You Can Get It Fast, Cheap or Good. Choose Two of Three

It's a well known trope and its written on pieces of paper in restaurants throughout America. You can have it fast, you can have it cheap, or you can have it good/quality. Choose two of three. I'm going to make my own version of that to the internet conscienceness.

You can let the stupid vote.

You can have a constitutional right to lie.

You can have a democracy.

Choose two of three.

This isn't that hard when you think about it, but let's look at it.

The argument for a constitutional right to lie is freedom of speech means you can lie. Some, with a better understanding, argue that profiting from a lie is fraud and is already legislated, but Fox News has a Supreme Court decision that basically gives them the constitutional right to lie. Note, I challenge you to find a founding father that said lying is cool. We're not talking Parody here...or fiction, or even benignly unknowingly making a mistake but bald face lying for profit. So even if our pathetic justice system, which is busy depriving individuals of their liberty because of drugs (and spend billions of dollars on such) spend almost no time at all enforcing existing fraud legislation on corporations and the media, because Fox can, per the Robert's court, basically just say its entertainment. Of course, a regular network, that does a fictional work like War of the Worlds puts up every commercial break, "This is a work of fiction. It's entertainment." Fox news doesn't do that. Why? Because it is political propaganda deliberately designed to exploit the stupid.

I find this particularly ironic given an ideology that claims moral superiority. Is not honesty a Christian value? Is not Honesty a basic family value we teach our children? Yet these people willingly lie to themselves and reject any inconvient truth, attack science, etc. They want their cake, to eat it, and to not gain any weight. So far, their own dishonesty has been their greatest weakness, and thankfully even the stupid who aren't caught up by their lies can see through their scams eventually...especially when it affects them personally.

Fox news might be the number one network, but no one but conservatives, independents that are actually conservatives and liberals making fun of it actually watch it. But really, I'm not talking about that more in this entry...because I've already talked about it and so have lots of people.

Understanding reality is like interest. Those who understand interest earn it. Those that don't pay it. Those that understand reality watch something besides Fox. Those that don't, watch Fox.

End of story.

More importantly, can one BLAME Fox? They've rigged the game so that they can profit from a lie. No one checks them on it...aside from fact checkers, but then they discredit fact checkers as having their own political agenda such that even intelligent indepents are leery of trusting them entirely, allowing smidgens of the Reagan reality to slip through the defenses of anyone who isn't firmly fixed on liberal sources of information, because everything else requires a constant judgement call on every single item, and its impossible to call what is true and what is a lie every single time. Moderates by their very nature, indeed I believe by their biology are going to take news from more than one source, and if one of those sources is a lie factory, then that means that they're being affected by lies.

The problem is that Democracy DEPENDS on voters making informed decisions. And you can't do that based on the inability to discern truth. Conservative ideology, it seems, depends on lies. You can argue to the contrary, but any intelligent independent or liberal can see it as plain as day. They suppress the vote, suppress the truth. That's a sign of weakness, which is odd because I think without the lies some of their basic ideas; or the ideas they say they care about are important and eternal and an excellent check on liberal excess.

But as someone that lived a lie and was lied to for the bulk of my life, my tolerance of dishonesty is low. But it isn't just personal.

A democracy is about making a CHOICE of who to vote for. Republicans, and Republicists...supporters of Republics, like to argue that the value of a Republic is that by choosing virtuous leaders you can temper the will of the mob. Well, that's a nice theory, but it only evens out and smooths the random impulses of the mob. A strange fad that infects half the population to spend a trillion dollars on pet rocks for a day is a bad idea, and a process of representation can delay it.

But an entire paradigm built on nothing but lies is going to create a sustained lie that will produce elected representatives that are more than willing to reflect the lies believed by their stupider minions. For democracy, or a democratic republic to work, voters must be able to make informed choices.

