The corruption of the leaders and the complacency of the West in accepting that corruption is a recurring theme. If the USA does not stop supporting dictators and embracing corruption as part of the “status quo” then no amount of good will or aid will suffice.
Dick Morris is part of the circus–Wall Street owns it and him,
July 14, 2009
Dick Morris
Neophytes argue about facts, journeymen argue about models, and masters discuss the assumptions underlying the models.
This book assumes the President has power, which most of us who are students of America, from Buckminster Fuller on, have recognized is not the case. We've gone from a village idiot to a major domo, and the only constants are three:
1) Wall Street and Goldman Sachs specifically continues to run and manipulate the US Treasury against the public interest.
2) Congress continues to abdicate its responsibility to its constituencies and the Constitution
3) The bulk of the American people remain uninformed sheep.
The ten books below are intended for those of you that want to move beyond Dick Morris as the classic comic book version of the truth, and into the deeper truth that should inspire Constitutionally-valid actions to restore the sovereignty of We the People of the United STATES of America. You cannot fix what you do not understand. Obama is a tool, not the problem. If Obama were willing to break free of Wall Street and embrace the 70% of America that did not vote for him, he could actually become the George Washington of this century if not this millenium.
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by restoring the Constitution and the sovereignty of We the People. The Electoral Reform Act of 2009, blowing open the crooked two-party system to Independents, Greens, Reforms, and Libertarians, and all others, is the ONLY thing we need to understand and demand. Below I offer five books on each side of the future:
The latter book makes it crystal clear–and the same is true in Canada for Quebec and others–that secession is a legal, non-violent, absolute right of each of the United STATES of America. Wall Street is literally creating a “fire sale” in the USA while moving all of its assets into foreign currencies. Just how stupid do We the People have to be?
Dick Morris is a good man, but he is a clown in this circus, and if all do not focus right now on the misbehavior of the government at large, violating the Constitution every day, not acting in the public interest as We the People would define it, then the USA will break up as the Soviet Union did, within the decade.
Best Depiction of Worst Case, Needs Sense of Best Case, September 12, 2008
Rick Shenkman
I cannot improve on the reviews by Kerry Walters and Retired Reader, in that order. I was drawn to this book by the fact that it is the “other” book that readers buy when considering Joe Trippi's great book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything which will be out in a new expanded and revised edition at the end of this month (September 2008).
I am continually shocked by the ignorance and apathy as well as the growing obesity of the American people, and this book has shaken me to the roots. To not know three branches of government, and to be violently opposed to immigrants who do, turns my world upside down.
What I want to do here, subordinating my contribution to those of reveiewers Kerry Walters and Retired Reader, is list 9 books that illuminate 1) why our blue collar population is devastatingly sidelined; and 2) what the rest of us who have NOT sold out, are trying to do about it. Each of the books I list I have reviewed, and linked to other books.
There are so many others–consider using my lists for broad exploration. I really admire the critical mass that reviewers now provide, especially those that provide summative reviews, not just critical reviews.
Industrial-era directory with little added value, September 27, 2008
Erica Payne
I eagerly anticipated this book's arrival, believing from the title that it might actually contribute to my thinking on how to build a twenty-first century political movement (I support Reuniting American and the Transpartisan Alliance with public intelligence in the public interest).
Nope. This is an industrial-era directory with almost no added value. Seventy nine organizations are profiled in small print in hard copy, followed by snapshot bios of some of the activists.
Organizations that are NOT on the left (which has hijacked the term “progressive”) but rather centrist, postpartisan, transpartisan, or nonpartison are NOT included here, for example, The New America Foundation, World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility, Reuniting America, the Liberty Coalition, and on and on and on.
I checked the website, hoping for an interactive online version of the book that might be useful, but found it to be merely an advertising site.
In brief: a lot of work went into this book, the editor and those involved in the book got a lot of face time with many good people doing important work in isolation from one another and from the rest of us, but the book does NOT advance participatory deliberative democracy in any significant way.
I recommend the editor urge every organization listed in this book to join the rest of us at World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER). That online resource is connnecting dots to dots, dots to people, people to people, and dollars to outcomes.
I put this book down several times over a week and picked up another, but I finally finished it, and that brings it up from three to four stars.
Here are my notes and some quotes, and I must say, given better organization and editing, this book probably deserve to earn five stars, but not in its current state.
It is important to note that the author, in lamenting the total breakdown of the Democratic Party, did not anticipate the outright purchase of the Party by the Trilateral Commission and the financial industry that fielded both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (a protege of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who also gave us Jimmy Carter). A very exciting “show” is being run, and regardless of which candidate wins, we all lose as the two criminally-corrupt parties remain under the direct control of the financial elite.
