The Last Post

Lost another friend due to politics today.  Not that I was wrong....or that he was right.  I was right...and he was wrong.  Including about being able to admit I was wrong.

I was especially wrong to even try.  The exploration of truth and ideas? Most people aren't interested in them.  Not really.  And if so, what's the point?  The wayback machine can find old posts....that's fine.  I said what I said for public record.

That doesn't mean I have to make it easy for folks to find. 

There are other ways to make the world a better place than yelling at them to stop stabbing themselves in teh face.  Especially when they really really want to.

The Constitution is a piece of trash

Because of conservative courts and power grabs by conservative presidents (perpetuated by corporate presidents like Obama) and gridlock from conservative lawmakers, the U.S. constituion has the value of toilet paper at this point.

My apologies to toilet paper.
 http://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-wp-blm-news-bc-hunt30-20141130-story.html

[Phil] 3 Hard Truths you Absolutely Must Accept to Effect Change.

1) All of the Truth Telling in the world by minds far more brilliant than your own have not been enough to do anything more than slow down the Koch agenda.  Truth does not reverse it.

2) Politics is now a religion for many and discussing politics with those who are infected with it is pointless as discussing interpretations of bible verses.  This is ALL infected; conservatives, libertarians, moderates who give equal credence to both sides, and even progressives or liberals or democrats more concerned about party identity than solving the problem.

3) It will take a trifecta of power sharing, third parties and independent ideological institutions to counter the Koch agenda.  Two out of three is not enough.

Details

1) John Stewart, Colbert, Carlin to name a few of those who have been warning us.  For those in the know, the Koch plan has been in the works for decades.  The thing is, that they have been telling the truth in brilliant ways over and over again in the belief that that alone would be enough to change things.  And it can, for a short period of time.

A great example of this is the attempts to tax or take over the internet.  They have many times attempted to pass ridiculous laws that would take over consumer freedom of the internet.  And they have been beaten back many times.  That is because the Koch agenda as well as the corporate agenda understand what you don't....politics is a forever battle, not just a few phone calls to your congressman.  And if you 'frame' the debate in the right way, you can get people to forget what it was they were fighting for in the first place.   A well placed bribe to the Republican party, and suddenly, Cable companies, one of the most hated groups in America, are ardently defended by legions of followers demanding that the government not enforce Net Neutrality.

Another example is Bill Maher's attempt to set up a fund to fund the opponents of the craziest members of congress.  HUGE amounts of money were spent on the fund's target and they still lost.  It sure looks like Maher's fund is gone, but you know who is still there? The NRA.  The CATO institute.  The Heritage Foundation.  Americans for Progress.

2) There is a study that shows an imagined experience is as real as those actually experienced.  Or in other words, it is emotional truth that affects the vast majority of people.  Now that might be loyalty to your God that motivates you to find reasons to support conservative policies, or anger at the government for "stealing" some of your hard earned money, or anger at the democrats because Clinton signed NAFTA or other things like it.  You need to admit to yourself that no matter how rationally you approach your beliefs, you attach significance to them because of emotional truth, not just because it 'makes sense.'  Conservatives and libertarians love to crow about how 'rational' their beliefs are, but their reason is often based on magical thinking at its best.

The thing about magical thinking is that it involves imposing your own view on top of reality, which means that their faith, which makes life more magical and meaningful for them comes at the price of accepting reality for what it is.  And while this gives liberals a tremendous advantage, as 2014 showed us, this cannot last forever.   This is not to say that liberals and others do not sometimes have irrational or false beliefs, but that the heroes of the party and the party ideology is much less inclined to NEED to lie.



So in practical terms what does this mean?  It means...STOP trying to convince people who disagree with you politically of anything.  I'm not writing this for infected conservatives.  Almost everyone who isn't a conservative knows what the problem with them is?  But Moderates who enable conservatives by pretending their views are just as legitimate are just as indirectly politically religious as conservatives.  Most moderates don't put their emotional truth in things like "the government is evil" but rather "both sides are bad."

The 'both sides are bad' or 'I am above both sides' people are just as wedded to their political religion as conservatives are.  There are some identity democrats that are as well.  Loyalty to the president or the democratic party is a problem.  So what does that mean?  It means that don't waste your time arguing with moderates,  much less conservatives...it means spend your time trying to fix the left.

3) There is a difference between a warrior and a soldier.  Warriors prize their individual skill but soldiers are part of a unit and are a cog in a much larger machine.  In the last days of the old west, native warriors were no less skilled than their Calvary opponents.  But the thing is, picking up a stolen (or purchased) rifle does not grant one sufficient resources to win a war against the government of the United States of America.  The Calvary had logistics, weapons manufacturers, corporations, banks, universities, town councils and many many other institutions helping to make the American war machine work.  You can leap forward in technology in seconds by learning how to pull a trigger.  You cannot create cultural institutions or paradigm shifts over night.  You just can't.

But metaphorically speaking, that is what liberals are trying to do against the Koch brothers.

Belief that people will just do the right thing if they know the truth won't make them do it.   Moral indignation against the tactics of the Koch brothers won't stop them from using them.  Nostalgia for the old days when the news really was the liberal media won't make them suddenly stop being 'he said, she said' shills.  The Republican Noise machine has been a known factor for some time.   But what has knowledge done?  Well, some very impressive counter forces have sprung up like MoveOn.org, or Daily Kos have sprung up to counter the message.  Asymmetric warfare is possible since sometimes there is only having a counter message not controlled by the Kochs is enough.

But the problem is that by and large many of these organizations are loyal to the democratic party and progressivism, but loyal to the democrats first, and progressive second.  These organizations are not the equivalent to the Heritage Foundation or other ideological organizations, primarily because they do not provide consistent bribe money to politicians each cycle but spend it ad hoc.  Furthermore, they are easily co-opted by the Party Apparatus who justifiably say, "You Must Vote For Us or Doom!"

Third parties are needed to have a viable replacement in case the democrats implode.  Purely progressive think tanks and funded advocacy organizations that are in this for the long haul need to operate independent of democrats.  And at the same time, pressure needs to be brought to bear in the democratic party to demand certain kinds of behavior in the democratic leadership.  There are ways to do this, and I will attempt to explain them in the next day or two, but the short version is that progressives need to hold their votes contingent, especially in off year and down ticket elections, contingent in getting a certain number of cabinet and committee positions in the executive and legislative branches.

[Phil] Evolution Doesn't Care if You Believe In It

Really.  It doesn't. From the perspective of evolution, all that matters is...don't die until you reproduce.  If you reproduce lots, great.  If you reproduce, you're still in the game. 

It doesn't matter if you're strong or smart or fast or rich or poor.  From the great game that is evolution in the chain of life from the amobea to whatever levitating martian looking things our descendants will be a billion years for now.

So when I read crap like this about the "reddening" of America, where they say essentially, "poll numbers show you're not as swell as you think you are Republicans...be good or BAD things will happen to you!"

BULLSHIT!

When it comes to power, if the election is actually free, if no one is burning a cross on your front lawn or making you do calculus to vote, its whether or not you vote and who you vote for.

That's it.  So by staying home and not voting, you can say you are against the system, or are standing for your principals or whatever you want, but ultimately, the fact is, you're voting for the Republicans unless you're voting for the democrats.  And is that a crappy crappy system? Absolutely.  But that's the way our crappy system is designed.