Which means you EITHER:

a) Improve the quality of the voter by ensuring that the stupid cannot vote. Property ownership is not a proper threshold...there are many many dumb property owners, and they have no real qualifications that improve society. More importantly, the definition of society has moved on since the original constitution was created to give more people the right to vote than rich white male land owners.

It IS possible to create a test to allow for intelligence. There are perils of this-sure. There are perils in holding an election. There are perils in having a military. I will argue in a future post how this can be done. Let us for now simply posit that by hook or by crook one solution to the conundrum of a functioning democracy is to improve the quality of the voter.

b) Remove lying reducing the barrier for the less intelligent or less able voter to be able to make a better choice. This is best accomplished by making Lying in anything short of fiction or parody a felony. Especially if it is done for profit. Already the law you say? Then we need to change our enforcement mechanisms to make it work...but given how hard it is to sue someone for liable or slander in this country I think we can say that there are no real consequences for lying, especially by the press, by politicians and by corporations.

That needs to change.

c) Don't have a democracy. There are many other forms of government, all called worse by Winston Churchill and they certainly do have flaws, but they pretty much all have the advantage that by reducing the size of the basket, you also reduce the amount of stupid. That's not always true, but it can be if designed right.

The real problem with these is a lack of accountability and most important of all; stability in the transition of power. Thus far, democracy does this better than all other forms of government, but that doesn't mean it has to be this way.

Personally, I favor a very low threshold test, something that even someone of an IQ of 90 can achieve, like maybe a 4th grade graduation test....but whatever it is...whatever we do...we cannot continue on our current course.

An ideology and civilization based on lies will have disconnects...some huge, like Climate Change, some small like an outbreak that becomes political anathema to the Reagan Reality to admit for some reason so they pretend that it doesn't exist...and it kills millions.

Disconnection from reality is a bad thing. Disconnection from reality in an era of weapons of Mass Destruction is a formula for disaster. Sarah Palin is stupid. And anyone who isn't a Reagan Reality inhabitant could see this, which is the main reason McCain lost and Palin isn't the current Republican candidate.

You don't let stupid be in charge of the nukes.

But if we don't change, it will happen eventually. You can only roll the dice so long without rolling snake eyes.

It. Will. Happen.

Excision: Lincoln's Mistake

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to dissolve the bands.....powerful words. In 1860, Lincoln faced a choice. He could either allow the South to secede in peace, or force the union to stay together at the point of bayonets. Though called a tyrant by his contemporaries, he was no lover of empire. And, though he did eventually sign the emancipation proclamation, he was not merely a militant anti slaver. To be sure, he despised slavery and skewered the Confedrate position in the Lincoln-Douglass debates...in the reality reality, the war was about economics....the economics of slavery but the decision Lincoln made was neither to oppress snooty rich white plantation owners or to appease corrupt tarrif imposing future carpet baggers in the north; no, it was to preserve the union.

If a chunk of the country were to break off in a snit every time something didn't go its way, then pretty soon there would be no country left at all, and since at the time the United States was one of the only truly democratic countries on the planet, and many of the vital reforms the UK now enjoys today had not yet been implemented, Lincoln felt it important not only for the United States but the whole world and the precious seeds of liberty that had been planted in the blood of patriots.

It is possible for a conflict to really be about good vs evil, despite the shades of grey in the humans that made up both sides. There were good southerners and there were evil northerners, but there was nothing good about the ideology of plantation owners' insistence that it was ok for one human being to own another. I didn't see any of them, volunteering to be slaves for a while...

So what was Lincoln's error?

Lincoln believed in extending the hand of friendship to the defeated confederacy. He believed the descendants and lackeys of plantationists could be reformed. What a naive idea....but as a good man, who can blame him for hoping such a thing? After all, he didn't have the 150 years of evidence of willful denial of the truth that this noxious culture would continue use to practice, or foree it's toxic spread to most rural areas of the United States. Slavery might be dead, but apologiests for the plantation owners are alive and well.

