Author: jpritikin

Like a fresh wind coming down from Alaska–the state he represented as a U.S. Senator from 1969–1981, Mike Gravel is determined to start a debate about the fundamentals of democracy in his quest for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President.

People who heard his address before the Democratic National Committee a few weeks ago and his brief statements during the first debate between the Democratic aspirants last month may be getting the idea that this is no ordinary dark horse politician.

For over a decade, given the failures of elected politicians, Mike Gravel has been engaged in some extraordinary research and consultations with leading constitutional law experts about the need to enact another check to the faltering checks and balances–namely, the National Initiative for Democracy, a proposed law that empowers the people as lawmakers.

Before you roll your eyes over what you feel is an unworkable utopian scheme, go to http://nationalinitiative.us to read the detailed constitutional justification for the sovereign right of the people to directly alter their government and make laws.

Among other legal scholars, Yale Law School Professor, Akhil Reed Amar and legal author, Alan Hirsch, have argued that the Constitution recognizes the inalienable right of the American people to amend the Constitution directly through majority vote. What the Constitution does not do is spell out the procedures for such a sovereign right.

The right of the People to alter their government flows from the Declaration of Independence, the declared views of the founding fathers and the framers of the Constitution, its Preamble ("We the People of the United States.do ordain and establish this Constitution,"), Article VII and other provisions, including the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

Very briefly, The Democracy Amendment asserts the Power of People to make laws, creates an Electoral Trust to administer the national elections, limits the use of money in National Initiative elections to natural persons (e.g. not corporations), and enacts the National Initiative through a federal ballot, when fifty percent of the voters (equal to half of the votes cast in the most recent presidential election) deliver their votes in its favor. Voting can be through traditional and electronic modes.

The Democracy Statute establishes deliberative legislative procedures vital for lawmaking by the people, administered by the Electoral Trust, in an independent arm of the U.S. government.

Mike Gravel points out that the initiative authority to make laws now exists in 24 states and more than 200 local communities. However, the national initiative, which he envisions would have deliberate legislative procedures and would be generically independent of any curtailment by the "officialdom of government," except a judicial finding of fraud.

With the National Initiative, the people acting as lawmakers, will be able to address healthcare, education, energy, taxes, the environment, transportation, the electoral college, the Iraq war, and other neglected, delayed or distorted priorities. Legal scholar, Alan Hirsch, believes "a more direct democracy could be an important means of promoting civic maturation."

Of course these initiatives, if enacted, would still be subject to existing constitutional safeguards such as the First Amendment, equal protection, due process and the like.

No doubt, you may have many questions to be answered. If you are interested, the entire text of The Democracy Amendment and The Democracy Act are on both the above-mentioned websites.

Mr. Gravel’s political positions place him high on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Cong. Dennis Kucinich will find that he is not alone during the forthcoming debates scheduled by the Democratic Party.

Don’t expect Mike Gravel to show up in the money-raising sweepstakes. For he really believes in a government of, by and for the People.

This proposal is not exactly a magnet for Fat cat money. No candidate for President from the two major parties has ever demonstrated such a detailed position regarding the sovereign power of People to amend the Constitution and make laws.

Will soundbite debates and horserace media interviews allow for such a public deliberation over the next year? Only if the People take their sovereignty seriously and take charge of the campaign trail with their pre-election, pre-primary participation in city, town and country throughout the country.

Over 2000 years ago, the ancient Roman lawyer and orator, Marcus Cicero, defined freedom with these enduring words: "Freedom is participation in power." That could be the mantra for Mike Gravel’s 2008 Presidential campaign.

Ralph Nader is the author of The Seventeen Traditions

Over the last 11 months, CNN/Opinion Research Polls have found that more than 60 percent of adults nationwide oppose the war in Iraq. Yet, the war continues. This is an overt instance of the government ignoring majority opinion. Since 2001, more than 55 percent of adults nationwide have favored the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Yet, the Kyoto Protocol remains un-ratified at the federal level.

