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Transparency

The nightmare of the Bush Administration that brought us eight long years of neo-con rule is almost over. I can honestly say that the United States was closer to losing its way than I have ever seen it in my lifetime. When I say “losing its way” I’m talking about operating outside the rule of law, and having our government basically ignore its responsibility to be honest with the American people and to at least consider the American people’s wishes in its decisions both foreign and domestic.



I’m not naïve. I realize that our nation has often ignored the wishes of the American people and has operated outside the rule of law many times, not only in recent history, but throughout our history. I believe at times it was necessary and I also believe at times, it was not. As I get older, and as revelations emerge as to what has transpired over the years about specific events, I understand to a greater extent how many times our government has kept information from its people, and how many times our government has lied to the people. Sometimes I believe it may have been in the best interests of the nation, and sometimes it was not. In fact, there were times that the government acted illegally and recklessly, and made decisions and performed actions that were definitely not in the peoples best interests. At times these things were done out of a genuine desire to do the right thing in the long run, and sometimes they were not. Either way, we are still here with our representative form of government, somewhat injured, but nevertheless, intact.



If we look at what has transpired during the last eight years in an honest, forthright manner, I believe that our nation has been extremely fortunate that we didn’t lose all of our rights after the savage attack on the Constitution by Bush/Cheney, Addington, Gonzales and all the others that seemed to believe that government administration belonged to the people of privilege. This was reflected by the obvious distain they held the Middle Class in by ignoring labor laws and refusing to increase the minimum wage for nine years until they couldn’t pass up a compromise in estate taxes that the Democrats offered.



Nothing happens in Washington for altruistic reasons. To believe otherwise is to ignore the obvious. When I mention this in conversation, or I write about the lack of morality displayed by those in government, I am reminded that it has always been this way. I maintain that because it has always been this way, it should be expected, and that the government continues to operate not because of its corruption, but in spite of it. I’m sure everyone would agree that if corruption was eradicated, the cost of government would be lower, and that the system would be much more efficient. I am told that this is wishful thinking. All governments throughout history had some level of corruption and that stopping corruption is impossible. While I agree that this is the case, I also believe that reducing the level of corruption is entirely possible. The problem is that before any problem can be corrected, the problem must be recognized and diagnosed. In medicine, the doctor cannot cure a patient no matter how many cures science had discovered. Unless it is acknowledged that the patient has a certain disease or condition, they cannot be effectively treated. The knowledge of how a patient contracted a disease may help to cure the disease, but it is not absolutely needed in most cases, it is usually enough to know what disease is that someone has in order to treat it.



The very same principle applies to government corruption. Transparency is absolutely essential in order for the public to oversee our political process and operations. It’s just commonsense when you think about it. Unless you have all the information available, supporting a certain piece of legislation or a policy, solving problems or offering constructive ideas, voicing opposition or suggesting alternatives all become very difficult. The truth is that we need all the information we can get in order to participate in government. Just as those that occupy a position in government rely on being fully informed, citizens should also demand that they are provided all the information they require. All too often, we hear that certain information cannot be shared with those outside the government because of “national security” issues. When Congress requested that they be briefed on Presidential Directive 51 (Continuity of government), the executive branch refused to honor the request due to “national security issues”. I’m sure that more than a few Congressmen and Senators’ are eligible to upgrade their security clearances in order to be properly informed. This one reason, “national security” has been used far too often in order to keep information away from government officials and the public alike. Therefore, in the interests of “national security”, and also in order to appraise those that feel they need more information than the government is willing to part with, I am offering a few suggestions.



Suggestions for the Obama Administration on Transparency in Government


1. Establish an Office of Transparency in Government (OTIG).

The Federal Government should set a policy whereby members of the government, both State and Federal, as well as American citizens themselves, can access all manner of information to include, but is not limited to proposed legislation, sponsors and co-sponsors of legislation, promises made in furtherance of legislation, campaign contributions from interested parties to any pending or recent legislation, political appointments of government officeholders or Federal workers, gifts to Federal employees or officeholders, visits or meetings with corporate representatives or lobbyists, employment of family members or appointments to corporate or private industry boards or advisory councils or groups. In addition, all officeholders and Federal employees must disclose their investments in order to determine if there is any conflict of interest between business interests and official duties. Scholarships and educational grants to family members, officeholders or Federal employees and any other potential conflict of interest issues must also be disclosed.



2. The Office of Transparency in Government (OTIG) shall exercise final

Determination of information access.

