Reason #15: The Third Party Lockout
One of the biggest problems we have attracting first string talent into public service is the two-party system. If you don’t fit neatly into one side or another, or you don’t toe the line just right when it comes to ideology, you might as well forget it. You’ll never make it in politics these days.
Just look at what happened to John McCain. To win the Republican nomination this past year, he had to hold his nose and make kissy face with every rightwing preacher he could find - just so he could look sufficiently conservative. That’s disgraceful and, again, it shows why the first stringers in America stay away from public service.
In his farewell address to the nation, President George Washington warned Americans against forming political parties. Parties, he said, “put, in the place of the will of the nation, the will of the party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority.”
Or, as my former friend Congressman Mike Honda once told me, “Democrats want to pick Democrats.” I said to him, “Whatever happened to Americans, not Democrats and Republicans, choosing who will run in an election?” After all, the framers of the Constitution did not include anything about primary elections, those money-soaked contests that produce two, and only two, chosen contenders for the White House.
Almost half of the elections in the 2008 primary season were “closed” to party members only. Another bunch of states staged so-called “modified closed” contests, where independents could choose to vote in only one primary, but not the other. The whole process is crazy. Why should we have such a small percentage of the population, Washington’s “artful and enterprising” minorities, pick the candidates for our highest office? Why shouldn’t every independent be able to vote for who they want to run?
In 2008, candidates from the two major parties spent more than the GDP’s of many countries - just for the right to run again in November. The only people that benefit from this waste of resources are the big media companies who pocket all that cash for advertisements. “Super-Duper Tuesday” - when over 20 states all across the country held their primaries on the same day - only tightened the stranglehold that big media and the two major parties have over the process. There was simply no way for anyone to visit all those states in person, so if a candidate didn’t have a fortune to spend on television ad buys, he or she might as well have just stayed home.
The Two-Headed Monster Debates Itself
Once the primaries are over, the two major parties really get down to business locking out any viable third party alternatives. Take the way so-called presidential debates are organized. The Commission on Presidential Debates, which puts those dog-and-pony shows on, is run by - get this - the respective National Committee chairmen for the Democrats and the Republicans! In 2000, this phony commission announced that candidates who wanted to participate in the debates would have to show a minimum of 15-percent support in major polls. What a Catch-22! In order to join the club, you must prove popular support, but there is no way to gain popular support without joining the club! If they won’t even allow someone else on the stage, how can voters even know about, let alone support, someone other than the two anointed nominees?
NEXT: Reason #16: The Superdelegate Shuffle and the Un-Democratic Party
Thanks Lee, for this outstanding site. You have written out and clarified all the problems of the prevalent two-party system that I have been aware of for some time. This will give Independents a great source for facts and figures to argue for our Independent position.
We all need to get behind your concept of a new organization, Independent Americans for Change. A grass-roots uprising similar to the recent Ron Paul phenomenon, utilizing the internet to the extreme and spreading the word, as you suggest.
Thanks again,
Jarey - New member of the Independent Americans for Change!
WAR HAS BROKEN OUT
IN THE USA
War has broken out in the US. There are basically two sides to this war. The entrenched Corportacracy/Political Parties in DC vs nearly every CITIZEN of the USA..
At this time it is not known who will win the battle for the control of America. It does appear as the Crimminal Class (CC) of Corportacracy/ Dems and Repubs have a head start far ahead of the Citizens, who want to refresh the Tree of Liberty. A tree that is meaningless to the CC. But holds dear in the hearts of Patriots. In which in the Declaration of Independance COMMMANDS when the state becomes inept, intolerable or both. The people must take matters into their hands and Refresh the Tree of Liberty One thing is apparently certain now that the public and states are beginning an open rebelllion against the Feds and corporate minions., The longer the battle, the less likelyhood of the CC prevailing.That is why the CC hit so hard at the start of the war and removed Patriot leaders so quickly to incarceration.Using the Blitzkrieg tactic. To engender great fear in those Sheeple that watched their neighbors swftly taken away in the wee hours of the morning.
