Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President (elect)

Well, we have to revise this earlier comment of relief that Obama was elected.


The "great weight" has once again settled atop us all alike.


Obama needs to be ferocious in defense of his campaign promises.
These include:
Universal health insurance. See the article in the September issue of Atlantic Monthly magazine--How the health care system killed my father.


An investigation of 9/11/2001. We haven't had one yet. This needs to be undertaken by either a special prosecutor, or by, say, the Attorney General of NYState or Massachusetts, or the District Attorney of New York City and/or the AG of Virginia or the District Attorney of Arlington County (or Commonwealth Attorney, however the state designates the prosecutors.


So the weight was lifted only briefly. Too bad, so sad. Your Dad. (The reply to the postcard from the profligate son in college, "Dear Dad...No mon, no fun, Your son."


So, strike these remarks:

"May I say that it's as if a great weight has lifted, with this 2008 presidential election of ours?

What an astounding event.

I'm even hearing echoes of my inky-dinky campaign slogan--Restore the Balance -- floating around in the æther, digital and analog.

So what balances need restoring?  My hope list, agenda, really did fit on the front and back of a business card. With one blank line left over.

Well, that didn't work!

By the time the deadline for filing nominating petitions rolled around (29July08) I had collected a grand total of 160 "bankable" signatures, just a few shy of the 2,000 a candidate for congressional office needs to get on the ballot as an independent.

Not that incumbent (for 32 years, consecutively) Ed. Markey would register the least frisson of concern were I to make the ballot — I'm sure he fully expects to expire in office when he's in his late 90s or more, but at least there should be some simulacrum of debate, a soupçon of (where's an s-word? Aah…) sparring.  (Who was it that claimed the pen is mightier than the s-word?)

I'm thinking that I didn't even come close (to making the ballot).

One John Cunningham (in the hirsute tradition of so many males these days--like Henry M. Paulson, Jr. and his deputy Neel "Cash & Carry" Kashkari, namely, bullet-headed-bald) has made it to the ballot as a Republican--he promises to be "a Ron Paul Republican"--that is, adhering to the reality-based US Constitution.

And for a guy with a campaign-on-a-shoe-string, John did pretty well, getting about one third of the vote from the 32-year-long Democratic party incumbent.

 But, except for the purpose of maintaining gridlock in the statehouse by filling the governor's slot with a Republican, citizens in Mass are about as Democratic as it goes.

However, come 2010, [the good lord willin' and the creek don't rise], I plan on getting started when the petitions become available--in February.

I've also learned the distinction between “encouragement” and “support.”

And I think I've also sussed out of the salmagundi the significance of the concept "free pizza" as figuring in the nominating petition collection operation. And I know how to make pizza, sauce, substrate & all.

Let's count the ways corporations work against us

Food.

What effect does corporate power have on the food we eat?

Has corporate power, by means of campaign bribes, skewed the playing field and screwed the American People and the people of the world?

Has the Politico-Agrico-Industrial Complex made foods that are worse for us all to eat too cheap to pass up — and foods that are good for us too expensive to buy?

Seems so.

Check out these items from Michael Pollan:

A discussion on NPR/PRI/WBUR's Here & Now about how the farm bill subsidizes high production volumes, by the bushel, of cheap corn and soy, but does nothing to help vegetable farmers. Even corn farmers used to be subsidized with price SUPPORTS — that is, methods to keep corn prices HIGH, not low. Farmers have never benefitted from low prices for their products; only agribusiness and now corn-fuel corporations benefit. These are the treacly, sticky folks from High Fructose Corn Syrup Land that help us continue to shift into a nation of obese-diabetics-who-don't-have-sickness-insurance. Ever heard this song about the "junk-food junkie" who dies with a Ding-Dong™ on his breath?

Not to sound cynical, but isn't that what you would expect of our campaign-funded government and our greed-wallowing corporate executive class? And not to ignore the fact that there are STILL some American citizens working, IN AMERICA, for American "multi-national" corporations.

