A Fantasy - On the Seventh Day: How a Burning Babe and Lynn Rothschild Saved Democracy in America
Tags: 2016 Election, Bernie Sanders, Michael Bloomberg

A Fantasy - On the Seventh Day: How a Burning Babe and Lynn Rothschild Saved Democracy in America

DAY ONE

The fat sweaty Capitol Hill policeman was in lust. The perfect babe was walking past him toward the steps of The Capitol, wearing only a T-shirt and the shortest of shorts, carrying only a cell phone and a jug. The possibilities of a wet T-shirt fully occupied his very small mind.

Then she exploded in flames. She had sat down, poured the jug of what turned out to be gasoline over her body, filmed her short manifesto for broadcast to YouTube, and lit a match. Here’s what she said:

I am a soccer mom My husband is an unemployed drunk, one of the 30% unwillingly unemployed. My child died to a fraudulent vaccine. My home went to bank fraud. And now I am dying of cancer traced to bad water from fracking. What does it say about this country when a guy from Vermont can enchant those left behind without ever calling into question the two-party tyranny, predatory capitalism, the military-industrial complex, and the fact that the US Government is the core enabler of global toxicity and death? With my death I hope to shock all of you into paying attention. God Bless America.

POOF.

DAY TWO

Deep in the woods of New Jersey Lady Lynn Rothschild welcomed Mort Zuckerman, Peter Ackerman, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, and Ross Perot. Others not attending — the Black Sheep Billionaires from the Silicon Valley and the innovation centres of Europe — were known to be ready to support whatever course of action the group selected.

Lady Rothschild:

Gentlemen, we are on the verge of losing everything. In our inbred arrogance we have allowed decisions to be made that have disenfranchised the productive public, concentrated wealth in an obscene manner, and externalized costs to the public that could take a century to address. All of the preconditions of revolution now exist across the West — one spark, such as we had yesterday — could ignite the public, unleash the pitchforks, and lead to all of our Lear Jets being shot from the skies by pissed off veterans who know how to aim a 50 caliber rifle.

I believe we have no alternative but to decentralize wealth and decision-making while promoting the idea that this can be done non-violently. Electoral Reform seems to be “root.” If we support the Electoral Reform Act of 2015 and the election of an honest US Government in 2016, I believe this one intervention will defuse the imminent collapse and limit our losses.

DAY THREE

Jesse Ventura looked at Ralph Nader with obvious skepticism. Meanwhile Al Sharpton and Cornell West were holding forth in opposite corners, while Joan Blades, Jill Stein, Christina Tobin, Elizabeth Warren and Cynthia McKinney tried to look interested in one another. Joan succeeded, the others did not. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich sat quietly, regretting they had come but unable to resist the $100,000 speaker fee they had each been offered. Bernie Sanders mumbled to himself alone in another corner.

Ross Perot called the meeting to order.

Folks, you all know that I was threatened with assassination and my daughter was threatened with great harm as well, in order to force me to leave the race for the presidency in 1996. I have been angry about that ever since — I had to make a practical decision, and while it was the right decision because the forces arrayed against democracy were too powerful at the time, it has eaten away at my guts ever since. It’s time to make things right.

Here’s the deal: I am committing $10 million as a starter fund for this Electoral Reform Summit that will go public at the end of the day with a Statement of Demand; for an IndieGoGo campaign to raise a $1 billion “Big Bat USA” from 100 million Americans who know they are disenfranchised and screwed over; and for a professional staff to organize nine Chautauqua bus tours across the nine regions of North America, to mobilize Occupy, labor unions, college students, veterans, and soccer moms. We will present each Member of Congress with the Electoral Reform Pledge, and give them one day in which to agree to co-sponsor the Electoral Reform Act of 2015.

