Introduction to American Radicalized Sociopolitical Movements in Informationalism and the Network Society

a working paper by

Russell Cole

After becoming versed in this typically neglected aspect to the American story [Populism and the People’s Party], I became fixated on the truly unique poignancy it deserved in any narration of American sociopolitical history; one characterized, in most every other instance, as a historical rendering that has obfuscated class; economic inequality; as well as stratifications extant within sociopolitical institutions; all of which can be conceptualized – although they rarely happen to be – along patrician and plebeian dimensions. This stratification has persisted for so long and it has had such a profound influence upon the cultural codes circulating through American social formations that it has gone unmarked in the preponderance of American discourse.

It should not be understated the impact that implicit sociocultural traditions have upon the surface reality, the veneer of American politics. As Tocqueville pointed to, Americans rarely voiced radicalized sentiments toward their sociopolitical institutions and their operations. In fact, as he considered, American democracy – in the form it assumed – might not be possible without such willing obedience among the population of America.

The deferential posture that Americans have been conditioned to assume in relation to civil and political institutions reinforces this lack of discursive treatment of a society divided along elitist and commoner lines. American history, by and large, has been accounted for under the pre-determinacy of Whiggishness, discounting enduring quasi-caste distinctions as if they are temporal aberrations, epiphenomena to an underlying narrative that ultimately tells of America’s advancement toward an increasingly democratic condition. There are, of course, notable exceptions to American Whig renditions of history, such as The People’s History of the United States. However, another treatment of these issues is by no means a contribution to an already saturated field of political sociological inquiry.

Coming to Terms with Populism

As both a result of my new interest in an organization that called itself the Populist Party of America as well as a family history - although fairly distant at this point in time - that included political participation in populism - I began researching the history of this movement, which presented itself in its fullest embodiment in the form of the People’s Party. After becoming versed in populism, I was awe struck at what appeared to be an under treated anomaly when in taken in the purview of the overall course of American sociopolitical history: a narrative that persistently omits accounts of sociopolitical and economic inequality; a lack of criticality that contributes to a facade of civic egalitarianism originally manifested in what has become the persisting mythology of Jeffersonian republicanism. This false ideology configures a conceptualization of American political relations, which neglects to recognize the influences had upon political opportunity by the material conditions belonging to the economy.

The Jefferson’s early articulation of Libertarianism exclaimed the virtues of the citizen agriculturalist; a body collectively composed of citizens who stood side by side one another in lateral sociopolitical uniformity. Thus economic class was left unconceived in the Jeffersonian account of American sociopolitical relations, and, needless to say, such an account failed to address the impact that economic inequalities, or class, had upon the feasibility of each citizen coequally affecting the public policies of the American state[4].

Populism – as it was incepted in economic affairs of the Midwestern and Southern farmer in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century – was an emergent pattern of economically directed intellectualism, which – through processes of its development – came to identify itself as a political movement with a more prodigious agenda than mere economic reform. Furthermore, it was a consequence of organic intellectual social processes. By that, populism culminated largely out of social mechanisms that existed independently from the institutional guard belonging to the Academe and other vested interests. Of course, populism was affected by Marxism, and, on occasion, in some of its expressions, it appeared proto-Marxist. However, the populist critiques of the economy and, in particular, the finance and monetary systems proved to be not only original and penetrating, but, additionally, they ultimately served as the precipitants of economic reforms that had lasting legacies.

For instance, the contemporary conceptualization of the free-market is heavily indebted to the populist movement in America. It was through populism that legislative fixtures intended to promote free-market competition, such as anti-trust and anti-monopolistic statutes, came to regulate the practices of capitalist interests. Indeed, we can go so far as to say that it was through populism that the modern conception of the free-market came about. Even more, it was due to its emphasis upon a competitive market[5] that the Democratic Party was amenable to the infusion of the populist ideology into its platform, which would come to mark its public disposition throughout the first half of the Twentieth Century. I realize that many students of American political history would delineate among the Populist era: the period when Bryan was the leading figure; and the Progressive era – associated with Wilson, as well as, the New Deal, which, of course, was the domestic policy of FDR. No matter, as John Gerring has demonstrated through a careful content analysis of American Party rhetoric, the consistencies among the three proposed eras out-weighed the significance of the differences demonstrable in the three proposed historical periods of Democratic Party ideology.

Many discount the ethical accomplishments of the People’s Party, which was the first to embrace multiple racial identities; the first to include women in its organizations, prior even to Women’s suffrage; and the first to demand in a recognizable voice the democratization of various political institutions that had been, till then, the decision-making province of political elites. Recourse to the denial of populism as an event that demonstrated advanced ethical and moral sensibilities on the part of its conceivers, promoters, and adherents is typically sought through citing aspects of the multi-faceted social critique leveled by populism, with the intended result of identifying internal inconsistencies in the populist ideology.

For instance, one of the more prevalent criticisms of populism is that it reflected a racial tolerance while, concurrently, possessing a nativist agenda. However, this criticism speaks more of the lack of analytical faculties by those who make such a claim as it points to the lack of sophistication in the populist social critique formed in reflection of the American gilded age. I am always dumbfounded each and every time I find myself explaining to detractors of populism that there is no a priori analytical relationship between nativism and racism. Although there might be empirical relationships between the two conditions, where nativists tend also to be racists, this has nothing to do with the People’s Party, per se. America was already a multi-racial society prior to populism’s emergence, and the nativist policies taken up in the advocacies of the People’s Party were not latent with racial discrimination. Objecting to undesirable immigration is not necessarily predicated upon race. Instead, as in the case of the People’s Party, it was based upon the impact that particular elements of any society might bring about if permitted to migrate to the United States.

Additionally, and this should be apparent to anyone who has expended any efforts, at all, when attempting to come to terms with American immigration – despite the conventional wisdom, belonging to American economics – which we are persistently instructed to embrace and believe – immigration does not proportionally benefit all sectors of the economy. One such group that certainly does not experience positive outcomes resulting from immigration consists of those who dwell in the middle and lower tiers of the labor market. Immigration both diminishes the value of labor in every sector of the economy to which its skills happen to apply, as well as, posing obstructions to the successful formation of cooperative institutions, either constituting organized labor, or qualifying as the financial cooperatives, such as credit unions, that leverage the monetary resources of those who are excluded from the many implicit trusts that dominate the financial industries controlled by organized-capitalism.