But the number of US citizens working in America for American multi-nationals continues to dwindle. Unemployment (if you use the most common-sensical measure, "U-6," — that estimates everyone who has taken lower-paying jobs, shorter-houred jobs, temp and stop-gap and minimum wage jobs, everyone who's gone on SS disability, taken "early retirement", has given up looking and just volunteers or runs for public office, who is "overqualified" PLUS those folks getting their six months of unemployment insurance payments, our ACCURATE unemployment rate is running at around 12%, not 3% or 4% or 5%. Twelve percent.

The Iraq Invasion and the Iraq Occupation (the so-called "OIF" or Occupation Iraq's a Failure) have been good for:

• George Bush in the 2004 election;
  
• Dick Cheney in retirement benefits every year from Halliburton/Brown,Root&Kellog;
  
• Dyncorp, Blackwater (which means sewage, in the RV lexicon), etc.;
  
• All tank, jeep (humvees), ammunition, tank, MRAP, bomb, airplane manufacturers.
  

The Iraq Invasion and the Iraq Occupation (the so-called "OIF" or Occupation Iraq's a Failure) have been double-plus UN-good for:

6,000 or so dead US soldiers and contractors;

1,000,000, give-or-take another million or so, dead Iraqis (from 1992 on until today

Markey on not impeaching; wait for new Congress

An early attempt by "constituents" to get Markey to address the topic of impeachment--February, 2008.

Why Run For Congress?

This is an essay on why it is that the Congressional Oath of Office should be taken seriously (that is, honored by acting on it) and what I see are the consequences directly flowing from our Members of Congress (MOCs) failure to honor those oaths. And why, therefore, I chose to run.

We all should note that this is the ONLY oath our MOCs take before they can be seated in Congress. The President takes a different oath, the words of which are set out in the Constitution itself — suggesting that the authors and ratifiers of the Constitution took it seriously.

The Acting President (Richard B. Cheney) copied the same Presidential oath of office, though that is not a requirement set out in the Constitution. The Vice President should merely take the same oath that MOCs take, as President of the Senate. But then, Cheney no doubt intended to be the Acting President of the country, not the senate, right from Day One I and Day One II (that is, Jan. 20, 2001 and Jan 20, 2005 at or about High Noon). Although for a time, Cheney claimed he was not a member of the Executive Branch, but rather of Congress, as Senate President, so as to avoid the requirements of making public any of his war plans and other illegal plots now stored in the three or so stand-up Mosler safes in his office. However, when Rep. Rahm Immanuel filed a bill to strip Cheney of all Executive Branch perquisites, or "emoluments of office," Cheney quickly found himself enabled to ascertain that he was indeed a member of the executive branch. At least for the purposes of receiving taxpayer money, avoiding subpoenas and of testifying under oath. Again I digress.

I'm not running for President or Acting President. I'm running for Congress from the 7th District of Massachusetts. Which, perhaps in the best traditions of Elbridge T. Gerry, comprises these towns and cities (cities in italic):

Arlington, Belmont, Everett, Framingham, Lexington, Lincoln, Malden, Medford, Melrose, Natik, Stoneham, Waltham (where I live), Watertown (but they call it a "town" anyway — this is Massachusetts, where if you don't know where you are, you don't belong. Road signs (what road signs?) don't help; they're not meant to),  Weston, Winchester, Woburn, Revere, Winthrop, and Precinct 2 of Wayland.

So let's start from the beginning. Again. What is the Congressional Oath of Office? What do the MOCs swear to (or affirm)? Here it is:

House: As required by Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution, Members of Congress shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution. Representatives, delegates, and the resident commissioner all take the oath of office on the first day of the new Congress, immediately after the House has elected its Speaker. The Speaker of the House administers the oath of office as follows:

I, [name of MOC], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic [e.g., Bush, Cheney, Rice, Gonzales, etc.]; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God. [emphasis added.]

MOCs do not have to hold a holy book in their left hand; they may in fact hold anything that is of particular significance to them: perhaps their wife's or husband's hand, the hand(s) of their children, a teddy bear or Linus blankie that has served them well throughout their lives, a rabbit's foot, service medals, etc. 

