Month: May 2016

Representative government requires the democratic process.

Democracy, in theory, results in an authority derived from the bottom up. All other theories of government sustain authority from the top-down.

Our two party system has entrenched itself between the voters and representative government. They are two top-down belief-based organizations, like churches, soliciting support from those who agree with their beliefs.

Political parties are the trolls at the bridge toward representative government, preventing our safe passage for their own gain. They are middlemen, profiting from our need for representation, and like insurance companies, prosper most when they serve the least.

Republicans and democrats have legislated their duopoly too big to fail, even though they did fail, and continues to fail, rendering our government an ongoing failure run by a two-party monopoly that rewards the establishment and exploits the public.

Elected officials must oblige to the top down party rules written and practiced by the political parties. Introducing bills, controlling debate, committee assignments, virtually all functions of government are controlled by two competing top-down authorities which results in a process where the majority is overruled.

The democratic process as outlined in the Constitution makes no mention of political parties. The Constitution provides for representation based on geography and population, not party affiliation.

That democratic process should now be expanded to consider each voter’s level of income and allow voters to elect candidates from their own tax brackets. This could be achieved with a new apportionment act.

The government could be much more representative of the population with a new apportionment act as described in “Income-based Representation“.

The intention of the Constitution is to provide a representative government of, by, and for the people, which requires the democratic process. Protecting and defending that process is the primary responsibility of government.

Government officials pledge to protect and defend the constitution in order to protect us from those, whether foreign or domestic, who would deny us democratic representation.

Government is not the problem. The problem is that the government is not representative of the public, financially.

Our government is occupied by private interest representatives working against democratic reforms that would benefit the public. They resist a more representative government for personal gain, incumbency, and party control. But, history shows if pressured enough, both parties will move, reluctantly, towards positive changes in public policy.

The major political parties that monopolize the path to public office are the obstruction to the necessary democratic reforms that could achieve a more representative government. The major parties have, intentionally or not, worked together against democratic reform.

The private parties pretend that they are not the government as they control every aspect of it. They need donations from the public to campaign, they say, because the public doesn’t want to afford publicly financed elections. This practice results in politicians beholden to private interest money and a government by and for those who can afford it.

The results of the current private party policies are democratic decay and increased inequality, which leads to more conflict, regardless of which candidates win.

The electoral process needs a major national public investment act to implement a post-modern, state of the art, high-tech consensus system for the public to facilitate American democracy.

I believe party affiliation should be removed from the ballot entirely. This would help prevent partisan politics and require voters to understand the candidate’s positions on issues.

It could be easy to vote for an issue with an issue based ballot, cross-referenced to a list of candidates who agree or disagree with the voter on their issues. You know it’s coming sooner or later.

A representative government would have candidates endorse specific legislation and then if they are elected be obligated to vote their pledges. This would increase policy predictability and reduce hypocrisy by elected officials.

I also believe any partisan rules should be retired, and that private money should be banned from the electoral process completely, and the parties themselves be better regulated or phased out.

All elected officials should serve as non-partisans. Party affiliation should be restricted to a candidate’s resume and/or biography with schools and employers.

Imagine concerns of voter ID to prevent people from casting an illegal vote that might effect election outcomes when so-called super-delegates can cast votes at the conventions that are equivalent to thousands of people voting.

The nation’s allegiance should be to the democratic process and to freedom of speech, first and foremost, as is required by law, not to campaign contributors.

Unity of purpose is assumed and expected in the constitution, unlike the factionalism as practiced by the two opposing major political parties we have now.

A representative government needs to reflect the economic condition of the public. Because money is representation, representatives should be apportioned according to the public’s income, not just geography and population.

We need to transition into a system like tax-bracket apportionment, or something similar, that recognizes the population’s economic diversity in order to achieve a more representative government, economically.

Academic dementia, or Academentia, refers to the institutional group think supporting the conflict-based economy. It is also a collective denial of the negative consequences being caused by the national demise, which includes intentional inequality, democratic decay, and public abandonment.

Academentia is sustained by a belief-based political system, fueled by money, that rewards division and deception.

Candidates must campaign on their common beliefs with the public, but then inevitably legislate in favor of private profits, party loyalty, and personal prosperity.

The conventional wisdom of our culture as defined by corporate media and virtually every institution that dispenses information that matters, is misleading the public towards more conflict.

