How Voters Can Unrig the 2012 Elections with Transpartisan Voting Blocs and Electoral Coalitions
Voters did not get what they said they wanted from the 2010 elections. In fact, they got the opposite because the two major parties rigged the elections.
The parties have been rigging elections for decades by gerrymandering election districts and passing campaign financing and election laws that prevent third party candidates from beating major party candidates.
These rigged elections give voters no choice but to vote for one of the two major parties. So voters do the only thing they can do, which is to routinely kick out the major party incumbents in the futile hope that the new major party candidates they elect will not flout their will to the same degree. But regardless of which party candidates they vote for, they get roughly the same policies. These typically sacrifice voters' interests to the special interests that fund lawmakers' electoral campaigns.
Unless voters are empowered to put an end to rigged elections before the 2012 elections, using mechanisms like the one proposed below, the middle class and working Americans will be ruined financially by the lawmakers and special interests that are enabling the business and financial sector to take more than their fair share of national income.
This article by Bill Gertz needs to be seen in perspective. During the Cold War the Soviet Union as well as a number of other countries, including China were constantly engaged in trying to acquire U.S. Technology of all types through various means from industrial espionage to bribery. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) was extremely concerned about this and the subject of illicit ‘international technology transfer’ to the Soviet Bloc (as well as a few other countries) generated numerous DOD requirements to such agencies as NSA and CIA. Much of the urgency of these requirements was downgraded precipitously when the Cold War ended. Also the number of incidents of foreign powers trying to acquire U.S. technology has declined in the 21st Century for a very sinister reason: the U.S. is no longer the sole leader in the research and development of advanced technologies that it was after WWII. Although incidents still occur, as the Chinese Huawei example shows, they are much less common than once was the case. So DOD no doubt does not see the need for the same emphasis on loss of U.S. origin technology.
Yet financial intelligence is more than technology loss it also involves major illicit financial operations, such as money laundering, and financial operations in support of espionage and terrorism against U.S. interests. This of course includes the financial infra-structure supporting al Qaeda. If Ferguson is shutting this effort down as well he is making an unbelievable mistake.
This incident is symptomatic of an Intelligence System that is indeed out of control. In the absence of a viable strategic plan for intelligence collection, analysis, and production, every time some new crises occurs the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) resembles an ant hill that somebody has just stepped on. In the absence any real leadership or clearly defined purpose, the big four of the IC (CIA, DIA, NGA, and NSA) will continue to waste billions of dollars for minimal returns while resisting an efforts at meaningful reforms. At the same time the IC institutional bias against using non-classified (open) source information will ensure that they will only be able to provide very small windows that are of only limited usefulness to decision makers. What a way to go!
Phi Beta Iota: We are truly surprised that someone of Jim Clapper's caliber would allow an Acting Undersecretary no one has ever heard of to be named Acting in the first place; or that such an individual would do something this dumb without clearance from the DNI. There are a couple of variations on a theme: a) Clapper wants to make it obvious that Treasury is in enemy hands and DoD wants nothing to do with Treasury intelligence which does not exist–Treasury, like Energy and the other non-national security departments are patronage stove-pipes receiving direction from ideological idiots–they don't do “evidence-based” policy; b) Clapper is finally thinking about holistic intelligence in support of Whole of Government, and having DoD drop financial intelligence is a preamble to elevating the Financial Intelligence Center in some manner. On balance, as much as we admire the DNI, we think he has blown it–he will not accomplish anything consequential in the next few years by continuing to do the wrong things righter, and that is a shame, because so much could be accomplished in a mere 90-180 days, if he would empower those with the right mind-set to do the right things, which is to say, M4IS2 simultaneously with Whole of Government intelligence-support operations and the creation of a Smart Nation.
Impacts from Wikileaks continue to multiply. Now, just getting a routine courier card renewed now involves pole vaulting over major mouse turds.
Message from the Director: Recent Media Leaks
November 8, 2010
We have seen in recent months a damaging spate of media leaks on a wide range of national security issues. WikiLeaks is but one egregious example. In some cases, CIA sources and methods have been compromised, harming our mission and endangering lives.
When information about our intelligence, our people, or our operations appears in the media, it does incredible damage to our nation’s security and our ability to do our job of protecting the nation. More importantly, it could jeopardize lives. For this reason, such leaks cannot be tolerated. The Office of Security is directed to fully investigate these matters. Unauthorized disclosures of classified information also will be referred to the Department of Justice. Our government is taking a hard line, as demonstrated by the prosecutions of a former National Security Agency official, a Federal Bureau of Investigation linguist, and a State Department contractor.
Here at the Agency, we are a family, which means we depend on each other—sharing burdens, challenges, and successes. But sharing cannot extend beyond the limits set by law and the “need to know” principle. The media, the public, even former colleagues, are not entitled to details of our work.
