Democracy Riots
We are all black now, deal with it.
Robert David Steele
Short URL: http://tinyurl.com/Steele-All-Black
The only people actually inciting violence at Donald Trump rallies are the organized agitators, including convicted felon and terrorist Bill Ayers, who are violating – with malice aforethought – the First Amendment rights of the participants in these private events.[1] We now know that George Soros has committed major funding toward a wave of civil agitation explicitly aimed at disrupting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.[2]
I understand their fear – funded by Soros in defense of the Establishment, these are intellectually shallow people who are deathly afraid that their delusional faith in the Democratic Party – the lite half of the criminally-irresponsible two-party tyranny that has betrayed the public trust since the deliberate assassination of John F. Kennedy (JFK) by his own government – is about to be crushed.[3]
There will be no riots. This is a scare tactic from the two-party tyranny Establishment that is utterly terrified of populism and pitchforks. More to the point, veterans – over twenty one million of them – and law enforcement officers – close to three million of them – have turned against the elite 1% and appear firmly committed to restoring democracy in the USA.[4]
I was a white Latino minor multi-millionaire. I lost my business to US Government security apparatchiks that could not compute 7,500 foreign contacts cheerfully declared, and I have been unemployed – a stint in Afghanistan and ten nights as a Lowe’s receiving clerk not-with-standing – since 1 January 2008. I can testify that the real unemployment rate is 23%,[5] and in my demographic, as well as those of people of color, single moms, and new college graduates, it is closer to 40%.[6] I have no salary, no pension, no savings, and no property. At several points I have had to worry about being able to repair a borrowed car, and at one point I did not have the $30 to repair the zipper on my one usable winter coat. Now I am a black homeless person and for the first time I begin to understand their centuries of abuse and deprivation at the hands of “the Establishment.”
We are all black now. That is the central unstated premise of this electoral cycle.
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the only two public figures speaking responsibly about what Matt Taibbi has documented in his book Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America. The below quote[7] captures with great precision why all of us with a brain are against the two-party tyranny, and why Hillary Clinton is the epitomy, the apotheosis, the pinnacle, the perfect representation, of this merger of political and financial crime in which there is no difference between the Democratic “Establishment” and the Republican “Establishment:”
What has taken place over the last generation is a highly complicated merger of crime and policy, of stealing and government. Far from taking care of the rest of us, the financial leaders of America and their political servants have seemingly reached the cynical conclusion that our society is not worth saving and have taken on a new mission that involved not creating wealth for us all, but simply absconding with whatever wealth remains in our hollowed out economy. They don’t feed us, we feed them.
I have discussed this at length with Dr. Cynthia McKinney, herself the anti-thesis to the corrupt Republican and Democratic party leaders we have in place now and we agree: the two parties have put tens of millions of blacks and Latinos into prison on the basis of the 1994 crime legislation developed by the Clintons, which created the prison-industrial complex and crooked judges selling convictions to that complex.[8]
Hillary Clinton does not deserve the black vote, and despite the failure of many black intellectuals, there are a few giants – Dr. Cornell West among them[9] – who are beginning to see as Dr. McKinney and I see – that Donald Trump and perhaps Bernie Sanders are, for all their flaws, authentic change agents.
The public is waking up and the two-party tyranny Establishment is not on its A Game (nor are Trump and Sanders, but at least they are waking people up). We now know that Sanders is a Democrat, not an Independent; that Clinton is a Republican, not a Democrat; and that Trump, while eligible for the Republican nomination, is more of an Andrew Jackson – Dwight Eisenhower – Ronald Reagan Independent. In such an environment, authenticity shines through, warts and all. This is why I believe the shallow Establishment agitators, ignorant fellow travelers, many easily manipulated, will fail to carry Hillary Clinton into the White House.
Trump and Sanders have opened the door to the restoration of integrity to America’s electoral system and thence to how we govern our economy and society.
According to Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, the Republican establishment may give tacit support to Hillary Clinton if Donald Trump wins the nomination. King said Clinton is somebody “they can do business with” if Cruz or Trump come out on top.[10] What more evidence do we need that Hillary Clinton is the face of the two-party tyranny, while Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, to one extent or another, are not?
While Bernie Sanders has won more of a percentage among Democrats in their primaries than Donald Trump has won among Republicans in their primaries, Bernie Sanders is being systematically cheated out of the Democratic nomination by a corrupt Democratic Party, at the same time that Donald Trump has brilliantly leveraged the Republican Party rules system that was designed to put Jeb Bush into power.
Massive electoral fraud lies in our future.[11] If an Electoral Reform Act of 2016 is not passed, and the Republican “Establishment” commits treason by cutting a deal with Clinton, then most of our state electronic voting systems are likely to be compromised against the public interest.