It would take too long to parse through even a partial list of the erroneous propaganda that gets parroted throughout our society. I will mention just a few examples of academentia to ease you into the possibility that there is a more accurate perception waiting for your understanding.

First, understand the current socioeconomic paradigm of the conflict-based economy requires an allegiance that goes against common sense and the public interest.

Nobody wants conflict except those who profit from it.

There is a stream of disinformation, from the professional political/pundit class, to persuade people into believing that there is no choice to our current socioeconomic system. It does not even exist. Or, if there is an alternative to the conflict-based economy it is impossible to achieve it because of human nature. Not your nature, of course, but the violent and deceptive nature of others that you need to be protected from, they will say.

Second, realize that despite the sincere efforts of so many to create equality and prosperity through peace and justice, the struggle against violence and chaos continues, making self-evident the existence of an opposing force that profits from undermining the public’s efforts towards more civility.

To understand the problem, connect these dots;

• Special Interests are corrupting the government
• Political parties are special interests
• Gerrymandering is election fraud
• Money is the representation we seek
• The public is 22 Trillion in debt
• We have record levels of inequality

To remedy the social dysfunction plaguing the public, investing in war must end.

The struggle of humanity for equality is ideological not geographical. Our allegiance is to our income, not the flag.

Wars against nations should be obsolete in a global economy. Wars are primarily waged now to preserve the otherwise obsolete, and global, industries that profit from them.

We all agree that wars are a last resort, but yet we can’t seem to stop waging them. That’s because war is profitable for those that work for, and invest in, the conflict-based economy.

If governments removed the ability from people to invest and profit from waging wars – the motivation for them would disappear.

Overtly we are all against war, covertly, we are not.

Institutional conflict requires money from the public to prosper because it has no demand in the free market – and in most cases is illegal.

Industries of conflict are supported by public debt so they must control public policy for self-preservation. They are motivated to undermine democracy to maintain control of the policies that keep their industries relevant and profitable.

Next, it is essential to understand the power, and the threat, of a democracy to those that prosper from conflict and inequality. That is why our democracy has withered and is always under attack.

Now, our political struggle is to save our democracy from those who are against it. In this case, our case, the opposing force to our democracy is a globalist, corporatism, and militarism, utilizing the emergency powers of an imperial presidency, ostensibly to keep us safe, while creating massive public debt and political instability for the public.

I’m not against a military or being protected. But, I do understand that as soon as we need military protection in our streets, democracy becomes impossible, and we have lost what our nation is supposed to be, a nation of law by citizen government as defined in our constitution.

We will have lost our democratic republic to militarism, under the guise of fighting something, because we believed that there was no choice.

Fighting wars, whether on drugs, commies, terrorists, or anything else, divides people intentionally, to enrich some for persecuting others – paid for with public debt. The practice should be ended.

Policies that create inequality and division undermine our democracy. Those afflicted with academentia might believe those polices are personally prosperous, and therefore worth the sacrifice.

We all mostly agree that slavery is bad yet ignore the institutionalized inequality of the conflict-based economy. Slavery is now achieved through public policies that reward some for depriving others.

The race to the bottom forces workers to compete for less so investors can make more, dividing the world into those that are invested, and those that are not. The tax burden of investors is offset for them, by capital gains, which effectively places the entire tax burden of society onto those that are not invested.

The government has chosen to shift the tax burden towards wages and reduce taxes on corporations in order to reward investors at the expense of those who work, which results in a system where investor prosperity is achieved by squeezing workers to do more for less. The practice is institutionalized slavery and should be ended.

Institutional propaganda tells us our conflicts are between ideals and religions, left vs right, etc. As if those differences between us are contentious enough to abandon our civility and take up arms against each other, which is ridiculous.

For instance, we supposedly believe our enemies are crazy fanatics, so we must occupy their land and oppress them to keep us safe, or weaponize them to fight each other, to prevent them from attacking us. In reality, the motivation for the deception is that investors prosper from publicly-funded conflict.

We wage wars for democracy, some believe, while we militarize our global partners who prevent democracy. We can also remain apathetic to trade polices that undermine our own democracy while our society transitions to a form of oligarchical militarism.

Symptoms of acadmentia include apathy and denial, or willful ignorance, likely induced instinctively to avoid the challenge of a cherished belief, or defending that belief despite imperical evidence to the contrary.

