The Gulag

[pan]

The U.S. has the highest prison population in the world, even more than the more populous China. Incarceration Incorporated is the biggest growth industry in the service economy. Indentured Servitude is profitable benefit to this industry.

[BO]

Next quarter, show 'em "Religulous", and ask them to write a paper explaining why their own misery wasn't of their own making.

Subtext: There are no [unwilling] victims in the USA. WE are what we believe.

[BO]

From the...This is no time to let morals get in the way of prudence department....

Hillary Clinton: Chinese human rights secondary to [our] economic survival

Arriving in China on her first visit as US secretary of state, Mrs Clinton promised a new relationship between the two countries, one she considers to be the world's most important of the 21st century.

Mrs Clinton landed in Beijing from South Korea, where she lashed out at the North Korean "tyranny" of its leader Kim Jong-il.

But in contrast she offered a conciliatory hand of friendship to Mr Kim's ally China, contradicting hostile policies both she and President Barack Obama promised during their presidential campaigns last year.

She said she would continue to press China on issues such as human rights and Tibet, but added: "Our pressing on those issues can't interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis."

Link

[pan]

Why are the U.S. armed forces is buying riot gear......

[Mouse]

Looks as though they want to have a real riot,
riotous living,
riotous thoughts

all that polypropolene, why not leather, with feathers and sequinned parts?

[BO]

Damn right.

[Mouse]

Goodness me, it's the Governor of California.

[pan]

(T)ortured at the US prison in Baghram, rendered to Morocco for eighteen months of further torture, including repeated cutting of his penis with a scalpel, and finally landing in Guantánamo for almost five years of more mundane abuse

. His crime? Reading a satirical web article titled "How to Make an H-bomb" with dark skin and an Arabic name.

[curt]

I'm sorry folks but some people are so fucking stupid it hurts. The German Supreme Court yesterday rule electronic voting machines illegal, no, unconstitutional. Or similar. I'm not one for pinpoint accuracy and the two handgrenades I threw in basic training blew the hell outa the old tires without getting close so shut the fuck up and read on. I smile to compensate for the bad mood creaping out of my shirt collar and to show you I mean no harm.

THIS VIDEO should be common knowledge. Get it behind you. We can then move on. I know it's old but even I hadn't seen it in its entirety until last week.

Now, back to Germany, where HCPBs are to rule over machines. So the papers, even online report the court decision. The debate begins. More voices FOR the machines than against and a broad misunderstanding how the court could rule against progress. After all, Zis Is Ze tventy second century. Vee have ze technology, vy not use it? Is Germany to revert to ze middle ages....paper and pencil....?? Duh?? Fucking Idiots!!! Argggggggggg!!!!!!!! So along comes this american idiot (me) and tellz ze people in ze debate to please fucking please educate your fucking selves first and then debate ze machines !!!

Scuse me, but I thought there was intelligent life in this country. Now I see that either

a) I was wrong, the country is FULL of bleeding idiots, most of them with diplomas or

b) ze CIA and zer German counterparts have invested a fortune in the hacking of Germany, by ze use of ze machinez.

Germany bans computerized voting; will hand count in 2009 by Paul L...

Speaking of Paul, Lehto, here is the link to Mark's latest article, one I mentioned elsewhere here on RBCII. A must read !

....details follow in seperate entry due to length..................

[curt]

okay, here ze Article by our Mark.

Voting: The Right That Forfeits All Other Rights
by Mark E. Smith w...

The right to vote, according to election integrity activist and former attorney, Paul Lehto, J.D., citing the pamphleteer of the American revolution, Thomas Paine, is "the right that protects all other rights." As an election boycott advocate, I think of voting quite differently, as the consent of the governed to authorize our government to take away our rights. Paul was litigating election integrity back when I was heavily involved in that movement, so we've been debating this topic for several years. We both agree that democracy is much too important a principle to allow it to be compromised, but Paul thinks that voting can protect or restore democracy, while I think that in our current system the very act of voting compromises democracy. Yet much of what I've learned about our Constitution and our electoral process came from watching Paul in court, listening to his talks, or through private discussions and email correspondence. What Paine actually said was that it was the right to elect our representatives that protects all other rights.(1) As it happens, voting and electing our representatives aren't necessarily the same thing and the right to one doesn't guarantee the right to the other.