HOWEVER, imagine if Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders began campaigning together, and agreed to restore the Constitutional practice of the runner-up becoming the Vice President but with a twist – Sanders instead of Clinton, Trump instead of Mitt Romney. We are at a tipping point in America, and instead of dealing with the substance – the glorious possibilities – we have anemic morons on Cable News Network (CNN) nattering about how ill-mannered it is to be talking about riots.
This is my country and I want it back – Jim Hightower, long one of my heroes, got that exactly right with his 2004 book Thieves in High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country and It’s Time to Take It Back.[12] Jim is not a Republican and in today’s environment of legalized political crime he could hardly be called a Democrat – I think of him the way Ike Eisenhower thought of himself: as an American.
My focus is not on a particular candidate winning the presidency, but rather on restoring integrity to the whole – I am especially concerned about two-party corruption and grid-lock within the Congress, which has abdicated its Article 1 responsibility under the Constitution, and turned all members less the Tea Party members into party-line drones who are in constant betrayal of the public trust.[13] Put bluntly, if we can pass an Electoral Reform Act of 2016 that restores integrity to Congress, I can live with Hillary Clinton as President – but I would prefer to go for broke: Trump-Sanders in the White House, and 20-30 Members of Congress who are not part of the two-party tyranny, and who refuse to caucus with either half of this despotic cabal.
The question then jumps out: Why has Senator Bernie Sanders ignored my six attempts to get him to sponsor the Electoral Reform Act of 2016, challenging the Republican leaders – especially the righteous Tea Party Republicans – to see that opening the doors to Constitution, Green, Independent, Justice, Libertarian, No Party Preference, Reform, and Working Families Members will be good for everyone less the corrupt elite?
Below I am going to do three things:
01 Outline the explicit preconditions of revolution that exist in the USA today
02 Outline the substance of governance and some issues not being discussed by anyone
03 Summarize specific steps we can take to restore integrity to our now-defunct democracy
Pay attention. I am trying to avoid those riots being incited by the “Establishment,” with George Soros now doing to America what he did to the Eastern European countries – only there he installed fascists, here he wants to keep the existing financial fascists in power, using the easily manipulated “progressives” who are incapable of doing their own thinking.
Pre-Conditions of Revolution
Revolution is the opposite of Evolution. The USA stopped evolving on 22 November 1963 when JFK was assassinated by a cabal facilitated by Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), who then led the cover-up. Elements of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) including George Bush Senior (then managing a proprietary non-official cover company for the CIA), the Cuban mafia in exile based in New Orleans, the CIA-funded Cuban exiles based in Florida, the Texas energy interests, the New York monied interests, and the State of Israel, represented by Yitzhak Rabin himself in Dallas for the assassination, all came together with J. Edgar Hoover, the pedophile founder of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who was about to be fired by Bobby Kennedy.[14]
The successful cover-up of the JFK assassination marked the triumph of the “deep state.” That was the point at which all subsequent presidents became totally captive to Wall Street and what Peter Dale Scott and more recently Mike Lofgren call “the deep state,” the persistent criminal state that is not elected and not at all interested in the well-being of the public.[15]
Five years later the “deep state” consolidated its total control – and its impunity – with the assassination of Martin Luther King (MLK) on 4 April 1968 – not because he was leading blacks against poverty, but because he dared to denounce the US Government (USG) as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. MLK was assassinated by a US Army sniper on detail to the FBI,[16] at the time still-directed by J. Edgar Hoover, a man with known deep ties to elite pedophiles and mafia figures who plied him with little boys.[17]
Today pedophilia at the elite level is generally still “off limits” to the FBI, an exception being the case of Jeffrey Epstein, operator of the Lolita Express to his Caribbean Island – an island visited by Bill Clinton, without his wife, at least eleven times in 2002 and 2003. Eleven times in 24 months.[18] In my view – and remembering the Franklin Scandal in Nebraska[19] – I believe that pedophilia and sexual deviance is co-equal to money as one of the means by which the “deep state” controls our politicians as a servant class.
This election is not about the two-party tyranny, which is merely the top echelon of the servile servant class sucking up to monied interests whose concentration of wealth relies on legalized crime. This election is about putting the “deep state” out of business and restoring integrity to our electoral and governance process such that We the People are again the primary focus of governance. America the Beautiful is still here, still strong, we just have to get rid of the absentee and criminal landlords, and get back in the business of “Made in the USA.”
Two words matter when you want to avoid a revolution and get back to evolution. Balance – and Integrity. As the chart below shows, the USA is out of balance and lacks integrity across the board. From political-legal to socio-economic to ideo-cultural to techno-demographic to natural-geographic, every possible mistake is being made because the government is not making evidence-based decisions and it is not focused on the public interest.[20]
The Substance of Governance
My 2008 book, Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig, is free online and offers chapters on paradigms of failure, the substance of governance, the issues, legitimate grievances, and a balanced budget.[21] Here I will just outline very briefly what is absent today in the US Government – a substantive honest process – and an inventory of issues where every decision made at the federal level is against the public interest and in favor of special interests.