You might be suffering from a form of academentia if you believe that we are keeping the world safe – from universal healthcare.

You might believe we must prevent illegal immigrants from taking our jobs, after we outsourced our jobs to their countries for cheaper labor.

You might think we are all in this together while domestic inequality and division has never been greater and continues to get worse.

You might have beliefs based on willful ignorance or a denial that can be dangerous to the collective safety of us all, and to you as an individual.

The truth is most everybody believes differently than everybody else. We are all products of our environment. Most of us engage in a predictable economic group think. What we believe is usually defined by how much money we have. Therefore It is likely that you believe the same as others in your socioeconomic class.

That is because money is representation. It is not only speech, as the Supreme Court ruled, it is representation itself. It is the measure of our freedom and influence. It is access and persuasion. It provides nearly everything that matters. It transcends borders, bias, and law.

Despite the importance of money, we collectively allow a private profit industry to create it out of thin air and saturate our economy with it. Money creation results in an allegiance and an obedience to that money instead of defending our constitution and what should be our representative government. Our allegiance is to the money, not our beliefs. It’s self-evident.

Our current belief-based political system is a deception, compared to a system that acknowledges money is representation and apportions representatives accordingly.

Our current law of one congressional representative per seven-hundred thousand and some diverse constituents is entirely inadequate representation. It definitely violates the spirit and the intention of the constitution and is likely the root cause of most social dysfunction.

Therefore a new apportionment act is necessary to update congressional representation based on our expanded population and our diverse income levels. A new law could allow everybody to vote for candidates from their own socioeconomic status.

Congressional representatives would then better understand and represent the experience of their constituents and would likely hold the same beliefs as those who voted for them, as opposed to the way we do it now, by gerrymandering geography for party dominance.

We need to fix the democratic process itself, first. A new apportionment act could be the remedy to the democratic decay that causes the increasing inequality and social dysfunction.

The public needs to transcend its divisions in order to unite for better democratic representation, despite the attempts to divide us.

We need to fix our democracy first. To fix our democracy we need to acknowledge money is representation, and politicians merely legislate its distribution, mainly to benefit their sponsors.

We need to understand who and what the opposition is and what motivates them to impede our democratic potential if we are to remedy the dangerous social dysfunctions now threatening our collective futures.

Academentia describes the propaganda tactics and belief system that protects and defends the conflict-based economy, and prevents the understanding of, and the transition to, the logical alternative, a health-based economy.

The national demise is an ongoing descent towards a new economic depression. Some want it, some don’t. It’s a political choice.

How bad the depression gets will be measured by the amount of inequality that there is, which is a political choice.

The national demise is self-evident considering the amount of public wealth, political power, and government function, that has been transferred to private ownership over the last few decades.

The national demise can be remedied with a democratic upgrade for a more representative government. The challenge is to educate the electorate so they will participate in the process before it’s too late.

If we want to stop the national demise, and we do, we should consider there is an adversarial power privatizing our government and acting against the public interest, just in case.

The antidemocratic trend of the last fifty years has now been solidified and normalized. Our ironic and deceptive socioeconomic design is a sinister brew of Orwellian Machiavellian betrayal with an unsettling pinch of the Twilight Zone. It’s a constant failure reconciled by more failure.

Success is now measured by investment profits for some, increasing in value by forcing others to work more for less. The global economy prospers on increasing inequality and division. That’s what destroyed the American middle class and our democratic potential.

The system of tax extraction, globalism, and corporate welfare, continue to divide the public economically.

Wall Street versus Main Street.

Wall Street is a system of money making money for investors. It is an industry, not the economy. Main Street is a system of people working for money to buy what they need, from other workers. That is an economy. The government taxes Main Street workers to bailout Wall Street investors. That’s because the system of money making money doesn’t work without taxing workers to pay for it. And those in government are heavily invested. That’s why Wall Street wins and why inequality is increasing.

Considering the government can print all the money it wants for whatever it might need, rewarding private capital with excessive gains with taxpayer bailouts is a political crime. As is subsidizing corporations for campaign contributions. Our socioeconomic design needs to change.

Inequality and social division are intentional policies that will inevitably result in conflict, perpetuating more debt, inequality, and division. If you don’t think so, you are likely the beneficiary of the division and the defendant in the political choice. The grievance is not yours.

Our economic system is best described as a conflict-based economy. It depends on increasing inequality and conflict for economic growth, as opposed to the alternative economic system, the health-based economy, which would provide prosperity from consumer demand for health services.

