"The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth (...) We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. (...) when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. (Declaration of Independence, signed by 13 Governors and allies). CLICK HERE FOR THE ENTIRE DECLARATION.
By enacting the open public records and meetings laws in Chapters RCW 42.30 and 42.56, the people, Washingtonians, insisted on remaining informed so that we may maintain control over the government instruments that we created. Effective management, transparency, accountability, and disclosure of taxpayer-expended resources by state government are of the utmost importance to sustain the trust of Washington taxpayers.
To favor Governmental responsibility and transparency, the Fundamental Freedoms Action Committee recommends the following measures:
MEASURE 1 . THE INTERNET AND THE INSTRUMENTS OF DIRECT DEMOCRACY. Since the Legislature can water down if not refuse to implement initiatives or referenda, a Bill to reinforce the People's Initiative and referendum rights would be useful. The integration of the Internet as a democratic tool with which the People can vote on issues would be very helpful. This consensus building technique via the internet was orchestrated in Sweden with astonishingly great results. Public funds so that all Washingtonians could have a computer system for those who need one, but can't afford one, in exchange of some public service work would be ideal. Once hooked up to the internet, the Government can get the People’s regular feedback on the policies the Governor would propose and on the laws the State Legislature would enact. Likewise for the People to be able to contact the Governor's Office. There should be a service put in place for this. Governmental transparency also includes a two-way inter-acting exchange structure.
MEASURE 2 . REFORM OF THE VOTING SYSTEM VIA PUBLIC FUNDING OF ELECTORAL CAMPAIGNS, INSTANT RUN-OFF VOTING (IRV), PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION AND GUARANTEES AGAINST STRAIGHT DIRECT VOTING (SDV). The drafting of a bill to address public funding of all electoral positions, including judges' electoral campaign would be reasonable. Many other countries have done this, which explains their vibrant democracy and why the People's fundamental rights and basic needs are better respected than in the U.S. To keep the system coherent, there may have to be a preliminary petition endorsing a candidate and signed by citizens. Meanwhile, we need to have a better control system to avoid electoral fraud.
"Before I overreacted, though, I wanted to check out the specifics included in the Snopes report. I sent the link around to various people in the election integrity movement and got a clear consensus that, while Snopes’ article was a great attention-grabber, the VotersUnite! article by Ellen Theisen is superior, offering more detail and is ultimately more useful. I spoke with Ellen this morning. She pointed out that votes get lost in every election, for a variety of reasons, including straight ticket voting. It is impossible to know exactly which ones, where, or even how many are lost or changed. Just today, an article in the Houston Chronicle tells of early voters who voted a Democratic STV and saw their presidential vote flip to John McCain. (...) Here are the fifteen states that offer STV (sometimes known as SPV, straight party voting). Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin. If you add up the population in those states, you’re at around 90 million. So, we’re talking about tens of millions of voters including those from four of the ten most populous states" (FOR THE ENTIRE ARTICLE, PLEASE CLICK HERE).
This why we need electoral reform, including, but not limited to public financing to avoid corruption, proportional represenation,(to avoid minority tyranny, in the best Madison tradition, see his text on his in the Constitutional clean up convention link), a binding "write-in" candidates blank form with no restrictions and governmental obstacles (which would help to establish a more participatory democracy while unleashing new projects and local initiatives) and via a new voting system called the instant run-offf system, which is defined as
"... a voting system used for single-winner elections in which voters have one vote and rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first preference rankings, the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated and that candidate's votes redistributed to the voters' next preferences among the remaining candidates. This process is repeated until one candidate has a majority of votes among candidates not eliminated. The term "instant runoff" is used because IRV is said to simulate a series of run-off elections tallied in rounds, as in an exhaustive ballot election.("Second Report: Election of a Speaker". House of Commons Select Committee on Procedure (2001-02-15). Retrieved on 2008-02-18).
MEASURE 3. THE THREE SEPARATE AND EQUAL BRANCHES OF THE GOVERNMENT. A plan to reduce the Government's and the State Legislature's delegation of legislative responsibilities to independent commissions and agencies. Likewise with special interests or lobby groups. A bill should be introduced to limit the political and financial influence of powerful special interests groups who do more to destroy the country than to harmonize and build it.
