How Far Left Must We Go to Undo Bush Fascism?

[Peace Patriot]

How Far Left Must We Go to Undo Bush Fascism?

--a practical guide to a REAL Leftist (majorityist) platform--


The Nightmare of the "balanced budget":

When Nancy Pelosi came out with the interim Democratic platform, which calls for a "balanced budget," my first thought was not a thought, really, it was a scream: "No, no, NO-O-O-O!" (--and other simple words.)

Then I calmed down and asked myself, why did that piss me off so much? Partly it was the irony. They want a balanced budget NOW?--not BEFORE Bush's murderous, heinous, unjustified war? NOW? AFTER they've stolen all our money, and our kids' future, and probably all of our pensions, for their corporate oil war?

Here's my thinking. (Screaming is over.) What would FDR do in these circumstances--a $10 trillion deficit, manufactured by the Bush junta to conduct a corporate oil war and to lard their fatcat friends with tax cuts and no-bid contracts?

Would FDR agree that we must "balance" this massive theft on the backs of the poor and middle class? Or would he see that tightening the belt is not just unfair, but very retrograde and destructive. You cannot recover from the excesses of fascist capitalists and global corporate predators without deficit spending on job creation, infrastructure, education, health, small business loans, a social safety net, and even make-work projects (like the CCC and the WPA). You must re-build the middle class, and provide hope and upward mobility for the poor. And that cannot be done without big government spending.

So what are we to make of the Pelosi proposal? Like many other policies of the Democratic Party leadership, their REACTION to the Bush junta's fascist outrages is so puny a movement along the political spectrum, as to constitute a short of shadow fascism. Bill Clinton removes the safety net from the poor ("welfare" as we knew it) and combines this with Reaganite tax policies (never revised) that hit the poor and middle class hardest, benefits also from the high tech bubble, and from high stock dividends from corporate malfeasance, and builds up a big government surplus, which the Bush fascists then come in and entirely loot--and then go way beyond just looting our surplus, to creating an humongous debt that the poor will have to pay for, for decades to come. Following this, then, the Democratic shadow fascists get Diebolded into office to enforce payment (the current Pelosi "balanced budget" policy). Social Security and government retirement funds are already being looted. We may lose both. What else will we lose to a "balanced budget"--with no hope of recovery, because of "tightened" government belts? (Really, we might as well be Argentina!)

Is this to be the cycle--an endless spiral downward for the majority of Americans?

It sure looks like it. We have almost no one in Washington DC speaking for our interests, and trying to push this political slide rule back toward the Left, where most people have a good life.

What would a REAL Democratic Party platform look like? And how would we pay for the continued deficit spending that is necessary to recover from these Bushite horrors? Here are some ideas:

A REAL Leftist (majorityist) Platform for America

1. Investigate and prosecute the Bushites and their corporate cabal, but not to put them in jail. What use is that? Do it to GET OUR MONEY BACK, as much of it as we can. Investigate, prosecute and convict, and impose big, big fines--all their war profits. And, since they will need something to do, to keep them out of trouble: Community service. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al emptying bedpans for the indigent elderly and wounded vets. Like that. It will save us those salaries, and greatly edify the population as well. To do this, we will need a Special Tribunal for the Recovery of U.S. War Loot (S.T.R.U.W.L.). (Maybe we can borrow some of those prosecutors from Gitmo. They'll need something to do.)

2. Dismantle the worst of the corporate predators, and seize their assets for the public good. War profiteers, oil companies, corporate news monopolies, the outsourcers of jobs, the users of cheap labor/no rights sweatshops in foreign lands, the major polluters. These corporate entities have no right to exist, other than by the charter rules that we permit, as the sovereign people of the United States. Time to dismantle the bad, and reign in the rest. And we could use the enormous amounts of financial and property resources that these bad actors have unjustly accumulated, to rebuild this country.