Sadly, it is not difficult to find many instances of the federal government ignoring majority opinion.

I believe the logjam in our obstinate federal bureaucracy can be broken by enacting the National Initiative for Democracy. Just as Oregon and 23 other states have an initiative system whereby the people can enact legislation by direct vote, the National Initiative proposal would provide deliberative procedures for direct lawmaking at the federal level. Under the National Initiative, if the majority decides to leave Iraq then we leave Iraq. If the majority decides to ratify the Kyoto Protocol then it shall be ratified. Direct democracy at the federal level is not a new idea. Switzerland has had it since 1874.

If the National Initiative is such a great idea then how come it hasn’t been enacted? Congress will never enact it because it dilutes congressional power. Seemingly, the only way is to enact it by direct vote. In the same way that the U. S. Constitution was established by "We the People," we the people may amend the Constitution by majority vote. One may object that the American people lack the competence for and interest in self-governance. However, I believe that our distaste for politics is due to the recognition that, at present, we are virtually powerless at the federal level. Our exercise of power is limited to electing a representative, and then we may suffer for the next two, four or six years until we can vote him or her out of office.

The National Initiative does not replace Congress. The National Initiative is complementary; it would become another check and balance on our federal government. Just like Congressional lawmaking, laws passed by the National Initiative would be subject to Supreme Court oversight.

The National Initiative was drafted by former Alaskan Sen. Mike Gravel, based on work by the People’s Lobby, and refined in the Democracy Symposium in 2002. In order to draw attention to the National Initiative proposal, Mike Gravel ran as a Democratic presidential nominee and more recently as a Libertarian nominee. He was eliminated in round four at the Libertarian convention in Denver over Memorial Day weekend.

However, the National Initiative can be enacted regardless of who our elected representatives are. If we had the National Initiative then we would not have to wait for the next election cycle to hope for change in our federal policy. Instead of candidates running on the promise of "change," they could run on the promise of oversight. The People must become the senior sovereign of our government. Until that is the case, we are continually vulnerable to exploitation by the elite minority. Vote for yourself.

Press Release, May 4, 2008
By Jim Kottmeyer

May 4, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Jim Kottmeyer 314.898.2051

CLEAN ENERGY INITIATIVE SUBMITS SIGNATURES FOR 2008 BALLOT
Successful volunteer effort shows Missourians are ready for clean energy

JEFFERSON CITY, MO – Missourians for Cleaner Cheaper Energy today turned in approximately 170,000 signatures for the Clean Energy Initiative to the Secretary of State’s office.

More than 400 Missouri volunteers statewide circulated petition pages for the initiative, which would require investor-owned utilities to generate or purchase 15% of their electricity from clean energy sources, such as wind and solar power. Approximately 170,000 signatures were turned in from six US Congressional districts.

"We are pleased that so many Missourians have gathered signatures to put this clean energy measure on the ballot. Using clean, renewable energy works for everyone in Missouri, and voters will now get the chance to vote on the future of energy in Missouri," said P.J. Wilson, a spokesperson for the campaign.

Twenty-five other states have already enacted similar renewable energy standards to increase production of clean energy and promote energy independence.
Renewable energy sources are often local, such as a wind turbine on a local farm. Using smarter power sources is good for the environment and is great for the economy. Because renewable energy is local, consumer prices won’t be affected by foreign markets and risks. With the Clean Energy Initiative, Missourians will see the difference in the air, in the river, and in the local economy — but they will not see an increase in their utility bills.

Missourians for Cleaner Cheaper Energy enjoys broad-based support statewide from community, labor, business, environmental and religious organizations.

“WHY SWITZERLAND?”, asked an excellent book by Jonathan Steinberg, an academic at Britain’s Cambridge University, first published several decades ago and since updated. It is still a good question, and not as straightforward as it appears at first sight. It can be read, among other things, as asking how Switzerland has become the way it is; whether its ancient and peculiar political and economic arrangements still make sense today; and, if they do, whether other countries might have anything to learn from them.