The office will determine if information will be withheld from Federal employees

Because of national security considerations. If there is a reasonable determination

information should be classified, the office will determine what can be disclosed

in order that the interested party has all of the information that can safely be

disclosed.



3. The Office of transparency in Government (OTIG) insures that the media

receives all information on new or pending legislation and any information that the Secretary believes should be disseminated involving operations of the federal government.

There also will be a meeting of an oversight council of members of the OTIG to determine if there is any other information that should be disclosed that the Secretary has not released or has missed.



4. The Office of Transparency in Government (OTIG) will report to the Attorney

General (AG) and be free of Executive Branch control.

This is a watchdog agency and will be relatively free from political or partisan control. The employees of OTIG will be subject to transparency itself and any possible conflict of interest will be disclosed immediately. If there is any redundancy in the Federal system, the OTIG will determine jurisdiction and responsibility for decisions. (This is in case any Federal agency rules differently on release of information).



These are some ideas that I believe will restore precious integrity to the Federal government. Of course, all of these ideas are only a guideline that came off the top of my head, I’m sure that there are many issues that an agency such as this would cover that I missed. I think that this is an idea that is long overdue. Transparency in government is essential if we are to keep our representative form of government. The demise of newspapers, smaller and fewer news outlets have caused the information flow and coverage about the workings of the government in Washington to decrease. Independent journalists that write about politics in Washington could use an agency such as this. Independent journalists work on a shoestring budget, yet they have never been as important as they are at this juncture in our history.



The people of this country need to understand who is behind legislation and they also need to know where any future conflicts of interests and possible trouble spots may occur. The people need to regain a measure of trust in government. This could go a long way to promote these things.

The Liberal Party of America

I am sending out feelers on about starting back this party with Senator Mike Gravel as our party's candidate. This means that we will work with the Gravel team as well as have our own. What we need is people from every State to chair the State and get petitions signed. Then we need to incorporate. The third step is to have a convention, we can have an e-convention. If I could get enough people that have had it with the two corporate parties and ineffective third parties that don't really conform to being "Liberal" or "Progressive", we could, along with Senator Gravels Team, organize and be effective by election day.

This could be a dream, but one that I would willingly go for. I believe that there are enough people that are dissatisfied with the situation politically that we could actually pull this off. If Unity '08 makes Mike Bloomberg their candidate, or the GOP splits because of McCain, this could be a four party race.

Anyone interested? You only live once, might as well do it trying to do what you believe in. Take a look at the platform in this blog, it was taken off our old website. All is subject to change when and if we have a Convention. BTW, Check out the videos.

That's the way I see it.

Mike Gravel for President

Today I formally announce our endorsement for Senator Mike Gravel for President of the United States of America. Senator Gravel is the candidate that is closest to the views held by The Liberal Party of America. He is a genuine Peace Candidate and he is for the working people of the United States. No other candidate is as well qualified as Mike Gravel to lead this nation in these perilous times.

"Get Out Of Our House!" An Idea Whose Time Has Come!

Some say that the government of this nation is not at all responsive to the people. They say that most politicians are “professional” politicians that are firmly entrenched in “The System” in Washington that causes the Representatives of the people in Congress more interested in how they can be re-elected than how they can do the best for their constituents. This doesn’t make the Representatives necessarily “bad”, but it does lead to people putting their own self-interests over the interests of the people that they represent.

We see this in campaign donations by corporations that have no vested interest in the district the Congressman represents. We see corporations give money to Congressmen that do have an interest in the District. Either way, corporations do not really carry “personhood” and therefore under the First Amendment have no real guarantee of freedom of expression. They would like you to believe that in 1886 there was a dispute between a railroad, and that in that dispute they gained “personhood”, but that is not true, The court actually ruled against the railroad, but from a court reporters notes, they maintained they won the case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Personhood_Debate.

Whether or not you believe that corporations should have “personhood” or not, we can all agree that the money they give to politicians that make a career in the House of Representatives is a clear signal to the American people that many of our Congress people have interests that don’t coincide with the interests of the people they represent. The two-Party system in this country has caused stagnation in legislation that is needed to cure this nation’s problems. The constant partisan in-fighting has caused many good pieces of legislation to die in committees because there is no chance of these bills being passed because of the gridlock of the House. The politicians with their “special interests” won’t let these bills see the light of day.