There is no moral superiority in geography. The north only behaved in an aberrant favor towards the south, but in their tolerance of Jim crow and slaver apologists, became in victory the very thing that they had crushed in military defeat. This willful denial of the truth has reached its zenith in the social singularity of the Reagan Collective; a bundle of self sustaining lies that will shift its groupthink paradigm to attack anything that threatens its dominance, assign the very traits of which it itself is most guilty on all opponents and excuse any tactic or behavior in the name of cultural dominance. Engineered in the bowels of diabolical think tanks owned by the plantationists, this superbug in the ecology of the idea is now resistant to all forms of truth whatsoever.

Shall we descend into the barbarism of civil war once more? I say nay....you can no more kill an idea than you can shoot a bacteria with a bazooka. But there is a remedy...any doctor will tell you that a step between a patient and death with a putrescent limb infected with insidious poison is amputation.

Expulsion. Removal. Excision.

To put it in terms that they can understand....Boot the South! If a democracy can add states then it should also be able to expel them with equal measure.

There is no mechanism in the constitution that allows it, however nor is there one that forbids it. By the 10th amendment to the constitution, all powers not measured as belonging to the federal government belong to the states. Technically, no amendment forbids the states from leaving either. Not one. And while I am glad the South lost, from a purely legal stand point, the balance of power was ALWAYS with the states on matters not enumerated in the constitution. I believe in a very widely interpreted commerce clause, but that still has nothing to do with membership. To this day, no written part of the document states that a state may not leave, save the tenth which says that if the document doesn't include a right, it goes to the states.

Emancipate the results of the hidden wishes of the plantationists. Let them practice their anarchist capitalist nihilist utopia. Let the states that lost the civil war cease to revel in victory at the paralysis and status of the rest of the nation. A majority of the other states can and should vote to expel the number that included the former confederacy forthwith and until such time as they admit of their own accord that the ideology of their forefathers was a lie and that there is NO constitutional right to lie. Freedom of speech is not freedom from truth. Freedom from religion is not restraint upon the free exercise thereof.

Let there be a parting of ways. Let the south and the rest of our nation no longer be one.

Reconstruction Done Right (or how to solve all our problems)

Background: One of the most persuasive arguments against rebooting the constitution is the sheer demographics.  When you look at red states and blue states, they are too finely balanced to have the supra majority needed to create the document.  No problem! Let me show you how.

First, money.  We need progressive banks, PACs and thinktanks fully purged of corpradem elements willing to commit to a long term vision of a better America.  Occupy has already started this, both with their B corporation project in California and Occupy the SEC.  It will take about 20 years but is very doable.  You will also need a hard core leadership team capable of taking the long view like Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers.

Second, create ECHO news.  Echo's job is like CNN but will remove the veneer of neutrality and actually echo FOX lite view points.  With an important difference, it will be geared explicitly to the southern demographic. All anchors and pundits will be from the south, and the days of the confederacy will be hailed by all racial demographics.  On this position they will be more aggressive than FOX...any time Perry clones say secession is an option.  Echo entertainment division will content and media distribution channels dedicated toward glorifying slavery and the antebellum south.  Progressive media owned by the cabal of reformation will muzzle natural progressive outrage at this behavior. Fox and clones will be alarmed but since echo is always reactive, never proactive, it will be impossible to purge them from the reagan reality without offending the south, since the primary mission of the echo network is to amplify the Reagan reality and the more insane fringe elements already harnessed by Ruprect Murdoch.

Third, waiting ten to fifteen years for echo to fully burrow it's way into the Reagan reality, the cabal then waits for the progressive high in the cycle (see 2008) when conservative behavior will be at its most irrational and then can for a constitutional convention.  Progressives will agree to this.

Fourth, once the inevitable deadlock occurs, a plebecite is held to allow secession by some states.  Strategically important states in the center of the country will be tampered with (see Diebold) and remain in the union.