Are you working to change it, or are you waiting for superman to come down and fix it?

After the last election, I'm done with the democrats. They're total cowards, and the last week utterly proves it.  All the democrats are fighting amongst themselves in the senate right now about whether they should be nice to the Republicans and be 'bipartisian' or whether or not they should fight them tooth and nail.  

These are the REPUBLICANS.  HELLO MCFLY?! ANYONE IN THERE!?

Even moderate republicans still vote with Republicans because Abortion. Because Taxes.  ALL Republicans that vote Republican are still responsible for the behavior of the Republican party no matter how much they say they don't like The Crazy.

You know how many closet conservatives there are? LOTS.

But it doesn't help that the democrats had a pathetic weak milktoast strategy.

Think 2016 is a given/lock in? So did Al Gore.  So did Kerry.  THEY LOST.  Big Time.

America doesn't CARE about the Crazy.  Get. Over. It.  Until Democrats STOP trying to play nice, until Democrats STOP BEING COWARDS.  So you can tell me that the dog ate the voters homework or we should be nice to stupid people, or that you should set a positive example...Obama set a positive example...look at what the monsters are doing to him.

You can be positive and fight.  But you have to FIGHT or you will die.  And I, for one, am more interested in working with minor parties like the greens who can take over when the democrats eventually implode, because they WILL implode unless they get a spine.  If we get a REAL leader who is willing to fight, like Warren who is in charge, then fine. 

I'm not holding my breath.

[Cons] Article III - Section 1 (5 of 10) Prosecutors

The former prosecutor who went berserk against the Duke Lacross team is one of the few examples of a prosecutor actually being punished for misconduct.  The truth is, as flawed as our system of justice may be against Law Enforcement, it is infinitely better than it is against Prosecutors.  Prosecutors wield tremendous power. 

I've mentioned these in numerous examples, but here are just a few examples.

Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here and Here.

And who publishes them? Basically no one.  Judges who arrogant snobs are a problem.  You can fix that with an empowered jury but a prosecutor who uses outrageous plea bargaining is able to wield psychotic levels of power.  The problem is, an institution is going to function how it was designed.  When you have prosecutors as an elected or indirectly appointed office, those officers want to get promoted and will work to show off how awesome they are with high numbers of convictions, not caring whether or not those prosecutions make sense.  We're not talking good or evil here; though there are good prosecutors who help people out when they need it, and evil prosecutors who sell children up the river with corrupt judges; we're just talking human nature.  When a prosecutor is in office, he wants to look good.  By making prosecution a political matter, rather than a matter of justice, at a local level you create problems.  At a federal level, the imperial nature of the US government causes the government to want to wield its power with majesty and awe.  This attitude started with J. Edgar Hoover and it has never really stopped since.

So let's itemize some of these problems, shall we? Specifically at the Federal level.

1) The US Attorney is appointed by and works at the pleasure of the President of the United States.  Furthermore, a federal court will not take a case unless someone has standing, and unless someone can prove specific harm, you can't take the government to court for violating the constitution.  That means unconstitutional acts (like violating a senate ratified Treaty on Torture) are completely and utterly ignored by the courts, because there is no one to prosecute them.

2)  The US Attorney is a cabinet level position, so he's peers with and buddy buddy with the very people he is supposed to able to prosecute if they violate the constitution.  The courts can't act as a check for what the prosecutor won't prosecute.

3) The US Attorney is ALSO in charge of the Justice Department, which includes several premier US Law Enforcement Agencies, including the FBI.  Which means when the FBI goes rogue, there aint no one to prosecute them except in the worst situations because the US Attornies work for the same guy as the FBI.

HOWEVER, as I said, as bad as cops are, internal affairs in this country works well enough that SOME things are not tolerated.  Publicly demanding bribes like they do in Mexico? Uh uh.  That's jail time buddy. 

So how to fix this?

Lots of countries make the justice department separate entirely from the rest of the government? This causes problems in Italy where the prosecutors go after the prime minister all the time.  I might see this is a problem, except that the Italian Prime Minister is the Itallian Rupurt Murdoch, aka fascist Burlosconi.  Maybe having someone file suit against Obama and Bush on a regular basis might make them respect the constitution a bit more.

How would they be appointed?  Lots of ways, but I think it should be a separate branch of the executive, so I'll talk about it more in Article II, but I will say that I think that prosecutors in general should be merged with law enforcement, and that the actual prosecution should be done as a part of law enforcement agencies.

If you just have a prosecutor sitting around 'protecting justice' they choose which laws they enforce, but also have to justify their existence by looking flashy.  Now, this won't be solved if its in law enforcement, but existing internal affairs departments could go after prosecutors rather than a non existent thing like what we have now.  I've been able to find all kinds of abstract reasons why they're supposed to be separate, but the real reason is that modern law enforcement is a modern invention while the King's prosecutor in court is an old feudal position.  When we became a democracy, the idea was to elect or appoint them, but like so much about Article III, so much of our courts was so poorly planned, it was just tacked on as an afterthought and just assumed it would work 'like the English courts.'

More importantly, the US attorney is not a constitutionally protected/defined role.  That means a simple act of congress could merge all US attorney positions into law enforcement agencies by a simple law without having to wait to reboot the constitution or amend the awful current one.

[Rant] Civility, Racism and Bigotry

So I got into an argument with someone on the internet today.  I thought about reposting here, but really, why bother? I try to post at least semi coherant stuff here, not just recycled logic.

The thing is,this person really obviously believed their own internal logic.  I think today was even more proof that the two cultures simply CANNOT be reconciled, and I'll tell you why.

Here's a video from the conservative side here you might watch if you can tolerate it:




I mean it all sounds pretty reasonable right?  Who doesn't like the individual vs the big evil government? And God knows I've ranted enough about the problems with institutions as well.  But the thing is...if you have noticed a single theme I have more than any other it is that of TRUTH.  I lived a lie my whole life until the age of 35.  I swallowed it hook line and sinker, only to discover that the leaders of that lie care only about their own power, profit and personal glory.

I digress. 

The meat of this conversation with the individual in question is that he called me a bigot for putting down people who have a different opinion than them.  This is a branch of the same stupid argument they make about tolerating intolerance, which I addressed here.



The link he posted was right here:

Now I mean, that might be the technical thinking...but is that really what most people think of when they think of the definition...here's the wikipedia entry:

Well that sounds like normal English.  So when you expand the google version, you see its based on a 17th century definition, whereas the one in wikipedia is sourced to a modern Meriam Webster dictionary.  So we see that the person here who is from a movement everyone else but them associates with misogynist assholes, he insists that their movement represents the interest of ALL blighted XYZ.  And to prove that, much like the GOP that trots out women who say, "There is no war on women!"  These collaborators say, "Nuh uh! #NotUsingMeAsAnExcuse!" And then idiot and many like him can point to him and pretend that they're not hanging out with mysogonist assholes.

He demands proof.  Then he says I'm being uncivil.

So what is this CIVIL thing they keep bringing up?

We'll use the google definition, since apparently that's what contards like.

"formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech."

Where have I heard that before?  Oh yes....



Is the incredibly racist slave owning psychopath CIVIL? Can we not at least be CIVIL to each other?

Of course, God FORBID you take offense at anything THEY might say, because you see, to a contard, it is not about what YOU find civil or what society finds civil but what THEY find civil.  If they feel civil toward you, if their gloves are still on then they are being civil.