There is an organization called “Get Out Of Our House” (GOOH pronounced “GO”) that is trying to bring ordinary folks into the House of Representatives and unseat all 435 members of the House. The political partisanship and the ineffectiveness of The House of Representatives in representing ordinary citizens is the reason this group exists. They are being led in part by Tim Cox who was on my radio show www.blogtalkradio/liberalpro.com last night. Tim is a computer engineer who once worked for Dell. He decided that this nation should come up with a different way to choose how the people should be elected to represent their districts. Tim got problem-solvers together and through brainstorming and looking at data across the nation, they decided that the two-party system is just not working.

They now have a website, www.goooh.com where people can join just by giving their e-mail address. Once they have joined they can choose to get involved by filling out a questionnaire and actually submitting their name to run for Congress. They are given 100 questions and the answers will be given to a group of 10 people that belong to GOOH in their district and through elimination based on the answers that they give on the questions, two people will be selected to run. This will happen according to Cox, throughout the 50 States and there will be a fund managed by GOOH to pay for their candidacy. This fund will come from the $100.00 fee given by all that want to run, and by donations from the web. This is an excerpt from their Website:
“Through GOOOH's Candidate Selection Sessions, you and your peers will select the candidate in your district that best represents your district's views. GOOOH will then fund the national election campaigns of all 435 candidates (one from each district) to run against the party politicians competing for each district seat. Because GOOOH is a process for selecting representatives (not an agenda-based party platform), we expect a very liberal candidate to be selected in San Francisco and a very conservative one in Colorado Springs -- but it will be up to the GOOOH members in each district to decide”.

This is one of the most novel ideas that I have ever heard of in my life. Could you imagine what we could accomplish without the Democrats and the Republicans fighting over every piece of legislation? Could you imagine what Congress would look like with ordinary people instead of professional politicians that are beholden to the “special interests”? The great thing about this is that after you fill out the questionnaire on how you will vote on specific issues, is that you are beholden to it. GOOH members are only allowed two terms and must be represent their districts and not their political party. I believe that this is an idea whose time has come. Check out their website and see it for yourself. With a Congressional approval rating of 17%, this Congress may well see this organization as a threat.

That’s the way I see it.

Write Your Congressman. Right.

Every time we see something wrong, every time we have our freedoms compromised, every time we see American youth dying in uniform to protect the wealth and power of the rich, we are told to “write our Congressman”. I have been hearing the same thing, over and over again until the litany is etched upon my very soul. “Write your Congressman”, “sign this petition”, and every organization that asks you to sign this petition to nowhere, at the end of these plaintive calls for help, they ask you to donate to their cause so that they can send out more letters and buy advertising that sends the same message, over and over again, “write your Congressman”.

First of all, I’m not sending a god damned dollar to any group or organization that asks me to “Write my Congressman”. You can write your Congressman until your fingers are bleeding and your tongue is crimson from paper cuts from licking the envelopes but it won’t do any good. You can call these people, write to them, and send a video if that what floats your boat, and it still won’t do any good. These people, in case you haven’t noticed, are not going to do anything! The faster you understand this, the faster we can promote real change in this country. The Democrats have failed us over and over again. If they were a sports team, you can bet that after not winning a game in a decade, that ticket sales would be non-existent. Only the most die hard fans would attend their games yet the Democratic Party continues to sell out to a loyal fan base, meanwhile they continue to throw their games. God forbid we organize a real political party for the liberal/progressives that continue to support a party that want nothing from us but money and votes… but not our input.

I saw Chris Dodd today on “The View”. This is the only candidate that is mainstream that admits the Constitution has been gutted. Let me ask you how this was accomplished? Did the Republicans have every seat in the 109th Congress, or did they do it with full cooperation of The Democratic Party? Yet Americans continue to dutifully head to the polls and vote for the Republican or Democrat that conduct their elections with corporate campaign funds and with the tacit approval of the same people that brought you the Iraq War. Is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Until the American People “get it” they will continue to do just this.

So keep on “Writing your Congressman” and keep on seeing them do just what they wish to do. Listen to the same old tired politicians telling you the same old excuses month after month, year after year. This nation has a gross national product (GNP) of 12.5 Trillion dollars. Sit there on your couch and watch year by year one trillion dollars migrates from the poorest 96 million households to the wealthiest 13 thousand households. The rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer and nobody in Congress does anything about it. It must be our fault that we find it harder and harder to pay our bills.