Fifth, the south is excised from the union but required to pay for any federal property (ie military bases etc).

Sixth, the new progressive president warns the south that no form of hostile or war like language will be tolerated.  The south, being the south, will be unable to not threaten violence against the rest of America.

Seventh, this threat is considered causus beli for war via the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes.

Eight, a weakened south, thinking it can rely on militia and Bubba and his shotgun to defend themselves are utterly crushed in a quick and decisive war.  (Note: it is utterly vital that the pacifist wing of the progrssive movement not be allowed to have the presidency for this to work.  We need Teddy Roosevelt, not Carter.) (He would be considered a democrat today.)

Ninth, using the Bush standard set by Iraq, we begin reforming the south properly this time with education camps and companies designed to profit from their suffering.  Note, that it is not because making them suffer is good, or even just, but because giving the corporations running the southern reconstruction zone a profit give will ensure that the occupation and reconstruction will take as long as possible.

Tenth, while the south is fully occupied and controlled, rebel sympatathizers in central red states, certain to commit terrorists acts in sympathy with the south are moved to reservations on southern land.  Meanwhile, more land can be restored to native Americans in these states per treaty we have already broken.  Lands currently owned by red states.  If necessary, we can create a central and mountain occupation zone as well.

Eleventh,  create a new constitution..  Then in a symbol of old to new, dangle the old constitution on a thread, cut the thread and then sign the new constituon, without the red menace.

Twelfth, profit.  Eventually, the south, fully vetted and potentially eugenically purified of excessive conservative contamination is admitted back to the fold, with firm pacifist clauses in their state constitutions ala Japan.

A modest proposal.  But also one that would absolutely work and a viable alternative to the conservative vision of America.

Third Parties In 2012

My analysis of third parties in 2012, mainly because I'm NOT voting for Mitt Romney and I'm not voting for Obama.

So as I have stated before, I'm not voting for Obama in 2012 given among other strikes:

Signing the NDAA allowing indefinite detention of US citizens.  - I don't care if he was 'forced' to sign it or avoid losing political capital.
Capitulation to the Republicans on the Debt crisis. - You do not negotiate with political terrorists and encouraging this kind of behavior actually did more damage to our credit rating than the deficit itself did.
Treatment of Occupy - You might not be a fan of occupy but a coordinated response by the DHS against mostly peaceful protesters to get mayors and police to crush them in a short period of time is absolutely unacceptable.
Failure to Prosecute Bush - This isn't going away.  Ever.

Now Added: Absolutely terrible governance on the health care debate.  Failure to fix the senate allowed a handful of democrats to have their way including Olympia Snow when it should have been HIM leading the debate, not the other way around.

Caveat: If the Supreme Court is as blatant about throwing down AHA as they were with Citizen's United and ignore existing precedent for the last 60-70 years, I will be forced to vote for Obama.  It is not that they might throw it down that bothers me, as there are several ways they can do this but if they effectively make the commerce clause interpretation go back to what it was pre 1937 it means that the conservative justices all lied about their honoring of Stare Decisis, and that the Supreme Court is a wholly political and illegitimate branch of government.

As such, fixing the court will take priority over Obama and I might even move early to have a vote that matters.

Again, it isn't IF they reject the law but HOW.

At any rate...so 3rd parties.

Not a fan of Libertarians really, especially the randian streak but they are a strong party and any 3rd party doing well sends a message to the Cowardly Democrats.  This is a rather interesting article about the chances of the Libertarian candidate this year.  He could play spoiler.  We have a whole generation that has forgotten Ross Perot and they don't remember much about Nader either.  12 years is an eternity in the small political minds of most Americans, but he has the advantage of a significant majority position in a lot of areas that are important people; specifically low deficits and a complete uncaring about social conservatism.  Ron Paul SAYS he is socially liberal but he's not.  Which means he has voted to repeal many protections on a federal level for women's rights...or not voted in favor of them.  Gary Johnson is different.  He's also opposed to the absolutely STUPID war on Drugs which Obama has actually ramped up through Holder the Idiot.