It was Paul Lehto who, arguing before a California appellate court, compared the futility of a candidate filing a Federal Election Contest in Congress after Congress has installed the wrong person to "asking the mob to reverse a hit."(2) His argument was borne out when Clint Curtis gathered conclusive proof that he had won his Congressional election, filed a Federal Election contest with Congress after they had sworn in his opponent, only to have Congress ignore his evidence and deny him the seat to which the voters had elected him.(3) It was further borne out when Congress dismissed several other such contests and the Attorney for Congress intervened in Paul's case by writing to the court citing Article 1., Section 5, of the Constitution, that the courts have no jurisdiction because Congress is the sole judge of the elections of its own members, and the case was lost.(4) Clearly, at least to me if not to Paul, in the Curtis case and similar cases, and in the case Paul was arguing where citizens were attempting to obtain a recount of a questionable election, the right to vote had been granted, but the right to elect our representatives had not.

Democracy, the principle Paul and I agree must not be compromised, is defined by dictionary.com as, "government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system." Most people agree with Benjamin Franklin that we do not have a democracy but have instead a republic, which the above source defines as, "a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them." There is a crucial distinction between the two definitions. In the first definition, a democracy, it is the people who are exercising power, either directly or indirectly, but in the second definition, a republic, it is the representatives rather than the people who exercise the power. Can people who cannot exercise their power either directly or indirectly, be said to have any power at all, no less supreme power?

We obviously don't have a democracy, since the supreme power in the United States is not vested in the people but in an unelected body called the Supreme Court whose decisions are the highest law of the land and cannot be appealed. But when the Constitution made Congress the sole judge of its own elections, it ensured that we didn't have a republic either. We can vote for who we'd prefer to have in Congress, but the Constitution gave the supreme power and the final say to Congress, not to us, so our votes are merely a suggestion, not an exercise of our will.

The Deficiencies of "Democracy" in the United States

Before we could be said to have a democratic form of government, we'd need a way to hold our representatives accountable so that we would have a way of exercising our power, even if it was done indirectly through those we elected. Many say that we do have a way to hold them accountable because we can wait until their terms of office are up, when the damage that they've done by failing to represent our interests, or by representing interests opposed to those of their constituents, can no longer be undone, and then vote for somebody else. I've compared that to our credit card laws. Supposing that you called to report a stolen credit card and were told that by law you were not allowed to cancel the credit card for four years, that during that time the thief would be allowed to keep running up unauthorized charges on your account, that you would be responsible for every cent of those unauthorized charges, and that after the four years were up you would be allowed to attempt to cancel the credit card, but that if enough people voted for the thief, the thief would be allowed to keep running up unauthorized charges in your name, for which you would be responsible, for another four year term. If that was the law, very few people would risk having a credit card. That's not accountability and that's why our credit card laws are not as unfair as our political process. Why do we accept a system that places our national treasury at risk in ways that we wouldn't accept with regard to our personal finances? Is our tax money somehow less ours than any other money we earn?

Our electoral system is even more undemocratic than most people would imagine. For example, the fact that the Constitution does not allow us to vote directly for President and Vice-President means that the popular vote is not the final say in who takes office, the people do not have supreme power, and the vote of the people can be ignored, nullified, or overridden by the Electoral College, Congress, or the Supreme Court. In the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections, the President was sworn into office before the popular vote count had been completed. Although subsequent investigations determined that Al Gore had actually won in 2000, and it was John Kerry's choice to concede before the votes were counted in 2004 thus invalidating the popular majority vote he had actually won, by 2006 elections officials had become savvy enough to illegally destroy enough ballots to ensure that no proper recount of elections could be done.(5)

At the Congressional level the Constitution was amended to allow the public to vote directly for Senators, however Article 1., Section 5, still makes Congress the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its members, so the popular vote is merely symbolic and not the final word or the decisive factor in elections. But at all levels it is the delegates of the major political parties rather than ordinary voters who decide who will get the party nominations, and it is the corporate media that decides which candidates will get media coverage and whether it will be slanted for or against them.

The slickest tactic of the oligarchy in U.S. elections is to make it extremely difficult for third party and independent candidates to get on the ballot, while fielding major party candidates whose agendas are so similar that voters need a micrometer to determine which one is the lesser evil. In this 2008 election, where Obama and McCain had virtually identical voting records during the time that both served in the Senate, even this failed and only by fielding the most reactionary Republican Vice-Presidential candidate they could find, Sarah Palin, were the major parties able to make Obama appear to be the lesser evil.

Of course by recognizing corporate personhood and ruling that money is free speech, the Supreme Court was able to ensure that only millionaires could mount a successful federal election campaign, so ordinary people usually get to vote for which member of the wealthy elite they prefer, not for a candidate who would actually represent their interests. If we cannot select the candidates, cannot ensure them a level playing field, cannot ensure that our votes are counted, and, even if our votes are counted, cannot ensure that the candidate we elect will be the candidate who takes office, the right to vote does not and cannot protect our right to a democratic form of government. Add to this that we have no way to force elected officials to represent the will of their constituents rather than their own will or the will of their biggest corporate donors, and voting becomes little more than a charade.

