On the Need to Abolish our Present Government

[Time for change]

…Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends (our unalienable rights), it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government… When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same objective, evinces a design to reduce {the people} under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government… from the U.S. Declaration of Independence – July 4th, 1776


The above excerpt from our Declaration of Independence provides the original rationale for the founding of our nation. The first great thought in that document is that all people have unalienable rights just because they’re human. Its second great thought is that we create governments to secure those rights. And the third great thought is, as noted in the above excerpt, that we have the right to abolish our government if it because destructive of our unalienable rights. That is the whole gist of the founding of our nation.

So, in order to secure our inalienable rights, our Founding Fathers created a government for us, based on a Constitution that specified the framework for that government. One of the most important parts of that Constitution dealt with how to abolish the leaders of our government, without the need to resort to violence as our Founding Fathers did, when our leaders become destructive of our unalienable rights. This of course was a direct offshoot of our Declaration of Independence.


The reasons for impeachment of a president

Note that there is nothing in the portion of our Declaration that deals with reasons for abolishing our government that says that our leaders have to commit a “crime” before they should be removed from office. Rather, it uses the words and phrases such as “becomes destructive of these ends”, “abuses and usurpations”, and “despotism”. I mention this not because we don’t have abundant evidence of numerous crimes committed by George Bush and Dick Cheney, but because the bar for impeachment and removal from office is lower than that. Or rather, more accurately, the bar for impeachment and removal from office is both lower than and higher than the committing of a “crime”. The most important issue is not whether or not the technical definition of a “crime” has been fulfilled, but whether or not our government has abused its powers and failed to fulfill its obligations to the people it was elected (or chosen in this case) to serve.

It isn’t only our Declaration of Independence that makes this point. Here are opinions on this issue from three of our most prominent Founding Fathers, a Supreme Court Justice, and the U.S. House Committee that drew up the articles of impeachment on Richard Nixon, with the reasons for impeachment in italics:

James Madison

It was Madison's view that impeachment was an "indispensable" provision for defending the American experiment - and the American people - "against the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate." The promise of another election, at which a wrongdoing executive might be removed, was not enough to provide such protection

Alexander Hamilton

A well constituted court for the trial of impeachments… The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust.

Thomas Jefferson

When once a republic is corrupted there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption . . . every other correction is either useless or a new evil.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story

The offences, to which the power of impeachment has been, and is ordinarily applied, as a remedy, are of a political character. Not but that crimes of a strictly legal character fall within the scope of the power, (for, as we shall presently see, treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors are expressly within it); but that it has a more enlarged operation, and reaches, what are aptly termed, political offences, growing out of personal misconduct, or gross neglect, or usurpation, or habitual disregard of the public interests, in the discharge of the duties of political office.

Three Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon

Each of the three articles drawn up by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee for the impeachment of Richard Nixon contained this language inserted at the end of the description of the evidence:

In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

How much more investigation do we need?

Many people who are every bit as concerned about the state of our nation as I am, including many DUers, say that we need more investigations before we proceed with impeachment. It’s not that I’m against investigations per se – other than for the fact that it is unlikely that the Iraq War will be ended or that the nuking of Iran will be taken off the table as long as Bush and Cheney remain in office. But the fact that impeachment has been “taken off the table” by our House leader and there is no sign at all that impeachment hearings will begin any time soon, despite massive overwhelming evidence of impeachable crimes and other offenses, after a half year of Democratic control of Congress, makes me worry that Congress has no intention at all of moving for forward with impeachment.


Evidence of impeachable offenses by Bush and Cheney: John Conyers’ “The Constitution in Crisis”

When considering current evidence of impeachable offenses committed by Bush and Cheney, a good place to start is John Conyers’ 198 page investigative report, including 1,401 references, “The Constitution in Crisis – The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Cover-ups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance”, which Conyers put together while the Democrats were in the minority in Congress. Among the conclusions of that report are:

The single overriding characteristic running through all of the allegations of misconduct identified in our Report has been the unwillingness of the Bush administration to allow its actions to be subject to any meaningful outside review.

Actually, the Report understates the issue by referring to the offenses as “allegations”. Let’s consider some of the “allegations” contained in “The Constitution in Crisis”:

The abuse and torture of our prisoners
I’ll start with the abuse of power that I consider the most serious because it violates everything our country is supposed to stand for, which is the right of people to be free of arbitrary government oppression. The abuses and torture of our prisoners have been frequent and abundantly documented. Regarding those abuses, the U.S. Supreme Court so much as branded George W. Bush a ‘war criminal’ for violating the Geneva Convention, in their Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision, as explained by Vyan. In that decision Justice Stevens, speaking for the majority, explained that the petitioner Hamdan was “entitled to the full protection of the Geneva Convention”, and that the “military commission convened to try him was established in violation of both the UCMJ and Common Article 3 of the Third Geneva Convention”. Justice Kennedy further elaborated on the Geneva Convention that the USSC determined the Bush administration to have violated:

The provision is part of a treaty the United States has ratified and thus accepted as binding law… moreover, violations of Common Article 3 are considered “war crimes,” punishable as federal offenses…

Lying our country into war
The rationale that the Bush administration used to justify the Iraq war was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ties to al Qaeda that posed a vital threat to our country. Foremost among the WMD threats was Iraq’s alleged nuclear capability, based on their alleged attempt to purchase yellow cake (natural uranium) from Africa and their possession of aluminum tubes alleged for use in the construction of a nuclear weapon. Though these claims were frequently repeated by the Bush administration to Congress and to the American people, it is quite evident that George Bush and Dick Cheney knew all of these claims to be false.

Regarding the yellow cake claims: In March 2002, Joe Wilson, the man who was sent to Niger by Dick Cheney’s office to verify the yellow cake claim, reported that there was no evidence for that claim; our own government’s National Intelligence Estimate stated that “claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are highly dubious”; and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told our government on March 3, 2003, that the Niger uranium documents were forgeries.