I'm not being facetious. The idea is that, in taking a solemn oath — one that is absolutely no easy thing to honor in these "parlous times" — MOCs be able to cling to something that has the greatest personal significance to them as they make these solemn promises. 

And in this country, albeit somewhat less here than in other countries, but as the older 0f us have all seen, possible nonetheless, defending the Constitution of a country— not the citizens of it, not the military, not the Acting President or the titular Unitary Liar-In-Chief, not any particular group, no matter how powerful, can get you killed. As someone has said, dead fish find it particularly easy to "go with the flow"; but people, especially people with significant power delegated to them by their constituents, who go against that flow far too often get killed. One might say, perhaps too lightly, taking on the office of MOC is not tiddlywinks.

Speaking of life-threatening matters, I offer this comment about service medals. 

While it may be easier for me to say than for others, but because I didn't dodge the draft, have a Vietnam Service medal, and was also a member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War when I returned from Qui Nhon — my GI benefit checks "got lost" after a VVAW "petition for redress of grievances" was published in the NY Times in September of 1968 after the March on The Pentagon, with my name and those of some 80 or so others), going into a combat zone is also not tiddlywinks.

By the way, most folks don't know this, but, while "grunts" (drafted or enlisted individuals) take an oath both to support and defend the Constitution and obey their superiors, Commissioned officers swear ONLY to support and defend the Constitution. In other words, support and defense of the Constitution is placed above obedience to orders of the Unitary Liar-In-Chief, or ULIC (that would be Geo. Bush), the Acting President Cheney (or APC), the Secretary of War, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chiefs of Staff for each branch of the military, and any other officers superior in rank to them. 

Just imagine what courage it would take for a high-ranking military officer to say, to any of those enumerated above, "Sir, with all due respect, your order for me and our military to invade Iraq without ourselves having first been attacked, without the direct permission of the United Nations Security Council and the UN Charter, without a definitive declaration of war by our MOCs as required by the US Constitution, is illegal, and I refuse to obey it. In fact, all of us high ranking military men (and they're all men) are placing you, the Acting President and the War Secretary under arrest for breach of your respective oaths of office." It would certainly have brought the Iraq invasion to a screeching halt. But instead, concern for their and their families' well-being, their pensions, their record and reputations, the members of our military officer class merely resigned. Theirs was a costly capitulation to our messianic ULIC and Machiavellian Acting President. 

But we all should take citizens' notice that there are not all that many MOCs now sitting who've served their country in combat, and that may be why they seem to place essentially zero value on human lives other than their own or those of their family members. Ditto, in spades, for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, the Kristols, pere et fils, Rice, Libby, Harrington, Yoo, et al. All of the "capture the Middle East Oil; set up (14+) huge, permanent (or "enduring") military bases; defend Israel at all costs, in money and lives" crowd.

Is this an unjust charge? I don't think so. As Dick Cheney famously noted about all his multiple Vietnam draft deferments, "I had other priorities." And, as we all now know, he damned well did, didn't he?!). Again, I digress — chalk it up to fury that's difficult to sequester about the [pick your pejorative] conduct of our Executive branch, our judicial branch, and our MOCs.

Back to our topic.

The MOCs' solemn oath, that promise, is made to US, individually, to US collectively as their constituents, and to US generally, as citizens of The United States of America.

They are undertaking , by the MOCs who are supposed to be OUR agents, acting on OUR behalf, supporting OUR Constitution, OUR government and the purposes we and our predecessors set out for this government. This Mission Statement is the first sentence of our Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to:
1. form a more perfect Union,
2. establish Justice,
3. insure domestic Tranquility,
4. provide for the common defence,
5. promote the general Welfare, and
6. secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I like to put the 52-word sentence in "list order," with numbers added, because it's easier to memorize, shows a nice mnemonic device (FEIPPS, the beginning letter of the beginning word of each clause) and because it shows that anyone claiming that "the first job of government is to protect your children and yourselves" is flat wrong. "Common defence"(sic) comes FOURTH, after perfect union, establishment of justice, and domestic tranquility. I think all school kids, municipal, state and federal officials should recite the Preamble before each school day and at the commencement of every official meeting. (And no one will call it "unconstitutional," I'll bet.

