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Tuesday, September 1, 2009

CHAPTER SEVENTY EIGHT. POWER TO THE PEOPLE!




This essay is dedicated to Mary Geddry, a brilliant and tireless ally of the Army of Soldiers For Peace International.


Mary is the mother of a Marine who served in Iraq and a self-taught engineer and businesswoman who has designed a highly efficient rooftop wind generator. While she is gearing up to put it into production, she is investing in designing software that will make the power so generated able to efficiently switch from the generator when active to a battery that will store energy when the wind is calm. 

Mary wants to place these on the roofs of commercial and municipal buildings and eventually sell the her patented design to an engineering firm that can downsize it for use on homes. Her long term goal is for communities to develop micro-grids linking these systems to local distribution points. She envisions these systems being owned and operated by local Public Utility Districts.

There are a couple of similar systems of which I am aware that are based on solar cells. One is in Northern California, as I learned when traveling through the area campaigning to put a single payer health care plan on the table early in last year’s “reform” debate that recently brought us the monstrosity of a bill that is reviled by conservatives and liberals alike, though for different reasons. 

Advocates of small, limited government do not believe it should be involved in our unique American non-system of for-profit medical insurance. Libertarians object to the mandate,  in keeping with their  monomaniacal focus on individual responsibility in a system rigged to make it nearly impossible for the average American to succeed. 

These opponents of the expansion of a system that works for millions of Americans so far despite the crippling costs of Medicare Part D are right to revile the legislation, but for none of the reasons they give. A mandate to buy private insurance makes little sense  if for no other reason than it will leave out millions of working Americans who will still not be able to afford insurance. Costs will price skyrocket as the new coverage requirements go into effect. with no serious cost controls in place. 

It defies logic to argue that we can mandate insurers to cover millions of sick they now deny coverage. It will  further deplete state resources by its underfunded mandate to expand Medicaid and force states to pay inflated yet still inadequate Medicare rates to providers.  How will advocates of limited governmental power react to a government "takeover" of the commercial utility industry?

Uncompromising advocates of a single payer health care system such as myself understand that the bill represents a sellout of the American people and a gift to the medical insurance, pharmaceutical and corporate health care industries that provide so much of the corporate money that pays for the propaganda blitzes every two years that keeps our Senators in their powerful offices. We will not see a day when the government acts in the interests of the People over corporations until we rid the Senate of its corporate Puppets.

Most of us have also come to understand the threat to representative democracy of corporations having the ability to buy Senators and dictate legislation through their deep-pocketed and generous lobbyists. Too often unrecognized is the corollary that this allows big oil and other war-based industries to manipulate events through the CIA and its traitorous corporate accomplices ,who keep fear and the ever present threat of endless war alive and in the subconsciousness if not the consciousness of the ordinary American.

Giving power to the people will result in giving electrical power and any money generated by its production to the people in our local communities. We can have free power generated and distributed locally, with profits used to fund schools and medical clinics in the community. By cutting as many as possible out of the main grid, we protect the grid from massive regional failures that are the inevitable result of centralized power generation. 

Our current system makes us vulnerable to attack by cyberterrorists in China and Russia, in addition to more obvious security issues. Taking it out of private hands and providing most power for free will boost the economy. It will make us independent of unreliable foreign sources and mercury-laden coal that is destroying our rivers and mountains, devastating and poisoning our people and generating massive amounts of greenhouse gases that threaten human civilization. Most importantly, it will take power away from the incredibly selfish and shortsighted men who have created endless war and environmental degradation in their pursuit of profit and the power to enslave the planet.

Ultimately, if the people take charge of their government they can force it to provide for the common welfare and ensure domestic (and international) tranquility, as promised in the preamble to the Constitution that lays out the purpose of our national government. 

When the people recognize their collective power, they can demand an affordable and sustainable system of universal health care, the conversion of our economy to a localized, sustainable one not dependent on products produced by slave labor in China, greenhouse and mercury producing coal or oil and nuclear resources obtained from unstable and volatile regions where we are fighting both cold and hot wars. Only when we acknowledge and act upon our God-given right to choose freedom over economic slavery will the promise of democracy be fulfilled.

