Supporting those who make our world a better place
Over 150 years ago, in his first State of the Union address, Republican President Abraham Lincoln warned of the "approach of returning despotism" which he described as "the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government."
Lincoln then stated his clear belief in the supremacy of the people:
Honest Abe next described the state of relations between labor and capital in the entire US (not just the rebellious South) ending with this summary of what was then the American reality:
Then Lincoln concluded his first State of the Union speech with this warning to hard-working Americans:
Clearly this surrender of political power is already largely in place. What was then the American Reality is now a broken and hollow American Dream that is fading like a ghost of its former self.
In the last ten years we have seen the US government fight undeclared wars that cost trillions of dollars. These wars only benefit the oil companies and weapons manufacturers who make the largest profits in the history of the world while the people of the US or the Middle East suffer a horrible physical toll in death and permanent physical and mental injury. The so-called US defense budget is now larger than the military spending of the rest of the world combined.
In the last ten years we have seen the US government pass a prescription drug plan that costs taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. First and foremost, this plan primarily benefits the pharmaceutical companies by requiring people to pay inflated prices both as individuals and as a people through our government. The profits of capital go up while the cost to people goes up to the point where senior citizens must make a Hobson's choice between food and medicine.
Within the last ten years we have seen the massive growth of a new Federal bureaucracy nominally dedicated to security but in reality intruding into the homes, communications and organizations of the people. People boarding a common carrier must submit to search without a hint of reasonable suspicion much less a warrant issued upon probable cause. They even search the diapers of infants and the disabled and fondle small children. None should dare call this liberty.
In the last few years we have seen the Federal Reserve bail out the large banks with trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) in cash and trillions more in loans while these same financial institutions have foreclosed on millions of homes, threatened to bankrupt state governments here and foreign governments abroad and grown even larger than "too-big-to-fail". While these banksters have paid billions of dollars to their managers and owners these same financial institutions plan to pay no taxes for years to come. The managers of these banks and hedge funds are taxed at a lower effective tax rate than a working person who pays payroll tax and income tax and then sales tax on the rest of their income. By and large, these same banks now refuse to lend to small businesses - they effectively "close the door to advancement" on hard-working Americans.
More recently, we have seen the government mandate the purchase of health insurance, largely from for-profit corporations, without even the attempt to create a common public system that creates equality for all. A growing number of over 50,000,000 people have essentially no access to effective health care while as a country the US spends more per capita than any other country in the world. The US healthcare system is clearly the greatest in the world only in terms of cost and the number who are not cared for - this is clearly a disability and burden on the vast majority of Americans. Again these large and growing for-profit insurance companies grow rich by increasing the suffering of the people.
Now capital -- the big money that drowns our politics and owns the mainstream media and owns or cows our politicians -- big money requests that we tie the hands of government with a so-called Balanced Budget Amendment. Their amendment would prevent raising the miniscule taxes on hedge funds and the billionaires that run them; would prevent raising the laughable capital gains tax that is equivalent to just the payroll tax deductions that working people pay before they pay income tax; would avoid a tiny transaction tax of less than a cent a trade which could raise hundreds of billions in revenue each year; would continue tax credits for fossil fuel companies and for companies who move jobs overseas in search of increasing tax-free profits.
The Balanced Budget Amendment is a foul canard intended to permanently "close the door of advancement against [US} and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon [US] till all of liberty shall be lost." Instead of locking down our government of, by and for the people We The People Move To Amend the US Constitution to Restore American Democracy by forcing money out of politics and reclaiming our inherent human rights from the soulless corporations who have taken this country to war after war, accumulated much of the world's capital to themselves and have used our government like a sock puppet in order to place new disabilities and burdens upon all of US until now all of liberty is threatened.
In accordance with all of the principles of the Preamble,
We the People Move To Amend the Constitution to Assert:
Our Freedom and Independence: All of We The People are human beings with unalienable and equal rights and among these rights are Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness and Self-Governance.
Our Human Rights: Our State and Federal Constitutions protect the rights of We The People; they neither create nor grant our inherent human rights.
Corporations Are Not People: Corporations and other commercial entities, money, property and other things are not people and therefore can not have human rights.
Money Is Not Speech: Expenditure of money, goods or property by commercial entities is part of commerce. In particular, any advertising paid for by business entities is commercial in nature and neither Constitutionally protected Free Speech nor Free Expression.
Our Right to Democratic Government: Congress has the power and duty to regulate campaigns, campaign expenditures and elections to protect the right of the people to vote, the right of equal participation and the count of the vote in order to preserve and promote a democratic form of government of, by and for We The People.
The Supremacy of We the People: Where federal, state and local governments, laws or regulations are in conflict, the greater consideration shall be given to increasing the equality and liberty of We The People.
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As the Declaration of Independence says: "Prudence indeed, will dictate, that Governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
We have suffered long enough: it is time to alter our system of government back to a democratic government of, by and for the people.
It is time to Restore American Democracy.
What you can do:
Go to Move To Amend and get the Local Action Toolkit. Start a group with your friends or neighbors. Do some outreach with or within the Rebuild the Dream Movement. There are many people who are too busy surviving or just waiting for someone else to go first. Move to Amend and Rebuild the Dream will help you find them. The people you meet will thank you for standing up for the American Way.
As Lincoln concluded his first State of the Union Address: "The struggle of to-day is not altogether for to-day; it is for a vast future also. With a reliance on Providence all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us."
The Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln and Thom agree:
Tag! We Are All It!
I just had to lift that...from here.
It was a long and slow coup...they won, we lost. Will they let us eat cake or glow beef. The number of cows keeps growing as good investigators keep digging.
Michael Bloomberg donated $50 million to the Sierra Club to stop coal burning power plants. The energy industry says that half our energy comes from coal.
What would the wunderground say?...let's see..
It's not like the Bush family has a monopoly on power, but come on...
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