Tuesday, May 30, 2006

SCOTUS Thugs At It Again

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

Re: Garcetti v. Ceballos (04-473), Tue 30 May 2006.
  • Removes 1st Amendment rights from, and ensures the arbitrary punishment of, public employees who say or write anything offensive to government hierarchies in their official communications.


  • Criminalizes dissent.
1st Amendment: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, ...".

SCOTUS, however, in its infinite nit-picking for the greater glory of money-power, robustly contends that it is not Congress. On Tuesday, SCOTUS announced that it can by God abridge the freedom of speech any damned time and any damned way it freaking pleases.

Said SCOTUS: "We hold that when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline."

As with Bush v. Gore (violating the Constitutionally-defined process of presidential election), and as with Raich v. Gonzales (violating federalism and the 10th Amendment rights of states to determine what is legitimate medical practice, as well as the 9th Amendment rights of individuals to conform to legitimate state law in the use of medical marijuana), and as with Kelo v. City of New London (violating Constitutionally-defined eminent domain), Garcetti is a purely unconstitutional ruling, abridging and violating 1st amendment free speech.

It is the SCOTUS fascist thugs masquerading again as Supreme Court judges.

The assenting judges -- Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito -- have violated the Constitution. They have not protected the rights of citizens. They have violated their oaths to uphold the Constitution. Those factors, taken together, make the decision in Garcetti an act of treason against the nation -- as did the same factors in the findings of treason against the secessionist state legislators in the 1860s.

More important legally, the decision in Garcetti is a felony conspiracy against rights, in violation of federal statute 18 USC 241. Felony forfeits judicial immunity. By stipulation in 18 USC 241, the convicted co-conspirators can be fined and imprisoned for up to ten years. Their life-time appointments to the federal bench are not a factor. Do the felony. Do the time.

Garcetti establishes an unconstitutional anti-law regime. Disposing of this case creates its own felony conspiracy against rights under 18 USC 241. Any future case disposed under its precedent creates its own felony conspiracy against rights under 18 USC 241. We can hold the SCOTUS Thugs responsible for understanding this ongoing legal snarl before their decision was made.

The assenting judges in Garcetti are all constitutional criminals and felons-in-waiting. Their only proper place is in federal prison.

The only reason that the Supreme Thugs will not be criminally prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned is because they are part of the dual-party, three-branch, Bush-Cheney fascist despotism. Constitutional criminal and felon-in-waiting Gonzales, and all his little goosesteppers at the DOJ, have their obstruction of justice act down pat.

There's no help coming.

The Democratic party is up to its eyeballs in the Bush-Cheney Usurpation, which is its own, rolling, anti-law regime. Give the bought-out, sold-out Democrats the power, and the despotism goes on. It's their job. It's been their job since Bush v. Gore. If you can't see that in their behavior and performance, then you're too servile to deal with. Elect any one of them without a signed "tough-love" pledge and an angry constituency in hover mode, and all you can expect is a re-play of Clinton's reneging on all of his campaign reform promises immediately after Election 1992.

We the sovereign people are the only help we get.

It's on us to force politicians to bring down the Bush-Cheney Abomination and renew the Constitution so that nothing like this dual-party, three-branch despotism can ever be perpetrated against us again. This will require dominating citizen action, signaling the politicians in certain terms that we are coming for them, and that we will strip them of their social, economic, and political power.

We are the sovereign here. We will ensure the destruction of our nation if we continue to let the predators fool us with their Machiavellian deceits.

Forward, fully independent, national citizen lawmaking melded with a still-strong but heavily-regulated representative government. Forward, 2nd National Constitutional Convention, strongly protected by generic legislation formulated by citizen proposals and passed into constitutional law in the states.

Among the 2nd NCC's regulating provisions for the federal bench, (1) a mass firing of all federal bench judges, in preparation for elections by direct referendums in each Court's jurisdiction, (2) making every federal bench judge subject to the recall, and (3) a list of prior unconstitutional rulings that are forever barred from use as precedent.

Forward, Constitutional renewal.

Last Update Thu 01 Jun 2006, 08:15 a.m., CST.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Spineless Demos -- Redux

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

There seems to be a consensus in the blogosphere that the election of enough Democrats in November to take back Congress will result in meaningful investigations, which in turn will lead to impeachments and removals.

No need, says the consensus, to talk about impeachments and removals directly -- might turn off too many voters. Instead, we can just trust that the evidence of impeachable crimes is so strong that, once the opposition is in power, the impeachments and removals will automatically spring from "meaningful investigations".

My suggestion that we quickly circulate a standard-form "tough-love pledge" for candidates to sign -- one that specifies the candidate's willingness to actively work for impeachments and removals AND willingness to actively work for a tough, new "Independent Prosecutor" law to cut through the DOJ obstructions of justice and get down to the business of criminal prosecutions, especially for felony rights violations under 18 USC 241 -- gets harshly snuffed by the consensus. Unnecessary, they say. Might turn off too many voters, they say. Might result in the election of too many Independents, they say.

I doubt that the consensus is the result of any rigorous examination. I suspect that it is the result of some seriously wishful fuzz-think.

The spineless Democrats of our current national government did not self-extract their own spines. They had to have been coerced and compromised by the same money-power forces that caused the Supreme Court to create the unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous decision in Bush v. Gore, 10 December 2000, and its consequent Bush usurpation of the presidency, an unconstitutional anti-law regime.

That's 'treasonous' on the established precedent of the treason findings for the seccessionist state legislators of the 1860s who also violated the Constitution, who did not protect their citizens' rights under the Constitution, and who violated their oaths to uphold the Constitution.

The Bush v. Gore anti-law regime is not some little golly-shucks accident. It is a huge, grind-it-out felony conspiracy against the rights of all Americans to have a president who is elected in accord with the Constitution. It violates 18 USC 241., felony conspiracy against rights. Felony forfeits all immunities -- judicial, executive, and legislative. Do the felony crime, do the time. Under 18 USC 241, convicted co-conspirtors can be sentenced for up to ten years in federal prison.

Under the rule of law, there are no get-out-of-felony-free cards for high station in life. Those cards are only availabie when the high-station-in-life perps are protected from prosecution by "accessories after the fact", as defined in 18 USC 3. When accessories after the fact protect felons, they perpetrate felonies, punishable by nalf the maximum sentence prescribed for the original felony. When accessories after the fact are in a different branch of government than the original felony's perps, Constitutional checks and balances are violated.

As the creator of an unconstitutional anti-law regime, the decision in Bush v. Gore means that everything done by Bush under color of law since his usurpation of the presidency -- laws signed, emergency orders promulgated, appointments made, executive branch policies promulgated, etc. -- are unconstitutional, felonious for their denial of citizen rights, and treasonous. It's a trainwreck of horrendous dimensions.

The initial 18 USC 241 felony conspiracy against rights, Bush v. Gore and the usurpation of the presidency, includes as co-conspirators the Supremes, Bill Clinton, his AG, a chunk of Clinton's DOJ hierarchy, Bush-Cheney, their AG (Ashcroft), and much of Bush-Cheney's DOJ hierarchy. They are all constitutional criminals and felons-in-waiting. Their only proper place is in federal prison.

In the unconstitutinal anti-law regime of the usurped presidency, each and every act done by Bush under color of law is its own 18 USC 241 felony conspiracy against rights -- in addition to whatever crimes each act perpetrates. The felony conspiracy against our soldiers' rights to be sent to war only on the expressed order of Congress includes the Bush v. Gore felony conspiracy against rights.

We can hold the Supremes responsible for knowing, even as they were sewing together the national shroud of Bush v Gore, that their unconstitutional blocking of the Florida electoral process would lead to its original felony conspiracy against rights, its anti-law regime, and its long-lived tangle of unconstitutional illegalities done by the presidential usurper, Bush, under color of law.

We can hold the Supremes responsible for knowing that what they were doing was felony that forfeited judicial immunity, felony for which they could be criminally prosecuted at any time, regardless of their life appointments to the federal bench. Felony has always, and must always, forfeit judicial immunity. When it does not, when judges are free to commit felonies against our laws, then the rule of law is a fiction and the government is a despotism.

Bush v. Gore and the Bush-Cheney Illegitimacy is not a golly-shucks accident that can be dismissed by the Supremes cautioning that the decision should not be used as precedent. It is a big, whopping deal that can be used as precedent by any future Supreme Court to violate separation of powers and intrude into the political process election of a US president.

Whatever money-power did to extract the spines of Democrats was not aimed at the extraction on a few. We don't have what Ian Welch at "The Agonist" calls "Vichy Democrats", implying a few rotten apples in the barrel. We don't even have what I've been calling the Republican wing of co-fascist Democrats, implying the same thing.

What we have is a whole silent barrel of rotten-to-the core, spineless Democrats.

They didn't volunteer. They didn't do the spine- extractions themselves. And they don't keep their silence because they're confused.

Just what the hell will it take for a majority of we the sovereign people to see that Election 2006 cannot mend the Democrats by itself? Even if we somehow perform the miracle of neutralizing the Diebold hack-o-matic vote-counting software.

The Democrat politicians are so utterly compromised now that they will be yanked around by money-power just as easily after Election 2006 as they are right now.

