Friday, May 7, 2010
Backing Up
I had a little ning blog and they just sent me an email that they're going to start charging $3 a month for it. So I copied a few of my old articles over here, and will let that one go.
Republic vs. Democracy
Do you think we have a democratic form of government? Think again! When progressives call for democracy, the response from regressives is often that we do not have a democracy, we have a republic. A republic, we're told, is a representative form of democracy, so many people think that we do at least have a type of democracy. We do not. The republic we have in the USA is not only undemocratic, it is anti-democratic. The reason for this is that while we supposedly have the right to elect our representatives, in reality we do not, as I explain below, and we also lack the power to remove them for refusing to represent us, as many of us have already learned the hard way. Without the power to elect representatives who will protect our interests, and to remove them if they fail to do so, we cannot be said to have a democratic form of government.
Although the right to choose our representatives was granted in Article I, Section 2, of the Constitution, it was taken away by Section 5, which says that, “Each House shall be the judges of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members....” I hadn't understood what that meant until Congress swore in a Representative from San Diego 3 weeks before the election was certified and with at least 68,000 votes remaining uncounted. When some of us tried to get a recount to see if he'd actually been elected, the elections officials placed several obstacles in our path and we ended up in court attempting to persuade a judge to order that there be a recount. That's when the attorney for Congress sent a letter to the judge citing the above passage from Section 5 and explaining that since Congress alone is the sole judge of the elections of its members, no court may order a recount.
The letter did mention that the Constitution provided a remedy, which was for the losing candidate to file a Federal Election Contest with Congress, but in our case the losing candidate, being a Democrat, chose to concede in the tradition established by Al Gore and John Kerry, rather than to fight. In subsequent elections several Democrats have filed election contests with Congress, but since the Democrats won a majority in '06, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has chosen to swear in the Republican in every case, without bothering to look at the evidence that the election had been stolen. This may or may not have been because Pelosi wanted more Republican votes to help keep impeachment off the table, but in any event it did not serve the interests of the constituents of the districts that had elected a Democrat and wound up with a Republican.
According to Constitutional expert Paul Lehto, if the interpretation of Section 5 by Congress is correct, they could even swear in a representative before an election had been held. All they would have to do is “judge” that an election had been held, which they could do by means of an unofficial poll or with no basis whatsoever, and once that representative had been sworn in, only Congress itself could unseat them – we the people have no Constitutional recourse whatsoever. But since the advent of electronic voting machines has made elections so easy to steal, Congress has no reason to preempt elections. They simply let the machines steal the elections and then swear in the “winner.” Here in San Diego where our new elections officials are former Diebold spokesperson Deborah Seiler, and Michael Vu of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, election fraud infamy, we have every reason to fear more stolen elections. Let me tell you about Michael Vu.
In the 2004 presidential election, two Cuyahoga County elections officials were caught rigging the recount. The videotape, taken by citizen election activist Kathleen Wynne, was later introduced in court, and the officials, Jacqueline Maiden, the Board of Elections' third highest employee at the time, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer, were prosecuted on 4th degree felony and 1st degree misdemeanor charges of mishandling ballots to make the recount match the machine count, pled guilty, and were sentenced to 18 months in prison. Despite the fact that Judge Peter Corrigan told the convicted officials, “Protecting other people, I don't know, it seems unlikely that your superiors didn't know,” they chose not to implicate their superior, Michael Vu. Vu then stated publicly that he didn't think that they had done anything wrong, as they had followed the same procedures that had always been used in Cuyahoga County. Vu then resigned from his position in Ohio and was quickly hired as the Assistant Registrar of Voters in San Diego, California. When irate citizens then protested to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors that Vu had stated clearly that he didn't consider felony vote rigging to be anything wrong, and that therefore he couldn't tell right from wrong and wasn't even competent to stand trial, no less hold public office, County Chief Executive Officer Walt Eckard replied, “I've listened to you, I disagree, and that's that.”
Well, that would have been that, except that last week I got a glossy brochure in the mail from the San Diego Registrar of Voters office which is looking for pollworkers. I phoned them to find out how I could apply to be an election observer, was put through to Deborah Seiler's secretary, Darren Neal, and he told me he'd find out and get back to me by email. His subsequent email said that I'd have to have a face to face interview with Seiler, and to phone him to make an appointment. But when I phoned, I found myself speaking directly with Seiler and we had a lengthy and pleasant conversation until I mentioned that I did not trust Michael Vu and explained why. Seiler said, “That's not true. Those convictions were dismissed and it is as if it never happened.”
Never happened? Shocked, I shot an email off to Kathleen Wynne, who contacted an activist in Cuyahoga County, and we learned that even though there had been no new evidence in the case, and there was therefore no legal basis for a retrial, the perps had been granted a new trial anyway. But there was no actual trial. This time the fraudsters pled “no contest,” which means that they neither admitted nor denied guilt, and on November 5th, 2007, the new judge issued a ruling of “no finding,” which meant that not only was there no trial, his ruling cannot be appealed. He then ordered the felons to be released from prison and sentenced instead to a 6-month diversion program, after the successful completion of which, their convictions would be expunged and could no longer be used against them in court. The problem here is that the Cuyahoga County diversion program is designed to rehabilitate 1st-time offenders who have admitted their crimes and taken responsibility for what they did. In this case the criminals neither admitted nor denied their crimes (although they had previously pled guilty to the same charges), and their counsel stated that they took no responsibility for their actions. A suspicious person might conclude that this was their reward for not implicating their boss, but that is mere conjecture. In any event, Seiler was either misinformed or lied to me, as it is not “as if it never happened.” The videotaped evidence of the Cuyahoga elections officials rigging the recount is proof that it did happen, and although it cannot be used against them in court again, it can be used for any other purpose, such as public forums and documentary films to prove that they rigged the recount. And in case you're wondering, both elections officials are Democrats and the beneficiary of the recount that they rigged was Republican George Bush. Starting to see a pattern?
