Robert Steele: Open Answers to Adam Dorwart

Increasingly these days, I am getting thoughtful emails from people who really do want to fix this country rather than leverage ignorance for selfish gain.  Here is the YouTube that helped start the conversation:

YouTube (5: 51) Robert Steele OWS Electoral Reform Proposal

Below is a fine email with questions, and my answers.  This is a good time for every citizen to be reflecting on INTEGRITY and what this means to how they should act in the near and mid-term.  St.

On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 5:19 AM, Adam Dorwart <redacted> wrote:

Hello Robert,

First let me introduce myself. My name is Adam Dorwart and I'm a politically active college student in southern California. I'm a Redditor and supporter of OWS. I recently came across your Election Reform Act of 2012 and have felt a strong impulse to spread its message as it deeply resonates with what I feel will fix our broken political system. In two days time I will be giving a speech at my college on Election Reform and I have a couple questions and comments for you related to your Act and problems our society faces.

What do you believe are the largest political issues that we currently face as a society relating to elections and voting?

My review of Will Durant's Philosphy and the Social Problemwill help you understand my answer to this question, along with the other two links below.Review: Philosophy and the Social Problem–The Annotated EditionJournal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAPJournal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to BothSee Also:Robert Steele: Citizen in Search of Integrity (Full Text Online for Google Translate)2008 Call to Arms Fund We Not Them ELECTION 2008 – Lipstick on the Pig (Full Text Online for Google Translate)

The core political issue we face is the loss of integrity in our democracy.  We have become a cheating culture across the board.  The people have become – by design of a corrupt government – ignorant and inattentive, prey to theater and absurd ideological propositions that are toxic to democracy and social and economic sustainability.

See Also:

Review: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

Review: Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

Review: Open Veins of Latin America–Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

Review: Top Secret America – The Rise of the New American Security State

Of the issues that you listed, what do you personally believe or feel has caused these problems?

When Lincoln violated the Constitution and waged war to deny the South its right of secession, he began the practice of large scale borrowing of money from banks, and we went downhill from there (with the twelve year looting of the South as a side effect).  It was a war against secession, not a civil war (which would have had the South contesting to defeat the North and take over all of the states).In the 1920's, a precursor to the depression, Rockefeller and Carnegie designed the schools to train factory workers that were obedient and could sit still all day, and at the same time they bought up all the public transporation companies in order to kill them, to force America into a national design of suburbs and cars instead of trains and efficient shared public transportation in mid-size cities and small towns.When JFK was assassinated and they got away with it (along with the assassinations of MLK and Bobby Kennedy), the “elite” realized they could overturn the will of the people with impunity, and all President's thereafter have feared assassination — including Obama who backed away from holding Bush-Cheney accountable for treason because of his fear of a coup by the CIA and the national security establishment (what one author calls “The Secret Team”).Ben Franklin said we had created a a Republic, “if you can keep it.”  Thomas Jefferson said that “A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.”  I have some other quotes at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, I include them all here for your convenience.  They all center around “truth” and dealing with reality on the basis of the truth.  If you deal with reality on the basis of lies, reality will deal harshly with you. This last one is original to me–Trotsky is quoted by Toffler as saying “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”  I substituted reality for that.  We are coming off decades of unethical politicians thinking they can shape reality to their selfish interests, instead of nurturing the polity in coping ably with reality.

Alexis de Tocqueville: The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.

Thomas Jefferson: A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.

Thomas Jefferson: Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

James Madison: Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Voltaire: When a nation begins to think, it is impossible to hold it back.

Fedor Dostoevsky: A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else.

Bob Seelert, Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide (New York): When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it.

Ben Gilad: Top managers’ information is invariably either biased, subjecive, filtered or late. . . . Using intelligence correctly requires a fundamental change in the way top executives make decisions.

Daniel Ellsberg speaking to Henry Kissinger: The danger is, you’ll become like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours” [because of your blind faith in the value of your narrow and often incorrect secret information].

Carl Jung:  The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko: When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.

Alvin Toffler: Information is a substitute for time, space, capital, and labor

Robert Steele: The truth at any cost reduces all other costs.

Finally how can we go about fixing these problems? Is the Election Reform Act of 2012 the answer to all of them?

Nothing is ever “the” answer.  Life is a continuing series of complex challenges that demand agility, clarity, and integrity to cope and adjust.  Restoring the integrity to our electoral system restores the integrity to our government, that in turn can lead to our restoring integrity to Agriculture (end toxic mega farms), Diplomacy (end big stick idiocy), Economy (full employment),  Education (child-driven, free for life, challenge tests for credentials instead of money), Energy (two-way grid, localized renewable power, massive redesign of everything toward power elimination and conservation), Family (redesign society back toward one wage, two parents), Immigration (hold businesses accountable for illegals–starve the beast), Justice (impeach the current Attorney General and the current director of the FBI, both of them criminally liable for high crimes against the public; invite all heads of national security departments and agencies to resign or be impeached); Security (implement my four forces after next concept, cutting defense back to $300 billion focused on DEFENSE, eliminating the Department of Homeland “Security”), Society (huge challenge, but we can do this), and Water (idiocy to let Nestle and Coca Cola sell water we cannot afford to use up from aquifers, or to allow water to be used to flush tar sands, etc.).

See Also:

Campaign for Liberty: Steele on IC and DoD

2008 The Substance of Governance ELECTION

2008 Lipstick on the Pig (Full Text Online for Google Translate)

2008 Rebalancing the Instruments of National Power (Full Text Online for Google Translate)

2008 Legitimate Grievances (US Citizens versus US Government)

ELECTION 2008 – Lipstick on the Pig (Full Text Online for Google Translate)

Reference: WATER–Soul of the Earth, Mirror of Our Collective Souls

On the subject of your Election Reform Act I see that point 4 has recently changed from proposing Instant Run-off voting (IRV) to Instant Round Robin Voting (IRRV). The topic of voting methods is obviously not a trivial one as you probably already know. Through my own independent research I have personally concluded that a version of score voting (range, approval, etc) would be best compared to plurality, IRV, IRRV (also called Condorcet) or any other voting method for that matter. I see that you already have these links listed on the discussion page

rangevoting.org

rangevote.com

I have killed Instant Voting and substitute IRRV in version 3.4 which is online.  You and others have already made the Act your own, I will continue to be secretary to the public on this.

I really do recommend that you read through those pages as they demonstrate and prove why range voting is best in terms of Bayesian Regret. The research was conducted by Warren D. Smith, who holds a PhD in Mathematics. The man was not predisposed to range voting in anyway before he started his research, but rather was looking to find some hard data on the subject. He was the first the run the Bayesian Regret simulations for various voting methods and determined that range voting is by far the best method. In fact IRV and IRRV (Or Condorcet) is only marginally better then plurality and at times just as bad according to Bayesian regret. You can see this very clearly in his posted data

If you're looking for a very thorough argument and comparison of the voting systems, this forum thread on XKCD has a couple very intelligent minds debating the topic. Keep an eye on forum user broken ladder in that discussion to see why range theory is the best choice. He goes through and refutes almost every argument made against range voting and then even explains why Bayesian regret is an accurate model for determining our voting system.

Adding your links (already had a couple) to the appropriate pages.  Reddit has a subreddit /electoralreformact for discussion, not getting a lot of attention.