The Green New Deal - Excerpts

 Introduction

I’m hoping that this book will finally force the Democratic Party to release the true nature of ‘Real Democracy’ onto the world before it’s too late. The Green New Deal gives me this hope because in the words ‘Democratic Socialism’ lies the essence of what ‘Real or True Democracy’ can give us.

The Democrats have as the basis of their brand the full meaning of the concept of ‘Democracy’. The Republicans have as the basis of their brand the full meaning of the word ‘Republic’. A Democracy is a political system in which the greatest benefits are aimed at the greatest number of people in any group - or the majority. A Republic is a political system in which the greatest benefits of society are aimed at the least number of people, the few and the Republican elected representatives are part of the few and so they themselves benefit the most by serving the fewest.

And for the purposes of a book about the Green New Deal, it must be stated up front that ‘The Few’, that Republicans love to serve is mainly the Oil Industry, the Multi-National Corporations, the billionaires who have made their billions from these sources.

‘The Many’ refers to the rest of us, the greatest majority in the history of the world, all of us who care about breathing clean air and drinking clean water and living our lives in peace and having an equal chance at health and prosperity.

Plain and simple, Democracy promotes these things for the vast majority of us - if used in the manner of Democratic Socialism defined here in these pages. And a Republic promotes the opposite for most of us as ‘The Few’ get richer, live long and prosper from the antics of the Republican Party and the vast majority of us are betrayed by them at every turn to become poorer and die sooner.

Sadly, I must also inform you that the biggest opponents of the Green New Deal claim that none of the ideas you are going to read about here are possible in this or any century. They claim that it’s impossible to transition away from fossil fuels, the main culprit in our rush to extinction. They claim that if we even attempt to do this in a big way that the economy would go into cardiac arrest. But, the truth is that a rapid transition away from fossil fuel economy to a sustainable energy economy would actually create jobs, save the economy from the terrible condition it’s in right now and bring the world a new kind of prosperity where everyone on the planet will be able to breathe easier again and that is in both the metaphorical and the literal sense.

The details of such a move away from fossil fuels has already been laid out for us by researchers at Stanford University. They go to each state, analyze how each state could be completely fossil fuel free by converting to solar, wind and hydro-electric, how homes in each state would actually save money on their energy bills and has even encouraged a few states already to adopt the goals of the Green New Deal with this knowledge under their belts. Hawaii for example and Washington state now have rules in place to be completely sustainable energy by 2050, the main goal of the Green New Deal.

This means that it certainly is not impossible and that there is a plan to get there that works and all we have to do is get the remaining 48 states in the United States to agree. Of course, the next main objection that critics of the Green New Deal make is that the biggest polluters are China and India and that whatever we do in this country can’t make a big impact until these other countries, Russia included, must also be on the same plan as the United States.

The United States however, is the biggest polluter on the planet. The rest of the world is rapidly catching up, it’s true but they are not the biggest polluters yet. And, they are doing better at reversing their addiction to coal, oil and gas at a faster pace than we are here in the United States. So, it is only a small nudge in the right direction for the rest of the world to go along with the goals of The Green New Deal and this book is all about how to nudge your own Consciousness into accepting these goals as essential, but also to nudge the rest of the world to continue to move in the right direction.

We can look at the problem and say that the glass is half-empty or we can say that the glass is half-full. I’ve always been a half-full type of guy and this attitude has always benefitted far more in life than the times when I could only see the glass as half-empty. It’s extremely exciting to be alive in an era where the entire planet is going to go through a massive rise in Consciousness as they learn more and more about their own value in the universe. Life is very rare and precious and in fact is the most precious element in the universe and therefore must be preserved at all costs.

So far, with all of the most advanced sensor technology in the history of Science, we have found no evidence of Life, absolutely zero, on any other place in the universe than this wonderful, miraculous place we call home. It’s a gift that was literally torn from Heaven and bestowed upon us by a Force that we have called ‘God’ for centuries. If we fail to do our part to preserve our home, and if there truly is a God, there is no Hell more disgusting, more painful, nor more justfied for those who looked the other way, while those in power crumple up this amazing planet and toss it away into the gutter.

There is a plan brought forward for us by those who can think critically and non-judgmentally and apolitically. These are people we can trust. They may be the only people we can trust and so we must trust them. There is a way forward that we must all learn about, study in every detail, and start to put into effect in our daily lives. This book is part of this plan and brings even more valuable information to the table to prove that in making the transition to a pollution-free world, we will not only improve the economy to a state of prosperity it has never known before, but we can also deliver to ourselves a new kind of freedom, a completely new type of freedom from any kind of worry about tomorrow. But, in order to achieve all of these things, we must begin the journey today.

This is the first day in your life’s journey toward such a world. I want to thank you for taking the time to begin it.

* * *

I want to invite all of my readers to read this book through to its entirety because the issues here are of the most urgent order of things that you need to put these ideas, all of them, front and center on your Consciousness. I even have a chapter that details what Consciousness is all about and how we’re going to use it. But most of all, I ask that you spread the word about this book far and wide among all of your friends, family, colleagues, associates, contacts because we strongly believe that there will be many versions of The Green New Deal and so in order for us to achieve it in time to save the planet, there has to be an official Green New Deal that we can all agree upon, make changes to it when we all agree on better ways to go and then focus on accomplishing what we all agree are the best steps forward to achieve the over-all goal of saving this planet.

I cannot stress enough the urgency of us all getting on the same page about this, our greatest challenge in world history.

As I prepare this book for publication, there was an amazing edition of 60 Minutes TV program last night where they showed from a recent Lawsuit where evidence was uncovered that going all the way back to President Tricky Dick Nixon (even though he had this nickname all of his political life, we’re just now realizing just how ‘Tricky’ he was.) that the Government knew that Carbon Dioxide was, and still is, this world's greatest threat to our security as a country and not immigration, not Socialism. But, of course we were never told or warned in any way, nor was the energy Industry guided to help turn us away from this fate and in fact were subsidized by the taxpayer to make it worse each day by giving this industry tax loopholes and outright Welfare. So, today, the urgency is more pressing than it needed to be had we done the right thing from the moment we discovered the problem.

If the plaintiffs win in the lawsuit they named as ‘Julianna V. USA’, there is a chance that the Government will be forced to guarantee us all Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness and Clean Air and Water. Isn't that ironic that we have to sue our own government to do what is so obvious, it never needed to be mentioned in the Constitution - until now?

We should all file ‘Friends Of the Court’ briefs in unity with this lawsuit because our own survival may depend on this one very courageous group of lawyers and citizens, mostly children.

In the same version of 60 Minutes (Air date: Mar. 3, 2019), they had a segment about the Government owned Rail Road Amtrak and how they have accidents that kill or maim thousands of Americans every year. All of these deadly train accidents, the show demonstrated could have been prevented by the simple installation of electronic systems that automatically stop a train if the tracks up ahead of the train is not clear of other trains or switches turned the wrong way that would cause a derailment. All of these horrific accidents would be instantly prevented by this simple equipment that is used in the rest of the world wherever they have trains.

Congress, made aware of the problem DECADES AGO, formulated a law that requires Amtrak to install this equipment everywhere years ago. The train executives simply ignored this law because there was no mention in the law of any penalties and so these over-paid train bureaucrats decided that it would be easier for them if they simply paid for the deaths that their trains caused rather than installing the life-saving equipment, because they would be paying with taxpayer money, not their own. Since they had no personal liability, this crime goes on today in this country.

In a new kind of government which we describe in this book as a ‘Democratic Socialism’ there is no way that this would have been tolerated by the American people, because the American People would have total control over the law-making process. What good is a Congress filled with hundreds of lawyers who can’t find a way to include any personal liability for the Train bureaucrats who would choose to ignore the law? And, of course, this is just one small segment of our government that is run by people who are either completely incompetent idiots, or completely irresponsible individuals, the worst kind of human beings placed in charge of caring for, protecting, defending the rest of us.

The answer is that there is no benefit to having a Congress with limited brain power such as we have today. We have to lay the foundation for a newer, more modern, more technologically capable system of definining our national priorities, or we’re all toast, as the saying goes.

All they had to do was include a provision that if the train system was not updated with the new automatic accident prevention controls by a certain date, they either are fired or are fined millions of dollars per incident or both. This is so obvious to most of us, it’s ridiculous. It’s common sense. Yet, this is the kind of rules and regulations we get out of Congress every time they make one. They simply don’t hold anyone accountable for the ill-conceived deeds that they do to us.

This has to change and it will change given all of the provisions are delivered to the American people in a timely manner. If this does not happen, we’re all doomed - that’s about as plain and simple as I can make it!

Where would we be if we were all forced to stick to the original version of Microsoft Windows? If you’re old enough to remember Windows Ver 1.0, it was awful. It locked up every 30 minutes or so and then you’d have to reset your computer which would take another 30 minutes to completely reboot. It had no graphics, only typed in commands you could make at the ‘C:/’ prompt. They soon added graphics to their first operating system, but you were limited to seeing and using only a few. I always used to comment to myself when using the first Windows Computers that Bill Gates was the first billionaire in history who made his money by selling us something that wasn’t even finished.

On the bright side of this time in our history, Bill Gates could have charged us additional money for the updates that came around every six months or so. To his credit, and the main reason I love Bill so much is that he designed Windows to automatically improve upon itself by logging onto the main Microsoft Computers in Seattle, no matter where you were in the world, and allow a new version of this truly evolved and mature operating system - Windows to be installed overnight, while you slept. The current version I’m using today to do all of my daily work on the computer Version 10, is excellent. It’s very fast. It’s lean. Doesn’t require me to reboot my computer every half hour. It works with every other program that I download from the Internet. It seems to be very secure and helps to protect me from hackers. It’s now worth the wait.

I waited for this new version of Windows since 1980. That means it took about 4 decades to evolve into something truly useful and laudible. Our Operating System of economics and government, Capitalism 1.0 has been in existence since the first farmer opened up a store and accepted pretty beads and stones in return for his meat and vegetables. You might argue that Capitalism version 2.0 hit the streets when President Delano Roosevelt, the greatest leader in history introduced the world to Social Security. Some would say that this great change in Capitalism gave us a watered down version of ‘Socialism’ and they would not be far from the truth, in my estimation.

However, since the vast majority of Americans who receive Social Security Old Age Benefits would never even think of sending the monthly payments back to the government, I think that this new blend of Socialism and Capitalism is here to stay.

But, I think this also demonstrates that our operational system of legal, governmental and economic principles should be allowed to improve at least as fast as Microsoft Windows does, which means it should be updated every few months instead of every few centuries.

As I write these words there are dozens of Congress men and women, leaders in Industry, etc. who are espousing a great change in the way that we do our political and economic business in this country and they are spouting off nice and loudly in the media only because they are running for office, especially for the office of President of the United States in 2020. Bernie Sanders is the candidate who ran in the last election and coined the term - ‘Democratic Socialist’, claiming that he was one of these.

And Lord knows that we are all ready for a major change. The proof of course that there must be a huge upgrade and a complete overhaul of our political system is the fact that in 2016, the Russian Government was able to infiltrate our social media, especially Facebook and Twitter as well as our voting machines and other systems and helped elect the President of the United States, even though, his opponent won the popular vote of the American voters. And, when it was discovered by the existing Congress, FBI and the existing President of the United States that this had happened, there was no way to hold a RE-VOTE, or a clean new election that could be monitored carefully and not be breached. And so, we got 2 years and it could be even 8 years under a President and an administration that may have been ‘Putin’ power over the American people by actions of his computer hackers.

It even appears that there is no place in the system to penalize the Russians for interferring in our elections so they continue to do it and it looks as though the 2020 Elections will be influenced in the same way. This time, they could put someone even worse than the guy they ‘Putin’ the White House the first time. Will it be Kim Jung Un, or maybe they’ll even try to ‘Putin’ Putin himself. We’ll have to wait and see.

The only question to ask ourselves is - “What kind of democracy is it that allows foreign dictators to rule over us?” The obvious answer is that there is no real democracy in America at this time. There used to be a Republic that worked part of the time, but today, we have to look at events and realize that we’re under some form of tyrannical government that is the biggest fraud in political history.

And of course, one has to question if we have a legitimate Government in the United States or even in most of Europe at this time. Could it be that hackers from all over the world are busy installing their favorite candidates into the Congresses and Parliaments of the world. It sounds crazy, but this is perhaps the best way to explain all of the craziness that is going on in the world at this time. There’s evidence that Britain is pulling out of the European Union, because in their recent National Referendum known as Brexit, there is evidence that Russia invaded that vote too and influenced the British Voters to vote for leaving the EU by showing billions of pictures in Facebook about the hordes of invaders (immigrants) that their EU regulations were allowing in.

Why they don’t just hold a new referendum and completely block Facebook during the election so that it can be held without interference is beyond me.

I’ve been writing about Democracy and a new way of doing business in the United States for decades, so this claim caught my attention and so I quickly put it together with earlier works of mine that proposes how to change the government by amending the Constitution so that the people could vote directly on some of the most important issues. I call this the ‘National Referenda Amendment’. We’re going to be talking about this in detail in a later chapter. For now, just know that this is the only way to make the big changes that Bernie Sanders and others, such as Elizabeth Warren and Octavia Ocassio-Cortez who have made big statements including the Green New Deal Resolution, which may be passed in Congress by the time you read this book. Most likely, Congress will be able to hold this Historic Resolution at bay because the Republican Party still holds the majority in the Senate, which allows a gang of a handful of men in suits to hold absolute control over the many millions of the rest of us.

Therefore, a Democratic Socialism, in my humble opinion, must contain a lot more Democracy in it than the old piece of parchment that we are forced to live with today where problems are never solved and when they are finally solved, they are decades too late and centuries behind in its conception.

Please remember that the current form of government in the United States was created by slave-owners, all of them. They did not want to free their slaves and so we got a half-assed form of Democracy, a Republic, wherein the people we send to Congress are old and wealthy enough to not do anything as radical as freeing the slaves, at that time, the vast majority of Americans living at the time.

