Open Source Government

From Wikipedia:

"Open source governance is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open source and open content movements to democratic principles in order to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of policy, as with a wiki document. Legislation is democratically opened to the general citizenry in this way, allowing policy development to benefit from the collected wisdom of the people as a whole."

For those of you who have not heard the term "Open Source" or never really understood what it meant, it is well described by Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia is also a good example of an open source system, anyone can access and/or add to the content, disagree with or correct errors. At first it seemed too vulnerable to manipulation, if someone can simply change the facts they don't agree with the whole reference system may break down into chaos. But that didn't happen. Will you find inaccuracies and biased content? Sure, but you and millions of other people will be there to correct it, so the long term consistency is much more true to reality. When I look through an old dictionary, or encyclopedia I get frustrated when I see old, outdated information that has obvious biased, sometimes even lending to or undermining the validity of certain ideas and agendas. There's nothing we the people can do to change that, those old books are almost fascist in their final judgement, the dictionary is the dictator of language. Open source returns power back to the people.

Open source governance is also well described on Wikipedia, but you could think of it as Wikigovernment. Nothing could be more democratic than to give everyone administrative powers with zero compensation. The way our governments are now structured a great deal of power is in the hands of the covert players in the secret core of influence and espionage, we'll never know just how much power as long as they operate behind this veil. Americas' idealistic beginnings gave promise of a right to privacy and an open form of government, opaque people and transparent state. In our modern world of electronic communications our governments (with the help of the communications corporations) can, and often do access our private information. Before the turn of the century the idea of the government listening in on our phone conversations seemed unlikely and yet very draconian if it were true. We never knew for sure, but now we know that we're being spied on for a fact, and by act of congress. Somehow that american promise went from "opaque people/transparent state" to "opaque state/transparent people.

Why should we have such unrestrained access to government policy? Corporations do. What is referred to as "lobbying" in Washington DC, is a process of accessing and manipulating policy. Anyone (in theory) is allowed to walk up to a congress member and express his or her ideas and opinions, so when's the last time you flew to DC to make sure your voice was being heard? You can call your representatives, just a few, and they may even make a sticky note just for you, but they have a lot of sticky notes and they don't work a lot of over time. Either way, it effectively acts as a filtration system, creating unnecessary barriers for the average person to present a new idea, or challenge an outdated one. There are many non-profit organizations who use their influence to lobby for some of these changes, but they also act as a layer of this filtration system because the average person has no influence over their agendas either. Why must we join together in groups to express ourselves in mutual consensus? Are we somehow less valid as unique individuals? Shouldn't the merit of a single idea, be able to attract those who can appreciate it, without a context associating it with a group or agenda?

A little over a year ago the supreme court decided in the citizens united case that corporations are "people" with all of the rights of people, they can't vote but if you had the money would you rather vote for a candidate, or fund their campaign? Corporations now have the "right" to do just that, they already have their corporate puppets sitting in the peoples' seats of power all over the country. And no surprise they're attacking the unions, the only thorn left in their side. Of course corporations aren't "people", they can't be arrested and put in jail, and they've tinkered with the legal system making it harder to sue them for compensation when they cause negligent harm. They can cheat on their taxes and still walk away with multi-million dollar bonuses. If they were "people" they would walk as giants among us, with super human strength and no natural predators. We are mere ants under their feet, we merely bother them with our cries for justice, peace, and true equality. We as individuals and even in large groups have little hope of countering the agendas' of this league of super people. Many of us real people have awakened from the american dream and it's getting harder and harder to deny the corporate coup d'etat that has claimed the power we the people are not using.

Imagine the majority of people who disagree with the citizens united ruling actually being able to access that decision and cite it's many flaws and over time with majority consensus overturn this obvious giveaway of our democracy. Perhaps you prefer the odds you have now to change this legislation, if you believe it can be done through the same system that implemented and enforced it, by all means prove it. But I'd prefer we the people all have a hand on the wheel, even if it's a struggle to guide the ship of state, at least we know that no one giant has it's finger on the scale. There is no need for politicians, there's really no need for nations or corporations. We the people can be the government we wish to create, and a true pursuit of democracy will lead us to this more perfect form of government. But we must put down the american dream, the attachment to patriarchal idolatry, the need to have a big father figure directing us from above. Democracy is not hierarchal but lateral, this is expressly implied by the concept of "one person, one vote". But in a world where our votes are undermined and channeled through a few non-choices, the time has come to upgrade democracy to be more modern, more responsive, more true.

We the people are ready to govern, do it yourself politics!

Class War Criminals

The concept of a class war is somehow omnipresent and yet not there, a reference to nowhere. We hear about it once in a while usually when right wing conservatives are commenting on union activity in the news. On a rare occasion you may hear the opposing version when corporate friendly union busting politicians are attacking the hard won rights of the workers. But we are now entering a heightened stage of this mystical, metaphoric war in which both sides will be fighting for their very existence. Though we've never heard the term "class war" in most history classes, it's somehow more important, more prevalent, and more instructive in our current world of multinational corporate power than any military war in the history of the planet. In a way it's also the longest running war when you begin to see the consistent thread of aristocracy through the bloody legacy of empires from roman to american. Maybe it's time we include a history of class in history class, to teach about the class war on par with WWII.

