Saturday, October 31, 2020

Creative Normalization vs Dehumanization

My inner professor, just now, was giving me instructions in a dream. A group. I call them ABBA 2.0, because the music was all ABBA, but the group were mixed race, some LGBTQ. Maybe some were the grandkids of the original ABBA singers. It doesn't matter. It was the oversoul [God?] lecturing me in a dream. It was a dream, or vision.

Humanizing vs Dehumanizing

The songs and events were humanizing the singers.  They, go about their lives, singing songs while loving, living, driving around the Universal City in a tardis like van [bigger on the inside than the outside].   Abba 2.0 was singing these realities. And my professor oversoul was judging;

This is good.

Music, theater, Tv, are all propaganda. They can share uplifting matters of faith; love, goodwill, beauty, goodness, general good gain, personal gain.

Versus Evil

Lurking in the background is awareness, that forces of darkness are always trying to reverse the script. People who prejudge and dehumanize other humans, usually do so seeking a pretext to deny, take, refuse, destroy. They will push a narrative of conflict, limited resources, the other as perverse, inhuman, out to get you. We need Abba 2.0 to push back. The Zombie apocalypse is not a real thing. But seeing fellow humans as zombies, gives killing an excuse.

Anyway, Abba music is playing in the back of my head. I can go back to sleep.

Christopher Holte
 

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Getting Progressive Taxation Right

Suggestions:
Gross versus Net Taxation
Taxes should not fall on a person's basic expenses [gross not net]
Allow people to deduct food, shelter & work expenses
1. First Home mortgage or rent.
2. State taxes.
3. Transport to & from work & commerce.
4.  Capital goods should be deferred or deducted for everyone.
A. Deferred over a million dollars value.
B. Deducted if LT Million$.
5. Genuine capital investment has a cost or depreciation. Investments that don't depreciate are actually economic rent.
6. Define strictly & focus taxes on economic rent.
7. Economic Rent should be taxed progressively. 
Rates
1. Social Security & Medicare taxes should be calculated on everyone & subsidized for people with a net income less than 30k$. [2020 equivalent]
2. Payroll differentials should be subsidized for employees making less than 30k$ net or 15$ per hour net.
3. 2 can take the form of Food, Transport & Shelter credits.
4. Social Security accounts available to everyone thru retail or postal banks.
5. 0$ rate on net income less than 50k$
6. 10% rate on portion of income LT 100K$
7. 20% rate on net income over 100k$ and less than 200k$
8. 30% rate net 200k$ - 400k$
9. 40% 400k$ - 800k$
10. 50% 800k$ - 1,200k$
11. 60% 1,200k$ - 10M$
12. 70% 10M$ - 100M$
13. 80% 100M$ - 1B$
14.  90%  GT 1B$ 
All taxes should be indexed for inflation





Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Expanding and reforming the Judiciary

Four sets of inter-connected principles govern our country,

Federalist principles
The notion that people are stronger when they pool resources and work together across geographical boundaries and subboundaries.
Commonwealth Principles
The notion that some things are common to everyone and should not be individually monopolized:
    The Commons
    Common Law
    Common Good
    etc...
Republican Principles
Separation of Powers
Representation by subdivision and population
Res Publica -- our thing. John Locke translated the term to mean commonwealth.
Democratic Principles
The notion that “we the people” should participate in and have a say in Government.

“Judges...shall hold their Offices during good Behavior.”

The existence of an independent Judiciary is derived from Republican Principles. It is based on hard won observation that judges should be independent of executive power and hold their offices "during good behavior." It is up to both the legislature and the Judiciary, but first in the court of the legislature, to define what "during good behavior" means. The principle of separation of powers implies that Judges can only judge what good behavior is, if that is well defined by the legislature based on long standing principles.

Defining “During Good Behavior”

Congress has a duty to legislate the definition and parameters of what “during good behavior” means. They have done this somewhat. There is a code of Judicial ethics that applies to all the Federal Courts except the Supreme Court. That is odd. For the most part Judges hold their offices until resigning due to some scandal or being arrested. Congress can exercise judicial review over them. But often that goes awry as it tends to be policiticized in the process and to have nothing to do with their fitness as judges. This results in impeachments being rare and usually only following outrageous conduct. But the "on good behavior" implies that it would be constitutional for mechanisms to be created for the Judiciary to police itself. But first we must consider what the judiciary is, or should be.

