A bit more rambling.

Thank You Spain!

A dissenting view of Columbus Day.

A rant

Replacing the Failed American Constitutional System with a Functioning General Government; Predicated upon full and direct Popular Sovereignty

Replacing the Failed American Constitutional System with a Functioning General Government; Predicated upon full and direct Popular Sovereignty; Enforced by Universal Call Up; Under the Control of the People and their Congress: The tyranny of debt slavery, corporate misrule, and a decadent elite must end.

There was once a magic land known as the United States of America. It was free and liberty was like running water. That was about 200 years ago and it is LONG past and gone and has NO relevance to our discussion as it is MYTH.

The reality is something rather more like this:

America is and always was an oligarchy. It started out as a mixture of a landed slave owning agricultural oligarchy and a mercantile maritime/urban oligarchy vying for power, and both playing off the common castes, as and were they could. The merchants won, and so now has the commons to themselves to have it their own way, and have it there way they have.

America is now an openly and totally corrupt plutocratic oligarchy; Money openly rules over all phases of life. Our national life and our government are debased to the point that accepting evil is the normal course of events, instead of expecting good. One knows the sponge has been thrown when the best that happens by means of the electoral process is that a less corrupt and selfish person fills the seat of the more corrupted person before them. It is all quite legally, and totally openly done in daylight. Everyone simply takes for granted that candidates will have to bow to money ie 'donors' to be elected, and everyone seems to just accept the lies and legal fictions, about how they would NEVER, EVER vote to favor a donor over any Joe citizen. The result is that usury, poverty, and unemployment are in the assent because the interest's of the few so cheaply, and easily and, I might add, selfishly buy up the future of the many.

And this is not new to the American experience. No, unfortunately, corruption is as old as the secret meeting that hatched the Constitution. It was NOT a popular document, fobs to the people not with standing: We the slave owners,lawyers, generational wealthy, bankers, usurers, larger merchants, land owners and generally the upper .01% is what they really meant to say. Your poor working self WAS not invited. You were considered a menial, a servant, a serf, at best, an artisan, a peasant, when and if you were considered at all. The founders thought of you the way the tides think of drift wood: Not in the least.

The merchants, bankers, and speculator scum of the world sealed the deal on America long ago, at the very latest the matter was settled totally in the merchants favor in 1865 at Appomattox Court House, where by the old slave owners were put to task by the merchants and the money powers that backed them from over the seas, garnered a whole continent of colored wage busters AND the war deaths gave them the excuse to start the immigration machine going with the Irish I might add. Oh and gaining the wage busting power of all those newly free negroes, and the imported cheap foreign labor as well.

IN the event the USA, irrespective of what it may or might have been or was supposed to have been, has morphed into the largest commercial empire ever known, truly world wide in its scope, in actuality. The USA is not any longer a republic. It most certainly is not a democracy of any kind that Aristotle, an Athenian or even Jefferson would recognize. It is, however, a shambles, by any standard, and failing rapidly. It is neigh time for those of us that care about the unhyphenated Americans to understand that it is either the empire for a bit longer, or our nation ie the actual physical people, but not both.

The elite that are supported by and support the empire are not going to willingly dismantle their creation, so that leaves it to the nations that linger under this system to do the lifting especially the Americans who live at the heart of the empire, and, if not among the top 1% or so, are its first victims. That is not wealth trickling down upon you, I can assure you of this.

Let me say this plain: The Constitution is defunct and more of an ideal than an operating principle or even an animating principle, when all the emotional attachment to it is striped bear, it is just words on paper ignored day to day by the current regime in DC. So why pretend that it is otherwise?

It simply is not some eternal complete final end of all human political thought. In fact it is rather poorly thought out, on several accounts and dated to say the least. Further it has been shown to be easily circumvented by those with a mind for power.

