Phi Beta Iota: The most important decision Barack Obama faces is the fundamental one of whether he wants to lead a government that works for all, or continue to be a meaningless placeholder in the theater of the absurd. Electoral Reform is the only thing that matters at this point. Absent Electoral Reform, his mid-term Cabinet appointments will be meaningless–business as usual. Colin Powell is as good as it gets if he can reframe his sense of loyalty back to the Constitutional Oath and actually down-size the Pentagon program by a third or more, while shifting $200 billion a year to State, where Senator Chuck Hagel would be well qualified to get the place back to evidence-based policies and coherent strategic planning. Commerce is a big one–Clyde Prestowitz would be our recommendation, along with Joseph Stiglitz to Office of Management and Budget–see our Virtual Cabinet at Huffington Post. However stellar the appointments, nothing they do will matter absent fundamental Electoral Reform and a restoration of the integrity not only of the US executive policy process, but of the legislative deliberation process as well. Only Electoral Reform can create an honest representative Congress. There are many other critical changes to be made at the highest levels, but ONLY in the context of a restoration of the government being Of, By, and For We the People. Obama is one single piece of paper away from greatness. We observe with interest.
Fast Company article on citizens (and yes, politicians are citizens) engaging in basic community maintenance, and those working to make web and mobile technologies use city data and neighborhood requests for community care-taking.
Links mentioned:
+ SeeClickFix
+ OpenPlans
+ Code for America
Phi Beta Iota: Robert Steele, our founder, has asked that we post the following as his testimonial.
If there were one person in America I would gladly sacrifice my life for, so as to give the larger group including my direct family the benefit of his continued wisdom, Tom Atlee is that person. He is without peer, and we are all blessed to have him in our lives and within our Commonwealth. PLEASE contribute to his endeavor–what he does creates real wealth for all of us, and that kind of wealth is the only riposte to the decades of unethical legalized looting that we have tolerated for too long. America the Beautiful is coming back–Tom is walking point and deserves our strongest possible support.
Dear friends,
As America's dysfunctional politics and governance swings wildly out of equilibrium, the Co-Intelligence Institute has increased its focus on the transformation of the way the U.S. does politics.
As we track the transpartisan movement, the Coffee Party, the Tea Party, the No Labels movement, the Palin pre-campaign, the strange shifting dance between the Administration and Congress, and other political currents, we sense an emerging and significant force demanding change in the power relationships between the vast majority of “we, the people” on the one hand, and corporate and government elites on the other.
It is very instructive to watch how this populist energy is being manipulated and co-opted. Many of the politicians positioning themselves as populists — “We're not going to take it any more!” — are themselves active members of the elite class they are supposedly battling, and totally beholden to the financial powers behind the political circus.
EXTRACT: The basic platform for such a candidate is clear: Unequivocally call for an immediate end to the presence of U.S. troops, advisers and private U.S.-based security firms in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and replace the “war on terror” with a Global Marshall Plan that roots homeland security in a strategy of generosity and concern for the well-being of everyone on the planet. Domestically, call for a massive jobs program; a freeze on mortgage foreclosures; a national bank that would offer interest-free loans to those seeking to create or expand small businesses; immediate implementation of the parts of the Obama health-care plan that would benefit ordinary citizens and build support for a health plan for all citizens; dramatically lower prices for drugs that treat critical diseases such as AIDS and cancer; a strong tax on carbon emissions; and immediate prosecution of those government employees involved in torture or coverups to justify the invasion of Iraq.
This candidate should push for the media to provide free and equal time to all major candidates for national office as well as for constitutional amendments requiring only public financing in elections and, separately, for corporations to prove every five years to a jury of ordinary citizens that they have a satisfactory history of environmental responsibility (as is sought by the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment, or ESRA, advocated by the Network of Spiritual Progressives).
This policy platform must be matched with a willingness to talk clearly about the spiritual and ethical need for a new bottom line – one of love, kindness and generosity. We need a progressive push for a new New Deal, which in the 21st century could be the Caring Society: “Caring for Each Other and the Earth.”
EXTRACT: It's time to consider that the president accepts centrist and conservative policies because he himself is a centrist or conservative. This does not mean that President Obama is a Republican, or anything close to a Republican. The Republican Party is not conservative, it is extremist. But as the Republican Party has drifted farther and farther to the fringe, much of the establishment Democratic Party has intrepidly moved into the ideological space the Republican Party abandoned. The Republicans lead this movement to the right, and the Democrats follow, taking the political center with them and leaving the traditional left ever more disenfranchised, disenchanted, and politically alienated. The problem with Barack Obama isn't that he is worse than establishment Village Democrats, the problem is that he is one of them.
EXTRACT: Last February, writing about the health care reform meltdown, Glenn Greenwald offered a theory:
The primary tactic in this game is Villain Rotation. They always have a handful of Democratic Senators announce that they will be the ones to deviate this time from the ostensible party position and impede success, but the designated Villain constantly shifts, so the Party itself can claim it supports these measures while an always-changing handful of their members invariably prevent it.
