Why America Needs Coalition – Clean Elections and Freedom (X)

[kster]

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
Headlined on 2/2/08:

There is an immediate need to take back the vote. For longer than it is comfortable to contemplate the vote has been controlled by those who sign the contracts with the corporations who provide 'voting machines.'

The Left has been talking about that for a long time now; they noticed first because in the beginning it was their ox being gored. On the Right we were lulled into the belief that it was just sour grapes. Part of that came from the media, other elements on which we built up our smug house of cards came from such books as, “Stealing Elections,” by John Fund. You may not be aware that a book with a similar title that actually outed the NeoCons was published earlier. The author died mysteriously. When you intend to steal elections it makes perfect sense to inject disinformation at the outset. Fund was late producing his book, it was originally planned in 2000, but he did write it and it has proven to be very useful in creating the impression that election fraud either did not exist or was more likely to be the tool of the Left than a clever idea raised to new levels of profit and complexity by his own friends.

The Campaign of the Voting Machines was designed to steal elections as an adjunct of the NeoCon political strategy for gaining absolute control over government. This gave them control over enormous wealth to be parceled out to their friends. Using that strategy they stole the rhetoric of peace, prosperity, individual Rights and freedom, converting the meanings to war (for us), grinding poverty (for us), and absolute slavery for us and our posterity.

The divisions between the Right and Left worked. It is time to come together since, to borrow a phrase from a previous generation, if we don't hang together we will all hang separately. Many on the Left doubt that rapid change is possible. Their skepticism is based on many years of experience with trying to change the present system. They have been diligent, methodical, and focused. Yet the system is still under the control of those who purchase voting machines both to profit their friends and to control elections

SNIP...Corporations are stripped of the power that makes it possible for them to evade accountability.

To ensure that future generations of wishful Willie Suttons understand we mean it, we sue those guilty of preying on us into a poverty so complete that in five generations their descendants, if they have any, will still be naked and whimpering.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/genera_melinda__080202_why_america_needs_co.htm

(X)http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2809116

[Peace Patriot]

1. Wow! This is an amazing statement coming from the Republican side.

They have realized (or, at least, this writer has realized) that they, too, have been disenfranchised.

"The Campaign of the Voting Machines was designed to steal elections as an adjunct of the NeoCon political strategy for gaining absolute control over government."--Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Yup. I've been saying this for a long time. The so-called "Help America Vote Act"-HAVA ($3.9 billion boondoggle to fast-track non-transparent electronic voting machines all over the country before the 2004 election) was passed in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution (IWR), October 2002, and is closely related to it. IWR guaranteed unjust war; HAVA provided the means to shove the unjust war down the throats of the American people.

That's how we've ended up with SEVENTY PERCENT of the American people opposing the Iraq War and wanting it ended, and a so-called Democratic Congress doing the opposite--ESCALATING the war, and larding Bush/Cheney with multi-billions MORE of our tax dollars to keep killing Iraqis until they sign over their oil rights.

Back in the immediate pre-war period (Feb 03), FIFTY-SIX PERCENT of the American people opposed the Iraq War. 56%! (NYT-Feb 03. Other polls 54-55%.) That is a significant majority. It would be a landslide in a presidential election (and believe me, it was). And it was to DEFEAT that anti-war majority--now grown to an overwhelming 70% majority--that HAVA was devised.

And the pisser of all time is that most of our Democrats in Congress voted FOR it! They voted FOR rightwing corporations 'counting' all our votes with "trade secret," proprietary programming code, with no audit/recount controls. They voted for this in even greater numbers than they voted for the war.

The article starts here (page 1)

http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/genera_melinda__080202_why_america_needs_co.htm

And here is what she says about the need for transparent vote counting.

"After Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina we need to assume that any given election has been stolen unless this is the procedure followed (below).... Here is what we must install, controlled by voters at the precinct level.

"What we need:

"1. Voters go to their precinct, marking paper ballots under the eagle eyes of local people from all parties.