Moreover it has never been applied in a manner that full fills its promises of liberty, freedom , and local accountable government for, by and to the masses, uniformly or otherwise. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments have been particularly underused. The second amendment is a farce in a time when the State has at its disposal weaponry that can devastate whole communities at whim, and is allowed to employ the modern equivalent of Hessian mercenaries to employ said weapons. The first amendment has always really meant the power of those with money to broadcast their views just so long as they favor the powerful and wealthy, and little else. And technology has made the 4^th rather quaint frankly, and more of an honor oath than a any sort of binding principle upon which the elite act. And so it goes with the other 'rights' promised but never fully delivered.

Common liberty, or what is more generally understood to be the freedom to get along and be let alone, has been taken and held from the oligarchy by force or threat of force, and/or circumstance of geography more than any charity on the part of the upper classes in American history. The elite only stoped using White slaves because colored chattel slaves were more profitable and because the Whites had this tendency to rebel.

Among the 'founding' documents, is a little known one called the Virginia Declaration of Rights, it reads in part: "That government is...instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community....whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes...the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal."

Basically if the government, who is your agent at the end of the day, is not doing its job properly you should hire new help against the ravages of nature and the unpredictability of fate. Government that either works for you or at the very least does not work against you, is the idea here. This is about as far as my agreement with the founders goes. ( And yes I have read them at some length.)

The fact is that since the 18th century much as happened like the little fact that we are no longer a rural society of freeholders, and townsmen, artisans, existing in a pre-industrial age, for starters. Simply put America has Urbanized: Hand in hand with urbanization has went pauperization and this too is not new under the Sun, being as old as the story of civilization and debt slavery.

The industrial revolution and urbanization have completely antiqued the constitution, it literally has NO basis in the modern world, or the modern facts of American existence, being written for another time and truly another place in many ways that matter. For starters why are Nine judges allowed to override the national will, without consequences? Why exactly do we have to cling to ideas and forms of government that were formulated before the industrial revolution for an agrarian society that does not exist any longer? The idea is laughable on its face: Hey let's use forms fitted to realities that no longer exist...anyone else find this even slightly off to say it nicely? The fact is that this empty document is keep because it serves the interest's of those that have power over those that do not have power.

Also the rise of the corporation and the 'personhood' and 'rights' granted it by judges and legislatures, have totally changed the game at all levels -- there is indeed a reason that sentiments such as,"kill the lawyers first,"retain popularity after all. These legal rights allow the few to use a legal fiction as a blocking dummy -- its was not the shareholders, you see it was the 'corporation' that did XY or Z. And then too there is the victory of the money lenders in 1913 when they by law took control of the volume and thus absolute worth of our nation's credit. These are no negligible events. And in and of themselves change the entire shape and nature of relations in society and the economy, but we are supposed to accept that even though this is true that the holy document is still applicable to our situation? The constitution facilitated all of this, and its judicial and legislative arms 'legalized' it as well. It is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The rise of the 'Corporate Citizens' -- large industry, financiers, speculators of all sorts, usurers, and not least the mass media -- or more accurately the more or less generational shareholders in said corporations, since the end of the 19th century, has seen the corresponding reduction of the natural citizen to a mere cipher. He is a degraded consumer forced to live in a political correct business friendly environment that is NOT to his own long term advantage. These corporate entities taken as a whole or a class if you will have largely subordinated the people in our lands. Thus has 'liberty' come to mean 'open plutocratic oligarchy' and the freedom to buy junk sold by the powerful and connected for whom government really does work -- overtime and hard.

The farce of voting is keep because in the actual unfolding of things the elite own both parties, all the voting machines, the courts, and the legislatures. It is a sure thing that they will win no matter what proletarian pawn plays at king of the hill. Voting for party X or Y when both party X and Y are bought by group Z is silly if one expects results that will not work to Z's advantage, and Z equals corporate power. This power needs either masted to the common advantage or destroyed, since it has bought the law, the media, the schools, the legislatures, the courts, and for the most part our souls as well.