Regarding the aluminum tube claims: On September 7, 2002 Bush claimed that a new IAEA report stated Iraq was 6 months away from developing a nuclear weapon – though no such report existed; later that same month the Institute for Science and International Security released a report calling the aluminum tube intelligence ambiguous and warning that “U.S. nuclear experts who dissent from the Administration’s position are expected to remain silent…”; and on January 24, 2003, the Washington Post reported that the IAEA stated “It may be technically possible that the tubes could be used to enrich uranium, but you’d have to believe that Iraq…”

And to top it all off, on March 7, 2003, just a few days before Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, the IAEA reported “We have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.” George Bush and Dick Cheney had to have known all of this. Yet they uttered not a word of it to Congress or the American people as they tried to sell their war, as George Bush repeated both claims, and more, in his January 28, 2003 State of the Union speech.

Illegal warrantless spying on American citizens
The Bush administration has repeatedly violated the FISA Act, as well as the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution, by using wiretaps to spy on tens of thousands of Americans annually, without even attempting to obtain a warrant. This is not a matter of conjecture – he has publicly admitted it numerous times.

Illegal oppression of whistleblowers
Then there is the matter of how the Bush administration treats whistle blowers who try to bring to the attention of the American public matters that the Bush administration finds embarrassing or inconvenient. The Whistle Blower Protection Act has some very important purposes, and one of the most important of those purposes is to prevent government abuses of power, by making it easy for government employees to inform the public of government abuses. The Bush administration has repeatedly demonstrated its contempt for this law – most notably in the case of the Valerie Plame scandal, where both Dick Cheney and Karl Rove conspired to “out” an undercover CIA agent in retribution for her husband’s contradicting the Bush administration in its lying about its justification for invading Iraq. Conyers documents numerous similar examples in his Report.


Other impeachable offenses

Beyond what Conyers documented in his Report, there have been numerous other impeachable offenses committed by the Bush administration:

Signing statements
Whenever George Bush is presented by Congress with a law that he doesn’t like, he merely disposes of it with a “signing statement”, rather than go through the legal process of vetoing it and risking an override of his veto. The American Bar Association said about this that Bush’s use of the signing statements undermines the separation of powers provided in our Constitution. And House Judiciary Chairman, Rep. John Conyers, said regarding his Congressional investigation into this issue:

Bush's widespread use of the signings challenge at least 800 provisions in laws passed while he has been in office… The administration has engaged in these practices under a veil of secrecy… This is a constitutional issue that no self-respecting federal legislature should tolerate.

Violation of the public trust, corruption, and negligence
If things like gross violation of the public trust, corruption, negligence, or incompetence are rightly recognized as a valid reason for impeachment, then in addition to the above noted offenses, things like the Bush administration’s gross negligence in its response to Hurricane Katrina, its failure to provide adequate health care to veterans, and the loss of billions of dollars associated with no-bid contracts for reconstruction in Iraq given to Bush administration cronies, would all easily be considered as additional impeachable offenses.


Perversion of government

The American people or anyone else would be hard pressed to find a single aspect of government that hasn’t been perverted by George Bush and Dick Cheney. Let’s consider some major examples:

George Bush’s war against science
As a scientist who has worked for the FDA for the past eight years, I have personally witnessed how George Bush has corrupted one organization whose purpose was previously supposed to be to protect the public’s health. Issues I have written about include: The FDA’s preference for industry representatives over the public with respect to meeting invitations; George Bush’s gutting of our Civil Service system; and, the time that a scientific article of mine was pulled by the FDA Commissioner just before it was due to be published in a medical journal and just after the Commissioner had met with representatives of the corporation that manufactured the medical device that was the subject of my article. An article that describes a poll of FDA scientists conducted by The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) last year sums up what has been going on at the FDA:

The results paint a picture of a troubled agency: hundreds of scientists reported significant interference with the FDA's scientific work, compromising the agency's ability to fulfill its mission of protecting public health and safety.

Of course, the Bush administration’s war against science is not limited to the FDA. Consider: Bush’s squelching of embryonic stem cell research; how Bush tried to silence Dr. James Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA on the issue of global warming, following Dr. Hansen’s December 2005 lecture calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases in order to reduce global warming; the Bush administration’s continued obstruction of public education regarding the use of condoms to prevent sexually transmitted disease, in favor of its religiously motivated abstinence only approach; and, the accusations by former Surgeon General Richard Carmona on how George Bush consistently put politics above science.

The perversion of our Justice Department
When Senator Patrick Leahy said of the U.S. attorney firing scandal that “It is an abuse of power committed in secret to steer certain outcomes…” he touched on a larger issue that is perhaps of unprecedented importance to our nation and its people. The purpose of U.S. attorneys is to promote and ensure justice in our country with respect to serious federal crimes. In order to accomplish that they must be independent – that is, not subject to political manipulation. But the Bush administration has totally perverted that purpose, in order to use the U.S. attorneys for its own political ends. And more ominous still, they used a provision in the Patriot Act – a piece of legislation that was presumably enacted for the purpose of national security – to accomplish that perversion of justice.

Furthermore, it would appear that the nine fired U.S. attorneys are just the tip of the iceberg with respect to this perversion of justice. How many federal employees have the courage to say NO to pressure from the Office of the President? I don’t know the exact answer to that, but I think that it would be safe to assume that most would not have that kind of courage, especially when dealing with a highly vindictive Presidential administration. Therefore, it would be safe to assume that for every U.S. attorney who was fired there were perhaps several more who gave in to pressure from the Bush administration to serve the Bush/Cheney political agenda rather than to serve the American people whom they were hired to serve.

What do you call it when the most powerful federal employee of all – the President of the United States – uses the power of his office to subvert justice and serve his own political ends to enhance his own power? Senator Leahy called it an “abuse of power”. But when taken to an extreme I think a more appropriate and descriptive word for it would be “tyranny”. But then, that word is (unfortunately in my opinion) not currently considered to be politically correct when uttered by an elected official.