The USA is failing – Thom Hartmann is right, Chris Hedges is mostly right, Jim Fallows is mostly wrong[22] – because we have a deeply corrupt government that has legalized financial crimes and absolved all corporations from being responsible about public health and safety. There is neither intelligence (decision-support) nor integrity in how we are governed.
We can fix the substance of governance in four ways, the first of which is the essential foundation for all else.[23]
01 Electoral Reform. Absent an Electoral Reform Act of 2016 in which we break the back of the two-party tyranny by installing 20-30 honest independent minds as Members – this restores Article 1 of the Constitution and reverses the criminal capture of the legislation by the two-party mafia – no president can govern. Chris Hedges nailed it in Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.[24] What no one expected was that Donald Trump would turn out to be a master of both spectacle (needed to win the Republican nomination) and potentially but not proven, substance (needed to win the general election and govern).
02 Governance Reform. All political parties are toxic for the simple reason that they castrate their candidates. Within our present construct, political parties impose on their winning candidates a party platform that has been paid for by donors with special interests; they impose a “winner take all” approach to filling the Cabinet and appointing key personnel within the Executive; and they block all reasonable efforts at transpartisan negotiation and compromise.[25] The next President must demand the right to select a Vice President from across the aisle; the right to create a Coalition Cabinet – the best and brightest in memory of what JFK tried to do before his assassination – and the right to educate the public and harness the distributed intelligence of the public in making public policy. As Elinor Ostrom has shown in Governing the Commons[26] (she received the Nobel Prize for this work), the only governance that is reasonable, effective, and sustainable is governance that is deeply rooted in the citizens themselves who know the ground, can make the rules, and can enforce the rules. Education, not regulation; state rights, not federal mandates; open everything, not secret deals; these are how we restore America the Beautiful.
03 Intelligence Reform. Since I first called for reform of the US secret intelligence community from 1988, we have wasted one trillion dollars (an average of $40 billion a year each year for twenty five years). General Tony Zinni, USMC, then Commanding General of the US Central Command (engaged in two wars and twelve combat actions at the time) went on record as saying that the secret intelligence community provided him with, “at best,” 4% of what he needed to know.[27] The fact is that the secret world is a world of waste.[28] It does not inform strategy, policy, acquisition, or operations. It spends money without accountability and that is all it does. It does not prevent terrorist incidents, and until we empower the FBI to actually go after religious, ideological, and financial traitors at the highest levels, our counterintelligence will continue to be a mix of fraud (entrapment)[29] and theater (false flag attacks organized by the US Government itself to keep the fear alive).[30] We need an intelligence community capable of holistic analytics and true cost economics that cannot be ignored. Henry Kissinger – one of Hillary Clinton’s favored advisors – remains the gold standard for doing the wrong things righter. Here are three of his most famous quotes:[31]
The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power, and is often, in point of fact, useless.
Military men are ‘dumb, stupid animals to be used’ as pawns for foreign policy.
04 National Security & Entitlement Reform. John Kasich is the only presidential candidate to date who has spoken honestly about the insanity of having a US military that cannot win wars while costing 60% of the disposable federal budget in 2015, 16% of the total budget.[32] Within this obscene amount of money spent on contractors and weapons systems that do not work (including the J-35 fighter that kills pilots and is beloved by Bernie Sanders), the infantry, the 4% of the force that takes 80% of the casualties, gets 1% of the budget.[33] Everything else is pork. Waste within the Pentagon is documented at between 45% (weapons acquisition) and 75% (Afghanistan). We need a military with global reach, but it must be a military that is cost-effective, that is rooted in all of our allies paying their fair share for their own defense, and that works. Closing all of our bases overseas (the allies should maintain the heavy metal elements such as tanks on their own ground at their own expense), returning our troops and their wallets to their home communities, and creating an air-mobile Army, a long-haul Air Force, and a 450-ship distributed Navy that can reach any Embassy within 6-18 hours, is one option to be considered by an honest government informed by an effective intelligence community.[34] Entitlements are another discussion. What most do not realize is that corporate entitlements and subsidies far outweigh individual entitlements, and the corrupt shallow US taxation system, reliant on taxing individual incomes while refusing to tax the 900 lb. currency and stock transaction gorilla, is needlessly painful. Eliminating the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and substituting the Automated Payment Transaction (APT) Tax proposed by Dr. Edgar Feige of the University of Wisconsin, would produce enough income to fully-fund a complete rebuild of our national infrastructure while also retraining all of our unemployed toward full employment, with a basic income as needed.[35] We are long overdue for ending the so-called non-profit tax exemptions, easily 90% of all foundations and churches and charities are nothing more than money-laundering scams. Let them all survive – or not – within an APT system.
