Election Reform!

[a ReVoLuTIONarY ideA]

The problem is that -- unlike 99% of the population -- anarcho-capitalists regard even limited, Constitutional government as "statist" (and hence evil), and are so delusional they actually think they can change this by prancing around all day calling anyone who doesn't blindly accept their Rothbardian dogma as divine gospel disparaging names such as "statist," "socialist" and/or "collectivist."

Since the Articles of Confederation was ratified in 1781, what has become of that once tiny, limited, decentralized, Constitutional government?  It has become the largest, most powerful, and most lethal empire in human history with the weaponry and resources to probably end all human life on earth.  America has become the most effective domicidal state ever to exist.  Governments have a shelf life with horrific consequences as they begin to fail and inevitably collapse.  America has been collapsing since 1913.  It's only a matter of time now.  No men can be expected to not abuse a monopoly on force and violence.  It's far too tempting and the power is intoxicating.  This is the great crux of all states and the very reason they will all inevitably fail.  The American experiment was the most benevolent government experiment ever in the history of mankind, and the result will be the same as all of the other states that have come before: FAILURE.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years." - Alexander Tytler

Hey, at least we beat the average...

[Geolibertarian]

Of course, despite the obligatory lip service they pay to the Constitution, many if not most Austrian Schoolers are in fact anarcho-capitalists, and so the likely response from the more intellectually honest among them would be that there shouldn't even be a government.

This "no government" fantasy is particularly delusional, because they simultaneously advocate the very sort of land tenure system that invariably and inevitably gives rise to oppressive "governments" in the first place:

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http://lysanderspooner.org/node/59

In process of time, the robber, or slaveholding, class -- who had seized all the lands, and held all the means of creating wealth -- began to discover that the easiest mode of managing their slaves, and making them profitable, was not for each slaveholder to hold his specified number of slaves, as he had done before, and as he would hold so many cattle, but to give them so much liberty as would throw upon themselves (the slaves) the responsibility of their own subsistence, and yet compel them to sell their labor to the land-holding class -- their former owners -- for just what the latter might choose to give them.

Of course, these liberated slaves, as some have erroneously called them, having no lands, or other property, and no means of obtaining an independent subsistence, had no alternative -- to save themselves from starvation -- but to sell their labor to the landholders, in exchange only for the coarsest necessaries of life; not always for so much even as that.

These liberated slaves, as they were called, were now scarcely less slaves than they were before. Their means of subsistence were perhaps even more precarious than when each had his own owner, who had an interest to preserve his life. They were liable, at the caprice or interest of the landholders, to be thrown out of home, employment, and the opportunity of even earning a subsistence by their labor. They were, therefore, in large numbers, driven to the necessity of begging, stealing, or starving; and became, of course, dangerous to the property and quiet of their late masters.

The consequence was, that these late owners found it necessary, for their own safety and the safety of their property, to organize themselves more perfectly as a government and make laws for keeping these dangerous people in subjection; that is, laws fixing the prices at which they should be compelled to labor, and also prescribing fearful punishments, even death itself, for such thefts and tresspasses as they were driven to commit, as their only means of saving themselves from starvation.

These laws have continued in force for hundreds, and, in some countries, for thousands of years; and are in force today, in greater or less severity, in nearly all the countries on the globe.

The purpose and effect of these laws have been to maintain, in the hands of the robber, or slave holding class, a monopoly of all lands, and, as far as possible, of all other means of creating wealth; and thus to keep the great body of laborers in such a state of poverty and dependence, as would compel them to sell their labor to their tyrants for the lowest prices at which life could be sustained.

The result of all this is, that the little wealth there is in the world is all in the hands of a few -- that is, in the hands of the law-making, slave-holding class; who are now as much slaveholders in spirit as they ever were, but who accomplish their purposes by means of the laws they make for keeping the laborers in subjection and dependence, instead of each one's owning his individual slaves as so many chattels.

[Continued...]