And when we consider that a major purpose of the attorney firings was to prepare the way for sham investigations of Democratic “voter fraud”, we would be wise to consider how the 2008 elections will play out if George Bush and Dick Cheney are still in office by then.


Failure to comply with Congressional investigations

Another issue that hardly needs any investigation is the Bush administration’s repeated refusals to comply with Congressional investigations. Not only has Bush (and Cheney) repeatedly refused to comply with Congressional subpoenas, using the unfounded claim of “executive privilege”; he has even ordered witnesses not to appear before Congress.

Many people have talked about the “need to hold the Bush administration accountable” as if that represented some sort of substitute for impeachment. But how is it possible to hold this administration accountable short of impeachment? It refuses to cooperate with Congressional investigations, as if it was a law unto itself. And even when top Bush administration officials are convicted of crimes, George Bush makes sure that they won’t be held accountable.

Does anyone really think that George Bush can be held accountable for anything while he is pResident, short of impeachment?


What some of our leaders have had to say about the issue of impeaching George Bush

I am thoroughly perplexed by the continuing lack of Congressional enthusiasm for moving on with impeachment. Some of our elected leaders and presidential candidates, declared or undeclared, have had some very powerful things to say about this, even while, strangely, most of them don’t actually advocate impeachment per se. Here are some prime examples:

John Conyers
Upon producing his report, “The Constitution in Crisis”, Conyers was asked about his report’s relevance to impeachment. Conyers summed up the evidence in his report as follows:

The report finds there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people … The Report concludes that a number of these actions amount to prima facie evidence that federal criminal laws have been violated… The Report also concludes that these charges clearly rise to the level of impeachable conduct.

Russ Feingold
On the Bush administration violating our FISA laws and our Fourth Amendment rights, Feingold had this to say:

I've seen some strange things in my life, but I cannot describe the feeling I had, sitting on the House floor during Tuesday's State of the Union speech, listening to the President assert that his executive power is, basically, absolute, and watching several members of Congress stand up and cheer him on. It was surreal and disrespectful to our system of government and to the oath that as elected officials we have all sworn to uphold. Cheering? Clapping? Applause? All for violating the law?"

I don't have to tell you how important this issue is. It gets to the core of what we as a country are all about. We all agree that we must defeat the terrorists who threaten the safety and security of our families and loved ones. Why does this President feel we must sacrifice our freedoms to fight terrorism? This is a gut check moment for members of Congress. Do we sacrifice our liberty? Do we bow to those who try to use security issues for political gain? Do we stand and applaud when the President places himself above the law? Or, do we say enough?

Stop the power grab, stop the politics, stop breaking the law.

It's time to stand up - not to cheer, but to fight back.

Wesley Clark
Here’s what Wes Clark had to say in response to Amy Goodman asking him whether or not Bush should be impeached:

Well, I think we ought to do first thing's first, which is, we really need to understand and finish the job that Congress started with respect to the Iraq war investigation. Do you remember that there was going to be a study released by the Senate… to determine whether the administration had, in fact, misused the intelligence information to mislead us into the war with Iraq? Well, I’ve never seen that study. I’d like to know where that study is…. We should have been investigating why this country went to war in Iraq.

Chuck Hagel

Any president who says, I don’t care, or I will not respond to what the people of this country are saying about Iraq or anything else, or I don’t care what the Congress does, I am going to proceed — if a president really believes that, then there are — what I was pointing out, there are ways to deal with that… You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don’t know. It depends on how this goes.

Dennis Kucinich
In a speech on the House Floor, in March of this year, Dennis Kucinich warned:

"This House cannot avoid its constitutionally authorized responsibility to restrain the abuse of Executive power," Kucinich said on the floor today. "The Administration has been preparing for an aggressive war against Iran. There is no solid, direct evidence that Iran has the intention of attacking the United States or its allies."

Kucinich noted that since the US "is a signatory to the U.N. Charter, a constituent treaty among the nations of the world," and Article II states that "all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state," then "even the threat of a war of aggression is illegal"….

"Since war with Iran is an option of this Administration and since such war is patently illegal, then impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran," Kucinich said today.

Mike Gravel
Gravel had this to say about impeachment and the Iraq War:

The other course of action for impeachment would be to hold hearings in the judiciary committee of the House and the Senate on how the fraud was committed on the American people. We’re getting enough stuff coming out of the Libby Trial and a whole host of other areas – some hearings that Levin held with the armed services committee – that now they can now build on that body of knowledge and probe more, issue subpoenas all over to hell and get these people to testify or perjure themselves.

Barbara Boxer
Barbara Boxer is the only U.S. Senator who has outright called for the impeachment of George Bush. In particular, she has said during a recent radio interview (scroll up to top):

I've always said that you need to keep it (impeachment) on the table, and you need to look at these things, because now people are dying because of this administration. That's the truth. And they won't change course. They are ignoring the Congress. They keep signing these signing statements which mean that he's decided not to enforce the law. This is as close as we've ever come to a dictatorship. When you have a situation where Congress is stepped on, that means the American people are stepped on. So I don't think you can take anything off the table. Because in fact the Constitution doesn't permit us to take these things off the table.

Al Gore
In his book, “The Assault on Reason”, Al Gore says:

If the president has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap, and torture, then what can’t he do? After analyzing the executive branch’s claims of these previously unrecognized powers, Harold Koh, dean of Yale Law School, said: “If the president has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution.”…

The administration has also launched an assault on the right of the courts to review its actions, on the right of the Congress to have information on how the public’s money is being spent, on the right of the news media to have information about the policies that it is pursuing, and on anyone who criticizes its excesses… This same pattern characterizes virtually all of the Bush administration’s policies… and its appetite for power is astonishing…

The fact that our normal safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is deeply troubling. This failure is due in part to the fact that the executive branch has followed a determined strategy of obfuscating, delaying, withholding information, appearing to yield but then refusing to do so, and dissembling in order to frustrate the efforts of the legislative and judicial branches to restore our constitutional balance. After all, the other branches can’t check an abuse of power if they don’t know it is happening.