Neither APC nor ULIC have contributed, in any way, to furthering the first three responsibilities of our government, never mind what they've done to many other provisions of "that damned piece of paper," as ULIC apparently called it during one of his temper-tantrums.

Here's what I believe has followed, as  day follows night, knight follows dragon, lawyer follows ambulance, Schumer follows camera, when our MOCs ignore the promise they made, the oath they swore (or affirmed) to "support and defend" the US Constitution. 

First, the actors in the matter, Bush and Cheney and others, have breached their own oaths of office, and to do so is surely a "high misdemeanor" within the meaning of the Constitution. If they are not constrained by their own oaths of office (perhaps they "took the obligation with mental reservations and for the purpose of evasion"), then who will stand against them to defend the Constitution? Certainly not the Judiciary, which cannot act on its own without being presented with a "case or controversy." Without Congress intervening, the criminal conduct continues.

Second, the Members of Congress, by failing to intervene, are now themselves complicit in the criminal conduct of the Administration and our military, etc. MOCs, by their oaths, are supposed to keep the executive branch, and others, from destroying the Constitution. To do nothing in the face of such notorious and flagrant criminal and unconstitutional conduct, is to foreswear their oaths of office. They, too, are now candidates for impeachment.

You must consider that the Cheney/Bush administration was ripping at the Constitution from at least their first full day in office, January 21, 2001. As documents later obtained from participants in Cheney's "Energy Policy Panel" revealed, Cheney's big oil buddies and he were divvying up the Middle Eastern oil patch, in preparation for the illegal Iraq invasion. Cheney, in his vice-presidential debate before the election, spoke about the need to invade Iraq for 8 or 18 minutes. So an Iraq invasion, even before the election, sounds like a plan, doesn't it?

I have very little doubt that the Iraq invasion plans inhabit the interior of Cheney's clutch of Mosler safes. The administration had probably "fixed its vision" on the use of WMDs to politically terrify Congress into going along with the plan. I call it "political terrorism," and suggest that we put the White House on the list of international terrorists. This would make them eligible for arrrest. Congress would need to freeze all their finances, and barricade them inside the White House or any particular "unknown location" or Naval Observatory mansion or other spider hole that Dick Cheney might have holed up in.

 Few Democratic members of Congress were willing to stand up to the Cheney/Bush threat of political blackmail — being called "cut-and-runners," cowardly on defense, no balls at all, wusses, sissies, etc. And all of the Republicans, with the exception of Paul and Hegel, were quite comfortable with following the Cheney/Bush administration into a war for oil and bases for "the projection of power" in the oil-rich Middle East.

 All of this "cowardice" mud coming from chicken-hawks, people who had themselves "cut and run" from combat duty in Vietnam, like Cheney, Wolfowitz, Addington, Bush, Rice, Rove — or who "had other priorities," which were, no doubt, seen by Cheney as his own "personal virtue," rather than personal cowardice. We should not be surprised at this apparent contradiction of the cowards calling the heroes and patriots "weak" or "unpatriotic." It is an old, tried and true, and very simple propaganda technique: Tar your opponents with your own weaknesses before they can reveal them. Then, any attempt they make at cleaning off the mud you've slung can be labeled "defensive" or "retaliatory." 

Anyone looking for proof that the Democrats, as the opposition party, had foresworn their oaths of office need look no further than their worry that they would be made to appear "soft on defense" by the Cheney/Bush/Rove slime machine. 

Had these stalwart members of Congress been engaged in carrying out their responsibilities, they would have had no time to worry about their own political skin — they would have been about the business of saving the Republic from the frontal assault on it launched from the White House.

Which is why, I believe, Nancy Pelosi said she was "taking impeachment off the table" in 2006.

   She and her fellow Democrats had no place to stand from which to take on their duty to defend the Constitution. Pelosi had already been "briefed" that torture was being carried out by the US Government, as a matter of official, "approved by the President" policy. She had already been "briefed" that the White House was illegally eavesdropping on US citizens in America, just as in the good old days of "Tricky Dick" Nixon. But on a far, far grander scale, what with all the glories of modern technology, a "wired world" and "splitter rooms" in all the major telecommunications carriers in the United States.