Speaking of Democrats, you may have heard that California's Democratic Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, has decertified the voting machines. That isn't exactly what happened either. Bowen's to-to-bottom review of voting machines used in California found that none of them could be secured against fraud and therefore none of them could be certified. But since elections officials in California have spent a lot of taxpayer money on those machines, there was strong pressure on Bowen to allow them to continue to be used. So Bowen issued a strange document entitled, “Decertification and Conditional Recertification” of the voting machines. While many election reform activists with ties to the Democratic Party took this to mean that the voting machines had been decertified and would not be used in future elections, I understood it to mean that the machines had been recertified and would be used.
The vendors and elections officials interpreted it the same way I did, and during our phone conversation, Seiler assured me that the machines would be used for the three elections to be held in San Diego in 2008. Since the machines cannot be secured against fraud, they will not be sent home with pollworkers prior to the elections, as they were in the past, and they will not be used in the precincts, except for one machine per precinct to accommodate the disabled. Instead, San Diegans will vote by mail or at the polls on paper ballots, and the paper ballots will then be taken to the office of the Registrar of Voters where a large room with a hundred optical scan machines will be set up. The paper ballots will be fed into the machines by pollworkers and elections officials, and then the memory cards will be removed from the optical scan machines and fed into the GEMS central tabulator for a final tally. The results will then be announced, transmitted to the Secretary of State, and broadcast over the media. For all intents and purposes the election is then over, and anything past that point will be shrugged off as the futile attempts of sore losers and conspiracy theorists to undo what has already been done and cannot be undone. But to satisfy SOS Bowen's conditions for the use of voting machines, some mandatory spot checks in the form of partial hand recounts will be performed afterwards, possibly the next day, or however soon the elections officials find it practical.
So I asked Seiler what the chain-of-custody of the ballots and the protocols for their security would be between the end of the machine count and the beginning of the recount. Seilor assured me that the ballots would be kept in locked cages at election headquarters with guards. Therefore the only people who would have access to them overnight would be Seiler and......wait for it....Michael Vu! In supporting his hiring, San Diego officials had said that Vu was “battle tested.” Indeed he is. This time there won't be any pesky video cameras around to record how the recounts are rigged.
To a casual observer it might appear that California's Secretary of State and local elections officials have bent over backwards to give election activists what they want. There will be paper ballots. Voting machines will not go home unattended with pollworkers the way they did previously. Observers will be allowed to watch the elections and the recounts. But of course since the human eye cannot read what is on the memory card of an optical scan machine, or what is going on inside a GEMS central tabulator as it counts or miscounts the votes, there really won't be anything to see. And since any ballot-rigging to make the hand recounts match the machine counts will be done secretly, overnight, at election headquarters, that will also be undetectable by observers.
And, as usual, once Congress swears somebody in, no action by the people can unseat them. All we can do is keep begging our representatives to represent us (and wondering why they don't), and waiting for the next rigged election, and the next rigged election, and the next rigged election, in hopes of voting them out (and wondering why their replacements aren't any better).
In a direct democracy, the people can vote directly on issues that effect them and on leaders to represent them. They can also remove leaders who fail to represent them or misrepresent them. In a republic like ours, we can vote for representatives, but we do not have the final say in who those representatives are, and we cannot remove them if they fail to represent us or misrepresent us. So it is incorrect to say that our republic is a form of representative democracy. It is not a democracy at all, it is an enemy of democracy. Some of us have learned this the hard way because we've been in the trenches on the other side of those battles that Michael Vu was tested in. And we lost.
Although the right to choose our representatives was granted in Article I, Section 2, of the Constitution, it was taken away by Section 5, which says that, “Each House shall be the judges of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members....” I hadn't understood what that meant until Congress swore in a Representative from San Diego 3 weeks before the election was certified and with at least 68,000 votes remaining uncounted. When some of us tried to get a recount to see if he'd actually been elected, the elections officials placed several obstacles in our path and we ended up in court attempting to persuade a judge to order that there be a recount. That's when the attorney for Congress sent a letter to the judge citing the above passage from Section 5 and explaining that since Congress alone is the sole judge of the elections of its members, no court may order a recount.
The letter did mention that the Constitution provided a remedy, which was for the losing candidate to file a Federal Election Contest with Congress, but in our case the losing candidate, being a Democrat, chose to concede in the tradition established by Al Gore and John Kerry, rather than to fight. In subsequent elections several Democrats have filed election contests with Congress, but since the Democrats won a majority in '06, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has chosen to swear in the Republican in every case, without bothering to look at the evidence that the election had been stolen. This may or may not have been because Pelosi wanted more Republican votes to help keep impeachment off the table, but in any event it did not serve the interests of the constituents of the districts that had elected a Democrat and wound up with a Republican.
According to Constitutional expert Paul Lehto, if the interpretation of Section 5 by Congress is correct, they could even swear in a representative before an election had been held. All they would have to do is “judge” that an election had been held, which they could do by means of an unofficial poll or with no basis whatsoever, and once that representative had been sworn in, only Congress itself could unseat them – we the people have no Constitutional recourse whatsoever. But since the advent of electronic voting machines has made elections so easy to steal, Congress has no reason to preempt elections. They simply let the machines steal the elections and then swear in the “winner.” Here in San Diego where our new elections officials are former Diebold spokesperson Deborah Seiler, and Michael Vu of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, election fraud infamy, we have every reason to fear more stolen elections. Let me tell you about Michael Vu.
