Review (Guest): OPEN POWER – Electoral Reform Act of 2015 – Open Source Activist Tool-Kit with Long Comment by Robert Steele

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Robert David Steele

Last Exit to Democracy, February 26, 2015

The author of this book, Robert Steele, has been a dedicated and patriotic advocate of reforming the U.S. Intelligence Community for over thirty years without noticeable success. Now he has taken on a bigger and much more important cause, reform of the U.S. Electoral System to restore real Democracy in this country. This book is the first salvo of that effort.

The premise of this book is that if a comprehensive and well crafted electoral reform act can be implemented, it will open the way for a return to government by and for the people. Steele is at pains to point out that the U.S. electorate has lost any real control over the Federal and many local governments and that, saving rhetoric, there is not a dimes worth of difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties. It is clear from this book that the two parties have formed a duopoly as fully corrupt and venal as any one party system (e.g. India’s Congress Party and Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party). Although the book covers a wide range of subjects, its principal theme is that only electoral reform will allow the majority of U.S. citizens to retake their country from the duopoly and its oligarchic masters.

Steele feels that the implementation of such a comprehensive electoral act is possible if there is some sort of unity among the disparate majority elements of this country that have been betrayed by our government. The author advocates a non-violent revolution as the most effective means of accomplishing this. He argues that if such a reform can be executed then the government will restored to the governed. This restoration would then be followed by a series of reforms affecting our National Security Establishment, Financial System, International Relations, and so on. The author would also approach select politicians who he believes have demonstrated their personal integrity and decency. This group would include such lights as (Progressive) Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, former (Republican) Utah Governor John Huntsman and so on. The theory being that this group could provide the political leadership to implement the reforms that would follow a true electoral reform.

So the most important, but unanswered, question is, would the plan outlined in this book actually bring about electoral reform? This reviewer does not know, but would suggest that, baring Devine intervention, it is extremely unlikely. Still it is refreshing to know that there are folks like Robert Steele are out there who have at least an understanding of what ails this country and, maybe, how to remedy it.

Initial post: Feb 27, 2015 8:58:58 PM PST

Retired Reader says:

I deleted my original review of this book at the request of its author. He noted that I had allowed the improbability of his proposals to cloud my judgment of their intrinsic worth. He was correct.

Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Feb 28, 2015 7:30:05 AM PST

Robert David STEELE Vivas says:

Heh. I hold Retired Reader in the highest regard. I actually urged him NOT to delete the earlier review because it demonstrated my own failure to communicate and my comments on his review were a helpful riposte; I sought only a sort balancing comment to be added. I am grateful for his kindness and attention. He is right that this is “mission impossible” BUT I think it is do-able and if I can find ONE millionaire willing to pay for the Electoral Reform Act of 2015 campaign, and I can get Joan Blades and Jackie Salit to stop squirriling around with side issues like corruption, then I do earnestly believe it is possible.

Here are some points I would make to honor Richard's earlier reservations:

01 The constitutional amendment is far-fetched but it is the last of the eleven points, in phase 2, and it is there to respect that segment of the electoral reform stakeholders I connected with in 2012. Their views merit discussion, I make no judgment.

02 That leads to my second point: these are not my ideas. When I ran for President under the Reform Party banner in 2012, I did so to collect information, make connections, and challenge all the other presidential candidates to support electoral reform, having been inspired by Occupy and by Eva Waskell via Gordon Cook. The ideas in this book, while refined and organized by myself, represent the best thinking I was able to access across a very broad spectrum of stakeholders (specifics at We the People Reform Coalition under Electoral Reform).

3) Richard is totally correct when he refers to the zero probability that the elected officials will embrace reform, or that the activists will overcome their current state of frenzied fragmentation on their own BUT I believe, having spent fourteen years with Tom Atlee, Jim Rough, Joseph McCormick, John Steiner, Debilyn Molineaux and so many others, and I believe there are three things that could “explode” the situation:

a) ONE rich person agrees that the only way to protect existing concentrated wealth is to help the rest of us create infinite wealth, by de-rigging the system and getting us back to ethical democracy and ethical capitalism (see my review just loaded of Richard Wolff's Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism (City Lights Open Media).

b) Joan Blades and Jackie Salit pay attention and instead of uniting the big five (Huntsman, Warren, Johnson, Stein, McKinney) to discuss silly stuff on the margins, go for the whole enchilada. Electoral Reform is the ONE THING that can being ALL of us together.

c) I am toying with starting a new political party and PAC, the Working Poor Party and the Working Poor PAC. It is criminal insanity that in the USA today, 100 million — one third of the population — are pre-qualified to be members of this party (or associates if they want to stick with their existing parties — I had to run for President to learn that we have EIGHT accredited parties, the two that are moribund are Natural Law and Socialist, and of course we have Working Families and Justice emergent, but they don't have the focus I believe we need). Now imagine 50 million cultural creatives (see The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World donating $10 each to BigBatUSA [after I get accountants and lawyers lined up and fully satisfy FEC guidelines]. That is $500 million. With that amount of money I absolutely guarantee I can kick the 42 billionaires out of the halls of government. … and then we extend it, first to be annual democracy fund that turns ALEC into a pimple on the ass of predatory capitalism where it belongs, and then to a global fund that executes Ambassador Mark Palmer's brilliant and ethical vision, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025 while also respecting Ron Paul's proper Constitutional vision, A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship.

I am giving serious thought to running for the presidential nominations of the Green and Libertarian parties as well as the Reform Party, in order to get these ideas before those bodies. I am certain I can help a TEAM win with the ideas at We the People Reform Coalition, BUT the likes of Huntsman, Warren, Johnson, Stein, and McKinney have to WANT to win, not just be about themselves as a candidate, and they have to respect the reality that since the assassination of JFK, no President has actually been President. To defeat the deep state, mafia, and other forces that have Obama by the balls, we need to crush the box and restore Extreme Democracy.

I know how to do that. What I do NOT know how to do is reach 100 million citizens that desperately need a game plan for saving the USA and assuring a prosperous future and peace for their grandchildren.