sanctioned and actively intervened to maintain the results of these corrupt elections.<br />
<br />
This clause removes the courts from elections, leaving the matter entirely to the executive branch. Clause 5 of this article, further down, guarantees election boards shall always be nonpartisan, and shall never decide to favor one party or ideology, and shall never exclude minority votes as happened all across the south in 1876 and in five states in 2000.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>“3.The Vice President shall be nominated separately by each party and elected separately from the President, and also serves as the Secretary of State.”</strong><br />
<br />
The Vice Presidential candidacy is more a punchline than anything else. It has given us such awful and almost universally despised politicians as Aaron Burr, John Calhoun, Andrew Johnson, William Marshall (who refused to become president when Woodrow Wilson was in a coma), Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Dick Cheney, and Sarah Palin.<br />
<br />
Of 47 VPs, the only ones to be highly regarded by both historians and the public were just two, Truman and Mondale. Truman headed a campaign to halt waste in wartime industries and Mondale was the first activist VP. A failure rate of over 95% for over 200 years is incredibly high even by the worst of government standards. As VP John Garner said, being VP is “not worth a warm bucket of piss.” He did not say spit, that was cleaned up by later writers.<br />
<br />
The office needs to be changed. The VP is chosen by a single person when they should be chosen by the voters, first in the party primaries and then in the general election. The office needs to be more than an empty formality, a person who spends most of their time at funerals or on make-work commissions to look busy.<br />
<br />
Make the VP also the Secretary of State. That is where one would acquire the skills most needed to step into the office of the presidency should something happen to the president. Require the parties nominate their VPs separately, and let the voters choose them separately. Then there would no more Andrew Johnsons, disasters who became president, originally chosen just to help the party ticket.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>“4.The Senate shall be 100 adult citizens chosen at random each year, representative of the adult American public by age, gender, race and ethnicity, religion or lack of, and income or social class.”</strong><br />
<br />
The Senate is a millionaire's club. This is no exaggeration. It has always been a vocation sought after by wealthy retired men almost as a hobby after a life in business or law. This must end. Let the Senate represent the American public directly, be chosen at random from the public itself to act as a check against any and all elite led efforts or laws.<br />
<br />
Look at the makeup of the Senate today in 2014.<br /> 93 whites, 4 Latinos, 2 Blacks, 1 Asian.<br /> Average age of 62. 80 men, 20 women. Average income of over $1 million.<br /> 52 Protestants, 27 Catholics, 11 Jews, 7 Mormons, 1 Buddhist.<br />
<br />
Now look at the makeup of the Senate under this proposed plan:<br /> 62 whites, 17 Latinos, 13 Blacks, 5 Asians, 2 American Indians, 1 Arab.<br /> 51 women, 49 men. Average age of 54. Average income of $35,000.<br /> 51 Protestants, 22 Catholics, 16 atheists, agnostics, or unaffiliated, 2 Jews, 2 Orthodox Christians, 1 Mormon, 1 Buddhist, 1 Hindu, 1 Muslim, and 3 who won't say what their faith, or lack of it, is.<br />
<br />
Clearly our current system leaves out the voices of most women and ethnic and religious minorities. Atheists and the unaffiliated especially are completely silenced, unable to be elected because of the hostility of those bigoted against them. But the most striking silencing of all is of working class people. Even the upper middle class rarely get elected.<br />
<br />
A completely random process for choosing senators from the adult general public can easily be designed by statisticians. Having a senate chosen at random from the public guarantees the public shall always be represented. It turns the public into itself the fourth branch of government and a check on the power of the other three branches.<br />
<br />
No doubt the more elitist and downright snobby will sneer at the thought of a waitress or truck driver in the halls of congress. No doubt many of those same people will pat themselves on the back, and never consider that to your typical member of the political or economic elite, the readers looking down on a waitress themselves would be sneered at by elites.<br />
<br />
Those who sneer at the hard working and less educated are contemptible, unlike the ones they look down on. Not having a degree does not make one stupid, and equally important, it does not take away from them wanting to do what is right, and having basic common sense. The recent documentary Schooling the World makes a very strong case for how education can often be used to make a person less ethical, more materialistic, and less tied to their community. The famed book Lies My Teacher Told Me points out that, believe it or not, more education makes one more likely to support wars, not less.<br />
<br />