In the 2004 presidential election, two Cuyahoga County elections officials were caught rigging the recount. The videotape, taken by citizen election activist Kathleen Wynne, was later introduced in court, and the officials, Jacqueline Maiden, the Board of Elections' third highest employee at the time, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer, were prosecuted on 4th degree felony and 1st degree misdemeanor charges of mishandling ballots to make the recount match the machine count, pled guilty, and were sentenced to 18 months in prison. Despite the fact that Judge Peter Corrigan told the convicted officials, “Protecting other people, I don't know, it seems unlikely that your superiors didn't know,” they chose not to implicate their superior, Michael Vu. Vu then stated publicly that he didn't think that they had done anything wrong, as they had followed the same procedures that had always been used in Cuyahoga County. Vu then resigned from his position in Ohio and was quickly hired as the Assistant Registrar of Voters in San Diego, California. When irate citizens then protested to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors that Vu had stated clearly that he didn't consider felony vote rigging to be anything wrong, and that therefore he couldn't tell right from wrong and wasn't even competent to stand trial, no less hold public office, County Chief Executive Officer Walt Eckard replied, “I've listened to you, I disagree, and that's that.”
Well, that would have been that, except that last week I got a glossy brochure in the mail from the San Diego Registrar of Voters office which is looking for pollworkers. I phoned them to find out how I could apply to be an election observer, was put through to Deborah Seiler's secretary, Darren Neal, and he told me he'd find out and get back to me by email. His subsequent email said that I'd have to have a face to face interview with Seiler, and to phone him to make an appointment. But when I phoned, I found myself speaking directly with Seiler and we had a lengthy and pleasant conversation until I mentioned that I did not trust Michael Vu and explained why. Seiler said, “That's not true. Those convictions were dismissed and it is as if it never happened.”
Never happened? Shocked, I shot an email off to Kathleen Wynne, who contacted an activist in Cuyahoga County, and we learned that even though there had been no new evidence in the case, and there was therefore no legal basis for a retrial, the perps had been granted a new trial anyway. But there was no actual trial. This time the fraudsters pled “no contest,” which means that they neither admitted nor denied guilt, and on November 5th, 2007, the new judge issued a ruling of “no finding,” which meant that not only was there no trial, his ruling cannot be appealed. He then ordered the felons to be released from prison and sentenced instead to a 6-month diversion program, after the successful completion of which, their convictions would be expunged and could no longer be used against them in court. The problem here is that the Cuyahoga County diversion program is designed to rehabilitate 1st-time offenders who have admitted their crimes and taken responsibility for what they did. In this case the criminals neither admitted nor denied their crimes (although they had previously pled guilty to the same charges), and their counsel stated that they took no responsibility for their actions. A suspicious person might conclude that this was their reward for not implicating their boss, but that is mere conjecture. In any event, Seiler was either misinformed or lied to me, as it is not “as if it never happened.” The videotaped evidence of the Cuyahoga elections officials rigging the recount is proof that it did happen, and although it cannot be used against them in court again, it can be used for any other purpose, such as public forums and documentary films to prove that they rigged the recount. And in case you're wondering, both elections officials are Democrats and the beneficiary of the recount that they rigged was Republican George Bush. Starting to see a pattern?
Speaking of Democrats, you may have heard that California's Democratic Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, has decertified the voting machines. That isn't exactly what happened either. Bowen's to-to-bottom review of voting machines used in California found that none of them could be secured against fraud and therefore none of them could be certified. But since elections officials in California have spent a lot of taxpayer money on those machines, there was strong pressure on Bowen to allow them to continue to be used. So Bowen issued a strange document entitled, “Decertification and Conditional Recertification” of the voting machines. While many election reform activists with ties to the Democratic Party took this to mean that the voting machines had been decertified and would not be used in future elections, I understood it to mean that the machines had been recertified and would be used.
The vendors and elections officials interpreted it the same way I did, and during our phone conversation, Seiler assured me that the machines would be used for the three elections to be held in San Diego in 2008. Since the machines cannot be secured against fraud, they will not be sent home with pollworkers prior to the elections, as they were in the past, and they will not be used in the precincts, except for one machine per precinct to accommodate the disabled. Instead, San Diegans will vote by mail or at the polls on paper ballots, and the paper ballots will then be taken to the office of the Registrar of Voters where a large room with a hundred optical scan machines will be set up. The paper ballots will be fed into the machines by pollworkers and elections officials, and then the memory cards will be removed from the optical scan machines and fed into the GEMS central tabulator for a final tally. The results will then be announced, transmitted to the Secretary of State, and broadcast over the media. For all intents and purposes the election is then over, and anything past that point will be shrugged off as the futile attempts of sore losers and conspiracy theorists to undo what has already been done and cannot be undone. But to satisfy SOS Bowen's conditions for the use of voting machines, some mandatory spot checks in the form of partial hand recounts will be performed afterwards, possibly the next day, or however soon the elections officials find it practical.
So I asked Seiler what the chain-of-custody of the ballots and the protocols for their security would be between the end of the machine count and the beginning of the recount. Seilor assured me that the ballots would be kept in locked cages at election headquarters with guards. Therefore the only people who would have access to them overnight would be Seiler and......wait for it....Michael Vu! In supporting his hiring, San Diego officials had said that Vu was “battle tested.” Indeed he is. This time there won't be any pesky video cameras around to record how the recounts are rigged.
To a casual observer it might appear that California's Secretary of State and local elections officials have bent over backwards to give election activists what they want. There will be paper ballots. Voting machines will not go home unattended with pollworkers the way they did previously. Observers will be allowed to watch the elections and the recounts. But of course since the human eye cannot read what is on the memory card of an optical scan machine, or what is going on inside a GEMS central tabulator as it counts or miscounts the votes, there really won't be anything to see. And since any ballot-rigging to make the hand recounts match the machine counts will be done secretly, overnight, at election headquarters, that will also be undetectable by observers.