Whose Representatives Are They?

The situation is worsened by the fact that neither of the two major parties in the United States can be considered to be on the political left. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are to the right of the political center, which may help explain why between them, they cannot muster even a 50% voter turnout. The reason that the political center is called the center is supposedly because half the country is on the the right of it and half is on the left. So the farther the two parties moved towards the right of center, the lower voter turnout they got. Paul Lehto has argued that politicians don't care about the views of those who do not vote, but he was unable to give me a recent example of politicians altering their positions due to public pressure, while I can cite many recent examples such as war, impeachment, and bailouts, where politicians totally disregarded the clearly stated will of a majority, in some cases as many as eighty or ninety percent of their constituents, so they clearly don't care about the views of people who do vote either.(6)

If we cannot bring about change by voting, there is still another nonviolent way to bring about political change, and that is by not voting. One example of this took place in South Africa. The severely repressive policies of the Apartheid regime had resulted in a country wracked with violence and many of those who opposed Apartheid were imprisoned or killed for attempting to overthrow a legitimate government. In 1983 the Apartheid regime decided to amend the Constitution to allow people of mixed race and of Indian descent to vote. Although blacks were still excluded, it was thought of by whites as a progressive measure. But when the election was held in 1984, "...more than four-fifths of the 'coloured' and Indian people--ostensibly the beneficiaries--rejected it in a massive election boycott....The boycott was a dramatic success, robbing the new system of legitimacy, and although the government accepted the result on August 28 and installed the new parliamentarians in their seats--one of them on the strength of a paltry 154 votes--a sense of triumph and expectation infused the black community. Five days later the great revolt began."(7)

Although it took violence to force the government to step down, I believe it was the successful election boycott rather than the violence that made possible the ouster of the Apartheid regime. Prior to the boycott the opponents of Apartheid were deemed criminals, but afterward, when it was clear that the government did not have the consent of the governed, they became legitimate freedom fighters and it was the Apartheid government that was illegitimate. Countries like the United States no longer had the excuse of supporting a legitimate government for backing Apartheid. Our Declaration of Independence clearly states that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed," and the way that governments obtain that consent is by holding elections. If the people don't vote, the government cannot claim their consent.

Another example of delegitimizing a government by not voting took place in Cuba, where the dictator "Batista insisted on legitimation through elections but was afraid of losing a free election. In 1954, former President Grau, suspicious of Batista's commitment to free elections, pulled out of the presidential election shortly before the balloting. Batista was then 'elected' President without opposition. Then turnout of registered voters dropped from 79.5 ercent in 1948 to 52.6 percent in 1954. This electoral farce, along with the higher rate of nonvoting, clouded the legitimacy of a regime that was based on force but did not wish to admit it. The presidential elections of 1958, a few months before Batista's fall, had two opposition candidates, but the elections were so obviously fraudulent that they served, once again, to undermine the government rather than to strengthen it."(8) Unfortunately, where the Batista dictatorship was not able to claim legitimacy with a 52.6% voter turnout, the United States government continues to claim legitimacy with only a slightly different percentage. Voter turnout for presidential elections in the U.S. was only 49.1% in 1996, 51.3% in 2000, 55.3% in 2004, and 56.8% in 2008. Even these numbers are questionable, as about 80% of U.S. votes are counted secretly by easily hacked central tabulating computers, and therefore cannot be verified.(9) When compared with political approval polls for 2004 and 2008, it appears likely that the higher turnout represents voters' anger at government and attempt to bring about change by voting. At least one research paper indicates that decisions to boycott elections, are more often influenced by whether or not a country offers financial incentives to political parties that participate in elections, than by the unfairness of their electoral systems.(10) For this reason, the U.S. being a country that remunerates political parties for their participation based on their success, the major parties have too much money at stake to consider a boycott and a successful election boycott would have to come from a general public initiative, rather than from a political party.

Realizing that two very different leaders, Adolph Hitler and Hugo Chavez, were both popularly elected, it cannot be said that the right to vote guarantees democracy. In some cases it can, but in others it will not. The determining factor is whether or not the supreme power is vested in the people or vested in government. In the United States the supreme power is vested in government by our Constitution, so voting has tended to further fascism rather than to ensure democracy. In order to have supreme power, the people need not only the right to vote, but also the right to select candidates, to ensure them a level playing field, to have their vote counted accurately and be the final word in who takes office, and to be able to directly hold elected officials accountable and force them to either represent their constituents or be removed from office. At best, in the United States, we have only the right to vote, and in many cases even that right has not been upheld in practice.

