Thursday, March 23, 2017

We Gave the Russian's Oligarchs. Now they are giving back

When the Berlin Wall fell, cadres of mostly Republican, Pirates descended on Russia to "help" them privateer on "reforming" the Soviet System. They didn't really reform anything. What they did was pretty much sell all the assets of the country off to the highest bidders, who were usually connected and savvy former KGB agents, Party leaders, or simply savvy local pirates. The result was that the standard of living of the country fell, access to healthcare, jobs even food dropped. But a few people got immensely wealthy, either by successfully seizing Turf (Properties) or using their connections to be first in line for properties. American Carpetbaggers also got wealthy "helping" the Russians. All those people have now come home to loot US.

We "helped" the Russians transform themselves into a Kakistocracy. Now they are returning the favor.

For more on this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/opinion/following-the-russian-money.html

Sunday, March 19, 2017

The Tiger Prowls

I wrote this in 2011 by hand. Posted it in 2012 on facebook. This article from the Washington Post on Robin Williams brought me back to the poem. Before my wife died. Most of what was in it, I thought, was referring to other inmates in the first circle of hell. One in particular was a man struggling to find the money to keep his wife alive. But no, the Tiger was coming for my wife. Since then the Tiger keeps taking members of my family, immediate and extended. If ACA goes away, the tiger will take more people than before.

The Tiger prowls my corridors
I hear her sobbing in the front row
Does the Tiger argue with God?
If we are meant to find a peaceful world
Why did He create the Tiger?
 

Inspired by real life and this article in the Post:http://www.washingtonpost.com/…/2…/04/21/AFGGtLEF_story.html

Sunday, March 5, 2017

Rules for Survival -- Masha Gessen

Masha Gessen is warning people that we need to follow 6 basic rules if we want to survive the totalitarian regime that is installing itself in our country:

In My own Words
 
1. Autocrats Mean their Nasty Business
2. Appearances of Normality are a Trap
3. The establishment can't save Us
4. Outrage is necessary - They will Gaslight!
5. Compromise only fails with authoritarians.
6. This too will pass (maybe). Tyrants fail.

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Like an Aging Wine

My Dad was like an aging wine
Doing the right thing all of the time
I hear about corruption
I hear about evil
But when I think of my father
I think only virtue
 
My father was like an aging wine
Getting better and wiser all of the time
I hear about evil
I hear about injustice
I hear about crime
But my Dad was a hero
All of the time
 

RIP
His business was facts
Engineering real virtue
He left the world better
For all that he did
No games, nothing underhanded
What you saw is what you got.
 
No better man, no finer man
Could ever anyone find
He grew wiser.
He grew stronger
Like a fine aging wine
 
Never a complaint
Never a whine
He sailed the seas of life
Steady in calm, or stormy winds.
In this universe he was the best
I suppose the ineffable one took a sip
 
He woke up quietly this morning
Not to disturb Mom
He made his hot chocolate
And set it by his chair.
But before he could drink it
The ineffable one took him.
My father was like a fine wine
Aging sweeter all the time.
When the ineffable one saw it was his time.
The Creator of Space and Time, took a sip.
 
Christopher H. Holte, March 4, 2017

Putin's World; poison, psyops and controlled opposition

Psy-Ops, poison, calculated controlled opposition. What do you do when the Reds control both the Left and the Right? Worse what do you do when it turns out that gangs of oligarchs are trying to pit you against one another?

Welcome to Putin's world! Where governments start acting like Mafia, or Renaissance Borgia Rulers. What is nice to know is that they are just mafia, doing business and using politics and crimes to hide their pettiness & greed.

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Vetting and Accounting for Candidates and Officers

Improving Scrutiny of Government Officers

To modernize the Democratic party and counter the effective but diabolical marketing agitation-propaganda psy-ops of the Mercers, Bannons and their Ilk, we need to use electronic democracy to ensure that people have a direct channel to information, to working together and to communicating with elected officials and party leaders. We need to institute the lessons from OFA (see Post on Lessons from Organizing for America).

This will have the benefits of:

Countering targeted but deceptive moral messaging.
Ensuring that we get the best possible candidates for our efforts
Ensuring genuine debate and deliberation in choosing candidates, platforms and laws.
Countering deceptive advertising and big money.
Promoting local democracy and thus strengthening the democratic features of our system

Extreme Vetting of potential officers

Key to making any kind of government, and especially a Democratic republic, more functional and responsive to the people (representative) is to put effective controls over officers. That requires better scrutiny of candidate officers and accounting for their behavior at the end of their term. Any control mechanisms can be subverted, so the controls have to be designed well from the start and applied systematically and using the most virtuous people available to execute them.

Election Judges need Juries

In our society that means using Jury like structures to judge the deliberations. We already use election judges to manage elections. However, a just judicial system employs juries to ensure that decisions are made objectively, on the facts, and in the case of elections represents a broad spectrum of the population. Using election judges with the power to supervise the process but not boss, requires juries. The juries need to be run under well defined democratic deliberation procedures with the powers needed to get testimony & debates under oath and examine records. They should have the power to make recommendations, refer for prosecution and put out reports.