These are the eight elements of the Act that were first discussed at the Occupy Working Group on Electoral Reform in 2011 and subsequently refined in a Reform Party candidacy still visible as We the People Reform Coalition:

01 Free & Equal Ballot Access for all qualified candidates — an end to the two-party tyranny.

02 Tightly-drawn districts ending gerrymandering, plus at large members for selected voting blocs such as our gay and lesbian communities and religious minorities.

03 Equal public funding for all qualified candidates — we kill CITIZENS UNITED & all donations from any organizations and all foreign countries.

04 Free & Equal Access to print and broadcast media for all qualified candidates and their Cabinet appointees — to be a candidate in the General Election the candidate must appoint a coalition cabinet and produce a balanced budget.

05 Debates to include all Independent and small party candidates including candidates from emerging parties not yet accredited nationally such as Working Families. We terminate the two-party debate Commission and restore the League of Women Voters as debate managers.

06 Paper ballots will be used with those ballots counted publicly and on site — we take both mail and electronic fraud off the table.

07 End winner take all plurality voting and implement a new voting system agreed upon by the public — Instant Run-Off seems the easiest for everyone to grasp and embrace.

08 End party-line voting, demand that all legislation be published in advance for national ballot consideration, end all lobbying, implement line-item citizen vetoes as well as Executive vetoes, and schedule an Article V Constitutional Convention for 2018.

Today, right now, I am asking each of you to commit to co-sponsoring our Statement of Demand tonight, and being part of the Coalition Cabinet that will be sorted out among yourselves tomorrow.

And so it came to pass, making the evening news. Hillary Clinton is reported to have fainted, while Jeb Bush crapped in his pants and went back to drinking heavily.

DAY FOUR

Jon Huntsman, Angus King, Bernie Sanders, and Jim Webb breakfasted quietly today, and agreed that they would trust in the larger process that Lady Rothschild and Ross Perot and others had now made possible. Bernie was visibly uncomfortable — he has never played well with others — but it was made clear to him that the team in formation respected him, embraced his good intentions, and would do everything possible to work with him toward the common good.

The balance of the day was spent in generally convivial conversation agreeing on the following tentative Cabinet assignments to be announced in the evening, after which all members of the team would campaign across the country educating the public on what an honest government can achieve, supporting individual candidates who embrace integrity in the public interest as their primary principle.

PRESIDENT: Angus King or Bernie Sanders or Jim Webb; VICE PRESIDENT: Cynthia McKinney, Jill Stein or Elizabeth Warren (non-selects become Counsels to the President and Vice President); OMB: John Kasich with Dennis Kucinich & Joe Stiglitz; Agriculture: Jim Hightower; Attorney General: Ralph Nader; Commerce: Clyde Prestowitz; Education: Derek Bok and John Taylor Gatto; Defense: Chuck Hagel and Joe Sestak, JCS Mattis & Stavridis; Fed: Ron Paul (close it down, then RP to Supreme Court); Health: Tom Coburn, Howard Dean; Homeland: Steve Flynn (close it down); Intelligence: REDACTED (restore DCI, kill DNI, NSA, NRO, NGA); FBI: Jesse Ventura; Interior: Costanza (integrate Energy & EPA, Herman Daly); Labor: Pat Buchanan, Warren Buffet (Seniors), Max Cleland (Veterans); State: Jon Huntsman, Gary Hart, Mark Palmer; Amb to UN: Carol Mosely Braun; Amb to Israel: Henry Seigman; Trade: Alfred Eckes (fold back into Commerce & downsize); Transportation: Jill Claybrook; Treasury: Yves Smith. NEW POSITIONS Chaplain: Jim Wallis with Michael Lerner; Computational Integrity: Stephen Wolfam (UK); Governor’s Council: Mike Huckabee; Mayor’s Council: Bill DeBlasio; National Research Authority: Larry Brilliant (integrated budget, focus on tools for peace & prosperity; Open Source Agency: Robert Steele; Water Conservation Authority: William J. Cosgrove.