I admit to still being puzzled and totally in awe of how the Venezuelan people managed to elect Hugo Chavez. Their situation was very similar to that in the United States today. Big corporations and the wealthy elite controlled the media and two major political parties had an iron lock on the electoral process. Yet when Chavez was elected, those two parties between them only managed to garner about 7% of the popular vote. Although I have no way of verifying this, I suspect that one of the decisive factors may have been widespread poverty. What good is owning the media if most people don't have a TV set and, even if they are lucky enough to know how to read, can't afford a newspaper? Another factor may have been a strong sense of community, so that when one person's consciousness was raised, their knowledge was quickly passed along to their family, their co-workers, their neighbors, and to other villages. I'm not sure if a revolutionary level of consciousness can be achieved in a population like ours, dumbed down by TV and mass media propaganda, and bought off with cars and material possessions. For that reason, I've felt that a total economic collapse might be necessary before a majority of the American people would begin to recognize that we are living in an oligarchal tyranny rather than a democracy.

Withdrawing Our Consent

The government of the United States has been planning to deal with a widespread insurrection and has spent billions of dollars on crowd control gear and training for local law enforcement, surveillance of American citizens for Homeland Security, and building detention camps that can hold millions of people. Our government has also trained and brought U.S. military troops home specifically for the purpose of dealing with "civil unrest" that has yet to materialize. The policy makers in Washington D.C. know exactly how they'd respond if a government treated them the way that they're treating us, so they keep increasing surveillance and other preparations to deal with insurrection, despite the fact that there has been very little for them to suppress. Although a total economic collapse might make it difficult, it should be expected that as long as the government has any money left at all, it will be spent on suppression rather than on social programs. Since a cost-benefit analysis would have shown that it was cheaper to provide housing, health care, and similar social programs than to incarcerate all the homeless and unemployed who might become desperate after an economic collapse, the decision to fund repression rather than human needs must have been made on an ideological basis. Given the enormous size of our police state, any attempt at change would be likely to succeed only after the public had withdrawn our consent from and delegitimized our government. While a government that can even obtain 50% voter turnout, can still claim to be suppressing dissent because they represent the will of the majority of the populace, a government with only 20% turnout can not.

One advantage we do have is that, unlike Colombia and Zimbabwe, our government is unlikely to send military or paramilitary forces to coerce us to vote at gunpoint. Not even Democrats would willingly submit to that sort of thing, while Republicans would be likely to shoot back first. And while our military and law enforcement agencies are quite willing to suppress protests and demonstrations, they might not be as enthusiastic about forcing people to go to the polls. Adding to that the fact that a government which can induce voter turnout only by force of arms, loses credibility and can no longer be mistaken for a democracy, and an election boycott, if we had the will, could have every chance of success.

Unfortunately there are still many people, including those who call themselves progressive Democrats, who believe that our only alternatives are voting or revolution.(11) It is interesting to note that several comments there speak of alienation, although Rob and his senior editorial staff have banned many radical or independent thinkers, including myself, and that at the time I was banned I was also informed that election boycott advocacy, a theoretically nonviolent solution, was "not welcome" on their website. In my view, it appears that they wish to keep the alternatives to voting or violence solely for the purpose of inducing people to vote. If the only alternative is violence, why not vote? But if there is a viable alternative that can bring about real change nonviolently, fewer people might wish to cast ballots for a government that doesn't represent their interests.

The most frequent questions I'm asked when I advocate an election boycott are what about the people who will still vote, and what do we do if we are successful. A successful election boycott requires that all political parties agree to boycott, that the boycotters include members of the political class rather than just the underclass, and that approximately 80% of eligible voters boycott the polls, so that the few who still vote would have no legitimacy in the eyes of the world. Right now we have little more than a 50% voter turnout, almost evenly divided between the two major parties, so even if only those who oppose our government's agenda stopped voting for the lesser evil and refused to vote until and unless we had a democratic system, we would immediately have less than 25% turnout. But as for what we'd do next, that's a much thornier problem. Because our education system and programs like COINTELPRO have for decades been marking out anyone with genuine leadership abilities and ensuring that they are discredited, imprisoned, or killed, the very fact that I am still in the United States, alive, and not imprisoned, tells me that I am, at best, a second-rate mind and lack the abilities necessary to lead a revolution.

Having lost the leadership that we deserve, we might, after a successful election boycott, be able to free political prisoners like Mumia Abu Jamal, and remove the price from the heads of exiles like Assata Shakur, but even if we managed to regain our most authentic populist leaders, we would have to look to other countries for the necessary Constitutional changes to ensure democracy. Fortunately, such countries exist, such as Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Whether we are mature enough as a people to exchange the chains of materialism that bind us, for a simpler lifestyle that enabled ordinary people rather than only the rich to have power over government, is debatable, and I don't really see much hope. It might require more than just an economic collapse and the failure of our military empire for us to gain that maturity. We might need to suffer the sort of genocide that we inflicted on Native Americans, African-Americans, and many other groups in other countries(12) before we could begin to understand the wisdom of indigenous peoples who have endured that which we have not. Those who have accepted limited options in elections, seem resigned to having limited options and, in some cases such as the website I noted above, virtually terrified of having expanded options.