This administration has not been content simply to reduce the Congress to subservience. By closely guarding information about their own behavior, they are dismantling a fundamental element of our system of checks and balances. A government for the people and by the people should be transparent to the people. Yet the Bush administration seems to prefer making policy in secret… insulated from any meaningful participation by Congress or the American people…

On the need to hold impeachment hearings

Some people have suggested that there’s not enough desire for impeachment on the part of the American people to enable Congress to act. I believe that that suggestion is very misguided. Even in the absence of impeachment hearings, most polls, depending on how they are worded, show close to 50% approval of the American people for impeachment. Here’s one that clearly shows greater than 50%.

But there is a much larger point. If Congress initiated impeachment hearings, our corporate news media would be forced to cover it intensively. Does anyone seriously believe that the current ongoing Congressional investigations are reaching nearly as many Americans as how many would be reached by impeachment hearings? Here is how Glenn Greenwald explains it:

You can't convince Americans of the need to stop abuses until you demonstrate to them in a dramatic and undeniable way that those abuses are being perpetrated and that they are harmful and dangerous… what we urgently need are compelled, subpoena-driven, aggressive hearings designed for maximum revelation and drama. Hearings are able, in a dramatic and television-news-friendly environment, to shed light on how extreme and radical this administration really has been in all of these areas. Democrats in Congress need to realize right now that the administration will not produce or disclose any meaningful evidence unless and until they are truly forced to do so.

The choice is not whether to provoke a constitutional crisis. The real choice is whether to recognize that we have one and to act to end it, or continue to pretend that it does not exist by acquiescing to the President's ongoing abuses and fundamental encroachments into every area… Democrats have to internalize that this administration does not operate like previous ones. No rational person can doubt that they are limitless in their contempt for legal restrictions or notions of checks and balances.

And televised, highly publicized confrontations over the administration's hubris and arrogance and utter contempt for our legal institutions and political traditions is not something to be avoided. It is something we desperately need as a country…

[regnaD kciN]

1. Impeaching Bush and Cheney isn't equivalent to "abolishing our present government"...

...although, sad to say, I'm coming to suspect that failure to do the former may well require the latter in the future.

[zonmoy]

4. perhaps the fact that all three branches of the government has become hopelessly corrupt

might show the need to abolish our government. the core principle of any such movement should be of course to abolish corporate personhood.

[BrainGlutton]

22. As a lawyer I can tell you abolishing corporate personhood would raise a lot of problems.

Of course, there are other ways the rights and powers of corporations could be reined in.

[Time for change]

25. Why is that -- what problems are you referring to?

Doesn't the concept of corporate personhood present a lot of problems itself? I'm talking about the fact that they enjoy many of the benefits that real people enjoy but porportionately less responsibilities. Why is it fair, for example, that CEOs who mismanage their company get to jump out with a golden parachute that sets themselves up for life, while employees of the company lose the benefits that they've worked all their lives for? Is that not a complication of the concept of corporate personhood?

[lonestarnot]

43. I believe it to be very fucking unethical.

[zonmoy]

47. how is eliminating the personhood of artificial entities

unethical.

[Wapsie B]

52. I don't understand that either.

Makes absolutely no sense.

[lonestarnot]

53. Not eliminating the personhood of artificial entities.

The burden of the golden parachutes on the working stiff's ass.

[zonmoy]

56. quite true I had thought that you were saying something completely different though.

[lonestarnot]

62. Sometimes things posted here get misconstrued quite easily.

Not to worry.

[BrainGlutton]

66. Well, remember why limited-liability corporations exist in the first place.

The concept was invented so, if a business venture should fail, as they often do, the investors would risk ONLY the amount of their investment, and the failed company's creditors could not go after them for the company's unpaid debts. That problem is no less salient now than it was in the 19th Century. And a corporation must be regarded as a legal "person" for many obvious purposes, such as negotiation of binding contracts. If you have to do business with a company, you don't want to negotiate and sign a contract with every single executive and employee, do you? No, you want to be able to deal with the whole company as a single legal entity.

Of course, corporations are not legally "persons" for all purposes. E.g., a corporation cannot vote in elections. It enjoys free-speech rights, but so does any not-for-profit organization or association.

I see a lot of things wrong with the corporations, but I can't see who depriving them of legal personhood could solve those problems.

[truth2power]

27. I'm interested in your point of view on this (corporate personhood)..

Seems to me that having certain "persons" among the populace who are immortal and who have gazillions of dollars to ensure political access, while the rest of us untermenschen have to make do with standing on a street corner holding a sign, doesn't contribute to the furtherance of democracy.

IMHO, 3 tasks before us:

1. Take away corporate personhood.
2. Get the money out of the system i.e. publicly funded elections
3. Instant runoff voting (to give third parties access)

I think the above could bring about substantive change, unlike wasting our energy for the next year+ worrying about who will be the next prez. The next president, even if a Dem, will likely be a corporate whore - with better background music.

Seriously, I'm interested in what you have to say about other ways to rein in corporate power. Time to get started. :)

[lonestarnot]

54. Past time to get started.

Get rid of the criminals first.

[zonmoy]

57. getting rid of the corporations will certainly get rid of nearly all the

corporate criminals.

[Usrename]

63. I'm not the poster you directed the question to, but I have ideas.

There are some models with better structures in our system.

Flight safety is the one that comes to mind. It’s a very complex structure, but it functions very efficiently IMHO. I know, many people would scoff at my point of view. What a ridiculous, absurd, and boneheaded position that such a huge government bureaucracy could function well. But imagine if aviation were run by the American Bar Association or the American Medical Association. No one would ever be able to fly anywhere.

The mission of the FAA is to promote aviation and the primary focus is safety. So how do they deal with the tension between maximizing profits and providing safety? There is much tension between those goals because safety costs money.