Indeed, the recent revelations concerning the use of Visas for the import of labor to be employed in the technology sectors of the economy reinforces the conclusion that immigration is not advantageous for labor. Despite the conventional wisdom, as it turns out, the overwhelming preponderance of Information Technology workers who are allowed entry into the United States are in the lower strata of the technocratic hierarchy comprised of Information Technology laborers. Therefore, America is not taking in the best and the brightest; rather, corporate America is merely increasing productivity by importing cheap labor that is only qualified to work in the most entry level of positions in an organization’s IT infrastructure. This – topped with the fact that wage stagnation, in recent history, has been an enduring feature of the employment market for the middle and working classes – indicates that immigration is only beneficial for those who dwell in the higher socio-economic tiers of American social relations; the ownership classes belonging to corporate America.

Another ill conceived critique of populism consists of instances where commentators remark upon the internal inconsistency of populism’s anti-statism along with many of its ‘socialist’ sentiments. It is true that populism called for the nationalization of the railroading industry as well as the banking industry. However, unlike what nearly amounts to ideological absolutism on the part of contemporary Libertarians, the populists were not constrained when devising possible solutions for social problems by a conviction that all instances of government should be curtailed, even in scenarios where the absence of government intervention appears to create a more undesirable social condition. Additionally, populism and its instances of economic cooperatives is more an expression of anarchistic sensibilities than anything approaching socialism. Certainly, no one can credibly contend that organic cooperatives intended to extricate the American farmer from his social positioning that amounted to serfdom was motivated out of an affinity of statist institutions. Indeed, it was only until such endeavors proved to be ineffective against the trusts that had been established by organized-capitalism that the populist movement became politicized.

This is not to say that populism – especially when taken up by the Democratic Party – did not come to reflect a pro-statist position on the majority of matters qualifying as issues of public concern. Nevertheless, this ideological posture on the part of Democratic populists was perceived as a necessity in order to guard against the publicly harmful excesses of what came to be called “predator elites” in the economy. To paraphrase The Great Commoner; also known as William Jennings Bryan:

Men are the creation of God. Corporations are the creation of man, and what man creates man can destroy.

In respect to this – which can be identified with less ambiguity as the regulatory measures needed to quell the popularly harmful greed of the corporation – that the adoption of a pro-statist approach toward public policy reveals its real character: Government was a device of necessity, and the pro-statism of the Democratic populists should not be conflated – in its interpretation - with the authoritarianism embodied by the Whig-Republicans and their mercantilist conception of political and economic social relationships.

Finally, what more that can be said about populism arises from an inference that is generated from mechanisms that are alien to the processes of scholarly research, but deserves mentioning, nonetheless. The populist movement seemed to stimulate the activation of ethical dispositions belonging to the social characters of those who would come to be participate in this movement. Individuals, whose ideologies had been immured in white supremacist backdrops, eventually identified with African-Americans, as social agents with whom they suffered the exploitations engendered by common same social conditions. In fact, there are accounts of former slave owners coming to advance the causes of African-Americans by serving as chairs to African-American farmer alliances.

Therefore, rather than specifically addressing fabricated shortcomings of the People’s Party, it is more worthwhile for a student of political sociology to treat the aspects belonging to this movement that set it apart from nearly all other facets of the American experience. Specifically, what strikes the attention of the epistemic agent – who is not predisposed to dismiss the accomplishments of the various farmer alliances and the People’s Party, which they came to establish – is the fact that these dissolute, degraded, and politically inexperienced agrarians could come to mount the most redoubtable third-party insurgence to the duopoly embedded in partisan politics in the whole of American history.

Families in the Midwest and South – who dwelled in a social condition where observances of women and children afoot in bare feet was commonplace – arose from a state of sociopolitical ignorance to one of penetrating insight and criticism upon American social relations. Even more, the political ideology developed by populists was emergent, composed from intellectual processes that were organic. Additionally, the populists were faced – when developing this intellectual formation – with constructing their own social institutions through which their knowledge could be manufactured as well as disseminated. Journals needed to be published and circulated. Travelling lecturers had to be trained and financially supported. Financial schemes had to be creatively fostered a deployed in an attempt to coerce other economic agencies into bargaining directly with the farmer alliances, so that the trust under which the crop-lean system[6] was actualized and enacted could be overcome. Finally, populism transcended sectionalisms – which were the by-products of superficial material conflicts in American society, such as white supremacy and its opposition to African-American interests – in order for African-Americans as well as Southern Whites to attend the same gatherings and applaud enthusiastically as the political orator explained racism as an instrument used by Southern elites to deflect the attention of the farmers from their real adversaries, whom Blacks and Whites commonly faced.

The Contemporary Significance of Populism

Recently, I had listened to a service given by a Unitarian Church in New York, which commemorated the outing of the Pentagon Papers. At this service, I became audience to descriptions of the subversive inner-workings of activists responsible for the publication of these documents, which were entered into the Congressional Record by Gravel, and, finally, published in book form by a Unitarian publishing syndicate. I was struck by words that were spoken in reference to Gravel that remarked upon an aspect to American culture where Americans are taught – from the time they assume comfort upon a parent’s lap – to, “avoid looking silly,” or foolish; to avoid orating that which strays beyond the comfortable parameters of orthodoxy. According to the wisdom embedded in this shared stock of social knowledge, not adhering to such standards would render the speaker as suspect to aspersions labeling him or her as a crackpot or a voice from the margins of society to be dismissed, because he or she conveys sentiments that are outside of the recognizable: the familiar domestic environment qualifying as the mainstream.[i]

In contrast to the insightful words spoken of Gravel and his current candidacy for the Democratic Nomination, in recent weeks, I have also heard a speech given by Bill Clinton during the memorial for Arthur Schlesinger. Clinton’s - in remarks that can only be interpreted as self-congratulatory - lauded Lincoln, who had also given oratory at the theater where the service was being held, for attempting to reach out to the, “Great American center,” prior to the collapse of the Nation into civil war. According to Clinton, Lincoln’s initial attempt to avoid confrontation, by remaining amenable to slavery as long as it did not extend into new territories and states, demonstrated an understanding of the great American center and how it allows for progress to be made during intervals belonging to a larger cyclical pattern; where the mushy middle of American politics would slightly tip its balance toward the Left or toward the Right. During instances where the Left was favored, small, incremental steps of progress could be made. However, it required a savvy leader who could continue to appeal to the middle, in order to coax the Country in the right direction without inciting a backlash by introducing proposals that were too radical, which would entail too abrupt a departure from the trails that had already been worn into easily transverse paths.