As a result, we have a horse-and-buggy type of system that is by definition, designed to be slow and thoughtful. The problem with that approach is that the people doing the thinking are an elite few handpicked by a two-party system.

To be able to go forward into the future with the ability to survive the rapidly increasing challenges to our survival, we will need a system of government that can react within days, sometimes within minutes. The new form of Internet protocols that are in use today are certainly able to respond to any issue where the people of this country can gather up all of the pertinent information and then make up their minds in fast and efficient order, fast enough and equitably enough to save our species.

We can and must improve our democracy in this way and many other ways that are outlined in this book, but no new political system can be truly effective and exploited to its fullest potential without an equal level of change and modernization in the economic system at the same time.

Our Capitalist economy is based on again, a small elite group of people who are the Captains of Industry, the leaders on Wall Street. Again, they wear expensive suites that express their higher levels of success and money far in excess of what the rest of us are able to achieve. They give themselves 20, 30, 50 Million Dollar Bonuses for doing things like laying off thousands of workers, raising their prices to the consumer, things that most of us would fight if we had the power, but these few elite leaders of the Capitalist system are constantly doing things that are anti-thetical to the common citizen solely for the purpose of the same group gaining millions and even billions of dollars for themselves.

So, the system we all live under today is the greatest pyramid scheme in history if you look at the way that the people at the top of the pyramid dominate everyone else.

It should be more like a circle where almost everyone has the same chance to get to the center of the circle where there’s a much greater greater chance of being involved with humanity in such a way that everyone prospers in unity with the concept that everything we do MUST SUSTAIN EARTH FIRST, ourselves secondarily.

And so, if you’re like me, and you have to drive your car for work or recreation, you get yourself stuck in traffic nearly every day and I don’t mean the kind of mild traffic conditions we used to have that we even considered as “normal" and might cost you a few minutes here and there out of your day while you're sitting there between bumpers of cars ahead of you behind you, all around you. All the lanes are clogged with millions of other cars and trucks, each one belching forth the toxic, smelly fumes from the combustion of gasoline and oil additives. You don’t feel so good any longer and indeed you start to feel sick. You can actually see the gas cloud rising up from the pavement and belching into the air of your city or town and you worry if your actions sitting in this traffic is helping to poison your friends and neighbors. At least, this is where my mind wanders when I’m stuck in traffic like this. I wonder what my own responsibility is in the co-production of all of these toxics simply because there is no better way to get around in this country.

When you get in a traffic jam where there is nothing but cars and trucks for as far as the eye can see, you realize with horrific suddeness that you are really stuck and there’s nothing you can do but sit there and for most of us, the panic sets in. Then, the road rage can begin. You see it starting to rise up out of all the junk in the road, but at least it’s entertaining. The Road Rage, that gets worse every day is something you can focus on while you’re sitting here stuck in the mud. ‘Thank God’, I say to myself, ‘that all they install in these things is horns and not something like a stinger missile, or we’d all be dead.’

It's not even easy for you to maneuver out of your lane to get to the nearest off ramp because the traffic is that heavy and if you're like me you panic a little bit more and you even have an anxiety attack because at some point in time you’re going to have to go to the bathroom. Or, you may have a heart attack. There’s no one to help you in any kind of timely way. And, you begin to feel worse and worse from the toxic fumes pouring out of the tail-pipes of the millions of cars that have already passed this way and poured out their effluent into the air that you're now forced to breathe. You wish you could be somewhere else and so you begin to fantasize about these more beautiful places. How long will they remain exempt from all of this modern ‘Progress’.

You wonder how you can change from being part of the problem to being part of the solution.

AND Now, there is a way to be part of The Solution and that way is for everyone to use their creative energies to find ways, or finding none, at least support the ways that make the planet better. In the last chapter of this book, I give you an excellent example of this new way of Positive Thinking.

While creating this book, I myself thought of a way to use Human power to get your car down the road while your gasoline engine is turned off. It’s called the Auto-Gym and I hope you will support it. www.MyAutoGym.com

When we sit in a traffic jam and we see that we're wasting our time but also our money, maybe it’s time to have a physical work-out and help give ourselves a new attitude, a new and better body while we move on down the road putting zero emissions out into our neighborhood air.

In a typical gasoline engine you're burning gallons and gallons of gasoline while you're sitting there as your engine is just at idle. The average is one gallon per day for every car that we drive daily. We not only sit in traffic going nowhere throughout our daily driving, but we also sit at traffic lights for 20 to 30 minutes per day, every day.

During this sitting time, stopped at lights and in traffic, all 4 cylinders 6 cylinders 8 cylinders, 12-cylinders, whatever you use in your car, are burning gasoline just to stay in ready mode for you. The cylinders are uselessly going up and down and burning gas just to keep you sitting there and traveling maybe one mile per hour in the traffic or zero miles per hour at stop lights.

Every day, for as much as hours of the day, you're just burning up gasoline, poisoning the atmosphere needlessly and money is streaming out of your wallet in your sitting there, getting nowhere. In the bargain, you are slowly losing the most important asset you have - your health.

Millions of us are forced to waste as much as two to three hours per day in these senseless positions of waste and health-disasters. Some of us actually waste this amount of time and energy going to work and the same amount of time and energy wasted in returning home. It’s no wonder that there’s also a national Health Care Crisis. It’s cause: The national unhealthy transportation and energy crisis.

Chapter One

- What Is The Green New Deal

The Green New Deal is a Resolution introduced to the members of Congress in early 2019 largely by a Freshman House Representative Octavia Occassio-Cortez.

At the end of this chapter, I have included the Resolution in full. It is NOT a law or even a bill that can be considered and then voted upon to become a law in the United States. It is only a Resolution. This means that it is there to give a sense of the thinking of Congress in order to obtain some or all of the ideas in this resoltuion and put them into real laws over time.

You’re not going to agree with some of the ideas put forth in the resolution, but you’re going to resonate with others. For example: One of the precepts of the Green New Deal is that EVERYONE MUST BE GUARANTEED a JOB. I doubt that the vast majority of Americans are going to agree with that goal, but others will like it very much. We’ll be discussing it because I feel that it is the key element of any New Deal that changes the planet’s headlong rush to extinction because the only way that we will be able to stop this plunge over the cliff for humanity is if we are willing to address all of the root causes of everything that is evil about our species.

AND IF WE DO THINGS right - that is make the changes that could potentially save this planet, there will be so much work to do that everyone will be guaranteed a job strictly because we will need ‘All hands on deck’ and everyone doing their part every day to improve our chances of success, to be constantly involved in doing things that make a NET IMPACT of taking pollution OUT of the air, ground and water. That will not be possible without the efforts of every living man, woman and child. These are urgent times. This is the only reason, we are considering, and many of us demanding, such drastic change in the world.

Here is the Green New Deal Resolution as produced in the United States 116^th Congress. I have placed a few of my comments on some of these points that I believe will help us to adopt them. My comments are in Parentheses (*).

Introduced in House (02/07/2019)

116th CONGRESS 1st Session

H. RES. 109

** MY NOTATIONS IN GREEN **

Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

February 7, 2019 Ms. Ocasio-Cortez (for herself, Mr. Hastings, Ms. Tlaib, Mr. Serrano, Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, Mr. Vargas, Mr. Espaillat, Mr. Lynch, Ms. Velázquez, Mr.Blumenauer, Mr. Brendan F. Boyle of Pennsylvania, Mr. Castro of Texas, Ms. Clarke of New York, Ms. Jayapal, Mr. Khanna, Mr. Ted Lieu of California, Ms. Pressley, Mr. Welch, Mr. Engel, Mr. Neguse, Mr. Nadler, Mr. McGovern, Mr. Pocan, Mr. Takano, Ms. Norton, Mr. Raskin, Mr. Connolly, Mr. Lowenthal, Ms. Matsui, Mr. Thompson of California, Mr. Levin of California, Ms. Pingree, Mr. Quigley, Mr. Huffman, Mrs. Watson Coleman, Mr. García of Illinois, Mr. Higgins of New York, Ms. Haaland, Ms. Meng, Mr. Carbajal, Mr. Cicilline, Mr. Cohen, Ms. Clark of Massachusetts, Ms. Judy Chu of California, Ms. Mucarsel-Powell, Mr. Moulton, Mr. Grijalva, Mr. Meeks, Mr. Sablan, Ms. Lee of California, Ms. Bonamici, Mr. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, Ms. Schakowsky, Ms. DeLauro, Mr. Levin of Michigan, Ms. McCollum, Mr. DeSaulnier, Mr. Courtney, Mr.Larson of Connecticut, Ms. Escobar, Mr. Schiff, Mr. Keating, Mr. DeFazio, Ms. Eshoo, Mrs. Trahan, Mr. Gomez, Mr. Kennedy, and Ms. Waters)

RESOLUTION

Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.

Whereas the October 2018 report entitled “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 ºC” by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the November 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment report found that—

(1) human activity is the dominant cause of observed climate change over the past century;

** Despite what Climate Change Deniers say, it should be obvious to anyone with a brain that it is our use of cars and trucks by the billions of hours every day that is causing the Earth to heat up. If you just open your eyes and look at the tail-pipes of the five to ten million cars that traveled along the same road you are driving on, you can do the math in your head. Every gas-burning vehicle has to belch forth at least 5 lbs of soot and smoke and toxic Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, Sulfur Dioxide every few miles. Still don't believe me that cars and trucks are poisoning all life on the planet? So, do this for me, drive your car into your garage or any enclosed space. Leave your motor running and read a magazine or a good long book in your car. Report back to me what happened. (That's one less 'Climate Denier' to deal with. **

(2) a changing climate is causing sea levels to rise and an increase in wildfires, severe storms, droughts, and other extreme weather events that threaten human life, healthy communities, and critical infrastructure; ** Just ask the people who have lost their homes to fires and floods if they think we're living in normal times. **

(3) global warming at or above 2 degrees Celsius beyond preindustrialized levels will cause—

(A) mass migration from the regions most affected by climate change; ** Ask yourself why Trump really wants his WALL? Is it because he knows that the desperate mass migrations will be getting much worse as Climate Change causes the mass destruction of farmlands and thereby the ability to feed the billions of mouths around the world? **

(B) more than $500,000,000,000 in lost annual economic output in the United States by the year 2100; ** I believe it's more like 500 Trillion, not the very low 500 Billion they are predicting here because they don't take into account how less productivity you will get out of a human being while they're suffocating. Yes, many of us will be on OXYGEN TANKS, but not more than a small percentage will be able to afford Oxygen by this time. **

(C) wildfires that, by 2050, will annually burn at least twice as much forest area in the western United States than was typically burned by wildfires in the years preceding 2019;

** This is obvious. The fires are worse every year. But, it's not just the forests, it's the homes and infra-structure, roads, bridges, damns that are destroyed and cause even more damage later on when it rains hard the following winter. Most people don't realize also that lost FORESTS MAKE THE PROBLEM worse because trees ABSORB the toxic gases and BREATHE OUT clean and pure oxygen that we need to live. **

(D) a loss of more than 99 percent of all coral reefs on Earth;

** This is really bad news because the Coral Reefs are where sea life is spawned and all of the plankton and other tiniest of animals in the ocean are the main provider of LIFE-GIVING OXYGEN that we need to breathe. Losing the Coral Reefs will have an effect of hastening the day when there's so little oxygen in the air that we breathe that billions of us will start to die of suffocation. If could only arrange it so that the Climate-Deniers are the first to go - we might be able to save the rest of us, but suffocation will not be able to discern the differences among us. We will all go at the same rate, sadly. **

(E) more than 350,000,000 more people to be exposed globally to deadly heat stress by 2050; and

(F) a risk of damage to $1,000,000,000,000 of public infrastructure and coastal real estate in the United States; and

(4) global temperatures must be kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrialized levels to avoid the most severe impacts of a changing climate, which will require—

(A) global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from human sources of 40 to 60 percent from 2010 levels by 2030; and

(B) net-zero global emissions by 2050;

Whereas, because the United States has historically been responsible for a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gas emissions, having emitted 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions through 2014, and has a high technological capacity, the United States must take a leading role in reducing emissions through economic transformation;

Whereas the United States is currently experiencing several related crises, with—

(1) life expectancy declining while basic needs, such as clean air, clean water, healthy food, and adequate health care, housing, transportation, and education, are inaccessible to a significant portion of the United States population;

(2) a 4-decade trend of wage stagnation, deindustrialization, and antilabor policies that has led to—

(A) hourly wages overall stagnating since the 1970s despite increased worker productivity;

(B) the third-worst level of socioeconomic mobility in the developed world before the Great Recession;

(C) the erosion of the earning and bargaining power of workers in the United States; and

(D) inadequate resources for public sector workers to confront the challenges of climate change at local, State, and Federal levels; and

(3) the greatest income inequality since the 1920s, with—

(A) the top 1 percent of earners accruing 91 percent of gains in the first few years of economic recovery after the Great Recession;

(B) a large racial wealth divide amounting to a difference of 20 times more wealth between the average white family and the average black family; and

(C) a gender earnings gap that results in women earning approximately 80 percent as much as men, at the median;

Whereas climate change, pollution, and environmental destruction have exacerbated systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic injustices (referred to in this preamble as “systemic injustices”) by disproportionately affecting indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this preamble as “frontline and vulnerable communities”);

Whereas, climate change constitutes a direct threat to the national security of the United States—

(1) by impacting the economic, environmental, and social stability of countries and communities around the world; and

(2) by acting as a threat multiplier;

Whereas the Federal Government-led mobilizations during World War II and the New Deal created the greatest middle class that the United States has ever seen, but many members of frontline and vulnerable communities were excluded from many of the economic and societal benefits of those mobilizations; and

Whereas the House of Representatives recognizes that a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era is a historic opportunity—

(1) to create millions of good, high-wage jobs in the United States;

(2) to provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States; and

(3) to counteract systemic injustices: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that—

(1) it is the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal—

(A) to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers;

(B) to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States;

(C) to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century;

