Once upon a time an evil witch visits a kingdom and poisons the central well with a potion that drives people mad. The next morning all who drink from that well go crazy. The king, however, knew about this in advance, and didn’t drink from the communal well. The next day, those who drank the poisoned water came to the king and accused him of being the crazy one. The king, aware of what had transpired, was faced with a dilemma: drink from the well and lose his sanity like the rest of his subjects, but remain king; or don’t drink, remain sane, but be swept from power by those who would view his very sanity as madness.

Today in our nation those who refrain from drinking from the well poisoned by the establishment witches are categorized, marginalized, and labeled extremists, crazies, conspiracy theorists, and other adjectives along the same lines:

The political candidate who choose to run as a ‘people’s candidate,’ not the establishment candidate representing this special interest or that foreign interest’s agenda, is referred to as an extremist.

Those groups who fight for accountability and demand justice are dismissed as radicals.

Those in government who dare to come forward, speak up, and tell the truth are labeled as disgruntled whistleblowers.

Those activists who dare to ask for ‘real’ investigations in matters such as 9/11 are grouped and stuffed in a bucket as insane conspiracy theorists.

We have the witches of the establishment pouring the poisoned concoction into the communal wells. Maybe a little bit of pseudo patriotism mixed with a fair amount of fear-mongering laced with dependency-inducing barbitals topped with fluffy fantasy puffs. Maybe three portions of false security shaken with two portions of false prosperity hallucinogenic elixir blended with a shot of apathy-enhancing liquor. Maybe all of the above and more.

Equally if not more importantly we have the poison-water bearers. After all, the objective of poisoning the majority is too important to be left to chance. What if some decide to collect rainwater instead of going to the well? What if some chose river water over well water? You see, for the poisoned well plot to work, most if not all should drink from the poisoned wells, so what better way to ensure than having water bearers deliver to most if not all. The mainstream poison-water-bearers do just that: take the water poisoned by the establishment witches, put it into easy-to-swallow portions and easy-to-drink containers, and then deliver it to as many people as they can. Think establishment witches’ 9/11-national security state-wars concoction, and then think New York Times and Washington Post. You see how it works? Right. You take the establishment poisons, mainstream media poisons-bearers, and you get a whole a lot of poisoned people acting crazy as hell. And if by any chance you have refrained from drinking, then you better be ready to be singled out, pointed to, and called a nut and a crazy.

In a recent article at LWR Tom woods addresses this issue extremely well:

Extremism is a sacred word in the bipartisan lexicon, solemnly reserved for willful and persistent deviations from the holy mainstream. For that reason, it is not extremism to favor a policy that led to 2 million deaths in Vietnam. Our mainstream politicians supported that, you see. It is not extremism to have favored the indefensible war in Iraq, which led to at least hundreds of thousands of deaths and four million people displaced. How could it be? Why, the Washington Post and the New York Times favored it!

How about a sanctions policy that led to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children? Even if this statistic were false, American officials, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former US Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson, said half a million dead Iraqi children were “worth it.” No mainstream outlet I am aware of has referred to Albright and Richardson as extremists.

For that matter, no one has been called an extremist for thinking it’s all right for people to stick their hands down your pants at the airport. This is a matter of public policy, citizen.

…

You can read the entire article here and watch his related YouTube clip here.

The potent concoction for the 2012 elections is almost ready. What you see right now is the aperitif being served by the mainstream-poison-water-bearers to stimulate the thirst and appetite for the coming potion. I am going to pass, and then pass again. Would you care to join the sane crowd and be called crazy by crazies and dare to hope to have the majority with you this time around?
 

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It was a rainy April day in 2004, and I was in the office of one of my professors at the university’s Public Policy Graduate Department. I was having one of those defeated and disillusioned moments that kept recurring during that time period. I think you would have found it justifiable: I had been slapped with two separate gag orders via two separate invocations of state secrets privilege, I had just witnessed the Congress being hit with another gag order in my case via retroactive classification issued by the Justice Department, we were at war in Iraq based on lies, the PATRIOT ACT was in full swing, secret kidnapping and detention operations by our paramilitary were taking place all over the world, congressional corruption and revolving door scandals were popping up one after another…So, you see, all this and being almost at the end of my masters program specializing in US public policy, where what we were taught didn’t match reality on the ground (US politics and government) whatsoever, gave me a certain degree of justification for feeling  the way I felt that day.