+ Progressive ideas have been defeated by dirty tricks and fraud
+ “mainstream” Dems are dead, the best action is happening on the margins and bottom up
+ New word for me: optiholic
+ Democratic Party not listening to youth or foot-soliders, “give us your money, we'll tell you when we want to hear from you.”
+ Liberals long for the past, progressives certain the future is bright.
+ League of Independent Voters rising in influence
+ Labor has dropped out [I would say more bluntly, labor leaders have been bought off and completely betrayed the labor rank and file]
+ Democrats close their local offices after the funding dries up, not organized for year-round operations
+ Need new ways to empower new networks (young, new immigrants, color)
+ Democratic Party is NOT the Progressive Coalition–some overlap
+ Red is not Red, Blue is not Blue
+ Cities are fighting federal efforts to retard wages, demanding and imposing living wages
+ Democrats not taking cities seriously
+ People across the Nation are against draconian drug laws and huge prison populations with attendant costs
+ Author believes that conservatives have locked down the national policy process while progressives are finding their voice in cities
+ I am introduced to the term “losing forward”
+ Local democrats are succeeding when they ignore the lack of support from the national party and go local, do what the party won't do
+ LIBERAL FOUNDATIONS SPEND TEN PERCENT OF WHAT CONSERVATIVE FOUNDATIONS SPEND ON ELECTION MESSAGES
+ Democratic Party is losing revenue from contributions to an increasing preference for grass root local organizations
+ Progressive activitists are focusing on “movement” instead of the national party focus on “getting out the vote.” [As I write this ACORN is under multiple investigations while the media has not noticed or chosen not to cover fraud on the right]
+ KEY POINT: DEMOCRATS CAN NO LONGER COUNT ON BLACK CHURCHES AND LABOR UNIONS
+ Will take ten more years to create viable grass roots coalition
+ Too much focus on electing Democrats instead of achieving outcomes
+ PARTY AGENDA IS FIXED, IGNORES SOCIAL NETWORKS AND LOCALIZED GRIEVANCES
+ Democratic Party is still focused on top-down and direct mail instead of bottom up local empowerment.
+ BLISTERING ON “LIP-SYNCH LIBERALISM”
+ Citing Charon Asetoyer, “one size fits all slogans do not work”
+ Democrats losing it on Language, networks, credibility
+ Right has BOTH the dollars AND the captive idological media that carries entire populations from cradle to grave (talk radio, think tanks, national organs) [I have a note, Left just has MSNBC & NYT]
+ Dump Lieberman was a bottom up citizens movement that recognized his betrayal of Democratic interests and took matters into their own hands–this is reported to have freaked out the Democratic leadership
+ Disc jockeys have more political power today than most realize, and they can “deliver” thousands to the streets at any given time and place
+ 62% of the Democratic state committees do not have permanent communications directors (or an annual campaign)
+ NEW ORLEANS ONE YEAR AFTER KATRINA: ONE THIRD STILL WITHOUT ELECTRICITY
Ends with comments on campaign fraud, and I have a final note, crummy sources and crummy endnotes.
A couple of quotes that I felt should be shared here:
“The United States more closely resembles a purplish smorgasbord than a blue-red sandwich.” (p. 35)
“People are craving leadership that is real.” (p. 124)
This book is more of a personal essay, the result of a personal “walk-about” that pays little heed to other books in the democracy and progressive domain, other than the first one in the list below, that is cited several times by the author. See these other books for a left-oriented take on what needs to be done to restore democracy in the USA. I MUST EMPHASIZE MY VIEW: THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS REPUBLICAN LITE–THEY ARE BOTH CORRUPT AND BOTH HAVE BETRAYED THE PEOPLE'S TRUST.
See other readings first, this is fourth in the line, November 5, 2008
Robert, F. Hawes
If you have not already, start your reading program on secession by seeking out, free online, Allen Buchanan's lovely essay on Secession in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
This book is a solid recommended fourth reading. It replicates and complements Bledsoe's book, which the author draws on with respect while digging down to the primary sources himself.. The two books dovetail perfectly with three bottom lines:
1) The Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and the Constitution are all compacts among STATES, and the Union is a plurality of STATES, not a unity of one people.
2) Secession is not treason; secession is in fact the only moral legal option open to any state when the federal government becomes both lunatic and pathologically dangerous to the well-being of the citizens that each state represents.
3) The federal government is an administrative entity created primarily to help the STATES be competitive in commerce, and was never intended to be a “national” government with authority over the states. The author cites Thomas Jefferson on more than one occasion reiterating that the federal government is in no way its own “decider” and is always the creature of the states, in no way superior over any of them.
I am enchanted to find that the Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that Quebec does have the right to secede, something I expect to happen one day, in part because Quebec is sitting on one of two long-term sources of clean water (Scotland has the other). If that happens, Canada will logically divide in three–the eastern portion joining New England in New Arcadia, and the Western portion joining the Pacific Northwest to create Ecotopia. See Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America, still the best rational study of the distinct character of each of these nine constituencies.