A great deal more detail, including a complete review of the ten high-level threats to humanity and the US public that start with poverty, and the importance of crafting an informed strategy for dealing honestly and openly with all those threats, is available free online.[36]
On the Issues
Below I list the classic issues common to a presidential campaign, none of them being discussed honestly by any presidential candidate, all of which should be part of a national conversation including a national ballot website in which the public votes their views on every issue prior to Election Day. The proposed words are my own – more coherent, honest, and substantive than offered by any candidate today.[37]
Domestic Issues
Civil Rights. We are all black now – it is time for the white blue collar and gold collar class to achieve solidarity with their black and Latino kin. Basic income and free education for life is the core right; religions decide marriage, civil unions for all others. Eradicate pedophilia, contain transgenderism, remediate agism and bestiality.
Crime. End death penalty & three strikes; legalize marijuana & hemp, full employment. Overturn the Crime Act of 1994, restore the vote to all prisoners, restore gun rights to all who have served their time, strive to empty the prisons within a decade commensurate with full employment – immediate release for all those convicted for non-violent and drug crimes.
Drugs. Legalize marijuana and hemp. Get CIA and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) out of drug business; burn banks for money laundering, invest in free education and full provision of clean water and clean energy in Afghanistan, Mexico, and the Andean countries where all the drugs are produced and are—for now—vital to those economies.
Environment. Stop with extreme prejudice all geoengineering. Zero Waste, Natural Capitalism, Green to Gold, Biomimicry, expose true costs of all products and services via bar codes and online free data, mandate clean air and disease-free air in all buildings and public transportation including airlines and trains.
Gun Control. Right to bear arms is non-negotiable less felons still in prison or on probation. Concealed permits not required—felons who have paid their debt to society need only carry a card certifying their restoration to full citizenship status—states may not abridge felon rights once court’s sentence has been completed. Achieve accountability with barrel printing and cartridge signatures—anyone can kill, be identified, and if wrong, held accountable.
Jobs. End absentee ownership of farms and production facilities; strive for 100% union membership; limit interest to 10%; make full employment the law and the outcome; raise minimum wage to achieve quality of life at last highest point. Limit CEOs to 100X wages of lowest worker they employ; impose severe penalties on short-term investments. Enforce e-verify (100% instead of 10%), end most H-1 visas. End most part-time jobs with no benefits as the standard practiced by predatory employers.
Economic Issues
Budget & Economy. Balanced budget, end debt, close Federal Reserve, adopt Automated Payment Transaction (APT) Tax with rate set by public ballot.
Government Reform. Balanced budget, line item veto, office of strategy, two deputy vice presidents (one for national security, one for commonwealth), end winner take all in Cabinet and in Congress (proportional leadership assignments, no party line voting)
Social Security. Eliminate retirement age and guaranteed pensions while introducing basic income, free education across a lifetime, and re-designing communities to restore multi-generational housing and family values. Listen to the Libertarians.
Tax Reform. End all taxes on income and specialty items, introduce the APT Tax on all transactions including currency and stock transactions; APT rate to be set by national ballot (if you want a war, the public has to agree to raise taxes to pay for it).
Technology & Infrastructure. Create the Open Source (Technologies) Agency,[38] create full employment jobs plan overseen by Labor and Defense,[39] re-design toward small cities connected by high-speed rail, incentivize population migration to the empty lands with Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE) and aquaponics – free Internet access at speed is a human right.
Welfare & Poverty. Enforce e-verify (now 10%), end most H-1 visas, restore “Made in the USA” as the common standard, end absentee landlords of lands and buildings, end inflation, incentivize 100% membership in unions and professional associations to achieve democracy in the workplace.
International Issues
Energy & Oil. Reinstate no export rule for fossil fuels. Protect coal miners while migrating toward full employment and 100% renewable energy with job training and lifetime protection for coal miners and others displaced by an end of all subsidies and tax breaks for fossil fuel companies. Re-design society and the economy, end to end, to eliminate the standard 50% waste characteristic of the current energy structure.
Foreign Policy. Extend the D3 (Defense, Diplomacy, Development) concept with the creation of the Open Source (Technologies) Agency – also applicable to domestic needs – and the transfer for $150 billion a year from defense to development; provide all dictators with a five year exit strategy;[40] make human rights and fair trade the foundation for all diplomatic and commercial relations; stop exporting military weapons; end all aid to Israel (today $30,000 per year for each person in Israel) until Palestine achieves an equivalent degree of prosperity and there is full employment in the USA.
Homeland Security. Terminate the Department of Homeland Security while re-instating the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under transparent moral leadership. Invest no less than $25 billion a year in water and food infrastructure and safety; fund Citizen Intelligence Networks ($30M per state).
Immigration. Mandate 100% e-verify for both employers and landlords including those hiring by the day or renting by the week; end most H-1 visas; close all military bases overseas; collaborate with the BRICS[41] to fully fund free education online in 183 languages; work toward providing a free cell phone to each of the five billion poor and educate them one cell call at a time; make OSEE the foundation for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) so everyone stays in their home country.