The Constitution seems to have done NOTHING to prevent this and in fact as noted above creative judicial and legislative interpretations of segments of this document have been the 'legal' basis for much of misery of both America's other 90+% of citizens and much of the third world that essentially are 'American' corporate labor camps complete with bought and installed general's as heads of state and everything.

I say 'American' because they are really not that in any meaningful sense except legally. Often they will have an office in New York but that will be their entire connection to America. With this legal fig leaf they will have cheaply bought the legal right to American protection abroad and the right to have it their own way with American citizens domestically.

Essentially they rent our military that acts as their protector and the enforcer of last resort as relates to payments on contracts. This is why American jobs go overseas. Why pay citizens well if you can use cheap colored slave labor abroad, AND import that self same labor to the 'home' nation -- corporations have no home -- and depress wages there to equilibrium? And then hire said citizens as cheap enforcers of your contracts? Money hand over fist.

The Constitution has facilitated all of this or at the VERY least is useless to stop it, and blind faith in both it and the so called 'free market' need to be set aside by sober adults. The fact is the wealthy few have eaten the substance of America to use upon over seas colonial/commercial enterprises. Welfare? Give me a break, paying almost no taxes and getting the US military to fight your fights by buying up a committee for a few million is the ultimate welfare and DWARFS social welfare by many times over. That FIVE TRILLION give away did not happen among the poor, right? No it happened among the elite that control the 'law' and thus interpret the 'Constitution' to mean 'OUR INTERESTS ALONE'.

The experiment has failed in all ways. It is an utter ruin. It cannot be salvaged from the wreckage that is itself. It is rolling in the surf,founded on the rocks, ribs shattered, keel up, and we must,organize, collect what can be saved, go towards the shore, hold out, and then build with remains of the wreck upon the shore after the tide is low. There is NO other way, my people.

Thus when I say it is high time to reclaim this right to new forms of governance, here in the USA, let it be clearly understood that I am not calling for a 'return to the Constitution', nor a return to any mythical 'golden age' that never was. No that document, and that claptrap have had their time, are historically dated and require placement in a museum to be forgotten with time's magic. What I would like to see, would be a Convention called under at least the color of Article V of the Constitution, with a document thereby framed having more popular, localized, and yet more uniform government, which would replace the original after getting three quarters of the popular vote in an open free plebiscite, thus establishing new forms of government.

I would like more popular forms of government ie a mix of representative and direct democracy. Forms that are more in line with the contingencies of NOW and not of two hundred years and more into our past. Forms that are LESS influenced by the monied and commercial powers that have wrecked havoc upon our nation's citizenry, in so many manner of ways, social, economic and political. Forms that in fact put those powers in check and make them the man instead of the master in our national household. New forms that unlike the old constitution and its Platonic pretenses of the founders to being sage-rulers, I think that you are all adults and capable of assuming the responsibilities that popular sovereignty entail, if you are all educated to a minimal level of civic understanding, with the power to act on your own behalf in a meaningful manner. I further believe that you can do better for yourselves than the corrupt elite that misrule this nation at present.

If the collective citizen body had the right to check acts by ALL the branches of government AT all levels, much of the mayhem done in their name would not be done at all. I would like you to ask yourself,"Would I, no could I, vote against my own best interests as often as the guy in DC, or the state capital, or the county seat, that 'represents' 'me' does at this time?"

I firmly believe that in most normal circumstances, the commons will vote more favorably to its interests than any representative will in any realistic world, especially a corrupted world in which the 'law' says that giving money does not corrupt representatives nor buy their vote, on matters that favor those that give money. Truly the 'law' would have you believe those men that write the law are to be as gods or other than men, for with men MONEY corrupts.

Now in this, the actual, factual world: No sane citizen would vote to give a corporation that off shored his job a tax break. Nor would they have sold themselves into debt slavery by giving reckless banks public money to the tune of 15 trillion dollars. Nor would they have tolerated.... and so and and so forth. The Fed would be dead.....and this and that repealed.....repealed......bye....bye...and so on and so on....