The Judiciary is the Justice System

The founders argued about the formation of the Justice department. This is because, technically almost everyone working their is part of the court system. Judge, Jury and Executioners, all are part of the Judiciary, and thus are, or should be, officers of the courts, subject to strict standards of behavior higher than those of civilians. So technically should legislators be when passing laws that will impact the courts. The founders wanted the National Attorney General to be an officer of the court and to be independent of partisan politics or self interested actions. They left him as a "subordinate" officer of the president in the hopes that the President would have the judgement and virtues necessary to keep his job scoped (focused) on enforcing the laws of the country. The courts have considerable civil and criminal powers as a result. When those are bent to self interested purposes they become subversive of good government. So the issue of how to police the police remains fraught with peril and unresolved, as Executive, legislature and judiciary, are all too self interested to police themselves. I propose an administrative mechanism to correct this problem.

Administrative Law and Enforcement

Thanks to Trump we've seen the potential for abuse embodied in runaway executive power. The flaws there, were there all along, but it took a wannabe dictator to see how easy it was to subvert them.

Officers of the court have a duty to be filial to letter and spirit of law

No system is sailor proof. That is why administrative actions need to operate as if they were trial courts. Further, they need to operate as Jury Trial courts, if necessary, in order to be fully fair to both the people as a whole and those being scrutinized. We need every officer to be subject to periodic scrutiny. The courts and their officers are “officers of the people” and therefore should be accountable.

Entry Points

The law has to specify entry points and affirm that people have a right to substantial due process. Otherwise substandard due process becomes a checkoff point for the efficient tyranny of runaway legal process.

Informal Adjudication

There are informal judicial proceedings that may involve people otherwise not in the court system. Anyone who can, can and usually does moderate simple disputes. If substantive agreement between the parties can be achieved, a simple contractural agreement should be able to memorialize the informal adjudication. When judges are engaged in informal adjudication, the same rules should apply as when an Umpire calls strikes in a baseball game. Except, if agreement fails, then that becomes the entry point for formal judicial process. Judges should be encouraged to seek agreements in private disputes. Those agreements should be binding unless deception, force, threats or bribes were used to achieve them. They can be private unless there is a public interest in the outcome.

Formal Adjudication Entry Points

When agreement is not achieved or affirmed in writing, deception, force, threats or bribes occured, or there is significant public interest in an adversarial procedure occuring, then that is the entry point to formal adjudication. The first stage can be an informal Judged trial. If the parties agree to be bound by the judges decision, then that should be respected. If not a person should have a right to a jury trial. This goes for all judicial type proceedings. Informal or formal, all such proceedings should have at least two counsels available. One for each defendent, one for each person pursuing the matter. This should be true for administrative judging as well as traditional courts. Anyone with judicial powers, must be a judge and member of the judiciary, in order to hear any kind of formal case. And anytime a defendent or subject requests a jury the trial should use that jury.

Administrative Hearings

Administrative hearings are sometimes necessary to establish regulations, review petitions for citizenship, etc.... I believe they further should be used to scrutinize candidates for office and periodically review office holders. Such bodies should have the power to inquire, subpoena, do accounting reviews and scrutinize past performance to determine candidate or office holder fitness as prospective officers to receive a job or continue in office.

Informal and Formal Scrutiny

This is a judicial function and an administrative function. It therefore should be performed within the judiciary, as a regular function with an informal process followed by formal process if contested. It is not about criminal behavior or even civil torts, but about whether someone is behaving with integrity and is fit for their job. Therefore while it should use juries to weigh fitness for office, matters of crime and damages should be referred to different bodies and different judges. In the case of elected officers, the information should be published to the voters because the voters are the ultimate judges, through recall petitions or elections.

Oversight

In the case of unelected officers, hiring or firing decisions should be in the hands of the chain of command and the information also published. In any case such courts should have no power beyond subpoena and order enforcement (contempt of court or seizure of evidence). It would have the power to forward evidence of wrongdoing to an ordinary court. No judge should be involved in his or her own case or of someone related to them or in their own chain of command. Admin courts would receive IGs and be established in regulatory and oversight agencies. The body of rules in the law and not subject to over-ride.