DAY FIVE

BigBatUSA.org opened for business today, and began taking in $25 million dollars a day in $10 to $20 donations, with many donations of $100 and more. Money was immediately allocated to provide guaranteed incomes and mobilize the 40% of all adult citizens who are unemployed (according to the Congressional Research Service in their 15-page report “An Overview of the Employment-Population Ratio” as published on 27 May 2015). New coalitions comprised of Occupy, labor unions, churches, college students, veterans, and soccer moms bringing their Homeowners Associations with them organized the occupation of the front lawns and home offices of every Member of the US Senate and US House of Representatives, demanding they co-sponsor the Electoral Reform Act of 2015 as introduced in the Senate by Angus King and Bernie Sanders, and in the House of Representatives by the delegations from Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, and Vermont.

By close of business one third of those targeted had signed the Pledge and co-sponsored the legislation; one third had resigned from office to be replaced by rapidly announced special appointments from the Constitution, Green, Libertarian, Reform, and Working Families parties as well as Independents; and one third were dealing with tens of thousands of people surrounding their home offices and homes — tens of thousands of people armed with money, food, water, power, communications, and a resolve such as has not been seen since the first American Revolution.

At midnight a vote was called and the Electoral Reform Act of 2015 was passed by a four-fifths majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. The President signed the bill into law immediately.

DAY SIX

The final stage of the Second American Revolution started quietly, at Starbucks in Redmond, Washington. Mark Surman of Mozilla, Mark Zuckerman of Facebook, and five others met and agreed to fund the Open Source Collaboratorium inclusive of an Open Source Everything Foundation, a World Brain Institute, a United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network, a School of Future-Oriented Hybrid Governance, and an Activist Open-Source Decision-Support Tool-Kit.

What no one had realized until Micah Sifry made the point in his book, The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Had Not Fixed Politics (Yet), was that in their obsession with their individual stove-pipes, they had all forgotten John Gage’s wisdom from the 1980’s: the network is the computer; they had ignored the need for what Howard Rheingold in the 1980’s called “tools for thinking” they had ignored the importance of open geospatial data as a foundation for machine-speed processing of all information in all languages all the time; and they had neglected the urgency of creating a world wiki, a virtual sparse matrix replete with true cost economics information on top of an open geospatial foundation.

The catalyst for their coming together was the combination of several billionaires admitting publicly that their hundreds of billions in donations toward climate change and other good causes had been wasted; the creation of the Open Source Everything category at the P2P Foundation Wiki; and the passage of The Electoral Reform Act of 2015 which opened the door to crowd-sourcing democracy and everything else.

DAY SEVEN

As dawn broke, America the Beautiful came alive. Bernie Sanders and his coalition team were inaugurated along with a Congress that for the first time included a majority of Independent and small party Members pledged to not caucus with the remnants of the two-party tyranny. Marijuana was legalized, the police disarmed, the banks nationalized or localized, health care was made a public service, the guaranteed income established for all, the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service abolished, the Automated Payment Transaction Tax implemented and set by national ballot to eschew elective wars, and a total debt jubilee declared.

Armed with cell phones and the true cost app, citizens flooded the streets to vote products and companies up or down. By the end of the day Coca Cola, Nestle, and Monsanto had declared bankruptcy. All other corporations opened their doors to crowd-sourcing their re-design.

Simultaneously, a local to national town hall and hackathon took place, with community-based solutions for free energy, clean water, organic food, and zero-energy shelter all launched in the moment.

In a climate of Truth & Reconciliation, Extreme Democracy and Open Source Everything took root.

Robert David Steele is a former spy, honorary hacker, and the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories. He briefed Occupy on electoral reform in a video that went viral, ran briefly for the Reform Party nomination, aggregating good ideas at We the People Reform Coalition, and is today the pro bono CEO of an educational non-profit, Earth Intelligence Network. His most recent books are OPEN POWER: Electoral Reform Act of 2015 — Open Source Activist Tool-Kit, and The Open Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, & Trust. A Guardian profile of him has received 67,000 likes.