Trade. Rescind the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Overturn all secret clauses in all trade agreements. Mandate documentation and disclosure of true costs of all products, services, policies, and practices. End slavery in the USA first,[42] then begin sharp sanctions against all those who practice slavery elsewhere. Give primacy to full employment in the USA and “Made in the USA.”
War & Peace. Cut the Pentagon budget in half while closing all bases overseas and creating an air-mobile Army, a long-haul Air Force, and a 450-ship distributed Navy able to put fires and Marines on any location within 6-18 hours; fully fund, in partnership with the Islamic and other nations, a peacekeeping and development force able to raise two generations of Palestinians, Jews, and others in peace; Jerusalem to be an international city within a two-state solution; create the United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN) and leverage OSEE to achieve the SDG within the decade at one tenth the cost of the dysfunctional industrial-donor model. [43]
Social Issues
Abortion. Strongly support pro-life choices, but woman ultimately decides. Praise Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for his Stare Decisis judgment on Roe v. Wade. Life does begin at conception; mother’s rights end with start of second tri-mester.
Corporations. Overturn CITIZENS UNITED. One set of books, end NAFTA and TPP, mandate true cost economics available online for every product, service, policy, and practice. End limited liability, hold corporate executives accountable for all corporate operations and true costs.
Education. Integrate education, intelligence, and research under a single Secretary General for National Intelligence. Cut the secret world by two thirds, migrating half the savings to free education for all US citizens. Assure all research is multi-disciplinary, multi-lingual, and focused on the public good.
Families & Children. Support families with multi-generational housing and services, one good job per family to restore full-time parenting; create pocket neighborhoods across all existing urban and rural communities; free education for life with a plethora of apprenticeships in the trades and professions.
Health Care. Terminate geo-engineering (which creates autism and kills trees) and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO); terminate fracking and all contamination of air, land, and water; illuminate true costs of all goods and practices in relation to toxins produced; clean sheet scrub of all vaccines; emphasize education and practice of natural cures; empower nurses, split medical training into segments that do not require a one-size-fits-all medical degree before one can do any given procedure.
Principles & Values. Restore Constitution; eliminate party organization in Congress and Executive; transparent budgets and all legislation and budgets online one week in advance of voting; character through school, apprenticeships, and mandatory national service twice: after high-school and at mid-career (each time a shared boot camp, then three tracks: Armed, Peace, and America Corps).
I cannot say enough good things about Jesse Gordon and his web site On The Issues.[44] That web site could be the foundation for a local to global citizen exchange in which all threats, all policies, all demographics, all true costs, are easily available to what Joan Blades and Debilyn Molineaux call a national “Living Room Conversation.”[45] The above suggestions for policy are a starting point for a national conversation, not to be confused with the meaningless empty platitudes that all of the candidates including Trump and Sanders, are offering now.
Ending the Two-Party Tyranny
In my view, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders represent a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to end the two-party tyranny in the USA, restore voice and vote to the 60% who have been disenfranchised, and then over time begin the export of Extreme Democracy[46] to the rest of the world. They each have their gifts, and they each have their impediments. It is up to We the People to take action now, to show them that We the People want more from them now, before Election Day.
There are three events that could take place in May or June that would end the two-party tyranny, energize 100% of the eligible voters, and get American the Beautiful back on track.[47]
- a) A virtual Constitutional Convention with Governor Greg Abbott in Texas
- b) An unemployment workshop with Major Bill DeBlasio in New York City
- c) An electoral reform summit with Larry Ellison and Tom Steyer in San Francisco.
There is one major change both Trump and Sanders could make that would change everything for the better, regardless of who is elected President: come together on the need for the Electoral Reform Act of 2016, and in so doing, demonstrate ethical leadership in time to transform our Congress from a two-party tyranny back into a body representing We the People.[48]
If Trump and Sanders refuse to consider these break-out ideas, then we are assured of another four years of what Matt Taibbi calls Griftopia, and I for one will join Tom Friedman in exile, mumbling to myself the title of Tom Friedman’s most significant article in this political season: “None of the Above.”[49]
We are all black now. That should be focus on our national conversation going forward. We must restore integrity to our electoral system such that Congress becomes a non-partisan balance to the Executive living up to its Article 1 responsibilities; we must restore the role of the public — all of us — in living up to the possibilities of democracy rooted in transparency, truth, and trust; and we must above all stop allowing the 1% to destroy the Earth and humanity for their own short-term selfish ends.
Robert David Steele is a former spy, honorary hacker, and the top Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories. He briefed Occupy on electoral reform in a video that went viral, ran briefly for the Reform Party nomination, aggregating good ideas at We the People Reform Coalition, and is today the pro bono CEO of an educational non-profit, Earth Intelligence Network. His most recent books are OPEN POWER: Electoral Reform Act of 2015 – Open Source Activist Tool-Kit, and The Open Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, & Trust. A Guardian profile of him has received 68,000 likes. He curates 80 others at Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog; his personal website is RobertDavidSteele.com.