Thus, it isn't YOUR definition of bigotry that matters, its THEIR definition.  Where have we heard this before? Oh yeah...













So...let's see here...you have to believe you're racially superior to others or that your race is better than others...and as long as you don't do that, you're not racist!  Cause...

You know...by that definition as long as there is ONE PERSON who you like and get along with in that race, who is tame and have the same beliefs as you do politically or socially and you believe that 99.9% of the people of that race aren't like that, then its AOK.  You can tell that off color joke because you're  NOT BEING RACIST.

Now, never mind that the vast majority of the population finds something like this incredibly racist...

"1 in 10000 negros is actually capable of acting like a white man...." but so long as you don't believe ALL of them are that way, YOU'RE NOT RACIST.

It all makes sense when you think about it.  If you define your own words and you don't have to care what 'the collective' thinks, then you can do whatever you want.

Get that? 

Where else have we seen it? The Austrian School of Economics which believes that ITS ideas matter more than science.  Science is merely part of the "collectivist" paradigm otherwise known as reality.  I've already established that by definition conservatives lie more and have a reason for society to tolerate their lies.  Libertarians ARE conservatives for purposes of truth.

And thus we see that even the words we use, the conversations we have can't hold them accountable unless society makes LYING a crime if isn't for fiction or parody.  Our very dialog, the very words we use, markets (which require truthful information to function) or government simply cannot work if we cannot talk to one another and until the individualists stop using 17th century definitions of words or care that while the REST of us call Racism "Someone else being offended about your stereotype about race" rather than your hypertechnical obscure definition (that happens to be an outdated dictionary definition) then we're all going nowhere.

[Humor] Republicans are People too...despite all evidence to the contrary.

Hilarious video and commentary here.

A Republican cult leader defines a relationship as "toxic" as one that might dare reflect too much of reality vs quietly pursing your lips or smiling painfully while listening to more crazy lies about Glenn Beck. :D

[Phi] Capitalism Works Pretty Good Until You Run Out of Other People's Money to Pay for It

There is an Elizabeth Warren quote I like a lot.

Or for those who don't want to read the tiny writing:

"“There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Now, for equal time to our contard friends, this is their response...

Because...HITLER.

Note....that's not an actual Hitler quote.  They say its parody.  You know "Entertainment" just like Fox News.

So the reason I'm writing this post is I saw this in the news today:

Georgia dealers want Tesla store shuttered for selling too many Teslas

That's right folks.  The successful entrepreneur Elon Musk, our reality's Tony Stark, is being Tuckered  by businessmen who don't compete in business but by going to the corrupt "Pro Capitalism" GOP government.  But what about our Libertarian friends? What about them?  First, show me a libertarian government that can actually get elected and then I'll care, and then remember that in a libertarian government there's nothing stopping them from bribing China or other countries to prevent Musk from being able to build the car in the first place, or just hire folks to burn it down.  Oh, Libertarians will say that law enforcement in their world will work....but look at how much they pay for their own party.

Capitalism in the United States involves Public Risk for Private Profit.  The Fed pumped literally trillions of dollars into the economy to prop up failed too big to fail banks, but were any held criminally accountable? No.  They just had to pay some fines of a few billion dollars.  What is the contard reaction to this by the way?

Poor corporations.  They're so put upon.  I mean, they're people right?

I have one contarded sibling who has severed ties with part of the family because we dare question her reality of Glenn Beck and Mitt Romney.  The lies told by contards don't just polarize political environments, they sever families, cost us billions.

Contards wrap their very identity in letting the rich get away with murder.  There's a name for this, and its called Afluenza.   But what about those who aren't rich?  Why would they buy into the lies?

Because of the other lies they're already believing.  The belief that Christ will redeem your sins for no effort but a few words whatsoever, that Love is a distant commandment, and that it is OK to harm children so long as they're not contard children.

Capitalism is an inherently flawed system as has now been mathematically proven not to work except for the rich.  It WILL create stratification unless stopped.  DRASTIC stratification.   How do we fix it? I'm working on lots of ways, but THIS is the most brilliant idea I've seen in a long time.

From their website: "

Our Ultimate Goal:

To restore true, representative democracy in the United States by pressuring our State Legislators to pass a much needed Free and Fair Elections Amendment to our Constitution.  There are only 2 ways to amend the Constitution. (1) Go through our Federal Government  (2) Go through our State Legislators via an amendments convention of the states. 

Wolf PAC believes that we can no longer count on our Federal Government to do what is in the best interest of the American people due to the unfettered amount of money they receive from outside organizations to fund their campaigns. We point to the failure of the Disclose Act as rock solid evidence that this would be a total waste of our time, effort, and money.  We also point to the recent decision by the US Supreme Court to not even hear a case filed by Montana claiming it did not have to abide by Citizens United, as proof that state legislation is not a sufficient measure to solve this problem.   We believe that we have no choice but to put an amendment in the hands of our State Legislators, who are not, at this moment in time, completely blinded by the influence of money and might actually do what 96% of the country wants...take away the massive influence that money has over our political process.  

Their extremely well thought out plan can be found here.  

 Even conservatives and libertarians (as compared to contards and libertarians) are getting on board with this.  Two states so far.  

This is good for many reasons, but for me the most important reason is that if we can have a limited Section V conference for one issue, we can do it for more later.  Washington is totally and fundamentally broken and so are most of our states, but we have to start somewhere and this seems like a good place.

[Cons] Article III, Section 1 (4 of 10) What role the judge?

So in this empowered jury world, what role does a judge play?

Let's start with what they don't do.

They do NOT cite contempt.  That's for the jury.  That means the court rises when the jury enters.  That means that people refer to jurors as 'the honorable' etc.

They do NOT determine the opportunities for opposing council.  "Approaching the bench" means approaching the Jury.

They do NOT cite what evidence is seen.  The jury sees that.

They do NOT determine what law or explain the law to the jury.  The law is simple enough for them to understand (see the next post for that.)

But the thing is, if the Jury is made this powerful, then someone must hold the JURY in check.  The Jury cannot be racist, cannot lie, cannot be sexist or make decisions based on religion or social status.  The jury must serve justice and be fair.  And thus, the greatest and most important power a judge has is to REMOVE a juror who is behaving with conduct unbecoming a public servant.

There must be serious consequences for this.  If a judge does this, a majority of the remaining jury can remove the judge and get a new one subject to their approval.   A judge removed must face a review by another jury about whether or not they get to keep their judgeship.

An honored judge could have powers delegated to him by a jury, but it should be THE JURY'S choice about whether or not they choose to do so and they should be able to take it back at any time.

A judge is honored in court because they are supposed to represent justice, but the political decisions made by conservative judges in US courts are anything BUT honorable or just.  Perhaps after a few centuries they might deserve the honors they receive, but not now.

[Cons] Article III, Section 1 - An Empowered Jury (3 of 10)

So how exactly would this work? I think as far as selection is concerned, most jurisdictions already have pretty good randomization methods in place; often using voter registration or the like.

1) I think the first fix we need is to remove the ability of prosecutors and defense attorneys from being able to remove jurors.  Jurors should have a questionnaire on a trial and be able to recuse THEMSELVES, but there is a definite conflict of interest when a prosecutor is able to remove someone because they might be too smart, too informed, or biased against law enforcement.  An excellent protection against prosecutor over reach or failure to disclose sufficient evidence to the defense is to remove their ability to tamper with the Jury.