Nazi Hayden at the CIA -- with his NSA wiretapping chit and well-documented anti-Constitution views? No problem, boss, we'll just run a little theatre to make the people think that there's a real 2-day tussle going on between Repubs and Demos.

Feingold, sitting on a tall stack of impeachable Bush crimes: We should maybe by gawd look into this and perhaps even consider a censure. Way to be, Russ. Auto-marginalization equals 100 percent. Strong signal to spineless demos everywhere for all time.

If you think that majorities of Democrats in the House and the Senate -- undominated by growing and threatening citizen action -- will change anything now, you just don't understand our massively corrupted governance. You're living in a bubble.

The Democrat politicians and the DNC are working for themselves. They still think that they're self-employed. Their useless, unfocused message is that they stand for everything -- they've got something for everyone.

If they were working for the people, their message would be a clarion call of utter simplicity -- (1) bring down the Bush-Cheney abomination, (2) rip the Bush-Cheney anti-law regime's unconstitutional statutes out of our legal fabric, and (3) make significant constitutional changes to ensure that nothing like the dual-party, three-branch, Bush-Cheney despotism can ever again be perpetrated against the American people.

It's the message that Kos and Armstrong missed in their recent book, Crashing the Gate.

How could they have missed something so fundamental and apparent? The reason is important. As with the Democrats, the DNC, and most Americans, Kos and Armstrong are still caught in seeing governance itself from the government's point of view. They see democractic markers all around them, but governance itself they see only as what is done vertically by hierarchies of politicians and government.

As soon as they and others begin seeing governance from the people's point of view, the world will change for them. When they see and notice horizontal governance done by nonhierarchical citizens in referendums, the world will change.

We all see elections. But very few notice that the reps are elected in referendums. Elections are just one of the eight people's governance components done in referendums. (See Extraordinary Rights Of Americans", posted on DD Revival, 24 May 2006.)

Seeing governance from the people's point of view is easier said than done, of course. Nearly everything you've read about US governance in your entire lives has prompted you to see it from the government's point of view. The people's point of view is pejoratively branded 'populism', 'socialism', or 'communism'. In our ideology-driven party-line voting, such labels are poisonous emotional propaganda triggers, keeping most people from examining the evidence. Cut through the ideologies, however, drop the labels and go looking for governance from the people's point of view, and, suddenly, you're seeing it with the eyes of democracy.

Seen with the eyes of democracy, the massive corruption of our Constitutional governance demands that growing and threatening citizen action dominate the activities of politicians.

The three-pronged starting point is (1) a standardized "tough-love" pledge for candidates, backing impeachments and a new "Independent Prosecutor" law, (2) process began for a stand-alone Constitutional amendment requiring that all new Constitutional amendments be ratified by national referendum, and (3) process began of reducing about 10 corrupt state legislatures from paritisan bicamerals to nonpartisan unicamerals with CAI's (constitutional amendment initiative, petition process) on the successful 1934 Nebraska model.

Without citizen action to dominate the politicians, we are just begging for more catastrophies to be piled on -- by the Bush-Cheney Illegitimacy and by the bought-out, sold-out Democrats.

But that is the way it has been with American bubbleers for-freaking-ever. Catastrophe piled on top of catastrophe ad nauseum until, finally, the bubble goes pip. It happened in the Reform Era, when horse and buggy citizens fought the good fight against massive corruptions that were butchering them for profits and power.

Somehow, the Bush-Cheney wall-to-wall corruption-butchering of citizens, institutions, international sensibilities, and world peace -- for profits and power -- just has not been massive enough yet to pip the bubble. Now, it looks like we let them pile on one more world-butchering, deceitful catastrophe -- Election 2006.

No help from the blogosphere in sight. Engine of organizing potential and parallel-processing human resources beyond anything civil societies have ever known -- lying fallow in seriously wishful fuzz-think. Snarled at the netroots by still-unrecognized agents provocateur -- diahrea-mouthed cheerleaders for go-nowhere yakity-yak, but also highly skilled trolls, flaming anyone who has action-item ideas offensive to money-power.

No pip in sight.

Just money-power predators, Repubs and Demos, who see civil society as their very own food chain, laughing all the way to the stateless, global bank.

------------------------------------------

Notes

1. Bringing down the Bush-Cheney abomination can be more quickly done in the election of an impeachment and removal Congress, Election 2006. However, no changing of the top names after either Election 2006 or Election 2008 will alter the nature of money-power's despotism. That abomination is here to stay until we re-write the Constitution and, consequently, build a new political dynamic -- through the 2nd Nat'l Constitutional Convention. See "Bush-Cheney Trainwreck -- Undo", Part Two, Renewal Objectives & Interactive Tools, posted on DD Revival, 17 May 2006.

2. I've not written my suggestion for a tough-love pledge yet, but it's coming. And you don't have to wait for mine. Write up your own and get it on a blog. We'll talk. If you're curious about past uses of tough-love pledges and their successes with candidates and their constituencies, read Randy Shaw's 1996 book, The Activist's Handbook: A Primer For The 1990s And Beyond, University of California Press, Berkeley.

3. "Consent of the governed" -- not consent of the totally corrupt representatives -- is key to the next wave of citizen action (2nd Nat'l Constitutional Convention). The first thing needed for "consent of the governed" is a Constitutional amendment specifying that all future Constitutional amendments be ratified by national referendum, preferably with "double majority" approval. The double majority is an approving majority of all those voting, plus a majority approval of those voting in a majority of states. It maintains the integrity of simple majority decision-making -- no two-thirds majority approval that is really a one-third minority veto -- and is the legitimacy mechanism used in Swiss national lawmaking since 1891. This stand-alone Constitutional amendment should be part of the three-pronged beginning of citizen action dominating the activities of politicians.

4. A starting-point discussion of why and how to reduce corrupt bicamerals to nonpartisan unicamerals -- and in which states -- is also in "Bush-Cheney Trainwreck -- Undo", Part Two, Renewal Objectives & Interactive Tools.

5. An overview of state-level governance done by the people since 1904 -- with initiative, referendum, and recall petitions and their approving referendums -- can be found in, M. Dane Waters, ed., The Initiative And Referendum Almanac, Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2003. The book includes I&R history and regulations for each I&R state, as well as essays on what has been accomplished with I&R.

Modified Tue 30 May 2006, 1:05 p.m., CST.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Extraordinary Rights Of Americans

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

There is nothing mysterious about rights, freedoms, and liberties. They are all made of the same stuff, the same powers. They are the freedom to be, the freedom to do, and the freedom from many human and political things involved with social, economic, and political fairness and equality. They are the discoveries and results of what it takes to defend those who are threatened or overwhelmed by aggressions against themselves and/or their society by powerful and unprincipled individuals and groups.

Once a fundamental human or political right is established, it lives forever. It might be suppressed by any government at any time. However, as long as it is recognized or rediscovered by any group of human individuals, it has its own life. Rights are humanly absolute.

From the rights established by 400 years in ancient Republican Rome, every civil society is the sovereign in its nation, whether the nation's laws recognize them as such or not. All political power flows from the people. The people are the nation.

Yes, we must live under our nation's laws. However, if and when we gain the opportunity to square those laws with the human and political rights that we know to be ours, the squaring is the right thing to do. Allowing predator elitists to deny us our rights, lawfully or unlawfully, so that they have increased opportunities to butcher us for profits and power, is clearly the wrong thing to do.

In the US, the people's sovereignty is not open to debate. There is no reason whatever that we the sovereign people must live with laws that suppress and violate our human and political rights. There is no reason whatever that we must allow predatory politicians to elevate themselves above our rule of law so that they can suppress and violate our rights for profits and power.

The public servants whom we elect and appoint to our governments are not the nation. They are not public masters. They are not the sovereign of the nation. They are public servants only, and the only powers they have legally are the ones that we the sovereign people delegate to them.

Now, we are at a turning point. All three branches of our national government have used their powers to become a massively illegitimate tyranny. This is not politics as usual. This is an unique proto despotism, violating our Constitution and laws to an unimaginable, 1934-Nazi-Germany-like degree; rejecting our hard-earned hard sciences in favor of ignorance spun by political hacks and party thugs (hello, Rumsfeld and Rove), backing the medieval barkings of the religious right's "values" against the established Constitutional rights of citizens; eliminating our personal privacy rights to entrench a bald-faced police state; lying and unconstitutionally manipulating us into a war of aggression; building an unconstitutional torture-murder gulag for POWs in our name; and obstructing justice with the DOJ to the degree that there is no justice for the despotism's crimes.

It begins with Bush v. Gore, 10 December 2000. As defined in 18 USC 241 -- felony conspiracy against rights -- the Supreme Court, Clinton, his AG, Bush-Cheney, their AG, and many others conspired together to deny the people's right to a president elected in accord with the Constitution. Felony forfeits judicial, executive, and legislative immunity. Everyone involved in that conspiracy is a constitutional criminal and felon-in-waiting. They can all be criminally prosecuted in federal court and, if conviced, fined and imprisoned for up to ten years. The holding of elected office or life-time appointment to the federal bench are not factors. Do the felony crime, do the time. No get-out-of-felony-free cards for high station in life.

They are loose to work their many other crimes because the proto-despotism has collapsed all of the checks and balances into collusions and obstructions of justice.

