Electoral Reform USA – Page 3 – Public Intelligence Blog

There are at least four movements underway to destroy the two-party tyranny and restore the integrity of the U.S. electoral process and with it the integrity of the U.S. Government.

Below is one such movement. Others include the movement for Free and Open Elections, the movement to Unify Independents, and the movement to audit the Federal Reserve and its its role as a front for Wall Street and particularly Goldman Sachs whose looting the U.S. Treasury of future funds has taken bank robbery to new heights. Phi Beta Iota appeals to all those who visit this site and who care about the public interest to support Independent.org with their signature. One signature, one vote, one Nation under God. We gave it up, let's get it back. Please click to read and repsond to a simple request for your signature.

Continue reading “Journal: Call for Signatures in Support of Open Primaries”

2008/03/092009/10/30

Review: Declaring Independence–The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System

4 Star, Electoral Reform USA

Best Available Primer for Third Party, March 9, 2008

Douglas Schoen

Edit of 1 July 2008 to change transpartisan to non-partisan, add flyleaf notes from second reading, and delete observations found wanting by Amazon visitors.

This is without question a very important book, a companion to both Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America and Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It. After a second reading, I now see this book as a primer in a class of its own and understand the author's background with greater appreciation.

One important comment: Both candidates are “keep the `bi-partisan' spoils system” alive candidates. They are of, by, and for the elites, and they are both out of touch with global reality such as depicted in A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. Barack Obama is a Manchurian candidate, a Trilateral Commission “House Negro” (as his own pastors of color have put it); see Obama – The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate for details.

Following my fly-leaf notes are a few observations, cut in half from my earlier review.

+ 75% of American voters are dissatisfied with the way things are going and generally do not trust either the political parties or the federal government–misery is at an all time high as is distrust
+ Voters “crave” real solutions
+ The time is right for a third party ticket, and the NYC race of Mayor Bloomberg in 2005 is the model
+ 3 out of 5 voters dislike BOTH parties
+ 61% feel they are not living the American dream
+ Being “on message” does not cut it–interaction and authentic tough focus on issues is demanded
+ Non-partisan solutions, with common sense, addressing tough problems, are demanded
+ Democracy in a crisis because the system itself lacks credibility (both political and federal)
+ Governor Schwarzenegger is on the right track
+ Half of all registered voters thing a 3rd party is a good idea
+ Restless & Anxious Moderates (RAM) are the swing vote
+ Fiscla discipline with a balanced budget, and being in touch with voter values, essential
+ Top two reasons people are Independents are both ANTI-PARTY: vote issues and candidate, not party
+ Parties are polarized, people are not
+ Need new fresh blood, open minds
+ 3rd parties are *not* odd man out, have a rich history
+ Ballot access is critical, needs 800,000 signatures
+ If not already done for the following states by today (1 July 2008), they are off the books: Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, Maine, Pennsylovania, Delaware (because of registration deadlines)
+ Internet blogging, YouTube, and texting (as well as ads to cell phones) have changed the dynamic
+ Democratic dirty tricks against Nader detailed (I am personally aghast–like Rove on McCain)
+ Nonpartisan Citizens Union could be a group to watch (see also Reuniting America)
+ Citing David Colarusso to Newsweek: “Web 2.0 has the potential to actually compel candidates to be genuine (page 141)
+ Independent must craft authentic grassroots citizen-based movement, field candidates for governor
+ Colin Powell is strongest candidate (author may not know Mrs. Powell has demanded, and received, a promise never to run), followed by Mike Bloomberg (I favor Powell back as Secretary of State, with his integrity this time)
+ Win or lose, a solid Independent candidacy will be able to influence the debate as well as the election (in the Electoral College, or in the House of Representatives) and lead a body of opinion thereafter.

FACT: Dick Cheney hijacked the White House and no one is willing to hold him accountable. BOTH the Democratic floormats and the Republican foot soldiers should be run out of office. I have no wish to impeach Dick Cheney. He simply needs to be removed from office and never again allowed to betray the public trust.