What I do know is that as long as almost half of us keep voting in our faith-based elections with secret vote counts where the popular vote is not the final say and we have no way to hold our representatives accountable, our government will continue its neoliberal and genocidal agenda and continue to claim legitimacy by demonstrating that it has the consent of the governed. It is much easier to change an illegitimate government than a government which can claim legitimacy, so if we really do want change, the first step would be to withdraw our consent from business as usual. If it is true, as both Paul Lehto and I agree, that democracy is a principle so important that it must not be compromised, then whenever voting compromises democracy, a people who want to be free must boycott the vote. I think it indisputable that voting for representatives we cannot hold accountable not only compromises, but actually eliminates any pretense of democracy, so no matter what emotional issues may be on the ballot or how attractive or unattractive the candidates may be, if we are to establish a democratic form of government in the United States, we first need to withdraw our consent from and stop recognizing or voting for the system now in place.

Voting can only be said to be free, fair, and democratic, when it allows the people to exercise their will, either directly, or at least indirectly through their representatives. Due to the lack of any way to hold our elected officials accountable, Americans vote for rulers, not for representatives, so any vote at all, even a vote for a populist candidate with no chance of winning, constitutes the consent of the governed to tyranny, rather than the voice of the people in government. Rather than exercising our supreme power when we vote, we are forfeiting our power and delegating it to people we can not control. The results, politically, economically, and socially, have been catastrophic. Americans have the right to continue to vote for a government that benefits only the wealthy elite, the big corporations, and the military-industrial complex, and that neither represents our interests nor is subject to our control, but it is foolish to pretend that we have supreme power over that government when we don't.

Back in the days of Thomas Paine, voting may have indeed been the right that protected all other rights. That was before our Constitution was written, before anyone dreamed that political parties would commandeer the electoral process, before easily hacked voting machines, gerrymandered districts, mass media, multimillion dollar election campaigns, lobbyists, or policy making bodies like the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations. Whoever has "supreme power" has the final say. Our Constitution didn't invest supreme power in the American people, but rather in an oligarchy that persists to this day, and it was to them that the final say, the supreme power, both in policy making and in elections, was given. I agree wholeheartedly with Paul Lehto that democracy is a principle that must not be compromised, and I think that if Thomas Paine were alive today, he would join me in advocating that we boycott elections that compromise rather than ensure and protect our supreme power over government. Only if we withdraw our consent from the oligarchy, will we have the possibility of establishing a genuine democracy in which the supreme power of government is vested in the people, and in which I would be proud to participate. To that effect I'll paraphrase another American revolutionary, Patrick Henry, and say, "Give me democracy, or don't bother asking me to vote."

Lehto on the Law

I sent the above article to Paul Lehto for his comments and here is his response, interspersed with my replies:

Paul: First of all, though Mark E. Smith and I may disagree on the contours of the “consent of the governed” we ought to all thank Mark for opening up an important dialog. The primary reason this dialog is so necessary is that the contours of “consent” are not very well known in our day, yet they are still of critical importance to the scope of the legitimate power of any government. Neither the importance of consent nor its historical relevance is really up for debate. On the importance of consent, the conservative Founder John Adams, despite his misgivings about the masses, nevertheless was clear about consent being the only valid foundation of government: “Metaphysicians and politicians may dispute forever, but they will never find any other [better] foundation.” On the historical relevance of consent, one can easily trace its path through every major progressive transformation of society, from civil rights struggles to the writings of Susan B. Anthony and Abraham Lincoln. As pointed out by Alexander Keyssar, Jefferson’s wording of the Declaration of Independence to clearly name consent of the governed as the only valid basis for government made all restrictions on suffrage intrinsically problematic. Thus, the political rallying cry for centuries has been, in a nutshell, “you can’t tax or govern us without us all having the vote.”

Mark: As an indication of how "progressive" the United States actually is, more than two centuries later that rallying cry may be heeded and the District of Columbia may get a voting representative in Congress. Of course with privatized elections and secret vote counts they may not get the representative they elect, and even if they do, that person may choose to represent interests other than those of their constituents, but at least the residents of our nation's capitol would have the same illusion of democracy that everyone else has.