Clearly the most notable difference between a military war and the class war is the role of nations, or the seeming insignificance of their roles. Wars are most often visited from one nation upon another, both with massive resources to draw from. When a nation wages a war it is overwhelmingly the poor to middle class (or bottom half) who put their actual bodies on the lines in the ultimate sacrifice. But this is not how class war works because the wealthy simply do not fight, and when they do join the military they are rarely if ever in harms way and historically enter the ranks at officer levels. Wealthy people have too much to live for, they cannot be expected to fight in infantry positions and therefore their numbers are severely low, especially when compared to the middle to lower classes who make up the bulk of fighting forces around the globe. Imagine if the class war were waged in the same military manner as WWI and II, the odds would be overwhelmingly in the favor of the poor. The rich and powerful upper 10% of the world population are not dumb enough to challenge the bottom 90% militarily. On the contrary, they're smart enough to get the bottom to do virtually all of the bidding for the top for a sliver of the reward.

In this very real war for the power and proprietary rights to the worlds resources, Fox news (or Faux news) is the pillar of propaganda for the rich and powerful, like the Koch brothers (pronounced "Coke") who have together bank rolled the entire tea party phenomena and all of it's puppet political candidates and campaigns. These billionaire cowboys have always been manipulating our so called democracy, but since the supreme courts handy work turned our corporations into "people" in a plot copy and pasted right from the script of Frankenstein, they can shop for the election results they want the same way they bid for fine art at Christie's in Rockefeller center. And wherever the Koch bros want them, there is Faux News repeating ad nauseum the talking points the wealthy corporate interests program them to say. Fox and all of the tea party candidates are little more than billion dollar Koch whores. There has never been a clearer demonstration of the corrosive effects of capitalism on democracy. The cohesion between Fox news and the republican party is seamless, and the claim of "fair and balanced" is designed to convince weak minded people that the far right is the center, effectively eliminating the left in a feat of overt Orwellian mind control.

There is no question that money makes a difference in elections, the only point that could be debated is exactly how much of a difference it makes in each individual election. And there is no doubt where the majority of money is coming from and where it goes thanks to many organizations tracking large campaign contributions from corporations and wealthy individuals. The average american doesn't contribute financially to political campaigns, most don't even bother to vote in midterm elections. So it's simple to conclude that the difference that money makes is overwhelmingly in the favor of the wealthy corporations and individuals who pitch the most into the pot. The one real variable is the significant sector of the poor who vote republican, but those numbers have been historically lower than the poor to middle class who vote for democrats. So for the sake of argument, let's be conservative and say that without any campaign contributions the races would be close, within a 5-10% margin. The difference that money makes only needs to be from 11-15% to ensure a republican victory at the polls. The reason democrats still win however is that without the extra money much fewer people would vote republican and that 11-15% difference just isn't enough.

In the state of Wisconsin there is a powerful, peaceful, peoples' uprising going on (as of this writing) over the recently "elected" republican governor Scott walkers' overt union busting tactics reminiscent of pre-FDR america. Walker has taken the gloves off making it easy to rip the mask off of the class war that is usually so subtle in it's ferocious appetite for destruction. He came into the drivers seat of a state that was well within budget and on track to have a surplus and declaring the state "open for business" (or "for sale") he immediately gave away over one hundred million dollars in corporate tax breaks putting the state into deficit. In the same stroke and without batting an eyelash he demanded that public workers make the sacrifices to pay for the hole in the budget, AND that their unions give up collective bargaining rights, the backbone of union power. Asking unions to give up their collective bargaining rights is like asking corporations to give up their limited liability status. When a somewhat weak union response came back to say "We'll make the sacrifices of our hard earned rights, but we won't give up our right to collective bargaining." Walker was uncompromising, unions must go so corporations could feel safe to call Wisconsin home. Walker beat his democrat rival by a mere 5%, this governor was purchased almost exclusively by the Koch bros for the purpose of destroying the unions and now his work has begun.

This is Class warfare union busting at it's finest, or worst, but one thing is certain, It's on. In the words of Florance Reese's classic union song it's time for everyone in the world to ask themselves deep down "Which side are you on?" The Koch bros and their cabal of Koch head republicans are watching this battle for Madison very closely, if Scott (The Imperial) Walker can destroy unions in their long time stronghold of Wisconsin, they are going to do it everywhere until there is nothing left for working people in this world. It's not as if they say amongst themselves "Lets destroy most unions, but leave a few here and there." they want them all dead, much more than they care to seek and destroy any terrorist hiding in a cave somewhere. And they argue somewhat effectively that our unions are driving jobs out of the nation, as if union members voted to have the factories moved overseas. The only reason the factories go where people won't defend themselves is because their unscrupulous owners want to exploit labor for their own disproportionate gains. Madison may not be Tunisia, but america is not the middle east, I see in Madison, Wisconsin a spark that can begin to resolve thousands of years of inequities in a mass global uprising of the people, by the people, and for the people.

If the unions must be sacrificed so must the system that justifies their existence.