(That is, with the one exception of US West, or Quest Communications, because the president of that outfit said "No, it's illegal," to the FBI or CIA or NSA or DIA — whoever it was who approached him and demanded access to every single one of the company's customers' communications. It might be just a coincidence, but after the US West CEO refused the government's illegal demand, the Securities Exchange Commission, and a prosecutor from the highly politicized Justice Department, charged the US West president with stock fraud of some sort and tried to put him in prison. A nation of men using laws to control other men, not a nation of laws, keeping all men to an equal standard. That is, fascism.)

Our members of Congress, starting with Pelosi and Reid, were so complicit in aiding and abetting the administration's sabotage of the Constitution that they would have had to impeach themselves as well, as accessories after the fact, had they ever dared bring on impeachment proceedings. I think that's the concept behind the "made man" requirement in the mafia. That is, to gain admission to the most evil, base level of the organization, you have to kill someone so that the rest of the princes of darkness "have the goods on you," just as you have the goods on them. This serves as a deterrent to tattling. And the principal seems to have worked reasonably well over the years. It's not "omerta," or a "code of silence." It's the simple, prosaic fear of being murdered, imprisoned, or both.

So we have the spectacle of an administration subverting the Constitution, breaking international treaties, breaking US laws, destroying provisions of the Constitution, completely ignoring the limits of their delegated powers.  And a complicit Congress doing nothing to stop these marauders, who were intent upon having total sway over the Middle East and the United States, Canada, Mexico and the rest of the world, wherever there are bases "from which to project our power."

It's not the kind of country I want my four children and two grandchildren to grow up in.

Congress has let the Cheney/Bush administration turn the US into a rogue nation, a pariah throughout the world, with very few governments to dare even speak ill of the US.

My conclusion is that the nation is in the terrible shape we find it in now because none of our elected Congressmen, senators and representatives alike, have performed the single most important duty we directed them to discharge: to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. 

Which is why I'm making a run for Congress. It seems to me that despite any one Member of Congress's exemplary record on various bits of legislation, and for however long their service has been,  all of their efforts are come to naught because they have let the very foundation of the country — our Constitutional Republic — be destroyed. And they have let this destruction take place with hardly a squeak of opposition. 

They have put their own political careers ahead of their duty to their country and their constituents.

I don't think this should stand.

Unless the citizens of this country make an informed decision to ignore these high crimes and misdemeanors, to ignore the tolerance by Congress of these high crimes and misdemeanors, then the government cannot stand.

And there is no way the citizens can make an informed decision without having the information on which to base it.

Which is why I decided to run for office.

   

A Campaign Platform: Restore the Balance

Restore the Balance 

1) Restore the Balance between We the People and the government, including: the Executive Branch, Congress and the courts. We must demand that our "elected" officials honor their oath of office--it's the only oath they take — which is to Support & Defend the Constitution. By Impeaching Cheney/Bush. 

This is not optional, by the way, even though Members of Congress have had the bejesus scared out of them by having been sent letters laced with Fort Devins Anthrax, probably by the Administration. We've now reached the point again, as we did with JFK, RFK, MLK, Jr. , probably Malcolm X, where standing up for office, on your hind legs, can get you killed. That happened in 1775 and onward. It happened during the Civil War. It happened during the 1960s. And at least the threat of it has happened during the past years of the incomparably lawless Cheney/Bush administration.

2) Restore the Balance between our foreign policy and our "National Interests--(OIL and Projecting American Military Might Throughout the World" — as in ProjectILES coming from the barrels of our guns and guns/ and guns and guns, teroooo, terooo, (repeat)/ Oh Johnny, I hardly knew you) and 

