Election Reform:
The elections of 2000 and 2004 have shown us that even national elections are susceptible to fraud and manipulation. The latest Zogby poll indicates that 92% of Americans distrust the new electronic voting machines with fraud susceptible proprietary software all owned by known Republican activists. Fraudulent elections are one of the 14 fourteen defining characteristics of Fascism or as Mussolini called it, Corporatism.
Corporate wealth is selecting our candidates for us and influencing policy in a direct manner. This kind of unofficial partnership between corporate wealth and government is what is called fascism. It doesn’t matter who people vote for if those corporations who count the votes do not respect the people’s wishes. We have a crisis in accountability, openness and fairness in our elections that we cannot ignore.
I propose we implement public financing of elections with free media to candidates. I advocate a multi-party democracy with a system of proportional representation in our legislature and Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) at all levels of legislative and executive branches of government using paper ballot or an approved open source computer voting system. The current voting and vote tabulation machines are unacceptable. We cannot afford to allow our elections to be run by private wealthy concerns no matter how trusted they may be by a few.
Education:
One cannot have a functioning democracy unless the electorate is educated so education reform must be a high priority. Obviously the Media, especially TV, plays an important role in inculcating our children with the kinds of values most profitable to industry. If we want our children to have better values the Fourth Estate needs be re-democratized either by breaking up the monopolies or by making them more accountable to the Fifth Estate, the electorate.
Talking about the issue of education in our society is complicated by an irresponsible media and the fact that Americans have not gotten a decent education and are not aware of the history of their own nation much less the history of the mandatory schooling system in this country. The Latin root of the word education means to “draw one out” but our school systems have been designed to “beat one in” instead in order to provide industry with a compliant workforce and conspicuous consumers with an unquestioning allegiance to the market system and its leaders. I had often marveled at why our school system was so opposed to helping children find their full potential until I read its history which makes clear what is going on.
I propose we establish learning communities much like the one room schoolhouse where fifty children of different ages would be teaching each other while the schoolmaster heard lessons at his desk from older students. Most children were educated in the basics before they entered school having learned to read and do basic math at home. George Washington didn’t go to school until he was 11 years old and his first area of study was trigonometry because he wanted to be a surveyor. Because children do not all learn in the same manner, being individuals, they should not all be required to pursue education in an academic setting if their interest and talents lie elsewhere, perhaps apprenticing to learn a trade or profession if they wish. In the process children would learn duty, hard work, responsibility, and self-reliance. The age divided classroom is a way to divide and conquer the impressionable minds of our children by a state with a mission to extend childhood well into adulthood for reasons of industrial social management and control. The 50 minute class was to assure they lose the ability to focus as is the high speed imagery programming used by television today.
We can begin to do this within our existing school infrastructure while we work on decentralizing the system. We need to move people out of administrative roles and into teaching roles. Instead of office supplies for a top heavy administrative system we can have more school supplies and teachers. We do not need obedient and compliant consumers, we need creative people with skills and knowledge to deal with the challenges of the future. It will be a large knot to untie but with your support I am eager to get started on that project. If you would like to read more on why our mandatory schooling system is the way it is and why it needs to change see…
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