Voices For American
Direct Democracy
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Voices For American Direct Democracy |
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DDL Objectives
Starting Places For
Politically Equal Individuals© 2000-2007 by Stephen Neitzke -- stephen
@ddleague-usa.net
Credo ||Common Ground || Primary Objective ||Other Objectives || DDL Membership || 31 Critical Issues
Credo
I am one person, one voice, one vote.
Successful republican governance depends on a sovereign civil society of politically equal voters having the powers of citizen lawmaking and the recall so that they can enhance, limit, and hold accountable their strong representative government and its powerful individual members.
The political levels of an issue can be decided independently of its technical-level and legal complications. I don't have to be a rocket scientist to decide whether human exploration is proper on a particular space mission. I don't have to be a medical doctor to decide whether pharmaceutical corporations should be regulated regarding annual influenza vaccine composition and production. I don't have to be a lawyer to decide whether public officials and judges should be punished for violating the sovereign people's Constitution.
All ideologies -- leftist, rightist, and uber-mensch elitist -- mask and distort some or all of any issue's political merits. I must look past ideology, its spins and its emotional propaganda triggers, to examine the facts and truth statements concerning each political issue. In any referendum, the intelligence and wisdom of the majority is strengthened if I am well informed about all of the political merits of the issues to be voted.
Others can put whatever labels on me they wish, but I am primarily a direct democracy and rights advocate. With John Dewey, I believe that the "ultimate aim of production is not production of goods, but the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality". Greedy predator elitists, deceitfully trumpeting family and religious "values", obviously believe that the only production is of goods, that the rights of free human beings should be sharply curtailed for the benefit of power and profits for the elites, that any equality is excessive equality, and that any democracy is excessive democracy.
Government must be regulated to minimize predator elitism's corruption potential within government. Corporations must be regulated for the same reason. And proven predator elitists must be stripped of any significant economic and political power.
Common Ground
There are obviously some emotionally satisfying levels of grinding our axes for divisive issues and then figuratively whacking anyone opposed to our views.
But we're too divided. We need a place where our emotional views on divisive issues don't block us from unifying to gain a constitutional renewal. We've got to find a cerebral workaround so that we can bridge all those emotional dividing lines and get to common ground.
The solution is not complicated. As soon as a discussion concerns governance issues such as increasing democracy or limiting representative government, we should agree to stop any talk about non-governance divisive issues such as abortion, pornography, drugs, racism, religion, leftist/rightist ideologies, or political party views. We should agree that governance issues be open to anyone, even when we know that another person in the discussion holds views on issues such as abortion or racism that we cannot tolerate.
We simply agree that some discussions are for the merits, procedures, and features of direct democracy, citizen institutions, the limitation and accountability of representative government, and constitutional renewal -- to the exclusion of all else. The common ground is simply that. Participants in governance issue discussions can agree to stay on topic.
Established organizations with non-governance issue agendas can simply create a governance workgroup in which discussion of non-governance issues does not take place.
Whatever divisive-issue axes you're grinding now will look very different in the issue-driven political dynamic of politically equal individuals in a traditional republican governance.
Detailing all the relevant political merits of an issue in fair and persuasive argument is far different from parroting some few spins out of the leftist, rightist, or uber-mensch elitist ideologies. Preferendum and referendum voting to resolve an issue is very different from getting a mob of axe slingers together to convince a pack of predator politicians to do what you want to have done.
We don't have to play the games invented by predator politicians that insure that they win and we lose. The issue-driven political dynamic of politically equal individuals making law, vetoing law, or recalling politicians -- when required -- is vastly superior to being legislatively powerless in a political dynamic of ideological cover-ups for wealth-driven and class-driven corruptions.
Creating common ground is necessary so that we can unify long enough to control the constitutional renewal that will give us functional sovereignty over all the predators.
Primary Objective
DDL's primary objective is to aid a peaceful transition to true republican governance, in which sovereign civil societies have the rights and powers of all eight direct democracy components to enhance, limit, and hold accountable still-strong but more-limited representative governments.
The eight direct democracy governance components are --
- Administrative functions:
- the people's direct election of all representatives in open, fair, and peer-reviewed elections, and
- the people's recall of an public official's election who has violating the public trust or simply offended too many citizens.
- Legislative functions:
- the people's constitutional amendment initiative, to propose amendments to our consitutions without government interference.
