OCCUPY Congress: Don't replace
congressmen, replace Congress, replace with Actual Democracy, the people as the Legislature!
To be free, to be equal, to be counted,
our votes must count! Vote for laws, not for men. I'll say why I
firmly believe this in a moment.
Our voices will count only when our
actions do, the action of voting for laws is the only true way to
govern ourselves. We must cease pledging allegiance to the flag and
”The Republic for which it stands”, and pledge allegiance to the
Flag and “The Democracy for which it stands...” once we make it
an Actual Democracy. The details of how to do this are coming. But
this is my goal, man ruling himself, governing himself.
Represent yourselves. Represent your
children, your future and their future. Represent America by voting
for economic equality, vote for equality of opportunity at work,
school, in the market place, in the media, in your religions, in your
sex life, in your taxes, in your very lives. For our votes to count
we must become the Congress. We must become the law makers. 200
million of us can do it better than any group of Congressmen possibly
can. We group-source, group-think, group-research, every Corporation
is a group, a think tank, on how to get our money with minimal
exertion and maximum return. The only chance we have is to
“group-govern” our nation, and the best group we can form is the
group of all the people, of “WE the People”.
Would you vote for the issues you march
for, advocate over social media, advocate in conversation, beg your
representatives to vote for? Things like reversing the
climate-energy-environment troubles that threaten our very existence,
like equal justice in the courts, at work, in health care, in
education, and in life, generally? Well, you can't. And the only way
you and all the other citizens and their children down through the
ages will be able to is if we become an ACTUAL DEMOCRACY: one where
the people make and vote directly on the laws and not for other
flawed and corruptible people to make the laws “for them”. Who
makes the rules RULES. We are RULED by our Congress, not Represented
by our Congress.
The mechanics of ACTUAL DEMOCRACY:
Right now Article I of the Constitution
assigns the Legislative Responsibilities of the Nation to the
Congress: that is the House of Representatives and The Senate. They
make 'bills' that are proposed laws by having these bills generated
in subcommittees of committees. When a subcommittee passes a bill it
'passes it on' to the full committee for passage, which is passing it
on the full House of Representative for them to vote on the proposed
bill. It's a three step procedure. The Senate hase the same
procedure but only with fewer members on the sub committees, the
committees, and the full Senate. If both the House and Senate pass
the bills, they frequently need to “reconcile” the bills because
they are usually slightly different versions in the House than the
Senate. Once the “joint House and Senate” reconciliation vote
succeeds in passing then the 'final bill' is voted on by the full
house and the full Senate. If it passes it goes on to the President
to be signed into law, vetoed, or neither. If neither happens within
ten days the bill is automatically vetoed.
The Congress can override the
President's veto by a 2/3 majority vote in both houses of Congress.
In which case it becomes a law.
The Executive branch enforces and
administers the laws. This is set out in Article II of the
Constitution. Article III requires the Courts to interpret the laws
and run trials for those accused of violating the laws.
Actual Democracy, as I envision it,
will replace Congress with the people directly voting on the laws.
Instead of the 438 members of the House of Representatives and 100
Senators generating or submitting bills through subcommittees, to
committees, from the committees to the full Houses for Votes, the
people will do it, almost exclusively electronically. There will be
subcommittees of various types set up, probably, at the beginning,
the same ones currently in Congress. They will be made up of citizens
who volunteer to be on such a committee. People interested in labor
will go on the labor committee. Those interested in banking to the
banking committee. Same with education, military, commerce,
transportation, the budget, etc. They will elect members for
subcommittees. The subcommittees will debate issues, call on experts
for their opinions, then propose bills to become laws, which the full
committees will vote on and send to a docket of proposed bills. The
bills that get a majority vote from the full committee will then be
scheduled for open debate by the people and after a given time,
probably months, will get voted on by the people. A majority of the
votes for the bill will send it on to the President for his
signature. Democracy, plain and simple.