Responsibility appears to be at the root of almost all of the regulation. It is a rarity when accidents happen. When they do happen, it is virtually nonexistent when there is no one found responsible. (It must happen, but I can’t think of an instance. Pilot error is a common factor, and pilots are aware of this catchall.)

The matrix that allows it all to work is a heavy reliance on the honor system. Most everyone who works in the industry is certified in one way or another. Pilots and mechanics are issued certificates, their training is provided by certificated persons or schools, etc. Still, each pilot keeps his/her own logbook. Mechanics certify airworthiness. There is minimal interference by anyone unless problems arise. The FAA involvement seems to entirely focus on making sure the is always a head on a chopping block somewhere, when/if any problem arises.

The system is multilevel and includes everything from ultralight (where the unlicensed pilot is responsible for everything, including the airworthiness of the vehicle) to the big jumbos (where air-carriers operate under the Air Transportation Act). In other words, one structure can include the guy working out of his garage as well as the international conglomerate.

I sort of rambled off the main point, which is, the whole thing is set up as an honor system. If a mechanic certifies an inspection, he is saying that he looked with his own eyes. If a pilot is logging flight time he is actually saying that he was in command for the flight.

If this system weren’t already up and running I would think that it might be unworkable. You know, no one has ever gone broke underestimating the stupidity.... and all that. But in my opinion it works. If it were run like other industries planes would be dropping from the sky all the time, if anyone could ever afford to get one off the ground.

It would be complicated for sure, but I’m wondering if a national structure couldn’t be developed to deal with corporations. Not like the SEC, but something more comprehensive that better defined the purpose for the corporations to exist and then developed the same tension between profits and that other purpose. Profits - greed - just does not seem like a good enough reason for an entity to exist.

[Time for change]

65. Don't we already have many sturctures like that?

The EPA, the FDA, the Consumer Product Safety Commission. All of those entities are supposed to (under any other presidential administration) serve the public's need for protection against corporate greed. And just like the FAA, they need to balance safety against other considerations.

I worry a great deal about effort to privatize government functions like these. Seems to me it would be replacing agencies that are meant to serve the public with those that are much more interested in profit.

[Usrename]

67. If the government were truly in charge it would be working now.

Or, if people were in charge and all playing by the same rules, it would be a good thing. But for people to be in charge, the corporate personhood would have to be done away with somehow. The question is: is that even possible anymore? I don't think it's possible. So I was moving past that to the question of: can the corporations be tamed?

Government doesn't seem to be able to handle the problem by itself. A separate private structure that functions side by side with government might be able to. A large complement of corporation pilots, corporation mechanics, corporation flight attendants all with nothing to do but make sure that the corporations behave themselves. (Notice that I'm referring to the corporations as if they were people. My little tribute to Roberts, Scalia, and Scalito.) If we are to coexist, we must force the corporations to behave themselves somehow.

Or, figure out a way to eliminate them entirely. Which is a much more difficult proposition IMHO. It's hard to visualize how they could be banned without taking ourselves out with them. A suicide mission to be sure. But I'm game. Just point me in the right direction and I'll pull the trigger.

Once it's understood that corporations, even if they could be entirely eliminated, could be almost instantly replaced by other legal contrivances or instruments, then it does seem almost impossible to want to move in that direction. Besides, to ease my conscience, I'll assume that they do provide some useful benefits such as ownership and the ability to pool capital to finance large investments in order to produce goods or services that would not be possible without the huge funds.

To me, a place to begin going in the right direction would be to try and better define why each and every corporation exists. Define its purpose, if you will, and make it necessary that this purpose must be something other than just maximizing profits or pure, plain, unadulterated greed. That would create the necessary tension between their mission or purpose and their profit margin. Begin trying to tame the beast by first deciding why it is you just don't slay the damn thing.

Organized crime, politicians, and corporate entities cannot be viewed separately any more. They are one and the same, or at least many individuals have interests in all three, so any solution must be very robust if you expect it to work.

[DeSwiss]

68. Your ideas are very provocative and extremely interesting....

I must mull them now....

:)

[Usrename]

69. Thank you for the encouragement.

Much mulling is necessary. These are difficult challenges...

;)

[zonmoy]

46. like what

and do these problems outweigh the problems and corruption of our system that corporations having not only the rights of a person but a lot more money and power than any person could ever hope to have causes.

[Richard Steele]

58. Such as.....what? I'm all ears.

[Wapsie B]

50. I agree.

To really change this form of government the corporate shield needs to be pierced and corporate personhood abolished.

[Time for change]

13. Why not?

One way to look at it is that our "government" is composed of the people who run it. If we get rid of Bush and Cheney, a great many people will go with them, and we can say that we got rid of our "government" in that sense.

Another way of looking at it is to define our "government" as the type of legal system that we live under. Right now we live under a sort of fascist dictatorship. If we get rid of Bush and Cheney, perhaps we can replace it with a democracy. That would make impeachment somewhat similar to the American Revolution, except without the violence (assuming that Bush and Cheney accept the verdict - which I'm sorry to say is far from certain). In any event, our government will be a whole lot different then than it is now if impeachment is successful.

Some might argue that we will still be living under the same Constitution after replacing them. But I would disagree with that. We really aren't living under a Constitutional system at this time. In theory we are, but not in actual fact.

[Sam Ervin jret]

31. Impeach or this govt. will not stand for long.

If we do not impeach this executive branch, one executive right after the next, we will put the whole of our future Republic in jeopardy. These crimes must not stand. These powers must not be allowed to stay in the executive branch. The imbalance of powers will cause just what our forefathers were afraid of. The next executive will not give up the power, no matter what party, he/she will only want more. It is only a republic as long as we can keep it. If we don't impeach our only other chance to save our republic will be to follow them out of power and prosecute them for crimes done while in office.

[Time for change]

37. Very well said

I would much rather that they get it done while they're in office than wait till afterwards. Anyhow, I doubt will happen afterwards if they don't get removed from office.

Welcome to DU Sam :toast:

[zonmoy]

48. actually I fear that the only way to save the republic if there is no impeachment

will end up being a violent and bloody solution.