3. Declare the 2004 election null and void, and rescind all Bush appointments--most especially those to the Supreme Court--as illegitimate. We will need to do this in order to dismantle the bad actor corporations (which Bush junta court appointees will try to blockade). The 2004 election was non-transparent--by deliberate design of the Bushites. With the passage of the so-called "Help America Vote Act," by the Anthrax Congress in 2002--a bill that was engineered by the biggest crooks in Congress (Tom Delay and Bob Ney, abetted by Bilderberg 'Democrat' Christopher Dodd)--Bushite corporations took over our election system, and "counted" all the votes in 2004 using "trade secret," proprietary programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls. Non-transparent elections are not elections. They are tyranny. Ask the citizens of Stalinist Russia. We are--theoretically--a Sovereign People. We can do what we need to, in our own interest. We can bust our government. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution all say so. Time to re-ignite that revolutionary spirit. American government was never meant to protect corporations, fascists and tyrants. It was meant to protect us against them. We have every right and overwhelming reason to nullify that election. (And we might want to add nullifying all acts of the Diebold Congress--including their tax cuts for the rich, their military lard, and their raise to their own salaries--since they, too, were illegitimately elected.)

4. New Election Policy. Paper ballots, hand-counted at the precinct level. (Make that hemp ballots.) (See #9, below). Canada hand-counts their elections in one day. But speed should not even be a consideration. Only accuracy and transparency. The recent Bushite conversion of our elections to non-transparent vote tabulation with secret code--and the $4 billion boondoggle they used to get this done--have so corrupted our election system at every level, we need to clean house first, return to a VISIBLE vote counting system, and then consider our options. Electronic voting with OPEN SOURCE CODE, and good audit/recount controls, might be possible. But we cannot trust the current crop of election officials to do it. We need to hand-count for a while, and weed out the corrupt. Trying to restore transparent elections by Congressional mandate--as some are doing--is a dangerous course, in the present circumstances. Better to fight for this at the state/local level, messy as that is, to keep election system decisions as close to the people as possible, and then, as we obtain more and more transparency in our elections, a "federal solution" might become less perilous. Electing true representatives of the people will, almost in and of itself, result in adequate revenue for our country's financial recovery. True representatives will legislate for our interests, not those of global corporate predators.

5. Publicly financed elections. A Constitutional amendment banning all private money in political campaigns, assigning a portion of the federal budget (say, 1%) to candidate access to voters, and reclaiming some our public airwaves (now licensed to private mega-corporations) for public debate. Publicly financed elections needs to be placed on an equal footing with the First Amendment--that is, made into fundamental law of the land. Judges and legislators continually shoot down campaign finance reform on First Amendment grounds (as if money = civil rights.) Don't namby-pamby around, trying to clean up this EGREGIOUSLY FILTHY campaign system, and getting stymied by the very corporate lobbyists who need to be removed. Go whole hog! 28th Amendment: END the influence of money on our government. Enough! Fini!

6. Elections--other items. Goodbye, Electoral College! Hello, Instant Run-Off voting--to broaden the political spectrum. (No more "winner take all." Look what that has resulted in--with the Bushites hogging all power! Build consensus into the system, with Instant Run-Off.)

7. Bust the military budget down by 90%, to a true defensive posture. What is this huge military budget for? They couldn't even protect the Pentagon! How long has it been since they actually "defended" us? All this huge, humongously expensive war machine does is provide overwhelming temptation to fascists to commit unjust war. We might need to keep a missile defense for a while (as we work to disarm the world), but the only other threat to the U.S.--stateless "terrorists"--is best handled by police work, not military action. Indeed, military action only makes more "terrorists." It's not the military that is at fault, exactly. It's the cabal of war profiteers that have been growing in power, and milking us dry, since the end of WW II. How about a world without war, hm? Time to try that idea again. (I doubt that the Democratic platform will contain words like "hm?"--but maybe it should.)

8. Environment-energy. Complete conversion to non-polluting alternative energy within 5 years. We can do it! We are the most creative, technically proficient people on earth! Take the assets from Exxon Mobile and Citibank, and, with them, create hundreds of small competitive companies, and give them this mission. The same kind of people who put men on the moon will save the planet. (The U.S. is contributing 25% of the damage to the planet. If we stop doing that, our efforts combined with those of other countries will become effective.)

9. Environment-forests. We also are in desperate need of new building materials, to end worldwide deforestation and consequent loss of biological diversity, fresh water supplies, soil stability, climate stability, and the good nature spirits of the forest. The government should finance the research for new building materials and techniques, and also should subsidize passive and active solar/alternative architecture. Every community could be energy-independent and green with SIMPLE remedies. It's absolutely NUTS that we are not doing this!