I would ask that every employee reflect on the responsibilities and privileges of service at CIA. Every officer takes a secrecy oath, which obligates us to protect classified information while we serve at the Agency and after we leave. A vast majority of officers live up to their oath, but even a small number of leaks can do great damage. Our adversaries benefit, while our credibility, our operations, and, ultimately, our ability to accomplish the mission all take a hit. Our sworn duty to the American people is to protect them and we must do nothing to violate the law or that sacred pledge.
Leon E. Panetta
Phi Beta Iota: Nothing has changed since the Moynihan Commission received testimony on CIA's refusal to brief Congress on its “sources & methods” that were and are very well known because CIA is a bureaucracy and persists in operating out of official installations. Its one very expensive attempt to create 21 non-official cover companies ended in failure, with 20 of the companies being closed down. What Panetta simply refuses to compute is that bad management and poor tradecraft are a much graver offense deleterious to national security, than straight-forward critical commentaries such as appear in the See Also and Miscellaneous sections below. We were surprised to see that Panetta now claims to oversee open source intelligence for the US Intelligence Community. It's hard to sink any lower in performance, but that does it for us. CIA has hit rock bottom.
Phi Beta Iota: We are in the process of identifying at least eight “modalities” that stand in sharp contrast to “rule by secrecy” as is characteristic of the axis of crime running from Wall Street to the Democratic-Republican “two-party tyranny.” We anticipate their all participating in a nation-wide series of citizen encounters on policy and budget, culminating in the Sense-Making Summit in October 2011. While the first summit is focused on Health in the larger context of the ten high-level threats to humanity and the twelve core policies, our intent from Summit '12 onwards, is to engage all citizens in addressing all ten threats across all twelve policies in the context of balanced budget, first in the USA, then in such other countries as might have a citizenry interested in Wise Democracy and Participatory Budgeting.
The Pentagon's intelligence directorate is killing off one of its most strategically important mission areas: monitoring efforts by foreign governments to buy U.S. firms and technology, such as the multiple efforts by China's military-linked equipment company Huawei Technologies to buy into the U.S. high-technology sector.
Defense officials tell Inside the Ring that Thomas A. Ferguson, acting undersecretary of defense for intelligence (USDI) and a former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) space analyst, initiated the dismantling of the financial-threat intelligence monitoring.
Phi Beta Iota: US Intelligence is out of control–as good as some of the leaders are in terms of diversity of experience within the OLD system, they simply do not have the mind-set nor the authorities to restructure intelligence to the point that it can meet all appropriate needs. The person ostensibly responsible for strategy, a CIA body, has just been made deputy director of DIA, and we have no doubt that a “strategy” exists that might ultimately turn DIA into the analysis center and CIA into a collection management center (while NSA becomes the all-source processing center, all as outlined in Chapter 13 of ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World) as well as all subsequent books such as INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time, this is all too little, too slow, too incoherent, and too expensive. An Open Source Agency (OSA) under diplomatic auspices, and a voluntary shift of $200 billion from Program 50 to Program 150 as a lure for Newt Gingrinch coming into the 2012 coalition cabinet under Obama running as an Independent (miracles do happen), are both essential.
(1) Militaries have used working dogs for a variety of offensive and defensive purposes for years; (2) military working dogs have been very active in Iraq and Afghanistan; (3) airborne (parachute) units have been jumping dogs officially and unofficially for years, although this is the first report I've personally seen of dogs being jumped using the military freefall technique, (4) the biggest problem I see for the dogs is the landing since, before their handler lands, he will likely lower the dog on a 15-20 foot line so that the dog lands before he does so the challenge for the dog is doing a parachute landing fall with four, rather than two, rather slender and fragile legs — kind of difficult to “keep your feet and knees together”; (5) the alternative to (4) above is for the handler to execute a standing landing, something that is at least theoretically feasible for a well-trained jumper using a ram-air canopy under favorable wind and drop zone conditions; that could possibly mitigate the doggie PLF challenge; (6) I think I'm glad I'm not the free-fall jumper since, while you can see that the dog in the photo below is muzzled to prevent bites, unless he's also sedated, he could flop around enough in his harness to make a stable descent to pull altitude a challenge for his jumper; (7) I'm not sure the United States Parachute Association has ever considered this application of the Tandem technique which is well established for willing human cargoes.)
Phi Beta Iota: This is one of the most balanced sensible white papers from a vendor it has been our pleasure to encounter. Taken in context of Microsoft thinking about buying Adobe after failing to see the value of Sun's Open Office, this white paper merits broad appreciation against the possibility that Adobe could become the Context & Content Division that Microsoft does not have and will not have under Steve Ballmer now that Ray Ozzie has given up on Microsoft and moved on.