And, as usual, once Congress swears somebody in, no action by the people can unseat them. All we can do is keep begging our representatives to represent us (and wondering why they don't), and waiting for the next rigged election, and the next rigged election, and the next rigged election, in hopes of voting them out (and wondering why their replacements aren't any better).
In a direct democracy, the people can vote directly on issues that effect them and on leaders to represent them. They can also remove leaders who fail to represent them or misrepresent them. In a republic like ours, we can vote for representatives, but we do not have the final say in who those representatives are, and we cannot remove them if they fail to represent us or misrepresent us. So it is incorrect to say that our republic is a form of representative democracy. It is not a democracy at all, it is an enemy of democracy. Some of us have learned this the hard way because we've been in the trenches on the other side of those battles that Michael Vu was tested in. And we lost.
Consensual Political Intercourse
Ever get the feeling that your government is screwing you? Legally, of course, that's something that it is not allowed to do unless you give your consent. Without your consent it isn't a consensual relationship and becomes rape. So my question is, did you give your consent or not?
"Of course not," my friends tell me indignantly. "Why would we consent to having our own jobs outsourced, our homes repossessed, our children's futures mortgaged to pay for wars based on lies, and allowing big corporations to poison our food?"
"I don't know why you'd consent to things like that," I tell them, "but I'm not so much concerned about your reasoning – I just want to know if you did or did not give your consent."
"No!" they answer angrily. "We did not consent!"
And I hear their echoes everywhere I go.
"We did not consent!" shout the peace activists.
"We did not consent!" scream the 9/11 Truthers.
"We did not consent!" holler the downsized and repossessed, young and old.
I hear them, but I'm not sure I'm buying it. If they didn't consent, how could things like this have happened? What if they actually had consented but are now ashamed of it and are trying to frame a perfectly innocent government for rape?
Now I'm not talking about implied consent, I'm talking about affirmative consent. Not just the failure to resist or to say no, but the act of saying, "Yes! I want it! Screw me! Take me for everything I've got! I'm yours!"
You see, our government may be aggressive abroad, but here at home it is not a rapist. It always asks you clearly and politely if you want to be screwed. And the process in which it asks is called the electoral system. Every four years our government asks us if we want to be screwed, and every four years we say yes. It even holds off-year elections every two years, and in most places citizens are asked to give their consent, at least to being screwed by state and local government, every year or several times a year.
"But we didn't say yes," people tell me. "We voted no!"
Ah, but we have secret vote counting in this country, so how can you prove that you said no? When votes are counted in secret is it the same as when intercourse takes place behind closed doors. It's your word against theirs and they say that you said yes.
"No," they tell me, "it so happens that the whole thing was caught on videotape and we can prove that we said no." And sure enough, there are CD ROMS with the poll tapes, the register books, and the actual ballots, proving that the citizens did not consent. But alas, the statute of limitations has run out and it is much too late to file charges now. "Why didn't you bring this evidence forward at the time?" I ask.
"Because it was withheld from us," they whine. "The government wouldn't let us have the proof until we'd spent years in court forcing them to release the records."
"You're telling me," I say, "that you had a few drinks with them, went up to their room, they asked you politely if you wanted to get screwed, and you said no, clearly and distinctly, but that they raped you anyway, and that when you tried to get the tapes to prove it, they wouldn't give them to you until it was too late for you to file charges?"
"Uh," they respond, "we thought that as long as there was a verifiable record of what happened, it would be perfectly safe."
If I hadn't seen the evidence with my own eyes, I don't think I'd believe that there had been any rape. People that dumb are so easily seduced that it isn't usually necessary to rape them. But I have seen the evidence and they were indeed raped.
In 2000 the people clearly said no, but the Supreme Court didn't consider the evidence (the vote count, the illegal voter purges, the voter suppression, and the rigged ballots and voting machines) to be admissible, so an unelected President was installed against the express will of the people. That's rape. But by the time the government released the evidence, it was too late to do anything about it.
In 2004 the people again clearly said no, but this time the government had become so adept at withholding the evidence that Supreme Court intervention wasn't necessary. Once again the evidence was withheld and the unelected President was installed for a second term. And once again by the time the people were able to prove they'd been raped, the statute of limitations had run out and the damage could not be repaired..
So now we are approaching the 2008 election. The same crooked elections officials are in control. The same secret vote counting machines will be used. Once more the government will ask you politely if you want to get screwed, and once more you will shmooze with them, have a few drinks together, and then go into their voting booth and say no. And once again you are going to get raped and be unable to prove it until it is much too late to do anything about it.
And yet people still berate me when I suggest that they not go to the polls this time.
"If we don't vote, we can't complain," they say.
What good does complaining do?
"If we don't vote, the bad guys will win," they tell me.
Did the good guys win when they did vote?
"It's our civic duty and responsibility to vote," they claim.
In rigged elections with secret vote counts? Give me a break!
"This time it might be different," they say.
Well, the first time somebody tells me that they've been raped, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I will ask how it happened and if it seems to me that they were engaging in risky behavior, I'll suggest that they be more careful in the future.
The second time that somebody tells me they've been raped, and they explain that it happened in the exact same way because they ignored my advice, I begin to feel that they are at least partially to blame themselves.
But when it happens a third time, I have no more sympathy. Unless you enjoyed it the first two times, you wouldn't allow it to happen a third time. That's not rape – that's consensual political intercourse, so don't come crying to me.