10. "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." A cap on excessive personal and private corporate wealth, via the tax code (a progressive tax system--which we used to have--before the Reagan Era of Greed). And a guaranteed bottom line of human existence--food, shelter, clothing, health care, mobility, and the availability of decently paid work.

11. Other albatrosses on the backs of the poor: Dismantle the prison-industrial complex. Amnesty for all non-violent offenders currently in jail. Provide them temporary financial help and (if necessary) permanent psychological counseling. (Jail is very bad for people!) Most prisons, like schools, should be community-based. Improve conditions for violent criminals. Prison should be aimed at healing and recompense. End capital punishment. It's not just the great potential for mistakes. It's the act of cold-blooded state murder that is wrong, brutalizing of everyone, and inherently inhumane. It sends a message of brutality and "might makes right" throughout society.

12. Other albatrosses on the backs of the poor: Decriminalize all drug use. Prohibition of alcohol was a disaster. Will we never learn? It created a massive Crime World. So has the outlawing of non-prescription drugs. Decriminalize them, and overnight you will see dramatic change for the good. We spend billions of dollars a year on incarcerating drug users and hunting down and prosecuting petty criminals. And, gee, we never seem to stop the Crime Bosses. Funny thing. The illicit Drug Trade continues unabated. Who benefits from all those billions, and who perpetuates the myth of "the war on drugs"? Follow the money. The Crime World and the Narco Cop World feed off each other. End both! Take the profit out of it! And use some of the billions that we will save to COUNSEL and REHABILITATE drug addicts, and give them medical care. They are sick, just like alcoholics.

13. Other albatrosses on the backs of the poor: Decriminalize prostitution. Long overdue. And we might also want to propose removing all non-violent crime from the prison system. The horror of overcrowded, corporatized, outsourced prisons (Prisons for Profit) is upon us. We must find another way to deal with minor civil disorder.

14. Foreign policy. International labor standards and wages. The time has come. Also, world disarmament. The time has come for this, too. Long, long, long overdue--and if we don't get this done, we can kiss the human race goodbye.

Well, folks, there's my dream Democratic Platform. Transparent elections. Big government spending to help the poor, paid for by corporate thieves. Continued democracy. Continued planet earth. Continued human race.


STRATEGY: Absentee Ballot voting.

To get there, I have one strategy to suggest, that can be implemented right away: A Citizen Revolt against Secret Corporate Vote Counting in 2006, by means of Absentee Ballot voting.

Absentee Ballot voting is an already in-progress citizen rebellion. People don't trust the machines, and are increasingly turning to Absentee Ballot voting as a protest--a statement of their distrust of the machines--and to try to get their vote counted. Many don't realize that Absentee Ballot voting is not safe either. (They scan those ballots into the electronic system, thus separating the vote from the evidence of the vote, just as with optical scan voting.) However, if it gets really big--if enough people request Absentee Ballots; say it gets up to 70% or more (it's already up to 50% in Los Angeles)--the machines will be made OBSOLETE--because no one will vote on them! So, it is both a protest AND a strategy.

Right now, Absentee Ballot voting is an indigenous, ordinary citizen rebellion--many are BOYCOTTING the machines (or are trying to). It just needs a bit of leadership and focus, and it could become huge--and could be the spearhead of the revolt against fascist rule. Think M.L. King and the bus boycott. Think Gandhi and the salt tax. Think Early America and the Boston Tea Party. Hit 'em in their MONEY. Billions of dollars for these crapass, insecure, hackable, Bushite-controlled, shiny new election theft machines--and they sit idle because no one will use them!

An Absentee Ballot protest may also help with voter turnout (needed to overcome the "thumb on the scales" that the machines are giving to Bushites, warmongers and corporatists). It will give people hope that their vote might MEAN SOMETHING--joining with others to protest things as they are. Absentee Ballot voting has gotten popular all on its, by individual citizen action and word of mouth. With help from activists, it could snowball, and could bring the end of the election theft machines, all by itself.

Then we have momentum to get rid of the central electronic tabulators. Then we have American Revolution II--the peaceful one.

Bumper sticker: "Bust the Machines--Vote Absentee!"

[IndianaGreen]

1. All we need to do is reverse everything that Bush has done

I must admit that your ideas about all of us voting by absentee ballot to minimize machine fraud sounds like a damned good strategy.