(D) to secure for all people of the United States for generations to come—

(i) clean air and water;

(ii) climate and community resiliency;

(iii) healthy food;

** This is where the Republicans claim that we want to take your hamburgers away. No, we just want you to eat a healthier diet so that you can think straight, have more energy, require less drugs, be more productive, and live longer. **

(iv) access to nature; and

** What's wrong with getting out-doors, hiking, climbing, bicycling, watching the birds and squirrels enjoying this wonderful planet - getting relaxed, finding some peace and quiet contemplation. Do you always have to be driving in your car to the local McDonalds? **

(v) a sustainable environment; and

(E) to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as “frontline and vulnerable communities”);

** Do people who are not as fortunate as you have the same rights to life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Or is it just you? **

(2) the goals described in subparagraphs (A) through (E) of paragraph (1) (referred to in this resolution as the “Green New Deal goals”) should be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization (referred to in this resolution as the “Green New Deal mobilization”) that will require the following goals and projects—

** This SECTION BELOW is how we can also alter the Economic System so that it benefits all the workers more equitably. After the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the finest man who ever breathed the air, put Americans to work building public works projects like the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. This is the kind of program we need now to put people to work whose talents would be otherwise wasted and the economic system would have to support anyway, but if you're accomplishing something that will SAVE THE PLANET - that's a good thing - not a bad thing - right? You see that? **

(A) building resiliency against climate change-related disasters, such as extreme weather, including by leveraging funding and providing investments for community-defined projects and strategies;

(B) repairing and upgrading the infrastructure in the United States, including—

(i) by eliminating pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as much as technologically feasible;

(ii) by guaranteeing universal access to clean water;

(iii) by reducing the risks posed by climate impacts; and

(iv) by ensuring that any infrastructure bill considered by Congress addresses climate change;

(C) meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources, including—

(i) by dramatically expanding and upgrading renewable power sources; and

(ii) by deploying new capacity;

(D) building or upgrading to energy-efficient, distributed, and “smart” power grids, and ensuring affordable access to electricity;

(E) upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification;

(F) spurring massive growth in clean manufacturing in the United States and removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing and industry as much as is technologically feasible, including by expanding renewable energy manufacturing and investing in existing manufacturing and industry;

(G) working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible, including—

(i) by supporting family farming;

(ii) by investing in sustainable farming and land use practices that increase soil health; and

(iii) by building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food;

** Again, when we use complicated sentences like these, the Republicans think it means that we're going to take their Hamburgers away from them. This kind of thinking is what I call 'gummed up thinking' probably caused by too much animal fat in their diets. We're just saying, it's healthier for the planet and your own longevity and energy is you ate less beef and chicken and more of what these creatures eat, GREENS. The GREEN NEW DEAL is about eating and living GREEN on a GREEN planet, so that you have some planet left that you can give to your children. **

(H) overhauling transportation systems in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in—

(i) zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing;

(ii) clean, affordable, and accessible public transit; and

(iii) high-speed rail;

** This is where our honorable(?) Opposition think that we're going to require that you NEVER fly in an airliner again. It doesn't say that. We're suggesting that high-speed rail could and should compete with highly inefficient and gaseous airliners so that we use them less and less. Have you ever noticed the CONTRAILS they leave in the sky? These act like clouds to deflect the sun's energy which is part of the Climate Change problem. OPEN YOUR EYES - look at the sky once in a while and you will be amazed at the truth hitting you on the head every day. **

(I) mitigating and managing the long-term adverse health, economic, and other effects of pollution and climate change, including by providing funding for community-defined projects and strategies;

(J) removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and reducing pollution by restoring natural ecosystems through proven low-tech solutions that increase soil carbon storage, such as land preservation and afforestation;

** Forests and life in the ocean are what gives us the life-giving oxygen that we need to live. Do you want to suffocate to death? That's what's coming unless you get on board with these goals. At least open your mind to them and read a little Science before making your fear mongering claims that you're losing your Hamburgers - please? **

(K) restoring and protecting threatened, endangered, and fragile ecosystems through locally appropriate and science-based projects that enhance biodiversity and support climate resiliency;

(L) cleaning up existing hazardous waste and abandoned sites, ensuring economic development and sustainability on those sites; ** This stuff is leaking into our air and water. I say find the people who made these waste dumps and force them to pay for the clean-up. Under a Republican EPA - we'll never make any progress. Just going backwards and making it worse for future generations to have to clean up after these slobs **

(M) identifying other emission and pollution sources and creating solutions to remove them; and

(N) promoting the international exchange of technology, expertise, products, funding, and services, with the aim of making the United States the international leader on climate action, and to help other countries achieve a Green New Deal;

(3) a Green New Deal must be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses; and

(4) to achieve the Green New Deal goals and mobilization, a Green New Deal will require the following goals and projects—

(A) providing and leveraging, in a way that ensures that the public receives appropriate ownership stakes and returns on investment, adequate capital (including through community grants, public banks, and other public financing), technical expertise, supporting policies, and other forms of assistance to communities, organizations, Federal, State, and local government agencies, and businesses working on the Green New Deal mobilization;

(B) ensuring that the Federal Government takes into account the complete environmental and social costs and impacts of emissions through—

(i) existing laws;

(ii) new policies and programs; and

(iii) ensuring that frontline and vulnerable communities shall not be adversely affected;

(C) providing resources, training, and high-quality education, including higher education, to all people of the United States, with a focus on frontline and vulnerable communities, so that all people of the United States may be full and equal participants in the Green New Deal mobilization;

** A mobilization is exactly what is required. We must ALL get on board with these goals or else it could be too late and we should just roll over and die. There is really no more time to be debating these issues any longer because we are reaching the 'TIPPING POINT' where there could remain no choices that are guaranteed to reverse the impact of the last 500 years and so we go extinct. It's happened to millions of species over the millennia. We must not take the slightest chance of extinction of the human being - unless it's the extinction of the Climate Deniers. I would support the extinction of that branch of human thought because it's the only hope for the rest of us. **

(D) making public investments in the research and development of new clean and renewable energy technologies and industries;

(E) directing investments to spur economic development, deepen and diversify industry and business in local and regional economies, and build wealth and community ownership, while prioritizing high-quality job creation and economic, social, and environmental benefits in frontline and vulnerable communities, and deindustrialized communities, that may otherwise struggle with the transition away from greenhouse gas intensive industries;

(F) ensuring the use of democratic and participatory processes that are inclusive of and led by frontline and vulnerable communities and workers to plan, implement, and administer the Green New Deal mobilization at the local level;

(G) ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hires local workers, offers training and advancement opportunities, and guarantees wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition;

(H) guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States;

(I) strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain free of coercion, intimidation, and harassment;

(J) strengthening and enforcing labor, workplace health and safety, antidiscrimination, and wage and hour standards across all employers, industries, and sectors;

(K) enacting and enforcing trade rules, procurement standards, and border adjustments with strong labor and environmental protections—

(i) to stop the transfer of jobs and pollution overseas; and

(ii) to grow domestic manufacturing in the United States;

(L) ensuring that public lands, waters, and oceans are protected and that eminent domain is not abused;

(M) obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples for all decisions that affect indigenous peoples and their traditional territories, honoring all treaties and agreements with indigenous peoples, and protecting and enforcing the sovereignty and land rights of indigenous peoples;

(N) ensuring a commercial environment where every businessperson is free from unfair competition and domination by domestic or international monopolies; and

(O) providing all people of the United States with—

(i) high-quality health care;

(ii) affordable, safe, and adequate housing;

(iii) economic security; and

(iv) clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and access to nature.

Chapter Two

- What is a Democratic Socialism?

First of all, we need to define our terms when discussing this concept. Currently, the opposition is using ridiculous arguments about the Green New Deal, claiming that “They will take away your hamburgers,” and “You can never fly in an airliner ever again.” Things even more absurd than these. There is nothing in the Green New Deal that would prevent you or anyone from enjoying a hamburger, trust me. There is no regulations proposed that would take away air travel either. You read the whole thing in the previous chapter and so I defy anyone to find anything in the Official Resolution that has any connection to their fear mongering.

To that end, I think that the best thing we can do in this book is to define our terms and give as many examples of what would happen if we were suddenly to adopt the Green New Deal in full so that ordinary people can then be the best judges and deciders of their future, and not be forced to leave it up to people we know are TOTAL LIARS and SELF-INTERESTED in making billions from the fossil fuel and Insurance Industry.

So, what is Democratic Socialism? What would the provision for a livable wage do for the overall economy? How can we discourage fossil fuels in such a way that we don't harm the economy, and instead move the work force into the production of sustainable energy? All of this and more can become part of the American awareness and maybe even becomes the majority opinion.

Democracy is all about the 'Majority' making the rules that we all live by. When Democracy was invented by the Greeks 2500 years ago, all citizens took a white rock if they were voting YES for a civil proposal, or a black rock if they were voting NO on the proposal before them and tossed them into a jar. A government official would count the rocks and the majority of either White or Black rocks won that particular referendum.

This was the greatest period for humanity in terms of political freedom and it brought forward centuries of the greatest thought and philosophy that everything we live by is based upon today. I believe that Democratic Socialism should arrive soon that could be a modern version of white rocks and black rocks where the people vote either UP or DOWN for any particular social program. We could vote for the most important issues of the day.

Let me give you a reason why I believe this is so importtant.

President Obama tried to get a Single-Payer through Congress when he had both houses of Congress in his democratic control. They would not pass that idea and the main reason given was that they couldn't figure out how to pay for it.

So, the next time, Obama took the time to think about the issue, Republicans had taken control of Congress and so he knew that Single-Payer would not even get a vote on the floor of Congress, let alone become law. If you can't vote on something - it has ZERO CHANCE of being law.

Realizing the need for something to be done about the "Health Care Crisis", Obama then chose a system of Health Insurance that he took from Mitt Romney's session as Governor of Massachusetts, a Republican Plan, thinking that this would at least have a chance to become law. Even then, it was difficult to put through a Republican Congress, but he did it. However, in order to make it work, Obama forced everyone in the country to buy Insurance, whether they needed it or not under penalty of the IRS enforcing it with very onerous financial penalties.

Being a healthy person all of my life, I didn't like being forced to buy something I did not need and so I struggle even today, how this kind of solution to a problem made any sense at all. But, that's what we got and soon, the Insurance Companies since they are a monopoly raised their rates pleading that it was necessary to raise their prices because they were now forced to cover 'Pre-Existing Conditions.' This made Obamacare extremely expensive.

I wrote to President Obama while he was campaigning for Obamacare and I suggested a different method of tackling the Health Care Crisis. I told him that what he should be doing is to put forth severe penalties for engaging in a MONOPOLY. There are only three major Insurance Carriers in this country, so they are already a Monopoly and I believe there are laws against conspiring against the public market in this way and so I was really asking Mr. Obama to just enforce the laws in this area and AT THE SAME TIME - create rules that would make it EASIER FOR SMALL Health Insurance providers to be formed and provide a service and become competitive with the HUGE CORPORATIONS. I even gave the example of some churches in this country who ask their members to make modest donations every month and whenever they have a health issue, it's paid for COMPLETELY - NO DEDUCTIBLES - NO CO-PAYS by the Church. Just one example of how society could solve the problem if given a chance.

The competition for the Health Care dollars would quickly solve the crisis for him, I advised. I was ignored. Never heard him talk about the Health Insurance Monopoly at all. Never heard him talk about allowing for more competition in this business. Instead, he let them become far more monopolistic by putting the MANDATE FORCING US ALL TO BUY THEIR PRODUCTS.

Now, if you forced everyone to eat at least one meal at McDonalds every day, don't you think their prices would go down due to savings in huge quantity cost reducstions and efficiencies that the business could utilize. INSTEAD, the Health Insurance Corporations because they are a monopoly RAISED their prices, instead of lowering them.

Over time, as anyone with any common sense at all could predict, the whole system has collapsed, has cost the economy trillions of dollars and crisis is even worse than it was ten years ago.

Now, let's look at the same history, but this time, let's play a game. Let's say that we had Democratic Socialism totally installed in this country. Democratic Socialism is merely the combination of the two terms in their highest and best interpretations. ‘Democratic’ means everything would be decided according to the will of the majority of voters, every time, without any undue influence by political parties, or industries and/or special interests. The word ‘Socialism’ means merely Social Programs. It does not refer to Stalinism or Naziism or Communism. It refers only to programs that have social benefits such as Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Disability Insurance, Food Stamps, etc. These programs which we The American People have enjoyed for decades have absolutely nothing to do with Communism or the kind of Socialism that is really a form of Dictatorship, as many Socialist countries are suffering today in many parts of the world.

These poor enslaved people are not experiencing Socialism, no matter how many times you want to say it because there are no REAL Social Programs introduced by their Dictator ”Presidents”. Instead, the only social program they are forced into is the one that makes their Dictator rich beyond his wildest dreams.

I have been proposing, writing about, speaking about more Democratic Socialism all of my adult life and therefore I believe I am more qualified to define it and give examples than any other political thinker.

DEFINITION: Democratic Socialism is the system of government that relies on Real Democracy - National Initiatives and Referenda allowing the people to VOTE on Social Programs or any other solutions to problems they face as they may qualifty to be placed on the National Ballot.

SO, in President Obama's first term, or may have even been in Bill Clinton's First TERM, someone in the country realizes that they are paying too much of their income for Health Care, and so they get onto the NEXT FEDERAL BALLOT the following Ballot Proposal.

A BALLOT MEASURE

"From (Dated) and until abolished or amended, all American citizens will pay from their incomes a deduction of 5% of their income to be paid into a National Health Account that will be there to pay for their family's health care expenses - however no payments will be made that exceed $10,000 PER YEAR."

Since this is on the ballot, the voters would either use a White Rock or a Black One and the votes would be counted.

VOTE YES: VOTE NO:

IF there is a majority of let's say 2/3 YES the ballot measure PASSES - if not - it fails and someone else may come along with a better proposal in the next election.