What are we to make out of these two contrasting stylizations of political existentiality? It is in respect to this question - more than anything else - that has led me to firmly believe that populism has a role to play in the development of the sociology of democracy. My understandings of populism are primarily derived from the historian, Goodwyn, who possessed the uncommon tenacity for summarizing the necessary antecedents for an authentically democratic insurgency to unfold: First, a group must obtain the institutional autonomy needed to formulate a conceptualization of sociopolitical mechanisms operative in a political structure, which foments in contradistinction, and in to varying extent, opposition to the preemptive orders of knowledge and the sociopolitical institutions that are arranged under the cloak of legitimacy derived from these hegemonic discourses. However, as Goodwyn wisely points out, such a development - an alternative episteme - is not, in and of itself, sufficient for democratic insurgency. In America in particular, there is a long untreated - yet, all too pervasive - posture of deference habitually assumed by commoners in relations to the established institutional guards of sociopolitical power. Without a shaking off of the deference toward institutions of the old guard encumbering the shoulders of those - who have long been conditioned to internalize the identity of plebiscite - the provision of an alternative interpretation of the Human Condition - currently embodied in the way things stand - would fail to incite the mobilizing of masses.

According to this parsimonious and elegant rendering of the necessary conditions for a democratic insurgency to take root, Goodwyn goes on in his minor masterpiece, A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt, to catalog the events that culminated in the establishment of the People’s Party. The process that resulted in the type of psychic characteristics necessary for democratic insurgency was a slow incremental process, involving quite a few setbacks and failures on the part of the various farming alliances as they initially endeavored to extricate their members from the crop lien system, which basically amounted to a trust comprised of financial interests along with manufacturing - both of which maintained credit as well as distributional relationships with local town agents, who dealt directly with the farmers. These relationships that were established and protected by the these interests precluded the farmers from entering into the necessary financing arrangements for them to bypass the insufferable arrangements imposed upon them by the local town agents, who extorted as much as possible from the farmers each time the farmer was forced to obtain credit for the oncoming year.

It is in these considerations that Web 2.0 assumes significance. The democratization of representational spaces in civil society fosters both the intellectual autonomy necessary to form alternative sociopolitical interpretations as well as the political self-respect necessary to abandon to the deferential posture assumed in relation to the institutions of the old guard.

[1] The Green Party has associations with other Green Parties that exist in other states around the globe. However, these relationships are loosely defined and often more symbolic than anything else.

[2] The Populist Party of America is a micro-party that was incepted 2002, and is based in Las Angeles. At this point in time – with some exceptions – it is a virtual community that is radicalized. The exceptions consist of activism – involving activities such as the distribution of literature – that has taken place in the Las Angeles area.

[3] Grounded Theory is the approach that is typically assumed by sociologists who perform ethnography

[4] As Charles Goodwyn has pointed out, the Jeffersonian ideology was a major obstacle to the political radicalization of the populist movement.

[5] Free-trade was a staple of the Democratic ideology during the period when it opposed the mercantilist protectionism of the Whig-Republicans.

[6] The crop-lean system was enacted by the trust of economic relationships assumed by financial firms, manufacturers, and local town agents, who extorted farmers for as great as a share of the yearly productions of agricultural commodities by withholding credit that was necessary for the farmer to procure the manufactured supplies that were a requisite for planting and harvesting in the oncoming season.

[i] The Pentagon Papers Then and Now: Unitarian Universalists Confronting Government Secrecy

http://www.uua.org/events/generalassembly/2007/presentations/30971.shtml; UUA

Tags: constitution, corporations, democracy, direct democracy, economics, education, Farmers, government, history, labor, legislation, politics, populist party, self governance, Social Change, society, sociology, third parties
Categories: Commentary, Economics, Society, Populist Party, Democracy, constitution, government, Education, self-governance, Politics, Third Parties, Legislation, Labor, Farmers, Corporations, Direct Democracy, Social Change, Sociology, History
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Rep. Ron Paul has taking the most unfortunate stance in response to the legislation under consideration, which would extend Federal Hate Crime statutes to instances of hate motivated crimes that are perpetrated against gays and cross-gendered. Reverting to the less intellectually endowed Republican rhetoric - deviating from his more interesting and, often, more reasonable Libertarian slant - he contends that provisioning Federal authority for purposes ensuring the Constitutional Liberties of these historically persecuted groups - in fact - discriminates against those who wish
to discriminate - to extremes where crimes are committed - against these vulnerable identities in our society. Additionally, in the tradition of Liberalism, he contends that laws can only reference individuated agents in society; a monadic conception of of the composite of agents and agencies constituting humanity; a premise upon which Liberal juridical-politico discourse is built.

Link to Paul’s letter:

http://www.populistamerica.com/unconstitutional_legislation_threatens_freedoms

Nevertheless, Liberal individualism conceals the effects of hegemonies, that enforce their own cultural dispositions upon other subcultures as behaviorally demonstrable requisites for participating in the institutions embedded in the social fabric. The form of individualism promoted by Liberalism is not the natural, appropriate state of humanity; rather, it is the product of an historically situated cultural condition that has been naturalized into the ontology by the members of the preemptive discourse in American society, who, in turn, identify those who fail to conform as social deviants, who are the justified targets of the bigotry; the hatred; the exclusion; and, worse, the objects of attack that are committed persistently in order to reinforce the alienated and inferior status of these marginalized groups.

The consideration that makes this legislation so abundantly necessary stems from the failure of states and municipalities to protect these social identities, so they - the sexual minorities who are perceived as deviant - can exercise the freedoms enjoyed by all other members of society.

Nevertheless, I do not want to appear callous toward the plight of bigots who are afraid of losing their privileges to practice bigotry against the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in society. However, we must consider from historical insight the following: If not for Federal intervention, the schools in the South appeared to possess little chance of entering into a state of desegregation. The crucial matter that justifies this legislation revolves around the necessity of expanding the Federal Government’s jurisdiction, allowing for Federal law enforcement to intercede where states and municipalities
turn tail. Remember, in order for Southern schools to abandon the institutional arrangements of Jim Crow South, Eisenhower was compelled to use the Air Force.

The simple fact of the matter is we are not all treated with the same dignity and expectations of negative rights, as if we were only individuals; not latent with any group identifications, such as African American or gay. Consequently, to bring closure to this rather parsimonious analysis, we are left with the task of determining what assumes greater saliency: The rights of bigots to practice their hate against the vulnerable? Or, the rights of minorities to enjoy a life free from fright, humiliation, and negations of social and personal respect?

I, for one, am partial to the latter.

