 |
|
June 7, 2007
by Stephen Neitzke
This is second of a two-part series: Executive Summary of Direct Democracy
We the people are the sovereign here. We need the seven extraordinary rights from the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence (DOI) instituted in our Constituion. We need our national govt to include the eight direct democracy governance components that express the seven extraordinary rights and that are already in place in some of our states -- so that we can exercise our sovereignty when necessary. Without the DD governance components, we are powerless to stop even the smallest tyranny. The staccato of the deeply planned and sweeping tyrannies perpetrated by the three-branch Bush-Cheney Regime prove beyond doubt that the omission of direct democracy from the Constitution was a systemic problem from the beginning.
The balance between sovereign civil society and rep govt in a DD/rep-govt mix is in rep govt's daily access to governing power and civil society's occasional application of ultimate power. The sovereign people do not have to make every decision.
Arguing against any of the people's fundamental governance rights is to argue that the American people are not sovereign. Such argument today is legally irresponsible. All power is held by the sovereign people and delegated with restrictions to the public servants, not the other way around.
We the people are the sovereign here. We need the functional sovereignty, the raw power, of direct democracy governance components so that we can exercise our sovereignty when necessary. Without the DD governance components, we are powerless to stop even the smallest tyranny.
The huge, globalized fascist tyranny of the superrich-governed world government -- reflected in the treasonous Federal Reserve and its treasonous money-pump, the IRS personal income tax on work and wages -- has been enslaving our nation for nearly a hundred years. It's work is nearly done. We're far into police state realities and on the edge of the North American Union collapsing our sovereignty, rights, freedoms, and liberty. Grow up politically or perish. See Arron Russo's 2006 film, America: Freedom to Fascism, free-per-view online at Google Video.
Stop with the do-nothing hand-wringing and clothes-clutching. Start with the citizen action groups organizing and citizen action plans. Grow up or die.
Great strides were made during the Reform Era in the civil society's sovereignty. It was the greatest democracy movement in recorded history, with many tens of millions participating.
Reform Era citizens devised the greatest corruption-fighting package ever created, leaving that package in many state constitutions where corrupt politicians cannot meddle with it.
State government elites have made a mockery of the constitutional amendments establishing the mix of sovereign citizen lawmaking and rep govt. They've passed unconstitutional statutes to override the hard=won constitutional provisions -- giving themselves the power to delay, alter, and/or reject any citizen-proposed law (I&R petition) that is offensive to money-power -- before the people have the opportunity to vote the issue. The parallel would be executive agencies and/or judges barring a Senate committee from sending a bill for a floor vote. (See the essay, "2nd Look--State Govt Against Citizen-Proposed Law", on my weblog, DD Revival.)
Despite the 100 years of illegal abuses, the Reform Era's corruption-fighting package is still there, messed-over but not broken, safely stored in the state constitutions of the 23 active I&R states. It needs only a statute-law cleanup and some clearly written constitutional amendments. The cleanup requires only the organization of nonpartisan citizen action groups. We have plenty of individual talent to craft the needed laws and amendments.
The cleanup will result in fully independent, sovereign citizen lawmaking. It will give we the sovereign people the power to end the elites' state-level, first line of defense against national-level corruption, as well as to minimize their national-level power-profit greed.
The Reform Era legacy can be viewed as an affirmation of eight direct democracy governance components that have correlated components in ancient Greece and Rome.
(Article Continues Below)
The eight modern, Reform Era versions of the ancient components are the functional expressions of the DOI's seven fundamental governance rights. They sort themselves into three categories --
Administrative functions:
(1) The people's direct election of representatives, suppossedly done in open, fair, and peer-reviewed referendums called 'elections'. Most Americans have been so dumbed-down into political ignorance that they do not recognize 'elections' as simple direct democracy referendums in which all the jurisdiction's eligible voters gather without officers to vote candidates up or down. Elections are done in all states, but only for state-level officials and members of the national Congress. President, Vice President, and federal bench judges -- the top-most powerfui of our political heap -- are selected, not elected, by the class-race elite, to whom they will be forever accountable. We need to eliminate selection by the elites and directly elect all of our representatives.
(2) The people's recall of the election of a public official who has violated the public trust or simply offended too many citizens is removal of the people's political employee for cause. It is done by petition process in 18 states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin). NOTE -- this is simply a modern and more civilized version of the ancient Greco-Roman citizens' vote to exile the offending person, barring his return, usually on pain of death.
