[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.