The answer to the first question is shrouded in history. As for the second, this survey has argued that in an interconnected world, even a small country determined to go its own way cannot escape geopolitical changes and global economic trends. This has meant that in recent years Switzerland has in many ways become less of a special case. …

“FORTUNATE events have put me at the head of the French government, but I would consider myself incapable of governing the Swiss,” Napoleon Bonaparte told a Swiss delegation in 1802. “The more I think about your country, the more convinced I become that the disparity between its constituent parts makes it impossible to impose a common pattern on it: everything points to federalism.”

Napoleon came and went, but the Swiss disparities remained. They culminated in a religious quarrel that led to a civil war in 1847. Fortunately this turned out to be short and not very bloody. The new constitution drafted in 1848 (loosely modelled on the American one), which became the foundation of modern Switzerland, enshrined the principles of a federal system and direct democracy, and was itself ratified by referendum. …

IN THE early, heady days of the internet, many of its most zealous proponents expected cyberspace to transform the political landscape. Autocratic governments, they thought, would be scuppered by their inability to control the free flow of information. That could yet happen (see article). But cyber-optimists’ hopes were even higher for established democracies, where they saw the internet restoring the electorate’s civic engagement. Citizens would no longer have to rely on information spoon-fed by politicians, but be able to find out for themselves. Eventually, people would vote directly from the comfort of their own homes. The political apathy which has spread through western countries in recent decades would be reversed. Democracy would be rejuvenated, at last achieving its original meaning of “power of the people”.

Judging by the most obvious political effects of the internet, so far this has not happened. Established democratic governments have published enormous amounts of information on the internet and moved towards the electronic delivery of some services, but this does not seem to have made much of a difference to the conduct of politics.…

After Tuesday’s election some lawmakers were heard to grumble about mixed messages from voters who approved initiatives that limited property-tax increases, raised tobacco taxes and increased the bureaucracy to regulate home health care.

But the results were part of a clear and consistent message from voters: "We’ll make the state’s major fiscal decisions ourselves."

As they have for most of the past decade, voters, not lawmakers, were setting the agenda for Olympia. Since 1993, voters have created a strict spending limit, given themselves tax breaks when the Legislature was busy cutting business taxes, boosted teacher pay, increased education funding and raised tobacco taxes.

If lawmakers are frustrated by that — and a recently published survey shows they are — they share the blame. In recent years the Legislature has marginalized itself as it failed to respond to voter discontent and then, out of fear voters would rebel, showed a growing skittishness about taking its own bold action.

Even when lawmakers think an initiative is flawed or unconstitutional they are loath to propose changes, imbuing the initiative with even more power.

And despite repeated warnings that initiatives would create fiscal havoc, the Legislature has consistently bailed out local governments and programs that would have been hurt. That tended to inoculate subsequent initiative campaigns from the same dire warnings.

"I think the voters have to understand that when you cut taxes, there will be fewer services. We’ve got to get out of this make-believe land," said House Appropriations Committee Co-Chairwoman Helen Sommers, D-Seattle.

The situation has been made worse by a three-year tie that has bollixed up the House while the Senate Democrats struggled last year with a one-vote majority. That has left a Legislature that spends much of its time on small things — so much so that it frustrates even Gov. Gary Locke, himself once a master of minutia — while voters draw the big strokes.

"The legislative body was constituted for incremental change," Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, said. "The initiative process is for big, clear, winner-loser stuff. The Legislature is for compromise."

Democrats won two important special elections last week that tip control of the House their way.

But with the Democrats holding only a tiny majority in each chamber, it’s what voters did themselves on the ballot that will have a bigger impact on broad state policy.

"The Legislature is going to get down the road in a couple of years and they’ll have nothing left to spend," said former Secretary of State Ralph Munro. "They’re not going to have any prerogatives at all and that’s not healthy. That’s not good at all."