Legislative functions
(Note that all of the legislative functions
are heavily and unconstitutionally interferred
with by state govts in all 23 active I&R states):
(3) The people's constitutional amendment initiative (CAI) is the proposal process for constitutional amendments, intended to function without government interference. It is the most powerful of the DD components. Where the CAI exists in the state constitution, it automatically establishes the people as the sovereign, because they can write fundamental law directly into the state's constitution, while the public servants cannot. The CAI is so powerful that it can do the work of all the other DD components. We need the CAI, fully independent from govt interference, in every jurisdiction -- local, state, and national -- with new online citizen institutions at the state and national levels to protect it. It is currently done by petition process in 18 states (Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois -- where it is very restricted, but still powerful -- Massachusetts -- where its constitutional provisions are unconstitutional relative to earlier, more universal constitutional provisions, so that the governing elites can arbitrarily stop any proposed citizen law that is offensive to money-power; big mess -- Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and South Dakota). NOTE -- In all of those states, the people are constitutionally the state and have constitutional political equality, regardless of how ignorant they are of, or how little they use, those powers.
(4) The people's statute law initiative is the proposal process for statute law, intended to occur without government interference. It is done by petition process in 21 states (Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming).
(5) The people's statute law referendum is the proposal process for the veto of legislature-made law. The name should be changed from referendum to remand to minimize confusion with referendum-the-vote. It is done by petition process in 24 states (Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kentucky -- where it is so restricted that it has no practical application -- Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming).
(6) The people's statute law affirmation ("referendum on existing state law") is the proposal process to bar government from amending a law that the people do not want changed. It is done by petition process only in Nevada. It was used in 1990 to stop the legislature from overturning Roe v. Wade's personal privacy rights for Nevada women. Its successful 1990 use, carrying its "see us first" provision in the constitution, forever barred the Nevada legislature from amending or repealing the state's abortion laws. The legislature can recommend and refer amendments or repeal to the people, but only the people's direct-vote referendum can approve the legislature's recommendations. In 1990, it quieted what promised to be an explosive situation if the legislature had its anti-Constitutional way.
Consultative functions:
(7) The legislature's statute law referral to the people's referendum, done in 23 states, and
(8) the legislature's constitutional amendment referral to the people's referendum, done in 49 states (excepting only Delaware).
Our Urban Progressives of the Reform Era -- circa 1898 to 1918 -- crashed into the systemic problems and corruptions of pure representative government. Unlike today's hand-wringing, do-nothing, so-called progressives, who sit on their hands and wait for the inside-the-corruption-box, inside-the-culture-of-lying, Democratic Party to save us all, the Urban Progressives worked outside the box of the failed status quo. Their remedies and solutions centered on giving the people the power to check and balance the corruption- and collusion-prone branches of government. They acted by constitutionally increasing direct democracy, so that they could gain the representative government promised in the Constitution. All they wanted was the melding of direct democracy to representative government, so that they could have a proper representative government, with corruption minimized.
In the past nine decades, predator elites in the state govts have done whatever unconstitutionalities were needed to wreck and defame all citizen lawmaking and the recall, with special emphasis on wrecking the constitutional amendment initiative. With the state govt unconstitutonalities eliminated, direct democracy components will have a very improved look and feel.
The eight DD governance components, if installed at the national level, are all the power needed by the sovereign people to limit wealth- and class-driven corruptions, to re-define the over-vague Constitution, and to hold accountable the corrupt and criminal representatives and judges. We have a 3-branch fascist despotism to end, a national economy to save with sustainability, a fascist corporatism "North American Union" to wreck, and the Yellowstone supereruption to prepare for -- a disaster that could happen from tomorrow to many years from now, and that will kill tens of millions of Americans within a few weeks if we are no more prepared for it than we are now.
In the frame of complex systems theory, the Reform Era was a microshift that partially succeeded. Our Reform Era citizens succeeded in advancing us toward the objectives of political equality and independence from tyrannical elites. However, they failed to effectively alter elitist corruptions and control.
We the sovereign people are no closer to independence from tyrannical elitist control now than we were at Caesar's death and the fall of the Roman Republic. As with the ancient Romans, we've lost our Constitution to money-power tyrants.
However, the early 20th Century Reform Era carried us one giant legal step toward the objectives. If we will take the time to organize and learn the lessons of the Reform Era's failures, we can make the next microshift fully successful. For the lessons to learn, see the "DD Reading List", on the DDL site.  
If you enjoyed this post Subscribe to the Free Populist Party Newsletter Please consider a donation of $1 or more to help keep this website active.
Stephen Neitzke [send him email] is the founder of the Direct Democracy League. He is the author of "The State of the Republic, 1776-2004" as well as a number of other works, which can be found at www.ddleague-usa.net and on his blog at http://ddrevival.blogspot.com/
© 2007 Stephen Neitzke
 |
|
|
|  |
Just 5 Bucks a Month...
Helps Keep This Website Active! 
Sponsored Links
Sponsored Links
|
|