If you were to take the US armed forces and divide them up between all fifty states. There would only be approxamately 30,000 soldiers per state. Plus law enforcement could add a few thousand more to the total. hardly enough to control the public in each state that numbers in the tens of millions. Millions of which are former servicemen and PEACE OFFICERS, who know how to frustrate the armed forces at nearly every turn. In fact the American population is so large, that they could probably set up a new goverment and just ignore the CC and go about their agenda.All it takes is a new paradigm of looking at matters and some good leaders, at all levels in a new way.
The US with a population of 305 million of which 200 million you can call able bodied in one form or another. Despite the armed forces superior weapons could not with 1.5 million servicemen hold back the tide of the Citizens.And a will of granite and heart of GOD and gold.
With the loss of servicemen and law enforcement to the Patriots, the ratio would be better than 250 Patriots to 1 service member. The longer the battle drags on the better chances of the Patriots winning. They simply have the fighters, intellectuals and assets to wear out through attrition the Armed Forces. That must also keep an eye on Russia, China and other world hotspots.We do not have to be violent. All we have to do is stand pat.Ghandi.
The Patriots if their numbers grow large enough could just ignore the military until they attained constitutional authority. Upon which time the Armed Forces and alphabet soup agencies would meet their new bosses. Obey, lest their asses be caught in a sling.
It is hard to say when the battle started. Was it HR-875 and S-425 that outlawed Farmers Markets and Organic Food Suppliers. Or the passage by the UN of the Law of the Sea Treaty. That gave the UN primacy over all water in the world. Including your back yard USA located pond. Or was it the result of the poverty that came with the trillions in tax dollars given to banks. Which refused to tell the Hill, how the money was spent and how.
Hard to believe their was no accountability clause in the contract for tax funds loaned from a Hill of lawmakers,that has many lawyers amounst their midst. When the banks refused to account for the funds the Hill just made a few crap speeches and layed down at the feet of Midas Makers.Intoning Manna, Manna, Manna as they worshiped at Midas’s feet.
From the Unconstitutional laws and Signing Statements by former President Bush. Now being held at the Hague for War Crimes. After the Supreme Court ruled that no President is above American law or the Geneva Conventions
But let me back up. Presently before the House-HR-875 and the Senate- S-425 are odiious Bills that would essentially outlaw Farmers Markets and Organic Food providers. Go to Steve Quayle’s or Blacklisted News sites to read up on these Bills.You can also read up on how the FDA at the behest of Big Pharm is getting ready to ban vitamins without a prescription. Fuck me dead. Can you believe that. The FDA has simply morphed into an arm of corporations. To legalize the taking of Freedoms Unconstitutionally.
Did you as I asked you to, set up your PC so you can whiz bang out e-mails to your legislators as I asked you to? Yes and you are a Patriot. No and you are full of bat guano.
Six million e-mails against a Bill will kill it. Lawmakers are more afraid of voters than anyone. Anyone.Including their corporate masters.
When Unions formed as a backlash against the Robber Barons, Washington in the face of tens of millions of workers or a few hundred evil fuckers. Dropped the Robber Barons like a hot potato. After all who votes and gives lawmakers power and money and access to crimminal money. Voters. Without an office Beltway Boys are nothing. To have power they must hold a seat. The voters not the Robber Barons hold that power. So when Unions formed, legislators knew who they had to appease or they would have been voted out of office. Meaningless and powerless they would become.
The Missori Imformation Analysis Center just released a report about the dangers of the Patriot Movement. They specifically noted Doctor Senator Ron Paul, Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin as dangerious men to be watched and dealt with. I have no idea what the report means by dealt with. The report in summary or full form can be read on Blacklisted News.The report also identified peaceful Constitutionalists as threats. Are they for real. Sadly yes.Because we do live in a soft, fuedal, fascist corportacracy and totalitarian society. It’s getting worse fast. Day by Day.
In their list they need to include Chuch Norris and the states of Texas and Montana. Plus the 22 states that are giving DC great fear and real blowback on State Rights via the 9th and 10th Amendments of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Moreover the states that have told DC to go to hell on the Real Fascist ID.