A stronger argument could be made in the case of the Defense in order to avoid a prejudiced jury, but given how things are already rigged in favor of the prosecution, removing the prosecutions ability to do this helps the defense, and it will be easier to maintain this state of affairs if the defense can't do it either.  More importantly, juries lie all the time.  If evidence comes to light that a member of the jury lied about certain prescreening questions that they voluntarily answer, it becomes grounds for appeal and the juror is convicted for felony perjury.

What does not happen anymore is that just because someone knows something about a subject they are instantly removed from a jury.  Our justice system should not be the lowest common demoninator, it should be the greatest most intelligent people we can get.  Random selection and intelligence are hard, but at the least we can stop the brain drain.

2) The Jury should set the length of the trial.  Look, you can argue legal quandries all you like, but the fact of the matter is, ultimately its the jury that decides what goes on.  In our current system, judges can shanghai people for weeks at a time while the lawyers go back and forth with mind numbingly complex testiomony with conflicting witnesses and they're just a pair of eyes in a box.

The best, most important way to empower juries is to ensure that THEY set the length of the trial and that they determine the length of testimony presented to each side.  Note, the defense should always get at least as much as the prosecution, but if the prosecution can't make its case in a week, then the Jury should get to tell them to go to hell.

3) The Jury can ask as many questions as it likes and see whatever evidence it wants.  Lawyers and judges pretend they know more about 'fairness' but in reality they lie all the time, twist evidence that would determine a trial if the jury could see it, and generally make juries stupid.  Even beyond this, Judicial 'instructions' to juries often tie their hands so much that the trial is a farce.

The jury should be allowed to ask questions, with a certain amount of time given to each Juror to speak to any witness or the defendant.  By placing the investigation in the hands of CITIZENS, it means that the law must be simple enough so that anyone can understand it; not just lawyers.

4) All appeals must be to juries, not judges.  A jury should determine if another jury has followed the law, not judges.  Judges can and are bribed and corrupted, destroyed by their own sense of entitlement and power.  A randomly selected jury is there to ensure that a trial is properly conducted.  After the behavior of our Supreme Court, I have more faith in a federally selected jury than I do in judges that have to bypass the gauntlets of corrupt conservative legislators.

[Rant] Why Reason with Conservatives Is Impossible

On Facebook the other day, on a liberal page I saw a conservative lady DEFENDING the following statement from Rush Limbaugh.  Not all conservatives love or defend Rush, but the majority of them do.  But even those who do not take their talking points from Rush.  This man is human filth, saying more and more monstrous things and has poisoned the political well in this country for close to two decades.

Until conservatives stop tolerating this monster or tolerating conservatives among their own number who defend him, peace and reconciliation is impossible.  And I for one don't even intend to try.

[Fun] North Korea has Nuclear Weapons!!

In the old Civilization 2 game, a civ thought it was a pretty big deal when it got nukes.  And sometimes it did, but I know of noone who cowered in fear of the stupid NPC, you either ignored them or had to go in and CRUSH them because some powers cannot be trusted with Nuclear Weapons.

Yes, they've had them for a while, but this is the first time I can ever recall nukes being comical.

[Awesome] Kristen Bell as Mary Poppins

Here

An excellent wish list

An excellent wishlist of things to fix from my mother's blog.







http://theoutlawcat.blogspot.com/2014/07/i-think-as-with-any-other-nation-it.html?m=1

[Rant] The Prosecutor and the Penis Pump

I had thought to wait until I was ready to post about prosectutors but really, this won't wait.  Its not just a constitutional post, it's the single most exemplary example I've found in the last three years as to why prosecutors are a serious problem.

Summary: 17 year old in Virginia Sexts a 15 year old.  Conservitard parents complain.  Blood thirsty ghoulish prosecutor is prosecuting him under CHILD PORNOGRAPHY LAWS and on top of everything else prosecutors are being summarily insane and asking for drugs to inflate his penis to ensure that they can accurately identify the guilty part in the image.

I mean, talk about perverse.  This proves that they are out of control.  There are almost no checks on their power.  We have internal affairs for police...what do we have for prosecutors?  The Duke LacRoss player prosecutor was removed from office but faced no criminal charges.  It's insane, unjust and rediculous.

And it needs to stop. Perverts like this guy should not sit in the DA's chair.

[Cons] Article 3, Section 1 - A Right to a Trial By Jury (2 of 10)

Why is it that in American courts, the distribution of power looks like this:

When it should look like this?

Let's look at this in detail, shall we?

I doubt many people are going to argue with this, but in the small chance that they are going to, let's examine the current status of things:

The Judge has almost limitless power in their court room to keep order, to hold people in contempt, to instruct the jury, to decide what evidence does or does not make it into the trial etc.  There are limits but primarily, they involve appellate courts.  Within an actual trial, the judge has a lot of power.  And definitely the most of it.

The prosecutor is next.  They select the jury with the defense.  They make plea bargains with the defense.  They get the first look at evidence given by law enforcement, and even though they are legally obligated to share it with the defense, often they don't, so in terms of practical power, the prosecution is the 2nd most powerful entity after the judge.

The Defense is still more powerful than the jury, because the jury gets selected by the defense.  The defense gets to ask questions, just like the prosecution, and also gets to make a closing argument and help argue about what the jury does or doesn't get to see.

The poor Jury is often selected down to the lowest common denominator with people who couldn't find a reason to get out of Jury Duty, people who have no expertise in law or the case are often selected above those that do, they can ask no questions, and even after the dog and pony show of what evidence can or can't be seen, they are often forced to find against defendants or for them given explicit instructions on the law by the judge.  They can't ask for their own advice from an independent source.  They can ask for clarifications but almost never do, and also can be held hostage until they come to a unanimous decision.

Summary of Events as Stand
It's a pretty pathetic system all around, but then why do we have them? The idea of jury trials started with the Magna Carta, in which nobles demanded a trial by other nobles (a jury of their peers) rather than the capacious judgement a king could often hold over them.  This continued down by tradition until commoners also got this right.

But in the UK, they have barristers and actual lawyers who get up and make arguments in trial vs those who make the legal arguments.  They won't say it, but if you have lawyers who specialize in making argument in court only, perhaps you can recognize the fact that the whole thing is a show and often comes down to makes the most convincing argument to the jury.

So if it's to some degree all a show, why still bother? Well in part, because it helps increase our confidence in the courts knowing that 'our peers' can help protect us from criminal abuses and we can argue (or have someone argue) our case.  More importantly, even though people recognize that juries make mistakes, especially in highly technical cases, the appellate courts can make it up by fixing things down the line.

But confidence in the courts is on the wain.  Why? In part because we now recognize what has always been true, that the vast majority of judges, being human, are political, and as such more likely to follow their politics than their respect for the law.  And until such time as we can have an AI programmed specifically to follow the law and the law only, ignoring politics, we must acknowledge that justice, being a human institution, is inherently political.

So the question then in courts is how to maximize faith in the Rule of Law, while at the same time reducing politics as much as possible.  Life time appointments and confirmations between branches seems well and good, but such a mix got us a court that decided that corporations are people and have unlimited free speech and religious exemptions as well.