A health-based economy is the logical outcome of a representative government that is democratically elected. A conflict-based economy is used by those who deprive their political opposition of democracy, and necessary services such as health and education.

American democracy is under attack like never before and the few democracy advocates left are increasingly confused, outnumbered, and ineffective. The need for a new strategy to achieve democracy is self-evident considering the national demise.

Artificial prosperity enabled by public debt disguises the failure of our current system. The system is protected and defended by those it benefits. Those who profit from the extraction scam are not failing. They profit from the system failing others, so the fail continues.

There is a willful public ignorance towards democracy. As if apathy will spite the antidemocratic forces who control their public policy.

Many believe that the system is rigged so they don’t participate, which ironically validates their cynical beliefs by empowering our political opposition.

Our democracy is disappearing due to apathy and prosperity. We’ve got too much money to care. The implication is democracy is not that important, especially for the prosperous. There’s no reason to be concerned about democratic decay and the national demise when wealth is abundant for the majority of voters, I guess.

It doesn’t seem to matter our prosperity is from a credit card, or speculation and extraction. Or that the graph of our private wealth curve matches that of our public debt curve.

Prosperity is being extracted from the public by a government mandated stock market/tax extraction scam, that taxes wealth from those who work and transfers it to those who don’t.

The scam isn’t profitable enough so it is subsidized and leveraged with public debt. This helps to disguise the tax extraction scam for what it is, a scam.

A few decades back, The United States transitioned from the largest creditor nation on the planet, exporting more finished goods than any other nation, to the largest debtor nation. We are now importing more finished goods than any other nation because “we” outsourced our manufacturing jobs to other countries for cheaper labor. This ongoing trade deficit is partially responsible for the national debt and must be corrected.

The public is in debt because our government chooses to borrow money from those it should be taxing, enriching private interests today with money extracted from the tax-paying public of the future.

We borrow money to sustain a war we can’t afford, that was started based on lies, and has resulted in our ‘homeland’ now needing to be militarized.

We continue to militarize the middle east while we ignore the war at our southern border, choosing to incarcerate refugees rather than defending democracy.

We borrow money to bailout a corrupt global financial system, and to subsidize a stock market with public debt for private prosperity.

We borrow money from global capital markets to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure which results in the private and foreign ownership of our country and political system.

We borrow money because current policy prevents the government from financing itself properly. All the while the public is told we can’t afford to invest in the basic necessities of a civilized society.

The increasing inequality of health, wealth, and education, is creating dangerous levels of division. The increasing militarism, privatization, and public debt, are all indicators of the national demise.

Nationalism, it seems, has surrendered to privatization and globalism. Until the national government becomes more representative, local concerns such as health and homelessness cannot be resolved.

Is the national demise the result of random acts of greed? Or, is it an orchestrated attack on our democracy?

Many people continue to profit from the national demise so they will be reluctant to endorse the necessary changes to stop the division.

The inability of the government to function properly is another indication of the national demise. Despite massive debt from borrowing money, the inequality and conflict keeps increasing. The government seems unable to provide the services necessary to promote the general welfare of the public, or to protect and defend the constitution.

To reverse the national demise it is first necessary to acknowledge that it is happening, and that the policies that are causing it need to be corrected.

My plan is to revitalize public participation in the democratic process to reverse the trend of democratic decay and public abandonment.

I believe democratic reform is the only viable solution. A new apportionment act is necessary to upgrade our democracy to be more inclusive.

Congressional representatives should be chosen from the same tax-brackets as the voters. This would provide a more representative representation motivated to increase everybody’s standard of living.

The number of representatives should also increase relative to the population. This will insure a proportional distribution of representation based on people’s income as well as their location.

The government can also turn debt into a profit center with a public profit banking system, if it wants. Ask yourself, why does the government pay interest to borrow money when it has the authority to tax or print all the money it needs?

When money can be created from nothing, and loaned for profit, to be invested for more profit, it is a function that should be generating revenue for the public, rather than make the uninvested public pay to bailout the fraudulent loans of private investors.

Big government is not a problem as long as it is representative.

Bipartisan efforts to blame government, by those that occupy it, has led to the national demise. This self serving propaganda that helps sustain the massive inequality, privatization, and globalization, causing the national demise, needs to be recognized for what it is, academentia.