I also fancy that few people would tolerate court rulings like those that give corporations equal rights IF they had an effective direct and absolute means to overturn them. Judges would be returned to earth and have to pass public muster with their legal nonsensical anti-logical 'reasonings'(ramblings) that are built on nothing other than other wordsmithings, with a dollop of silly sally make pretend as a bonus.

Would you vote to allow corporation in as equal citizens? How about illegals? Would you vote to cancel the public debt and imprison the bankers that alleged that you owe it to them? Yes and so would many others.

The trick to ensuring good behavior is appropriate consequences for bad actions and adequate rewards for doing good. Our government has no checks of any effective kind upon its corrupt behavior and thus no incentive to change that behavior. It was in point of fact set up to ensure itself against popular opinion in the words of James Madison the 'father of the Constitution': "The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages...{it} ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority."

If you are not opulent ie rich maybe Madison was not your man, eh? Jeepers! You mean America was ALWAYS an Oligarchy? That's right Jimmy...Republic equals OLIGARCHY. Oligarchy always leads to arrogant and reckless behavior among the ruling elite because there is no effective means to check their bad behavior once they are in office.

If Congressmen, Judges, the President and all other officials besides KNEW that they could be recalled, put on trial for their actions and their acts overturned and made to no effect by the population at large, would the moral cowards even attempt 99% of the corrupt actions they regularly engage in now? If the Court knew that their little gavel and ropes WERE NOT proof against popular outrage would thy play legal games with peoples dearly held ideals? If even the mighty president were subject to recall and arrest would be in this mess? I think not. This is why the average citizen has NO such vote at this time. Oligarchies never willingly submit to popular checks upon their outrages upon the populous.

Keeping this in mind.

This abusive relationship between the corporations/oligarchs and their 'government' on the one hand and everyone not in power, needs ended and the actual people that hide behind the authority such as it is of the above power elite, need brought forward and punished fittingly for their attempted tyranny over, theft from, and general mismanagement of the affairs of the People. They are vipers and need routed out for the good of all. Many laws and no justice is what we have here and now. Congress is weak and powerless. The President is more imperial than Caligula. The money power that backs all is ascendant and the people are enserfed, enclosed, and disposed and nearly disenfranchised in their own land; slaves to usurers and debts that are not justly their own. To call the republic a failure for those that are not milking the cow is fitting and just at this time. Does anyone here disagree?

With all this said I put forward some thoughts on what should...perhaps must take the place of this system.

First Principles:

Ideas are the central force in human history, not matter, not modes of production, which are only the material upon and the means by which human ideals ie will operate in reality. Human need generates a will, which puts labor to work upon raw materials with capital, to produce wealth. Thus Men make tools; tools do not men. Tools make money; and both serve Men.

Men band together by nature. Man is as Aristotle says, 'the political animal'. It is his nature to form combinations for the purpose of ensuring general survival of the kind. They do not choose to do so, it is just that each and every person is born into a group and from there becomes a member of other groups, which form up into groups that have internal hierarchies ,in all indo-eurpean societies. The result is that each lives better than he could if he lived alone against nature.

The People are the Sovereignty. The people are both a states foundation and its animating spirit. Their collective world view is its world view, and in the end their consent is the permission it has to act. Hence the state's existence is predicated upon the continued support and input of those governed. The People are the polity. They are sovereign and the highest earthy judge of all matters political. They can in theory assign this to any number of combinations of offices or persons, but they still remain the base of the pyramid.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are meaningless 'rights' without, a corresponding right to livelihood, hearth and substance to thus ensure 'life' against the vicissitudes of reality. Thus the ideal is to ensure as general an ownership of land and/or ownership stakes in capital ventures by the masses which will provide the nation's labor, as may be achieved to ensure the meaningful application of the above 'rights' to human life and not incidentally a more generally diffusion of wealth thereby.