-----------------------
The Evidence:
Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election by Richard Hayes Phillips (Hardcover with CD ROM, Canterbury Press, March 2008)
How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008 by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (Paperback - Sep 21, 2005)
What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld, and Harvey Wasserman
Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election? by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld, and Harvey Wasserman (Paperback - May 30, 2005)
Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?: Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count by Steve Freeman and Joel Bleifuss (Paperback - Jun 19, 2006)
HACKED! High Tech Election Theft in America - 11 Experts Expose the Truth by Abbe Waldman Delozier and Vickie Karp (Paperback - Sep 5, 2006)
Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 by Alan M. Dershowitz (Hardcover - 2001)
A Badly Flawed Election: Debating Bush V. Gore, the Supreme Court, and American Democracy by Ronald Dworkin (Hardcover - Sep 2002)
Irreparable Harm: The U.S. Supreme Court and The Decision That Made George W. Bush President by Renata Adler (Paperback - Jul 2004)
Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform by Mark Crispin Miller (Paperback - Jun 2007)
Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 20002008 by Mark Crispin Miller (Paperback - April 1, 2008)
Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, The Best Legal Whorehouse in Texas, The Scheme to Steal Election '08, No Child's Behind Left, and Other Investigations by Greg Palast (Paperback - Apr, 2007)
"Of course not," my friends tell me indignantly. "Why would we consent to having our own jobs outsourced, our homes repossessed, our children's futures mortgaged to pay for wars based on lies, and allowing big corporations to poison our food?"
"I don't know why you'd consent to things like that," I tell them, "but I'm not so much concerned about your reasoning – I just want to know if you did or did not give your consent."
"No!" they answer angrily. "We did not consent!"
And I hear their echoes everywhere I go.
"We did not consent!" shout the peace activists.
"We did not consent!" scream the 9/11 Truthers.
"We did not consent!" holler the downsized and repossessed, young and old.
I hear them, but I'm not sure I'm buying it. If they didn't consent, how could things like this have happened? What if they actually had consented but are now ashamed of it and are trying to frame a perfectly innocent government for rape?
Now I'm not talking about implied consent, I'm talking about affirmative consent. Not just the failure to resist or to say no, but the act of saying, "Yes! I want it! Screw me! Take me for everything I've got! I'm yours!"
You see, our government may be aggressive abroad, but here at home it is not a rapist. It always asks you clearly and politely if you want to be screwed. And the process in which it asks is called the electoral system. Every four years our government asks us if we want to be screwed, and every four years we say yes. It even holds off-year elections every two years, and in most places citizens are asked to give their consent, at least to being screwed by state and local government, every year or several times a year.
"But we didn't say yes," people tell me. "We voted no!"
Ah, but we have secret vote counting in this country, so how can you prove that you said no? When votes are counted in secret is it the same as when intercourse takes place behind closed doors. It's your word against theirs and they say that you said yes.
"No," they tell me, "it so happens that the whole thing was caught on videotape and we can prove that we said no." And sure enough, there are CD ROMS with the poll tapes, the register books, and the actual ballots, proving that the citizens did not consent. But alas, the statute of limitations has run out and it is much too late to file charges now. "Why didn't you bring this evidence forward at the time?" I ask.
"Because it was withheld from us," they whine. "The government wouldn't let us have the proof until we'd spent years in court forcing them to release the records."
"You're telling me," I say, "that you had a few drinks with them, went up to their room, they asked you politely if you wanted to get screwed, and you said no, clearly and distinctly, but that they raped you anyway, and that when you tried to get the tapes to prove it, they wouldn't give them to you until it was too late for you to file charges?"
"Uh," they respond, "we thought that as long as there was a verifiable record of what happened, it would be perfectly safe."
If I hadn't seen the evidence with my own eyes, I don't think I'd believe that there had been any rape. People that dumb are so easily seduced that it isn't usually necessary to rape them. But I have seen the evidence and they were indeed raped.
In 2000 the people clearly said no, but the Supreme Court didn't consider the evidence (the vote count, the illegal voter purges, the voter suppression, and the rigged ballots and voting machines) to be admissible, so an unelected President was installed against the express will of the people. That's rape. But by the time the government released the evidence, it was too late to do anything about it.
In 2004 the people again clearly said no, but this time the government had become so adept at withholding the evidence that Supreme Court intervention wasn't necessary. Once again the evidence was withheld and the unelected President was installed for a second term. And once again by the time the people were able to prove they'd been raped, the statute of limitations had run out and the damage could not be repaired..
So now we are approaching the 2008 election. The same crooked elections officials are in control. The same secret vote counting machines will be used. Once more the government will ask you politely if you want to get screwed, and once more you will shmooze with them, have a few drinks together, and then go into their voting booth and say no. And once again you are going to get raped and be unable to prove it until it is much too late to do anything about it.
And yet people still berate me when I suggest that they not go to the polls this time.
"If we don't vote, we can't complain," they say.
What good does complaining do?
"If we don't vote, the bad guys will win," they tell me.
Did the good guys win when they did vote?
"It's our civic duty and responsibility to vote," they claim.
In rigged elections with secret vote counts? Give me a break!
"This time it might be different," they say.
Well, the first time somebody tells me that they've been raped, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I will ask how it happened and if it seems to me that they were engaging in risky behavior, I'll suggest that they be more careful in the future.
The second time that somebody tells me they've been raped, and they explain that it happened in the exact same way because they ignored my advice, I begin to feel that they are at least partially to blame themselves.
But when it happens a third time, I have no more sympathy. Unless you enjoyed it the first two times, you wouldn't allow it to happen a third time. That's not rape – that's consensual political intercourse, so don't come crying to me.