Now we need a heavily-protected 2nd NCC (national constitutional convention) to solemnly renew the Constitution, building in the people's fundamental governance rights so that we can rid ourselves of the proto-despotism -- and so that we can prevent anything similar from ever happening again.

The people's fundamental governance rights, derived from the Declaration Of Independence (DOI), do not exist at the national level. However, they do exist in many state constitutions and in thousands of "home rule" jurisdictions (boroughs, cities, counties, water districts, school districts, etc). That existence dates from the late 1800s to early 1900s "Reform Era". Because of our federalism, all of our fundamental governance rights from the DOI have a legal reality in our nation's governance. We have only to insert those fundamental rights into our national constitution -- and, of course, into the state constitutions that do not now have them.

Our DOI fundamental governance rights are:

(1) Individual citizens have the right to be politically equal with all other citizens.

(2) The sovereign people have the fundamental right to speak for themselves, in their voting majorities.

(3) The sovereign people have the fundamental right to be their own sovereign masters, democratically and directly electing all of their public servant representatives.

(4) The sovereign people have the fundamental right to remove any elected representative, for cause, without interference from government.

(5) The sovereign people have the fundamental right to control the output of legislation by formulating their own, by vetoing law made by government, and by affirming existing law in such a way that government is barred from amending it -- at every jurisdictional level, without interference from government.

(6) The sovereign people have the fundamental right to alter details of their governance, without interference from government.

(7) The sovereign people have the fundamental right to protect themselves from themselves by establishing the powers within government to administratively, legislatively, and judicially prevent zealous majorities, greedy corporations, the corrupting superrich, and government itself from violating individual and minority citizen rights, as given in the constitution and laws.

Our Revolutionary War patriots fought, died, suffered, hated, killed, and succeeded just so they could have the DOI's implied promises of rights. They were rights far beyond the traditional rights of Englishmen. Patriots of the 1770s and 1780s knew they were worth fighting for. They were, and are, the extraordinary rights of Americans.

The 1770s and 1780s American elites, however, knew from their studies of Republican Rome that the DOI's extraordinary rights would limit their social, eonomic, and political power. They weren't about to give the rabble such perogatives.

The DOI was a deceitful baiting of ordinary people to fight the war for the class-race elites' independence. Before the war was over, the elites were reneging on the DOI's implied promises. There's no mention of those rights in the new state constitutions. The USA's first national constitution, the "Articles of Confederation", ratified 1782, do not mention them. The 1787 Constitution buries them.

Pure representative government does not grant political equality to all citizens. Instead, it absurdly makes the public servants of the ruling elite vastly superior to sovereign civil society. It does not allow the sovereign people to speak for themselves. Instead, its charlatans, demagogues, and psychopaths get to legitimatly speak for, and in the name of, the majority of civil society. It does not allow sovereign civil society to directly elect all of its representatives. Instead, it maintains arbitrary corruption grounds called "the Electoral College" and "the independent judiciary" so that individuals in the highest reaches of power are appointed by the elites. It does not allow the sovereign civil society direct access to lawmaking. Instead, it makes whatever convoluted, loop-holed, and unenforceable laws best suit its corruption-on-corruption-in-corruption. It does not allow sovereign civil society to freely alter details of their governance. Instead, it protects all of the arbitrary mechanisms that ensure the power of the psychopathic few against the welfare of the many with highly controlled amendment procedures. It does not prevent violations of citizen rights by zealous majorities, greedy corporations, the corrupting superrich, or government itself. Instead, it is the facilitator for rights violations by all of those societal elements.

Even though the Constitution intervened and buried the extraordinary rights of Americans beyond reach, those principles and rights are still what most Americans have lived and died for since 1776.

The extraordinary rights of Americans became realities again in the midst of predator elitism's, slavery-driven Civil War. Lincoln was forced by the war over slavery to deal with it. He obviously saw that the DOI's great freedom statement -- all men are created equal -- mated with the Constitution's separation of church and state to overwhelm Biblical backing of slavery. The DOI's extraordinary rights of Americans reached into the Constitution and drove emancipation.

Again, predator elites, led by the South's white supremacists, buried the DOI beyond reach. It was buried -- law, facts, and truth -- in lynchings, race riots, and denial of African-Americans' political rights.

The DOI's extraordinary rights became realities again in the abuses of ordinary people by government-backed predator elites during the Guilded Age, 1880s to WW1.

The citizen backlash against the massive corruptions of the Guilded Age was the Reform Era. The people demanded direct legislation, so that they could have the republic promised to them in the nation's founding. The ordinary people understood that corruption negated republic. The people demanded that corruption be minimized. They demanded their sovereign right to control the output of legislation. They demanded their DOI rights.

Well-organized, with political sophistication booming due to the good fight lost by the Populists and the outrageous exposés done by the first generation of investigative reporters, the "muckrakers", citizens of 26 states rammed various parts of the DOI's rights down the elitist throats of their state constitutions.

The Reform Era was the greatest democracy movement of recorded history, involving the participation and supporting votes of many tens of millions of Americans.

Again, the predator elites buried the extraordinary rights of Americans. This time, citizen lawmaking was jammed with unconstitutional interferences masquerading as "administrative law". Statute-mandated "separation of powers" constitutional violations and "binding judicial review" constitutional violations gave government officials and judges the unconstitutional and arbitrary powers they needed to delay, alter, and/or reject any citizen-proposed law offensive to money-power.

No constitution in the nation defines the judicial power to include "binding judicial review" of proposed law.

The species-juvenile governance of competition among elites for obscenely excessive profits and power raged on.

The corrupting wealth and power bought all sorts of pro-elites propaganda. Media, think tanks, and history-department "Madisonian scholars" extolled the virtues of seeing governance from the government's point of view. Never mind that the government's point of view was bought and paid for by money-power. Never mind that governance from the people's point of view was needed to hold together the middle class and to solve grinding problems with bottom-up lawmaking.

Madisonian scholars were particularly handy for the elites. Over time they've all but deleted the increase of direct democracy from the history of the Reform Era. Pick up any history of the period and look for mention of the remarkable feats of Ohio citizens. In 1912, they triggered a constitutional convention, wrote provisions for over 40 constitutional innovations -- including initiative, referendum, and recall -- and then approved their convention's work, making the most sweeping state-level constitutional renewal in our nation's history.

You won't find mention of it in any more than about one out of a thousand history texts. But you can find it online in "The Constitutional Framework of Ohio State Government" at http://www.lsc.state.oh.us/guidebook/chapter1.pdf. Scroll down to the sub-head, "The 1912 Constitutional Convention".

As soon as the state legislatures could make admin law to control citizen-proposed law, the will of the sovereign people was toast -- unconstitutionally, feloniously, and treasonously. There's been no change for the hundred years since. What officials and judges do to citizen-proposed law would get them immediatley impeached and removed if they tried it on legislature-proposed law. But there sit the people, on their hands, not informing themselves, getting their slice of the pie, confident that government is doing about as well as can be expected.

Now, in our 2nd Guilded Age, abuses of ordinary people by the predators are bringing back our need for effective initiative, referendum, and recall -- this time, fully independent of government interference and at the national level.

Direct democracy (DD) is governance done by the sovereign people in majority-rules referendums.

The elections of representatives are done in referendums. Therefore, the election of representatives is as much direct democracy as is a petition-proposed and citizen approved statute law.

Including the election of representatives, the eight DD governance components that express our DOI fundamental governance rights group into three categories.

Administrative functions:
(1) The people's direct election of all representatives; done in open, fair, and peer-reviewed referendums called 'elections', and

(2)the people's recall of a public official's election who has violated the public trust or simply offended too many citizens; done by petition process.

Legislative functions:
(3) The people's constitutional amendment initiative, to propose amendments to our consitutions without government interference; done by petition process;

(4) the people's statute law initiative, to propose statute law without government interference; done by petition process;

(5) the people's statute law veto, now known as the "referendum" (should be changed to the "remand" to minimize confusion), to reject statute law made by representative government; done by petition process; and

(6) the people's statute law affirmation to bar government from amending a law that the people do not want changed; done by petition process.

Consultative functions:
(7) The legislature's statute law referral to the people's referendum, and

(8) the legislature's constitutional amendment referral to the people's referendum.

This is true democracy. It is the sovereign people's petition-proposed citizen lawmaking -- including initiative, referendum, and recall -- done without officers and without middlemen in any sort of citizen-managing institution, fully independent of representative government, and approved or rejected by binding referendums at every jurisdictional level within the nation.

True democracy is horizontal, non-hierarchical governance done by the sovereign people. It is best done in combination with repocracy.

'Repocracy' is a word invention of mine. It means "vertical, hierarchical governance done by representative government".

Whatever it is that representative government does, it is not democracy. Just Congress' party-line voting -- coercing many, suppressing their right to vote their conscience -- is a contradiction of democracy. Terms such as 'representative democracy' and 'indirect democracy', or 'parliamentary democracy', are all contradictions in terms. Representative government needs its own word. 'Repocracy' seems a good candidate.

True democracy melded to repocracy is true republican governance. It is a mixed form of government pioneered by the Roman Republic, the Swiss Confederation, our New England colonies, and, since the Reform Era, 24 modern US states. It was ruled a republican form of government intrinsic to the Constitution by the Supremes and many other high courts in the early 1900s.