The means to this general end is Law. Law is the will of the nation. Law is supreme within its domain, but should be limited to the least amount of domain that will keep general good order and ensure the conditions outlined above. Generally less laws equals more justice to the many and less legalism by the few, and the less room that judges have to insert their opinions into the operations of law, the better.

No special law is valid, nor does any law that gives special advantage to one private party over another have ANY legal effect, ever. A law not enacted properly has no effect, and is NO law at all.

Equality before the law, should mean ONLY that NO persons get special privileges at law and everyone gets a minimum standard of treatment before magistrates. Nothing else at all. Nor should it ever be taken to mean that any legal being is equal to a living man.

Any act contrary to law by any governmental agent or employee is tyranny. All acts without power of Law are tyrannical at their inception. Any state official that acts without the positive sanction of law is a tyrannt and may be resisted with force by all citizens, and any person that attempts to enforce tyranny by what ever means forfeits his life.

Tyranny is NEVER lawful nor just, all may kill a tyrant. No one is bound to the will of a tyrant.

As the tyrant so the may citizens may dispose of criminals, who may be stopped by any citizen with any amount of forced needed to protect both his own person and the general common good. No citizen is liable for a crime in stopping criminal acts.

Men make weapons to defend their interest in both their own things and in the general order about them as such: No law outlawing the keeping of private weapons is to have effect.

No Corporate Being is or can be a citizen, and thus NO such being has RIGHTS. This being cannot vote and cannot be called up to defend the polity so to give it equality with those that can and will is obscene. Corporations are creations of the state which is itself a creation of living men, who are created in the image of the living God. Corporate beings have ONLY privileges. Corporations must be loyal to the national interest. It simply makes no sense to allow enemies of the nation to function from within our country with our blessing and support.

Voting and Taxation/Call-up: These should be tied together in so much as those that do not pay in, nor risk life and limb, should not have a say in how monies are paid out, this is just. These are the two primary duties. ALL full citizens shall pay at least some nominal tax AND risk life to qualify for full citizenship. Females will not be subject to call up, nor will they be allowed to volunteer and thus females will not vote, period. Females that are not married to a man will be subject to tax at the rate of males that refuse call up, which shall be double that of a man that does not refuse his duties.

Duty and Right: These in union with justice are the foundation of all good human ordering and just such ordering is the basis for human society. Rights without Duties to keep their exercise within decent bounds bring chaos and anarchy, with all the waste attendant there upon. But on the other side of the coin duty without right is merely slavery with flowery terms attached to the matter, a form of serfdom if you will.

All Rights carry with themselves a Duty to exercise them in a manner that is just and morally defensible. Duty is the key to right. Thus no person that rejects duty can act in a manner which is morally defensible and just. And as such the state and its citizens have no reason to act as such toward them. Hence those that reject duty do not have rights that will be respected by the People as valid and having force.

Given the above I propose the following :

As regards:

The People: Initiatives, Referendums, Recalls and Plebiscites, need put into place to ensure at all levels of government are the servant and not the master of the People -- as defined above -- whose will it represents and whose agent it is in fact at all times. We want a government of the People, by the People and for the People, who will be defined as all male adults that pay tax and do call up, in the new order of things. The simple fact is the rot begins at the bottom in our system. Our localities are corrupt, the states even more so and the fed is beyond gone. They are corrupt because they know that once the every other yearly show at differences is over it will be back to the same old back room deals, and shady activities, with NO effective means of the voting citizens to check their actions. If the country council or mayor, and all the rest on up, could be simply VOTED OUT like they were voted in, and this was fairly easily done, these folks would be far more amendable to public inclination, and far less likely to engage in corrupt and or unpopular practices. Thus the healing would start at the bottom and work its way up. This would also be good in that it would instill the practice of banding together to peacefully debate and otherwise engage in civic activity in the exercise of their sovereignty. Politicians and the administrative class generally need to remember right good and well that they hold office and public trust, and for that matter any station in life, at the leave of free men, who can and will freely take that trust back with impunity, as is their right.