Paul: Under both US Supreme Court cases as well as, to give but one example, an express term of the California Constitution, the right to vote includes more than just casting a ballot for representatives, it specifically also includes those things necessary to keep the right meaningful, including the right to have that vote counted, and to have the overall count, uh, count. Suffragist Susan B. Anthony wrote: “Here, in the first paragraph of the Declaration [of Independence], is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can the 'consent of the governed' be given, if the right to vote be denied?” Faced with computerized secret vote counting -- in which there’s absolutely no evidence or basis for confidence that any reasonably competitive race has been correctly counted – the meaningful right to vote has been denied and the “consent of the governed” has not been given. In effect, those who voted, regardless of who they voted for, have all been disfranchised. An illegitimate election is void, and thus the voters are not bound to respect the moral authority of its results.

Mark: Unfortunately, even when a meaningful right to vote has been denied, those fraudulently elected can still levy taxes and wage wars without having obtained the consent of the governed. Voters are not bound to respect such a government's moral authority even as it illegally surveils, surrounds, clubs, arrests, and imprisons them for disrespect, but having obtained a significant voter turnout, a fraudulently elected government will still claim that it has the consent of the governed.

Paul: Consequently, refusing to vote is not the only way to withhold the consent of the governed. As I wrote in the foreword to “We Do Not Consent”, by Dave Berman, the consent of the governed is itself specifically conditioned on the reasonable exercise of any powers delegated to representatives. One can hardly be considered to have “consented” to a surprise tyranny or tyrannical law. Even more, the consent of the governed was intended, say the editors of “The Founder’s Constitution” as nothing less than a second debate. That
is, public opinion continues to have an ongoing relevance after the election, and consent, and legitimacy, can be withdrawn immediately as soon as the majority of the public becomes aware of action they do not consent to, since, after all, the sole foundation and purpose of government is the guarantee the rights of the people and to serve their happiness.

Mark: If Paul's Susan B. Anthony quote above is correct and the consent of the governed cannot be given without the vote, it cannot be claimed without citizens having voted. While voting might not constitute the consent of the governed if there is fraud involved, it is the only possible basis by which government can claim that consent and therefore not voting is the only possibly means of denying a government the ability to make that claim. Theoretically perhaps, consent can be withdrawn immediately, but as I mentioned above (see footnote 6), even when 80% of Rep. John Olver's constituents formally petitioned him to support the impeachment of President Bush, they were unable to get him to do so and both Olver and Bush served out their terms without the actual consent of the governed, on the basis of the consent both claimed to have obtained through elections.

Paul: The lack of remedies for violations of rights is the crux of the problem, together with confusion about the nature and scope of our rights, which are greater than commonly believed. Politically illegitimate decisions not immediately corrected pass themselves off as legitimate law, but so do the edicts of every tyrant. The lack of moral legitimacy in an election for example, of course does not mean at all that there won’t be a “winner” announced and installed, just as illegitimate laws will often be enforced for a short or even long time. But this moral analysis of political principles is critically important to an analysis of legitimacy, and upon that turns nearly everything.

Mark: However important a moral analysis of principles may be, it is no substitute for democracy. Once it has become clear to anyone that voting in rigged elections has resulted in tyranny for however short a period of time, I think if becomes a moral imperative for anyone who does not wish to compromise democracy, to do nothing which could result in that tyranny being able to claim the consent of the governed for a longer period of time.

Paul: If our votes do not carry through all the way to control of the government, then indeed We the People are not the Supreme Power and then we know we have to get our freedom back, the core freedom of which is the guaranteed ability to kick the bums out. The inability to recall federal representatives is a limitation on that power, but it is present in various state constitutions, and in Article V of the Articles of Confederation. As the “supreme power” truly can not be resisted, if the supreme power wants it, then it gets it. This may be a sensible proposal to resuscitate. Somewhat like the most recent constitutional amendment banning congressional pay raises from taking effect until after an election, this idea originated as part of the Bill of Rights, was defeated back then, but finally won the day in the late 20th century. There’s no reason why a majority of Americans wouldn’t support the wisdom of retaining the right of recall, to vindicate our power.

Mark: If we know that we are not the supreme power, I fail to see the wisdom of continuing to cast votes which are not meaningful in the hopes that a few centuries from now we might be able to regain those of our inalienable rights which will continue to be violated by our government in the interim. If you knew that an identity theft ring had stolen your credit cards, I don't think you'd consider not taking immediate action and thereby allowing them to continue running up unauthorized charges for a couple of hundred years, secure in your knowledge that the theft was a criminal act which violated your rights, and that eventually your descendants might take action to report the cards stolen. Our national treasury should be at least as important to us as our personal finances, as it is our national economy that can support or undermine our individual fiscal stability.