Birth of a movement

When the 2002 Legislature convenes in January, lawmakers will face the most serious budget shortfall since 1993.

That year, lawmakers fixed the problem with budget cuts and heavy tax increases.

In many ways that set off the current trend in citizen initiatives.

The voters’ immediate reaction was to pass in the fall of 1993 Initiative 601, which created the state spending limit.

With a cap on spending and the economy humming, large budget reserves built up, which lawmakers used to give tax breaks to businesses, while individual taxpayers got little relief.

Republican lawmakers put a small property-tax cut on the ballot because Locke had said he would veto it if it went to his desk for a signature. The GOP also put a small cut in the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax on the ballot.

But with still hefty budget reserves and business getting a lopsided share of tax cuts, Mukilteo businessman Tim Eyman created Initiative 695 in 1999 to eliminate the car tax and replace it with a flat $30 fee.

It passed overwhelmingly as Eyman told voters hundreds of millions of dollars in reserves would pay for any services left wanting after the tax was eliminated.

While the budget reserves were building up, lawmakers were telling people and groups pushing for more state services that they would have to do with less, that I-601 wouldn’t allow for the raises, social services and number of schoolteachers they wanted.

So those groups went to the ballot, too. And they won, raising teachers’ salaries, dedicating money for hiring more teachers and, last week, raising tobacco taxes to pay for low-income health-care programs.

That’s what lawmakers see as a mixed message: simultaneous calls from voters for less taxes but more spending.

Really, though, voters are making the same sort of decisions and trade-offs the Legislature does each year. "They’re telling us what their priorities are," Locke said last week.

Frustration grows

But legislators are "hugely frustrated," said Todd Donovan, a Western Washington University political-science professor who studies initiatives. "I’ve never met one who thinks the public is equally skilled at making major policy decisions," he said.

That was evident in a survey recently published by Donovan that compared answers from legislators and candidates in Washington, Oregon and California — all big initiative states — to answers from Washington voters.

The survey found that only 36 percent of Washington residents thought there were too many initiatives, compared with 71 percent of the politicians. And 79 percent of candidates and lawmakers said the Legislature should handle issues, while only 24 percent of the public thought that.

That is not to say that the public is blind to problems with initiatives. The survey found agreement among most politicians and most of the public that initiative campaigns were misleading, and a majority of each group said that initiatives made bad laws.

"The vast majority of the people were pretty sympathetic to the job the Legislature is doing," Donovan said. "It’s not that they think the legislators are idiots, it’s that they think they are just as smart."

At the same time, legislators say that they, and not the public, are best-suited for deciding issues. But Donovan says they don’t always do it when they can or should.

When a King County Superior Court judge ruled Initiative 695 unconstitutional, lawmakers and the governor rushed to put the $30 car-tab fees into law, even though they had said it was a Draconian move sure to cripple essential state services.

"It still remains a big mystery to me why they didn’t even put up some alternative," Donovan said.

Lawmakers give initiatives even more power, Donovan said, "because they are not willing to amend them or challenge them or even talk about them."

Even Democrats who led the charge against I-695 voted to cut the car tax, though they didn’t think it was a good idea. The voters seemed angry, so "Why pick a fight with them?" is how Dunshee remembers the argument.

He said he and others had been working on an alternative that wouldn’t have been so dramatic, but that Democratic leaders made it clear "that would have reflected bad on the institution."

Lawmakers have often lacked candor when talking about Initiative 601. While it has been amended several times to allow for more spending and many lawmakers say it is seriously flawed, they talk as if I-601 were a sacrosanct guiding principle in Olympia.

"It is probably unconstitutional," said Senate Minority Leader James West, R-Spokane. "It was a psychological barrier. It was more mythical."

The Eyman factor

Eyman says the initiative process is unfairly labeled as a radical approach to problems, "but we’re no more wacky than some of what the Legislature does."