[Time for change]

49. That's what I'm afraid of

I'm not at all sure that even if they are impeached and convicted in the House that Bush and Cheney will go without a fight.

And for that matter, I'm not sure that they will allow us to have elections in 08 without a fight.

[zonmoy]

2. Thanks for pointing out all the stuff we need to impeach bush for

now all we need is a way to give congress a choice between impeaching bush or the lot of them getting convicted of obstructing justice or worse crimes.

[EFerrari]

3. K&R

[Karenina]

16. And another!

[countmyvote4real]

5. The 5th Dimension had a great song with the words of the D 'o I.

That section has always made my eyes misty ever since 2000.

"It is their duty to throw off such government."

[hootinholler]

6. It's fucking heartbreaking...

I hope that there is a valid reason for not pursuing impeachment.

-Hoot

[Time for change]

38. Well, maybe not

Did you see that Conyers just advocated impeachment!!!
:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[mmonk]

7. Excellent

K&R

[warren pease]

8. Well researched and well written, as usual....

Feingold's quote (above) from February '06 is particularly maddening when juxtaposed against his July 19, '07 email response to a constituent's note concerning his position on impeachment, partly reproduced here:


He has broken the law, and he has made it
clear that he will continue to do so. The President must be held
accountable for his actions, and Congress must take action to
check the power of an executive branch that is willing to flout the
law.

That is why, on Monday, March 13, 2006, I introduced a resolution
to censure the President because of his actions. I believe that this
is an appropriate response to the President's illegal wiretapping
program.


Full letter on this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1380584&mesg_id=1380584


So in a year and change, he goes from firebrand demanding that this administration be stopped and held accountable before it can commit further atrocities against the Constitution, to an "off the table" mainstream Vichy dem who's apparently OK with a toothless censure resolution as an "appropriate response" to the sons of bitches who brought us Amerika v2.0: The Fascist Boot for Happy Feet.

And to top it off, he was one of the "ayes" in that horrible Bushean suck-up exercise the other day in which the senate adopted, by a 97-0 margin, a resolution to accept as truth the customary BushCo lies about nuclear programs, WMDs, terrorist-harboring and so forth -- just do a global search and replace on the Iraq PR plan, substituting an "N" for the "Q," and you don't even have to break a sweat. After all, BushCo has been so reliable, honest and forthcoming about its reasons for invading Iraq, why would anyone question their motives for attacking, and probably nuking, Iran? Not, apparently, Russ Feingold. What a goddamn disappointment.

How stupid do you have to be to fall for the same exact discredited nonsense not once, but twice? I'd like to think that at least some of my elected representatives are considerably smarter than I am -- which christ knows isn't all that tough an achievement -- but they prove time and again that they're just predictable products of a mainstream Dumbfuckistan education and lack the critical thinking skills that gawd gave the average squirrel.

Enough... It's bedtime on the west coast. And Bonds hit two more home runs today which, despite the imminent death of the republic and the ascension of a humorless, brutal national security state, makes this a pretty good day after all.


wp

[Time for change]

17. I'm trying to be more optimistic than that

Perhaps I'm in denial, but I still like to believe that most of our Democratic Congresspersons are approaching this with integrity and some degree of courage.

With regard to Feingold, it's just impossible for me to believe that he has caved on this. Rather, I want to believe that this is just an honest difference of opinion, or that he knows something that we don't know.

With regard to Feingold's censure resolution, keep in mind that his censure resolution went further than any other Senator, and only two other Senators even supported him on that. Feingold was the only Senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act, he was the first Senator to call for withdrawal from Iraq, in the interest of clean elections he has put severe restrictions on campaign contributions that he will accept (even when involved in very close elections), and he is one of 5 U.S. Senators who has expressed approval of gay marriage. So I just can't believe that he is reluctant to voice unpopular opinions on anything.

As I said in my OP, I am thoroughly perplexed about this.

[bbgrunt]

9. I remember when Feingold was so hot over FISA--and

now he doesn't support impeachment? I can only assume they all know something dreadful will happen if they were to start impeachment proceedings--otherwise they're all complicit in this crime

[warren pease]

10. If that's the case...

and "something dreadful" would happen if impeachment were put back on the table, then about a dozen or so of the more credible senators and congresspersons -- "credible" used as a relative term here -- should simply spill their guts to, say, The Independent or The Guardian. Or maybe Bill Moyers, Jon Stewart, and Olbermann. No other infotainment outlets in the US deserve that kind of story, nor would they run with it even if it fell right into their laps with all the right documents, other physical evidence, second-source corroboration and so forth. Such is the state of the US free press.

What the hell do they have to lose? If it's of the least concern to them that they're collaborating with the fascists who are about to destroy the great experiment, and impeachment would trigger unbearable consequences, they owe it to us, their employers, to come clean about what they know.

You'd think there would be enough honor, dignity and courage around to produce just a dozen witnesses out of 535 total in the senate and house, more than half of whom are members of the opposition party. But apparently not. I guess their priorities prevent them from doing the right and just thing -- as is usually the case.

Meanwhile, fascism at home, imperialism abroad, terra terra everywhere, and nobody in a position to put the brakes on does shit. I wonder when civilized countries will open their doors to political refugees fleeing the US. Somebody let me know immediately; my passport's valid and ready to go.


wp

[NotGivingUp]

14. Yes...you'd think there'd be at least a dozen..pitiful. Lucky you, you've got your passport. nt

[warren pease]

33. Passport...

The most essential document in the US these days. Fortunately, I live fairly close to B.C., Canada and could probably get that far undetected unless "the authorities" were specifically looking for me -- in which case I wouldn't make it out of my own driveway.

Anyway, get one NOW. They're still under $100, I think, and it's probably the single best investment in your continued freedom you can make in the BushCo era.


wp

[cutlassmama]

12. I used to really like him too. I wonder what he knows. n/t

[Time for change]

20. That's a scary thought, isn't it?

Here's something I wrote a long time ago on that issue:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5495235&mesg_id=5495235

I would really love to know how many of our Congresspersons believe this kind of stuff, and how many feel that they are personally at risk. What happened to Wellstone really creeps me out, and I don't believe for a minute that it was an accident.