IBM and GE as part of the stimulus bill, have been given billions of dollars to come up with a way to monitor rural citizens more completely. DC does not like that independant, free thinking mindset that is often found in the countryside.
When are people and not Fortune 500 companies going to be the central focus of the theft of our money–NEVER!!Because the money is being used to try and save a dying form of Capitalism. So the CC will pour our money into the corporate rabbit hole, to try and stop efforts by taxpayers demanding responsible use of our money.
Which now is done so fast and ramrodded through before the next news cycle and thus no time for people to act. Addionally people are acting to meekly and slowly. So the high levels of goverment do not even take us into the calculus.
The airline Terror Watch List has just hit one million American Citizens. So the TSA can harass, democrats, acedemics, freethinking bloggers, reporters and likeminded souls.While quietly intimidating those with morgages in line.Credit is what controls us. But once we have nothing to lose we will be free and start to react faster than our current turtle speed.
As Bob Dylan said ” When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. ” When we are all broke our power will be immense.
The Terror List has grown so large as a tool of intimidation. 8 dollars an hour zoot brained fools with tasers and badges can strip search you. Moreover, encompassing an area that holds 70% of the US population, people are in what are known as 4th Amendment Free Zones. The state can search you for any reason. Including hallucinatory cause on the part of cops and HS agents.In other words Probable Cause, guaranteed by the Constitution, means nothing now.
Again I looked at my copy of the Founding Documents and found no reference to a 4th Amendment Free Zone.HMMMMM????
Do any of you in your copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, see a clause in it for 4th Amendment Free Zones? For that matter Free Speech Zones?How dumb of me and I thought the public owned public areas and one could upon permit, if a crowd was over a certain limit. Say what ever they damn well wanted to. They Liberty Bell in Philidelphia, has a cordoned off area, off the beaten track, as a designated, Free Speech Zone. More state intimidation.Pure Unconstitutional crap.
Oh!! By the way never ever greet a friend named Jack in an airport by saying ” Hi Jack ” Busted
As I wander around from the beginning of my blogging. Here is some more wandering.
For 22 years the military denied the use of Agent Orange in Nam. Until they had to come forward to the teacher, with their head bowed low (snicker, snicker) and admit they lied.
The military wanted as many as possible soldiers to die from Agent Orange from the long term damage it caused. To lower the costs of treating a shrinking list of survivors. Before that it was the Atomic Veterns.
These were the dudes, in the late fifties, that the army told them lying down in a foxhole at the time of a nuclear blast was as safe as cotton candy.Soldiers were told a foxhole was all they needed to be safe. As they were covered in extremely radioactive fallout. 2 miles from Ground Zero.Safe for dirt. Maybe. My ass.
The goverment has still not settled with the sterile and cancer ridden men, who were in those nice and safe duck but no cover foxholes.
Why has the military not settled? Atomic Veterns typically only live into their 60’s. Most are dead now. In another few years they will all be dead. Such a deal!! The goverment will not have to pay damages for their deadly, insiduious lies. And that era will be buried in the fog of history. Leaving no scars on the military from the patriotic soldiers that died young from horrible cancers.
Now the military is denying against all science that the depleted uranium dust is sickening and killing our soldiers and Iraq’s and Afgans.
I believe it is this weekend that Chuck Norris is having a few hundred Patriots over to his house for a bar-b-que. Elsewhere across the nation there will be other gatherings of Patriots, sending notice to DC that the numbers of Patriots is growing and willing to go public with their discust of the inside the Beltway crowd. Elected or not. Amoung the group of Patriots going public are CITIZENS, whom the military serves at Our Pleasure. Lawmen and active and non-active duty soldiers will also be at Chuck’s and elsewhwere.
Why are there Fusion centers, where members of the public report to the FBI on their spying efforts on friends and neighbors. Fusion Centers answer to no one and are Unconstitutional. They are above the law. In an emergency they are allowed by law to shoot to kill. Without recourse. Just like Blackwater in Iraq once was.This is very dangerious when the people we elect or trust to keep us safe, rob our money without reading the Bill, can’t and don’t care to have an accountability cluase in TARP funds. Setup Fusion Centers to spy on Citizens. Things are getting very sideways.