Endnotes
[1] Among the professional agitators filmed and appearing on TV disturbing the peace at a Trump rally are Bill Ayers, founder of the Weatherman Underground terrorist group, convicted felon, self-admitted Communist revolutionary, and in passing, good past friend of President Barack Obama. Cf. Dave Hodges, “Violence at Chicago Trump Rally Led by Known Ally of Obama,” The Common Sense Show, 12 March 2016.
[2] Geoffrey Grider, “Soros Group Called ‘Democracy Spring’ Vows To Cause Catastrophic Civil Disobedience To Stop Trump,” NowtheEndBegins, 16 March 2016.
[3] My essay, Open Power: Democracy Lost & Found, citing one hundred books, is free online. Perhaps the best book of all, by former aide to Ralph Nader Theresa Amato, is GRAND ILLUSTION: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny (New Press, 2009). My full review of this excellent work is free online.
[4] Revolutions require three things to occur: long-standing preconditions such as are outlined in the graphic; a precipitating incident (such as the Tunesian fruit seller) or character (such as Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders); and – the big one – an end to blind uniformed support for the status quo establishment. Once the uniforms make it clear there will be no May Day or Kent State or other massacres, it’s over. Cf. Chris Hedges, Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt (Nation Books, 2015). My summary review is free online.
[5] John Williams, often cited by Paul Craig Roberts himself a former ranking official in the Department of the Treasury, is the most reliable source I have found to date. Visit www.shadowstats.com.
[6] Of particular interest to me is the Congressional Research Service (CRS) finding in May 2015 that fully 40% of all eligible workers (sixteen years of age and up) are not participating in the labor force. While this includes retirees, invalids, and prisoners, this is a compelling documented fact. Sarah A. Donovan, An Overview of the Employment-Population Ratio (Congressional Research Service, 27 May 2015.
[7] Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America (Spiegel & Grau, 2010), p. 32. My summary review is free online.
[8] Cf. Michelle Alexander, “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote,” The Nation, 10 February 2016, and Cynthia McKinney, “Loose lugs lose elections: Are the wheels falling off Hillary Clinton’s campaign car?” RT America, 14 March 2016. Other great analytic pieces are emerging; see for instance Dave Lindorff, “Why I Won’t Be Voting for Hillary in November,” CounterPunch, 21 March 2016. A complete list of provocative articles on Hillary Clinton, and the book by Diana Johnstone, Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton (CounterPunch, can be accessed here.
[9] If the Nobel Prize were given on merit, instead of Barack Obama in 2009 the Committee would have recognized Dr. Cornell West, whose book, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism (Penguin, 2005) is a modern manifestation of the wisdom and spirit of MLK with an intellectual and moral depth unique to Dr. West. My summary review is free online.
[10] Kurt Nimmo, “Republican Establishment Plans to Support Hillary: Vote fraud may be the final solution,” InfoWars.com, 2 March 2016; Eric Zuesse, “Hillary Clinton is Backed by Major Republican Donors,” ZeroHedge, 23 February 2016; Jonathan Swan, “GOP donors wrestle with possibility of Trump nomination,” The Hill, 29 November 2015..
[11] Cf. Joachim Hagopian, “The Half Dozen Biggest Reasons Why the Iowa Caucus Turned into a Voter Fraud Circus,” LewRockwell.com, 6 February 2016; Jenna Johnson, “Trump alleges widespread voter fraud: ‘This voting system is out of control,” The Washington Post, 5 January 2016. The Diebold electronic voting machines are totally unreliable; they can be easily hacked in multiple ways, and of course there is no preventing state governments from simply manipulating the numbers reported from each precinct. In 2012 there were multiple reports of Ron Paul having primaries stolen from him by the Republican Establishment. This is why an Electoral Reform Act of 2016 is needed, as it would among other things reinstate paper ballots counted publicly on site, and add exit polls as an integrity control measure. Cf. Matt Novak, “Obama’s New Tech Advisor Proved How Easy It Is to Hack Voting Machines,” Gizmodo.com, 11 May 2015; and Brad Friedman, “Diebold voting machines can be hacked by remote control,” Salon, 27 September 2011.
[12] Jim Hightower, Thieves in High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country and It’s Time to Take It Back (Plume, 2004). My summary review is free online.
[13] Newt Gingrich is explicitly culpable for destroying what was once a bi-partisan Congress where Members represented their states and constituents rather than their party. The story of his destruction of Congress and the integrity of Congress is told in John Barry, The Ambition and the Power: The Fall of Jim Wright – A True Story of Washington (Viking Adult, 1989). My summary review is free online.
[14] “Steele Reviews on Assassination of JFK,” Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 13 December 2014, provides complete summary reviews and links to one DVD and eight of the best books on the assassination of JFK.
[15] Peter Dale Scott, The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014); and Mike Lofgren, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government (Viking, 2016).
[16] William Pepper, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King (Verso, 2008); and Tavis Smiley, Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year (Back Bay Books, 2016). My summary reviews of these utterly riveting books are here and here.