Sitting across from my professor I threw out the questions: Why can’t I see a single instance of practices indicative of our so-called system of checks and balances? Isn’t it more like three illusionary branches but actually one system serving the interests of a very few? Isn’t our nation headed towards a police state; fast and furiously? How do all these in-theory-only fanciful policy concepts apply to real-politics on the ground? …

My professor smiled and nodded. After letting me vent, he calmly replied:

“You are young. You have to look at what’s been happening and place it in historical context. If you look at the US political climate over the last century you’ll see this Pendulum Trend. Things get really bad for civil liberties and good governance for a few years, sometimes even for a decade or more, then, things swing back the other way, and you see Renaissance-Like changes towards the other direction. We go through a hawkish period with wars, and then, we get into a more pacifist mode. We get a conservative administration and lose some of our welfare gains, but a few years later we get a liberal government and put in place new welfare programs…Things don’t stay the same. It’s been only three years or so since 9/11. Very soon people will get over the initial shock and fear, and they’ll push out the current national security state of government…This is the cyclical nature of US politics…”

I looked up at him, and asked:

“So you are saying this Pendulum will swing the other way? All by itself? So we just sit tight and wait for this pendulum to swing the other way?”

He shook his head, and replied:

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, but yes, time takes care of some of that. Other actors outside the state will play their role…you know, various NGOs, etc. Changes in the economy will be another ingredient…of course, the media…the Bush administration will be replaced, and most likely, it will be replaced by the other party, bringing in a liberal oriented administration… So, yes, give it some time and you’ll see the Pendulum swing the other way…”

Tell you what: I have heard this ‘Pendulum Swing’ story-theory many many times since; especially from academians, tunnel-vision analysts, crusty politicians, and to a certain extent, from the general public – those with a bit higher education who consider themselves politically involved and savvy. The more I study history, the further I delve into our real governance record, the more I look at the last half century’s graph on fluctuation of the real ingredients (here at BFP we call these the real diseases, the macro causes)…well, the more I get pi..ed with this utterly nonsensical and false yet widely-held notion of ‘just wait for the ‘Pendulum Swing.’

The only area where the ‘pendulum swing’ applies, and even that with a major caveat, is this yoyo illusionary cosmetic change of party every few years. That major caveat being: two parties as two sides of the same coin; the monopolistic power above made to look like a duopoly where naïve and ignorant citizens are led to believe they’ve been given two choices – Product A packaged in Red & Product B packaged in Blue. If you haven’t read my pieces on this, the ones that brought loads of attacks due to ‘me not giving enough time or chance to Obama,’ read the pieces here  and here. You don’t have to go far back in history to see this exact phenomenon. Just take a look at the ‘actual’ records for the Bush and Obama administrations, and you’ll see that on everything that actually counts (again we are talking macro level factors) the records match; Product A (Bush) in Red & Product A (Obama) in Blue, and of course, beneath the two, all the poor suckers who are still under the illusion of having a say, having a choice, when it comes to their votes.

Back to the damaging misguided illusionary ‘Pendulum Swing.’ If poor suckers count the same product in different packaging as governance choice, the two-party system as two opposite ends of governance, then they certainly can argue that this ‘pendulum swing’ notion applies. I’ll leave this group alone, and go to non-suckers, almost all my known readers who look for the master factors, the big bubbas of US politics-governance determinants: the ever expanding Military Industrial Complex, the  ever extending and expanding federal police and intelligence sector, the ever increasing campaign finance domination by the very few, the ever ongoing-increasing government-elected official corruption and revolving door practices, the ever expanding US wars (and their ever increasing costs), the ever failing-damaging hypocrisy-ridden foreign policy practices, the ever diminishing civil liberties and citizen privacy rights…We pretty much named all major trends-determinants-ingredients of US politics-governance, and one look at the record on these will tell you, with 100% certainty, that NO, there ain’t no swinging pendulum involved in those things that matter and really count. It is a myth. If there is a pendulum it is broken and totally malfunctioning; it is stuck, travelling only in one direction, and going fast, my friends.

I came across the following quotes in a well-written article published at New Internationalist Magazine:

Some people take comfort in the back-and-forth sway of the political pendulum. It is part of the greatness of our ‘two-party system’, they contend; it reflects the American aversion to extremism on ‘either side’. For the mainstream media, charting each degree of the pendulum’s swing is the essence of the 24-hour news cycle.

The problem is that focusing on the to-and-fro of electoral politics, like staring at the hypnotist’s medallion, can lull you into a trance. Once there, it is easy to miss those political trends that transcend episodic US elections. A graph of these trends would not show undulating curves that rise and fall based on shifts in Congress. It would be marked by arrows pointing steadily upwards.