Russell Cole

Tags: bill of rights, constitution, government, history, legislation, society
Categories: Society, constitution, bill of rights, government, Legislation, History
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An assessment of the political landscape following the Midterm Elections, which analyzes the opportunities and the best course of actions for the new Democratic Majorities…An Article by Dave, who forgot to provide us with his last name. However, we have an address to a Weblog that is published by Dave at the following URI:

URI: http://le-enfant-terrible.blogspot.com/

On November 7th I voted.

Many may see this statement as surprising–either because they assumed anyone with left-of-center politics will naturally be very excited about the elections or because they know me and assumed that I wouldn’t. In general I don’t put much faith in voting. It is essentially a chance every several years to legitimize the broader set of relations within society. To the extent it allows us to actually choose among leaders it is often a choice of imperialisms, a choice of capitalisms etc.

This year I felt differently. This election was widely viewed as a referendum on the Iraq war and the aggressive nationalism of the Bush administration. The stunning rebuke to the Republican party is an important tool for re-orienting the political climate, for establishing that the country as a whole is unhappy with the Iraq war and government corruption. It has heightened the sense of cost that politicians feel in supporting the Iraq war (Ned Lamont’s primary victory was also absolutely crucial in this) and in forcing elites towards consideration of an exit strategy sooner rather than later. As opposition to the Vietnam war created the “Vietnam Syndrome” and a reluctance to commit American military forces worldwide, we can only hope that we are creating an “Iraq Syndrome” that will help prevent future pre-emptive wars and aggressive militarism. By giving Democrats subpoena powers we put in motion a process that will surely reveal facts about the preparation/execution of the war that will further increase popular outrage. I also felt that splitting the power of government between parties would help curb a range of excesses that have resulted in vastly increased government surveillance power. Finally, the proposition in my state would have banned not only marriage (which I think should be a purely religious affair, untouched by government) but also any form of legal arrangement that was similar to marriage such as civil unions or domestic partnerships.

We should be careful, however, in hailing the new balance of power. In terms of the Democratic agenda there are some issues. During the election the Democrats were careful to avoid a specific platform, but since the election they have been promoting their “Six in ‘06″–six goals to accomplish after coming into power. The items are:

-increase the minimum wage
-negotiate for lower prescription drug prices
-restore 12.5 billion dollars in cuts for higher education
-use $15 billion in oil subsidies and use it for “energy independence”
-reinstitute “Pay-Go” rules (any new tax cut or spending must be offset elsewhere)
-vote on the 9/11 Commission recommendations

Now, some of these I have no issue with. Increasing the minimum wage is good (although it will likely not be by very much and they will probably still fail to index it to inflation so it automatically increases with the cost of living). Negotiating for lower drug prices is good, but its main effect is to just decrease the cost of existing healthcare programs (will those savings be used to cover the tens of millions without insurance? or increase the quality of healthcare?). $12.5 billion to help people with college costs is good (but is nothing within an over $2 trillion federal budget, and will these funds actually help break class barriers to college, or will it only help defray the cost to the upper-middle class?). Ending tax cuts for oil companies is good (but “energy independence” has been picked up as a catch-all phrase including tax breaks to oil companies for domestic drilling and investment in technologies that are already economically viable on their own). The Pay-Go rules are perhaps the biggest issue but they come too late to stop the massive GOP tax giveaways and commit the Democrats to fiscal straitjacket in the future. The one I have the least concern about is the 9/11 recommendations implementation. I have not seen the full list, and there may be objectionable changes, but instituting measures that don’t compromise civil liberties and that actually reduce terrorism (i.e. not racial profiling, not massive data mining) is a good thing.

You will likely notice that nowhere is there anything about Iraq. The Democrats would prefer to have this off the table at the moment. Iraq makes for a good election issue, but they are now stuck between advocating some form of withdrawal (which they are unwilling to do) and advocating some other strategy to control the country for America’s benefit (which means they have to tone down the rhetoric and agree with many statements the right is making). Some Democrats are willing to actively engage, but their plans often revolve around maximizing US leverage in Iraq. The event that may alter this political hesitancy and incoherence is the release of the James Baker III/Iraq Study Group report. The report will give massive political cover for politicians to support a bipartisan re-alignment of American foreign policy along Realist lines (crack down on Shia regional power, shift back towards American backing of dictatorships to enhance regional stability).

We should remember that the left need not be simply a Democratic interest group, it can be a powerful social force. Conservatives may now be for the moment wedded to the GOP, but they grew powerful as a social movement in the 1950s & 1960s through local campaigns, awareness raising and building a mass base around people’s grievances. The height of the American labor movement’s power was in the 1930s & 1940s as it waged a relentless struggle to increase wages and expand social programs. The New Social Movements that coalesced in the 1960s & 1970s achieved the most social change when they were vibrant, active movements that challenged existing social relations. The Civil Rights and Black Power movements completely upended the existing power structure of the country by mobilizing African Americans to collectively and directly challenge racist institutions, racist practices and unequal systems of wealth.

Sometimes social change requires legislation. Occasionally you need to play the inside game of electoral strategies and lobbyists to achieve a particular objective. Too many people on the left, however, are at risk of being caught up in the game of the big non-profits and politicians whose business it is to talk a good game. We should remember that between Nixon and Clinton, Nixon was by far the more liberal president. When the Democrats finally captured the presidency the result was NAFTA, GATT, welfare “reform” and more. Earlier in his term, when Clinton attempted to lift the ban on gays in the military and expand health coverage both failed because the conservative movement had achieved so much in terms of reworking the political landscape and the terms of debate. The Democrats will say to the left: “Settle down, we’re doing what we can while staying in office.” The reality is that this is true; that’s why the left cannot make its agenda putting Democrats in office.

Tags: congress, democracy, Democrats, Elections, left, legislation, National, politics, war
Categories: Commentary, National, Democracy, Politics, Legislation, Congress
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An Article by
Robert T. Melaccio Sr.

The making or creation of wealth has only one goal and this is the creation of more wealth. It seems that in today’s Global market that when it comes to gaining wealth it does not matter where or with whom. It matters not about people or anything else. Making money is solely about increasing the bottom line. The history books of life are filled with those facts. Yes, when required it even will supplant loyalty and allegiance to nations, friends and even family.

Here is an example of what I am talking about. The newspaper today had an article about North Korea. In it they defined this vast cheap labor base just waiting to be exploited. It talked about China and how even they are fast becoming too “costly”. In fact several Western European nations have already been exploiting this fact in North Korea while we as a nation have been on the sidelines. In fact they state the manufacturing potential is excellent. Swiss companies are already manufacturing game software there.

Now what about U.N. sanctions? Well if you have any intelligence at all you know these are meaningless.