Also, I am not at all convinced that even if the Senate voted to convict both Cheney and Bush that they would go quietly. Or that they won't cancel the 08 elections. I felt that there was about a 10% chance that the 06 elections would be cancelled, and even after seeing that they were not, I now believe that there's about a 20% chance that the 08 elections will be cancelled.

:scared:

[bbgrunt]

64. that was a very interesting post. Curious, isn't it? No, I don't doubt they are capable of

anything.

[puebloknot]

11. K&R Eloqent...sadly so! nt

[NotGivingUp]

15. Our government has definitely become destructive. There is no doubt about it. nt

[The_Commonist]

18. Excellent!

Thanks for writing this.

Even if we somehow get these people out of office, we will still need to address the underlying issues that allowed this to happen in the first place. In my mind, that is the corporate agenda of destroying the functions of government in an effort to privatize everything. Corporate Personhood might be a good place to begin, regulating corporations the way the founding fathers laid it out for us. Maybe once we do that, we can get the money out of the political system, and return government to "the people." Until we do that, this cycle will just repeat itself...

[Time for change]

19. Thank you -- Most definitely we have a lot of work to do.

Other important and related issues to consider are transparent elections and a free and independent press, rather than the virtual corporate monopoly that we currently have on TV and radio news.

[AntiFascist]

32. Regulating corporations is definitely needed...

but threatening to do away with corporate personhood, sad to say, opens up the opportunity for the far right to scream that we are communists or socialists. That's really how the fascism ball gets rolling, as people begin to fear for the 401Ks, losing their businesses, there goes my pension, etc, etc.

[Time for change]

39. The far right screams about every f***ing thing

I don't believe that corporate personhood is a holy cause for most average right wing nuts. Nor can I see a "Communist" label sticking for that reason.

My understanding is that there is no solid legal opinion in its favor.

Anyhow, we can't be quiet every time the far right screams. Somebody's got to take them on.

[AntiFascist]

42. The point of saying that it would "get the fascism ball rolling" was...

the far right would accuse the left of being Marxists, and there would be plenty of moderates supporting them on this issue. I'm sure there are also plenty of centrist Democrats who don't want their corporations messed with too much. If the issue of corporate personhood became front and center, it could isolate the far left (once again) and cause the rest of the political spectrum to shift to the right.

We've made a lot of progress recently in reeling in much of the population on the issue of ending war. Pushing the end of corporate personhood would undo much of that progress, and it could also force Democratic front-runners to choose sides.

There are plenty of evil corporations out there which subsist on corporate welfare, many for militaristic purposes. Let's focus on these. Google "military socialism" and you'll see how the German Nazi Party evolved from a politically socialist end of the spectrum.

[me b zola]

21. k&r

[wiggs]

23. Great post. May want to add links to writings and interviews with Bruce Fein, a

credible and articulate expert on the constituion.

[theletterf]

24. Would _somebody_ in congress stand up and say this!

if i hear one more person tell me it's off the table, i'm going to catch fire.

[Sam Ervin jret]

29. remind them it's impeach now or prosecute later!

The wrong doing of this administrations cannot be allowed to stand into the next election. Democrat or Republican. This is a Republic not a Kingdom. These powers that have been collected will not be given back! and are very dangerous in any hands

[Time for change]

41. Barbara Boxer said it

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/24602#comment-132689

And now John Conyers has said it:
From the front page of today's DU:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1390369

:bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce:

[Time for change]

51. I was just reading Al Gore's "The Assault on Reason" and he quotes Fein

as saying with regard to Bush's use of signing statements that the "eliminate the checks and balances that keep our country a democracy".

[EFerrari]

26. kIck for an excellent post.

[bdamomma]

28. if we do not stop this we are as guilty as the disgusting regime is.

[Sam Ervin jret]

30. Worse, It is the responsibility of the CItizens, WE THE PEOPLE

It is only a republic as long as we can keep it.

[PATRICK]

34. Reluctance versus the reality

I don' think it is merely a question of long term precedent, the making of impeachment a routine factor, as it should have been to deter the NEED for it in the first place. The problem is that that any closed group self-excepts itself and protects it membership above law, profession, charter. Into protected environments where power and money flow the wrong elements proliferate like sheltered weeds.

The past experience has been that the most avid users of the law to attack and remove "offending" members has been used quite often for political purposes and especially on the politically vulnerable. The double standard is quite clear on precedent. Exceptions like Nixon who made deals and slid into resignation "gracefully" prove the rule. Clinton and Johnson were savagely impeached in naked takeover plots that fell short by the narrowest of margins, one in spite of minimal charges and popular support on his behalf. the people who most deserve impeachment, in other words, are those most quick and ruthless in using it. Like any criminal or terrorist using the law against itself it challenges or cows proper implementation in the future- making the situation even worse. Does one respond by changing the law, matching the ruthless implementation "the way it is supposed to be" or avoiding the whole thing because it is shown to be so dangerous. The latter perceived and ill-advised cowardice that guarantees more abrogations of law by criminal government officials is what rankles the common citizen.

Protected from challenges to their election and the election system, put beyond the reach of recall(unless, once more the criminals decide to fast track a movie star) the rule of application is that only overwhelming acts, political weakness, and dire need(last on the list) force accountability. With that kind of ultimate accountability, all of the ordinary accountability has been tainted and dismissed with relative ease along with the reliability of election or even primary process.