OR, if passed, someone could amend it in the next election after realizing that Doctors and Hospitals are charging too much and that $10,000 doesn't go very far.

A BALLOT MEASURE

"From (Date) all medical facilities from Doctor's, Hospitals, Clinics, etc. shall accept Government payments as payments in full for their services according to a payment schedule that will be provided to them by Medicare. Failure to provide services to anyone using the Medicare schedule will be subject to a fine of no less than $10,000 Per Incident."

VOTE YES: VOTE NO:

NOW, let's say that the worst fears come true and the entire Medical Community LEAVES THE COUNTRY IN PROTEST or they start working as Car Mechanics because they can't earn enough money from this ballot measure proposal.

Then, perhaps someone would come up with the following solution to this new problem.

A BALLOT MEASURE:

"From (Date) in order to make the National Single Payer Health Insurance System of Medicare for All MORE FINANCIALLY FAIR to all, a National Sales Tax shall be collected on the sale of every item or service sold in this country at a rate of 1.5%. All money raised by this tax shall go into the general funds of Medicare For All and the PAYMENT SCHEDULE for Doctors and Hospitals shall be raised in increments to equal the total amount of funds received by this special tax."

VOTE: YES - VOTE: NO

Now, how did YOU VOTE in your own mind when you read these proposals? Did you think of BETTER SOLUTIONS that would serve us even better if put on the ballot?

I have suggested a very limited Sales Tax Rate of 1.5% to fund Universal Health Care because I calculated that this few pennies per transaction since every transaction in the total economy is included except for food and housing, would generate about 500 Billion Dollars Per Year - more than enough to pay for truly excellent Health Care for all Americans.

And, just in case, you don’t think people would have the money for another Sales Tax - let me tell you that probably BEFORE THIS INITIATIVE hit the ballots of this country a Ballot Measure to ELIMINATE ALL PERSONAL INCOME TAXES would most likely have been approved by the voters.

The favorable results of this Ballot Measure would put TENS OF THOSUANDS OF DOLLARS IN THE POCKETS of the average American every year, and so a few pennies per transaction would be very welcomed to fund our SOCIAL PROGRAMS, instead of a tax on our individual incomes that is both confiscatory and PUNITIVE.

If you’re still not convinced of the usefulness of the National Direct Democracy Action - (NDDA) the Democratic Part of Democratic Socialism - Just ask yourselves why would we want to PUNISH PEOPLE for earning a living, supporting their families, going for the American Dream. I think that a far better way to fund our society is to REWARD THE PEOPLE for their thrift and financial savvy, by earning more and CONSUMING LESS.

A National Sales Tax can completely FUND the entire GOVERNMENT without punishing the Individual American for having and seeking a job, AND, it would reward Americans for CONSUMING LESS of the Earth’s resources, because by BUYING LESS goods and services, they pay less taxes. Since no one wants to pay any more in taxes than they have to - a tax on consumption, it seems to me, is the best and fairest way to collect this nation’s revenues.

To be fair - In order to fund the entire US Government, after eliminating the most costly ways that we waste money, would require a National Sales Tax of approximately 10% of all transactions but again exempting all food and housing costs. This means about one dollar in taxes paid for every ten dollars spent. The average family in this country consumes about $10,000 per year in non-exempted transactions which means they would pay approximately $1,000 per year in National Sales Taxes, but they would have on average of about $10,000 more in take home pay by eliminating the payroll tax deductions. Therefore, most of us are thousands of dollars ahead every year that we make the transfer from taxing income to taxing our consumption.

I am far from an EXPERT economist, but I can GUARANTEE that somewhere in between all of these suggestions made here, that there is a viable course of action that would make for a very fair system of Universal Health Care and one that makes total sense, is easy to administer and would greatly limit if not ELILMINATE the problem where someone gets so sick that they have to sell all of their assets, and even go bankrupt to pay off their bills. That just should NEVER HAPPEN in a sane society in my opinion.

Bear in mind that ALL of these Actions above could have taken place over the course of ONE or TWO Election Cycles: No more than 8 years and in those 8 years, we probably would have experienced much less chaos and turmoil with this problem and we could have been concentrating, after fixing the problem, on the next major issue to come along. AND, that one is going to be solved just as fast, if not faster because with each ballot measure and the resulting economic impacts our decisions are making, we are LEARNING HOW TO BE MATURE and THOUGHTFUL CITIZENS - our Democratic Socialism is becoming more and more secure and respected around the world because for one thing - we are NO LONGER INVADING FOREIGN COUNTRIES for NO GOOD REASONS and in fact are even proposing solutions that impact friends as well as foes overseas in POSITIVE WAYS, instead o DESTRUCTIVE ONE.

In my books, I list hundreds of examples of how I think Democratic Socialism could work to solve problems just like the Health Care problem. The basic and most fundamental point of my writings is to show how putting MORE BRAINS than ONE OR TWO to bear on a problem, you have a much greater chance of finding the best solution, one that is both practical and inexpensive - yet effective.

Originally I became a believer in more Democracy during the Viet Nam War that was truly the Hellish and crazed mass death made possible by the power of one man, first LBJ and then Tricky Dick. I kept asking myself and others - "HOW COME we don't have a way to VETO these murderous people in the White House?" It's a continuing nightmare to me that I and others have not been able to answer that question.

When looking at the example above and how the whole Health Care problem in this country could have been solved under Bill Clinton's term in office, one has to compare my dissertation of the possible to what has actually happened in regards to this problem in the last 28 years. NET LOSS of TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS and the vast majority of Americans are either WITHOUT any Health Care Insurance OR are paying far too much for whatever they do have. The country is on the verge of bankruptcy having to live through ridiculous non-solutions to nearly ALL of our problems. The attack on the World Trade Center, in 2001, for example on 9/11 has cost at least 5 trillion dollars and I doubt anyone is any safer in this world.

It gets worse:

George W. Bush KNOWINGLY attacked the wrong country (Iraq) in retaliation for the attack on America by the Saudi's (Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi as were all of his henchmen) and now they even talk of letting them have nuclear power!?! According to news I have seen regarding Jared Kushner - someone we never voted for - they may already have our nuclear secrets. Let me say that again: The people who attacked us on 9/11 may be getting or already have our nuclear secrets from the greed of just a few people in power over us today and who threaten the very existence of our species for MONEY.

In a Democratic Socialist state of my creation, the people would have risen up the day after it was known that Russians had helped elect our President - and placed an EMERGENCY ballot MEASURE to DO THE ELECTIONS OVER - with TWO NEW CANDIDATES from both sides AND TO BE COMPLETED IN 90 DAYS while SUSPENDING ALL SOCIAL MEDIA during the election.

So, the people should have the power to do things like that too. During the Bush Attack on Iraq - the Wrong Country - I believe a Ballot Measure - IF it was part of our process PRIOR to the attack - could have put a stop to that nonsense OR if enacted AFTER he did it - PUT HIM IN PRISON for TREASON.

I hope you can judge by now that Democratic Socialism is a way for ordinary citizens to simply and quickly create completely NEW and BETTER FUTURES for themselves and the world. Sure, there will be nay-sayers, just because that's the way we begin to judge things in this world. Eventually, the nay-sayers will find themselves in a smaller and smaller sub-culture. Sure, there will be mistakes made by the majority of voters from time to time. But, whenever that happens, the impact of our mistakes will be very quickly known and felt by all of us and then we can easily correct them at the next Ballot Measure. DONE: Or even in some cases months or even days after the discovery by using EMERGENCY BALLOT MEASURES.

CAN WE get this type of system in place BEFORE it's Too Late? I don't know. BUT SHOULDN'T WE AT LEAST BE TALKING ABOUT IT? I've tried in my small way for decades to get people to start talking about Real Democracy in this country, but I have failed miserably. Only with people like you can it even get to first base.

The phrase I like to use is that Democracy is really simple. It's just hard to wrestle it away from those who want to kill us.

I would like you and I to start making it easier by educating the citizens of this great nation, raising their awareness on this most important topic as much as we possibly can. We have to stop acting like sheep being led to slaughter. We have to start to ROAR like LIONS and LIONESSES that we are or can become. When I first saw you enter the halls of Congress in January with THE MIGHTIEST ROAR of a great Lionness, it gave me great hope and the highest sense of anticipation.

BUT we need to get busy. Polar Ice is melting - The Polar Bears are dying in large numbers and may soon become extinct along with thousands of other species. Wildfires are spreading all over the world. Oil and Coal are still KING. The oceans are being turned into garbage dumps. People are fleeing tyrants by the millions all over the world. Diseases we had once conquered are coming back. I just saw a documentary on the Opiod Crisis taking place in Seattle and here in my own town of Santa Cruz, its effects are also terrible and exploding.

Can you think of a Democratic Socialist Program that would solve this current problem?

I have several in mind.

Or maybe we should just leave it to a system where foreigners are in control of our Congress. There’s evidence that billions of dollars of money is coming in to our country from foreign countries and going into the election campaigns of people who they - the foreign countries - have approved. Very few citizens get into Congress who place the interests of the American people first. The authors and co-sponsors of The Green New Deal - Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the House and Senator Ed Markey, in the United States Senate and their 50 cosponsors of this Resolution are a few rare exceptions to this rule.

And perhaps this foreign intervention in our government has been going on longer than we know. Reagan vetoed 78 proposals that came from the Congress, the one we the people vote to do things for us - That's ALMOST ALL OF THE LAWS that came to his desk after months and years of wrangling and horse-trading and compromising and creating at least something for us. In REAGAN'S MIND he must have said to himself each time he vetoed something: "I'm a movie star, I never needed anything like that. Why should they?"

We all know about the billions of dollars that the Bush family has made from Saudi Arabian oil investments. We also know that Bill and Hillary Clinton are sitting on a wealth of hundreds of millions of dollars. How did they get all that wealth on petty government salaries?

Obama just got paid 20 million dollars for a “Book Deal”. If you read this highly successful book of his, I guarantee that you’ve heard him say it all before. Is it worth 20 million bucks? I doubt it.

NEITHER Bush Presidents ever did one single thing that I approved of, nor most of the rest of the people approved of. YET, WE THE PEOPLE NEVER GET TO VETO ANY COCKA-MAMIE IDEAS OF THEIRS. I've already mentioned Moderate, Middle-Of-The-Road Mr. Obama.

We should reverse ALL of that. Yet, even with all of this corruption and lies, the Truth always rises from out of the muck and shows up for us just when we need it most. Someone like Bernie Sanders comes along and mentions that he wants to see Free College Education for all. Why not? Every educational system up to college is free. Why do we stop this most beautiful benefit of a democracy, the ability for someone to become more valuable, more productive in society - at the college level, just the moment in our lives when we need education the most?

Of course the Republicans merely dismiss great, progressive ideas like this by saying that ‘it’s too expensive’. Yet, they will instantly approve trillions for the military invasions of other countries. They will all instantly pass legislation to give the corporations ANOTHER TAX BREAK. So, they are correct by saying that everything GOOD is too expensive because they are giving every dollar of the money we could have taken in from the BAD.

They simply don’t understand the difference between Good and Bad, or they are part of the Bad. It can only be one or the other.

While I am writing these words, I’m listening to a Republican Senator speaking about how many trillions of dollars the Green New Deal would cost us and how many millions of jobs it will take away. In reality, the Green New Deal, if enacted along the lines proposed in this book, not if enacted by the brainless in Congress who want to see it fail, but if enacted along the lines of Democratic Socialism will actually save us trillions of dollars and create millions of high-paying and healthy new jobs.

But, this means he hasn’t even read the Green New Deal Resolution at all, because it is clear to me in my reading that this type of legislation would actually save us the trillions of dollars that they, Republicans are giving away to the Bad causes that they support which is basically, subsidizing the oil and coal and gas companies so that the world climate will get even worse under their guidance. They will actually lie, cheat and steal to protect their constitutents, Big Money. How much longer can the people of the world support a system that is actually lethal for all of life on the planet? We’d better start asking that question soon and then do something about it.

Whenever I hear a Republican railing against socialism, I ask him if he ever received any kind of social assistance from the government, you know, like unemployment insurance during times when he or she was out of work, or receiving a Social Security check. Almost all of them will admit, if they’re honest, that they have at one time received Unemployment, or workman’s compensation for an accident or incident at work, or they have a disability and are receiving a ‘Social Security disability payment for that injury they received when they were on the job.

So, next I ask them, did you send the check back to the government, or did you graciously accept the money? Not one yet, has told me that they have sent their check back, and they all hope to collect many more Social Security retirement checks from Uncle Sam because they know that they paid into the system for their

entire lives and see that income as something that belongs to them.

So, after I get them to admit that they have participated, and most of the time, happily in the Socialistic safety net program that they did enjoy, I say - ‘Comrade’. I shake their hand heartily and I give them a big hug if we’re close enough.

Most of them get the joke and laugh along with me, but it’s obvious to everyone in the room that I’ve made my point. We’re all Socialists. There is maybe one percent of the citizens of this country who have never received a Social Benefit of one kind or another from the US Government and that only happens to the rich and wealthy and very elite one percent who owns 95% of all the wealth of this country.

The other 99% of Americans need a social safety net mostly due to this one percent of us who are ripping us off, using us up, casting us aside every day so that they can become wealthy and remain that way. When the economic system favors only one percent and leaves the other 99% to eat the scraps they leave behind, there’s something wrong with the system. It’s upside down.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong about wanting to become rich and/or famous. There’s nothing wrong with getting rich and/or famous. But, don’t get rich and famous at the expense of the rest of your friends and neighbors and fellow citizens. Get rich because you contributed something beautiful to the world. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, all contributed something beautiful for the world to enjoy and we advanced as a group from these contributors.

All I ask is that when you do become rich and famous that you don’t become a hypocrit and turn on the people who made you rich and famous, calling them Socialists and worse Communists and please don’t crucify us when we ask for a little bigger slice of the pie. I don’t think that’s asking too much.