We need such juries involved because neither legislatures, Judges or Executives should be trusted to police themselves, even if they can, on principle. Judges are expected to be less political than legislators and executives, juries can be representative of a spectrum of points of view. They need formal oversight and that would be the purpose of election judges. Judges know how to both unobtrusive as possible but also ensure the panels follow best process. Eventually we can do this for the country as a whole yet. But for now we could make this part of the Democratic Party process.

Professional Investigators would drive the process. Election Juries would moderate debates, question candidates and review accounting data based on professional expertise.

Vetting and Accounting

The controls I'm talking about start with democratic features that worked well for hundreds of years in Athens. The greek terms for them are Dokimasia and Euthenia. There is a lot of talk about "extreme vetting", mostly in the context of preventing immigration. And politics has all been about "accountability" as a slogan for years. But the Greeks effectively implemented these concepts thousands of years ago. We can do the same thing, updating them for the Present.

Dokimasia δοκιμασία; Scrutiny as in Vetting/Testing
Euthuni Ευθύνη (modern pronunciation: Efthýni); Scrutiny as in Accountability
The greek term is also associated with Euthenics, which is the study of improving human conditions. And the Greek Goddess of Prosperity. As used by the Ancient Athenians it was a performance review that officers had to endure.

Essentially a Jury works with investigative officers to investigate and vet candidates for office or re-election. They would perform the following functions:

Each Jury would be constituted for a short term from the Jury Pool
They would perform or review background checks on the Candidates.
They would interview them under oath (eventually) and with a Judge overseeing the interview on their plank, history, past transgressions, etc...
Those deliberations would be public record.
They would Judge debates between candidates (threshold), under oath (objective), and question them.
They would have the power to issue a report with majority and minority opinions.
If someone lied to them they could request the Judge cite them for contempt.
If a candidate lies to the Jury, later they can be tried for Perjury.
A second Jury type structure would review the finances and performances of Officers at the end of their term.
These structures would be supplemented by electronic reporting of Town Halls, Leaders Meetings and a requirement that all of them are televised, shared electronically, and that people can participate electronically.

Implementation

Of course, the Democratic party can't implement this idea initially in it's full fledged form. The Juries ought to have powers to put people under oath, to question and to review records. The juries be formal but they'd have no prosecution power, they'd be like grand juries in that they could refer evidence to the courts for actual prosecution. We might not be able to force others do do this but we could institute these ideas within our party informally.

Trouble Reporting, Surveys and Votes

Vetting and Accounting also needs to be performed using electronic democracy. The candidates might not be under oath, but everything said or talked about would be a permanent record that we the people can use to judge their merits for reelection and such.

In addition to the vetting and accounting milestones, the system should provide issue reporting so that complaints and infractions can be reported, tracked, returned to periodically until marked as resolved. Anyone should be able to report an issue. And it should stay open until someone at a final accounting session moves it be closed as resolved by the Accounting "Jury." Or until the person reporting the incident or issue reports it as resolved.

Additionally, anyone should be able to suggest items for legislative consideration, propositions, amendments, etc... and these should be deliberated on until sufficient majorities support them to move them on to the formal legislature or take public action.

Encouraging Participation and Activism

We Democrats need Social Media. We need objective reporting. We need a systematic way to ensure that everyone's concerns are addressed. And we can do that by taking control of our electronic media and making it as "bottom up as Possible." More Democracy is the answer to the fascism we are encountering. Not circling wagons or hiding. The "other side" is using our emotions and prejudices to con us.

Dokimasia

Euthenia

Related Posts:
http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/02/lessons-from-organizing-for-america.html
http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2016/07/economic-democratic-subsidiarity-and.html
http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2016/09/sustainable-economic-policy-v.html
http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2016/06/principles-of-federalism.html
http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2016/12/implementing-democratic-subsidiarity.html
Further Reading
http://www.tawananna.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Principles-of-Athenian-Democracy.pdf
http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/article_democracy_overview?page=all
http://www.publicus.net/articles/edempublicnetwork.html
http://www.centreforedemocracy.com/
Wonky:
http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/11/elinor-ostrom-and-her-8-principles-of.html

Monday, February 27, 2017

East India Company and Islamic Jihad

I wrote this post after reading "God's Terrorists" by Charles Allen. I ended up writing several posts based on that book. But then Trump made his incredibly stupid comments about General Pershing and I realized another reason why people need the book. It is ostensibly about Wahabiism and Islamic Jihad. But it also touches on the execrable behavior of the East India Company, which was a pirate outfit that wound up privatizing much of the Far East, and wrecking India:

God's Terrorists; East India Company & Terror

This remarkable book by Charles Allen called "God's Terrorists" is writing about the birth of the Wahabi movement and Islamic Jihadism, in both India and the Mideast.