-----------------------
The Evidence:
Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election by Richard Hayes Phillips (Hardcover with CD ROM, Canterbury Press, March 2008)
How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008 by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (Paperback - Sep 21, 2005)
What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld, and Harvey Wasserman
Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election? by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld, and Harvey Wasserman (Paperback - May 30, 2005)
Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?: Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count by Steve Freeman and Joel Bleifuss (Paperback - Jun 19, 2006)
HACKED! High Tech Election Theft in America - 11 Experts Expose the Truth by Abbe Waldman Delozier and Vickie Karp (Paperback - Sep 5, 2006)
Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 by Alan M. Dershowitz (Hardcover - 2001)
A Badly Flawed Election: Debating Bush V. Gore, the Supreme Court, and American Democracy by Ronald Dworkin (Hardcover - Sep 2002)
Irreparable Harm: The U.S. Supreme Court and The Decision That Made George W. Bush President by Renata Adler (Paperback - Jul 2004)
Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform by Mark Crispin Miller (Paperback - Jun 2007)
Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 20002008 by Mark Crispin Miller (Paperback - April 1, 2008)
Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, The Best Legal Whorehouse in Texas, The Scheme to Steal Election '08, No Child's Behind Left, and Other Investigations by Greg Palast (Paperback - Apr, 2007)
The Fable of Lanova Messiah
Lanova Messiah is a hero of the peace movement here in Exxonia. Lanova's mother was tortured and killed by the corrupt dictator who is currently our country's President. Lanova has been arrested many times protesting the crimes of our government, most recently at the office of one Member of Parliament who had promised to help us remove our dictator from power, but has not, and at the office of another who is also from Lanova's own political party but is protecting the dictator instead of protecting the people. So it was with great joy that we learned that Lanova is running for Parliament herself.
Of course we know that if elected, Lanova would be a junior member with no seniority, but we are happy to have a chance to vote for someone who cares about peace as much as we do, and who we know to be incorruptible. We also know that Exxonian elections are rigged, but we think that Lanova has a good chance of winning anyway. The only candidates with a chance of winning the Presidential election are one from the dictator's political party and one from Lanova's own party, but both have consistently voted for everything the dictator wanted and, if elected, are committed to continuing the dictator's agenda of atrocities and crimes against humanity. So if the private corporations that really run our country, and that own and program the voting machines, want the two-party system to retain any credibility at all, they may allow Lanova to have a token and powerless seat in Parliament. From the point of view of the corporations, this might help allay the growing rebellion within the citizenry, and will put Lanova in a position where she can be more easily controlled.
Exxonia's two ruling parties are the Corrupt Party and the Not-As-Corrupt Party. Like most decent Exxonians, Lanova is a member of the Not-As-Corrupt Party, but will have to run as an independent in order to get her name on the ballot in the next election. Once elected, however, Lanova will be considered part of the Not-As-Corrupt Party's voting bloc, despite being nominally independent. The job of the Corrupt Party in Exxonian politics is to promote the agenda of war crimes and atrocities to further enrich the already wealthy elites. The job of the Not-As-Corrupt Party is to support the same criminal agenda, but not quite as fervently. In this way they can co-opt those citizens who oppose war crimes and prevent them from opposing the system by allowing them to cling to the illusion that change could come about from within the system itself. Only half of Exxonia's citizens, seeing that their only choice is between flagrant supporters of war crimes and less flagrant supporters of war crimes, reject this as an unreasonable choice and refuse to vote in our rigged elections at all.
The overwhelming majority of Exxonians are unhappy with our government, but we show our displeasure by voting in rigged elections and by calling on our corrupt dictator and his lapdog Parliament to change their ways. We are a peaceful people with a relatively comfortable standard of living, and we are not given to violence. Of course we know that our government is a military superpower and one of the world's biggest arms dealers, so we can see how futile a violent revolution would be, even if we were to attempt one.
We Exxonians think of our Parliament as a sacred institution. This idea is perpetuated in the schools among the youngest children and is deeply ingrained. We revere the founders of our country who did not give us a mere dictatorship, but a dictatorship with the appearance of a democratic apparatus, Parliament, that had the possibility of being responsive to the people. We know that with one or two exceptions, all the Members of Parliament are wealthy elitists who can't be held accountable to their constituents, but we like to pretend that the rich aren't greedier and more corrupt than anyone else. We desperately need to believe that if Lanova is elected, and particularly if a handful of Lanova's colleagues are also elected, we will finally have achieved a real voice in government through our electoral process.
Deep in our hearts we know, of course, that our sacred institution of Parliament is really nothing more than a bureaucracy designed to shield the powerful from our grievances and our wrath. Like any bureaucracy, it has a hierarchy, a strict chain-of-command, complex procedures, and time-tested ways of dealing with troublemakers and insubordination. Facing the truth that our sacred institution is nothing more than a bureaucracy, however, would force us to accept the fact that we do not really have a voice in government, so this is something that we cannot do. We not only remain in deep denial with regard to this crucial issue, but we attack anyone who mentions it with the fury of those who have convinced themselves that a naked emperor is regally garbed.
Let's take a look at what Lanova will encounter in Parliament once elected. First of all there will be the complicated procedures that must be followed. For help in understanding and navigating these obstacles, Lanova will hire competent staff members who have made careers out of trying to work within these rocky channels. Naturally, it will never occur to such people to try to do away with the obstacles or to find ways to go around them, because then what would they do for a living? So Lanova will be taught about the proper procedures and how to follow them.
Lanova's first actions in Parliament, of course, will be similar to the actions that Lanova has taken as an ordinary citizen. She will attempt to speak out on the floor of the House of Commons, but will always be ruled out of order. She can then choose whether to confine her speeches to after hours sessions, where TV cameras will film her speaking to an empty room, or to continue attempting to speak out while the House is in session until she has been pronounced out of order, declared in contempt, and ushered from the floor by the Sergeant-at-Arms and the Parliamentary Police and arrested enough times to justify having her removed from Parliament by reason of having a criminal record.
It is also possible that Lanova will decide to abide by the rules of Parliament and attempt to work within those rules to persuade Parliament to remove the dictator from power and to stop funding his war crimes. But being a freshman, Lanova will not have any important committee assignments or any seniority with which to qualify for such assignments, so Lanova's legislation is unlikely to ever make it out of committee and get to the floor for a vote so that she can discuss it without being arrested. Lanova will quickly become frustrated and realize that in order to accomplish anything, it is necessary to first have more power, which would mean remaining in Parliament so as to gain more seniority. In order to do this, it is necessary to raise vast amounts of campaign money, so instead of legislating, Lanova, like all other Members of Parliament, will have to spend almost every waking moment trying to raise funds instead of legislating. Lanova will therefore need more staff to read and brief her on legislation that has reached the floor, and to remind her when it is time to vote.