[17] A proper exposure of J. Edgar Hoover has not been done, Clint Eastwood’s movie not-with-standing. The twin themes that are still with us today and that prevent the FBI from being fully effective are the deep sexual and financial corruption of the elite on the one hand; and the Gestapo-like nature of government when applied to protect government power as opposed to protecting the public interest. For a superficial sense of Hoover’s hypocritical depravity, see Peter Sheridan, “Secret shame of Hoover the hypocrite,” Express, 20 January 2012; Anthony Summers, “The secret life of J. Edgar Hoover,” The Guardian, 31 December 2011; and M. Wesley Swearingham cited in “J. Edgar Hoover was a cross-dressing pedophile blackmailed by the Jewish Mafia,” LunaticOutpost, 25 October 2011. I believe that today there are within the FBI as well as other national security agencies a line of pedophiles and traitors who recruit their successors and whose explicit role is to exploit our national security capabilities and constrain our national counterintelligence capabilities, in defense of elite corruption and depravity. This is why Donald Trump is so threatening to the two-party “Establishment” – under an honest government, internal counterintelligence would be unleashed, we would clean house, and integrity would be restored to all elements of the US Government. What’s not to like? Only traitors and pedophiles should be afraid.
[18] Paul Bedard, “Details on Bill Clinton’s ride on pedophile’s ‘Lolita Express’ sought,” Washington Examiner, 23 June 2015.
[19] Cf. Nick Bryant, The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal (Trine Day, 2012). The FBI has never been allowed to investigate the importation of Asian children via US Air Force planes; the sale of children by elements of the Catholic Church taking those babies from unwed mothers; or the kidnapping of over 6,000 Native American children. Elite pedophilia is the last veil.
[20] The graphic, a concise paper “Thinking About Revolution” (Marine Corps University, 1992), and the original graduate thesis for Lehigh University in 1976 are all free online at Graphic: Preconditions of Revolution in the USA Today.
[21] Robert David STEELE Vivas, ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Earth Intelligence Network, 2008). The individual elements remain today vastly more substantive than any presidential candidate is offering: Prefaces; Paradigms of Failure; The Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances (US Internal); Legitimate Grievances (Anti-US Global); Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography.
[22] Cf. Thom Hartmann, The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America–and What We Can Do to Stop It (Twelve, 2014); Chris Hedges, Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt (Nation Books, 2015); and Jim Fallows, “How America Is Putting Itself Back Together,” The Atlantic, March 2016.
[23] These four elements were first developed together in 2002 in an essay, “Citizen in Search of a Leader,” updated and posted in full text online in 2011. See also Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone (Scribner, 2007) and the life-long work of Tom Atlee on collective intelligence and informed democracy, via his web site on Co-Intelligence.
[24] Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (Nation Books, 2009). My summary review is free online.
[25] Running for President is a learning experience. What I learned from my candidacy for the Reform Party nomination in 2008 has been published as “How I Tested the Boundaries of the Two-Party Tyranny,” Reality Sandwich, 24 May 2014. At We the People Reform Coalition one can find the intellectual and moral specifics of my short-lived candidacy; both the web site URL (http://bigbatusa.org) and the ideas could be useful to anyone who wishes to be the first modern, honest, independent president genuinely committed to We the People.
[26] Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge University Press, 1990). My summary review is free online.
[27] Cf. Graphic: Tony Zinni on 4% “At Best” and Tony Zinni: Background & Confirmation of the 4% “At Best” Quote on Secret versus Open Sources. My own extensive writings on intelligence reform can be found at http://robertdavidsteele.com, generally all free online.
[28] There have been exactly two successes within the US secret intelligence community that I acknowledge. The first was Tom Fingar’s prevention of a US attack on Iran with an National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that stopped the war-mongering neo-conservative fascists in their tracks; and the second was Jim Clapper’s more recent declaration that Syria is not a “slam dunk.”
[29] Cf. Trevor Aaronson, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism (Ig Publishing, 2014).
[30] Cf. Kevin Barrett (ed.), ANOTHER French False Flag?: Bloody Tracks from Paris to San Bernardino (Sifting and Winnowing Books, 2016). My own chapter, “Was Paris 11/13 a False Flag Event? A Matric for Evaluating Possibilities,” is free online.
[31] Cf. Henry Kissinger: “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.” and Henry Kissinger: Intelligence as Useless as a Booger — and Less Tasty as well as Henry Kissinger: Military men are ‘dumb, stupid animals to be used’ as pawns for foreign policy.
[32] Cf. Graphic: US Military 61% of 2015 Disposable Budget.
[33] Cf. Robert Steele: On the Record – 4% of the Force Takes 80% of the Casualties, Receives 1% of the Pentagon Budget, citing General Robert Scales, USA, speaking at the Brookings Institute on 27 September 2010.