So just what does that mean to us here in America? In my opinion it means we have already passed the point of being a power as we used to be and are on the decline in everything but service industry, investing and making money. Even our Military, although they say otherwise cannot possibly fight two wars at once. Although they will say we are there are just zero resources left to commit anywhere else. That’s people and that’s equipment, etc. Very soon we will realize the effects of this slow dismantling of our capabilities for the Global ideology. It will require more on us taxpayers, as they have to replace what isn’t on the shelf. Our military runs on parts made over seas, perhaps even in China and countries against our way of life produce critical components we must have.

The swamping of the nation with Illegal workers has and will continue to drive down worker pay and benefits and cost the citizens in increasing billions as well as changing the face of the nation. We have lost a considerable amount of our manufacturing capability and what we have left are assembly plants.

Well how can you say that just look at how strong our economy is and certainly we have the mightiest military? Well why bother to even write on this. If you don’t know who has it you never will. Yes, the global dream may not have impacted you but it has already changed the face of America and it will never be in my opinion, as we once knew it. People are making money and that is those who have it already. As for the military we are depending on robots to do the job. Technologically strong yes, boots on the ground and ground holding capability, no.

I had a problem with a cell phone the other day. I got to speak or at least attempted to speak to someone and wound up talking to two people in Mexico. Prior to that it was Argentina. In fact I was surprised I did not get India. I finally called corporate headquarters and they did help me. This is after two days of being unable to get anyone to even understand just what I was saying. Their “service” policy was we are “family’. Their response when I informed them they would not pass me through to someone in America was “we are an international organization”. You know what I told that representative? Be happy with your job while you have one.

So as for us my fellow whatever the heck we are these days, enjoy what you have now, get used to low wages, no benefits and working until you drop and working the off the books jobs. No gloom and doom from me just the truth if you want to accept it. That is your choice just like everything else you do in life. Yes that $7.25 will be a blessing if someone will hire you when they can get a Mexican for much less. Yes, even the churchgoers do it and have no problem. Just ask those who hire the millions of illegal workers and show up in the pew on Sunday.

As I said making money has only one allegiance as the title says. To those who foster this I can only say no man takes their riches with them. You are reaping what you sow for you and yours but will it be what you think it will?

Tags: allegiance, corporations, economics, economy, foreign policy, free trade agreements, Global, government, labor, legislation, money, National, outsourcing jobs
Categories: Commentary, National, Global, Economics, government, Legislation, Corporations, Foreign Policy
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An Article by:

Susan Hutson

Ohio – a state consisting of 21 electoral votes – declares a law that essentially negates the Constitutional Right guaranteeing Due Process.

On September 1, 2006, Ohio’s Attorney General, Jim Petro, and others, including Senator Mike DeWine and other House Representatives, advocated the adoption of an Ohio law, which allows for a person to be classified as a sex offender, and, subsequently, be subjected to government monitoring as well as public humiliation – and, indeed, the possible object of retaliation by vigilantes - via the person’s picture and a name on a Website; all of which can occur without the individual ever being convicted of a crime.

This law has been coined The World’s Worst Idea Ever. People – never convicted of a sex offense – can still end up on a publicly available sex-offender registry provided for by various state agencies belonging to the State of Ohio. The law is, apparently, designed in order to provide for the publication of sex-offenders’ identities, even if the statute of limitations - amended to the criminal statutes – has transpired. It is peculiar that the State Legislature of Ohio would put forth such an initiative, which cuts at the core of Constitutional Liberties, when all that was needed was a modification to the current statutes on the books – prohibiting sexual abuses – that protracts the statute of limitations qualifying these types of criminal offenses and the terms under which they can be prosecuted.

Most alarmingly, apparently, the only indication that someone has committed a sexual offense, allowing for a person to be legally deemed as a sex-offender is an acknowledgement or judgment of punitive or compensatory responsibilities transpiring in a civil action against the party that will, subsequently, be legally defined as a sex-offender.

Editor’s Notes: The aforementioned legislation appears to have been motivated by a deal struck between the State of Ohio and the Catholic Church, where the Church can maintain its one strike and your safe but two strikes and you are out policy while, contemporaneously, providing for some safeguards against future sexual abuses – a provision compelled upon the Church by the State of Ohio – by virtue of the liturgical civil defendants’ classifications as a sex-offenders.

I think it is absurd to pass such legislation when all that needs to be done with respect to this matter is allowing for the extension of the statute of limitations in these types of crimes.

The protraction of time allowed for prosecuting sex-offenders is clearly more sensible than allowing a potentially vindictive individual – acting from motivations of mere spite; emotions not resulting from sexual victimhood – essentially ruin an individual’s reputation and livelihood through recourse to a Constitutional subterfuge, consisting of a civil adjudication – which involve the lofty presumption of innocence; nor, the burden placed upon the plaintiffs, requiring them to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

For purposes of a hypothetical, consider the following: An embittered member of a former romantic relationship pursues – through the unconstitutional legislation described above – revenge in such a profound form that it essentially strips away every life opportunity to which the afflicted individual would normally have had access, if not for an imposed, publicly declared label of a sex-offender.

The upset ex-lover could cause the other to be forbidden from seeing their children (without a liaison); the vindictive party could cause the other to lose their job; he or she could cause the subject of the accusations to be compelled to move, if living within 1,000 ft. of a school (by way the crow flies); and the individual, operating out of vengeful motivations, could inflict insufferable emotional trauma.

In addition, this law would allow an actually convicted offender, or predator, to strike a deal with the prosecution, where he or she falsely attributes guilt to another individual, causing that individual to be bestowed with a prodigious burden, necessitating the practice indefinite practice of stigma management, resulting from his or her affliction with the labeled of a sex-offender.

Do Ohioans need to have a legal document signed by everyone they know that contains a “Hold Harmless” clause, stating that the individuals with whom they have intimate relations are not being forced into sexual acts or being assaulted in a form that constitutes a sex-offence?

In order to protect one’s self from the potential retribution from a vindictive ex-lover seeking revenge through recourse to this Unconstitutional law, it, most likely, would be in everyone’s best interests in Ohio to take such safeguards.

Editor’s Notes: “Hell hast no furry like a woman’s scorn.”

Are the people who conceived of this law from this country, and do they understand America’s tradition of Due Process?

Have they considered that we are still supposed to have a Constitution? Is the legislature in the State of Ohio inept?

Should there be a major overhaul of the people who are running this state? Why has this new law been kept under the covers?

Shouldn’t everyone know they could be a target of harassment and are labeled with this?