Moreover, it remains illegal for any minority to dictate its self serving conditions on other minorities. This is what Madison and many of our other framers fought for in order to avoid the tyranny of one minority over others. This was a big time cultural trauma for many of the European persecuted immigrants (Huguenots, Puritans, Quakers etc.). In Hindu culture, the caste system reflects the hegemony of one minority over the majority of other minorities. Definition number two of the Webster dictionary (the one the Supreme Court uses) states: "Caste: A division of society based on difference of wealth, inherited rank or privilege". When private bankers like U.S. treasury secretary Hank Paulson become public servants and then when high ranking public servants go back to mega corporations from which they continue working with their former colleagues who in turn tend to establish corporate public favoritism for these companies, we have a constitutional problem. Among other agencies, this is well establish for the FDA where high officials who leave the FDA get jobs with the large pharmaceutical corporations and then the FDA "connections" of those former public servants favor the marketing of the drugs of those companies, many of which are not sufficiently tested for safety. In addition to this "revolving door" conflict of interest, there is the problem of corporate financing of political campaigns. To repay the favor, the elected official will often enact laws which are favorable to those corporations which financed the elected official's campaign. Like tax loophole laws. (See campaign book for concrete examples) This is relevant because studies show that it is the candidates who have the most t.v. exposure, and therefore the most money, who tend to win political elections. Likewise with the military industry and almost all else. Thus, one of the four conditions for deep change emerges, the key element of which is tyranny, via the self perpetration of a caste like control system.
Thus, new blood needs to be given to the governmental equal and balance of power doctrine. As a corollary to the fact that Congress, and only Congress, is vested with the legislative power, Congress (in theory) cannot delegate legislative authority to other branches of government (e.g., the Executive Branch), a rule known as the nondelegation doctrine (Click here for the details). It this perspective, there is evidence that there is over 50 percent of Legislative production which is delegated to non legislative bodies like regulatory agencies which depend on the Executive branch. As Montesquieu and others taught, the very definition of tyranny is the violation of the "equal and separate" check and balances system between the three governmental branches. Yet, the practice is not what was originally intended. The mainstream Supreme Court has ruled that Congress does have latitude to delegate regulatory powers to executive agencies as long as it provides an "intelligible principle" which governs the agency's exercise of the delegated regulatory authority. (Click here for the details). In practice, the Supreme Court has only invalidated 3 statutes on non-delegation grounds in its history, all 3 of which were invalidated in the mid-1930s.(Click here for the evidence). The nondelegation doctrine is primarily used now as a way of interpreting a congressional delegation of authority narrowly, (Mouse click here) in that the courts presume Congress intended only to delegate that which it deems it had to, unless it clearly demonstrates it intended to "test the waters" of what the courts would allow it to do.(The evidence). I
Alas, some studies have shown that up to 80 percent of Congressional legistative production is done outside of Congress. For example, the F.D.A has concentrated all three of the Governmental branches within its Bastille-like walls. It has it's own executive para-military force to invade and ramsack alternative physicians medical office and records (too often, at gun point) to see if any of the patients received non standardized treatments (like apricot seeds based laetrile for cancer patients or human growth hormone for the elderly), it's own legislative branch where it decides what is right and wrong (and this adjudicatory system is based on multi-million dollar double-blind randomized tests which is self-serving "Science" for the money hungry pharmaceutical companies and has little to do with the "good medicine") and its own legislative branch where it makes its own rules. Except when it comes to questionable big money makers like tobacco, where the Supreme Court denied the granting of jurisdictional powers to the FDA on tobacco cases, having ruled that tobacco is not a drug, nor a food, therefore it can not be controled unless Congress enacts a legislative Act thereto. Yet, after 60 years of knowing that industrial tobacco is a holocaust poison, Congress has desisted, abdicated from responsiblity in this realm. Please see Joubert's Tobacco and Crime against Humanity book for the evidence of all of this (Also on the homepage, menu section 22).
In other words, there is much Constitutional clean-up to get done. Hence Joubert's Grand Call for Constitutional clean-up Conventions in all States asap (as soon as possible, when the conditions will be ripe). See the Declaration Call on this and the corresponding campaign book.