[Arkansas Granny]

2. I intend to vote by absentee ballot. In Arkansas you don't

have to give a reason and you can take it to the County Clerk in person, mail it or even fax it in.

[EST]

3. Utopia forever! I love it!

Please explain to me how absentee voting is superior.
It seems to me that absentee just places even more of the process in the hands of the miscreants, with even more time and convenience, to "adjust" the votes. If it happens that the folks in charge of the election think republican, they can guarantee the ruling junta stays in power forever.

[Peace Patriot]

6. I'm not saying that AB voting is the answer. I'm saying it's a PROTEST.

Big difference. And the thing is, it's already happening--people don't trust the machines, so they get an Absentee Ballot in protest, with many thinking that this will insure that their vote is counted. They are mistaken, but that doesn't really matter. They are PROTESTING. And if enough people do it (and many are), it will literally mean OBSOLESENCE for the machines! If nobody will vote on them, what good are they? And what does THAT say about this rigged system?

Now. NOW you have something. You have a huge rebellion against the Bushite-installed and controlled voting machines. I'm talking about MOMENTUM for change. AB voting--like the Montgomery bus boycott, and the Gandhian salt protest--can't solve everything at once. But these kinds of protests make the POINT. They started things rolling. They symbolize EVERYTHING ELSE. The Boston Tea Party. Like that.

And it's so EASY! Everybody can do it! Not everybody can go to meetings, and file lawsuits, and protest, etc. What can people do? They can VOTE ABSENTEE as part of a massive protest against the rigged election system.

This will

1. In the immediate instance, throw a big monkey wrench into the system. They'll have to hire thousands of people to word process/scan the AB votes. --while their multi-million dollar election theft machines sit idle.

2. With a lot of people--say, 70%, 80%--voting Absentee, this will put great pressure on election officials to handle these votes more respectfully and lawfully. And it will bring much bigger scrutiny to vote counting in general.

3. It will result in big publicity for election reform. It has to! 70% of the people voting Absentee as a protest against the machnes is NEWS--whether they like it or not!

4. What do they do NEXT? Maybe, try to outlaw AB voting. But then you have a rebellion! With 70% of the people voting that way, the options for the election thieves become limited.

5. Politicians start coming out in favor of transparent elections. The lid is off. The "Iron Curtain" is down. The people themselves have "broken the dam" on the issue.

6. They will probably try to save Optiscans, and "trade secret" vote tabulation in the central tabulators. But I don't think they will be able to. People want paper ballots, hand-counted. That is clearly what AB voters are SAYING.

7. And from here, we get a cascade. Transparency becomes the watchword for vote counting. We have activists closely monitoring the upcoming elections, challinging results, filing lawsuits; we have politicians breaking free from orthodox blindness to the non-transparency; we have 70% of the people with some level of awareness of the vote rigging, and protesting it with AB voting. We have non-transparent vote counting becoming THE ISSUE.


I keep asking people who object to pushing AB voting as a protest--people like Wilms, who have good reasons (they don't want people to RELY on AB voting to get their vote COUNTED--and he's right): What do you propose? We have an election coming in November with all the voting systems riggable. And you can be damned sure that the Bushites, warmongers and corporatists are going to use that capability. They've done it before. They'll do it again. Our vote counting is controlled by Bushite corporations, with TRADE SECRET PROGRAMMING! How can that be remedied before November? It cannnot be!

So, WHAT do we do? We don't have enough activists to monitor and challenge all these rigged elections, and we have corrupt election officials everywhere. (That's what the $4 billion from HAVA and the unregluated lavish lobbying were all about--corrupting everybody!)

WHAT do we do?

Ordinary citizens are ALREADY protesting it, by choosing to vote by AB! Let's go with that! Push it! Make it bigger! Make it huge! And bring this rigged voting system down!

[Sammy Pepys]

9. What governing body....

...is going to be responsible for declaring/legislating these changes and who will be responsible for enforcing them?

[Terran1212]

4. Kucinich President Barbara Lee VP

Hey, you wanted to know how far left -- I told ya.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Your proposals may seem utopian to some, but...

that is NOT a bad thing.

Always begin negotations by stating what your most desired outcome would be. Reach for the moon.

