Politics: Making America Safe for People Again

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Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Local Politics
  • 2.1. What's on the ballot?
  • 2.2. How do I vote?
  • 2.3. How can I impact the process?
  • 2.4. Where can I learn more?
  • 2.5. What next?
• 3. Resources
  • 3.1. County
  • 3.2. State
  • 3.3. National

1. Introduction

If these are our guiding tenets, why are we (the people) being pushed around by big business, big religion, big government, lobbiests, organized crime (including, again, big business) and "the best Congress money can buy"?

It happens because most of us are not doing our share. Sure, politics is messy. But each honest citizen has to get in there and mix it up, or all the rules will be made of, by, and for special interests.

Family and career usually narrow our focus, until some event retriggers interest in the polity. For some it is a local toxic waste dump. For others, the loss of a child to unsafe products. For me it was three events over a period of a year:

• The December 1999 Seattle WTO police riot. That was my old neighborhood (and neighbors) being beaten and gassed by unidentified LEO's (law enforcement officers) in riot gear. Yet the LEO's I've known personally wouldn't have let it happen, much less participated. What the heck was going on? Notice that I have no beef with the police locking up window smashers. I'm talking about police gassing, kicking, and clubbing peaceful protesters and local residents who had nothing to do with the protests. And while I'm not happy with the assaults themselves, I am far more concerned by the "code of silence" aftermath, the chest thumping by the King County Sheriff's Department, and the total lack of judicial response.

  December, 2000 . The police and judicial response to the WTO anniversary march went along the same lines: peaceful protesters, police surround them, then claim failure to disperse (but do not allow it to happen), and make mass arrests (including journalists and passers-by). The charade was make complete by first arresting and then dismissing charges against the labor leaders who were there expressly to coordinate peaceful and lawful assembly. The whole process is pure intimidation. New police chief, same results.

  April 2006 I've now learned that imprisioning in situ is apparently a specific police tactic for protestors who are non-violent and too honorable to be attacked outright, but still considered inconvenient in the eyes of the powerful. Funny, I thought that holding people against their will and without court order was called kidnapping.

• My daughter was charged with skipping class. Skipping so many in fact that we were threatened with jail time for both parents and child. The county court personnel made it emphatically clear our best course was to plead guilty, sign a consent form, and thereby accept jail time if it happened again. We knew the charges were false, so we stood our ground. As we investigated, we found the school's records were at least 40% in error, and that the bookkeeping process for excuse slips was a comical disaster. We eventually got the case dropped, but not after many threatening calls and letters from the school, and many an anxious moment. That wasn't the civics lesson I wanted my daughter to learn.

• The US Supreme Court-mandated coup d'etat of 2000, naming George W. Bush president. The gloves are off -- power has never been more nakedly used to usurp democracy. [Unless you believe there was something fishy about a string of assassinations in 1963 and 1968.]

2. Local Politics

All politics are local

2.1. What's on the ballot?

• The single best source is the League of Women Voters pamphlet, put out each year by county.

• SnoCo elections and voter FAQ http://www1.co.snohomish.wa.us/Departments/Auditor/Divisions/Elections_Voting/FrequentlyAskedQuestions.htm Sometimes the downloadable files move around, so check here if the individual links are broken.

• Elective positions, compiled from county and state sites. This list is not legally binding, but is useful to get a sense of what is out there. Not all positions come up on every election.

• Filings http://www.co.snohomish.wa.us/auditor/Elections/filings/index-cndfil-CMP.html

• Past election http://www.co.snohomish.wa.us/auditor/elections/ecurrent.htm

2.2. How do I vote?

• Washington State voter registration form http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/register.aspx. For new or moved from different precinct. Can request absentee ballot directly on this form.

• Snohomish County permanent absentee ballot form http://www.co.snohomish.wa.us/Documents/Departments/auditor/elections/voters/AbsenteeApp.pdf. To be used if you are already registered to vote and just need to change to absentee ballot. To understand why this is important, see Electronic_voting

• Polling place. See the SnoCo FAQ above

2.3. How can I impact the process?

This is where real politics begins -- helping shape the issues and choose the candidates which go onto the ballot. You have to make some tough choices here. (Sitting on the sidelines is a choice -- but not an honorable one.) This generally means you join an existing political party. See: http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/parties.aspx

For example, I am fiscally conservative, socially tolerant, environmentally committed, and determined to protect liberty and the processes necessary for liberty. This translates into a mixture of Green Party, Libertarian Party, and Democratic Party. (The Republicans used to be fiscally conservative but went haywire under Reagan and haven't recovered. They haven't been environmentally committed since Teddy Roosevelt.)

I've thrown my lot in with the Democrats. I figure the State Platform looks pretty good, the candidates tend to be sane, and any differences of opinion can be worked on a case by case basis. To learn more, I read:

Robert Allen Rutland. "The Democrats, From Jefferson to Clinton". Louisiana State University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-8262-1034-1.

Then I joined various meetups, MoveOn, etc. and finally made my way to the official party organizations:

• 32LD Democrats http://www.32democrats.org/ The 32nd Legislative District (LD) overlaps King and Snohomish Counties.

  NOTE: Precinct Committee Officers (PCO) are the true grassroots of politics. They are the door-by-door, neighbor-to-neighbor coordinators. They are organized by Legislative District. The 32LD still has precincts needing PCO's.

• SnoCo Democrats http://www.snowa-democrats.org/

• Washington State Democrats. http://www.wa-democrats.org. See especially the state platform and the links to campaigns.