- the people's statute law initiative, to propose statute law without government interference,
- the people's statute law veto, now known as the "referendum" (should be changed to the "remand" to minimize confustion), to reject statute law made by representative government, and
- the people's statute law affirmation to bar government from amending a law that the people do not want changed.
- Consultative functions:
- the legislature's statute law referral to the people's referendum, and
- the legislature's constitutional amendment referral to the people's referendum.
Other Objectives
The DDL coalition has several other objectives. These may be modified as we go along. Additional objectives may be established at any time, of course -- or standing objectives deleted. Majority rules.
There's no particular order in this set of other objectives -- except for the first one.
- Job One is organizing. Not just casually organizing for anti-war protests, flash mobs, NGOs that prop up the failed status quo, and the corrupt political parties that are alarge part of the failed status quo, but organizing into cross-country citizen action groups for every proactive anything. Organizing especially for the "Unity America" citizen action plan, and especially for remedies that reform the Constitution and today's mega-corrupt, pure representative govt.
- Massively, seriously, formally organized outside the corruption box 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. We can cripple or kill all of the corruption machines of the fascist superrich, corporate predators, and predator politicians. We can not only get the country back and minimize corruption, but we can and must prevent any future recurrence of a three-branch fascist despotism.
- Unorganized, we're nothing.
- Null & Void Project. Bush is not a president. He was not elected in accord with the Constitution. He is a presidential usurper whose usurpation violates the rights of all Americans to have a president elected in accord with the Constitution. His usurpation is the product of a wide felony conspiracy, defined in and violating 18 USC 241. By constitutional principle, his "presidency" was null and void from inception, regardless of when any judge finds the usurpation to be legal fact.
- Technically, all we need to have the Bush usurpation ruled null and void is a cooperative US District Attorney, a persuaded grand jury, and a willing federal judge.
- The US District Attorney would call a grand jury and persuade them that a criminal violation of 18 USC 241 and Constitutional law has occurred. The grand jury would issue a criminal indictment. The US District Attorney would take the indictment to the US District Court. The judge would rule to hold a hearing or to go directly to trial. A normal criminal prosecution would ensue, with due process. Everyone's Constitutional rights would be protected, including Bush's -- constitutional criminal, felon-murderer-in-waiting, war criminal, knee-jerk liar, and abject traitor that he is.
- Formally found to be a usurper, every action taken by Bush under color of law since 20 January 2000 would become null and void. Every law signed, every ambassador appointed, every judge appointed, every felon's sentence commuted, every treaty signed and unsigned. Everything. Null and void.
- Bush, of course, has packed SCOTUS with a rack of fascist thugs masquerading as judges, which bumps up our difficulty level by an order of magnitude. We need to adapt.
- The "Unity America" citizen action plan -- see below -- is intended to steadily and quickly escalate citizen smash-mouth politics so that the Congress gains an attitude adjustment centered in THE FEAR. (Their arrogance seems to have clouded their sense of history, obscuring how easily the elites kill-off of a French Revolution can be triggered by despotism.) With THE FEAR in place, a standalone Constitutional amendment can be quickly passed to fire the entire federal bench, pending nonpartisan elections of judges. See the details sketch below.
- Needless to say, firing the federal bench is not the end of our problems with them. A significant fraction of their number are felons-in-waiting -- clearly guilty of rights violating felony conspiracies and unconstitutional rulings. Felony forfeits all immunities -- judicial, executive, and legislative.
- The guilty federal judges are now protected by the criminal collusions that protect the constitutional criminals in all three branches of the Bush-Cheney fascist despotism. As of now, we have many felonious, treasonous, federal judges to criminally prosecute, convict, and imprison -- starting with most of the SCOTUS judges.
- Every complication that this pack of fascist thugs -- governmental and corporate -- has fabricated to obstruct justice for their ilk must be dismantled. Every criminal among them must be prosecuted and convicted. Every null and void action must be untangled from and ripped out of our legal fabric.
- There are many parts to this null & void project.
- Rewrite in progress. I'm characterizing the many projects of the "Unity America" citizen action plan -- as found in the essay, "Open Letter To Susan". Check back soon or refer to the essay for more details now.