The people's true democracy will need a still-strong, but more-regulated repocracy to help protect the people's rights -- for a long time to come. A properly regulated, helpmate repocracy can protect rights from encroachments that minorities within civil society cannot. The helpmate repocracy can help protect the people from themselves.

Contrary to predator elitism's sophistries, such a properly regulated repocracy, will not chase off the best and the brightest. It will, howeever, chase off the big-ego-tiny-minders who live for the thrills of corruption. It will give the best and the brightest increased tools to help protect the people from greedy corruption. It will give the best and the brightest increased motivation to serve. It will aid us in developing the same cooperation between sovereign civil society and public-servant repocracy that exists in Switzerland. And, while never perfect, that is a cooperation with intensities and national advantages that we need desperately. It is a cooperation that minimizes corruption and maximizes national unity.

True democracy melded to repocracy is our legacy from Reform Era citizens. The heavy lifting was done by them. The mixed form of government -- species-mature governance that automatically centers on equality, rights, and sustainability -- is just sitting there -- ready for us to clean it up at the state level and take on into the national level.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Open Letter To Howard Dean


Posted to the DNC blog this date

Gov Dean --

Midterms in six months. Voter identification requirements should be addressed, but they pale in comparison to the Diebold hack-o-matic vote-counting software. The Diebold Hack-O-Matic Is hijacked Election 2004, and now their Hack-O-Matic IIs -- the "nuclear bomb" of vote-counting systems in Dr. Avi Rubin's estimation -- are about to do the same only better to Election 2006. Are you not talking about this issue because the RNC's co-fascist wing of Democrats is up to their eyeballs in mutual electoral corruption with the RNC? Are the 19 Demofascist Senators who helped the Republifascist majority vote down the Alito filibuster dependent on the Diebold hack-o-matics to get reelected the next time up?

I've just started a new blog, "DD Revival". Its basic themes are getting back to citizenship; renewing the Constitution in a 2nd NCC (nat'l constitutional convention) so that we never have to face another dual-party, three-branch, treasonous proto-despotism like the Bush-Cheney Illegitimacy; and electing an impeachment and removal Congress in Election 2006, with enough juice to quickly override Bush's veto of a strong new Independent Prosecutor law, aimed at cutting through the massive obstructions of justice done by Ashcroft/Gonzales, obstructions that are totally unchallenged by Democrats throughout the government.

I'll do what I can to help organize moderates to diselect Republifascists to the extent that the Republican party ceases to exist. But Demofascists are on my list too. I'll do everything I can to make this the year of the tough-love pledge for every candidate/incumbent. Don't sign -- forfeit the votes of moderates. I'm betting that the tough-pledge drive will result in the election of many Independents, putting the power of the DNC where it deserves to be -- in the toilet.

You should appreciate how I'm holding myself in check. You're only getting a semi-rigorous flaming here. I'm taking it easy on you, because the moderates will need the help of your political operatives in a 15-state slaughter of hack-o-matics and voter registration drive. Those would be the 15 states in which Republfascists are running for reelection to the US Senate.

I don't want to see a single Republifascist senator filling any of the up-for-grabs seats from any of those states: Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Maine.

To get that done, the moderates will need your help. Hold back just a little and you'll have to deal with me.

Give my new blog's first two posts a fair read before you get laughing too hard at my little-nobody threats. The posts are "Throw the rascals out" and "Bush-Cheney Trainwreck -- Undo".

Stephen Neitzke
Direct Democracy League
http://ddleague-usa.net
http://ddrevival.blogspot.com

Note -- Of the 19 Demofascist Senators voting with the Republifascists to end the Alito filibuster before it could begin, 10 are up for reelection in Election 2006. Just a coincidence that Democrats are letting the hack-o-matic issue slide? Have you lost your mind? There is no such thing as coincidence in the mega-corruption of political party politics.
Alito is a a sworn enemy of our 14th Amendment liberties and a treasonous Bush-Cheney thug. He shouldn't be on a county commission, let alone the federal bench. You are authorized to suspect that the 19 Demofascists voted to crush the only proper debate available -- the filibuster -- because they knew that the Republifascist hack-o-matic vote-counting systems will reelect their treasonous butts in Election 2006 no matter how their state constituencies actually vote.
The 10 of the 19 traitors up for reelection this year are Akaka (HI), Bingaman (NM), Byrd (WV), Cantwell (WA), Carper (DE), Conrad (ND), Kohl (WI), Lieberman (CT), Nelson (FL), and Nelson (NE). None of these Demofascists should ever again be elected to anything in this country.

Friday, May 19, 2006

Throw The Rascals Out

Diebold Variations -- copyright 2004 by Rand Careaga/salamander.eps.  Used with permission.

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

I'm disaffiliated from political party politics and am an advocate of direct democracy's fully independent, citizen lawmaking (initiative, referendum, and recall). I want to see it mixed with our national representative government to create the true little-r, republican governance pioneered by the ancient Roman Republic, the Swiss Confederation, our New England colonies, and, beginning in the Reform Era a hundred years ago, 24 modern American states. We need civil society to have the corruption-fighting powers of fully independent citizen lawmaking because pure rep govt has completely failed us.

We need, I think, to get into a protected "2nd NCC" (national constitutional convention) asap -- and I've got pointed suggestions for how we get there. The 2nd NCC is the only way for us to get the Constitutional renewal that we need. We obviously need the power to minimize corruption, instead of allowing the Constitution's one-eyed political dynamic of pure rep govt -- with the people locked out -- to shroud us in continually maximized corruption.

We need the power to prevent future, dual-party, three branch, treasonous tyrannies such as the Bush-Cheney Illegitimacy, which is not a lawful presidency, but rather an unconstitutional anti-law regime. That status dates from the unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore. As defined in 18 USC 241, every co-conspirator in that felony conspiracy against citizen rights, to have a president elected in accord with the Constitution, can be fined and imprisoned for up to ten years. Felony forfeits judicial immunity, legislative immunity, and executive immunity. Public office-holding and life appointments to the federal bench are not factors. Do the crime, do the time.

The Bush v. Gore felony conspiracy against rights includes at least the five assenting judges, perhaps the entire Supreme Court; Clinton and his AG; and Bush-Cheney and their AG (Ashcroft). They are all treasonous constitutional criminals and felons-in-waiting. Their only proper place is in federal prison.

Everything done by the Bush-Cheney Illegitimacy under color of law since 10 December 2000 is unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous. Untangling this illegal snarl will be monstrous. It will take, I think, a decade or longer of semi-concentrated effort. Just handling the felony conspiracy of out-sourcing will be horrendous.

Before I can devote full time to a 2nd NCC, I have to go be a anti-fascist. Before the important preventative work outside the box of the failed status quo can be given the time it needs (see the previous post, "Bush-Cheney Trainwreck -- Undo"), some of us have to concentrate on legal-realm efforts inside the box of this failed status quo. Somehow, we must throw out the Republican party, its political cretins, and its home-grown American fascists -- before they finalize our national destruction. We have to focus this effort so that it is not the constant flogging of the dead horse.

Dancing faster and faster with ever-new angles on Bush-Cheney's bad politics doesn't get the job done. It's just playing into rightwing partisan hands, where it's quickly branded radical leftwing partisanship. Bush-Cheney is not politics-as-usual. From the beginnning, it has been high crimes and treason in the legal realm, not simply bad politics in the political realm. Dancing faster and faster with the politics is pretty much a waste of our time. We can slow-dance the politics. It's time for us to be American moderate citizens again. It's time for us to focus our efforts on righting wrongs legally -- in our sovereign majority.

I'm firmly convinced that the majority of US citizens are moderates who are offended by the Bush-Cheney crimes and bad politics. Regardless of whether you agree with my direct democracy politics, a majority of you are sure to agree that we need to rid ourselves of Bush-Cheney and the Republfascist horses they rode in on.

For the five-plus years of the Bush-Cheney Illegitimacy, the Republican party -- with its bought-out co-fascist wing of Democrats -- has proven beyond doubt that their credo is money-power first, ordinary people last.

The Republican party has used all of its power to bring back laissez faire and Reaganesque voo-doo economics to butcher ordinary people for profits and power. They are well on their way to destroying our middle class for the sake of the superrich's obscenely excessive social, economic, and political power. Their greed has expanded the predators' global American Empire with an unconstitutionally-waged war of aggression in Iraq, where their crimes against humanity are Nazi-like -- where their war crimes include the torture and murder of POWs. Additionally, they have crippled so many of our Constitutional safe-guards and liberties with inter-branch collusions and police-state tactics as to have us teetering on the brink of enslavement.

The Republican party has bankrupted our nation financially, legally, and morally. They deserve to be diselected to the degree that they cease to exist as a political party.

Unfortunately for we the sovereign people, the Republican party has privatized our electoral system into the hands of Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia. The predator politicians used the Machiavellian deceits of the HAVA (Help America Vote Act) to fool us. The corporate predators at Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia have fielded hack-o-matic vote-counting software that their goosesteppers can hack into by picking up a phone anywhere and dialing the magic number. The hack-o-matics have been installed even in non-touch-screen systems and include the back-room counting of absentee ballots. The hack-o-matics utterly negate our electoral system.