Sidenote:
REFS:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11

FACT: Congress abdicated its Article 1 responsibilities, a sin for which Al Gore especially culpable in failing to support the McKinney House resolution to re-do Florida. Every one of these folks merits an independent challenge.

REFS:
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders into Insiders
…and…
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All

In my view, Mike Bloomberg is the only truly credible independent, see my review of his own book, Bloomberg by Bloomberg. If I had one minute with Mike Bloomberg, this is what I would say:

1) Win or lose, you can *be* the catalyst for creating an “open books” alternative government at all levels

2) $20 each from 25 million Americans buys our government back, make it a subscription and we can migrate the new system to the rest of the world

3) A nonpartisan coalition sunshine cabinet, each person leading thousands of citizen wisdom councils focused on each Cabinet's respective areas of concern, will change the debate and inform America overnight

4) A balanced budget online, where everyone can debate and then see aggregated differences by zip code and party affiliation (anonymous otherwise) will enable strong leadership.

That's it. All we need is a really rich guy willing to stake the new system (Perot did not), be authentic, and LISTEN.

2008/03/062010/01/05

Review: A Letter to America

5 Star, Democracy, Electoral Reform USA, Politics

Elegant essay with embedded references, March 6, 2008

David Boren

Edit of 14 Mar 08: FRAUD ALERT. I like and admire David Boren, but I am now fed up with his sanctimoneous appearances calling for “bi-partisanship” while failing to recognize all the other parties that have been–with malice aforthought–shut out of the political process. “Bipartisanship” is CODE for”save the two-party spoils systme.” ENOUGH. Anyone who cannot explain the difference between Transpartisanship and Bipartisanship is a FRAUD.

This is an elegant intelligent book of reflection, but I have to say up front that is misses the core point: the need to end the strangle-hold of the two parties that dismissed the League of Women Voters from the presidential debate process because they had the temerity to want to ask questions not provided in advance, and to include third, fourth and fifth parties. I know many people will be reading this book, and perhaps also this review, and the mere existence of the book as a focal point for dialog is worthy of five stars.

There are eight specific electoral reforms that could be easily passed, four in time to impact on November 2008, the others for impact in 2010. The fact is–and I saw this demonstrated in Oklahoma where I went to see for myself how Michael Bloomberg fared. He was, in my view, made to look the fool because no one there knew the difference between bipartisanship (code for keeping the the two party spoils system alive) and transpartisanship, which buries the two party mafiosos and restores sovereignty to the people.

I funded the Earth Intelligence Network at the same time that Jim Turner, Ralph Nader's first hire, created the Transpartisan Policy Institute. We identified the top experts on the ten high-level threats, and we have devised tranpartisan answers to 52 tough questions not a single candidate can answer coherently today. In my view, there is still a need for an independent transpartisan team to run for the full range of positions, and demonstrating in advance of election they can balance the budget.

This book deserves five stars, but it is futile unless Senators McCain, Obama, and Clinton will sponsor the simple eight point Electoral Reform Act, and we discuss openly the degree to which Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Dough Feith are impeachable for their role in telling 935 explicitly documented lies, and in the case of Cheney, 25 explicitly identified high crimes betraying the public trust.

Here are ten other books I commend to anyone concerned about our future.
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

I will end on a positive note: there is no lack of money–for one third of what we spent on war this year, we could have begun the rapid eradication of the ten high-level threats to humanity, and catalyzed the creation of new wealth everywhere.

Bipartisanship is NOT the right answer. Electoral reform and Transpartisanship, such as represented so ably by Reuniting America, is the best possible path to restoring America the Beautiful.

2007/09/062009/10/17

Review: The Infernal Machine–A History of Terrorism

5 Star, Electoral Reform USA, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Terrorism & Jihad, Truth & Reconciliation

State Terrorism Vastly Worse, Individual Terrorism Logical

September 6, 2007

Matthew Carr

This is a superb book that should be read in conjunction with Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Terrorism is nothing more nor less than individual and small group asymmetric violence that breaks the state's monopoly on violence.