In short, American courts are now a total joke.  But try telling a judge that, and he has unlimited power to lock you up for nearly as long as he likes until appeal or you apologize in sack cloth and ashes for your 'contempt' of court.  Your 1rst amendment to free speech doesn't matter too much if you insult a judge in their court.

What to Do About It?

I mentioned in my last post on this that we need to rebuild from the ground up, including the elimination of Common Law.  I'm entirely certain anyone who currently works with the law might find this a horrible idea, just like creating a new constitution, especially anyone with a stake in the current system including lawyers, judges, some politicians and law enforcement.  But the people at large?

Maybe.  If you can make a case for it.  And I think there is a case to be made.  To keep politics out of the courts you need to democratize it, disburse the power away from institutions and away from the elite few who can be corrupted by corrupt interests.  If anyone can be on a jury then bribing the entirety of the population can be much harder.  Protecting the minority is important, but in our current system, all minorities aren't protected, just the select few who happen to be favored by the current factions in power.  Any justice system which does not protect ALL minorities; racial, sexual, genetic, political, or economic, is an unjust system prone to abuse.

A judge should be there to ensure the rules are followed, not to decide what evidence does or does not get presented.  A prosecutor should represent the interests of those enforcing the law, not the political aspirations of an idiot who needs a head.  And the defense should represent their client, fairly and with equal information to the prosecution, of equal ability with the prosecution in resources and the like.

Each of these things needs to be informed, but to me it starts with the Jury.  Juries need to be able to ask questions and they should be able to organize themselves, and they should not be able to have to be absolute to convict.

Let's look at the counter arguments:

People are Stupid, so thus will Juries be: Yup.  This is true.  But the idea that judges and the prosecution somehow counter this is ludicrous.  Millions of people are thrown into jail in this country to satisfy the political aspirations of prosecutors who want career advancement by being 'tough on crime.'  Justice is political, and politicians are slime.  So do you want corruption or stupidity? Corruption is hard to fix without a justice system that is just, whereas stupidity can be fixed with time as people learn the fact and are able to educate themselves.

Majorities will oppress minorities.  Well first, this happens all the time with  our current system, but if you can design a political system that gives the minority power (such as requiring multiple votes over time to amend a constitution or pass a referendum) you can also fix this by allowing multiple juries to see the same case.  It does mean that the ability to avoid being tried for the same crime twice might be out the window, but then again, given the fact that our current system of government essentially allows a prosecutor to charge someone with something different but for what is essentially the same crime over and over; or that a federal prosecutor can charge for something when a local prosecutor can't, that argument is by practicality also made null and void.

There should be rules in a court room. There should be lawyers.  But the basic of how the trail occurs and the law that is being tried need to be fundamentally rewritten and the best place to start is with the idea that it is the JURY not the lawyers or judges who make that determination.  

Five solutions to make this happen:

1) Give Juries, not judges, the power to declare contempt of court.

2) Give Juries, not judges or lawyers, the power to determine what evidence is seen by the court.

3) Allow the creation of technical juries for technical trials or sub aspects of trial.  Have a case that involves DNA evidence? Allow a jury of scientists to hear the evidence rather than a jury of people who think that science is evil.  

4) Allow Jury duty to serve as donated Civic Time (see a future as yet written post on this).  If all citizens are trained in law and law enforcement from the day they enter school, then it becomes much more possible to have quality juries.

5) Hold Jurors accountable for deviant or corrupt behavior.  If a juror or jury takes a bribe, acts in a fashion that is inappropriate (mocking the defendants, lying, conviction of guilty for racist reasons etc) and is held accountable for it by another jury, then they will take this much more seriously.  Higher courts from wider jurisdictions (especially federal ones) can find the unreasonable behavior of a small pocket of the country (like say...East Texas) and convict appropriately.

It's not a perfect solution, but I think its better than our current system and worthy of experimentation.  I'll address Jury Selection in my next post.

[News] The Supreme Court is about to NERF Unions

So unions have to argue for benefits for everyone but a bunch of conservative freeloaders can get all the benefits and pay for none of it? That sounds like a racket, and only a conservative would call that justice.

[Cons] Article 3, Section 1 (1 of 10) Actual Breakdown of the Text, General Thoughts

The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.

It is evidently clear from the creation of the document, both in the size of the article and the flexibility of interpretation, that of the three major branches, the authors of the constitution gave the least thought to the Supreme Court or to the law in general.  Why would they?  American Courts worked perfectly well in their eyes, and the English legal system was 'the envy of the world.'  While America had revolted against Monarchy and Kings, thus necessitating a new experiment in legislative and executive activities, courts were just, you know...COURTS.  Everyone knew how they worked.  They knew they wanted a supreme court that could decide federal cases, and they knew that it was a good idea to have lesser courts under that.

And they basically said, "Hey congress, you guys just handle this mess, OK?"  They put a few safeguards in that seemed obvious at the time, such as not being able to suddenly state that a judge was earning nothing so congress could destroy their lives, but that's about it really.  Nothing about how many people there were in the court, not about how many courts they should be, and that's about it.

In the other two articles (which I'll address later) they specified which cases were to go to the court, how they were supposed to be tried, and that political cases were specifically in the hands of the legislature...and they defined treason.  That's it.   

So is it any wonder then that our system is so messed up?  The amendment process does add some more guidelines, especially in the Bill of Rights.  At the time, many people thought we didn't need a bill of rights because they didn't want to 'lessen' our rights by defining them.  Can you imagine where we'd be now without it, in this second gilded age?

Due Process would be optional, unless the executive declared it classified and a state secret, oh wait, that was recently declared unconstitutional.  Good luck getting it enforced.  To quote Andrew "I like Genocide" Jackson, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" This is a serious problem in our court system as well.

But as I mentioned in the intro to this article, American justice is a farce.  So aside from the vast amounts of what is NOT written into Article III about how courts should work, is there anything wrong with what IS there?  Not really.  The court is very ill defined, so checks and balances against it are slim at best.  The court, thanks to English Common Law (enshrined into our constitution in the little known 7th amendment), has a tradition of doing things a certain way.  Why do people obey the court? In part because federal judges have tremendous power given them by congress by statute and also by tradition, but in part it is largely because people simply recognize the court as being the final arbiter of these kinds of decisions.

But even that has had to be taken by the court.  Marbury V Madison, in which the court basically said that it had the right to interpret the constitution is even now contested by psychopathic conservatives.  If it isn't written in the document, it isn't acceptable to them.  And really, who am I to disagree? Our courts require lofty standards of documentation and legalisms, which in turn require lofty standards of regulation and arguments, but is it viewed as fair?

The vast majority of the population do not believe so.  So if the court isn't viewed as fair, why do we put up with it? Partly inertia, and partly because we view the alternatives as far worse.  But as I have mentioned earlier, just because 'democracy is the worst form of government except all the others' doesn't mean you don't examine other methods.  Just because Article V strikes terror into the hearts of many for what it could do doesn't mean we timidly fail to explore an alternative to what is clearly a fundamentally unfair and utterly broken process.

And I aim to do just that.

[Cons] Article III, Section 0 - Not Justice

Before I start with Sections, I want to explain why I'm doing Article III before Article II.  Article II is about the executive, but the majority of the abuses by the executive, except some of the more recent and blatant abuses of power, Are taking place because of the very nature of our laws.  Look, remember that civilization is an illusion, and such one of the most important things that Government can do is maintain that illusion through the belief that there is Justice in the courts.