Lanova's office will quickly be bombarded by hordes of lobbyists trying to influence the way that Lanova votes, so even if Lanova intends to ignore them, it will be necessary to have more staff to deal with them. And since lobbyists can often make the fundraising process easier, it is likely that due to her need to gain more seniority so as to be able to accomplish anything, Lanova's staff will at least have to be courteous to the lobbyists. Lanova's capitol and district offices will also be besieged by constituents seeking her assistance with personal and community problems, so Lanova will need more staff to cope with constituents. Parliamentarians themselves, no matter how much they may care about their constituents, simply don't have the time to communicate with them other than in town meetings during campaign season. Without her staff, Lanova would be as hobbled as a prerevolutionary Chinese woman with bound feet. But given a large and dedicated staff, including both paid professionals and unpaid interns and volunteers, Lanova will be able to concentrate on raising money to stay in office and gain the seniority necessary to have the power to accomplish anything in Parliament.
As a fierce warrior for freedom and the child of a martyr, Lanova may seek to circumvent the bureaucratic procedures of Parliament. This will be seen, by the corporations that really run Exxonia, as troublemaking and insubordination, so they will instruct the leaders of Lanova's party to punish Lanova by removing whatever seniority she may have gained, or refusing to grant her the privileges to which such seniority usually entitles one. Lanova may be denied committee memberships, and her party can easily withhold support for her legislation and, by endorsing and financing her opponent, substantially increase the costs of her subsequent political campaigns. If Lanova wishes to remain in Parliament long enough to gain the power to accomplish anything, she will find herself having to submit to party discipline, at least to a limited extent. Lanova will never become her Party's leader in Parliament, of course, because only those who commit to not opposing the dictator can rise to that position.
After many terms in office, if she submits to party discipline, Lanova may find herself the powerful head of a powerful committee. But she will still not have the power to accomplish anything. Even if her committee has the votes to get legislation to the floor, there are unlikely to be enough votes in Parliament to pass it. And of course it could still be rejected by the upper body (the House of Lords), vetoed by the Dictator, or struck down as unconstitutional by the dictator's Council of Final Decisions, the highest law of the land from which there is no possible appeal. And if Lanova tries to subvert Parliament by carrying her appeals directly to the people, she would be removed from her committee chairmanship by her party's leadership, she would no longer have subpoena power, and she would have to hold her hearings in a basement broom closet instead of in a grand committee hearing room. If she persisted, she might even be assassinated or “suicided.” But by then the dictator will have died or have been replaced with another dictator, and a new generation of idealists will be getting themselves arrested sitting in at Lanova's office, trying to force her to fulfill her promises to do that which it is impossible to do by working within our bureaucratic system.
But these are things that we dare not think about. So we in Exxonia are overjoyed at Lanova's decision to run for Parliament. We are sending her money, volunteering to work for her campaign, and those fortunate enough to live in her district will have the privilege of voting for her, whether or not their votes are actually counted. We are grateful that we live in a free country with a democratic Parliament, and that we have such patriots as Lanova to represent us.
Lanova Messiah for Parliament! Viva Lanova! Long live the democratic Republic of Exxonia!
Of course we know that if elected, Lanova would be a junior member with no seniority, but we are happy to have a chance to vote for someone who cares about peace as much as we do, and who we know to be incorruptible. We also know that Exxonian elections are rigged, but we think that Lanova has a good chance of winning anyway. The only candidates with a chance of winning the Presidential election are one from the dictator's political party and one from Lanova's own party, but both have consistently voted for everything the dictator wanted and, if elected, are committed to continuing the dictator's agenda of atrocities and crimes against humanity. So if the private corporations that really run our country, and that own and program the voting machines, want the two-party system to retain any credibility at all, they may allow Lanova to have a token and powerless seat in Parliament. From the point of view of the corporations, this might help allay the growing rebellion within the citizenry, and will put Lanova in a position where she can be more easily controlled.
Exxonia's two ruling parties are the Corrupt Party and the Not-As-Corrupt Party. Like most decent Exxonians, Lanova is a member of the Not-As-Corrupt Party, but will have to run as an independent in order to get her name on the ballot in the next election. Once elected, however, Lanova will be considered part of the Not-As-Corrupt Party's voting bloc, despite being nominally independent. The job of the Corrupt Party in Exxonian politics is to promote the agenda of war crimes and atrocities to further enrich the already wealthy elites. The job of the Not-As-Corrupt Party is to support the same criminal agenda, but not quite as fervently. In this way they can co-opt those citizens who oppose war crimes and prevent them from opposing the system by allowing them to cling to the illusion that change could come about from within the system itself. Only half of Exxonia's citizens, seeing that their only choice is between flagrant supporters of war crimes and less flagrant supporters of war crimes, reject this as an unreasonable choice and refuse to vote in our rigged elections at all.
The overwhelming majority of Exxonians are unhappy with our government, but we show our displeasure by voting in rigged elections and by calling on our corrupt dictator and his lapdog Parliament to change their ways. We are a peaceful people with a relatively comfortable standard of living, and we are not given to violence. Of course we know that our government is a military superpower and one of the world's biggest arms dealers, so we can see how futile a violent revolution would be, even if we were to attempt one.