- development of clearinghouse web sites -- precursors to Online Citizen Institutions -- that provide services to the state's direct democracy community, even if that community is only legally active in sub-state jurisdictions such as counties, boroughs, cities, towns, water districts, school districts, and so on -- the sites might include --
- educational information about direct democracy rights in that state -- something rarely done by state government,
- sound advice on how to go about waging a successful I&R campaign, or on how to use what direct democracy the state has, or, if there's no state-level direct democracy, a standing campaign to gain it,
- database information concerning state government's actual performance on a day-to-day basis,
- connections to volunteer authoring services within citizen special interest organizations that have expertise in a particular topic area, so that I&R proposals are intelligently and carefully crafted,
- a preferendum (pre-referendum) voting system to set the agenda, to establish the "rough draft" of a proposal, to amend a proposal, and to mark a proposal as ready for the ballot box referendum,
- server space for any I&R campaign's web pages, email needs, and bulletin board,
- secure chat rooms, which would allow people anywhere in the state to discuss direct democracy issues in real time, and which would allow petition signature gatherers to coordinate their activities,
- archive services, recording the history of each I&R campaign for later reference and research.
- development of online voting systems, for both preferendum and referendum voting, with --
- open code and peer review,
- secret ballots with a verifiable online voter registration system that adopts the safeguards that we know work for paper ballot elections -- a registration system that ends with the unique PGP high-bit, digital voter's "signature" before the online ballot is released to the voter,
- use of the PGP public and private keys to create a ballot-length, semi-transparent, digital "watermark" in a design incorporating a looping date/time stamp -- so that after-voting alterations can be detected,
- after tabulation, archiving all valid ballots for later examination by peer-reviewed computer programs and/or human intrevention,
- interactive security systems that monitor the balloting process -- archiving the compromised ballot and the details of its violations -- and placing the offending, but properly registered voter into a "try again later" category,
- helping to pass state level constitutional amendments to --
- ensure that the majority cannot harm minority or individual civil rights through any of the democracy components -- for example, "the people shall not make or delete any law resulting in the violation of any civil or human right granted in this constitution",
- eliminate unconstitutional and unreasonable restrictions on citizen lawmaking,
- define and penalize the feasance violations -- malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance -- of the state's constitution done by any sworn official of the state's government, and
- require education about direct democracy generally, and the particular state's direct democracy provisions specifically, beginning at the elementary level and continuing through college and university level in both public and private schools within the state's jurisdiction,
- Any constitutional structure establishes a certain dynamic of doing politics. The current dynamic in the US allows for issue concealment, problem solving avoidance, corporate welfare, spin control of the public's political perceptions, and gross manipulation of public opinion. By melding direct democracy and representative government in the national constitution, we can reset the dynamic to allow issue-driven politics, intensive problem solving, and the minimizing of spin control and manipulation.
DDL Membership
DDL membership is a state of mind plus activity. To be a member, you must be able to answer yes to all three of the following questions:
- Did I read and understand "Fundamental Governance Rights", grasp what it means to be a politically equal citizen, therby graduating from political kindergarten ?
- Do I accept my responsibility to be a part of political solutions ?
- Am I active in one or more of DDL's "other objectives" ?
We don't keep membership lists here. Local, state, regional, and other-country DDL clubs -- or DDL workgroups within other organizations -- are free to keep lists.
Local, state, regional, and other-country DDL clubs -- or DDL workgroups within other organizations -- are free to use the DDL URL format. For example, "ddleague-sf" for San Francisco, "ddleague-mt" for Montana, and "ddleague-nz" for New Zealand. Needless to say, the first to claim a particular extension following "ddleague-" wins.
31 Critical Issues
We already have many Expert Citizen Groups (ECGs) operating in the critical issue areas. We should catalog all ECGs operating in each critical issue so that we can do systematic research in any one issue in a short time.