Yet no one really believes that, especially about the justice department of the American government.  The lists of abuses are endless, but I'll cite some of them here.

• Dozens, perhaps hundreds of innocent men killed by bloodthirsty out of control prosecutors.
• Failure to prosecute Wall Street Bankers who stole trillions from America because they are 'Too Big to Jail.'
• The National Director of Intelligence LIED to congress, committed Perjury and has yet to be prosecuted despite claims that they are 'looking into it.'
• George W. Bush, war criminal and advocate for torture, has not been held to account by the Holder Justice department.
• Federal raids on peaceful medical marijuana dispensaries in direct contravention to the 10th amendment to the constitution AND their own given word.
• Recurring prosecution of whistle blowers trying to expose the festering rotten corruption in the US government whilst allowing other evils to flourish.  Attacking our own immune system of truth.
• A Supreme Court that has said that Imminent Domain can be used for the rich, that Corporations are people, that money is speech (and thus the rich are entitled to more rights than the rest of us), and so many, many, many abusive decisions in favor of insane police privilege. 
• Failure to prosecute the police who destroyed peaceful Occupy Protesters in a massive federally coordinated attack.  In fact, one of them was even given a fat check for 'trauma' he suffered from complaints filed against him.
• Minorities are singled out by law enforcement, not given proper representation, and executed at far higher rates.
• You have to be rich or go into debt or find a lawyer that likes you to take on the rich and powerful in the courts of justice.
• Your public defender is under paid, over worked and is likely working to make you plea for a bargain even if you did nothing wrong.
• Your prosecutor is looking out for their own career prospects in most cases, rather than than whether or not you are guilty if you happen to be the one the police pin it on.
• For profit private prisons rake in the money, in some cases bribing judges to set up little factories to send them prisoners. In other cases pressuring law makers to make tough crime penalties to get more prisoners for rural counties to increase their political clout.

The list goes on and on and on and on.  But one of the root causes of the problems, aside from lying sociopathic conservatives and libertarians, is the moderates who buy into the 'abusive government regulation' schtick the sociopaths spin, BECAUSE IT IS TRUE.  And why is our government filled with abusive regulations?

In large part because it must.  Our justice system uses English Common Law, which states that a prior judgement takes priority until a judge changes it in a new case.  The idea of a jury of one's peers is at the heart of American justice.

But lawyers get to lie to juries with half truths.  Judges lie to juries.  Juries are just little pairs of eyes, carefully selected for their stupidity.

In the adversarial system, the Prosecutor is supposed to represent Justice (ie US), the defending lawyer their client and the judge (US) or at most Justice.

Does anyone REALLY REALLY believe that these people represent us?  The thing is, when you meet a conservative face to face, they seem like nice people.  It is easy to forget that they believe things that will kill all life on earth, and that may very likely threaten the freedom of your children.  Abstractly, perhaps, you may be aware that conservatives are liars, but when you see someone's face, are you likely to call them a liar?

Hell, I'll admit I'm not.  I might believe my friends are liars when they are speaking AS a conservative, but I don't want to call them liars.  No one does.

So of course a prospective Jury, sitting in a box, being asked questions by a defense attorney or a prosecutor doesn't want to think that the entire thing is a farce, that the judge may be insane or abusive and totally unaccountable for their actions, that the prosecutor may have been hiding evidence from everyone and will NEVER be held accountable for it, and that the defense is trying every trick in the book to help their client, but that may involve taking a shady crooked deal for less time even though they are TOTALLY INNOCENT?!

The regulatory weight of our schools, our governments and our regulatory agencies are in large part based upon this system that carries greater and greater weight as the centuries pass, property law from the time when people thought people could be property echoes down upon us like a ton of bricks.  Laws passed by useless legislatures and regulations must withstand the connivance of corporate lawyers seeking to game the system to make a quick buck.

It cannot continue like this.

And before we speak of enforcing laws, we must discuss fixing the system that tries them.

More Evidence Congress and all Legislatures in General

Are bad and should be abolished.  At a minimum it is evidence the US Constitution needs to GO!

[Cons] Article I, Section 10 - How Not To Govern

So I got into a discussion recently with some friends on the new Common Core standards, and an interesting question came up about regulations.  I'm of two minds regarding regulations...

On the one hand, I am vehemently opposed to opposition to regulation for its own sake, in that having an anti government filter for everything is just stupid.  It is one thing to want small government, it is another thing to automatically be anti government about everything, always saying that government is the wrong solution or to say that government is always evil.  This way lays madness and compulsive lying to get what you want.  Lots of people rag on and on about the lady who sued McDonalds because her coffee was too hot.  Well guess what folks, that lady had a legitimate reason to sue, and it was primarily because the psychopaths at that restaurant kept their coffee so hot and so far above industry standard that the woman actually got third degree burns on her legs because of their insanity.

On the other hand, while individual regulations might be well intentioned, those that make and enforce the rules rarely consider the ripple effects that they will cause.  One example of this is included in the book Outliers, which explains about the curious fact that Hockey Players in Canada in the major leagues were almost all born in January, Febuary and March.  This was due to the tiered system of minor leagues and an arbitrary cut off date which put five year olds with much greater size and skill playing against kids of a much younger age.  This affected 75% of all players for the rest of their lives because someone thought it would be convenient to put an age cut off 'here.'  Another example of this was when I was getting my Scrum Master Certification and I mentioned my recently awful experience with the USPS IVR and how it clearly hadn't been tested with actual users...only to have one of my fellow students mentioned that they'd tried that with some pentagon software, and due to some insane White House directive, they initially couldn't and were only able to do so due to a desire of a third party to conduct research.

When a bureaucracy has to skirt its own rules just to be able to interact with its own end users, there is clearly something wrong with the world.  A former friend of mine (well I'm still his friend but he decided to become my ex friend when I took umbrage with the fact that maybe the NRA was awful and liars because they were AOK with mass murdered children being a cause for some soul reflection beyond saying 'EVEN MORE GUNS' without any thought whatsoever....) had a really good point in that he explained that it is the nature of an institution to try and do what it was designed to do...which is to say that a government regulatory agency is going to try and well...regulate.  It isn't just going to suddenly decide, 'you know what guys...we've got enough rules now'....it just doesn't happen.

Now, regulatory agencies have their own problems in that they can either be utterly coopted by the people they're regulating, or potentially be so archaic that they don't understand modern technology, or they could just become so overwhelmed that they become essentially lazy and non functional.   There are a lot of solutions to this...reform works from time to time...but let's look at some.

1) The CIA in the 1960's was the perfect definition of the Deep State, causing some of the most notorious abuses in the history of government.  In the 1970's some of their abuses were paired back, but by the time 9/11 rolled around, they were given cart blanche ability to do whatever was 'necessary to protect us' showing that the constitution and the bill of rights were utterly inadequate to protect us from their abuses as well as the rest of the Classified Community.  Now these rogue agencies don't even answer to Congress any more.  A commission is not enough to hold a rogue government agency in check.

2) The IRS was brought up in witch hunts by the 'special' conservative revolution class in the 1990's...most of this, like so many things conservatives do, was idiotic and stupid, but there were some very legitimate complaints against government power.  So congress passed some laws to reform it.  And what happened? The agency that took down Al Capone when no one else could has become so weakened that it barely has enough to do any audits at all any more.  And people wonder why there is a wealth gap in this country.  Even now, Oligarchy efforts to demonize the IRS are being carried out by their mass army of conservative collaborators.