What’s wrong with updating our social economic system using the new technology that these rich and famous people produced for us in order to make life just a little bit better for the masses? Let me hear your argument against social progress for millions and even billions of people and I will show you the way to the door. No one will miss you. There’s so many confused hypocrits out there today and most of them have an (R) after their names. Or it could be they’re not confused at all, but just want to do their best to keep us as confused, divided and disunited as they can because our becoming united on this issue is what frightens them the most.

And so, we have to first emphasize the word ‘Democratic’ and notice that this word comes ahead of the word ‘Socialism’ and is therefore, the more operative word that defines much of our mission and purpose for this type of governmental system. In order for any brand of Socialism to work, there has to be a mechanism for the people, those most greatly benefitting or hurt from the Social programs to vote to put them in place or to amend them as they please and as they learn about how they willl work most efffectively in every day practice.

During the writing of this book, I witnessed a meeting in Congress between a Democratic Senator and a group of school children who were arguing very aggressively for this very tired and old US Senator to vote 'Yes' on the Green New Deal Resolution.  Her response was shocking. She told the children that they were pushing too hard and when that happens, she ‘Does not respond’ - a polite way of brushing the children off and dismissing their entire argument, which in my opinion was stressing that the adults in the room have to do their best to preserve the planet for those who are just now coming to age and will either live or die by the decisions being made by the adults.

Since, I’ve known for many years that this is the kind of thinking that we get from our entrenched political establishment, I was not shocked. I think that many of this Senators may have been shocked. This Senator is in her 80’s, is a multi-millionaire and so her life will not be impacted by the decisions she and her co-horts make these days. She’s smart enough to know, however, that these very same children and billions of other children just like them will be impacted greatly, even to the point of threatening their very existence. Shame on her, for not telling these kids that she would do her best, and leave it at that, if she cannot actually do better than her best, which is doubtful now that we have seen what’s in her heart and soul. At least, at some moments like this the Devil exposes himself and we can know who he is and how to counter-act him in all future actions.

This Senator went on to argue to these poor little kids that she was against the Green New Deal because there is "No way to pay for it." Wait-What? This incredibly dumb response to these children made me suspect that if we looked into the Contributions made to this Senator’s campaign funds, we would find that the largest chunks of money comes from the oil companies, the gasoline companies, the auto manufacturing industry, the road building contractors, the tire manufacturers, the major Health Insurance providers, the big pharmaceuticals, etc., in short all of the major American commercial interests who are doing the greatest harms to the environment. The reason she’s not thinking creatively here is because she is PAID NOT TO THINK CREATIVELY. This is plain and simple, and obvious to more and more of the citizenry every day. We’re almost at the point where most of us laugh at these politicians whenever they make their fancy but fraudulent speeches.

AND . . . OF COURSE THERE IS A WAY TO PAY FOR THIS GREAT REVOLUTION - and it's so simple even children can easily understand it. It’s shocking that an aged and professional US Senator doesn’t seem to know about the way to pay for the major tenets of the Green New Deal.  The way to pay for these bold new initiatives is to simply tax the folks who are doing all the damage and re-direct some of their profits to research into the most promising new technologies, such as full-electric cars, new types of batteries, improved solar power collectors, improved wind-power generators, futuristic forms of people-movers, etc., that can help us to reverse the negative impact of the evil Industries now killing us slowly. Of course all of the politicians know this. It’s basic taxation policy that they all know better than they know their own names because it’s what brings the money flowing like honey into their little treasure chests every day.

So, because of this undue influence that was once considered to be illegal, we are not likely to make any progress in this world when the majority of our elected officials - the decision makers - are elected under our present system of greater and lesser degrees of corruption.

The NEW WAY FORWARD for our Democracy is to make it a Real Democracy - one that includes the systems and methods wherein the people are allowed to vote on the issues directly by putting the most pressing problems with the best solutions ON THE BALLOT where we would then vote on them by giving them a simple ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’, no longer relying on people who are bought and paid for by the commercial interests of the rich and famous and super-rich and famous, the large corporations.

This is the basis of what I define as the The Real 'Democratic Socialism'. Bernie Sanders is the first national political figure who calls himself a ‘Democratic Socialism’, but I’ve never heard him talk much about the ‘Democratic’ part of the equation where we would allow the PEOPLE THEMSELVES to VOTE ON THE ISSUES - the only Real Democratic process in this world.   

This is the ONLY WAY to counter-act the evil that our elected representatives do to the world in return for money.

The people themselves would have no self-interest that would influence how they vote except for the selfish interests of wanting to live in peace, harmony and prosperity as much as they possibly can. No single voter could gain any more of that type of thing than any of the others - this is the basis of the word ‘Democracy’ which literally means - ‘A system (ocracy) of, by and for the PEOPLE (Demos).

A recent poll was taken and in the polling they found that more than 70% of the American people said that they wanted a form of ‘Medicare For All’. Now, the next question asked when we put this type of social benefit on the ballot should be ‘How to pay for it’.

This is not Rocket Science, folks. Democracy is really quite simple. It’s only the politicians who have fouled it up so much so that they can keep their salaries and their power, constantly looking for more money and power and this is the bane of our existence. Greed is the reason why our current Republican form of Democracy does not and can never work.

When the ancient Greeks first created Democracy, they merely asked the citizens to place a white rock into a jar which would be counted as a ‘Yes’, into a jar, or a black rock which would be counted as a ‘No’ into the jar. The proposal in question would become the law of the land if they then counted a simple majority of white rocks, or it would not become law if they counted a majority of black rocks in the jar.

Democracy itself is the simplest and least complicated, and the most effective form of government ever conceived and that’s why it must be included in any new kind of government, especially to promote a form of Socialism because Socialism itself, as we have seen, can devolve into something evil, which we know as ‘Communism’.

Hopefully, I have at the very least, whetted your appetite for more nutrition in this healthy diet of new ideas. So, in this chapter, I want to give you hard and cold examples of how we could have used a Democratic Socialism in the last several years, and how we MUST BEGIN to use it in the next few years or else - we're doomed to continue doing the same old insane things to ourselves every day until we fail completely as a nation and maybe even a species.

Many scholars call the United States of America an ongoing experiment in democracy, because that is exactly what history teaches us. It is not a completed form of governance, and there never will be such a thing especially in this new era where technology changes the very essence of our relationships to one another almost daily. And so this Doomsday Experiment will build upon the earlier model experiment, but it does so with an increased sense of urgency and the awareness that we cannot afford the snails pace of change that we've been forced to suffer since the inception of the first experiment in democracy.

Today, we are charged with the ability for everyone now reading these words to use this same experimental process, mankind's greatest talent, to achieve even greater things and especially in the area of extending the American experiment in Democracy. It will never be perfect, but in the ongoing learning process, we will always get closer and closer to perfection, as we fine tune the process and build mechanisms to prevent total disaster.

* * *

This is the practical part of this experiment and forms the basis of our vows - that we will FIGHT the EMPIRE with the most powerful weapon of all TRUTH and Truth only. Herein lies HOW we can achieve so much and the reason that I have spelled it all out for you as the most solemn part of our vows is that we now have all of these tools that we can use to get ourselves out of the worst pickle we've ever known in all of our 5 million year climb up out of the jungle and into cities and towns. By this point, you should be all fired up and ready to go. You are starting to feel the collective consciousness or if not - you soon will begin to feel it. Everyone catches on at their own pace and in their own way. I know you are catching on and this is my greatest accomplishment to date and one for which I am the most grateful and humbled.

But, you may need more direction. You may even have the Cosmic Connection in place already that I am trying to instill in every one of my readers. But, I also know that some do not have that yet and need just a little bit more encouragement - a few more details on how we can accomplish so much that we would be saving our planet and our own species from the ultimate and conclusive disaster.

Well, the answer to the biggest question in your mind is that we will use the power that we have just unleashed in 'You' and by that I mean the collective 'You' or all of you, the communicating and very powerful union of those of you who have volunteered to see this to the end. This is the 'Collective Consciousness' that we are testing here and it is now up to you to be part of it or to ignore it. Being part of it is now made easier by the invention of the Internet as I have said, but in this chapter I am going to give you how I can see the Collective Consciousness working in much greater detail and it is at this close-up magnification of this Knighthood that I hope to capture your participation once and for all time.

By placing our full faith and trust in the greatest tool for democracy to ever land here on planet Earth, we can and must start to turn our world from its present course to total annihilation and destruction of all life forms on this planet towards a final destination of total peace, harmony and global sustainable economy and husbanding of our resources in such a way that we guarantee all future generations of humans and all other life forms an always-improving environment upon which to live.

Please remember that this line of reasoning and the accompanying chores that we ask of you is based on the following question:

Why in the name of all that's holy - do we allow massive decisions effecting the entire planet - the fate of over 7 billion people and countless billions of plants and animals upon which we depend be made under the mental capacity of only a few men (even fewer women) in suits? Why do we rely on this antiquated method of governing ourselves when the tool for managing all of this for the benefit of all 7 billion of us is right before our eyes?

You will want the proof.

In several previous books, I argue in detail how an Internet democracy could work with almost no major alterations to the Internet and how we use it today. We use similar technology to vote for our favorite singing contestant on American Idol and other talent competition shows. It's obvious this same kind of technology could be used to vote for our most important proposed solutions to our most pressing problems, not only for who should win a million dollars and have a nice life. The system, of course, would require much more in the way of total security protections from any kind of hacking or meddling into the vote results and we discuss this in detail later.

Another consideration that people have whenever I mention this is that we do not have a Democracy in America because it was technically set up as a Republic. Although this is true historically, the same history books prove to us that when people want a major change in their system of government, they merely band together and demand it. Eventually it gets done if they are persistent and have the courage of their convictions. Mohatma Gandhi, the man who single-handedly brought a form of democracy to India and freed his country from British tyranny said "First, they ignore you. Then, they laugh at you. Then, they fight you. Then, you win."

They are no longer ignoring us. This means the next step will be for them to laugh at us. I hear and see that every day. Don’t worry, it’s just the step before the day when they fight you. This is the step that I look forward to very much because I know it will be the best fight of my life and of your lives and I also know that WE will win it and therefore the greatest excitement greets me at each and every step in the process of making such a great change in the world. I’m up to the fight and I hope you are as well and that you will join the fight today.

Many scholars call the United States of America an ongoing experiment in democracy, because that is exactly what history teaches us. It is not a completed form of governance, and there never will be such a thing especially in this new era where technology changes the very essence of our relationships to one another almost daily. And so our Knighthood will build upon the earlier model experiment, but it does so with an increased sense of urgency and the awareness that we cannot afford the snails pace of change that we've been forced to suffer since the inception of the first experiment in democracy.

Today, we are charged with the ability for everyone now reading these words to use this same experimental process, mankind's greatest talent, to achieve even greater things and especially in the area of extending the American experiment in Democracy. It will never be perfect, but in the ongoing learning process, we will always get closer and closer to perfection, as we fine tune the process and build mechanisms to prevent total disaster.

Before going any further in this book - please ask yourself if you’ve ever seen anything remain successful that does not change with the times?

AND IF we are to CHANGE our SYSTEM of Government - which way would you want it to go - in the direction of more tyranny and dictatorial control over us? Or would you prefer to gain MORE DEMOCRACY - MORE FREEDOME - MORE POWER to determine your own fate - NOT LESS?

To my mind - this is the nature of the choice ahead and there is no other choice that is this important to our future!

* * *

The following are examples of how we can and MUST BEGIN to use the Internet in the world's first DEMOCRATIC Socialism to untangle and solve our nation's and later the world's most perplexing problems.

And as Democratic Socialists - I am hopeful that 'YOU' will think of many others for this is our most pressing battle in the war against the Evil Empire of confusion, ignorance and GREED. There will be others.

The only way to do that peacefully is to PUT all of the MAJOR CHOICES we must make as a NATION on the INTERNET for ordinary people to resolve for ourselves, thus rendering the power of the Empire as less and less until it is finally defeated by common sense solutions and not ones that they were PAID TO FORCE UPON US by the special interests.

With our FINAL VERSION OF DEMOCRATIC Socialism -- or FILTERING the best candidates and IDEAS and then Voting On The Internet we could instantly have the following laws approved by the voters within minutes and at ZERO expense. All of this is known fact by the use of the latest polling. Therefore, I am giving you the best laws that would be produced by this highest and best use of the Internet, because we already know how the majority of American voters feel about these issues.

AND my personal favorite ideas are listed here. These are taken from the recent history of our country and my ideas on how to solve related problems in a far more effective and less expensive way than our government structure attempts to squeeze solutions to our problems out of an out-dated and obsolete horse and buggy system.

In this basic format, you would be VOTING on the IDEAS themselves - HOWEVER - in the BETA-TEST of the new and improved problem solving system of government we would be merely GIVING our RATINGS to these ideas and helping to push them to the top of our communal awareness. (These are only examples of how we could have contributed to a wiser set of laws in the past. What the future holds for us is not completely known.)

SO - HERE WE GO -

The NUMBER ONE example of how we can determine our destiny in a Real Democracy.

When an election is suspected of being intered with by a foreign nation, a New Election must be called within 30 days of the discovery of any major interference by foreign entities and the decision by a Federal Judge is serious enough to have interferred with a substantial number of votes and therefore requires a do-over in a more secure manner.

Concurrently, when a foreign entity, nation, state or person can be determined that this source of election meddling must be punished with a fine no less than one billion dollars per incident.

I believe this national Initiative - when passed - would put an end to any future meddling in our elections. Democracy is simple. It would look something like the following:

The wording here is abbreviated to show how easy Democratic actions can be performed. The actual proposition would have to be a little more detailed for the final passage by the people - but I see only needing a few more details about how to secure the new election under such circumstances where we know some fairly talented computer hackers are busy at work to destroy us. This is just a matter of consulting with the appropriate computer scientists until we have the exact wording for this National Referendum.

How would you vote for such a proposal? Are you the type of person who is comfortable opening up our election process to external and adversarial factors? Or would you prefer to keep the power over our national destiny to Americans only?

I’m confident that I know how about 90% of us would vote on this one. I welcome any of you who believe you can prove me wrong.