Impeachment? How about recalling elected officials, something we can do besides casting 8 tenths of a ballot or signing petitions. You can start anywhere such as with Vitter. The Dems and the Congress can stay out of it. It is a matter of the citizens of the state to conduct the process. Any Senator blocking investigations. Any Senator with his hand in the till. Any hypocrite or failure. Congress takes our calls for impeachment(blocked as well by corporate media from sharing our perceptions honestly as a nation) lightly because we expect them to clean a house where our votes seem not to matter and our wishes something less. Of course, over the years, recall has been made more onerous(unless the politicos themselves desire the tool)than the impeachment process. Because the first use of impeachment was an abuse, most lawmakers consider it fearful, dark territory, a coup ploy for dictators in the wings. No one after its defeat had the political power to correct the abuse or STRENGTHEN the abused law. Instead it lay fallow until Nixon forced its hand then the anti-Clinton pretext needed it to thwart the resurgence of democracy itself.

Since the airwaves and streets themselves are as weighed against citizen will as recall law and impeachment practice the onus is on "activists" or select dissenters to organize, foment and bring about change. The danger there is that is forced to be without the majority and without the government officials. There are revolutionaries on the dark side also, better armed and likely supported by the SAME creeps causing all the repression and trouble in the first place. Like any third world sucker with loans to the World Bank, popular protest and particular leaders are pre-emptively punished and attacked or the "chaos" used as an excuse to react with a police state. When the law itself is taken over, the true citizen is by definition an "insurgent". There is no violence or peaceful protest or method that cannot be touched, attacked, corrupted, fall into the natural dangers of heated revolution by the problem people- themselves a minority of shepherds holding the majority of the sheep inside electric fences.

I think, first off, before getting into the general need for radical change(and guess who is in reality leading the way in THAT as well?), names need to be named and the few targeted for their responsibility. Otherwise the masses as usual will be set powerlessly against each other as in civil wars instigated by the protected few who profit from the fight itself.

The politicians, crooked and subversive and the specific crimes and dangers they pose to the nation. The corporations whose business is despot economics and who fund attacks against the nation they turn against as consumers or workers. The CEO's, the voices the entangling foreign relationships. Start from the top. Recall, boycott, lawsuits, denial of services, strikes, film, pamphleteering(e or snail). One does not have to wait before the political club members and the permissive corporate world that tolerates renegade behavior reluctantly submit to purposeful half measures- which is very unlikely to be much more than token PR with again- zero enforcement.

And advocates, champions of justice and causes, need to get together. An MLK can be shot, a coalition can only be pettily, short-sidedly divided. We have an insufficient plethora of action groups running around trying to get past the goons guarding and pounding the leaks in the dam. We need to get together as massively as possibly to combat the real abuse of topdown money, media and power that would not mind overmuch putting guns in our frustrated hands so long as we don't fundamentally crash the public illusion of "legitimacy" they hold so arrogantly. A thousand letters to Monsanto or a thousand organizations mobilized to attack corporate dishonesty full front and together.

In order to defeat the circular logic and powerlessness, legitimate and non-violent power in service of LAW must first be demonstrated. Otherwise the paper and the pols can only be changed by the point of the gun or surrender to the tainted delegation of our will into a slate of officials weighted toward insufficiency or corruption. Think of a Constitutional Convention convened by Bushbots. If they needed to bother or their whim was to recreate their fraud into a more convenient image. In these circumstances, reasoned and legitimate citizenship activism must unite from below and hammer real consequences at the facade and impose real debate and real national will against the criminal. Before changing the government, in other words, the people must prove themselves as united agents of change. and reset the purpose of government and restore proper accountability.

In those actions will be the seeds of a better America and the revolutionaries will not be isolated activists taking up the Ring of Power. We need to unite despite accommodations, niches, particular causes or concerns and face down the entire top structure of America- which as of now woefully and corruptingly includes many advocacy groups as soft on this crisis as Dems are with impeachment.

The ship of state that rides the swell of the suckers' discontent is barely rocked enough to make a few
chickenhawks seasick.

[Time for change]

55. Wow -- You may very well be right

It's going to be very difficult, however, to get us all united enough to check the power of this regime. I hope someone can figure out a way to do it.

[whistle]

35. So then why is impeachment not on the table Speaker Pelosi?

...Why?

[stevietheman]

36. Perhaps it's time to also remove CiC powers from the Presidency

The idea that we let one man or woman decide if we go to war or not is ultimately going to mean our nation's end if we don't strip this power by Amendment to the Constitution.

A four-person bi-partisan committee, appointed by the top two parties in Congress, should become the Armed Forces Command, working with the current Joint Chiefs, to make military decisions, and would normally defer to the Congress to declare war.

We just cannot trust solitary Presidents to handle this power any longer.

[Time for change]

60. That may be worth while

But CIC powers still don't give a President the right to declare war or to invade any country that he feels like he wants to invade. The President's power could be greatly curtailed, I believe, without changing the Constitution, but merely by letting him know that showing contempt for the Constitution is likely to result in his impeachment and removal from office.

[Uncle Joe]

40. Excellent work, Time for change!

:applause:

Kicked and recommended.

[Warren DeMontague]

44. Thank you for compiling this all in one place. Excellent.

Nice work.

[Martin Eden]

45. "the bar ... is both lower than and higher than the committing of of a crime”

That is a vital distinction that the public must be made to understand.

Very well-articulated case for impeachment -- both in concept and in particulars.

KAY and ARE

[cutlassmama]

59. Excellent piece! K&R

[L. Coyote]

61. Natural rights inherent in people ... a right to alter, reform, or abolish the government

Oregon Constitution.

Article 1. Section 1. Natural rights inherent in people. We declare that all men, when they form a social compact are equal in right: that all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; and they have at all times a right to alter, reform, or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.

....

This takes precedence over joining the Union. Thyat isn't even in the Constitution.

What about your State's Constitution? Does it allow for abolishing the government by the People? Does it recognize these rights?

======================
Abraham Lincoln, speech in the U.S. House of Representatives, subject: The War on Mexico. Delivered January 12, 1848.

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable--a most sacred right--a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world,"


Lincoln was referring to Mexico's right to throw off crown, church, and slavery.
Today, reforming our government might also aid in liberating the world.

[Philosoraptor]

70. THANK YOU Time.