THe author is to be commended for stating in blunt and ably-documented terms that terrorism is a logical asymmetric response and it is not senseless nor cowardly but rather coherent and calculated.

I share the author's view that most Western analysts of terrorism are witness, uninformed, and devoid of historical, cultural, or contextual analytic skills and knowledge. Most on the right, including the Zionists, push their ideological beliefs rather than the empirical evidence. As the author notes, Israel has genocided the Palestinians and out-terrorized their opponents time and again (while also attacking the USS Liberty, a war crime that will never be forgotten by our men and women in uniform).

There are other books that have documents the use by the extreme right of fake leftist terrorist actions that are actually extreme right and fascist actions intended to increase the totalitarian and fascist nature of the state. 9-11 certainly enabled Dick Cheney to do that. See American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America and Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency.

In the author's view, the CIA created the conditions for the Islamic jihad with its over-turning of the Iranian election results and restoration of the hated Shah to the throne–as we learn in Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, CIA has been all too fond of dictators and secret police as their proxies; its presence in Saudi Arabia (ably covered by Robert Baer in Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, and of course providing billions in aid (see Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times that the Pakistani's used to create jihad with close ties to Afghan drugs, guns, and global logistics.

The author makes three key points in his conclusion:

1) USG ignores and does not publicize the thousands of acts of civil dissent, including hundreds (as many as 900) bombs a year across America;

2) The government consistently lies to the public and covers up larger group anger by claiming that major incidents are “a lone wolf” operation. This has since been proven untrue for the JFK assassination (see Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History and A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, And the Case That Should Have Changed History, and in the Oklahoma City bombing and most certainly in the 9-11 case where CHeney, Gulliani, and Silverstein and Rumsfeld are clearly more culpable than Bin Laden or the Pakistanis for the bulk of the deats (see Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory among many other books and DVDs.}

The author ends by calling the US Government, essential, a persistent liar, with hollow propaganda and specious claims that–in combination with the destruction of civil liberties–do vastly more damage to the national fabric than any small band of terrorists might. As one reviewer notes, what 19 alleged terrorists have done is nothing compared to the state terror that Bush-Cheney have unleashed on Iraq, Iran, around the world in secret renditions and secret torture, and of course here at home, where a “state of fear” and grotesque abuses of executive privilege are used to avoid justice and liberty for all, reducing both dignity and accountability.

2002/05/292010/10/16

Review: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Electoral Reform USA, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Greg Palast

Let Freedom Ring–Truths the Corporate Thieves Can't Hide

May 29, 2002

The most distressing aspect of this book, written by an American expatriate publishing largely through newspapers in the United Kingdom, is that all of this information should have been published in U.S. newspapers in time to make a difference–to inform the voting public–but was not. One can only speculate how corrupt our media have become–how beholden to their owners and advertisers–if we cannot get front page coverage of the Florida government's disenfranchisement of over 50,000 predominantly black and democratic voters, prior to the presidential election; or of the raw attacks on our best interests by the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and others linked in a “trigger” network where taking money from one demands all sorts of poverty-inducing and wealth theft conditions.

Even more timely are his stories about the current Administration continuing a practice of the former Administration, spiking, curtailing, forbidding intelligence investigations into Saudi Arabian government funding of bin Laden's terrorism as well as Pakistani production of the “Islamic” atomic bomb.

His exposes of corporate misdeeds, some criminal, some simply unethical, all costing the U.S. taxpayer dearly, are shocking, in part because of their sleaziness, in part because our own newspapers do not dare to fulfill their role as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, of informing and educating the people of this Nation upon which the government depends for both its revenue and its legitimacy.

Although I take this book with a grain of salt (wondering, for example, why he did not ensure that Gore's campaign had all that he could offer in time to challenge the vote disenfranchisement as part of the Supreme Court case), there is enough here, in very forthright and sensible terms, to give one hope that investigative journalism might yet play a role in protecting democracy and the future of the Republic.