Diebold Variations -- copyright 2004 by Rand Careaga/salamander.eps.  Used with permission.
The Hack-O-Matic I versions counted about 80 percent of our votes in Election 2004. Their newer, "nuclear bomb of vote-counting systems", the Hack-O-Matic II versions, will count an even higher percentage of Election 2006, unless we the sovereign people force changes.

The "nuclear bomb" quote is from Dr. Avi Rubin at Johns Hopkins. His "Information Security Institute" is one of the world's leading computer security organizations. He and his crew evaluated the first-leaked propriety code from Diebold and published their evaluation, February 2004. One of the early, good stories about his evaluation of Diebold's new "nuclear bomb" is --


Getting shuck of the hack-o-matics will take sophisticated brute-force, blunt-force-trama politics, which will have to be applied at the county level. Even then, it is not a sure thing. The political cretins and homegrown fascists have the power to say no to us. Well -- until things get down and dirty in all sorts of wild-eyed lawsuits and promises of mass diselection at the county and state levels.

Trick is, all that has to happen before Election 2006. Six short, tiny months away.

Right alongside plowing the hack-o-matics into the ground, we have to bring out the politically withdrawn, unregistered voters. We're talking massive local and county voter registration drives to capture the 100-million-plus unregistered voters for our side. More nonvoters nationwide, you know, than voters. We need as many of them as we can get. If you had started on this yesterday, it would have been almost too late.

Here's voter registration drive Priority One. It is the 15 states in which Republifascists are up for reelection to the US Senate.

Montana -- Conrad Burns (the super-slime who jammed in the undebated "rider" that allows his big-money buddies to slaughter wild horses for sale as very expensive delicacy meat sold to foreign restaurants). Wyoming -- Craig Thomas. Utah -- real old slime Orrin Hatch. Nevada -- John Ensign. Arizona -- Jon Kyl. Texas -- Kay Hutchison. Missouri -- James Talent. Indiana -- Richard Luger. Ohio -- Mike DeWine. Mississippi -- super-slime Trent Lott. Tennessee -- super slime Bill Frist. Virginia -- George Allen. Pennsylvania -- Rick Santorum. Rhode Island -- Lincoln Chaffe. Maine -- Olympia Snowe.

Those 15 villains, or their villainous replacements, must be the focus of a 15-state-wide citizen action effort to dump their treasonous butts on the bricks.

We need political operatives, probably from the Democratic party, who know the turf and the campaign computer software that breaks everything down to the proverbial knat's ass. We need high-energy voter registration drives -- wall-to-wall from here to November. We need clearinghouse web sites to keep things organized on the state and local levels, as well as to discuss and find workable solutions to on-the-fly problems. We need excellent campaign strategies, executed on at least the very good level.

Obviously we need genuine candidates
to elect in the villains' places. Does anyone remember what a genuine candidate is? Why do I suddenly feel ancient?

This generation of genuine candidates needs to be carefully vetted. We need to make this a tough-love election year. Candidates should not get our support unless they physically sign a tough-love pledge. They should acknowledge in writing that, in return for our support to elect them, they will be an active part of the impeachment and removal Congress, to rid us of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Rice, Chertoff, at least six of the Supreme Court judges, NSA heirarchies about 5-deep, and as many of the other criminal minions as we can catch. They should acknowledge that they will actively support a new and very tough "Special Prosecutor" law, so that the many 18 USC 241 felony conspiracies against citizen rights can be criminally prosecuted in federal courts, despite the obstruction of justice by the Bush-Cheny DOJ. They should further acknowledge that, if they fail us in this objective, they understand that we will work hard to diselect them the next time around.

Forward, tough-love pledges.

Until Election 2006 gives us an impeachment and removal Congress, I'll be heard frequently singing the little ditty that I penned just after Election 2004.


God rest ye merry predators,
Let nothing you dismay.
Remember Bush is goosestepping
Across the USA,
To kill the rights of all mankind,
And get you extra pay.
Oh, Republicrats for havoc and coin,
Havoc and coin,
Oh, Republicrats for havoc and coin.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Bush-Cheney Trainwreck -- Undo

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

Clearing away the Bush-Cheney train wreck will require that we do three different jobs well.
First, we need to morph from milquetoast, directionless consumers back to regular, rights-demanding, well-organized, American citizens -- and organize nationwide. We're not there now, but we've been there before.
Second, we need to organize and control our materials for Election 2006. That means eliminating the Hack-O-Matic vote-counting software from Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia so that we can fairly get an impeachment and removal Congress with enough juice to quickly get a new "Special Prosecutor" law past certain presidential veto. It also means a massive voter-registration effort, targeting the 100-million-plus voting age Americans who are not registered voters.
Third, we need to get into a 2nd NCC (national constitutional convention) as soon as possible, with controls to protect the convention from predator elitist take-over, and with interactive tools for delegates and their constituencies. We need to renew the Constitution, so that nothing similar to the criminal and treasonous, dual-party, three-branch, Bush-Cheney proto-despotism can ever happen again.
Nobody said it would be easy. And there are no rose-garden promises.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Undo -- Part 1

Citizens, Not Consumers

Clearing away the Bush-Cheney train wreck will require that we do three very different jobs well.

First, we need to morph from milquetoast, directionless consumers back to regular, rights-demanding, well-organized, American citizens. We're not there now, but we've been there before.

"Liberty or death", and "live free or die" were American realities in the pre-Revolution 1770s. Liberty, freedoms, and rights -- voiced in the 1776 Declaration Of Independence (DOI) -- drove fighting American patriots throughout the War for Independence. From July 1776 in New York to the improbable 1777 wins at Saratoga, from the 1778 agonies at Valley Forge to the English-smashing 1781 victory at Yorktown, the DOI was continually read to assembled troops.

The DOI's extraordinary rights of Americans were far beyond the traditional rights of Englishmen. Ordinary Americans knew that they were worth fighting for.

The elites, however, had other plans. The elites used the DOI to fuel their army. But before the victory was fact in the 1783 Peace of Paris, the elites began reneging on the DOI's implied promises. The new states' constitutions excluded them. The extraordinary rights of Americans were buried beyond reach in the 1782 Articles of Confederation and the illegally ratified 1787 Constitution. The Bill of Rights, forced onto the elites as a quid pro quo for ratifying the Constitution, and then carefully controlled by the elites, was about the traditional rights of Englishmen, not the extraordinary rights of Americans.

Rights, freedoms, and liberty, after all, maximize citizen equality and minimize profits and power to the class-race elites. The elites were true to their class, not to their nation.

The extraordinary rights of Americans became realities again in the midst of predator elitism's, slavery-driven Civil War. Lincoln was forced by the war over slavery to deal with it. He obviously saw that the DOI's great freedom statement -- all men are created equal -- mated with the Constitution's separation of church and state to overwhelm Biblical backing of slavery. The DOI's extraordinary rights of Americans reached into the Constitution and drove emancipation.

Again, predator elites, led by the South's white supremacists, buried the DOI beyond reach. It was buried -- law, facts, and truth -- in lynchings, race riots, and denial of African-Americans' political rights.

The DOI's extraordinary rights became realities again in the abuses of ordinary people by government-backed predator elites during the Guilded Age, 1880s to WW1.

The citizen backlash against the massive corruptions of the Guilded Age was the Reform Era. The people demanded direct legislation, so that they could have the republic promised to them in the nation's founding. The ordinary people understood that corruption negated republic. The people demanded that corruption be minimized. They demanded their sovereign right to control the output of legislation.

Well-organized, with political sophistication booming due to the good fight lost by Populists and the outrageous exposés of the muckrakers, citizens of 26 states resurrected the DOI's extraordinary rights of Americans. They did it with the petition processes of initiative, referendum, and recall -- citizen lawmaking. Many of the nation's highest courts, including the Supremes in 1912, affirmed that the mix of citizen lawmaking with representative government is a republican form of government intrinsic to the Constitution.

Again, the predator elites buried the extraordinary rights of Americans. This time, citizen lawmaking was jammed with unconstitutional interferences masquerading as "administrative law". Statute-mandated "separation of powers" violations and "binding judicial review" violations gave government officials and judges the unconstitutional and arbitrary powers they needed to delay, alter, and/or reject any citizen-proposed law offensive to money-power. The will of the sovereign people was toast -- unconstitutionally, feloniously, and treasonously. There's been no change for the hundred years since. What officials and judges do to citizen-proposed law would get them immediatley impeached and removed if they tried it on legislature-proposed law. But there sit the people, on their hands, waiting for government to save them.

Now, in our 2nd Guilded Age, abuses of ordinary people by predatory government and predatory elites are again unearthing our need for initiative, referendum, and recall -- this time, fully independent of government interference and at the national level.

We can't do it as directionless consumers. We've got to morph back to well-organized citizens.

The second job that we must do well is to impeach and remove Bush-Cheney and as many criminal minions as we can, near simultaneously. Job 2's Part B is the criminal prosecution under federal statute 18 USC 241 of the many felony conspiracies committed by the Bush-Cheney Illegitimacy.

All of Job 2 will require that we control our materials for Election 2006. That means eliminating the Hack-O-Matic vote-counting software from Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia so that we can fairly get an impeachment and removal Congress with enough juice to quickly get us a new "Special Prosecutor" law past certain presidential veto. It also means a massive voter-registration effort, targeting the 100-million-plus voting age Americans who are not registered voters.