a) Get Out of Iraq — give Iraq back to the Iraqis; give Embassy City back to Baghdad; return the 14 "enduring" bases, and provide the where-with-all to let the Iraqis build back their country from the rubble we've reduced it to with unprecedented and cruel bombing under Poppy Bush and Baby Bush, and the criminal, unconscionable decade-long embargo, blockade, "sanctions" and "designations" by the Unitary Liar-In-Chief imposed on the people of Iraq as "collective punishment" for their failure to overthrow our ally, enemy, ally, then enemy again, Saddam Hussein. As they say at the home of the "trigger mug," Bennington Pottery, and at the Pottery Barn, "You break it, you bought it." As I recall, the going rate our military is paying in reparations for a dead Iraqi civilian is $1,000. (They should sue in Texas; their surviving families would get millions from those frivolous wrongful death lawsuits)

b) Reign in the WIA (War Department Intel Admin, formerly known as the Defense Department Intel Admin), the CIA, NSA, FBI, and the rest of what we're told are 15 distinct "intelligence" agencies (remember, they're the ones who don't have enough, if any, native speakers of the Afghani dialects, speakers of Arabic, Farsi, etc. I vaguely recall some one of our CIA or other intel "operatives" having been quoted as saying "We don't do countries where you get diarrhea from the drinking water."

 

2a) Restore the Balance of  honesty and trust between citizens and their government concerning the events leading up to, during and after 9/11 with a full-scale, independent investigation.

 By my back-of-the-envelop calculations, about 43,000 individual explosive and thermate shape-charges (and three or more MOATBs — Mothers of All Thermate Bombs) were required  to bring down the three World Trade Center buildings 1, 2 and 7. Just let your mind begin to grasp just how long it would take even a small army of experts to install and rig all of those explosives. 

Now, you may be one of those who believe the folks who say "Oooh, that big an undertaking could NEVER be kept secret! Of course, you probably weren't around when an even bigger undertaking, the building of the world's first atomic bombs, was kept secret. It was called The Manhattan Project, and parts of it were conducted on the East Coast, and other parts of it were conducted in New Mexico, at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I heard tell (not Teller), from the daughter of the guy who ran the cafeteria there, that after every meal, even the paper tablecloths had to be burned, because the scientists there would invariably be discussing their work and doodling on the place-mats or tablecloths.

And most non-New Yorkers STILL don't realize that three, not two, buildings were demolished on 9/11. They wouldn't learn about it from Phil Zelikow's infamous novel, The 9/11 Commission Report, either, because there is not one word about the collapse of the 47-story Salomon Brothers building, or WTC 7, in that work of fiction. And when there's a lapse about something as big as that, you just know the report is probably a complete white-wash, creating a legendary conspiracy theory that the attacks on and collapse of the three WTC buildings was inevitable and the facts were being fixed around that conspiracy theory by Zelikow, his henchmen, and his water-carriers Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton. 

3) Restore the Balance between election challengers and the Incumbent Party's advantage: Eliminate cost of campaign advertising (require FCC to serve the public necessity--which is its mandate--and set aside five or so channels for campaign/political advertising 24 hrs a day, 365 days a year. (Commercial channels can carry such advertising, but they can't charge for it, and they must air, back to back, commercials for ALL the other candidates for that office. The order of broadcast to be determined by lot (or rock, paper, scissors--my favorite). And the stations have to cut their own content/revenue ads to make the time available to run all those ads back-to-back. 

4a) Restore the Balance between Federal and State Government by capturing more taxes at the state level and, wherever possible, short-circuiting the taxpayer-to-Washington-to-States route, which always wastes money, as Washington seems to take a pretty big cut.d

4b) Restore the Balance between citizens and corporations by turning every family (and person) into a corporation. Then it'll be, "What's good for business is good for business"--because EVERYONE will be "a business," whether in business to raise children, re-acculturate, retrain themselves for their new economic poverty, etc. All family units intend to make a profit, and it's high time we gave them their proper appellation. What family do you know that wants to sink further into poverty with each passing year? Or doesn't want to put away savings, or invest in their own and their children's education? If that's not a profit-making intent, I don't know what profit or intent mean.

5). Restore the Balance between what we take out of the planet and what we give back to it.