I admit, I just don't like the Greens.  I should.  I am a firm AGW believer.  The greens are more liberal than most democrats and I should be voting for them all the way.  I. Don't. Care.  Unlike my parents, I am not a big fan of Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader after he ran in 2004 despite a need for the left to rally against Bush.  They seem way too caught up in their own view point, and they also believe in the carbon tax which I think is useless. Better to have, literally, a conservative tax because their beliefs are doing more damage to the planet.  Seriously.  Reality denial should cost people money, especially in a political system where cash is speech.  I might vote green, but they've got a lot to do to impress me, and I haven't investigated them this year.  If they're like they have been the last several election cycles, forget it.

One group that is definitely attracting my attention is the Pirate Party.  I can see Occupy aligning with them more than the Greens even though they support both groups. Indeed if the Occupy movement could form an alliance with the Pirate Party they might be able to make some significant headway.  I doubt they could win, simply because the Pirate PArty is so new, but they could do what third parties do best which is affect the narrative, and SOPA, PIPA, CISPA and Copyright and Patent Law have gotten ridiculous in this country.  More importantly, the PP could theoretically do a better job of creating a third party alliance with the special snowflake greens and libertarians to reform the electoral process since they are not left/right but instead pro freedom which both greens and libertarians can embrace.

Review - The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

This book has aged far better than the Communist Manifesto, both in terms of the applicability of the theories found therein, and in terms of the respect with which it is had by the general population.  However, having read it, I find the general application of anarchy libertarianism to be functionally hilarious.  Smith neither advocates nor evidences for the kind of magical 'free market' thinking espoused by today's captains of industry.

What he does do, is show with stunning thoroughness, the ripple effects of limits by the state on resources that are artificially placed or by private individuals in such a state or by circumstances.  He does indeed show the nature of a TRUE free market, which is allowed to operate on its own and show the historical real world examples that allow one nation to prosper and another to perish.

The level of research he does is also fascinating, especially understanding that he lived in an age which required months of travel and had no form of instantaneous communication.  To know all of the things he did about the American colonies, China, India etc, he had to talk with people who had been there or travel there himself.  It is understandable that it took him as long to write it as he did.

Having said that, Smith himself was quite the philosopher and was a good and charitable man.  Nothing at all like many of capitalism's more ardent defenders in this day in age.  Explain to me, upon reading this book, how the CEO of a cooperation, as an agent of that cooperation is able to justify an 8000% ROI that is sufficiently greater than the base salary man below him?

Smith talks at great lengths about the value of having a skilled labor force and a middle class which has a lot of money.  In fact, he actually shows the damage of stratification for locking up capital in silly ways.  When I read "The Wealth of Nations" I certainly don't picture Ronald Reagan and if I do, I DEFINITELY don't picture George W. Bush and tax cuts.  The dangers of deficits are certain but the concept of a non gold based currency is post Smith.

At some point, I think economics moves beyond the 19th century, and while I think his comments on the nature of being and the value of wages and production are astoundingly insightful for his time, much of which is still applicable to today, I also think there have been many fundamental shifts since then, including such radical notions that women can vote, slavery is a bad idea, black people are not an inferior race etc.  I say this not to imply that Mr. Smith should be faulted for advancing such ideas (he assuredly does not) but rather had these new technologies and ideas existed at his time, his thorough and universal work would certainly have incorporated them.

Mr. Smith is amazing.  His so called 'disciples' are not.  There some solid ideas in this work, but it should be regarded as 'holy' no more than that other 200 year old document, 'the constitution.'

[Constitution] The Mother of All Amendments

I have personally become convinced that unless we slide further towards democracy, our nation is doomed to dictatorship or oligarchy.  My simplest evidence for this is the sheer corruption of the federal government.   I don't care which of the two realities you live in, pick two of the three branches of government and you're likely to find them totally non functional.  In my case, I think it is all three.