[34] Cf. Robert Steele, An American Grand Strategy: Evidence-Based, Affordable, Balanced, Flexible (Earth Intelligence Network, 31 October 2015), also free online.
[35] The Automated Payment Transaction (APT) Tax allows for the elimination of all existing taxes — particularly income taxes — while dramatically increasing the revenue available to government. It offers fairness, simplicity, and efficiency while eliminating the corruption attendant to a complex tax code used to extort money from special interests seeking to buy loopholes and other forms of exemption. As a tax on ALL transactions, at the point of payment, the APT Tax is tiny, relieving families, small business, and corporations of the heavy burden of carrying the federal government on their backs. Learn more: Graphic: Automated Payment Transaction (APT) Tax.
[36] One starting point is a series of OpEds done for Huffington Post and found online, see especially “10 High-Level Threats to Humanity,” Huffington Post, October 27, 2010; “12 Core Policy Domains,” Huffington Post, November 1, 2010; “8 Populations, 4 Methods,” Huffington Post, November 4, 2010; and “On the Issues from Abortion to War & Peace,” Huffington Post, November 5, 2010. Virtually all my publications are easily seen free online.
[37] For a review of typical positions on these issues, along with key words, see Candidates on the Issues as included in ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Earth Intelligence Network, 2008).
[38] Twice approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in earlier incarnations (2000, 2010), the Memorandum to the Vice President, “SUBJECT,” Earth Intelligence Network, 8 October 2015, while certified as delivered by the US Postal Service, has been blown off precisely because this agency would lead to cutting the federal government budget and manpower by two thirds over ten years. An honest government would see this initiative as central to creating a prosperous America at peace. Its application to the five billion poor and the accomplishment of the SDG in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost of the dysfunctional industrial-donor paradigm cannot be overstated. For that case, see 2016 Robert Steele: The Ultimate Hack – Resilient Villages, Smart Cities, Prosperous Nations at Peace — and Unlimited Clean Water (Earth Intelligence Network, 6 March 2016).
[39] Cf. “Building a Post Cold War Workforce for the 21st Century: Our Manpower Peace Deficit” as crafted by Del Spurlock, then Deputy Secretary of Labor in the Reagan Administration.
[40] It is obscene that of the 40+ dictators on the planet, the USG is “best pals” with 40 of them – now that we have made nice with Cuba, North Korea is the only dictator we don’t like – all the others receive US taxpayer subsidies and complete immunity from all forms of international accountability. Cf. Ambassador Mark Palmer, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
[41] This is a reference to Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, all of whom are creating alternative financial, development, and information systems to those controlled by the West. In my view Indonesia and Iran will soon join them in a more structured manner and the future of the world will be in the hands of this group.
[42] There are three forms of slavery (not counting abused housewives) prevalent in the USA today: blacks in prisons manufacturing furniture and other goods: Asian women working in textile sweat shops; and Latino men incarcerated involuntarily in Florida, Texas, and other locations, where they are forced to work on agricultural projects without pay. Cf. John Bowe, Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy (Random House, 2008).
[43] My vision is offered here, 2016 Robert Steele: The Ultimate Hack – Resilient Villages, Smart Cities, Prosperous Nations at Peace — and Unlimited Clean Water (Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 6 March 2016).
[44] Jesse Gordon, OnTheIssues: Every Political Leader on Every Issue. See especially the Issues page.
[45] Joan Blade, founder of MoveOn, is easily one of the “Founding Mothers” for a new America the Beautiful in which civility and integrity are restored to public self-governance. Most recently she has created Living Room Conversations as a means of achieving what Jim Rough calls “deliberative dialog.” His book, Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People (AuthorHouse, 2002) is, together with Tom Atlee’s The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World that Works for All (North Atlantic Books, 2014), are two of my “Bibles” for extreme informed engaged democracy.
[46] I credit this phrase to John Lebkowsky and Mitch Ratcliffe, Extreme Democracy (Lulu, 2005).
[47] As the proponent for electoral reform, agnostic over any particular candidate, I have reached out to Bernie Sanders (six times), Donald Trump (six times), and the other candidates two to three times each. Among my publications expanding on these three points and offering other ideas such as a national competition to name a coalition cabinet and craft a balanced budget, are multiple Amazon Kindle white papers, and three CounterPunch articles: “Counter-Coup: How Trump Can Win” (14 August 2015); “On the Seventh Day: A Fantasy” (12 June 2015); and “Where is Jesse Ventura When You Need Him?“ (20 November 2014).
[48] Trump and Sanders are leadership archtypes. Trump is engrossed with himself as a great leader and all too willing to believe he can make America great again through the sheer power of his will and intellect; Sanders, while paying lip service to “we, not I,” cannot do the math and is limited to a handful of platitudes. Both would do well to study the Social Change Model of leadership as developed by the National Clearinghouse for Leadership Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Empowering the public is leadership – everything else is a form of tyranny.
[49] Thomas Friedman, “My Choice for President? None of the Above,” New York Times, 17 June 2015.