Now the enemy of the state is anyone who Questions Authority. Yet it is the 1st Amendment to our Constitutiuon that demands we speak our mind and Question Authority. Why are there enemies lists as there were in the day of Nixon.Listing a Senator who delivers babies. They are really scared in DC. Lets turn up the heat. Peacefully though.
I see a time when a work stoppage of non-essentials will come.150million people just do not show up for work. A coordinated effort where, sick, personal and vacation days are taken by everyone all at once. Thus shutting the goverment down and business down, but assuring payment by bosses over legitamatly taken week off. Goverment and corporations would grind to a halt. Truckers know what to do.They have done it before on a regional basis.They have immense strategic power for Patriots
” Gee Mel isn’t it odd all the trucks inthe US ran out of fuel, on the highway at the same time.Beats me ” He, He, He.
The alleged Luck Pluck and Virture capitalism we were told about as little boys and girls never ever existed.The Military Industrial Complex, President and Five Star General Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about has ruled for too long.
During the Bush Regime a raft of American and International laws were routinly broken. Illlegal and Unconstitutional laws were passed like farts after beans. Stunk like it too. Just revealed today was that American assasination of ” enemies” occorred. In complete violation of the Nuremberg Rules and American law. The assasinations were run out of Dick Cheneys office. Bypassing the President, Joint Chiefs of Staff and Congressional oversight.
Oversight laws passed after the Church Committee Hearings on assasination. From the Nixon era.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and that gang belong in jail or face a firing squad, for Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide. Wake up people. The ACLU, After Downing Street and many other groups are trying to make this happen. They are Just and legally correct in this cause. Why is this taking so long? Because the corporations, crappy international politics, the Military Industrial Complex, the MSM and others that are vested in crimminality have been very successful at keeping jurisprudance away and Americans asleep.
It is a no brainer, since those being sought for arrest have publically admitted to those crimes. Albeit saying without any legal precidence, that the Unitary Executive, along with a complicit Congress. Make these actions by these people above the law and treaties. WOW!!
I have said a lot here, jumping around but giving much food for thought. The war has started. Just in the last 2 weeks Obama pulled the State Secrets Act. Preventing the truly wronged from recourse and he has signed off on continuing redition of people.
Presently there are allegedly 18,000 people housed on ships that were rendered. Now floating in limbo on the high seas. Certainly they belong in a prison camp where there cases could be heard. Not all are guilty. An ongoing act such as this is discusting and makes it hard to be proud to be an American.
Our leaders make Roman tyranny look like a soft glove.The state is truly the enemy of the people. We can’t continue to allow this.
No doubt a goverment ABC group will read this post and I fully expect to be rendered at some point. But as a CITIZEN of the USA, I have a right to speak my mind at what I see is a goverment of crimminals.
I am not talking about govrment workers. I am talking about goverment politico’s. Who have no respect for the First or any Amendment.
War has started. States are pushing back at the Feds. People are blogging and reporting about the henious acts of those who hold power. They are pushing back. Every time the Feds attack CITIZENS now. More people are giving the Goverment blowback. Blowback is begun. Soon it will be a gale and then a hurricane. Things are going to get……..real interesting soon….real interesting.
Along with decriminalizing pot, Americans in full force must decriminalize Washington DC and end the Fuedal System that most people work under. We are not much differently off, than those who in the Middle Ages that were lorded over by Royalty and Aristocracy. America has fallen off the wonderful construct our Founders laid down for us. Most but not all politcians are crimminals. But most are. The fight of the centuary is coming to the USA and the whole of planet Earth. Where do you stand?
For now 6 million e-mails in a week scares the hell out of the Leeches. We all need to be writing Congress every week. It works. Remember if Congress does not make us happy, we can vote them out. That scares the power hungry Leeches far more than Exxon or Haliburton.
WHERE DO YOU STAND?
WILL YOU HELP CARRY THE BUCKETS,
TO DOUSE THE EVIL FLAMES,
ENGULFING OUR NATION ?
WHERE DO YOU STAND?
In Heart and bleary eyed. Faithfully Yours,
KEEP IT LIT—-WILDCAT