…

In recent decades, raising the budget for US military spending has been a bipartisan passion. That budget now amounts to around $680 billion per year, more than seven times the military spending of the US’s nearest rival, China, and enough to sustain a network of more than 700 bases scattered globally across some 130 countries.

…

Economic inequality is another arrow, and perhaps the most distressing one. Since the 1970s, the once-garish sight of a CEO making more than 250 times the pay of an average worker has become the norm. This, combined with the steady growth of corporate power, has given the wealthy a firm hold on the levers of our democratic politics. A landmark Supreme Court decision in January, which eliminated restrictions on corporate spending in elections, only strengthened their grasp.

…

When I was living in other parts of the world I came across oppressed, repressed and abused people, the perpetrators being the government and or the monarchy’s extensions. Some of these people, not the majority but the irate minority, had the fire in their eyes and the will and the energy to fight for change. There were others, perhaps not far from being the majority, who took pride in their faith-religion, and refused to do anything about their conditions; they even smiled about it. They would be open and quickly tell you why they refused taking actions and just waited, and that with such conviction. You see, their religious leaders whose strings were in the hands of that same oppressive government told them, day in and day out, that their suffering was temporary since it was only worldly suffering, and that when they died, when they entered the land of eternity, they would be handsomely rewarded for all their suffering and live happily, and forever. They hung on to this notion administered to them like opiates by those in power; it was their version of ‘Pendulum Swing,’ it was what pacified and lulled them, and it was exactly what the powers above wanted.

Maybe my experiences rightfully or wrongfully helped shape my loath and disdain for this utter nonsense called ‘Pendulum Swing’ and the elite advocates I keep encountering here and there. It is here in my home country today that I often see those lulled and pacified, some even smiling, doing nothing and waiting for their pendulum to actually swing…magically. How about ‘You’? Are you waiting for the Pendulum to Swing?

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According to the latest reports the degree of allegiance to Israel and its lobby has taken center stage in two Chicago election campaigns for a congressional seat. As far as the two candidates, the incumbent Jan Schakowsky and the Republican Joel Pollak, are concerned, this race and the issues are not about the tanking economy, over a trillion of dollars in deficit or unemployment, neither it is about our disastrous state of civil liberties, quagmire state of our wars, or speedily declining foreign standing and dignity. No.  The number one issue for both candidates is the level of allegiance to the State of Israel, the approval rating from Israel’s number one US lobby AIPAC, and the degree of religiosity in Judaism. The main question and top competition arena in Schakowsky v. Pollak is ‘Who does and will do more and better to represent and protect the Jewish interest?’ And so far our current representative, Ms. Jan Schakowsky seems to be way ahead (the emphasis are all mine;-):

Pollak tends to carry a map of the Middle East with him on the campaign trail, and to present it to the voters. Last week he visited the reform synagogue of B’nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim in Deerfield, Illinois, which hosted a debate between the two candidates. He spread the copy of the Google map in his possession and announced to the audience: “My focus tonight will be Israel.”

…

Pollak’s main obstacle is that Schakowsky was labeled ‘kosher’ by the pro-Israel community, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a prominent lobby group, has praised her work.

…

I’d say Schakowsky is way ahead since her closeted ties and certain long-term commitments go beyond AIPAC, and extend to other Israeli and Turkish subsidiaries all operating under the main lobby’s umbrella.

Do you remember the cover-page story on Jan Schakowsky’s questionable loyalties and skeletons last November? Don’t be hard on yourself if you don’t have a clue since the Israel-Loving mainstream media made sure it stayed quiet and censored. The AmCon Magazine dared to explore the topic after my under oath testimony in Schmidt v. Krikorian case:

So the FBI was monitoring these connections going from a congressman to a congressman’s assistant to a foreign individual who is connected with intelligence to other intelligence people who are located at different embassies in Washington. And all of this information is in an FBI file somewhere?
EDMONDS: Two sets of FBI files, but the AIPAC-related files and the Turkish files ended up converging in one. The FBI agents believed that they were looking at the same operation. It didn’t start with AIPAC originally. It started with the Israeli Embassy. The original targets were intelligence officers under diplomatic cover in the Turkish Embassy and the Israeli Embassy. It was those contacts that led to the American Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations and then to AIPAC fronting for the Israelis. It moved forward from there.

…
GIRALDI: So the investigation stopped in Washington, but continued in Chicago?