3) The Department of Homeland Security coordinated a federal strike against peaceful protesters...and no one has been held accountable.

4) The Department of Justice has failed to go after bankers...and no one has been held accountable.

So simple reform isn't enough to do it.  Would eliminating the entire agency like what South Korea is doing to their coast guard work?  Not really, because there is still a need for regulation and so when an agency is dissolved, a new one must take its place, but because of the way most governments currently hire...guess who is the most likely group of people to be hired when you go looking for employees for the agency? Yup, you guessed it, the old employees of the one that was just dissolved.  That's exactly what happened with the hyper corrupt agency that regulated oil drilling right after the Deepwater Horizon incident.

So what solutions actually work?  Well one that is working pretty good so far is to set up competing agencies, like the Consumer Financial Protection agency initially chaired and advocated by Elizabeth Warren...you KNOW it is working because of how much it is making the bankers squirm, but the problem is, all societies have conservative administrations sooner or later, and the next is likely to eviscerate it and fill it with conservative psychopaths.  It might be effective for NOW, but give it a couple of Romneys, Bushes, Reagans or McCains and they'll likely suck more than anyone else and be bogged down in nonsense or, like most Oligarchy agencies, stop answering to the common folk at large.

So what will actually WORK?

My solution starts with the Brundlestaag, which has the potential to shift the arbiter of a government solution from federal to local, local to federal or either to NOT GOVERNMENT every fifty years.  This solution might seem extreme, but it kept the Roman Empire alive for another THOUSAND YEARS when they shifted their capital to Byzantium.

There are other solutions as well, such as I think allowing election or at least popular rejection of pretty much everyone currently confirmed by the US Senate.  Special care will have to be taken to prevent conservatives from destroying government or killing everyone, but there are ways to achieve this.

But back to my solution of 'not government.'  How does that work?  What happens if people put, say, Health Care, in not local and not government but still want something better for their society than the psychotically stupid 'Get Well or Die Quickly' American health care system pre ACA?

I look at that coolest of nations, Switzerland.  No country is perfect, but as a direct democracy (or closer to it than most countries) they have prevented some pretty stupid things and pretty awful corruption by allowing a popular vote.  The way the Swiss handle their health care is to allow for a wide variety of not for profit institutions to act as insurance agencies but since they are not for profit, their stake holders are their policy holders rather than Oligarchy Stock Holders.

And it works pretty well.  The government only has to set some minimum standards about how they can't basically be conservative lie factories that don't really provide insurance.  Now, a lot of libertarians have provided this exact same solution and I think its a good idea.  The problem is, that you cannot allow people who hate civilization or any form of regulation (and even if you know that one rational libertarian who isn't against all regulation, you know the rest are really pretty much anarchists organized enough to try to destroy everything but the military and contract law) to actually implement government or be in charge of anything.

But its actually a GOOD idea.  The Red Cross, long before FEMA, did fantastic things in disaster relief for the better part of a century.  Sure they weren't perfect, but they did a really great job and, not being part of the government, were able to a lot because they didn't have to fill forms out in triplicate, use government procurement rules etc.

In the Scrum class I attended, at one point the instructor asked, "Why does government have to hold itself to those standards? Who set them? Government."  Usually congress, because some legislator has to make a name for himself.  Government doesn't work, not because government is part of the problem, but because some of the basic assumptions we make about it: 'blind' procurement, meritocracy based testing, supreme documentation etc, are all based on reforms that took place in the 19th century that helped out a lot but were put into place before current technology.  We need to rethink how we do regulation and government at a fundamental level, but before we do that, I want to swap out the order I take things because Article III talks about the courts and Article II talks about the executive.

All problems with our regulatory system come down to how we administer our courts and our laws, which needs to be fixed (at a constitutional level) before we do anything else.

But I want to mention one more idea in this area, which is basically the constitution saying 'the legislature can't do this'...which it has routinely ignored.  Telling government and congress what it can't do piecemeal has often been ignored, in large part because the constitution is simply too hard to change and too inflexible to adjust to the times.  Conservatives love it...but let's look at who is defending it.  You know...conservatives...the same group who think that having their Oligarchy Masters tell them what to watch and what to think is a swell thing.

But one good idea, executed horribly, that the conservatives had was the idea of competing institutions for government.  That is to say, that one way you could make a regulatory agency behave was to threaten to replace them with something else if they suck.  But you can't make it another government agency.  Where conservatives (as usual) got it wrong was their magical Market Fairy thinking that assumed a business could do it better.  What does a business do? It makes money for the people who own it (usually the Oligarchy).  It isn't going to work for the greater good of society. In theory, a B corp could do that, but probably never in the American Oligarchy Capital society.

However, threatening to replace it with a NON PROFIT granted monopoly power or even better, several non profits could work wonders.  Note....this also only works if you can keep religion out of it, because while not all religions are about money, telling the ones that are in it for the money vs the ones that are in it for the good of Man is essentially impossible.

My Witness Against the Corrupt FCC and Obama Administration

I do not believe my comment will be heard. I believe this because we, the people, have spoken again and again on this matter. TWICE we elected a man as president who promised a free and open internet (truly free, not the garbage 'free' the current chairman claims to support). We campaigned against SOPA, and PIPA and the TPP and numerous attempts, COUNTLESS attempts to put a fence around the internet and put up toll ways and basically take away the medium of freedom of the people. It is now scientifically proven that this is an oligarchy. Obama put a man who is a known lobbyist for the corrupt and hated broadband industry in charge of the regulatory body and the first major thing he does is turn around and say that he wants to do what broadband wants. Give him two or three years and then he'll leave for a nice well paid job that pays millions of dollars as a reward for his brazenly selfish actions. It appears we can't stop you this time around. Obama AND the republicans are bought and sold, but since Rule of Law is important to the illusion of freedom we have this will be kept as public record, so for future generations know that we did not let this corruption go unnoticed. We did not take to the streets because of visible evidence that federally coordinated strikes on peaceful protestors go entirely unpunished and have reason to fear for our lives. We have made our wishes known countless times, and they are still ignored. Let this be witness and evidence to the corruption of the Republic of the United States of America, never perfect but at one time much more moral than it is now.

http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment/confirm?confirmation=2014516188817

Comment yourself if you want: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=w969v

[Cons] Article 1, Section 9 - Titles of Nobility (4 of 4)

Sir Paul McCartney?  Sir Alec Guinness?

England has this wonderful opportunity to grant brilliance in a field with a title of nobility.

Yet our constitution forbids it, primarily to get away from the European tradition of Monarchy.  You see the monarchies were often tyrannical entities that took away the rights of the colonists that fought for independence to get away from them.

Really? Well, it's true that I'm free to write this blog, but god forbid we protest in the streets because we'd be beaten to death, and the people doing that beating would never suffer the consequences for it.  

But really?  How about the idea that we should basically just Carthage the concept of a Republic.   Why? Because we've had some evil dictators and evil organizations in history....Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Ida Amin, Ghengis Khan, but NONE of them....not one of them have ever tried to deliberately wipe all life on earth just to make a quick buck.