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As I explained on page one of this thread, the key point here is that a group of private individuals presuming to "own" all the land comes first, and the "government" (or, more accurately, the State) into which they organize out of common interest comes second. (Whether they actually call it such is irrelevant.) That's the inevitable result of allowing the concept of "private property" to be applied to the Earth on which all must live yet which none produced in the same unlimited, unconditional sense that it's applied to the products of human labor.

       http://geolib.com/sullivan.dan/commonrights.html

It's also the inevitable result of turning the power of money creation (as the Austrian School would have us do) entirely over to private interests:

“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money." -- attributed to Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the Bank of England (appointed 1928)

"...the powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences." [Emphasis added] -- Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 324

The typical Austrian School reaction to this is to shamelessly engage in hysterical fearmongering about the presumed evils of government-issued currency. Yet one could just as easily posit all sorts of ridiculous fearmongering scenarios concerning government-controlled police and government-controlled armies as a way of scaring well-meaning yet gullible readers into embracing the stateless utopian fantasy world of the Austrian School, wherein -- according to those who promote this quasi-religious fairy tale -- a mystical, God-like entity euphemistically called the "free market" magically keeps privately controlled police and privately controlled armies from terrorizing, oppressing and enslaving the masses.

Fortunately, most readers aren't quite so gullible. They know that keeping the police and military in public rather than private hands is, if nothing else, the far lesser of two evils; and that the reason certain public institutions have become so corrupt and oppressive is that they've been, in effect, "privatized" to one extent or another (case in point: the "Federal" Reserve), and that the solution, therefore, is not to mindlessly throw the baby out with the bathwater, but to reclaim from these private interests our rightful control over our own government.

I, for one, say "no" to the privatized tyranny that anarcho-capitalists would have us all living under if they had their way, and "yes" to the liberty and freedom that can only be experienced in a truly Democratic Constitutional Republic:

       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DioQooFIcgE (The American Form of Government)

I'm sure I'm far from alone in that regard.

[Geolibertarian]

Why do Americans elect such awful Presidents? For the same reason they elect so many awful Congressmen, Senators and Governors: because they refuse to ask the right questions. Allow me to explain.

I think most of those reading this would agree that there's a world of difference between "being your own leader" and being a cheerleader for someone else. And most people, unfortunately, are always looking for excuses to be the latter, that way they can go on treating politics as just another spectator sport. But in doing so, they ignore

(a) the fact that feel-good platitudes designed to elicit cheers and applause from the already-converted are no substitute for specific ideas on how key governmental policies can actually be made conducive to securing a truly just, prosperous and free society;

(b) the fact that, although ideas themselves are indeed bullet proof, the political leaders who espouse them are not; and

(c) the consequential fact that, the more a nonviolent revolution is driven by the force of a particular person's popularity instead of by the force of ideas, the easier it is for the banker-owned political establishment to neutralize that revolution through either character assassination or -- if the political leader in question becomes too popular and/or advocates policy reforms too threatening to the institutionalized privileges of the parasitic ruling class -- literal assassination (as the anti-war followers of RFK and MLK all found out the hard way).

Now, that's not to say that an idea-driven nonviolent revolution is incompatible with supporting and promoting a particular candidate, just that the latter must be a mere supplement of, rather than substitute for, the former.

It seems that no matter how many times I say this, it continues to fall on deaf ears.

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=198869.0

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.globalresearch.ca/2012-us-elections-obamney-vs-rombama/32488

2012 US Elections: Obamney vs. Rombama
War, economic collapse and poverty await Americans no matter who they vote for

by Tony Cartalucci



Global Research, August 25, 2012
landdestroyer.blogspot.com

War, economic collapse, and personal devastation await Americans no matter who they vote for - and what we should do instead.

A vote for Obama will bring war with Syria, Iran, and eventually Russia and China. The economy will continue to suffer in order to bolster the interests of off-shore corporate-financier interests, while  the collective prospects of Americans continue to whither and blow away. A vote for Romney, however, will also bring war with Syria, Iran, and eventually Russia and China. The economy will also continue to suffer in order to bolster the interests of off-shore corporate-financier interests, while the collective prospects of Americans continue to whither and blow away. Why?

Because the White House is but a public relations front for the corporate-financier interests of Wall Street and London. A change of residence at the White House is no different than say, British Petroleum replacing its spokesman to superficially placate public opinion when in reality the exact same board of directors, overall agenda, and objectives remain firmly in place. Public perception then is managed by, not the primary motivation of, corporate-financier interests.

It is the absolute folly to believe that multi-billion dollar corporate-financier interests would subject their collective fate to the whims of the ignorant, uninformed, and essentially powerless voting masses every four years. Instead, what plays out every four years is theater designed to give the general public the illusion that they have some means of addressing their grievances without actually ever changing the prevailing balance of power in any meaningful way.