Then, if you're forced to compromise, you will get at least SOME of what you want.

Don't put limits on yourself from the beginning, because then you'll get almost nothing of what you want.

[EST]

11. Agreed!

Wish we could actually create a utopia. Who was it--Bacon, maybe--who said, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?
Anyway, you say it well--if we only aim for what we know to be attainable, who is to judge what really might be attainable?

No victory was ever won by aiming to be an also-ran, except by luck, and we certainly can't depend on that.

[rucky]

7. False choice.

We don't need to get left as much as we need to get clean.

Edit: Upon actually reading the body of the post, those policies listed are fantastic. I would love to see all of those policies implemented soon.

[rinsd]

8. This is a practical guide (ie; realistic)????!!???

[KamaAina]

10. Community-based prisons?

These would be something along the lines of halfway houses, right? I mean, who wants to give directions to their house like "Turn left just past the barbed wire, then turn right across from the guard tower, and I'm the second house on the left"?

[Peace Patriot]

12. Yes, community-based prisons, where the idea is to keep good integration

between prisoners and their community, to make it easy and pleasant for family and friends to visit, and to get rid of this horrible idea of a barbed wire cage, where humans are treated like animals, and where people who have merely made a mistake in their lives are locked up together in a confined space with others who may be more criminally-minded, with little outside contact. Prisons are little better than CONCENTRATION CAMPS now--inhuman places where gangs are fostered, and where the guards become callous and brutal. These are hothouses of crime, where the rapes that occur and the brutality are used by the police in conversation with young people, as threats. I've heard them do it! This is not a good attitude! Instead of calling for reforms, they use these terrible conditions to intimidate and bully. Further, police/guard brutality can be better monitored by the community that it affects, if the prison is closer to the community. If you take people off and cage them far away from their communities, abuse is facilitated. One more thing: Black convicts are deprived of their right to vote, and then are removed far away from their urban neighborhood, to sparsely-populated, white, rural areas, where their BODIES are counted for redistricting purposes (while they are in prison there), to ADD to the power of the white voters, and REDUCE the number of black votes in urban areas. What a disgusting practice! And it tells you a lot about the purposes of the prison-industrial complex.

Most non-violent convicts shouldn't even be in jail. Jail is a "cruel and unusual punishment"--given current conditions (for instance, critical overcrowding--4 people to a cell, where only 1 was intended by the architects). 10 years of living like a caged animal, with the constant threat of rape or other brutality-- for petty theft? --when we have people stealing billions in Washington DC--in the White House and the Pentagon? It is unconscionable! And once a person is in that system, they are often lost to a good and decent life.

The policies of "three strikes" and capital punishment--and the MONEY to be made by incarcerating people CHEAPLY--have created a horror. We have the worst prison system in the civilized world. And why is it that THIS is the destination of many of our poor young people from the moment they are born--in this wealthy society where others are billionaires? (And the line between, as to behavior, is very thin, indeed, if it exists at all.) It's all screwed up. And we've got to begin somewhere straightening out our priorities, and creating respect and hope and love in our society. These medieval torture dungeons are not the way. (And it's interesting that some of the bad actors in our prison system here--who were so bad they were removed here--were sent over to Abu Ghraib to create THAT horror.) Our prison system is a SICK culture, fed by a sick justice system, which produces little by way of justice. So, I think we should begin with an amnesty for all non-violent offenders. Shut some of these prisons down, and use the money to HELP THESE PEOPLE.

Even ancient kings and potentates used to do amnesties. We never do. It creates rot and corruption.

[KamaAina]

13. Excellent points.

In particular, one wonders about the constitutionality of counting prisoners as "residents" for redistricting purposes when they cannot vote. As far as making it easy for people to visit, would you believe that some Hawai'i inmates are incarcerated on the mainland?! (There was once a prison riot over the fact that mainland prisons serve potatoes rather than rice!) No place here, not even one in economic straits, is willing to accept a new prison, so the prison-industrial complex has actually built prisons in places like Arizona just to house our overflow inmates! :grr:

Then again, once the rest of your platform is implemented, I would predict that the population of criminal offenders, especially violent ones, would shrink drastically, to the point where the logistics of implenting such a program would become more manageable.

[Vidar]

14. You have my vote: a very wise, moral list of proposals. K&R.