The third job we must do well is to renew the Constitution, so that nothing similar to the criminal and treasonous, dual-party, three-branch, Bush-Cheney proto-despotism can ever happen again. The Bush-Cheney Illegitimacy is not Constitutional governance. It is anti-democracy, anti-rights, fascist thuggery masquerading as Constitutional governance.

None of our three jobs get done with mealy-mouth, or constantly over-thinking nuances. or with us sitting on our hands. All of it requires brute-force, blunt-force-trauma politics. We do the nuance stuff first, on the Internet and face-to-face across the country. We design our complex systems (hello, Erwin Laszlo's microshifts into macroshift), decide when they're right, and then shift gears and slam the turn-key systems into place. We do not listen to the predator politicians' screaming and screeching.

Yeah, well, no -- no nation's citizens have ever done a rack of reforms against a super-power government. This government's social, economic, and political power is wide and deep. It's power anchored in horrendous and treasonous violations of the nation's own constitutions and laws. It's power protected by collusions among its players that illegally break checks and balances all over the political landscape. It's power sold to the servile with lies on lies in lies. It's power buttressed by the religious rapture of medieval end-days fuzz-think. It's power entrenched in global mega-resources, on-planet and off-planet.

As FDR's then-Vice-President Henry Wallace wrote of American corporate fascism in 1944, "Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection." Wallace's words, in that NY Times op-ed, published 09 April 1944, had iron in them.

OK, big breath. Nobody said this would be easy. It is, however, very real. Options are do the work-arounds, or die enslaved. And there are no rose-garden promises. Dying enslaved is a distinct and very real possibility if we don't handle these three jobs well.

Undo -- Part Two

Renewal Objectives & Interactive Tools

OK. Job 3 first. Here are the minimum objectives for the Constitutional renewal. This is the prize at the very top of our three jobs. This is where we have to go to prevent money-power's massive corruptions from just snapping power out of our hands again.

Taken together, all of these things create the political dynamic that preserves the worthy core of our Constitution, the rights it houses, and our national continuity. We can expect the predators to instantly learn new tricks as they squirm to recover, but this set of changes should allow us to adapt to anything they hurl at us for a long time.

  • All elections should be nonpartisan. Parties should remain legal, but should be absolutely barred from playing any role in the electoral process, from candidate selection to election. The Swiss experience shows us that parties cease to exist as power centers as soon as fully independent, sovereign citizen lawmaking is in place. Still, they remain as societal focal points of political sentiments, networking with single-issue and topic-area citizen action groups. As Swiss government holds pre-legislation meetings with the social organizations, to write a new law's provisions so that costly referendum campaigns are avoided, a balance of political party sentiments become expressed in legislative provisions. It has proven to be a stellar cooperation for over a hundred years.


  • All representatives should be elected by the people directly. There should be no more "Electoral College" corruption grounds. This will require a state-, regional-, and national-level direct-vote, referendal primaries system for selection of the national candidates.


  • Congress should be reduced to a nonpartisan unicameral (3 senators per state to protect small from large) on the successful 1934 Nebraska model. This automatically eliminates the "conference committee", eliminating the behind-closed doors corruption of decisions made in face-to-face committee and floor debates. No conference committee also means no un-debated "riders" snuck in at the last minute, eliminating especially "pork barrell" corruptions. Constitutional rules for the Senate should provide for single-subject bills, as does Nebraska, eliminating the corruptions so frequent in omnibus bills -- and making citizen veto of a Senate-passed bill an uncomplicated matter. There should be provisions barring gerrymandering, as Nebraska does. There should also be recently developed "clean-money campaign financing" provisions, generated by expert citizen organizations. All 535 bicameral senators and members should be fired at once. 150 new Senators should be elected within a year and be put into place in the new Senate simultaneously. Senators, along with the Senate Chairman (third in succession to the presidency), and the Supreme Court judges should have 4-year terms. Their election should be off-set 2 years from national elections of executive branch officials, to promote governmental stability. Reduction of the partisan bicameral to a nonpartisan unicameral results in an approximately two-thirds reduction in money-sucking and corruption-spewing representatives. Media loses its sweetheart deals with money-power and reverts to people-biased 4th Estate concerns. The nonpartisan unicameral is cheaper, less wasteful, capable of much less secrecy, minimizes corruption, and maximizes cooperation with civil society. The nonpartisan unicameral has 69 years of success in Nebraska. See especially, "The History of the Nebraska Unicameral", http://www.unicam.state.ne.us/learning/history.htm .


  • There should be an optimum system of fully independent, sovereign citizen lawmaking meshed with a still-strong but more-regulated representative government. Minimal constitutional provisions for such a mixed form of government already exist in 17 US states, arguably more. The mixed form has been found a republican form of government intrinsic to the Constitution by many of our highest courts, including the Supremes in 1912. This is the mating of the people's horizontal, non-hierarchical, bottom-up lawmaking with the government's vertical, hierarchical, top-down lawmaking. Both are needed to protect citizen equality and rights. 'Fully independent' means no government interference whatever -- and no built-in citizen-management institutions to provide corruption doors to money-power. 'Citizen lawmaking' unpacks to the petition processes of initiative (citizens formulating constitutional amendments and statutes, when needed, in addition to day-to-day legislative action by the Senate), remand (proposed name change, from 'referendum', to eliminate confusion with referendum-the-vote -- remand is the veto of legislature/Senate-passed legislation), and the recall (firing elected and appointed representatives or judges who need a career change). Sovereign civil society, with its fully independent citizen lawmaking, becomes a second legislative house. The people don't need demagogic, charlatan representatives speaking for them. They can speak for themselves in referendums. With the mix of citizen lawmaking and rep govt, governance swings from species-juvenile corruption to species-mature cooperation, centering on rights, equality, and sustainability. The dynamic majorities of issue-driven politics replace the rigid majorities of ideology-driven politics -- both in civil society and in government. Dynamic majorities, stemming from each citizen's ability to vote his/her conscience on each initiative, remand, and recall issue, and being adopted out of necessity by the nonpartisan Senators who are subject to recall, will better-protect the rights of individuals and minorities than do rigid, party-line majorities. Swiss rights protection history is inspiring. The rights protection history of the party-line US is a literature of massive, depraved failure.


  • Online Citizen Institutions (OCIs) are crucial for citizen lawmaking. They will give sovereign civil society an institutional presence that can stand against corporate immortality and the ever-threatening corruptions that pry open repocracy. State-level OCIs -- and their future, peer-reviewed, open-source, digitally secure, online "preferendum" (pre-referendum) voting system -- are required for (1) the setting of citizen agendas; (2) the formulation and amending of initiative, remand, and recall petitions; (3) deciding when a particular petition is ready to be formally filed with the national repocracy; (4) monitoring the enactment of citizen-passed legislation; and (5) monitoring and publishing real-time information on the performance of representative government's institutions and individual representatives. All five features will be democratically messy. Nonetheless, excluding the still-future online voting system, they can be easily done with advanced wiki, blog, and bulletin-board "community" software that we have right now. National-level OCI's -- for each "area" of, say, 12 groups of states -- are needed to accomplish 1-5 above for national level legislation. We get to OCIs by experimenting with the "clearinghouse" web sites needed for organizing the lead-in citizen action efforts.


  • Federal-bench judges should be elected by the citizens of the Court's jurisdiction and should be subject to recall -- Supremes included. "Judicial independence" is an 18th Century device for the protection of predator elitism's corruptions and the class-race elite, at the expense of ordinary people. Given the present massive corruption of government, judges must be made dependent on the sovereign people. Bush v. Gore -- unconstitutional, felonious (violated 18 USC 241, felony conspiracy against the rights of all Americans to have a president elected in accord with the Constitution), and treasonous (parallel with the findings of treason for the 1860s seccessionist state legislators) -- began the conspiracy to elevate the Bush-Cheney Illegitimacy. The conspiracy includes all 9 Supremes, Clinton, his AG, many in his DOJ hierarchy, Bush-Cheney, their AG, and many of their DOJ hierarchy. The Supremes' ruling in Bush v. Gore established an unconstitutional anti-law regime. Everything done by the Bush-Cheney Illegitimacy since the taking of power, January 2001, has been unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous. Felony forfeits judicial, executive, and legislative immunity. All of the co-conspirators can be criminally prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned, even if they still hold public office or life-time appointments. Untangling this trainwreck will be a legal nightmare. Other recent Supreme Court Rulings that are also unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous are Raich v. Gonzales (medical marijuana) and Kelo v. City of New London (eminent domain). Both of those rulings created unconstitutional anti-law regimes that must be legally untangled, hopefully at great expense to the corporate predators responsible. Both rulings also created felony conspiracies against rights. The assenting Supremes in both rulings are treasonous constitutional criminals and felons-in-waiting. Their only rightful place is in federal prison.


  • The Department of Justice should be an independent agency. The AG should be independently elected to a 4-year term and subject to recall. The AG should be elected on the same ballot as president and vice president, off-set two years from the elections of the Senate Chairman, the Senators, and the Supreme Court judges.


  • "Double majorities" are the Swiss legitimacy steamroller for national-level citien lawmaking. A double majority is an approving majority of all those voting, plus approving majorities in a majority of all states. For us, it should be a legislative, executive, and judicial matters device. Our national citizen lawmaing should require double majorities. Our elections of all representatives with national constituencies -- president, vice president, attorney general, chairman of the senate (third in succession to the presidency), and supreme court judges -- should require double majorities, with run-offs to prevent election by non-majority plurality.