The surest means of seizing and holding on to the reins of government is through a Constitutional amendment abolishing corporate personhood that nullifies the decision of the Five Stooges of the Supreme Court in Citizens United. We can and must do this by supporting the campaigns of the many men and women prepared to put their lives on hold to run for the Senate without reliance on corporate money. Once in office, these patriots will represent the People and not the corporations that are bleeding America and the world dry and destroying wealth and the middle class of America with their endless pursuit of control of the world’s energy supply.

It is possible to pass the amendment abolishing corporate personhood within two election cycles. Perhaps this will avoid the prophesied Armageddon projected by the Mayans and others to occur in 2012.  At the very least, the imminence of the fulfillment of this ancient prediction could wreak havoc in the Democratic Party, given their abysmal performance in bringing about the change the United States needs to survive beyond that year.  

Perhaps the destruction that was predicted to occur will be to theirs and the other corporate party. The signs have been seen in the decline in Republican Party membership and the losses to Democratic ranks in 2010 by crank Tea Partiers financed by corporate interests. If we can educate partisan supporters of the corporate duopoly, we can restore democracy to America.

If introduced now, the amendment to abolish corporate personhood would force the 36 Senators up for re-election to choose between serving the corporate Puppetmasters of the Senate or serving the People who elected them. I wouldn’t bet on the chances of anyone foolish enough to argue against it. 

We are gearing up to raise awareness of the issue and mobilize the people to fight for what we have earned through the sweat of our brow and endless sacrifice for ourselves and our families. With the support of the majority of American voters, victory in the War to Take Back America for the People is assured. 

A small vanguard of those who consider themselves conservatives are beginning to join forces with those who consider themselves liberals to wipe out the weaker corporate coup plotters. With the aid of we who have trained in the military, we will free the American people to assume control of the government and their collective destiny.

This is the essence of a plan to fight the War to Take Back America for the People. We are putting into place the troops to attack in flanking movements from the Left and the Right. We can join forces in the middle after the bloodless battle is over and turn over the government to civilian command once the traitors in our midst are removed from power. 

We will support and defend our Commander in Chief, as long as possible, but he seems to be a hostage to the corporations that control the traitors in the Senate and thus are holding him as a virtual political prisoner. They essentially succeeded doing so with Bill Clinton. As the Army of the Soldiers For Peace International grows in numbers and strength, we will be prepared to launch this coordinated attack.




In the immortal words of Graham Young:


Soldiers of peace are not fighting a war
Are not looking for enemies behind every door
Are not looking for people to kill or to maim.
Soldiers of peace are just changing the game.


Men who were fighting for all of our lives
Are now fighting for children, for homes and for wives,
Fighting for the memory of all who fell before,
But the soldiers of peace just can't kill any more.


So come all you warriors who live for the fight,
Come listen to somebody, someone who might
Have been there before you and they have the right,
They've been dying to tell you the score.
The old warriors don't want you to hurt any more.

Soldiers of peace can still hear the cries
When the people were screaming and losing their lives,
When bodies were broken and spirits were torn
The soldiers of peace do not want you to mourn.


So come all you warriors who live for the fight,
Come listen to somebody, someone who might
Have been there before you and they have the right,
They've been dying to tell you the score.
The old warriors don't want you to hurt any more.


Soldiers of peace are not fighting a war.
No more! No more! No more! No more!


Rick Staggenborg, MD
Roseburg, Oregon

1 comment:

  1. This somewhat rambling essay has a grandiose flair, but the meaning of the claim that Soldiers For Peace will Take Back America refers to the broader notion of Soldiers For Peace, referring to all who are fighting for justice.

    The essential message is that we have to empower the average American by giving them a simple way to understand how our government has been seized and is under control of corporations that have no interest in putting the People over profit. The abolition of corporate personhood is that message.

    All of us who are working to make government address its responsibilities must understand just how important this issue is. In an age of increasing information overload, we must speak with one voice to our fellow Americans about the one way that we can Take Back America for the People before the corruption in government leads to a violent rather than a democratic Revolution.

    If we want a sustainable Green economy, health care, living wage jobs, the end of war or any other social justice that comes at a cost to the corporate Puppetmasters of the Senate, we must let the People know that they always had the power and that now is the time to use it to free ourselves from the threat of fascism.

    ReplyDelete

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