"2. The ballots are counted by hand at the precinct immediately after the polls close by stalwarts elected by those in the precinct for that purpose. Everyone can watch, staying six feet from the table where the count is taking place.

"3. Finally, the double, triple checked results are posted at the precinct (polling site), as well as directly and transparently to the Internet Right up where everyone can tally themselves getting it exactly Right.

"Then, the election will be honest."

She credits the Left with dong all the ground work...

"This leads us immediately to the question of how to achieve the simple and direct scenario above. This will be far easier with all of us working together. That is the sticking point. Working together the Left and Right could have the resources, people and expertise, to give America clean elections. But can they do that? There are many organizations and many people working on different approaches. Can the tendency of people to divide themselves be overcome?

"The time, money, and thought spent by people across the country on how to return control to the people has been monumental. That investment has mostly come from the Left. Those of us who only recently recognized the problem should remember to be grateful for what has been done already."

---

Melinda is a Ron Paul supporter. She has roots in the Goldwater movement, and has been a Libertarian but is now a Republican. I never agreed with Barry Goldwater about much of anything--I am an FDR "New Deal" Democrat (the majority needs government to be its strong advocate against "organized money")--but I do know this: Goldwater would be appalled at the Bushites--at their unbridled lawlessness, corruption and greed.

Melinda hints at something but doesn't quite say it--that we on the Left also have a problem in our own Democratic Party office holders, who have ALSO been "elected" by "trade secret" vote counting. I'll come out and say it--and have often done so. "Houston, we have a problem!" And the problem is that our top Democratic office holders are shills for the Bushites--and for the war profiteers and global corporate predators who have no party and no allegiance to us. The Bushites do their worst--slaughtering 1.2 Iraqis to get their oil, shredding the Constitution and looting us blind, and the Democratic leaders hold the towel for them. It is a closed system at the top. And all are elected by these "trade secret" code voting machines that THEY imposed on us, all over the country.

Melinda identifies the enemy as the "NeoCons." I would say that the enemy is the NeoCons and the DemoCons--the fascist shock troops and their supply lines. The "idea men" (pre-emptive war, "unitary executive") and their funders. The shockers and the shock-absorbers. The looters and the distractors. The touchscreeners and the optiscanners. One way or another, they keep getting "elected."

Melinda proposes a coalition of THE DISENFRANCHISED to overcome this circumstance. We might also want to revise the standard corporate political spectrum (which starts at the center and includes only center, right and far right (no "left" at all), completely, and create a new one: the blotted out left side of the spectrum becomes democracy itself, and the center/right becomes the disenfranchisers, the powerful, those who write and those who protect the "trade secret" code. On THIS political spectrum, 99% of Americans are on the left--the massive majority--and 1% are on the right (and in control of all money, media and reins of government). It reveals even more un-balance than the corporate (invisible left) vs. center/right spectrum. An overwhelming unbalance, with most Americans having no say in their government, no vote and no power.

Tyranny.

And I think Melinda is right on about the remedy. Or, it is at least the foundation of a remedy--the beginning, the bottom line, the first and essential condition for reform: Transparent vote counting.

---------


Description of Melinda at the bottom of her article:

http://howtheneoconsstolefreedom.blogspot.com

"Melinda Pillsbury-Foster is the author of GREED: The NeoConning of America and A Tour of Old Yosemite. The former is a novel about the lives of the NeoCons with a strong autobiographical component. The latter is a non-fiction book about her father and grandfather.

"Ms. Pillsbury-Foster has been active in politics since the Goldwater Campaign. She left the Republican Party to join and become active in the Libertarian Party in 1973, working as an activist and party officer until she left the Libertarian Party in 1988 when she returned to the Republican Party and became active in the National Federation of Republican Women.

"She is also the the founder of the the Arthur C. Pillsbury Foundation."

[autorank]

2. Hard K*R. WOW

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