Small comfort, perhaps. But Eyman says lawmakers should not feel threatened by initiatives.

"Legislators think, ‘these darn citizens keep criticizing us by passing these measures,’ " Eyman said. "Now that they’ve discovered that they’re not a monopoly on public policy, they should react to the competition and say, ‘OK guys, we better come up with better ideas, better solutions, or an initiative will do it for us.’ "

Already, though, some lawmakers are guided by WWED — What Would Eyman Do?

Some were reluctant to pass an increase in the gas tax this year without putting it on the ballot; they feared that Eyman would mount a referendum campaign to undo it.

"Just the fact that we didn’t put it on the ballot would give Eyman the ability to say (to voters) ‘Ah, they don’t trust you,’ " Dunshee said.

Eyman makes much of the fact that most initiative issues had been before the Legislature earlier, and that lawmakers had had the chance to address them.

Former Rep. Brian Thomas says that’s true. But rather than a sign that the Legislature is gutless, he says, it’s a sign that the proposals were bad.

"There’s been a lot of really crummy ideas out there that the Legislature, for good reason, wouldn’t do," said Thomas, a Republican from Renton.

Thomas and Sommers, the appropriations co-chairwoman, worked together to create a new way to fund school construction.

But last year voters overwhelmingly approved Initiative 728. Known as the class-size initiative, it gave school districts wide discretion in deciding how to spend money from a new Academic Achievement Fund that used the same money Thomas and Sommers had identified solely for school construction.

"We were happy and smiled and went home and the next year the people destroyed it," Thomas said.

"The public stole it."

David Postman can be reached at 360-943-9882 or at dpostman@seattletimes.com

Ever heard of the National Initiative for Direct Democracy? I just got word about it last week, even though the idea is the brainchild of two nonprofit corporations established in 1992 by Mike Gravel, the former Democratic senator from Alaska.

But wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let me share with you what I found at the nation’s premier public opinion data clearinghouse – the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.

In July 1988, an ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted putting forward the statement: "Large corporations have too much power for the good of the country." Respondents were asked if they agreed with that statement, disagreed or had no opinion.

A whopping 71 percent said they agreed, while 24 percent disagreed and five percent said they had no opinion. In 1992, 1996 and 2000, the same poll was conducted. The results were almost exactly the same.

A 1994 Harris poll about the people’s perception of power put forward this question: "Do you think big companies have too much or too little influence on Washington?"

That survey found 86 percent of Americans think big companies have an undue influence on the famed "Washington consensus." Only 9 percent of the respondents said that big companies have too little influence. In March 2000, the same question was posed and the numbers changed only slightly, as you might expect.

This is amazing! In a society where business propaganda is beat into its citizens’ heads every single day; in a nation where big corporations monopolize the media that most Americans say they rely on to form their public policy opinions, you would expect those polls to tell a different story.

Stupid question: If we live in a democracy where "the people" rule, how is it that, with a majority of Americans – for at least a decade – believing that corporations have too much influence on the American political process, there has not been a legislative movement to devolve centralized corporate power, which has surpassed the power and influence of most of the world’s nation-states?

Why has the "free press" responded with dumbfound disdain at protest movements across the globe calling for corporate accountability to the people? Why haven’t lawyers all across America spoke out in a collective voice at the absurdity that corporations have the same individual rights as flesh-and-blood human beings and have evoked the 14th Amendment in their defense far more times than the very people for whom the 14th Amendment was originally created?

Such questions get put on the back burner so that we can focus on the dialogue that our pundits and politicians want us to have, like O.J. Simpson giving Robert Blake unsolicited advice about how to conduct himself in the face of charges that he killed his wife, or whether Jim Jeffords’ defection from the GOP was a principled or traitorous move.