Paul: If we find ourselves not truly acting as the supreme power, and the only valid basis for government is when We the People act as the supreme power, then we know that our rights are being violated. Mark simply mis-frames the question and grants his own consent to
illegitimate power by stating or implying that such violations mean we are not in charge. If “We” are not in charge, nobody else is, legitimately, either.

Mark: In this case we not only know that our rights are being violated, but we also know the mechanism by which these violations are accomplished. Unverifiable elections, elections where the popular vote is not the sole, determining, and final factor in deciding who takes office, and elections where a fraudulently elected candidate cannot be immediately removed from office by the voters, constitute violations of our rights. Whether those "elected" have any legitimacy or not, the act of voting in such elections allows them to claim legitimacy and thereby compromises democracy. Our lack of immediate recourse means that we are not only compromising democracy for ourselves, but also for our neighbors and our children. Even if we are willing to risk or endanger democracy for ourselves, I don't believe we have any moral right to do so when others are involved.

Paul: The Constitution does not give final say to the Congress who it’s members are. This is only the over-reaching statement of a single lawyer for a single committee of Congress opining in order to support a member of his own party, that was no part of any official judicial decision. Nor was the trial court decision or the 2-1 unpublished appellate court decision in any way “law” but Mark appears to treat it as such. It is revealing of the system of elections and courts in southern California, but the 2 judge majority simply refused to rule on the case by declaring it moot since the short congressional term of 6 months had then expired, but setting up a nice statement of facts that, in lawyer parlance, teed up the issues favorably for California Supreme Court review, which was not granted. Ultimately, it may well be the failure of courage or commitment to hard work in favor of core principles of freedom on the part of the California Supreme Court that is most to blame. Historically, members of both parties have, out of both “institutional pride” as well as power-mongering, advocated a ridiculously expansive view of their own power to “judge” their own elections under Article I, sec. 4&5. But the key word is “judge” and the proper trigger that must occur before Congress can legitimately act in a judicial capacity (not a partisan vote capacity) and “judge” an election, would be if a state sent two representatives to Congress from the same district. The notion that the Founders intended to allow Congress to be a self-perpetuating body or club that chooses its own members whenever an election is close is preposterous.

continued................

[curt]

Mark: The intent of the founders can only be decisively interpreted by the Supreme Court, an unelected body that is incompatible with a democratic form of government. In our system of government, when the legislative or executive branch of government acts in accordance with an absurd and overly expansive interpretation of their own powers, and only Supreme Court justices, appointed by the executive branch and confirmed by the legislative branch without any consent of the people having first been asked for or obtained, can make the final decision as to whether or not that interpretation is "law," I fail to see even the illusion, no less the reality of democracy.

Paul: Moreover, the “intent of the Founders” – the interpretation scheme favored by Scalia and referenced uncritically by Mark E Smith, was rejected by the primary author of the Constitution himself, James Madison. Madison, who could have granted himself much more power, denounced that by saying: “As a guide in expounding and applying the provisions of the Constitution, the debates and incidental decisions of the Convention can have no authoritative character. However desirable it be that they should be preserved as a gratification to the laudable curiosity felt by every people […] the legitimate meaning of the Instrument must be derived from the text itself; or if a key is to be sought elsewhere, it must be not in the opinions or intentions of the Body which planned & proposed the Constitution, but in the sense attached to it by the people in their respective State Conventions where it recd. all the Authority which it possesses. James Madison to Thomas Ritchie, 15
Sept. 1821 Writings 9:72
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch2s28.html from
The Writings of James Madison. Edited by Gaillard Hunt. 9 vols. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1900--1910.

Once again, the idea that we’ve a Constitution set up by aristocrats for the benefit of aristocrats is defeated, and we’re invited by the primary author of the constitution itself to look to the voices, ideas and votes of the people in state conventions, and to the consent of the governed, as the keys by which to unlock the true meaning of the instrument. We’re right back to the People, the need to keep them educated, the need to keep them politically aware, especially the need to remember that consent can be withdrawn at any time by an act of conscience and that many unpopular laws are simply unenforced by prosecutors and become nullities, that public opinion, even in a dictatorship, carries a certain but variable force of its own, and that voting is the primary reason most people stay current on public
affairs.

Mark: Recalling that at the time, "the people" did not include women, slaves, Native Americans, or those who did not own land, it was indeed only the aristocracy that gave their consent. Given the astonishing ignorance of most Americans with regard to public affairs, voting has not served to keep us educated and politically aware, despite greater enfranchisement, and cannot be justified solely for that purpose.

