Bad Constitution versus Unconstitutional
The other day I wrote a blog entry based on Naomi Wolfe's article. She made the case that the Domestic Security Alliance Council had assaulted Occupy from before they were created. But what is this organization, what does it do, and why would it be involved with trying to crush protest or democratic actions aimed at reigning in wall street's corruption and excesses?
Who is the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC)?
The answer to that question becomes obvious from looking at it's constitution (charter), purpose, membership and mission. Here is it's homepage statement of purpose:
The Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector, enhances communications and promotes the timely and bidirectional effective exchange of information keeping the nation's critical infrastructure safe, secure and resilient. DSAC advances elements of the FBI and DHS missions' in preventing, deterring, and investigating criminal and terrorism acts, particularly those effecting interstate commerce, while advancing the ability of the U.S. private sector to protect its employees, assets and proprietary information.
http://www.dsac.gov/Pages/index.aspx taken September 9 2013
Analyzing this mission statement one sees that there are a number of potential built in conflicts of interest here. For one thing is the DSAC serving the interests of the country as a whole, or it's member companies and their industries? From the Occupy experience, it seems more likely the later than the former. Once again the premise (bait) is that such an organization is created to protect against "terrorism" but the switch is that it is also there to protect the prerogatives of the private sector.
But it gets curiouser and curiouser as one enquires:
The DSAC Leadership Board is formed by approximately 25 representatives from various organizations. The DSAC Leadership Board (DLB) represents a diverse cross-section of private sector organizations based on industry, geographic region, and other factors. The individual members of the DLB will serve as the subject matter experts for their respective industries.
Again, this seems innocuous. We need representative bodies for all the stakeholders in our country. But, wait, that is the problem. Where is labor? Where are teachers, miners, employees of these various industries? Look at the following list:
Company Name Company Name 3M Archer Daniels Midland American Express Bank of America Barclays Boeing Bristol-Myers Squibb Bridgestone Firestone CIGNA Citigroup Coca-Cola ConocoPhillips Ernst & Young FedEx Corp Dupont General Electric Kellogg's KMPG International JetBlue Mastercard Medco Health Solutions Merck & Company NextEra Energy RBS/Citizens USAA Walmart Walt Disney Company Time Warner United Airlines Src:http://www.dsac.gov/Pages/dlb.aspx taken 9/9/2013
Badly Constituted
No teachers, no activists, no members from organizations like Occupy. On the contrary, Occupy is the natural enemy of a list like this. No members from Unions. Again, this is a list of people who have a personal stake in attacking labor. Bad constitution leads to organizations without democratic features. The democratic feature here being the republican one of membership from all the stakeholders affected by the organizations decisions.
All these are industries, with a "private, separate" agenda seeking their own advantage over other stakeholders. In a similar manner to our trade negotiations we are trusting lawyers who work almost entirely for private companies to also represent their customers, employees, retirees, etc... There is not even an expectation of trust that they will actually in fact represent any of these people. That is where these boards go wrong. They are purely executive organizations run for the "private, separate advantage of their board members. If those board members were to represent the greater good, their stockholders would revolt and their CEO's would fire them.
So without even getting into the personalities and histories of the members of this organization I already know it is badly constituted, is a tyrannical organization (Locke's definition of Tyranny as power for "private, separate advantage"), and is going to engage in mischief. It's badly constituted, and because of that is a tyrannical organization that if it happens to act any different is acting out of it's chartered structure.
I have a lot more to say and had written it all out in draft form when I misplaced the draft. But the core point is simple and I don't need all that to make it. Why would greedy or powerful folks want to defend the letter of a charter over it's intent? Because that is how tyranny works. One can be legally "constitutional" and have a badly constituted organization. And a badly constituted organization is unconstitutional by design. But one will never get a corrupt lawyer or Judge to affirm that without changing the judges and their education on the subject. It has to be changed by changing the constitution of the organization. A government that is constituted as a Republic, but whose organelles are badly constituted is a badly constituted government. The tyranny is enabled by the charter.
Thus in our country efforts to make our government less tyrannical have often been defeated by tyrannical courts taking advantage of bad constitution.
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