The author slams Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party that Bush-Cheney have been so fond of, pointing out that it was not secession that destroyed the Southern economy, but rather the northern attacks and the post-war “reconstruction” (carpetbagging, a precursor to Exxon and Wal-Mart). The litany of crimes against the public interest committed by Lincoln is quite fascinating, and my first exposure apart from Bledsoe to Southern revisionist history, a history I find morally compelling. I wrote a not-so-brilliant paper on the causes of the Civil War in high school (as I supposed all Advanced Placement students did), and I learn for the first time that the real cause of the war was Lincoln's desire to impose Northern values and controls over the varied territories being acquired to the West. The author points out that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves in the northern or border states, and was a military act, nothing more.
The book has two special values as the fourth recommended item:
First, it is a reader with key appendices including recommended amendments to the Constitution that I do not agree with (all we need is Electoral, Governance, Intelligence, and National Security Reform, OR a dismantling of the Union which is too big, too corrupt, and too stupid to survive as is).
Second, its third part explores “modern” (that is to say, current as of 2006) arguments against secession, and as the author intends, leaves the reader quite satisfied that the USA is no less open to secession than was the Soviet Union.
Toward the end the author provides completely new information to me on the 1993 official apology of the US Congress to the citizens of Hawaii, an apology whose language both certifies the illegality of the US overthrow of the islands, and sets the stage for Hawaii's eventual secession from the United STATES of America.
For my own inquiry, in preparation for a brief presentation on 15 November to the secessionist conference in Manchester, New Hampshire, on page 62 the author provides a valuable quote from the Constitution, Article 3, Section 3, defining Treason:
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against THEM, or in adhering to THEIR enemies.”
The emphasis on them and their was in the author's original rendition as italics.
I am satisfied that secession is not treason, that it is legal, and that it is moral. However, I also like the United States of America as an entity, so I am going to start looking for Governors interested in forming a Council on Nullification and Secession that will educate the public and strive to break the backs of the two criminal parties that now violate the Constitution with impunity while shutting out Independents, Libertarians, Greens, Reforms, and others. We need to achieve the four reforms, or break up the United STATES of America.
President-elect Obama is either the last act in the theater of the macabre sponsored by Wall Street, or the first act in creating a Second American Republic. We can help him out-grow the first and nurture the second.
5 for elegance and good intent, 2 for being blind to reality, a strong 3 overall, November 17, 2008
Peggy Noonan
I would have gone with a weak four if the book had more substance to it, but ultimately this is a “quickie” book with good intentions and elegant turns of phrase, and I certainly recommend that it be bought and read.
I am estranged moderate Republican utterly livid over the manner in which the “bi-partisan” spoils system allowed Bush-Cheney to destroy America while both Congress and the White House subverted the Constitution.
Hence, when Noonon calls for “bi-partisan” collaboration in the middle of the book, I must immediately put her in the same class as lawyers for organized crime leaders. Democracy in America has been destroyed. The League of Women Voters was pushed out of the debate business so that the Republican-Democratic debate commission could exclude Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, Cynthia McKinny, Gloria La Riva, and the ever so arrogant and hence irrelevant Bob Barr. We are NOT one nation, we are NOT one people, and there is nothing wrong with America that Electoral Reform will not fix. A third of the country's voters have been illegally gerrymandered out of their vote, and another third have been disincentivized by the idiocy of our campaigns.
Here Noonan earns a solid three and moves almost to a weak four when she castigates both Obama and McCain for failing to discuss any serious issues, and especially her pet rock, the electrical grid. While she is right on both counts, this is as substantive as the book gets, everything else is pabulum about bi-partisan singing kumbawah while in fact bi-partisanship is treason–Congress is broken in every possible way at the same time that the Executive is organized for incoherenceand the ONLY thing that will fix (and preserve) the United STATES of America is Electoral Reform–I am providing the text in easy to read format in the first comment below, most from Ralph Nader as refined by me.
NOTE for my regular readers: Amazon has totally hosed up the review system. Fans that come in once a week to catch up and vote on each review are being treated as “campaign voters” and their votes are automatically deleted once they pass some threshhold, perhaps three votes for the same reviewer on the same day. You have to complain. They are also incentivizing negative reviews, and this has encouraged stalkers (whose votes get deleted) but it also peverts the system in that most of my reviews which have three times the positive votes of any other reviewer, now fall below the line because I also have a small segment of negative reviews that are oriented mostly on the premises of the book I am reviewing, not my review (most of which go right up to 1000 words and include 10 links to other books). If you select me as an “Interesting Person” at my profile, this will unbury my reviews when you as an individual visit–otherwise Amazon has sentence me to intellectual death….