Paul: If we boycott the vote, what is to take the place of the vote as the voice of the people? The truth is, it is reasonable and rational to boycott fraudulent elections. But since election results are the only official and organized voice of the people, whether we vote in defective elections or not (and both courses are rational) we had best construct the architecture for the voice of the people forthwith, or else be open and honest enough to declare ourselves slaves forthwith, for the very definition of a slave, which is the balance of Paine’s “right to vote” quote, is a person without a say in the governance of the community, and thus subject entirely to the will of another. That is the general definition of a slave. Individually we all must obey the law, collectively as We the People we are rightfully Supreme. If we withdraw from our collective capacity we are then withdrawing consent, but also admitting our slave status. It can be strongly argued that participating in fraudulent elections is pointless and grants too much legitimacy to a fraud. But on the other hand, I don’t wish to grant legitimacy to my own slave status. The most important thing, and the reason I don’t end the dialog with Mark E Smith on this issue as some pro-voting folks might, is that no matter what we do, we make it clear as often as possible and as clearly as possible that we do not consent to anything but the full measure of the most meaningful rights to vote, and we never will.

Mark: Before closing, I want to express my gratitude to Paul Lehto for his contributions to this article. Believing that you have rights you cannot exercise, assert, or defend, is delusional and precludes actually attaining genuine rights which can be exercised, asserted, and defended. It is abhorrent and painful to any person to admit to their own slave status or declare themself a slave, but it is a necessary precursor to freedom. Harriet Tubman lamented that she could have freed thousands more slaves if only she'd been able to convince them that they were slaves. As long as many Americans continue to believe that we live in a democracy because we can vote, we will not be able to establish a democracy where supreme power is vested in the people rather than in unaccountable tyrants. Those of us on the left believe that if one of us is enslaved, imprisoned, or tortured, none of us are free. It is as much a sacred tenet with us, as the belief that as long as some of us are free, all of us are theoretically or at least potentially free and therefore should be grateful and willing to die for that "freedom," is to the political right. Our vote is our only voice in government and when that vote is not the final, determining, and sole decisive factor in who takes office, and we have no power over what they do while they remain in office or any power to directly remove them immediately when due cause for such removal exists, we are forfeiting democracy itself by voting, and with it all other rights. Our rights may have been forfeited due to theft, fraud, lies, or delusions, but until and unless we stop forfeiting them, admit that they are gone, and reclaim them, we do not possess them.

---------------------------------------------------
(1) "The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery." - - Thomas Paine

(2) Jacobson v. Bilbray (2007) Cal. App. 4th, Docket No. GIC870044 (unpublished)

(3) House Admin Committee Unanimously Votes to Dismiss 4 of 5 Federally Contested 2006 House Elections http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4527

(4) http://www.bradblog.com/Docs/CA50_HouseAdminLetter_Vinovich_082306.pdf

(5) Richard Hayes Phillips, Witness to a Crime, Canterbury Press, NY, 2008, pp. 396-398 and pp. 417-418

(6) http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/10/even-overwhelming-majority-su...

(7) Allister Sparks, The Mind of South Africa, Ballentine Books, 1990, pp. 330, 333

(8) Jorge I. Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution, Harvard University Press, 1978, P. 124

(9) Hacking Democracy (video) http://freedocumentaries.org/theatre.php?filmid=234&id=1157&...

(10) Emily Beaulieu, Why Not Boycott? Public Finance of Political Parties and Party Election Boycotts, http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/8/8/...

(11) http://www.opednews.com/articles/Coming-Soon--Riots-in-Ame-by-Rob-K...

(12) Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide, City Lights Books, 1997

[Mark]

Thanks for posting that, Curt. It is horribly long. Happened because somebody who wasn't familiar with my election boycott advocacy asked me to write an article explaining it and then because I'd mentioned Paul, I sent it to him and he sent a lengthy response.

All worth it, if nothing else for that last footnote. Ward Churchill rocks!

So how is it that people can live in a police state? Because they've got the vote so they think they're free. Back to the old Sufi story about the magician who had a flock of sheep and was too cheap to hire a shepherd, so he hypnotized the sheep into believing that they were magicians. Believing that they have power they don't really have, is what keeps people voting in faith-based elections.

Paul was pissed that I called him delusional, but that's the only way I can describe believing that you have rights you can't exercise. He wanted to know how we can face reality and avoid succumbing to an immobilizing depression. Maybe I'll tell him we do it with a little help from our friends and invite him to RBC.

[curt]

you're welcome, Mark. By all means, please do invite old Paul, Lehto. I'm sure, no, I'm certain even Paul needs friends.

Ward C. ? As mentioned, I have a few of his CDs. "A little thing called genocide" is -I believe- part of one. Why I can't just go up the stairs to looksee....is beyond me.

Ward gave me one thing, one very big thing. A tribe, a reason to belong to the tribe and the certification one requires to belong to the tribe : conviction.

luvya, Mark. Good to see ya here again. curt