• The parties operate within certain rules, on a tight schedule. These are defined by the Secretary of State. See: http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/

2.4. Where can I learn more?

Each party is trying to convince impressionable voters that its positions are the best. Madison Avenue-based "persuasion science" dominates this process, with focus groups, carefully tuned ads, polls, spinmeisters, and astroturf "grassroots" campaigns.

It takes a pretty sophisticated citizen to even detect the gamesmanship, much less see through it to the reality. This is especially tough when the TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, movies, and major ad buyers are all owned by a relatively small set of people. (People whose interests don't coincide very well with those of the USA.)

First, you need a practical lesson in politics:

Loft, Bill (ed). "Politics the Wellstone Way" Wellstone Action, University of Minnesota Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8166-4665-1

Next, you need alternative points of view. See: alternative_media.

There is no substitute for doing your own homework. Meet people, research issues, and report your findings. Democracy is a roll-up-your-sleeves, hands-on process.

2.5. What next?

2004-11-04: Immediately after the Nov 2 2004 election a lot of folks were talking about being depressed. Personally, I was outraged, and wrote it up in a note about the future of US politics.

2005-01-16: Congress accepted the Ohio electors. Habeas corpus is a distant memory. Torture is admissable in court. Peak Oil is on its way. Oil producers and central banks are shifting from dollars to Euros. Multi-millionaires are forming a compound in Montana protected by Secret Service and helicopters.

Looks like we've gone to hell. Time to get the homesteading equipment ready for service, and brush up on hunting and fishing skills.

2006-12-09: Despite yet more HAVA-induced vote fraud, Dean's Democratic Party 50-state strategy and a potent grassroots internet effort brought home the House and Senate. Next problem is that the Wealth Party (Republican and Democratic) is already working backroom deals to keep the Peoples Party (mostly Progressives) at bay. The trick is to get the facts on the table. The American people are not dumb, even if they are badly misinformed at the moment.

3. Resources

3.1. County

• Snohomish County Home Page http://www.co.snohomish.wa.us/

• Snohomish County Law Library http://www.co.snohomish.wa.us/council/Law%20Library/LawLibrary.htm

• Folio Infobases (Municipal) http://www.mrsc.org/codes.htm

3.2. State

• Washington Constitution http://www.courts.wa.gov/education/constitution/article12.cfm

• All Law - State Resources - Washington http://www.alllaw.com/state_resources/washington/government/

• Foster Law Offices : Legal Links http://www.fosterlaw.com/links/link_org.html

• Access Washington http://access.wa.gov/government/awstate.asp

• Washington State Courts - State Law Library http://www.wa.gov/courts/lawlib/home.htm

• WA Law Search http://search.leg.wa.gov/pub/textsearch/default.asp

• FindLaw: State Resources: Washington http://www.findlaw.com/11stategov/wa/laws.html

• WA State Courts http://www.courts.wa.gov/

3.3. National

• Groklaw http://www.groklaw.net/

• FreeLaw http://freecaselaw.com/

• Openlaw http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/

• United States Code http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/

• Search Executive Orders http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/search/executive-orders.html

• GunCite http://www.guncite.com/index.html

  The 2nd Amendment is the "reset button on the Constitution". Every voting citizen should own one or more guns. But anyone attempting to fight the local police, local SWAT teams, National Guard, Delta Force, US Marines, and the full might of the Armed Services is a (dangerous, suicidal) fool.

  By the time you have sufficient dedicated soldiers and support in the citizenry to carryout and win a full scale revolution, you have more than enough influence to win any election anywhere in the nation. So far, even the power brokers feel they must abide by the outcome of elections. Or at least lopsided victories.

  The hard part is getting the citizenry informed at all, in the face of orchestrated mass media pabulum. For now, video cameras, Freedom of Information suits, and web sites are more powerful than guns.

  2004-08-06 I wrote the above in 2000. At the time I was hoping elections would work. I was very worried the military would step in and enforce the coup d'etat. Well, by now even the career military is seeing the GOP may not be the best friend of either itself or the USA. Further, I'm seeing an explosion in grassroots politics. People are coming out of their insular lives, ready to meet up, join up, speak up, and act up.

  There has also been an explosion in alternative media. Democracy may have been in a drugged stupor, but it wasn't quite dead. GW Bush and his neocon cronies have lit a fire they cannot quench.

• U.S. Federal Census http://www.firstct.com/fv/uscensus.html

  A census is needed to establish congressional representation, and to plan for a citizen draft in time of war. Anything else is a market survey on behalf of corporations.

  2004-08-06 Hmmm, not just market surveys. Also used to find muslims, for yet more FBI ethnic profiling. Can you say "Richard Jewell"?

• Emerging Law on the Electronic Frontier

• What's Wrong With Content Protection

• 4CITE http://WWW.4CITE.ORG/

  I've had several different careers, each associated with professional organizations. Interestingly, all those organization think the US Law on digital content is corrupt.

• Police Brutality http://www.hrw.org/reports98/police/index.htm

  Nothing new here, folks. The US does it just like all the other bad guys. It is deliberate and it is systematic, not isolated incidences. However, I blame the power brokers who put the LEO's in the line of fire more than the LEO's themselves. Sure, there are some nasty, cruel bullies wearing badges. But what scares me are the decent people wearing badges who feel they must protect the bullies. The War on Drugs and the resulting SWAT-ification has had a devastating effect on police/community relations.

• THOMAS -- U.S. Congress on the Internet http://thomas.loc.gov/

• Do It Yourself Congressional Investigation http://www.crp.org/diykit/