Phi Beta Iota: The first article, written by the author of The Left Hand of God–Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right, misses the key point: Barack Obama is a bought and paid for member of the club who takes his guidance from Vernon Jordan, Colin Powell, and a handful of other members of the club. He did not spend $750 million ($300 million still unaccounted for) to become our President, he took it to solidify his status and earn his retirement as their representative…four more years. The second piece gets closer to the truth–inter-changeable villains, all a charade–musical chairs, lights, camara, and no action in the public interest. What interests us is that Barack Obama has a choice, such as we have written about at the Huffington Post, and he can Change the Game, such as Tom Atlee has written about. He probably will not, and already we see fraudulent organizations with hidden agendas and secret sources of funding (No Labels, America Elects, IndependentVoting.org) all intent of protecting the status quo by putting forward yet another candidate who is Of Wall Street but just different enough to fool enough of the people enough of the time to buy Wall Street four more years. ENOUGH! There is one litmus test, and what Barack Obama has going for him is that he has right of first refusal: Electoral Reform. Electoral Reform introduced upon the inauguration of the new Congress, with a roll call vote demanded and televised, would end these decades of carpet-bagging and war-profiteering, and give us a government BETTER than any wwe have had since Jack Kennedy–a government Of, By, and For We the People, in which all voters are connected with all relevant information and policies are evidence-based and in the context of a balanced budget. Show us that, and we will show you the first great President of the 21st Century.
Welt am Sontag in Germany asked me for an op-ed on Wikileaks. Here it is, auf Englisch. Hier, auf Deutsch.
Government should be transparent by default, secret by necessity. Of course, it is not. Too much of government is secret. Why? Because those who hold secrets hold power.
Now Wikileaks has punctured that power. Whether or not it ever reveals another document—and we can be certain that it will—Wikileaks has made us all aware that no secret is safe. If something is known by one person, it can be known by the world.
WARNING NOTICE: http://www.taylormarsh.com has a major virus. Do NOT go to their story on the Houston meeting (apart from its being hype, now it's just plain dangerous).
Phi Beta Iota: We believe the following:
1. Michael Bloomberg wants to be President.
2. Wall Street wants Michael Bloomberg to be President not because Barack Obama has failed them, but because he has so visibly pandered to them. The elite mob includes Burson-Marsteller, the Clintons and Joe Lieberman as well as Peter Peterson and David Walker (former Comptroller General who declared US insolvent in 2007 without being witting of financial crimes legalized by the Clintons and sanctified by Bush II and then Obama).
3. Two groups have been started, one on the West Coast, one on the East Coast, both focused on convergence in the middle, with Michael Bloomberg as the “natural” anti-thesis to the Republican and Democratic alternatives. Both are eligible for and will channel massive funding from corporations exercising their ill-gotten “personality” rights.
As we all observe with stunning detachment the symbiotic continuance of Bush-Obama Democratic-Republican support to the Wall Street looting of America led by Goldman Sachs, whose executives continue to “own” the Department of the Treasury and the Bank of New York (Federal Reserve), I believe it helpful to itemize some legitimate grievances that could inspire State by State nullification of federal mandates and regulations, and perhaps a few secessions, with Cascadia, Vermont, Hawaii, and Alaska being well positioned to abandon a compact that no longer serves the United STATES of America, nor We the People.
I am indebted to Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale and founder of the Middlebury Institute, for teaching me about the urgency and relevance of the secessionist movements, and the detailed reflections that they have published, reflections that I point to here for the common good.
Core Point: Liberty can only survive if political power is returned from the banks and corporations that have corrupted the federal government, to local communities and States. The American Empire is no longer a nation or a republic, but has become a tyrant aggressive abroad and despotic at home.
The Burlington Declaration of 2006 (5 points)
Core Point: Any political entity has the right to separate itself from a larger body of which it is a part and peaceably to establish its independence as a free and legitimate state in the eyes of the world. Governments are instituted among peoples, deriving their just powers power from the consent of the governed, and whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the legitimate goals of life, liberty, prosperity, and self-determination, it is the right of the people in democratic fashion to aleter or abolish it, and to institute new government in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
The Logic of Secession: Three Tines to a Trident (A Manifesto by Kirkpatrick Sale)
Core Point: In the face of a rigged game in which two parties have conspired to corrupt, manipulate, and generally monopolize power, third party politics will not work. Only secession will allow for the emergence of a restored Republic once the federal government and its two-party tyranny are made irrelevant (and starved of revenue).
In Defense of Vermont's Secession from the Union (A Manifesto by Keith Brunner)
Core Point: Vermont was its own country before it joined the Union, and nothing in the Constitution of the United STATES of America precludes secession from this voluntary compact [Lincoln violated the Constitution in multiple ways, most Americans simply have not learned the truth of the matter]. The American Empire is economically, politically, cultural, and especially environmentally unsustainable, and far from fixing itself, is just getting worse. When a government of people who have no moral authority are in the possession of enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over, in the position to dominate the global economy for their own interests, and continually and foolishly pace the needs of the “economic system” above the needs of the natural world, the time for action cannot be put off any longer.
In sound support of the above, I have itemized a list of the behaviors and conditions that have inspired anti-Americanism. Each is, without exception, a betrayal of the public trust and grounds for abolishing the present political criminal enterprise that has hijacked the federal government and the public treasury on behalf of its banking and corporate masters. Each of these high crimes and misdemeanors justifying impeachment is derived from one or more works on non-fiction.
A harvest of lies and a complete lack of intelligence
Always, without exception, failure to invest in peace in the aftermath of war
Axis of Evil #1: poverty, disease, and ignorance
Axis of Evil #2: US support for 42 of 44 dictators, idiocy on the other two (Cuba, North Korea)