  • There should be Constitutional provisions defining and penalizing feasance violations (malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance) of the Constitution by public officials and judges. Bush v. Gore likely would not have happened had the Constitution contained a mandatory penalty for judicial malfeasance against the Constitution's provisions. The threat to strip judges of their social, economic, and political power for Constitutionally-defined feasance violations would be a powerful deterrent. The feasance violations are age-old ways in which public officials and judges violate constitutions. They should have been defined and penalized in the Constitution at the time of its 1787 writing, putting accountability teeth into the oath to uphold the Constitution. Instead, the oath to uphold was left ambiguous and hollow. The elitist authors were true to their class, not to their nation.

Mind, there likely will be many miscellaneous features added that are not mentioned here. Regulating capitalism, corporations, and the international activities of wealth will likely be begun. International Criminal Court access to military and government officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity will likely be made mandatory. As with the basic set of features above, however, the miscellaneous features are for the people to decide.

All of the suggested features are based on the work of many minds over many years, but they are still only suggestions. Interactions between 2nd NCC delegates and the sovereign people voting in non-binding referendums will write the actual provisions. In line with "consent of the governed", only the sovereign people should be empowered to ratify the new provisions in binding referendums. See below for discussion of the Constitutional amendment needed. The people's ratifying referendums will probably ratify or reject the new amendments on an Article-by-Article basis within the Constitution. And they will probably ratify only with heavily legitimizing "double majorities" (see below).

Nuance stuff ahead of the 2nd NCC (national constitutional convention), which is obviously needed for the renewal, includes tending to Alexander Hamilton's "solemn and authoritative act" of Constitutional change. See Hamilton's Federalist 78 for the full text. Note there that Hamilton calls on "judicial independence" to protect the predator elites from ordinary people. Then see the US Civil War for what happens when the keepers of the Union deem citizen action a sedition instead of a solemn and authoritative act of change. No wiggle room. We have to meet the Constitution's authors on their own terms.

"Solemn and authoritative act" of change means using the Constitution's Article 5 and state government calls for the 2nd NCC. Simple resolutions calling for the convention will not do what we need. Legislative packages of a generic enabling act will be required in a minimum of 34 states. The package must protect the convention from predator take-over, and force convention delegates to work with state and national majorities in non-binding referendums during the convention -- or face individual recall, or face convention disbandment and re-start from scratch.

The non-binding referendums can be used by the delegates to guide them in all sorts of provisions not mentioned above in our basic objectives. (Such referendums are not mentioned in the Constitution, and therefore not barred. We should've been using them for decades, allowing civil society to set informal agendas for Congress.) For example, we need to heavily restrict presidential Executive Orders and provide for "clean-money-only" campaign financing. The convention's delegates can write a spread of possible provisions, and then the people can approve one or more per topic in a non-binding referendum.

The non-binding referendums are half the interactive story. The generic legislative package has to provide for the people formulating and triggering required delegate action from outside the 2nd NCC. No problem.

Delegates from any state not backed by the generic legislation and its required provisions, as defined by a simple majority of the 34 states required to call the convention, simply will not be credentialed.

This is power politics by the people. Our control-legislation packages will have to come from at least 18 states. There are 17 states in which the citizens have free-ranging CAIs (constitutional amendment initiatives). In those states, the people are more powerful legislatively than is the state government. The people are the state. Predator politicians cannot meddle with legislation packed into the state's constitution.

That leaves one state to be picked up. We'll get that one and many more in THE FEAR.

It's one of the things that the CAI is good for. THE FEAR will happen in the reduction of partisan bicamerals to nonpartisan unicamerals in, say, ten of the 17 states in which citizens have the CAI (constitutional amendment initiative) and corrupt bicameral legislatures.

Imagine the effect on politicians across the country of citizens in 10 states passing a constitutional amendment that fires their entire legislature, sets up a nonpartisan, "clean-money-only" election of a new unicameral Senate of about one-third the bicameral numbers, and brings the unicameral into reality about two years after the last bicameral session. It's basically what Nebraska citizens did in 1934.

After 69 years of success in Nebraska, the jury is in. Nonpartisan unicamerals are less expensive, more efficient, less secretive, far less corrupt, and more cooperative with civil society than are partisan bicamerals.

The move auto-eliminates the bicameral's "conference committee" and their behind-closed-doors corruptions, including their injection of undebated "riders" such as wild horse butchering and pork barrel obscenities. Automatically, the nonpartisan unicameral is relatively incorrupt.

You can read more about it at http://www.unicam.state.ne.us/learning/h istory.htm -- "History of Nebraska's Unicameral Legislature", on the Nebraska legisture's site.

Across the country, 10 state legislatures being reduced to nonpartisan unicamerals will cause public civics lessons to flow like water. The flow of civics lessons, looking much as it did during the Reform Era's increases of democrcy in 26 states, will increase public political sophistication levels to something approaching Reform Era levels. We purely need that sophistication to dismantle Bush-Cheney and prevent any future occurrence.

And across the country, politicians will see that we the sovereign people are coming for them. They will be falling all over themselves in THE FEAR, trying to prove that they are our stalwart public servant buddies -- trying to hang onto whatever of their social, economic, and political power can be salvaged.

The 17 target states are Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and South Dakota.

We need wide discussion of, and agreement on provisions for the generic legislation package going in. However, once you start thinking about what is needed, the pieces fall into place quite naturally. (We can talk specifics some other time.) There should be relatively little controversy.

Most predator possibilities for torpedoing the convention can be anticipated and blocked beforehand, in the generic legislation. In the event of a really nasty surprise from the predators, a fail-safe can be built in, taking down the whole enterprise on a non-binding national referendum, providing time for state-level legislative corrections, and re-starting from scratch. Those are losses that we should expect. The predators stand to lose their obscenely excessive profits and power, and we should expect them to fight like tigers to keep as much as they can.

Of course, nothing done in the 2nd NCC becomes binding Constitutional law until ratified. And that brings up another need of ours.

Before we get to the end of the 2nd NCC, we need a stand-alone Constitution amendment n place, specifying that all future Constitutional amendments will be ratified or rejected only by a referendum of the people. "Consent of the governed" does not mean of, by, and for the money-power fascists. Consent of the governed is not something done by representatives -- not in the massively corrupt Congress, and not in any potentially corrupt "special" ratifying convention.

The stand-alone amendment will have to be forced. No bought-out, sold-out Congress will ever do it for us out the goodness of their hearts. Predator elites do not share power. Still, when the time is right, we'll ask them to do it for us -- after THE FEAR has set in. When they know we're coming for them, and they're trying to cut a deal, they'll be our buddies. Bet is, that they'll fast-track our referendum-ratification amendment right on through.

THE FEAR is an interactive tool.

OK. How does that feel? Breath of fresh air? Or is it something more like nausea? Buck up. As an old friend of mine liked to say, "Nothing is really difficult, it's just that some things take longer than others."

Part 2 modified Mon 29 May 2006, 7:05 a.m.

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Undo -- Part Three

Getting Past The Hack-O-Matics

Here's Job 2 in our countdown. This is Part A, plowing the hack-o-matic vote-counting software into the ground and recovering enough democracy to hold fair elections. This sets up Part B, which is the one-two punch of impeachments and criminal prosecutions for felony conspiracies against rights and many other crimes against our laws.


The first tangle we have to vaporize is the hack-o-matic vote counting systems from Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia. In Election 2004, they counted about 80 percent of all votes cast. The percentage will probably be higher in Election 2006.

The predator politicians love hack-o-matic vote counting, because it is such a sure thing. No democracy to worry about. Just spew the campaign lies on lies in lies and wait for your friendly neighborhood goosesteppers to adjust the vote totals -- not too much, just enough to win. It's computer hacking for fun, profit, and power.

There's no chance of our electing the impeachment and removal Congress that we need until the hack-o-matic privatization of our electoral system is dead and buried. Peer-reviewed "open source" code must be put into place, so that we can see that the vote counting is secure and that there are no backdoors through which the vote count can be altered.

You might have noticed. While many small citizen groups were trying to get rid of Hack-O-Matic I from Election 2004, the fascist rat-bastard predators were scurrying around making Hack-O-Matic II for Election 2006.

Diebold has installed what one of the world's leading computer security experts, Dr. Avi Rubin at Johns Hopkins University's "Information Security Institute", calls the "nuclear bomb" of electronic vote-counting systems. It's a Mack-truck sized back door into which anybody can load any software before, during, or after the voting day. The add-on software can do whatever it is designed to do, communicating with whatever remote computers it is designed to communicate with, and adjusting vote totals any which way. It can then be deleted, leaving no trace whatever of its ever having been there.

Oh, pooh-pooh, say Diebold reps and the predator politicians. The backdoors are design features. Backdoors are good. They make the machines more functional. After all, the machines will always be kept in secure places, safe from dirty evil-doers.

Lies on lies in lies.

Dr. Rubin's study of this new democracy-ending tool from Diebold made headlines a few days ago. If this instance is anything like Dr. Rubin's study of Diebold's Hack-O-Matic I (my term, not his), February 2004, money-power's parasitic media will have Hack-O-Matic II in their black hole by now. Look for coverage on your favorite techie, alt media, and blog sites.