Parties: The only thing more openly controlled, than a two party state that does not allow any sort of national or any meaningful state plebiscite on matters of nation/regional impart, is a one party state, with an openly Leninist system. The unofficial two party system is in dire need of being dismantled, and any advantage or control over elections and candidates eliminated by means of positive legislation. In their place I would like to see a multiparty system, as that seems to be able to work in almost every other country in the world,at least but at best a NO party state with only individuals running on platforms that they will be bound to keep if selected by the people.

Voting: If you do not do call up and do not pay at least the nominal minimum tax you will not vote. Voting days and times will henceforth be uniform across all jurisdictions, and all voting days will be a paid holiday so that working citizens have time to exercise their franchise. Really though there is NO reason that voting cannot be done on the fly. We have the network technology to allow people in the Hindu Kush to vote if need be, so all the silly technical arguments against popular direct voting are rubbish, pure and simple.

The Law: This nonsense with having 50 states bars will be done a way with by STANDARDIZING legal procedure and practice across all jurisdictions in the United States. Common Law will be put to bed and Stasis Dare will NO longer exist. What was ruled before will be of NO consequence now. A Codified Civil Law will be the order of the day. The People and Congress -- which Congress will be thoroughly under the control of the people by means of recall and plebiscite -- and NOT judges will make law; judges will merely rule on the application of particular laws to particular citizens, and then sentence them to the proscribed punishment.

The States: These are anachronisms, and at the very least require their laws and administrative codes normalized by introducing uniform legal codes, procedures, criminal codes, regulations. They should be keep as congressional voting districts and administrative districts, but have NO existence beyond this. Their governors will be appointed from the center and there will be no legislatures. All legislation will come from the Congress.

The Congress: The House-- Needs to be expanded to four times it current number and all members need to be voted in proportionately in the House by 'state' voting districts, with any party that can get 15% of any district's electorate eligible. The Senate – four senators with all being elected by direct election by administrative district formally known as states. This expanded Congress should be the center of the new state and the prima inter pares among governmental bodies, and all laws will be passed by it, subject to veto by the electorate, in the name of the People and Congress.

President: Needs abolished and replaced with a collegiate office subordinate to the Congress, all of the current executive offices will be put at the disposition of congress and the people, which will alter, abolish or reform, them as needed.

Courts: Marbury V. Madison needs struck down and all usurpation by the court made to no effect. The court will be a strictly junior partner in government. They will be subject to recall just like any other public official. The House will nominate them and the Senate will either confirm or reject them, subject to the final approval of the People at large.

FED: There is no action that this parasitic body performs that the body politic cannot perform for itself. If the nation can charter a bank to lend itself money..it can skip the bank and simply lend itself money. If the nation can give a bank power to issue legal tender at interest thus facilitating bond sales and debt, then the nation can issue legal tender, on its own accounts without interest and no inherent debt attached. Thus I move that the treasury simply issue debt free notes that function in much the same manner BUT that are issued without interest and without bonds bearing interest backing them, but that are backed SOLELY by the productive capacity of the nation as a whole. Moreover I mover that the international investors bond -- ALL OF THEM -- be defaulted upon and any properties they may hold within the United States be forfeit to the Treasury to be sold at free open public auction for public profit. I can see no reason to allow foreigners and traitors to keep ill gotten loot.

Army/Police: will be under the command of the new congress. It shall be manned by the citizen body who shall serve in rotating reimbursed 4 month call ups from 18 to 58 years of age. It shall be composed so that no unit is based near its home nor has a majority of persons from any state or locality. The Officers to include upper ranking NCOs shall be the only professional corpes of career soliders in the state, and shall serve from 16 until 70 . There number shall be limited to 50,000 to be chosen based upon ability alone, and they be provided for at public expense from tax revenue; however they shall be barred from marriage and all their property will revert to the state upon death. The army shall act as the constabulary force, when and where the armed citizenry cannot keep order, so there will be NO more local, or state police.