The foreign policy of both Obama and Romney is written by the exact same corporate-financier funded think-tanks that have written the script for America's destiny for the last several decades.

Bush = Obama = Romney

As was previously reported, while the corporate media focuses on non-issues, and political pundits accentuate petty political rivalries between the "left" and the "right," a look deeper into presidential cabinets and the authors of domestic and foreign policy reveals just how accurate the equation of "Bush = Obama = Romney" is.



Image: Professional spokesmen, representative not of the American people but of Fortune 500 multinational corporations and banks. Since the time of JP Morgan 100 years ago, the corporate-financier elite saw themselves as being above government, and national sovereignty as merely a regulatory obstacle they could lobby, bribe, and manipulate out of existence. In the past 100 years, the monied elite have gone from manipulating the presidency to now reducing the office to a public relations functionary of their collective interests.

George Bush's cabinet consisted of representatives from FedEx, Boeing, the Council on Foreign Relations, big-oil's Belfer Center at Harvard, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Circuit City, Verizon, Cerberus Capital Management, Goldman Sachs, and the RAND Corporation, among many others.



Image: The Henry Jackson Society is just one of many Neo-Conservative think-tanks, featuring many of the same people and of course, the same corporate sponsors. Each think-tank puts on a different public face and focuses on different areas of specialty despite harboring the same "experts" and corporate sponsors.

His foreign policy was overtly dictated by "Neo-Conservatives" including Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Richard Armitage, Zalmay Khalilzad, Elliot Abrams, Frank Gaffney, Eliot Cohen, John Bolton, Robert Kagan, Francis Fukuyama, William Kristol, and Max Boot - all of whom hold memberships within a myriad of Fortune 500-funded think-tanks that to this day still direct US foreign policy - even under a "liberal" president. These include the Brookings Institution, the International Crisis Group, the Foreign Policy Initiative, the Henry Jackson Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, and many more.



Image: A visual representation of some of the Brookings Institution's corporate sponsors. Brookings is by no means an exception, but rather represents the incestuous relationship between US foreign and domestic policy making and the Fortune 500 found in every major "think-tank." Elected US representatives charged with legislative duties, merely rubber stamp the papers and policies drawn up in these think-tanks.

Obama's cabinet likewise features representatives from JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, the Council on Foreign Relations, Fortune 500 representatives Covington and Burling, Citi Group, Freedie Mac, and defense contractor Honeywell. Like Bush's cabinet, foreign policy is not penned by Obama sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, but rather by the very same think-tanks that directed Bush's presidency including the Council on Foreign Relations, RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, the International Crisis Group, and the Chatham House. There are also a myriad of smaller groups consisting of many of the same members and corporate sponsors, but who specialize in certain areas of interest.



Image: Obama, not a Marxist. A visual representation of current US President Barack Obama's cabinet's corporate-financier ties past and present. As can be plainly seen, many of the same corporate-financier interests represented in Obama's administration were also represented in Bush's administration.

And with Mitt Romney, "running for president" against Obama in 2012, we see already his foreign policy advisers, Michael Chertoff, Eliot Cohen, Paula Dobrainsky, Eric Edelman, and Robert Kagan, represent the exact same people and corporate-funded think-tanks devising strategy under both President Bush and President Obama.

While Presidents Bush and Obama attempted to portray the West's global military expansion as a series of spontaneous crises, in reality, since at least as early as 1991, the nations of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and many others that previously fell under the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, were slated either for political destabilization and overthrow, or overt military intervention. While the public was fed various narratives explaining why Bush conducted two wars within the greater global "War on Terror," and why Obama eagerly expanded these wars while starting new ones in Libya and now Syria, in reality we are seeing "continuity of agenda," dictated by corporate-financier elite, rubber stamped by our elected representatives, and peddled to us by our "leaders," who in reality are nothing more than spokesmen for the collective interests of the Fortune 500.



Image: The International Crisis Group's corporate sponsors reveal a pattern of mega-multinationals intertwined with not only creating and directing US, and even European foreign policy, but in carrying it out. ICG trustee Kofi Annan is in Syria now carrying out a ploy to buy time for NATO-backed terrorists so they can be rearmed, reorganized, and redeployed against the Syrian government for another Western-backed attempt at regime change - all done under the guise of promoting "peace."