How can a true democracy - that must endure - not have such a concept as part of their system of rules? No nation can allow the intervention of a foreign nation into our basic form of government - or we run the risk of being part of a colony in the foreign government, without them firing a shot. This process of accumulation may be going on today as I write these words because there has been no call from our government for a new Secured (hack-proof) Election System since the current President was elected with the interference of foreign dictators.

NUMBER TWO:

Where did they get the power to TAX OUR INCOME? They got this power and maintain it ONLY BECAUSE we have never had any method to VETO THIS IDIOTIC IDEA, one that makes us all slaves. We’ve never had any power to veto them until the day coming soon when we will have a Real Democracy Amendment to our Constitution.

Taking money from our personal incomes was FORCED upon us all in 1913 and they sold it to the American people by telling us it would never be more than 1%. We had no SAY THEN TO VETO this idea and so it was forced upon us.

TODAY - we have the POWER of the INTERNET TO STOP doing what we DON'T LIKE or START THINGS that we DO LIKE.

1. ABOLISHING the PERSONAL INCOME TAX.

Since none of us enjoy paying instead of the 1% that was promised, and we're now paying over 50% of our incomes to Federal, State and Local Taxes, I think it's easy to assume that this proposal would gain your 5 Star Rating.

If we eliminate the personal Income Tax - there would no longer be any fear of the IRS - We would not be forced to hire Tax Accountants every April to calculate our taxes for us - We would have much more MONEY IN OUR POCKETS TO SPEND ON OUR FAMILIES EVERY PAYCHECK - instead of giving it to the BUNGLING IDIOTS IN WASHINGTON who quickly give it away to FOREIGN DICTATORS!

HOWEVER - since this would leave the GOVERNMENT BROKE - we may want to CONSIDER something that would RE-COUP this income for the Federal services we APPROVE later.

IF we start RATING the ridiculous and unpopular laws that they have forced upon us - eventually - this will lead to OUR Changing the LAWS using the same TECHNOLOGY.

This is not ROCKET-SCIENCE.

This would also COUNTER-ACT the idea that American Corporations can AVOID TAXES by MOVING to other countries like Ireland where they pay almost ZERO taxes on their income.

This form of funding the government would discourage CONSUMPTION which in turn AIDS the environment because we are consuming less of the Earth’s resources. And notice that it requires the entity on the SELLING SIDE of the transaction to pay the taxes. Why not? They have all the accountants. Why should the individual American citizen be required to keep track of their purchases and allocate the funds and then remit them to the government. Small and big businesses of any size have all of the people in place who can perform this simple calculation and send it to the US Treasury in about 5 minutes, even if it’s collected yearly. My preferred version of this would require them to pay the sum in question - quarterly at most and maybe even monthly, the way that they now are required to deposit payroll taxes withheld monthly.

But, this type of law accomplishes something much better than all of this. It makes us free from having to sit at our computers calculating for the government, without paying us for our time, how much we are supposed to give them every year making us virtual slaves to the government.

It has no loopholes and so any corporation who sells any product within our borders has to pay the 10% tax on any transaction.

Why can't our CONGRESS conceive of GREAT IDEAS LIKE THIS?

Can you guess why they FAIL EVERY TIME?

We live in one of the most heinous of all tyrannies in the history of the world. Taxes on our incomes if they were administered fairly and objectively would be fine, but the millions of pages of code that has been developed over the years, mainly due to special interests, makes the personal income tax a burden on all citizens who are forced to go through complex calculations every year to be in compliance.

Instead the Income tax rules could be abolished by one simple sentence - and replaced with a second sentence that set up a National Sales Tax of say 10% of anything sold in this country. The IRS could remain in business but enforcing this new tax code that replaces the old one.

Here again, all the latest polls confirm that at least 90% of the American people would gladly vote PRO on such a proposal. And again, the only reason we have not changed our primary method of taxation from over-complex personal income taxation to a flat taxation of consumption is because special interests are allowed to bribe our law-making body.

The National Association of Realtors, for example, pays millions to Congress people to keep the Personal Income Tax rules in place because they hold the very narrow and selfish view that if we didn't have the personal income tax DEDUCTION for HOME MORTGAGE INTEREST that fewer people would buy Real Estate.

This narrowly focused belief by a wealthy class of people who number in the smallest of minorities, Realtors, prevents them from seeing that if there were no income taxes, a much vaster population would have sufficient money to buy Real Estate without any further inducements.

It's really that EASY - FIRST we start RATING THESE IDEAS and then later on - when everyone learns how SIMPLE DEMOCRACY REALLY IS and HOW EMPOWERING for ordinary folks to control their government - it will EVOLVE into something that is the most common-sense form of government in the world. Everyone will wonder why we have not been doing this for centuries and the world will emulate it over and over.

Next - because in recent POLLS 90% of the American People wanted to STOP CHASING and JAILING pot-smokers for doing far less than harmful than drinking alcohol which is completely legal for anyone over the minimum drinking age in each state. Surely, this was all that was necessary in the regulation of the enjoyment of this weed.

Since, the herb has become legal in about 30 of the 50 states of the United States today, in the form of being used as a medicine, we have all the evidence we need to answer that question. And, it is being decriminalized and even legalized in all of the states one by one, but in almost all cases, the decriminalization of pot is being done by putting the question on the BALLOT - not waiting for the politicians to do their jobs.

YET, our Federal Government continues to classify Marijuana in the same classification as HEROIN - a Class-One Controlled substance even though 22 states in this country classify it as a MEDICINE with proven HEALTH BENEFITS.

2. Marijuana would be taken off the list of criminal substances and even legalized everywhere just as alcohol was a century ago. This is supported by 90% of the American people, yet Congress wants to keep it a crime. Why? Because they are bought and paid for by the money-class in this case - the MAJOR DRUG PUSHERS of the WORLD - the PRESCRIPTION DRUG COMPANIES. In this issue they are bribed to make no changes to CRIMINAL LAWS by the Pharmaceutical companies who know that over half of their revenues would be gone due to the healthier benefits of a decriminalized marijuana ingredient, Cannabinoids.

AND THIS FORM OF DEMOCRACY IS EASY TO UNDERSTAND when you see it in this familiar way - something we already DO on a daily basis for TRIVIAL IDEAS. Real Democracy is SIMPLE TODAY and this proposal would look like this -

BOOM! - DONE! - With this one proposal - if passed SAVES the American taxpayer billions of dollars in prison time and GENERATES BILLIONS from taxes of people who can remain taxpayers as part of the economy.

When you are able to see NATIONAL PROPOSITIONS on the ballot like these - then and only then you know that you live in a Real Democracy! Things like this go on in other countries - why not in the so-called world’s most important Democracy?

AND WHY do we allow Democratic systems that produce really sound rules and laws in only a handful of states for state laws? This is a NO-BRAINER!

[ SEE HOW SIMPLE REAL DEMOCRACY CAN BE? They make it sound COMPLICATED because they want us to BELIEVE WE NEED THEM. WE DO NOT - IN FACT - WE MUST RID OURSELVES OF THEM OR ELSE WE'RE DOOMED! ]

Another way to look at Changing National Laws and regulations is that it will homogenize all State Laws because you can’t have state laws that conflict with Federal Laws (In General). So, when we legalize pot at the national level it would be extremely difficult for state politicians, many of whom are religious fanatics, to dictate what their citizens medical marijuana decisions should follow.

Right now, for example, because the Federal Law still prohibits smoking pot, the state of Florida is very confused where the people have passed a Medical Marijuana Legalization, HOWEVER, the Republican Governor banned the smoking of pot, just because he is Republican and they want to obstruct all progress, even when voted on in an officially sanctioned Democratic process. Republicans are all for keeping power concentrated in the hands of old, rich white men in suits and the corporations that pay them.

Citizens who had just voted to allow Medical Marijuana were awakened to find out that even though their state Marijuana Initiative passed was still making their smoking of pot illegal due to the action of one politician, their Governor, who merely disagreed with what 10 million people voted on and worked hard for years to pass into law.

They had to wait a year for a new Governor, a Democrat to become elected before their will was made official.

This criminal act was perpetrated by the same Governor who tried to kill the Solar Energy Industry in his state by making it tougher for homeowners to put solar electric panels on their homes. This, in a state, the ‘Sunshine State’ where the solar energy falling on the state in one hour could power the entire state for one year if we could collect it all.

This situation in Florida is a perfect example of how Republicans want to maintain a Republic, the form of government that allows their minority group of so-called conservatives, in actual fact, they are really the party of uncontrolled representation for the wealthy class and the corporations, who pay them the most, are able to maintain their tyranny over the people. And, it shows how the Democratic Party is not strong enough to fight the people’s oppressors because they also DO NOT ENDORSE DEMOCRACY - they, the Democrats, also prefer the Republican form of government because it keeps them in power in a scale much larger than their actual numbers would allow.

Democrats have more members on some issues, but fewer members on other issues. Therefore, the Democrats don’t endorse Real Democracy because they maintain control far more than if the people had the ability to over-ride or veto their decisions or propose better ones.

Obamacare is the best example of this. The best way to solve the national Health Care Crisis was and always will be to launch something like Social Security, where we have money deducted from our salaries to pay for our health problems. Obamacare was modeled after Mitt Romney’s solution while the Republican Governor of Massachusetts. Obama did that to us and he was able to do this because there was and still is no way for the people to enter into any discussions or inpur of any value.

At the very least, there should have been focus groups set up in all major cities and the opinions of the people should have been taken to help shape Obamacare, but instead, the only input was from the Insurance Companies and one Republican Governor.

Here’s another National Ballot Measure that I think is worty of our consideration.

Right now, we are currently over 22 TRILLION DOLLARS IN DEBT. Where are the finding the money to give away to foreign countries when so many of our own problems here in this country go unsolved. Let’s get the roads back up to speed, give everyone national health care, clean up all of the air and water, solve the homeless crisis, and do more things like that - and THEN decide if we can give some money to other countries overseas who may even have things better than us.

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HOW would you VOTE on this issue? If this were placed on the ballot - and we all voted this National Ballog Measure down, we would simply continue sending the money oversears until another proposition, worded differently may effect it. This would also be a form of Real Democracy.

Members of Congress who are opposed to the Green New Deal have been known to claim that they are against it because “There is no way to pay for it.” Of course they are lying to us when they say this and they know the way to pay for it. They just don’t want to give up all the money that they get from the Industries that are destroying the planet - so they have to lie to us and claim there is no way to pay for the plan when the ONLY WAY to pay for it is for the industries that are destroying the planet to PAY FOR IT - it’s really that simple.

We could have similar ballot measures that direct the surtaxes on the polluters go to the Electric Car Industry or into more battery research to improve their positive impact. This is a special tax, by the way, that would be over and above the federal taxes we already impose on gasoline.

Currently, corporations avoid the income tax rules by holding meetings in other countries and therefore claiming they are not based in the United States, therefore, BILLIONS of taxes are lost to this fraud. Our law-makers could easily reverse this unfair and ridiculous slap in the face of American tax laws by simply passing a law that requires that every dollar earned in the USA is taxable at 10%, no deductions, no loopholes. Calculate it every year and send in the checks. Currently, Apple Computer has declared the largest profits in the history of the world. Yet, they pay no taxes on this income because they now claim to be headquartered in Ireland. And, they create very few jobs in this country because all of their products are made by Chinese girls in such deplorable conditions where hundreds are committing suicide every month. They pay them next to nothing. They also hoard their profits and don't give much back to their investors in the greediest hoarding of capital ever known, thus doing the American economy almost no benefit at all, only taking from its consumers, more than triple what it could charge for the same products.

The only reason our law-makers have not done this years ago is because they are bought and paid for by the corporations who they regulate. They are also given high-paying jobs when they retire from government by the same corporations who also bribed them during their terms in office. This is the biggest pay-offs they can give our law-makers because they all end up with 5 or even 10 million dollars in salaries from the Pharmaceutical companies, the Oil companies, the Big Banks and they are not even required to come to work every day. A meeting or two over the phone once or twice a year is all they need to do to "earn" this money and it lasts for the rest of their lives. Big pay-offs like this are common because in not passing laws like the decriminalization of Marijuana, for example, they allow the pharmaceutical corporations to continue making BILLIONS.

The same goes for the oil companies. By not regulating them so that they pay their fair share of taxes into the US Treasury, they are allowed to make billions. Paying off a few key Senators or Congress people a few million is nothing in comparison and in our system, which these corporations love to death, they only have to pay off a Committee Chairman because he or she can prevent a proposed law from even coming to a vote.

Which brings me to the next National Ballot Measure that I presume would be on the ballot if we had aquired the National Initiative and Referendum Amendment by this time.

I used to believe, because of the way that they pay so much attention and grant so much power to the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader in the Senate that these rules of procedure in our Congress were hard and fast and written down to the point where there might even be penalties, such as getting tossed out of the House or Senate for disobeying them.

However, I recently learned from Lawrence O-Donnel that there are no rules that require bills to be filtered through a House of Representatives Speaker, or Majority Leader in the Senate. It’s only ‘TRADITION’, that we thwart all attempts to make the laws of the land and let through only the bills that have been approved by the President, or the two-party system. This is NOT democracy. What we suffer from in America today is BIT a Democracy of any kind. We suffer a form of Bureaucratic Bastardization of Democracy and with a little help from you - it may soon be amended and/or abolished along the lines presented here in The Green New Deal, for reasons that are obvious.

If we are going to achieve even a small minority of the goals laid out by the Green New Deal, whose sole purpose is to save our planet and especially our species from extinction, we must make huge changes to the system of how we make the rules of the road. We cannot rely on these antiquated and corrupted systems and methods of making the laws that will result only in the same old financial interests continuing to destroy the world in order to make more money for the elite few.

4. Using the Internet, we can make it law that "No committee in Congress shall have the power to block any legislation from coming to a vote in Congress. Any Senator or Congress person may introduce a bill in Congress, upon gaining ten signatures from any of his colleagues, whereupon he gives it to the Speaker of the House or Leader of the Senate and must be scheduled for a full vote of the chamger in question within 14 days of the bill gaining the 10 signatures by the bill’s sponsor."