Ohio is a very politically corrupt state, as you may well know. I once knew a woman living in Ohio, who had been set up by a disgruntled U.S. Postal Inspector, and was denied Due Process. Needless to say, nobody cared. The Inspector lied to police dispatch and said the woman was suicidal. The police went to the dark back door of the house and the Inspector met them there. When the woman came to the door, the police grabbed her and pulled her out. After the woman was put into the cruiser, the inspector entered the cruiser with the police congregating at another a distance away, and the inspector knocker her out. She was sent to jail without a mug shot and the next morning the Inspector with his business card showing he was an attorney, posed as her attorney, and told the judge to send her to a mental hospital. No Due Process! Nobody cared!

What would you do, if you fall victim to one of these constitutionally subversive provisions provided for in this legislation?

You do have an opportunity 6 years later to ask a judge to have your name removed from the list. Six years after potentially losing your children, job, financial standing, home, and respect of other members of your community, etc.

Please push for your state to protect the Right of Due Process and not allow such a horrible loss to the legal process, which once protected Americans! What is next?

Will a person be implanted with a biometric chip without their knowledge or approval?

Editor’s Notes: Will we begin to implant chips in former sex offenders, in order to guard against them committing future sexual assaults? What if the current policies in Ohio persist, allowing for people to be legally defined – without any protection or recourse provided by Due Process – as sex-offenders? A person only the subject of civil accusations might suffer the same fate as a criminally convicted person - (and I certainly do not endorse implanting a chip transmitting a serialized identification, for the purposes of tracking and surveillance, into anyone).

More ominously, programs are already being introduced to implant these tracking devices into the flesh of infants; a proposal, which would ultimately lead to surveillance by agencies operating in the sphere of law enforcement, that is being promoted under the pretense of providing a means to identify the locations of missing children. The reason I have included these remarks, pertaining to biometric chips, is that they are all interrelated. The implementation of one of these affronts to our privacies and liberties can be used to enhance government or corporate surveillance of our activities in other scenarios; such is the case with the implanted bar code chips and the endless punitions endured by those who have been convicted as sex-offenders.

Furthermore, considering the blurred distinctions between criminality and civil responsibilities, currently taking form in Ohio, we all need to be concerned for our own personhood’s, whether we possess sexual aversions or not. For this reason, we need to challenge any infringement upon the rights we, as a people, have procured, because an assault upon any person’s liberties and rights in this society can have ramifications for all of us.

R Cole

Let’s get rid of the substandard politicians!

Tags: bill of rights, constitution, due process, government, legislation, liberty, microchips, Midwest, ohio, sex offender registry
Categories: Commentary, Midwest, liberty, constitution, bill of rights, government, Legislation, Ohio
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An article by Joseph Murtagh, originally published in the Muckracker Report For the last six years, there’s been this assumption about George W. Bush that has occupied roughly the same place in people’s minds as the second law of thermal dynamics, or the existence of the moon, and which goes something like this: while the president might not be so strong on domestic issues, he’s very good at Protecting The Country From Terrorism.

Well, according to a story that came out recently, and which was mostly drowned out by the elections, the federal government’s record on fighting terrorism may not be as impressive as you think.

Researchers at Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) recently discovered that in the first nine months of fiscal year 2006 federal prosecutors rejected 87% of the international terrorism cases brought by the FBI, and the rejections have been increasing steadily since 2001.

The White House responded to the report the way they’ve always responded to empirical facts: by calling it “faulty” and “inaccurate,” and deriding its findings as “intellectually dishonest.”

Judging from last week’s election, though, I think the nation has already made up its mind about who’s being intellectually dishonest, and it’s definitely not the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. On the contrary, it’s the same bunch of yo-yos who cooked up false intelligence to dupe us into going to war with Iraq. Who held closed door meetings in Washington the day before 9/11 with a Pakistani general who a few weeks earlier had sent a $100,000 check to hijacker Mohammad Atta. Who granted no-bid contracts to a bunch of oil-rich mafia goons who were willing to sell our troops poisoned drinking water to save a buck.

And speaking of intellectual dishonesty, how about exploiting religious conservatives for political gains and then laughing about them behind their backs? Or cheating black people in Florida and Ohio out of their vote? Or leaking the name of a CIA officer to settle a political score? Or refusing to declassify important documents about 9/11? Or torturing innocent people and then lying about it? Or pretending to fight a phony war on terrorism while stealing our liberties from behind our backs?

In fact, the only honest moment in George W. Bush’s entire presidency came recently on the campaign trail when he finally admitted to voters in Nebraska the real reason why we’re in Iraq. “You can imagine a world,” he said, “in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources and then you can imagine them saying, ‘we’re going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following.’”

No wonder the Republicans lost. I think Keith Olbermann said it best on Countdown: “Having frightened us, having bullied us, having lied to us, having ignored and rewritten the Constitution under our noses, having stayed the course, having denied you’ve stayed the course, having belittled us about ‘timelines’ but instead extolled ‘benchmarks,’ you’ve now resorted, sir, to this? We must stay in Iraq to save the $2 gallon of gas?”

If you spend time with the sorts of people I spend time with, you’ll probably have cynics in your life trying to persuade you from feeling overwhelmingly joyful at the results of this election, but for the moment at least, I think you should ignore them. We’ve witnessed an extraordinary thing in this country: the checking of a powerful totalitarian movement by the will of the people, just when a lot of us were beginning to fear that the system was beyond repair. There’s nothing phony or indoctrinated about the message Americans sent to Washington on Tuesday, and when you consider that it happened in spite of one of the most vicious propaganda campaigns in modern history, Americans have all the more reason to feel proud.

But this election hasn’t changed the fact that there are still people in the world who are being tortured and maimed and killed at the hands of this administration, and it’s for their sake that we must make Bush and the rest of them pay for their crimes. Read the following to find out what you can do to make that happen:

Subpoena Power, Congressional Hearings, and Special Counsel

But in the meantime, take faith that the America of Geronimo, Jefferson, and Muhammad Ali is live and kicking.

Tags: bush, Democrats, Elections, Global, homeland security, legislation, power, Republicans, society, Terrorism
Categories: Commentary, Global, Society, Power, Legislation, Homeland Security, Terrorism
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by Stephen Neitzke

We the sovereign people are powerful beyond imagining, if we’re organized for anything. Not just casually organized for anti-war protests, flash mobs, NGOs that prop up the failed status quo, and the corrupt political parties, but formally organized into cross-country citizen action groups for every proactive anything, as well as for remedies outside the box of mega-corrupt representative govt.