We Exxonians think of our Parliament as a sacred institution. This idea is perpetuated in the schools among the youngest children and is deeply ingrained. We revere the founders of our country who did not give us a mere dictatorship, but a dictatorship with the appearance of a democratic apparatus, Parliament, that had the possibility of being responsive to the people. We know that with one or two exceptions, all the Members of Parliament are wealthy elitists who can't be held accountable to their constituents, but we like to pretend that the rich aren't greedier and more corrupt than anyone else. We desperately need to believe that if Lanova is elected, and particularly if a handful of Lanova's colleagues are also elected, we will finally have achieved a real voice in government through our electoral process.
Deep in our hearts we know, of course, that our sacred institution of Parliament is really nothing more than a bureaucracy designed to shield the powerful from our grievances and our wrath. Like any bureaucracy, it has a hierarchy, a strict chain-of-command, complex procedures, and time-tested ways of dealing with troublemakers and insubordination. Facing the truth that our sacred institution is nothing more than a bureaucracy, however, would force us to accept the fact that we do not really have a voice in government, so this is something that we cannot do. We not only remain in deep denial with regard to this crucial issue, but we attack anyone who mentions it with the fury of those who have convinced themselves that a naked emperor is regally garbed.
Let's take a look at what Lanova will encounter in Parliament once elected. First of all there will be the complicated procedures that must be followed. For help in understanding and navigating these obstacles, Lanova will hire competent staff members who have made careers out of trying to work within these rocky channels. Naturally, it will never occur to such people to try to do away with the obstacles or to find ways to go around them, because then what would they do for a living? So Lanova will be taught about the proper procedures and how to follow them.
Lanova's first actions in Parliament, of course, will be similar to the actions that Lanova has taken as an ordinary citizen. She will attempt to speak out on the floor of the House of Commons, but will always be ruled out of order. She can then choose whether to confine her speeches to after hours sessions, where TV cameras will film her speaking to an empty room, or to continue attempting to speak out while the House is in session until she has been pronounced out of order, declared in contempt, and ushered from the floor by the Sergeant-at-Arms and the Parliamentary Police and arrested enough times to justify having her removed from Parliament by reason of having a criminal record.
It is also possible that Lanova will decide to abide by the rules of Parliament and attempt to work within those rules to persuade Parliament to remove the dictator from power and to stop funding his war crimes. But being a freshman, Lanova will not have any important committee assignments or any seniority with which to qualify for such assignments, so Lanova's legislation is unlikely to ever make it out of committee and get to the floor for a vote so that she can discuss it without being arrested. Lanova will quickly become frustrated and realize that in order to accomplish anything, it is necessary to first have more power, which would mean remaining in Parliament so as to gain more seniority. In order to do this, it is necessary to raise vast amounts of campaign money, so instead of legislating, Lanova, like all other Members of Parliament, will have to spend almost every waking moment trying to raise funds instead of legislating. Lanova will therefore need more staff to read and brief her on legislation that has reached the floor, and to remind her when it is time to vote.
Lanova's office will quickly be bombarded by hordes of lobbyists trying to influence the way that Lanova votes, so even if Lanova intends to ignore them, it will be necessary to have more staff to deal with them. And since lobbyists can often make the fundraising process easier, it is likely that due to her need to gain more seniority so as to be able to accomplish anything, Lanova's staff will at least have to be courteous to the lobbyists. Lanova's capitol and district offices will also be besieged by constituents seeking her assistance with personal and community problems, so Lanova will need more staff to cope with constituents. Parliamentarians themselves, no matter how much they may care about their constituents, simply don't have the time to communicate with them other than in town meetings during campaign season. Without her staff, Lanova would be as hobbled as a prerevolutionary Chinese woman with bound feet. But given a large and dedicated staff, including both paid professionals and unpaid interns and volunteers, Lanova will be able to concentrate on raising money to stay in office and gain the seniority necessary to have the power to accomplish anything in Parliament.
As a fierce warrior for freedom and the child of a martyr, Lanova may seek to circumvent the bureaucratic procedures of Parliament. This will be seen, by the corporations that really run Exxonia, as troublemaking and insubordination, so they will instruct the leaders of Lanova's party to punish Lanova by removing whatever seniority she may have gained, or refusing to grant her the privileges to which such seniority usually entitles one. Lanova may be denied committee memberships, and her party can easily withhold support for her legislation and, by endorsing and financing her opponent, substantially increase the costs of her subsequent political campaigns. If Lanova wishes to remain in Parliament long enough to gain the power to accomplish anything, she will find herself having to submit to party discipline, at least to a limited extent. Lanova will never become her Party's leader in Parliament, of course, because only those who commit to not opposing the dictator can rise to that position.
After many terms in office, if she submits to party discipline, Lanova may find herself the powerful head of a powerful committee. But she will still not have the power to accomplish anything. Even if her committee has the votes to get legislation to the floor, there are unlikely to be enough votes in Parliament to pass it. And of course it could still be rejected by the upper body (the House of Lords), vetoed by the Dictator, or struck down as unconstitutional by the dictator's Council of Final Decisions, the highest law of the land from which there is no possible appeal. And if Lanova tries to subvert Parliament by carrying her appeals directly to the people, she would be removed from her committee chairmanship by her party's leadership, she would no longer have subpoena power, and she would have to hold her hearings in a basement broom closet instead of in a grand committee hearing room. If she persisted, she might even be assassinated or “suicided.” But by then the dictator will have died or have been replaced with another dictator, and a new generation of idealists will be getting themselves arrested sitting in at Lanova's office, trying to force her to fulfill her promises to do that which it is impossible to do by working within our bureaucratic system.
But these are things that we dare not think about. So we in Exxonia are overjoyed at Lanova's decision to run for Parliament. We are sending her money, volunteering to work for her campaign, and those fortunate enough to live in her district will have the privilege of voting for her, whether or not their votes are actually counted. We are grateful that we live in a free country with a democratic Parliament, and that we have such patriots as Lanova to represent us.
Lanova Messiah for Parliament! Viva Lanova! Long live the democratic Republic of Exxonia!
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