What will it take to squash the hack-o-matic systems? We don't know. We've never had to do anything similar -- certainly not against the vice grip of the dual-party, three-branch, Bush-Cheney fascist machine. I suspect, though, that it will take huge numbers of people in every county using the hack-o-matic vote-counting software -- also installed in non-touch-screen machines, you know -- to barge around, demanding that the software be scrapped.

Note that this has to be resolved by November, this year. Six short, tiny months. No time to waste. Do something now, please. Don't stop till you've got a proven, sound, vote-counting system -- with paper trail.

Don't be satisfied when some toothy predator smiles and says, "Oh, we're very happy with our vote-counting system". Their happiness has nothing to do with fair elections. Sitting on our hands, waiting for government to save us, is the wrong thing to do. This is on us.

Power politics required -- brute-force, blunt-force-trauma politics. Do not give the slimeballs a chance.

Note that the predators -- Repub fascists and Demo co-fascists -- will win anywhere, in any county and state, where government rams hack-o-matics down the electoral system's throat.

This, when the fascist Republican party should be so diselected as to cease to exist. And when any co-fascist Democrat -- like the 19 Senatorial Demofascists who gleefully helped the Republifascists shut down Samuel Alito's SCOTUS nomination filibuster before it could get started -- should never again hold any public office, anywhere. Can't find their names? Email me.

Yes, there's the intelligent approach. We can target the 15 Republican party Senate seats up for re-election. We can make sure that no county in any of those states uses a hack-o-matic to count any category of votes, including absentee. At the same time, we can do a voter-registration drive in all of those states aimed at the previously unregistered voters.

Nationwide, there are over 100 million. There are more withdrawn, unregistered voters than there are registered voters. We need them now. Get 'em off their butts, into registration, and then to the polls on voting day. You snooze, we all lose. Do something now, please. Don't stop until Election 2006 is won.

Part 3 modified Wed 24 May 2006, 2:35 p.m.

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Undo -- Part 4

Prosecutions Timing & Flowing Civics Lessons

OK, let's say that Election 2006 passes and we've got our impeachment and removal Congress. Now we're in Job 2, Part B -- impeaching and removing Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, at least six Supreme Court judges, and as many criminal minions as we can catch in our legal hammermills. At the same time, we set up a new "Special Prosecutor" to slam through the DOJ's obstruction of justice so that those same criminals can be criminally prosecuted and imprisoned for their crimes, primarily for their violations of 18 USC 241 -- felony conspiracy against rights.

We do not want the criminal prosecutions to go too far, however -- not while the current crop of fascist thugs masquerading as Supreme Court judges still control the top of the legal heap.

We should hold the most important of the 18 USC 241 felony conspiracies until after we have a renewed Constitution. The most important are rights violations that result in the felony murders of our soldiers and POWs. They carry sentences mandated by 18 USC 241 of life imprisonment or the death penalty. There is no statute of limitations on felony murder.

We can prosecute the lesser felony conspiracies to imprison the felons-in-waiting, get our constitutional renewal -- to clear the Supreme Court ahead of new national elections of the judges -- and then go after the rights violations resulting in felony murder.

Even with that plan, it's clear that the Supreme thugs could arbitrarily reverse lower-court convictions for the lesser felony conspiracies. We might well see the murderous co-conspirators freely living the good life, no matter what we do. Well -- until we can finish the Constitution renewal.

We can't get to the 2nd NCC fast enough.

And another of the Constitutional renewal objectives should be ensuring that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzales, and a large number of generals and admirals are bound over to the ICC at the Hague for their war crimes and crimes against
humanity in Iraq. We did not go through the Nuremberg trials for giggles.

We can debate whether the state should be allowed to kill anybody in the 2nd NCC. Perhaps civilization will prevail and an absolute prohibition of the death penalty written into the renewed Constitution. (If not, I'll be one of those lobbying for death penalties for the worst of the murderers -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gonzales, and a dozen or so generals and admirals.)

Needless to say, all three tasks growing out of a successful Election 2006 -- impeachment and removal, the new Special Prosecutor law, and criminal prosecutions of the treasonous felons -- will require intense preparation. Get some friends together and start now, please.

In the first days of the new Congress, we should have the new "Special Prosecutor" bill on Bush's desk. Veto. No problem. Override. (We must have tough-love-pledge Independents and Democrats enough for quick veto overrides -- plan for it.)

The long list of 18 USC 241 felony conspiracies and their co-conspirators need to be prepared well in advance of Election 2006. Felony forfeits legislative immunity, judicial immunity, and executive immunity.

The indictments should name hundreds of felonious co-conspirators. In the unconstitutional vote to give Bush unconstitutional war powers for the unconstitutional invasion of Iraq, 373 senators and congressmen voted aye. That vote, and Bush's orders to invade, violated our soldiers' rights to be sent to war only on the expressed order of Congress.

Only Congress is given war powers in the Constitution -- for damned good reasons. Presidents do not have war powers in the Constitution -- for damned good reasons. Nothing in the Constitution allows any branch to give away any power expressly assigned to it in the Constitution. The votes to give Bush his very own war powers were unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous. Felony forfeits legislative immunity. Do the crime, do the time.

Per 18 USC 241, every last one of those 373 senators and congressmen is a co-conspirator in the felony murders of our soldiers in Iraq. Per 18 USC 241, conviction means a sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty. Just right for those fascist thugs. Just right for our honoring our war dead and maimed.

Can't find the names of those 373 treasonous constitutional criminals masquerading as senators and congressmen, or the roll call votes in October 2002? Email me.

OK, let's say that we've got the Bush-Cheney Illegitmacy out of office and into prison. Are we safe? Oh, hell no.

We'd better have a hair-trigger impeachment cannon ready, because we're likely to need it. Money-power has a thousand Bush look-alikes lurching around in the toilets at the Business Round Table, the fascist think-tanks, globalization centers, and Fox News. Additionally, they'll still have the fascist thugs masquerading as Supreme Court and lower federal bench judges.

We can't get to the 2nd NCC fast enough. And we've got to figure three months to a year for the interactive convention to write the provisions. Then there'll be about a two-year debate and deliberation period for civil society before the, probably, "double majority" referendums ratify or reject the amendments, probably on an Article-by-Article basis.

"Double majority" referendums have been the Swiss legitimacy steamroller for national legislation since 1891. They require an approving majority of all voters, plus an approving majority of all states. It's an idea that they copied from our Congress, where the passage of law requires a majority of the people's representatives and a majority of the states' representatives.

To smooth our way into the 2nd NCC, we purely need to do nonpartisan unicamerals in about ten states. We need THE FEAR working for us.

Getting the picture? All of this needs to be running on the same days, the days between now and Election 2006. We need volunteers and organizations to break it all down. We're burning daylight.

The simultaneously running package includes the stand-alone Constitutional amendment for the ratifying of future Constitutional amendments only with the people's referendums. Timing is everything. It runs after THE FEAR sets in, but it needs intense planning well in advance.

What will we name the citizen action group that handles the planning and execution for this stand-alone Constitutional amendment?

Mantra in play -- planning prevents piss-poor performance. All of this needs to be a well-organized, multi-level, citizen action effort. Do something now, please. Don't stop until all the jobs are done.

Job 1? Morphing from milquetoast, directionless consumers back to regular, rights-demanding, well-organized, American citizens?

By the time this multi-level citizen action effort is up and running, Job 1 will be well on its way. Civics lessons will flow like water. Public political sophistication will soar from its present 0.5 on the 10-scale to Reform Era I's 8.5 -- and beyond. Reform Era II will be ours.

But it doesn't happen with the world on automatic and your sitting around on your hands waiting for government or your neighbors to save you.

It's all on us. This will be work, mentally and physically -- get used to it. You'll need to dig for the good information that helps. You'll need to build connections with like-minded people and maintain those connections. Connections are the hard work of democracy. The connections can be online, but we know from Reform Era I that they have to be face-to-face, too.

People need to see people doing democracy. In the 1880s, the greatest democracy movement in recorded history started in small, church-basement and Grange-hall meetings, as well as around wagon-camp meetings of thousands of whole families on the open praries. They organized co-op economics for the National Farmers Alliance. The NFA countered money-power's vicious racketeering in the "Crop Lien System", which reduced thousands of rural families to virtual enslavement. When eastern bankers threw in with the merchants and broke the backs of the NFA's co-ops, the NFA members morphed into the People's Party and took on the massive corruption of the two major political parties in Election 1890. They lost, but their loss -- plus the powerful exposés done by the first investigative reporters, later branded "muckrakers" -- triggered the urban backlash of Reform Era fame. Citizens of 26 states rammed citizen lawmaking down the throats of their elitist state constitutions.

Lasting from from 1877 to 1914, it was the greatest democracy movement in recorded history. People seeing people doing democracy was at its core.

This citizen revival has to be done on top of demanding jobs, messy families, and whatever culture-stuff you're into. And it'll have to have high priority.

You'll never do anything more important in your life than to help all of us get all the way through Reform Era II.

Chew on this. We'll do 2nd NCC details next time, along with imagining many little sidebars that will happen around a 2nd NCC in session. It could be a whale of a festival.