All a Republic is is a country ruled by 'the people' instead of a king.  What's so great about having the Head of State in the hands of the Presidency anyway?  Every single one of our presidents to Carter have been, as near as I can tell, Immoral in one way or another...and Carter?  Yeah, not Immoral so much as Paralyzed at a time of critical crisis...then Ford who pardoned Nixon, Nixon, LBJ....

Hardly moral pillars even if all did good and bad things.  But why NOT elect a moral bedrock as our king?

A monarchy does not mean a HEREDITARY monarchy.  Why not elect the king every ten years?  Or Queen?

We don't need a house of Lords, but we could have a moral foundation of individuals recognized by society to have great worth and performance.  They should have ZERO power...and of course it could be abused...but if they did, then a democratic society can take the institution away or remove the title from those who espouse evil views.

And really...explain to me what moral superiority men who said that it was OK to own people have over anyone else anyway? If they didn't want titles of nobility maybe we should take a second look.

Note: Giving them actual LAND or power, would be absolutely stupid nonsense of course.  Our own house of Lords, the Senate, is also corrupt and evil.

[Rant] Disproving yet another lie from filth

"Even if you took all the income from the top 1%, it would barely pay for the government for a single year."

Net Family Wealth US: $54 Trillion.

Wealth held by the Upper 1%: 42% of all wealth.

54 Trillion * .42=22 Trillion.

That was a 2 minute google search.

So it's true if you just take the amount they earned from income and interest and capital gains that might not pay for a year, but if you look at how much they have STOLEN thanks to a bankrupt, corrupt and unequal system, looks like they could fund the US government for about 20-25 years, more if you established a sovereign wealth fund like Norway....

[Wall of Shame] Liberal or Progressive

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.  But I really doubt the numbers will compare.

Cartoon: Get well gifts for the unvaccinated

[Revolution] An Alternative to my last post

I saw "House of Cards" yesterday where in one episode an officer randomly shot a gun at a fleeing bystander and it nearly cost him his badge...

And I got to thinking, we want anyone acting in a police capacity to be well trained.

This does not solve the problem that there seems to exist the feeling that they are 'a separate class', and also the default desire to please authority that the majority of society has has allowed officers who have clearly committed egregious abuses to get away with it because a jury won't hold them to account.

Step 2 involves fixing State Law Enforcement and Prosecutors....

But non violent revolution is not going to be easy, perhaps not even possible until law enforcement feels it is PART of the citizenry, rather than opposed to it - And I'm sorry....the blue wall of silence against fellow police, as well as the fact that the officers who crushed occupy as coordinated by the DHS proved that this is not the case.

All efforts of reform of this seem to fail....so I advocated simply dissolving professional police departments.

Random selection ala Jury won't cut it, even if it is only for beat patrol officers leaving core professional teams intact....BUT

We already have citizen soldiers, ala the National Guard.  They're both military and 'us'.....so why not do this with the police? They're only police 3 days a week and paid as much as national guard even though they're controlled by governors ala Militia?

It's not perfect, but its better than what we have now.  A LOT better.

[Cons] Article 1, Section 9 - Bills of Attainder and Ex Post Facto (3 of 4)

So first of all, what the hell are they?

If you don't know, here's the wikipedia definition:

Bill of Attainder: A bill of attainder (also known as an act of attainder or writ of attainder or bill of pains and penalties) is an act of a legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without privilege of a judicial trial. As with attainder resulting from the normal judicial process, the effect of such a bill is to nullify the targeted person’s civil rights, most notably the right to own property (and thus pass it on to heirs), the right to a title of nobility, and, in at least the original usage, the right to life itself. 

Or to Summarize: A penalty just for being somebody or a member of a specific group.

Ex Post Facto: An ex post facto law (Latin for "from after the action" or "after the facts") is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law. In criminal law, it may criminalize actions that were legal when committed; it may aggravate a crime by bringing it into a more severe category than it was in when it was committed; it may change the punishment prescribed for a crime, as by adding new penalties or extending sentences; or it may alter the rules of evidence in order to make conviction for a crime likelier than it would have been when the deed was committed. Conversely, a form of ex post facto law commonly called an amnesty law may decriminalize certain acts or alleviate possible punishments (for example by replacing the death sentence with lifelong imprisonment) retroactively. Such laws are also known by the Latin term in mitius.

Or to Summarize: It's about changing the rules after the fact so that even if you think you're obeying the law, it can still mean you're not.

Both of these are really important for the rule of law, because even though that rule of law is an illusion, it's a REALLY important illusion.  And if the law is not fair, then its almost impossible to believe in it.  So to the degree the law is fair, or at least gives the illusion of fairness, the law is strong.  That's why when we know the law is not fair, the law starts to lose strength and civilization itself is threatened.  That's the problem with being a Republic.

So, we should definitely include these in any constitution, and probably in the 'always' part, not the Hierarchy of Rights or the BrundleStaag, no matter how much I might want to punish Conservatives merely for being Conservatives.  After all, they might do the same thing to me...(in fact they probably would.)  

And yet....AND YET...

If the primary argument against Ex Post Facto and Bills of Attainder is that it makes the law seem unfair, what about instances where behavior of the offending parties in question also threatens the rule of law?  For those of you who have seen the movie, "Lethal Weapon 2" you likely remember the moment where the racist South African villain laughs that he will get away with murder because he has Diplomatic Immunity? Or what about the fact that millions of people are losing their homes but the bankers got away with it?  Or how I hear my entire life about how a war criminal is the worst thing EVER and they hunt them down until the end of time, and yet we let them get away with it.

The argument can be made that as bad as these things are, the alternative is worse.  This why we need to let Nazis and Racists and Liars have their political speech, because it helps keep the speech free for everyone.  I can see this.  It might be fun to imagine a world with blurry Rule of Law where Batmans whirl around and solve the grey areas, while the law still keeps the glue apart for everyone else.  But without script writers, I really doubt that would work out too well. 

But I think the argument can be made that there might be some areas where the willful ignorance is so high, so deliberate, and so evil that even if the law doesn't cover it, punishment still needs to be applied to cover the rule of law itself.  I think one excellent example of this was the efforts by the Tobacco Lobby to cover up the truth causing millions to die of cancer.  Yes, its true conventional laws were used to punish them....but what if that had failed? EVERYONE knew they were guilty and patently evil...I mean selling cigarettes to children....

And, quite frankly, I think we need to punish conservatives for AGW denial.  This isn't a joke any more.   There is no ambiguity and their willful ignorance is threatening all life on earth.  The cost will be in the TRILLIONS to fix it, and there is a deliberate effort not only to cover it up by the Koch brothers, but to ignore the consequences thereof...

I think they should pay.

Right now, I assure you, I am in the vast vast minority....but what about in the future? What about when the sea levels rise and every day is hot, August Hot?

What's better...a rampaging mob that moves to the south and tears the conservatives limb from limb...or a process...an organized threshold to actually PUNISH an organization so evil and destructive that everyone hates them, like the Westboro Baptist Church?

When people are sufficiently pissed off, there is going to be action....whether or not they have a loop hole in the law...so why not allow a mechanism in the rule of law?

I'll set the barrier at a simple one: 80%.  If a national vote (not a legislature because legislatures suck) can find 80% of the people voting against you? Yeah.  You're gone.

Banishment is the best alternative.  And yes, it can be abused, which is why I think it should also require voting over three years to make it happen, but it might also make some groups who abuse our hospitality...calm down a little.