Some of you need to realize that our present CONGRESS as it exists will NEVER pass any legislation that takes power away from THEM and this is why we need to be united and make it a major new political consciousness against which they cannot and must not win.

Our present Congress will never ABOLISH the Personal Income Tax either - no matter how many candidates claim that they will do this - because the entire income tax code, thousands of pages, is ripe with loopholes that have been placed there by the major elite, the wealthiest of us and the big corporations so that they can avoid as much of the income taxes as they can. This wouldn’t be so crucial except for the fact that the rest of us have to make up the difference that they are saving.

When the day finally comes when the American people can fund their government with a FLAT TAX, or my preferenece, a National Sales Tax, collected at every retail financial transaction - there are no loopholes and therefore, we are not favoring any one section of the citizenry.

One more provision of this law states.

"Any member of Congress shall be granted sufficient speaking time for proposed bill introductions every month so as to carry out the intent of this law."

NEXT ISSUE: How do we get this country out of debt? It has to happen someday. We might as well start to solve this problem now, rather than later when interest rates go up to a normal range and put us closer into bankruptcy.

I think, if we do not pass an earlier National Ballot Measure to abolish the Personal Income Tax regulations from A - Z, then, we should use them to get this country out of debt. Let’s tax the Super-Rich until the National Debt is completely paid off because it is the results of giving them so many tax breaks over the decades and the over-spending on their own industries that made them wealthy in the first place and therefore - THEY are the most responsible for the problem.

In solving great and thorny problems always identify the CAUSE of the problem and then make the CAUSE of the PROBLEM - become the SOLUTION. This is Real Democracy in Action when you get to do this over and over and there is nothing that can stop you.

A current candidate for President in 2020, Elizabeth Warren is running on this idea, but she has NO WAY of ever getting this enacted through Congress and she knows it - even though it’s one of the best ideas ever. Who the heck needs more than 10 Million dollars per year to live? Only the ugliest and greediest humans would need to consume so much food and drink so much alcohol and have so many toys. It’s disgusting to me. But, at least we leave these sorts of individuals with 25% of their incomes above this level and I think that’s more than generous - given the economic situation they put us in.

AND WHEN the National Debt drops to zero, we can always revisit this and abolish this tax law if we feel it’s too oppressive or adjust the amount downwards. In a Real Democracy, WE THE PEOPLE get to do whatever the Hell we want. HooYah!

This is one near and dear to my heart. If you can’t do your job properly, should you get paid by the taxpayers?

We should also understand that in a Real Democracy the people would have the right to VETO anything that the President does to us which we feel is not in our general interest.

For example: According to the latest polls, the vast majority of Americans do NOT WANT a huge WALL built at the border with Mexico. So, the question is why is this concept being forced upon us?

ANS: Because they have the power to do it! That’s why. They know the people have no way to VETO THIS KIND OF IDIOTIC IDEA. All Presidents have known this sad truth about our lack of any real Democracy. Lyndon Johnson knew it when he created the Viet Nam War. Tricky Dick Nixon knew it when he went back on his campaign promise to end the war and expanded it into Cambodia. George WRONG WAY. Bush knew it when he invaded the WRONG COUNTRY to protect his family’s oil wells in Saudi Arabia.

But what if all future Presidents knew BEFORE they pushed something on us that the American people quickly and easily would OVER-RULE HIM?

I am against this solution to the immigration problem mainly because I believe it’s one of the worst ECOLOGICAL DISASTERS waiting to happen in all history, and I propose a solution that is much better which follows. It has to do with curing the root cause of a disease, not just treating the symptoms. And, where do the wild horses, wild goats, wild boars, rodents, tortoises, coyotes, etc. go when they need new sources of food or water, new habitat to survive the changing weather pattersn on this planet?

A wall that is continuous for thousands of miles would spell the extinction of many species in this part of the world. We don’t have the right to make any species go extinct. We’re doing that anyway from our inadvertent activities. In the spirit of the Green New Deal - we cannot and must not make any intentional actions that would make even a single species life more difficult.

AND the real solution to the immigration problem we are facing in this country is not best solved by putting up a wall that we know won’t work. The best solution to this problem is to find out what the SOURCE of the desperation is for so many people in the Southern parts of this world who believe they must migrate North to survive.

SO the real SOLUTION to our Immigration Problem is something like the following National Ballot Measure that would have to be debated, but I think eventually the American people would support because “When the times get tough, the tough get going.”

The root of the problem of the mass immigration North to our borders is due to the fact that the governments South of us are all corrupt and immoral and incompetent and should be overthrown, violently if necessary. Look at Venezuela as an example. They have more oil reserves in the ground than any other nation in the world, and yet, their people are starving. Someone is stealing all of the profits from their own people. There’s no other way to explain the confusion here.

But, should we ask our own young men and women to lay down their lives in helping people gain their freedom in other countries? I am not so sure of that - especially when there’s a better way to go - one that can last longer because the problem would be solved by the sacrifice of those who love, know and understand their country far better than we do.

Now, this is a tough one, as I say above, and I doubt this one would pass on the first time it’s placed on the ballot, but eventually, when you consider all of the horrific alternatives like the ecological disaster of a 2,000 mile long wall, something that would most assuredly make Global Warming worse - not better, I would challenge any of my readers to come up with a more cost-effective and proper, by all measures, solution to this persistent and pressing problem.

In other words, when a serious crisis like the flow of millions of desperate people begins to hit us, we need to acknowledge the CAUSE and go after that problem by fixing the cause of the problem, and NOT putting a huge trillion dollar band-aid over the symptoms.

While we’re on the subject of Veto-Ing the actions of a Dictatorial President, let’s go back a few years and I’ll show you how our present economic problems could have been avoided TOTALLY if we had a way to VETO the actions of George Wrong-Way Bush.

He began a war in Iraq, which has now spread all over the Middle East under the FALSE PRETENSES that it was Iraq who was responsible for the attack on 9/11 at the World Trade Center in New York.

It was not Iraq. The perpetrators of this most heinous attack on our country since Pearl Harbor came from Saudi Arabia - none of them from Iraq and there was no connnections at all. Wrong-Way Bush knew this but attacked the wrong country because he knew that he had to attack someone in retaliation but he couldn’t attack Saudi Arabia because his family has billions of dollars invested there - so he lied to the American people and we are all paying trillions of dollars to destroy the lives of millions of innocent people.

In my opinion George Wrong Way Bush should be in jail for what I consider to be th worst crime in American history thus far.

IF we had a chance to VETO this criminal act - I believe it would have passed and Bush would be impeached probably - (For Lying to the American People) and we would have saved a portion of the world now placed in a constant state of Chaos, poverty, despair and a global migration to escape the evils Bush unleashed upon this region.

In case you have forgotten, George W. Bush invaded Iraq on a false story published by some rag newspaper in South Africa about Saddam Hussein was purchasing uranium in the form of ‘Yellow Cake’. Millions died and millions more will continue to die from this decision that came from the brain of one LIAR who happened to have the power to do this to the planet - ‘Wrong Way’ Bush.

AND it is sad - no TRAGIC - that the whole of the United States Intelligence community didn’t rise up and yell at the top of their lungs about this HUGE LIE BEFORE the troops were put on the airplanes for the invasion. Some did try, but they were not loud enough. Today, the world lives with the consequences.

And looking back through history - the same thing could have been done during the Lyndon Johnson and Tricky Dick Nixon's similar lies about Viet Nam.

So, since the Presidents of our country are known to lie to the American people and they do so frequently because they know it’s NOT A CRIME to LIE to us - then, we obviously need to repair this gaping hole in our system of Justice.

It’s incredible but true that they lie to us constantly because there is no Federal law in existence today that has any teeth, no penalties for their lies. This would reduce the lies by about 99.99% in my opinion.

We put people in jail for smoking pot and I don’t see the harm to society for that activity. Why not jail and fine those who can cause the world, death and destruction in the trillions of dollars. There’s no logic or any morality, in my opinion, to keeping things the way they are.

As you can see - if politicians knew that We The People were watching their every move and had the power to not only impeach them, but make them pay for their crimes, there would be far fewer of them that we are forced to pay for. Think about it. Why should the American People be constantly forced to pay for their criminal behavior. In an honest and robust form of Justice, Equity and Democracy, it would be the criminals who themselves pay for their crimes against us - humanity.

To be fair, I must also point out that Barack Obama, who campaigned on the slogan - 'Change we can believe in', also lied to us and - as far as I can tell he changed nothing. None of the Bush initiatives were reversed in Obama's first two years in office, when he had a complete Democratic Majority in Congress as we all expected. To me 'Change' of this nature would have meant at least that much. However, in his first two years in office, while he had his party in complete control of Congress and therefore could have done anything he wanted to, he removed not a single soldier from Iraq or from any foreign country. He kept the NSA Spies spying on us. In fact, spying on Americans got worse under Obama's watch, not better. The national debt soared, however not completely his fault because of the Bush Financial Debacle. Yet he prosecuted none of the Bush co-conspirators who robbed all the banks and retirement plans of the entire world.

The only thing he changed was to legalize and complete the total monopoly that the Big Three Health Insurance companies hold over the American people by forcing all of us to buy their products, when it had been optional prior to Obama. At least he's finally talking about making Peace around the world in his last two years of his administration, but this is exactly when he should be doing the opposite and going after the Terrorists now running wild in the horrible political morass that Bush created in Iraq. Instead, this situation is worse today because we have yet to have anyone in office who knows how to solve this problem.

It’s obvious to me that the majority of American people would be able to much better if given the chance. I hope you agree by now, after seeing these few examples. In a future book, I hope to give you many hundreds more of them, but this time in real operation.

This may seem very small and petty, but I can’t understand how someone has the right to cause air and NOISE POLLUTION all over the planet, thus stressing out thousands of people as they drive by, when there are simple and effective ways to cut their pollution to zero as all cars are required to do.

We should all vote on requiring all motorized vehicles to emit no more than 75 decibels of noise pollution. One of my pet peeves. I hate to have to listen to these cars and motorcycles that have intentionally installed mufflers that make them so noisy you can hear them coming a mile away, then for another mile as they go away. This is noise pollution at the cost of my peace and quiet and yours.

It seems to me this would be an easy and fun way to help get our country under control. You may have a similar pet peeve you’d like to see on the ballot. If not - think harder.

The National Ballot Measure that follows is one of the best examples of Real Democracy in action because this is the one rule of law that I think we can all agree will never be put into effect by those who make the most money and remain in power the longest due to the activities of these people - The Lobbyists.

Only the American Citizens being cheated and left out of the process would be the ones who would CONTROL this group of pests.

Which to be truly effective must be accompanied by a second element.

No Congressman or woman shall - upon leaving the Senate or House of Representatives shall take a job or accept money, or financial benefits of any kind over $100 in value from any corporation doing business in the United States where the sole purpose of that job is to influence Congress in any way or if the payment or reward is in payment for any legislation they have voted for or against while a member of Congress.

How about this one? Making it MORE DIFFICULT FOR CRAZY PEOPLE OR CRIMINALS TO OWN OR CARRY A GUN

We’ll never get this kind of common sense legislation out of Congress until we’ve passed the National Ballot Measure above that makes it illegal to lobby them.

SEE how SIMPLE DEMOCRACY can be when you take OUT the ability of the MONEY TO INFLUENCE the LAW-MAKING PROCESS?

The next National Ballot Measure is one I personally agree with, but I doubt that the majority of my fellow citizens would vote to pass it today. Maybe some day in the future. But, I am putting it here so that you can see that even though something you like doesn’t pass muster by your peers, it’s still far better to have the opportunity to cinvince them every few years because this one will keep popping up over the years, I believe, until it does become the law of the land.

We simply imprison and kill too many innocent people in this country not to take this precaution.

OR - if a total Abolition is not acceptable to the people, we try something else. Many times, an innocent man or woman has been put to death by the state, even when the prosecutors know they are innocent. This type of justice can’t be tolerated.

On the same subject of the justice system and police powers, it bothers me greatly that too many police officers have shot one of our citizens in the back as they are running away from the officers. I don’t see how this is tolerated in the least. Police are wonderful people to have around, don‘t get me wrong, but we cannot tolerate a few bad apples that join the force so that they can murder people. That’s just Basic Morality and Common Sense - 1A.

Therefore:

If this were part of our Federal Laws, all police forces would train their cadets more fully in how to recognize when someone is running away from you, you must not shoot at them, unless of course, they turn and shoot at you. That’s different. It’s OK for a police officer to shoot back in self-defense and he or she would not face prosecution if it could be proven that the deceased fired his gun at the officer(s) first.

We’re not going to write stupid laws either.

While we’re talking about the Criminal Justice System, I believe it’s far too expensive to house millions of criminals, give them three square meals a day, letting them sit around all day watching TV and never learning anything, never improving themselves, never paying society back for their crimes.

THEREFORE:

I think that Prison should be a real deterrent to the criminal mind so much so that they NEVER think about committing a crime again, especially if they’ve had to work hard in the fields.

THIS ONE STROKE OF THE PEOPLE - would help SOLVE THREE MAJOR PROBLEMS in our society today -

A. The BILLIONS wasted on a roof over their heads and feeding prisoners who are doing nothing to earn their keep.

B. The IMMIGRATION problem because we would have an instant labor force to pick our fruits and veggies - mostly ALL AMERICAN Citizens would be learning a viable job skill even though forced to work in the fields, at least we don’t have to hire illegal immigrants.

C. The failing INFRA-STRUCTURE because some of the Chain Gangs would be put to work repairing roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, etc.

AND the COST OF FOOD would go DOWN to boot because of all the free labor on the farms.

I can see non-violent offenders put to work in so many useful and productive ways for them to re-pay society and learn new skills that could serve them when they are released back into society.