EDMONDS: Yes, and in 2000, another representative was added to the list, Jan Schakowsky, the Democratic congresswoman from Illinois. Turkish agents started gathering information on her, and they found out that she was bisexual. So a Turkish agent struck up a relationship with her. When Jan Schakowsky’s mother died, the Turkish woman went to the funeral, hoping to exploit her vulnerability. They later were intimate in Schakowsky’s townhouse, which had been set up with recording devices and hidden cameras. They needed Schakowsky and her husband Robert Creamer to perform certain illegal operational facilitations for them in Illinois. They already had Hastert, the mayor, and several other Illinois state senators involved. I don’t know if Congresswoman Schakowsky ever was actually blackmailed or did anything for the Turkish woman.

…

I think it would be wise to also concentrate on Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s convicted husband, Bob Creamer. After all, this is Chicago! The following is from what I wrote a while back titled ‘Chicago! Not the Musical, but the Action-Suspense Docudrama!’

In March 2004 Schakowsky’s husband, lobbyist Robert Creamer, who was also executive director of the Illinois Public Action Fund, was indicted in federal court on 16 counts of bank fraud involving three alleged check-kitting schemes in the mid-1990s, leading several banks to experience shortfalls of at least $2.3 million. Later he pleaded guilty to tax violations and bank fraud for writing rubber checks and failing to collect withholding tax from an employee. Here is a report in USA Today:

Creamer, 58, a prominent Chicago political consultant, was accused of swindling nine financial institutions of at least $2.3 million while he ran a public interest group in the 1990s.Creamer told reporters Wednesday there was “no doubt that my actions a decade ago were very foolish and placed myself, my family, the organization and many of those who worked with me at considerable risk.”The indictment alleged Creamer caused a series of insufficiently funded checks and wire transfers to be drawn on accounts he controlled as executive director of the Illinois Public Action Fund. According to the indictment, he allegedly then used the inflated balances to pay the group’s expenses and own salary.

And here is more:

The husband of U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) will spend five months in prison for committing bank fraud as part of his efforts to keep afloat a nonprofit group that he ran. U.S. Senior District Judge James Moran handed down the punishment on Wednesday to Robert Creamer, who also will serve 11 months under house arrest.

The sentence fell far short of the three-year prison term that prosecutors were seeking for Creamer, who pleaded guilty last year to writing a series of bad checks worth millions of dollars to numerous banks to generate cash — a scheme known as check-kiting.

…

Now, Rep. Schakowsky served on the organization’s board during the time the crimes occurred. She happened to sign all the IRS filings along with her husband during this almost decade long of … basically embezzlements. She was fully aware of her husband’s additional income of $100,000 from these fraudulent funds. Yet, this woman, who happens to be a Representative, claimed she had no idea, that she had not noticed, that she had not known or suspected.

I don’t know about you but no matter under which one of the two scenarios – she didn’t know or she knew and went along – this woman should have been kicked out of her congressional seat. Let’s take the first scenario:

If she is so dumb and stupid as to sign all these joint IRS documents and it doesn’t register that there are unaccounted for millions of dollars, she is not competent to be a congresswoman. PERIOD! If she is so irresponsible and intelligence-wise challenged to serve on this organization’s board, sign all the minutes and papers and bank dealings, and yet doesn’t realize millions of dollars are coming out of nowhere, then she is not capable and mentally unfit to occupy her current congressional seat, and should be removed. PERIOD! So here is the question for Schakowsky’s constituents: If she is telling the truth shouldn’t they be voting this uber gullible, stupid woman out of office?

Under the second scenario that we assume she knew: she is a criminal, and she should have joined her husband in jail. She was an accomplice in swindling nine financial institutions of at least $2.3 million.

As for Robert Creamer’s connections, we’ve already established his connection to Blagojevich :

Jan Schakowsky contributed $28,000 to Blagojevich, endorsed him in 2002 and 2006, and raised money for his campaign through 2008. Her convicted felon husband Robert Creamer worked for Rod Blagojevich before pleading guilty to tax and bank fraud.

From 2001-2002, Friends of Blagojevich paid more than $541,000 to a political consulting firm run by Schakowsky’s husband, Robert Creamer, according to state records. The firm, Strategic Consulting Group, reportedly provided “consulting,” “field consulting” and “predictive dialer” services to the Blagojevich campaign.

…

Okay, you can read the entire piece on Chicago here

Come on proud Chicagoans. Isn’t it time to set things straight? Are you going to stand up, pick a ‘real candidate,’ and cast your vote with conscious? Or are you going to say ‘oh well, this is Chicago!’ ?!
 