....

No matter who you vote for in 2012 - until we change the balance of power currently tipped in favor of the Fortune 500, fed daily by our money, time, energy, and attention, nothing will change but the rhetoric with which this singular agenda is sold to the public. Romney would continue exactly where Obama left off, just as Obama continued exactly where Bush left off. And even during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Bush Sr., it was the same agenda meted out by the same corporate-financier interests that have been driving American, and increasingly Western destiny, since US Marine General Smedley Butler wrote "War is a Racket" in 1935.

What Should We Do About It?

1. Boycott the Presidential Election: The first immediate course of action when faced with a fraudulent system is to entirely disassociate ourselves from it, lest we grant it unwarranted legitimacy. Boycotting the farcical US elections would not impede the corporate-financier "selection" process and the theatrical absurdity that accompanies it, but dismal voter turnout would highlight the illegitimacy of the system. This in many ways has already happened, with voter turnout in 2008 a mere 63%, meaning that only 32% of America's eligible voters actually voted for Obama, with even fewer voting for runner-up John McCain.

Ensuring that this mandate is even lower in 2012 - regardless of which PR man gets selected, and then highlighting the illegitimacy of both the elections and the system itself is the first step toward finding a tenable solution. People must divest from dead-ends. Presidential elections are just one such dead-end.

[Continued...]

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-political-illusion-of-the-lesser-of-two-evils.html

The Political Illusion Of The ‘Lesser Of Two Evils’

Brandon Smith
Alt Market
Sept 4, 2012

As I stated in my article ‘The Lesser Of Two Evils Con-Game’, one of the great dangers of the upcoming 2012 elections is the psychological trap presented by the Mitt Romney campaign.

Some conservatives are so terrified of a second Obama term that they are willing to strap on the blinders and ignore the overwhelming facts that reveal Romney to be no more than another globalist puppet with an almost identical policy record to the man they despise.

If a citizen votes at all, he should first understand that the election process, especially at the federal level, is utterly corrupt and beyond repair.  Believing that you can affect change by replacing one traitor with another is absurd.  Secondly, he should at the very least vote based on his deepest principles.

Every American should ask themselves one question:  Why participate in the farce if there is nothing to gain?  We have been voting for the “Lesser Of Two Evils" for decades, and the strategy hasn’t been working out too well for us so far.

[Continued...]

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/03/obama-is-worse-than-bush-in-favoring-the-super-elite-bailing-out-the-big-banks-protecting-financial-criminals-targeting-whistleblowers-secrecy-and-trampling-our-liberties.html

Even Democratic Party Loyalists Starting to Wake Up to the Fact that Obama Is As Bad As Bush … Or Worse

by Washington's Blog
March 17, 2013



Obama Is Worse than Bush In Favoring the Super-Elite, Bailing Out the Big Banks, Protecting Financial Criminals, Targeting Whistleblowers, Keeping Government Secrets, Trampling Our Liberties and Starting Military Conflicts In New Countries

Glenn Greenwald notes that even Democratic party loyalists are getting fed up with Obama’s Bush-like actions:

Even the most loyal establishment Democrats are now harshly denouncing the president for his war on transparency ….
 
This secrecy has become so oppressive and extreme that even the most faithful Democratic operatives are now angrily exploding with public denunciations.

(Greenwald gives numerous examples.)
 
The Hill reported last month:

A majority of voters believe President Obama has been no better than his immediate predecessor, President George W. Bush, when it comes to balancing national security with the protection of civil liberties, according to a new poll for The Hill.
 
Thirty-seven percent of voters argue that Obama has been worse than Bush while 15 percent say he has been “about the same.” {In other words, a total of 52% think Obama is just as bad as Bush. That was before the drone controversy - discussed below - went viral.}
 
***
 
The results cannot be fully explained as party line responses. More than one in five self-identified Democrats, 21 percent, assert that the Obama administration has not improved upon Bush’s record. So do 23 percent of liberals.

Indeed, more and more Democrats are waking up the fact that Obama is doing a lot of the same stuff Bush did.
 
Bush was a horrible president. His warmongering, disrespect for civil liberties, redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class to the super-elite, and obsession for secrecy were all abysmal.
 
But how does Obama stack up by objective measurements?
 
Let’s compare …

[Continued...]