Having wealth in many ways makes a person less capable. They are sheltered from day to day struggles. They don't know what it is to have to choose which bill to pay, to go without, or to see one's children go without. It is elitist to sneer at those on public assistance as “lazy” when truly the laziest people are those who let their wealth do their work for them. It is ignorant or willfully blind to not know the wealthy receive far more public assistance than the poor.<br />
<br />
A nation should never try for change solely from above, imposed on those below. Those below must have a veto. A senate made up of 100 John and Jane Does rather than Rockefellers provides that.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>“5.Redistricting and the administration of elections shall only be done by nonpartisan committee, and gerrymandering to favor one party or dilute minority voting power is forbidden.”</strong><br />
<br />
Redistricting is today done by the most highly partisan people possible. State legislatures decide voting districts, and they generally do so openly to favor their own party as much as possible. For over a generation after the civil rights era, it was also quite common for districts to be set up to weaken or exclude minority voting power.<br />
<br />
A good example of partisan redistricting is Austin. Politically, Austin's voters are quite similar in their outlook to San Francisco's. The Republican state legislature gerrymandered Austin out of its own congressman, dividing it up into parts of six more conservative districts. By one gerrymandering effort alone, nearly a million Americans are not represented in the House.<br />
<br />
But perhaps the most notorious examples of partisan electioneering have happened in Florida and Ohio. Florida's Secretary of State Katherine Harris purged eligible voters, mostly Black, and halted a recount to help her own party. Ohio's Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, himself Black, disenfranchised a number of minority voters, and then refused to cooperate with investigations into his actions. Neither person, nor indeed any politician, has any business as an authority to decide who can vote. <br />
<br />
Less known, but just as unjust, is how partisan election rules keep out third parties. When John Anderson ran as an independent candidate for president in 1980, eventually getting 8% of the vote, his campaign spent much of their time and limited funds overcoming the many barriers to getting on the ballot in each state. Anderson at one point had over a quarter of voters supporting him. State barriers trying to exclude him were not the only reason he did not do nearly as well as he could have. But they had a crippling effect on his campaign.<br />
<br />
Voting, and insuring that everyone eligible can vote as easily as possible, should not be up to partisans with a stake in keeping out voters of other parties. It should be as nonpartisan and uncontroversial as health or fire departments.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>“6.Congressional representatives' terms are changed to four years, elected in the same elections as the President.”</strong><br />
<br />
Most of the public does not show up to vote for midterm elections. These votes, and the people chosen by them, are illegitimate because most of the public is not represented. That must change.<br />
<br />
Blaming the voters themselves is pointless. Voters often show up depending on how much they have been conditioned to show up, and the media does not do so for midterm elections. The media pays far more attention to the presidency than all other offices combined, but there is no law that will change that. Instead that attention must be harnessed so that a majority will always turn out to elect their congressmen.<br />
<br />
The terms of the two houses are almost reversed by this proposed system. Today senators are wealthy elites with a longer term than a president, and they represent mostly small population states. Congressmen serve only two years, and while still well off, have slightly higher numbers of the upper middle class than senators. This new system makes the new House the upper house, with longer terms and still likely more well off economically than the Senate.<br />
<br />
The new Senate will be mostly working class and mid and lower middle class. While there will still be some from the upper middle class, it is unlikely to have more than a single member of wealthy elites. There likely will even be several members of the Senate each year who were unemployed at the time of being chosen, and a fair number of retirees and housewives. With a new Senate every year, it will represent the mood, beliefs, and priorities of middle America better than any past congress ever has, or could. With nonpartisan redestricting, the House will look much more like America as well.<br />
<br />
That is as it should be. This will be the most direct form of democracy seen since town, village, or tribal meetings, a populist one that can and will block elite actions that harm others or the nation.<br />
<br />
---------<br /> Al Carroll is Assistant Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College and the author of numerous articles and books including the forthcoming <strong>A Proposed New Constitution.<br /><a href="http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/">http://proposednewconstitution.blogspot.com/</a><br /><a href="http://alcarroll.com/">http://alcarroll.com</a></strong>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08554611728806858217noreply@blogger.com2