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The Electoral College shall be abolished. Article 1, Section 2, Clause 1; Article 1, Section 3, Clause 1 and Article 2, Section 1, Clause 2 shall be amended to provide for random computer  selection of all Federal Elective offices from Internal Revenue Service tax rolls of citizens within the appropriate Congressional District, State and Nation respectively according to existing Constitutional requirements. This amendment shall supersede the Fifteenth, Seventeenth and Nineteenth amendments.

Proposed Constitutional Amendment

As I look back over my experiences as a voting citizen since 1972, I have viewed with increasing alarm the growing disconnect between the citizenry and the leaders and representatives we elect. I have watched the increased growth and power of a Political Class disconnected from the needs of the citizenry as well as the alarming increase and importance of money in our electoral system. This corruptive influence of money on elections has further isolated the aforementioned political class by allowing a defacto form of two-tier citizenship. One class of the wealthy and corporate citizens who have real influence on government, another, lower class of regular citizens like you and me who have little or no influence on the actions of our government. Over the course of those decades, I have seen the Congress repeatedly try and either fail to enact significant campaign finance reform or have it’s efforts frustrated by contrary legal decisions that enshrine that unequal influence on our elections. This view was most recently reinforced by the Supreme Court’s activist ruling in their recent decision on Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission.

As a result of these actions, I have been forced to conclude that the pernicious influence of money on politics has become a clear and present danger to the functioning of our Constitutional Democratic Republic. I have further been forced to conclude that the elective system we have currently in place no longer provides for Real Representative Government responsive to the needs of the citizenry at large. I have, therefore, long pondered what changes can be made to restore citizen control of and real representation within that government. With the recent Supreme Court decision throwing out over 100 years of legal precedent, I do not see Public financing of elections as a credible path to reform. It is time to consider radical solutions to this problem. Since the acknowledged intent of the framers was to ensure that representatives to our government would accurately reflect the citizenry at large, what is needed is a mechanism to restore and reinforce that reflection.

My mechanism for reform would abolish all federal elections for legislative and executive offices and replace that mechanism with one based on random computer selection for all current federal elective offices from Internal Revenue tax rolls. All existing Constitutional requirements for office would remain in force. Using myself as an example, as a 56-year-old native-born citizen with no felony convictions from the 2^nd Congressional District in New Mexico, I could be selected as the 2^nd District Congressman, Senator from New Mexico, Vice President or President. Companion laws would be passed based on existing statutes governing National Guard Service and Jury Duty. The mechanism would work as follows.

As a citizen who files a tax return, my records, along with every other taxpaying citizen, are held by the Internal Revenue Service. Every two years in the case of the House of Representatives, four years in the case of Presidential and Vice-Presidential offices and every six years in the case of Senatorial offices, my name would be put in a pool of likely citizens within my Congressional District, the Nation or my state respectively. If I were chosen for office, I would be allowed a leave-of-absence from my job for my term of office. I would still be paid my regular wage while I served in office and all my expenses incurred doing the government’s business in office would be financed by the government. I would serve one two, four or six year term in office. At the end of my term, I would return to private life and my old job as another selectee would take my place. Since selectees would be chosen from IRS rolls, no political party affiliation would be noted or considered. Indeed, for the first decades of the Republic, political parties did not exist as organized entities. There would be no retirement pay or perks given as officeholders get today nor would there be a need for an actual salary for any of those positions as all officeholders would receive their regular wages while in office. Any employee of a corporation would be required to recuse himself from any legislative or executive action benefiting his employer while in office. A companion statute would be enacted allowing lobbying only by citizens within the selectee’s district or state to ensure the officeholder’s independence and impartiality.

This mechanism would, in one stroke, eliminate the corruptive influence of money on politics, restore real citizen representation in government, provide term limits since only one term in office would be allowed, and foster an increased participation in the political process. Officeholder selection would be taken from the hands of political party organizations and opened up to the citizenry at large. Indeed, mechanisms could be built into the selection process to provide a more accurate reflection of ethnic backgrounds so the Congress would actually contain the same ethnic representation as the citizenry itself. I also see this process as a mechanism to open up state and local offices as well. I use the federal offices as a model that could be transposed into state Constitutions with similar mechanisms and results. With a federal model already in place, that example could be amended into the 50 state constitutions. The actual selection process could be overseen by non-partisan organizations such as the League of Women Voters to prevent any attempted chicanery.

This, then, is the essence of my idea. I offer it to this board and the body politic for comment, question and expansion.

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