One of the huge payoffs for our uniting on the common ground will be the power to resolve the many critical problems. There are at least thirty-one interconnected, critical political problems in present-day US national and state governance. They are --
- updating the Bill Of Rights to create citizen rights for (a) the selection of legal medical treatments, (b) privacy against the technologies of the 21st Century, (c) reversal and prohibition of all rights-infringing parts of the USA Nazi Patriot Act, (d) prohibition of governmental re-definition of standing rights for the purpose of establishing anti-rights Ashcroft Fascist Law, and (e) ending the predominance of convenience over rights for government and business -- e.g., using the Social Security Number as a defacto national ID number ("not for identification" is printed in caps at the bottom of my 1956 SSA card),
- establishing constitutional reproductive rights for women,
- establishing specific constitutional rights to universal health care and prescription medicines coverage, both funded by the national government with tax-payer dollars,
- establishing a specific constitutional right for individuals to use vitamin, mineral, and herbal remedies freely for health and well-being, and to use the herb marijuana as a medicine when prescribed by a physician,
- establishing a specific constitutional right for individuals to select and receive chelation therapy as a preventative or curative treatment for atherosclerosis,
- establishing specific constitutional rights to adequate information on the mutation and "reassortment" of flu viruses -- and on any deadly bacteria -- for the purposes of monitoring the composition of vaccines and for having legal recourse against corporations and individuals responsible for the production of adequate vaccine,
- constitutionally defining the Internet as a public political and educational forum, in which "degraded digital copies" in Internet streaming music are free of any royalty fees -- to encourage the re-growth of free Internet radio,
- improving public education, especially to emphasize thinking skills,
- improving essential human services,
- establishing sustainable economic systems that benefit all citizens over the long term,
- establishing news media independence from corporate and governmental influence,
- improving environmental and biodiversity protections,
- regulating foreign investments in the US so that domestic investors pay less tax, not more,
- regulating potentially dangerous technologies such as nanotech, biotech, and robotics,
- regulating corporate bookkeeping so that hiding financial losses, faking financial gains, and keeping more than one set of books are all severely punished felonies, not Mack Truck Loopholes,
- regulating corporate taxation so that it becomes progressive, closes off loopholes and tax breaks for corporations using production facilities outside the 50 US states, and closes off all corporate welfare,
- establishing and charging fair market value of natural resources to corporations who use them,
- establishing and charging fair market value to corporations for R&D financed by public funds,
- regulating corporations to minimize or eliminate people-abusive free market forces,
- regulating industries to minimize or eliminate people-abusive free market forces,
- altering or eliminating international treaties that abolish US legal protections for people so that domestic, foreign, or stateless corporations gain money and power,
- regulating corporate raiding so that corporations benefiting national security, social justice, and environmental integrity, can continue without threat of hostile takeover,
- protecting public and private pension funds, including constitutional protection for the Social Security Trust Fund,
- locating and re-writing the hollow and unenforceable federal statute laws that Congress has passed, preserving the most important of those in a new Article of the Constitution, created especially for laws that we do not want Congress to meddle with,
- locating and clarifying or deleting all federal statute law that leads to the violation of citizen rights -- e.g. the Controlled Substances Act of 1970,
- constitutionally establishing the Department Of Justice as in independent agency, with the Attorney General to be directly elected and directly recallable by the national citizenry,
- constitutonally establishing the federal judiciary as elected and recallable in the federal jurisdiction, District or Circuit, in which the judge will serve, and by the national citizenry for the Supreme Court,
- constitutionally reducing Congress to a non-partisan unicameral legislature, with clearly defined rules for the making of law, and with provisions for the recall of any national legislator by the national citizenry,
- constitutionally establishing a system of national direct presidential primaries, outlawing the direct participation of political parties, and having an adequate number of tiers to assure the choice of meritorious and genuine candidates for the people's presidency,
- constitutionally defining and penalizing feasance violations (malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance) of our constitutions by public officials and judges, and
- constitutionally regulating lobbyists in Congress.
As long as there's no effective citizen lawmaking, there'll be no effective resolution of most of those critical issues.
Each of the unresolved, critical political issues -- whether ignored or hidden in hollow law -- creates one or more conflicts that divide groups within civil society against themselves. The divisions benefit the governing and financial elites in keeping the people from uniting against the people-abusive practices of government and business. Such unresolved and constantly aggravated divisions -- combined with assertions by public officials that the problems will be by-God looked into, are being studied by another by-God commission, or have been by-God taken care of by another obviously hollow law -- also cross-pressure individual citizens into withdrawing from politics.
Getting voters to withdraw and keeping voters emotionally divided among themselves have been the primary objectives of post-FDR and post-WW2 predator politicians. With the primary objectives gained now, the voting public is cut down to the servile -- those who will uncritically accept whatever the thoroughly corrupt and predatory government wants to do.
Comments? Please Email
Stephen Neitzke, DDL Founder
stephen@ddleague-usa.net
Dura lex, sed lex.
Common
Ground
Unity
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Page last revised Fri 06 Jul 2007