A hundred years ago, such citizen organizations were driving the Reform Era — the greatest democracy movement in recorded history. Citizens then put together the greatest corruption-fighting machine ever devised by ordinary people. (See especially, “2nd Look–State Govt Unconstitutionalities Against Citizen-Proposed Law”, 08 October 2006, on my blog, DD Revival.)

Massively, seriously, formally organized outside the corruption box of of pure representative govt and its two major political parties, we can do any of the many things that have to happen so that we get our country back from the fascist superrich, corporate predators, and predator politicians. And not only get the country back, but prevent any future recurrence of a three-branch fascist despotism.

Unorganized, we’re nothing.

Organized, we can field third and fouth parties whose roles will be as minimally corrupted focus points of reform idelolgies within a national govt of direct democracy melded to nonpartisan rep govt. The DD/nonpartisan-rep-govt political dynamic is the only way to eliminate the systemic problems that led to the Bush-Cheney fascist despotism. And we desperately need third and fourth parties whose “genuine candidates” will supply the reservoir of human resources for a heavily regulated, subordinate, but still-strong representative govt.

Unorganized, we can’t reach minimal corruption — or the fascist despotism cure and preventative of DD/nonpartisan-rep-govt.

Why do you want to go on grinding your same old axes, wringing your hands, pointing fingers, doing nothing, waiting for govt to save you, staying unorganized? Why the insanity of constant repetition that always gets the same failed result in corrupt rep govt? Why put servile and failed consumerism above societal improvement — above citizen responisbility? Why do you want to be unorganized?

Organized, we could attract most of the 100 million withdrawn, non-voting citizens to help take back our country. Unorganized, we can barely attract the failed status quo’s servile of the left. Unorganized, we’re nothing.

Organized, we can form across state lines to review, question, and attack every little unconstitutional thing that our corporate-predator-owned governments are doing to us. You know that’s a lot. Unorganized, we can barely see across our towns. Unorganized, we’re nothing. Why do you want to be unorganized?

Saul Alinski’s efforts, 1940s-1970s, organized ordinary people of the left inside the system and did great things. It won’t work for us. The corruption machines won. The system is sewed up. Every traditional approach inside the failed rep govt system, that we could use to break the tyranny of fascist money-power, has been anticipated and blocked. We have to work outside the system, outside the political party corruption machines. So organizing inside the system won’t work. But Alinski had two other ideas that are still good for us. The first was — see the world the way it is — and organize. The second was — fix on the world that you want to have — and organize.

Nation-ranging citizen action groups (CAGs) can bring us that tandem vision.

Organized, we can have anything. Unorganized, we’re nothing

Organized, we can make political mountains move. Unorganized, we can barely make spit. Why do you want to be unorganized?

Organized, we can get our Reform Era legacy of constitutionally-defined, corruption fighting, direct democracy away from the unconstitutional and arbitrary controls of state govts. Organized, we have the legal power to make state govts stop the unconstitutional delays, alterations, and rejections of the constitutionally-defined, citizen-proposed law that has the power to kill corruption machines. Unorganized, we’re nothing. Why do you want to be unorganized?

Organized, our direct democracy can kill corruption machines and make representative govt strong, adding the sovereign people to the checks and balances of co-equal branches of public servants.

Unorganized, we have to sit and watch as corruption machines in all three branches of national govt collapse checks and balances, make a mockery of our rule of law, obstruct justice for constitutional and felonious criminals, privatize and negate our electoral system with fascist computer hacking, violate our Constitutional rights, commit the constant bribery of “money equals free speech” in our politics, commit felony murder against our soldiers in Iraq, commit felony murder against kidnapped detainees in a worldwide torture/murder gulag, make unconstitutional and treasonous ex post facto law to block their criminal prosecution for torture/murder in their gulag, illegally wiretap US citizen communications and bank transactions to ultimately criminalize dissent, and financially rape our nation in a hundred ways for the benefit of their globalized and stateless superrich, fatally weakening our nation for collapse in any catastrophe.

Organized, we can stop the race of fascist corporatism and the international central banking cabal into Bush’s media-hushed North American Union of US, Mexican, and Canadian fascist governing elites. Unorganized, we will just sit and watch as the treaties establishing Canusmex and central banking’s Amero currency do here what the French referendum barred from happening to the EU member nations last year.

The French 2005 referendum rejected the EU Constitution, which was nothing but an enslavement document ending all national sovereignty in the EU member nations for the benefit of fascist corporatism at its superrich owners. If we remain unorganized and Bush has his way, the NAU will set up with all of the EU Constitution’s corporate-nazi features — all of them dirty, ugly, mean, and nasty — locked up in a Canusmex treaty that we will be powerless to stop and that will become fundamental constittutional law under the US Constitution’s treaty clause.

Organized, our direct democracy and sovereign, fully independent, citizen lawmaking can end the Bush-Cheney fascist despotism, rip its unAmerican laws out of our legal fabric, imprison its treasonous constitutional criminals, heavily regulate corporations and the misuse of money in politics, prevent any recurrence of fascist despotism, and make our representative govts strong for the people. Unorganized, we’re nothing but meat on the hoof for the superrich’s slaughterhouses.

Why do you want to be unorganized?

Pick a national CAG name — CAG-USA, Direct Democracy League, I&R Federation, Citizen Law Society, Unity America, Citizens Union — whatever. Then start a chapter in your small town, city neighborhood, side of the city, local library, rural county, whatever. Claim that you are the so-and-so chapter of the national CAG name you’ve chosen. Begin organizing and advertizing your group online — and network with any other chapter using the national CAG’s name. Change your national CAG’s name if some network with a different name is attractive.

Play it by ear. Just organize, fellow babies, organize.

Stephen Neitzke [send him email] is the founder of the Direct Democracy League.  He is the author of “The State of the Republic, 1776-2004″ as well as a number of other works, which can be found at www.ddleague-usa.net and on his blog at http://ddrevival.blogspot.com/

© 2006 Stephen Neitzke

Tags: citizen lawmaking, citizens, constitution, democracy, direct democracy, government, legislation, liberty, National, north american union, organization, organize, politics, populist party, self governance, Social Change, third parties
Categories: Commentary, National, Populist Party, Democracy, liberty, constitution, government, self-governance, Politics, Third Parties, Legislation, Direct Democracy, Social Change
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Extreme Democracy (ED) is a set of technology- and sociology-bound political concepts being developed in hopes of changing the nature of representation. ED advocates want citizen activists to have a greater role in governance, mostly through digital technologies that can bring together dynamic, ever-changing, issue-driven majorities (as opposed to traditional, rigid, party-line, ideology-driven majorities). They want the representative govt — the repocracy, rule by representatives, new word to take away their false claims to democracy — to become more responsive to citizen consensus.