So the next election, go vote for the corporatist of your choice and when you find that Congress can’t override a veto, or your complaints fall on deaf ears along with a note that says thanks for writing, think of what you read here today. I can see the people wondering why we are still seeing body bags in Iraq in 2013 when the Dem front runners have already told America they have no intention of pulling our troops out. Still we have Progressives supporting Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama. Don’t whine and cry when nothing changes. Don’t underestimate the power of those 13,000 thousand households that have a vested interest in seeing this war continue. Don’t blame anyone but yourself when we finally go down that path of war with Iran in our desire to control the resources of the entire Middle East or when we finally prod the Russians and Chinese to go to war with us.

Support your political party of your choice. It doesn’t matter which one, there are only two, and they are both right of center. You may as well vote Republican; at least you won’t feel as deceived when they go against everything you believe, better the enemy you know than the one that you don’t. God forbid liberal/progressives break from the herd that is heading for the cliff.

That’s the way I see it.

Everything Starts with You

I have been reading heartfelt and sincere pleas to Al Gore to run for President. Some of these of these articles that try to tap into Al Gore’s “conscience” seem more like prayers than reasons why he should enter the race. I have read “open letters” to Gore and articles that predict the future with Al Gore at the helm would bring America back from a spiritual and moral abyss. Sometimes, when I read these things I get a knot in my stomach and I shake my head in wonder. Have the people in America fallen to a point where they are looking for a new “messiah” to lead them out of the desert and into the “promised land”?

While I might be mixing up Jesus with Moses, the basic message of these letters and articles remains the same. It seems as if Americans have lost their moral compass and feel that the sainted Al Gore will lead us back from certain doom, and the tone of these pleadings remains the same; “Please reconsider and save America”.

The facts are that no one person can save America. No “savior” is going to be sent by the creator to lead us out of the valley of death. The savior that everyone expects to appear, whether it’s Al Gore, or Dennis Kucinich or God forbid, Hillary Clinton, is not going to “save” this country from the reckless and militaristic path to destruction. The facts are that the “savior” that everyone in this country seems to be waiting for is in the mirror looking back at you.. You heard that right. The person that will bring this nation back from moral bankruptcy is you. Don’t expect that someone is going to descend from heaven (in this case Hollywood) and put things “right” again. That can only happen when you decide that something must be done, and knowing that, you pull yourself out of your comfortable cocoon and you go ahead and do the things that are necessary to change the course of history.

When I write the word “you”, I mean you and you and you. I’m talking about every American that realizes that we can no longer proceed with our lives pretending that “somebody” will magically appear and do all the hard work that is required to change the way things are. That my friend is a kind of wishful thinking that won’t change a thing. The only way that change can be brought about in a system that has the deck stacked against the average American citizen is through hard work and perseverance. When everyone tells you that you can’t change the way things are, you must understand that change starts with one person at a time. Bobby Kennedy once said;

“There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

These aren’t just the words of a great man; those words are the formula for change. Change will only come if people want it bad enough. The truth is that if you can’t change the way things are, maybe you didn’t want it bad enough.

Think of what may come to be and imagine that your worst fears have materialized. Think of our country doing the unthinkable. Think of America using nuclear devices on Iran, and then on Syria. Think of the consequences. Go one step further and think of the White House declaring martial law and imagine the Army in the streets or worse yet, paid mercenaries doing their bidding. Think of the sanctions that other nations would direct towards the United States and international travel forbidden. Think of being forced to have a national ID in order to purchase anything and the things that they would be teaching your children in school. Maybe these things will never happen, but then again, what if they did? Then imagine yourself asking the question over and over in your head; “What could I have done to stop this?”

God forbid that you should ever have to ask yourself that question, but if you did, what would you answer that question with? Would you have an answer? If you had a do-over, what would you have done differently? Take a moment and put yourself in that hellish nightmare of a scenario and ask yourself that question. Once you have figured out what you could have done differently, go out and do it as if you had been given that second chance. Act as if God in all his wisdom, or anything that you regard as a power greater than yourself, had given you a do-over, than do it as if your life depended on it. Want to know something? Your life or what you perceive and have grown accustomed to as your life, just may depend on it.

Like the old Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times.” We are indeed living in interesting times. What we do today determines what our future will be tomorrow. Don’t count on anyone to save you from what may come. You are the only one that can decide to change things from what they are. You can’t make anyone else decide to change things. The only one you can convince to change things from what they are now is you. Do the things that you can do to make a difference, whether it may be talking to others, or to collect money for a candidate that you believe in, or attending a demonstration or organizing a grassroots group, you can do something. Bobby Kennedy also said this:

“It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task”.

He wasn’t wrong, and if you believe you can make a difference or at least try, neither are you.