If problems arise in the process then
the people will address the problems, change the process by passing
laws to change it. We have amended the Constitution 26 times. There
is no counting how many laws have been changed, replaced, or thrown
away, Any interference in the process of voting and making laws will
be severely punished. In future years we may not even recognize the
law making process of the people from what it was when it began. That
is not important. What is important is the majority of 200 million
citizens will be choosing and voting on the laws under which they
will live. Each coming generation will no longer be tied to the
previous generation's laws that they inherit through inertia and
laziness of the current and previous generations.
What problems appear will get fixed.
What path to travel in the progress of the nation will be chosen by
the people. Then corrected by the people. The American governmental
experiment will continue, evolve, and serve for the benefit all the
people. Nothing else is political equality, a just society, and a
free and independent society of the people, by the people, and for
the people. The media will publish all the various opinions they
care to publish, but lies of fact will be subject to legal and civil
attack. The Corporations will generate goods and services, hire
employees, sell stock, but do so under the watchful eye of the
people. Power will no longer slip away from the
people into the hands of a few.
The real and probably final question
is a big one:
Are the people wise enough,
responsible enough, involved enough, smart enough, strong enough, and
concerned enough to 'bother' making the laws, to expend the time and
energy it takes to study, evaluate, challenge the guess that the law
will be a good law
The best answer to this is Jefferson's
answer in his first inaugural address in 1800, when he became the
third president:
“ "It
is often said man is not wise enough to govern himself; then he
should govern others?" It's there, in the Jefferson Memorial in
Washington D.C., carved in stone!
There are many others who have answered
this question. Plato, in his book “The Republic” concluded that
the people were not wise enough to govern themselves, that they
should be governed by “Philosopher Kings”. And it reads like he
might have been running for the office.
The best answer I've that challenges
this claim is Bertrand Russell, in his 'Historhy of Western
Philosophy, p 107:
But
even if we suppose that there is such a thing as "wisdom,"
is there any form of constitution which will give the government to
the wise? It is clear that majorities, like general councils, may
err, and in fact have erred. Aristocracies are not always wise; kings
are often foolish; Popes, in spite of infallibility, have committed
grievous errors. Would anyone advocate entrusting the government to
university graduates, or even doctors of divinity? Or to men who,
having been born poor, have made great fortunes? It is clear that no
legally definable selection of citizens is likely to be wiser, in
practice, than the whole body.
It
might be suggested that men could be given political wisdom by a
suitable training. But the question would arise: what is a suitable
training? And this would turn out to be a party question.
The
problem of finding a collection of the "wise" men and
leaving the government to them is thus an insoluble one. That is the
ultimate reason for democracy.
Our elected representatives, our
Congressmen, make the laws. Laws are limits on the free actions of
men required to keep the peace when people differ. To protect the
weak from the strong. To use tax dollars to build and maintain the
infrastructure, to keep a police force, a judicial system to punish
law breakers, to guide the course of commerce and economics, set up
schools, etc. Once the criminal code is made law becomes an adventure
is spending tax dollars. There are inevitable 'kick backs' to the law
makers when they help a group of businessmen get wealthy. The
'special interests' buy the votes of representatives. Those who have
capital, a lot of money, which is power over others, fight hard for
laws that let them keep that power, and even enable more power to be
gotten. Every hour of labor gives a good percentage of the fruits of
that labor to the 'owners', the bosses, the rich and powerful, making
them more powerful. The citizens of the United States have been
through this economic theft of their productivity for 218 years under
the Constitution and Capitalism. That's 11 generations of oppressed
workers, teachers, scholars, artists, machinists, bricklayers,
artisans, manual laborers, and just folks and citizens. Too much
greed has taken away all faith in this government's form and
function. The only solution is to change the form and function of the
government and move on to a 'more perfect' form of government: Actual
Democracy.
See www.assocactualdemocracy.com.
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