A. They will clean graffiti

B. They will fix roads and bridges

C. They will rescue lost animals

D. They will fight forest fires and even building fires

E. They will work to prevent forest fires.

F. They will clean up parks, beaches, rivers and streams, and even help clean up the oceans. They could even be used to enforce our clean air and water regulations. (As soon as they are put back in place by a new Admininstration.)

G. They will help feed the homeless by collecting food waste from restaurants.

H. They will aid police and hospitals do their duties

I. They will pick up garbage and other refuse aid in recycling efforts.

J. They will help in reclaiming wetlands and other natural habitats.

K. They will perform many more such duties as a committee of concerned citizens determines to be in the public interest.

Would you vote YES or NO to such a proposal?

To some of my readers, a Chain Gang sounds like we’re going backwards, but I think it’s a way to go into the future, because I believe too many people of a criminal mind believe that Prison is like college or University, a place where they can learn new and better skills of criminality.

But, out on a Chain Gang - working hard every day - there’s little chance of that happening and this would be the biggest deterrent to get into criminal activity that I can think of.

I recently heard one of the Democratic Candidates claim that she is NOT for Universal Free College because there’s no way to pay for it. But, again, this proves how one little mind working on a problem is no match for MILLIONS OF BRAINS working together in a Real Democracy, each one of us giving our best to help improve our own system of laws.

If the government wanted to - they could give everyone a Free College Education by simply putting it ONLINE. The cost of buildings is gone. The cost of paying expensive professors is gone. The cost of paying over-paid administrators is gone by putting courses online that are designed by the EXPERTS in every subject - BUT they are PAID ONCE - and then the course if free and OPEN TO MILLIONS OF STUDENTS, for FREE.

BERNIE SANDERS wants to pay for very expensive college courses in the actual campuses of this country, already over-flowing with kids to be paid for by TAXING THE SPECULATION ON WALL STREET.

This way of taking a real stab at the heart of the capitalist system is dangerous. You don’t know what part of investing is speculation and which part is solid investing for one’s family’s future. It all depends on how often you trade, I guess. So, you could place a tax on frequent trading and I would agree with that - HOWEVER any tax of this type would provide only a drop in the bucket when you’re trying to fund college tuition for fifty million kids. It’s ridiculous to even try to pay for this benefit in this way.

However, by making Free College Education - FREE BECAUSE it’s all on the Internet - that is do-able.

When you take the best professor in each category and pay him or her to create an online course, that works out to pennies per student in costs because we don’t have to pay all of these salaries. When the course needs to be upgraded - we pay someone to upgrade it. Still, pennies per student. The government could easily pay for a few pennies per college student with a barely noticeable ADDITIONAL TAX on the most harmful products that we all consume to our detriment like alcohol, marijuana and even processed foods.

I see many of the Democratic Candidates and of course ALL of the Republicans are against Medicare for all - even knowing that this is supported by 90% of the voters. The excuse they give once again - THERE’S NO WAY TO PAY FOR IT.

Here’s a way:

Which may be accompanied by:

So by requiring Doctors and Hospitals to take 50% of what they currently charge as payment for services, Medicare For All could become the law of the land and even sustain itself without any taxpayer problems by simply taxing those of us who have so much money that we can buy cars that are priced at $100,000 or more.

This kind of behavior should be supported by society ONLY IF there is a positive impact somewhere for somebody. The people that choose $100,000 cars, when they see that there is a $50,000 Tax on the thing are going to purchase far fewer of them and the air and water of the world is improved just a little bit by their NOT buying these things.

I believe most of the devices built by Apple computer should be required to pay this tax because anyone can easily find a similar product that is half the price of an Apple model.

And, they have tons of fans, so don’t shoot the messenger here, but this company was caught recently intentionally SLOWING DOWN OLDER PHONES so that their customers would be forced to buy new models. I was one of these slowed down by Apple because I did not need a new model for what I do with a phone. Forcing us all to continually buy the newer models something should be illegal.

This would be one way of making them pay for just some of these transgressions.

Here’s another one near and dear to my heart.

Somehow they all retire after ten or twenty or even thirty years in office as multi-millionaires - when their salary is only about $175,000 Per Year. How do they do that?

TERM LIMITS would be a simple and powerful way TO LIMIT the amount of damage they can do to us.

AND FINALLY, I want to take on the Homeless Problem in this country because it is a major tenet of the Green New Deal. And this proposal shows how even the most complex problems are easily solved when we put our collective minds to it. The actual homeless problem solution will be better than the one I have proposed here, but at least I can give you a starting point for your thinking when I think about solutions that the rest of my peers can vote on and either endorse or not endorse.

At the basis of this proposal is the notion that every adult citizen in this country must have productive work in a modern civilization, and not be a drain on society. And that everyone must have a roof over their heads and sufficient food on the table to take care of their family. These are just a couple of basic conditions for forming a nation in the first place, are they not.

Therefore:

This National Ballot Measure would be combined with two or three more along these lines that make it clear that this country will have a way to provide living quarters for any American who has run into difficulties in paying for their own support. Most importantly, the children would be cared for and educated on the same premises so that we don’t cause this problem to become a generational one for this family.

This is one of the most complex problems that any nation can face. I feel as though it should be treated the same way we would tackle any other type of national emergency. What would we do, for example, if everyone started becoming ill from a monster global pandemic? We would segregate these people from the rest of us until we could cure them of their affliction.

Becoming homeless is like becoming ill. It can happen to anyone, especially in this new type of Economy of the Elite, where housing prices are going up ten times faster than wages in America. If you are not careful enough about your financial well-being to counter this price and wave discprepency in America, you are risking being homeless at any time because the people who own the Rental properties know they can get more and more money for their spaces, according to the rapicly escalating values. Very few of us have the ability to contract with our employer so that every time housing prices go up, our salaries go up accordingly. This would be a nice feature in any economic system, if your goal is to keep everyone in your country housed and fed at a minimum.

In many cases, it’s nothing that you did intentionally. You were at the wrong place at the wrong time. It just happened when you lost your job and suddenly you get behind in your rent payments, you can never get caught up and so your landlord evicts you. Then, you realize that every other type of accomodation has now become more expensive than you could ever afford. You’re homeless and if you have children, this is a very serious kind of affliction. There is one other way to become homeless and that is to become addicted to drugs and too often this is the underlying problem. We have to fight both of these social problems if we want to continue being a civilization.

We can fight this growing pandemic by truly helping to overcome the basic problem. People who have become homeless have become this way due to drug use or for simply bad economic conditions hitting all around them and catching them off guard. In my area, home prices are now in the millions of dollars, so there are very fewer and fewer people who can afford to buy a home in my neck of the woods and this is more and more common in many parts of the United States.

But this is where Government can be used to actually help the people who are depending on good government. We should have available for anyone who is homeless a small barracks like living situation where they can learn a new vocation, there is a good chance we are going to rescue this life from total death and disaster. There is no other way.

I believe most people would support such a solution if it was placed on the National Ballot, maybe not the first time they see it, but after it’s explained over the course of two or three ballot attempts, most of us will support it.

These are just a few examples of how - when left to the decision-making process of Too Few, we wind up with 'Too Late' and Too Expensive and truly costly solutions for the rest of us. If I - one person - can think up a better way to solve all of the problems that I have done above - imagine how many more even better solutions to problems would come out of the brain trust of millions of us!!

As John Lennon said - "Imagine - All the people living life in peace."

And I would add - “Resist the people who ignore you - Embrace those who listen. It’s healthier for all that way!”

Chapter Three

- The Color Of Consciousness

Author’s Note:

In a previous work of mine - ‘The Four States Of Consciousness’, I outline how Consciousness works in both the universe and inside our heads. What you and I and every living creature experience is the locus of interaction between the two fields where Consciousness can exist. It exists inside of living creatures like us in our own individual field of Consciousness and it also exists outside of us in the over-all arch of the field that contains every single tiny particle of or position in the universe.

The following is a revisit and an adaptation of these thoughts because the challenge before us is the most overwhelming and important one of our entire evolution and history on this planet and therefore in order to ensure that everything works properly and in time to save our species, I believe our individual and social Consciousness is our greatest weapon in that cause. We must learn how to use this great weapon with far more accuracy and far more attention to detail than we give it today.

FIRST: I feel as though we should define some terms before we make our case which may be new to you.

‘Cono-Location’ - The place in the field of Consciousness where your own personal artistry exists as if it were a pixel or set of pixels inside a larger picture.

‘Cono-location device’ or ’Cono-locator’. The part of our Consciousness that solves the riddles in our lives and tells us precisely where we are in relation to other Conscious beings.

‘Consciousness Score’ - This is not a number, but similar to a sheet of music that determines the flow, the depth, the emotional attributes of a concert. The Consciousness Score is the set of notations aquired at birth that gives rise to whatever is happening inside your mind at any given time but especially when you are challenged to perform to the best of your abilities.

_______________________________________

I would like you to think of your own claim on the field of Consciousness as if it were a color. Actually, it’s not a single color, but a wide array of color depending on how much creativity is expressed in your own position in the universe. The more creativity that is granted to what I call your ‘Cono-location’, the more colors and patterns you will observe in your life’s Consciousness score. This score is basically the sum of all the major incidents in your life that impact you the most. These include your major achievements, your most important love affairs, your personal insights, no matter how big or how small. Your score depends on how your friends perceive you, how your family responds to you, how your pets respond to you and most importantly, how the universe responds to you.

We are not alone. The sum and substance of things in Existence out there is connected to your existence and the way that you connect your own life to the life all around you and even the death all around you is what determines your over-all total score.

Your life is like a painting that you work on and color in just a little bit more every day until the day you pass from this place, and that is the day that your painting is finished. It will stand as the major work of art that was your life. It is recorded for all eternity by the brushes that you chose, sometimes, large strokes and sometimes small brushes to color in the details. Your painting begins with a clean slate, a bare white canvas upon which you will dabble with reasons, blame, excuses, claims, counter-claims, fair truths and discernments as well as bloviated lies and self-deceptions. Some parts of your painting will be amazingly bright and articulate and other parts will be muddied and clouded. But it will all be there for all of us to ponder and appreciate and once a part of the piece is finished, it cannot be changed.

Recently, my eldest daughter and I were having words about the distribution of chores around the house, something, we’ve all gone through many times.

I ended up having to give this advice to her. It came out of my mouth at just the right time in our discussion because she was questioning my writing abilities, as children often do. She was expressing doubts about the amount of time that I spent writing and the eventual value that they had to the running of the household. (I know - right?)

So, I decided to conjure up some of my previous discoveries and expounded thusly to her:

“When we’re conceived in our mother’s womb, within seconds of the creation of our selves, a little piece of Cosmic Consciousness comes out of hiding and permeates our first cell. The egg explodes into an amazing but very tiny fireworks light show that uses up the quantum energies of some 15 billion zinc atoms. I call it the Zinc Spark of Life. It happens to all of us, every single person who survives this moment of conception, are born in the most brilliant fireworks show far more brilliant than any 4^th of July exhibition. This is how all of us, no matter how big or small, white or black, regardless of where we’re born or how humble or regal our surroundings, are introduced into the Field of Consciousness that exists only here on planet Earth, as far as we know.

From this point forward, which takes place within 10 to 15 seconds of your Father’s sperm penetrating your Mother’s egg, your original egg-cell, announced to the world in this most auspicious way, begins to replicate into dozens, then thousands, then millions, then trillions of cells exactly like the one that was previously announced to the world. Eventually, some number of these cells have pretty much defined how you will be perceived by the others in the universe who have all gone through the exact same process, but come out very unique and different every time.

Soon in your development outside the womb, as you quickly gain the ability to think and speak and talk in any kind of language, you begin an ongoing conversation with that little snippet of consciousness that invaded your internals when you were at the original point of impact and that ongoing conversation, the one that never stops, as it develops and begins to comprehend its surroundings more and more - is you.

This internal and very private conversation goes on throughout the rest of your life and as time goes on, you get more and more comfortable with who you are. But, you never own the person that you are, nor are you the one in control. You never own that little snippet of Consciousness because you can only borrow it for a short time, the length of time that you are alive. It came into your existence by the first chemical explosion that made you and it lives inside your flesh and blood deep inside every cell. It even invades and helps create your code of life, your DNA, that which is your own registered trademarked recording of your life’s path through the rest of the universe. What impact your life had on your own code is engrained in it and remains forever gifted to every succeeding generation of your progeny on to infinity or as long as the human race exists. But the actual experience of your own life evaporates and returns some day from whence it came.

One day, the day that is the last day of your life on Earth, the library card for the book that you borrowed comes due and you have to return your little snippet of Consciousness back to where you found it. Hopefully, you made your book of Consciousness, just a little more interesting than how it read when it was loaned to you, way back when. If you did, our Master Librarian takes notice. If you did not make your life’s work more interesting, a new and improved version of the one you borrowed, then it goes largely unheralded and unnoticed and will gather dust for centuries.

When you return your book of your own life to the library, our Master Librarian carefully examines your book of your life’s conversation, your cono-location, your use of colors, the shapes and pictures you chose to remember as the most important, your basic composition, your understanding of your objectives, your themes, your most precious loves, hopes, desires and prayers. The patterns that you may have uncovered, the mysteries you solved, the plots you conceived and stuck with as well as the ones you quickly abandoned, your logic, your sense of aesthetics, your perceptions of reality, are all carefully considered.

Then, after a period deep and profound contemplation, the Master Librarian stamps your book as returned with honor and privilege and is then placed high on a shelf where all future books are proudly on display as great achievements, or it is stamped with a seal of disapproval and disappointment and perhaps even dishonor and these life-stories are sadly placed on shelves very far away from the main entrance where they will simply devolve, decay and gather dust over the centuries until they are finally totally forgotten. No others will borrow your book for all eternity if placed out here. No one will remember you. No enhancements will ever attach to your contributions.”

When I finished my little lecture, my daughter said very little and left the room. I believe I made my point. I intentionally gave very little that could be argued. I left in hopes that it was a moment she would not forget and that I may have finally made an enhancement to her own book and improved her cono-location device to some small degree.

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