6). Restore the Balance between the creators of wealth and the users of wealth (e.g., Hedge fund thieves get to put up maybe 10% of their own money and use 90% of the peoples' money — from banks— to make their SWAGs — scientific wild-ass gambles — on such things as: Four-wheel-drive Satyrs'  Investment Vehicles which are little more than bets on promises to pay on bets on promises to pay on bets on promises to pay— or, in reverse order, bottom to top: Mortgagee to Mortgagor to Bank Gamblers to Investment Bank Gamblers to Foreign Investment Bank Gamblers to Hedge Fund Gamblers, to Central Bank Bailouts with taxpayers' money.

7). Restore the Balance between what children learn and what they need to learn.

 8). Restore the balance between the citizens, their Constitution, and their government.

a). Require students and public officials to recite the preamble to the Constitution every day. And provide every school kid with his or her own pocket copy of the Constitution.

b). Wrest documents out of the cold living hands of Bush, Clinton, Cheney, Poppy Bush and the cold dead hands of Reagan. It is time to wean the Executive Branch from suckling on secrecy at the teats of Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hell.

c). Wrest documents out of the hands of governmental agencies, quickly (no more than 30 days turnaround), and with penalties for non-compliance and wretched excess in censoring said documents. It's yet one more abuse of a rogue government run amok. 

d). Pay attention to the {Preamble and the 9th amendment. (unenumerated individual rights)}, as well as the rest of the Constitution. I would assert that one of the UNenumerated rights we the people did NOT delegate to our government was the right to impeach the whole operation, sweep the Augean Capitol and White House clean of the horse manure they've been filled with for lo these past many seasons, and start over again. When, ever in our history, has there been a government so complicit in criminal conduct? I oscillate between livid anger and despondent lachrymation. 

e) Last but not least, in all other matters governmental, return our government to a Constitutional footing.

Email address:  wilt4congress@comcast.net

website: www.wilt4congress.com

Most discouraging thing so far? People who conflate permitting someone to RUN for office by signing "nominating petitions" with signifying their assent to his/her positions by signing the petitions. Two separate matters. When people begin to learn about their own Constitution, starting with the recitation of the Preamble in every public forum, we might do a bit better.

It all starts with Nominating Petitions

So, you visit the Secretary of State's Election Division office on the 17th floor of One Ashburton Place, tucked behind the State Capitol building annex, or extension.

You sign for a 10-pound (so it seems) shrink-wrap ream or so of Nominating Petitions, color-coded (I think--but I only got yellow ones), and a little red booklet entitled "Don't Just Stand There — RUN!

Which is what finally got me to make the trek downtown (you can find a copy on the web). To get on the ballot as an independent for Congress, you need only get some 2,200 or so signatures from registered voters in "every Middlesex village and town" (or whatever your relevant, target-collection of geo-political clumps happens to be). 

After working phone-banks in 2006 to change the majority in Congress, seeing the majority shift to the Demicans. And watch nothing happen about the Iraq war except both parties now seeming to agree that the US is going to be an Army of Occupation for many years to come--protecting our never-defined "national interests" (everyone in the world except Americans seem to understand that America's "national interests" are Oil, Natural Gas, and prmanent Military Bases from which to launch more invasions to "secure our National Interests "(whether those military bases — and one humongous "Embassy City" in Baghdad — are "enduring" or permanent — pick your propaganda euphemism word or "reality based" word) in the oil- and natural gas-rich Middle East....

After participating in "vigils" and "seminars" and meetings with MoveOn folks and meetings with Congress-folk and attending congress-folks' Town Meetings....

After trekking down to the US capitol and meeting with congress-folk in Senate and House, and listening to their speeches on the subversion and sabotage of the Constitution...

And seeing nothing happen...

It became time to "Don't Just Stand There! RUN!" as Bill Galvin's gang exhorts. 

Reminds me of the September weekend in 1968 when hundreds of thousands of citizens descended upon D.C. to protest the continuation of the Vietnam Misadventure. This "March On the Pentagon" received wide attention in the MSL (mainstream large, rather than mainstream medium), and supposedly in the nooks, niches and cloakrooms of the Capitol.

And the Vietnam Misadventure continued on for another eight (8) years, essentially.  So much for petitioning the government for redress of grievances.

Now it's time for us to Restore the Balance of powers, rights and duties spelled out in the US Constitution, about which, sadly, it can currently be said, is "more honored in the breach than in the observance."