The Senate is the most dysfunctional legislature on the planet that has any actual power.  It lost all legitimacy (to me at least) when they proved utterly unable to fix health care.  Leaving aside the fluid question of rights, it is a vitally important national industry that is broken for a lot of people (like...millions) and it couldn't produce something better than the AHA.  There are some things good in the AHA.  But if THAT is the best the Senate can produce....

The abject failure to fulfill its basic duty to ratify or even reject executive nominations on a simple majority also to me says the body is not legitimate.  The filibuster is not in the constitution.

The house has some still but is currently run by morons and was always designed to be a racaus collection of frat boys and sorority girls compared to the senate.  Which it is.

The supreme court is likely to strike down the AHA.  And while there are things in AHA that I don't like, the supreme court's reasons for doing so appear (on pre examination) to utterly ignore previous precedent.  I know conservatives like to argue otherwise, but frankly, I really don't care about their interpretation of the constitution anyway.  They look at the document and either think its fine or that we need to remove some amendments.  Combined with Bush v Gore and Citizens United and the Supreme Court is an illegitimate institution.  It does not represent the will of the people, either past, present or future but it does represent the will of the minority.  It is a political institution that is supposed to be apolitical.

And the executive...the imperial presidency.  Unaccountable to anyone.  Able to ignore the law of the land and only paying lip service to our rights, both in the current president and the president before that.

The states have lost power (in part legitimately, because the south proved that they can't be trusted with power by ignoring the 14th amendment to the constitution for 80 years.  The Voting Rights Act is totally legitimately focused on those racist southern states that thought segeration was a nifty idea.)   However, they are supposed to be a counter to abusive federal power.

Most importantly, the people have lost power.  The leadership is corrupt, and given the wealth of the nation, 9 justices, 500+congressmen and 200+ top cabinet posts and administrators are EASY to bribe with billions in lobbying money and reelection funds.  When you say Cash is Speech, corruption is the result. 

But that's the subject for another blog entry.  For this one, I believe the root fix is to have a constitutional convention with one primary focus.  If you want to do other stuff, go for it, but don't expect it to pass and insist that the things it produces are segmented.  Many older folks who still view the constitution as some kind of sacred text are scared to death of an Article V convention because anything could happen.  CRAZY people might mess with it.

Guess what? They're doing this now.

The way to do this is, state by state, pass an amendment which has no time limit and requires a 90% agreement of the state legislature or population to repeal calling for a constitutional amendment which says the following:

Amendment 28

Section 1 - The several states shall all provide a reasonable mechanism by which the population of that state may pass a popular referendum.

Section 2 - The people of the united states shall collectively have the right to place a popular referendum on a federal ballot providing said referendum shall collect signatures amounting 1% of the population.

Section 3. - No referendum may repeal or alter the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, thirteenth, fourteenth or fifteenth amendments; save the amendment clarifies or enhances the freedoms in a manner acceptable to the population affected thereof.

Section 4. - Any referendum must declare a method of adequate funding within the text of the amendment itself. 

Section 5. - Congress and the several states may not aggregate amendments, but must allow each that qualifies to be voted on individually.

Section 6 -  The period of election for the referendum shall not exceed one year after which the referendum qualifies for the federal ballot.  

Section 7 - Congress and the several states shall have no authority to alter or rescind this amendment, though they may be given the power to enforce amendments individually created by the referendum process described within this amendment.  The Federal Court may not declare an amendment to the constitution unconstitutional but may find a party (individual, state, federal or institutional) to be in violation of an amendment.

Section 8 - An amendment passed by at least 50% of the electorate in a single election will then be subject to another election approximately one year later.   If the amendment passes with a majority in both cases, the constitution is amended.

Section 9 - Congress and the several states shall have the power to ensure by legislation that the provisions of Section 4 are properly enacted. 

Slow Jam the News