Voir Dire

The judges would be subject to the same scrutiny. Juries would come from the jury pool and be selected by voir dire. The investigators would be selected from local journalists, and Government investigators, in a similar manner.

Codify regulations

Congress must establish a strict definition of what "during good behavior" means and let administrative courts enforce it. If they want to be really effective, they'd include themselves in the scrutiny laws.

I'm not a lawyer, so the details behind this probably need some work.

Expand the court

The Supreme court does not have to be 9 members. It could be 12, 13, or 15. But more importantly all judges, including the ones on SCOTUS should be subject to the same rules that define "during good behavior" for the entire judiciary and judicial impeachment [firing] should be the remedy for violating those rules. That should not take an amendment to COTUS.  Moreover, one of those rules should be no judge may be a prosecutor or judge in his own case.

The beauty here, is that were the courts to rule they don't have the power to police themselves, they still would [and should] have the power to report an impeachment recommendation to congress. The house could pass the bill to the Senate & the case record would already be available.

Given the amount of corruption revealed since Citizens United, the Congress might not even need to expand the numbers of judges, just remove badly behaving ones.


Fernando

I woke up in a dream where I was walking back to my house in the snow and a neighbor started singing Fernando. I woke up singing along. The song is about the Mexican Revolution, which started near El Paso with young people wanting a less corrupt government. The version I had was a medley of Abba voices & a baritone male.

My Great Grandpa was there in El Paso. My grandpa was a baby. My Great Granddad was a railroadman who had friends who were probably involved in the Mexican Revolution. But he was warned about the dangers and moved back to Vermont. 

The Mexican revolution exposed both the ideals and hypocrisy of our countries. Some of the major fighting started just across the border.  And Wilson sent Gen. Pershing to intervene in the war after Pancho Villa raided our side of the border.  Our involvement in WW1 was largely inspired by German efforts to get Mexico to attack us - or British efforts to make us think Germans were doing that. Influence operations are not a new phenomena.

div>https://t.co/IzPtQl7PAZ

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Out the Door

I walked out the door
and wandered into the night
I looked up at a star far away
and felt alone

Above me twinkled the lights
Images tell me they are suns
children of other nights
so far away, also alone.

Don’t fill the world with fear
We don’t have enough years
to live all our dreams,
life is fearful enough
why live the nightmares?

I don’t know today
How can I know tomorrow?
When we have each other
why hold onto sorrow?

The nights are dark, the nights are cold
inside it is warm,
let us stretch our muscles, warm our hearts
don’t let them burn like aching coals.

Old wounds remind us of too much foolishness.
But old pleasures comfort.
Old aches tell us we are still here.
I ache therefore I am.
You are my love,
I am a Descartes of Pain
We get used to it.
We hurt therefore we are alive.

We get used to it.
The illusions never hold,
unless they are skillful.
I’m getting old.

Chris, written in early summer, 2011.

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Why aren't they investigating Q?

Facebook is going after "Q" groups, taking them down, etc.... But those groups aren't the problem, "Q", whoever that is, is the problem. It's not an anonymous individual, somewhere there are servers and a team preparing and "dropping" Q Drops... doing propaganda...
As long as those exist, Q goes its merry insane propaganda, black and gray, conspiracy fomenting, way. Take out a "Q group" and q fanatics will get their fix elsewhere. It will get all the more popular.
I'm convinced Q is an FSB Team, working with American hires.
No hard evidence, and other folks are dealing with this insanity too.
For more:

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Flying across the stars

A million miles you went
Across vast seas,
Where I can't yet go,
Anchored as I am,
to children and grand children.

Pioneer you are,
Ranging 
across vast skies,
Planets and stars.
You navigate them unbound by earthly bonds
In perfect freedom
To go where you would go.
Except to return to my arms,
Where I could hold you again.

How I miss you, 
Sailing far from me.
Sometimes I seem to feel you
Surprisingly close.

One day,
My soul will be as free as you.
I hope, i pray,
will come at the end of this long night,
Such a glorious day.
And we can navigate the stars.