So back to the National Initiative for Direct Democracy. It’s a legislative proposal to be enacted by the People in a national election conducted by "Philadelphia II." The National Initiative is comprised of the Direct Democracy Constitutional Amendment (DDCA), which asserts "the People’s First Principles – that is – their sovereign authority and legislative power to create and alter governments, constitutions and laws;" and the Direct Democracy Act (DDA), which would establish procedures so the People can enact laws by initiatives, according to the Initiative’s executive summary. (Check out www.p2dd.org for more info).

The DDA also creates the Electoral Trust to administer those procedures on behalf on the People, independent of government officials.

"The National Initiative will institutionalize direct democracy and will, in essence, establish a legislature of the People in every government jurisdiction of the United States. The National Initiative does not alter representative government, but it does create a working partnership of the People acting as lawmakers with their elected representative lawmakers," the summary explains.

"In 1787, ratification of our Constitution required an affirmative vote of nine state conventions. The People’s election conducted by Philadelphia II, to enact the National Initiative, will in a more democratic manner require a number of affirmative votes greater than 50 percent of those voting in the most recent presidential election, i.e., more than 50 million votes… ."

An e-mail friend of mine asked me last week: "Should we who love freedom and self-governance support this effort? Or is this just a crazy fantasy?"

I don’t know the answers to those important questions. I do know that a society without chattel slavery was once considered a "crazy fantasy," as was the notion of representative democratic government.

I sure wouldn’t put too much stock in the Jeffords defection.

DAVID COLE
Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, Cole is a leading specialist in constitutional law and the U.S. Supreme Court.

MIKE GRAVEL
A former two-term member of the U.S. Senate, Gravel used his position as a senator to officially release the Pentagon Papers and facilitated full publication as The Senator Gravel Edition, The Pentagon Papers (Beacon Press). He is author of Citizen Power and is currently leading Philadelphia Two, a group which works to bring about direct democracy. Gravel said today: "The situation in Florida shows that the polity is controlled by the factions or parties, which is precisely what the Founding Fathers feared most. They control things from the canvassing level, with the design of ballots, to the executive level with the Florida Secretary of State to the Florida Governor — the Republican candidate’s brother — to the Legislature, exercising party, political prejudice, to the gaggle of attorneys financed by the factions who are vying for power. It’s got nothing to do with the interest of the people. This points to the fundamental flaw of the representative system. The representative is committed to his own self-interest first and then the economic interest of those who finance his campaign. At best, the people’s interest comes third."
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PENDA HAIR and JUDITH BROWNE
The Advancement Project reports that unprecedented numbers of African Americans were turned away from the polls in Florida on Nov. 7. Since then, two of the organization’s attorneys — Hair, a nationally recognized expert on voting rights law, and Browne, a civil rights attorney and activist — have been among a group of lawyers in Florida collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses for potential litigation. They are available to provide specific information regarding voter intimidation, African Americans denied the right to vote, and potential litigation.
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DOUGLAS AMY
Professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, Amy’s most recent book is Behind the Ballot Box: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting Systems. He said today: "Given the recent problems with the Electoral College system, the time has come to take a sober look at our entire electoral system and consider whether Americans would be better served by alternative electoral arrangements. One such alternative, used in several other democracies, is instant runoff voting, which eliminates the ‘spoiler’ problem and ensures that the winning candidate has the support of the majority of voters."
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SCOTT RASMUSSEN
President of Rasmussen Research, Rasmussen said today: "In a poll we released today, we found that 60 percent of Americans say voter fraud and illegal activities played a role in Election 2000. Most, 58 percent, say that when election results are close there should be an automatic recount. When it comes to the Electoral College, 61 percent would like to see the president elected by all Americans in a direct, nationwide election; only 33 percent would prefer to have the Electoral College elect the president."

WHEN Winston Churchill proposed a referendum to Clement Attlee in 1945 on whether Britain’s wartime coalition should be extended, Attlee growled that the idea was an “instrument of Nazism and fascism”. The use by Hitler and Mussolini of bogus referendums to consolidate their power had confirmed the worst fears of sceptics. The most democratic of devices seemed also to be the most dangerous to democracy itself.