Unfortunately, the ED advocates don’t want this to be direct democracy (DD), which is rule by the people through constitutionally-defined governance components decided by binding referendums. In various US states, there are eight constitutionally-defined DD governance components. (See this blog’s sidebar essay, “Executive Summary of Direct Democracy”.)

The eight DD governance components are the greatest corruption-fighting package ever devised by ordinary people in the history of humankind. It was secured into the many state constitutions by the greatest democracy movement that has ever occurred: the Reform Era, circa 1898-1918. Many tens of millions of politically sophisticated Americans were directly involved. Their collective level of political sophistication so far exceeded that of today’s national civil society as to be a face-flushing embarrassment for any ethically normal person with sufficient historical information.

The predators’ Reform Era corruption machines promptly ran in unconstitutional controls of citizen-proposed law, taking away much of the corruption-fighting power that the citizens had won. We’ll come back to that.

The eight DD governance components include the election of representatives. There’s nothing mystical about elections that set them apart from referendums. Elections are nothing more than binding referendums, voted by all eligible citizens in a given jurisdiction, as all referendums are. This lack of distinction between elections and referendums becomes very important in breaking down the wall of sophistries and vacuous arguments that predator elitism uses so deftly to help them keep down the sovereign people’s DD.

In fact, in the genesis of DD, in the early 1900s, there was one primary purpose that came through in the DD literature. DD, most often referred to then as Direct Legislation. It was to achieve the genuine representative govt that the sovereign people had been promised in the Constitution — and that political corruption had robbed away.

Strangely enough, that is exactly the intent of the Extreme Democracy political philosophy.

Contrary to predator elitism’s propaganda, sophistries, and vacuous arguments, the purpose of DD was not to set up a “pure democracy” to weaken representative govt, but rather to set up citizen checks and balances on govt to strengthen it against the treasonous corruptors within and without. (See especially, The National Economic League, The Initiative And Referendum: Arguments Pro And Con By A Special Committee Of The National Economic League. � 1912, J.W. Beatson. Published at Cambridge, MA: Caustic-Claflin Co., Printers.)

One of the ED movement’s leaders, Lebkowsky, misstates DD — in distinguishing it from ED — to require that “all people must be involved in every decision in order for the process to be just and democratic.” He then turns this specious falsehood into a straw man, which he handily knocks down to show that the ED political philosophy is vastly superior.

Lebowsky has not done his homework on the legal realities of either American DD or Swiss DD. (He seems not to know that DD is a legal reality in the US, or that it exists as an intrinsic part of the Constitution’s guaranteed “republican form of govt” in 23 active I&R states.) In both nations, DD’s citizen lawmaking — formulation of new law with the initiative, or veto of legislature-made law with the referendum — is not involved with every “decision”.

In the US, thousands of unchallenged, legislature-made laws go quietly into the books every year in the 23 states in which the citizens possess DD’s veto-referendum. In Switzerland, there is a informal 90-day rule. If the sovereign people have not brought a veto-referendum within 90 days of a measure becoming law, it’s understood that they have given tacit approval to the law.

Of course, the sovereign Swiss possess the constitutional amendment initiative (CAI — the most powerful governance component in the nation), which has the power to write law directly into the constitution, indirectly wiping out any law that has become harmful by making a correcting law. There are 17 active CAI states in the US, and here as there, the CAI is the most powerful governance component in the nation..

Most DD advocates, excluding the “half-DD” elitism-fascism shills, but including especially myself, would love to see the Extreme Democracy concepts active in the civil societies of the I&R states. The ED concepts amplify participation in the democratic processes, which would include the DD processes. They also would help activate each I&R state’s civil society to organize the national citizen action groups (CAGs) that we desperately need now to combat the Bush-Cheney Usurpation with our sovereign people’s power. Additionally, the ED concepts would be invaluable aids to future Online Citizen Institutions (OCIs), much more below.

Unfortunately, ED is not a good fit for DD civil societies. It could be beneficial, if its advocates could temporarily limit its leadership analysis, but it’s not clear that the ED political philosophy can function without its full-blown leadership principles.

ED’s leadership analysis is attractive and commonsensical. It accounts for the rise of individual leaders in any horizontal, nonhierarchical organization (NHO), which, of course, ED sees itself generating. ED’s leadership analysis says that individuals who are naturally talented, effectively active, lucid, and cogent will be identified as issue-related leaders in the NHO, and will be followed by others. It says that such leaders will acquire more power than others to affect decision-making in the NHO.

Such NHO, of course, were also the products of any local or state-level DD campaign before the advent of — arrggg — money as free speech. The DD NHOs grew out of the processing needs of individual I&R and recall petitions. People who supported the issue got together and campaigned the petition into the next election/referendum.

Naturally, advocates of a future national DD system want to see DD NHOs become permanent fixtures in and around the needed OCIs, which will protect citizen business against govt intrusions, vote in agendas for their state or regional jurisdictions, develop and process I&R and recall petitions in wikis and other modules, create a deliberative and amendment “floor” for discussion of the petitions, vote amendments up or down, vote finished petitions into the formal state or national govt’s lawmaking process, coordinate most of the petition campaign’s activities, and ensure that state or national govt actively complies with any law passed by the people.

Strangely enough, all of that is on a par with, but a step up from, ED political philosophy. It’s a step up because it carries with it the sovereign people’s power that precludes govt from using its arbitrary rulings and corruption machines to block legal citizen action.

However, the deep-pockets corporate funding now possible in I&R petition campaigns — since the 1988 SCOTUS decision deemed money as free speech — has made DD organizations very different from what they were previously. The presence of big money, to buy petition signatures and to run expensive PR campaigns, automatically requires and brings managers, giving the organization an hierarchical structure.

Obviously, the ED leadership analysis cannot apply to individuals within hierarchical political organizations (HPOs). The hierarchy provides the leaders, not the grassroots group. So DD loses the ED leadership analysis that was once its reality. It loses that reality to elitist-fascist encroachment — for now. It’s about when grassroots are not grassroots. ED would also suffer in such supposedly grassroots HPOs. ED’s natural leaders could easily become disheartened. In the end, ED leaders will probably eliminate HPOs from any ED operations.

Many of us who advocate an optimum, fully independent, DD system melded to the national repocracy believe that money is not legal free speech. (Bribery is done with money, and bribery is illegal. If money were actually free speech, then bribery would ha