It’s Official: I’m doing it again in 2020!

So three Fridays ago, on 19 April 2019, I filed with the FEC to be running again for the Office of the President of These United States of America.  That being said, I fully support Mayor Pete Buttigieg, so I volunteered for his campaign.  They have not yet responded, as I sure they have a deluge of people who are as interested and capable as I am.

When I first ran for POTUS in 2008, I would have been the youngest, but now Mayor Pete has that mantle.  Let’s please elect him and get this country back!

Also, please keep in mind that I wrote a Voting Rights Bill Of Right back in 2016, which some candidates are now picking to adopt. Please look at it again!

Thank you and Luvvins!

Michael

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It’s almost Election Time!


Click here if you live in Tucson!
Hi Everybody,

It’s getting close to election time and many of you in Ward Six have your early voting ballots already!

There are a few debates among the Ward Six candidates which you can watch and at least one more coming up which everyone can attend.

Arizona Public Media aired a debate between myself and Mike Cease on 4 August 2017 and you can watch that on the AZPM website.

Also, the Green Party had a similar and slightly longer debate at its General Meeting on the first of August.  We are getting that online shortly, so check back.

The next debate, which everyone can attend, will be held on Monday 14 August 2017 at 6:30PM in the Ward Six offices near Country Club and Speedway, and it will feature all four candidates.

In the meantime, we are still looking to get our Clean Elections Funding, so please contribute today!!!

Thank you for all that you do!

Michael

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Vote NO!  We Can Do Better Than Prop 101


Click here if you live in Tucson!

Hello, Everybody!

I’d like to take this opportunity to write about the current ballot measure, Tucson’s Proposition 101.

You might not know that we are currently in an election cycle for propositions, as this one is rather unusual in both its timing and its brevity.

However, there have been may flyers circulating letting everyone know that they should vote “yes” on Tucson’s Prop 101.  If you’re not in Tucson, you may not have noticed.  If you’re in Tucson, you must have been flooded with these “YES” messages, and you may want an unbiased perspective.

I’m not that one.

I would like people to vote “NO” on Prop 101 and I can tell you why to vote “NO” on or before this coming Tuesday, the 16th of May.

What Prop 101 Does

In general, though, I think all sides agree to this:

Prop 101 takes money from everyone who buys anything in the Tucson City Limits, by way of an increase in the sales tax of .5% (the total sales tax will jump from 8.1% to 8.6%) for a minimum of five years.

Also, the excess money which is gathered from the sales tax increase will be applied to purchasing more hardware for the city police, and then fire departments, and then the remainder will be used to resurface a few roadways.

Everyone agrees that any monies gathered will not be used to fund higher salaries for TPD officers or fire personnel, nor will it go to fund pensions, nor raises in salaries of those who are currently on the TPD and fire forces.  It will not go to hiring more community police “beat walking” officers, and no money will be allocated to having better TPD training for new and existing officers.

The money will go to more militarization, think war toys, for TPD, primarily.  Tucson should not be taxing the poor to be at war with its citizens.

This means that this piece of legislation is bad for people, bad for police and fire, pad for the poor and middle classes, and bad for tourists and travelers.

Claims Being Made

The backers of Prop 101 claim that this city-authored ballot proposition is primarily for roads: for their repair and resurfacing, although this is in no way true or correct.

What is actually written in the bill is that only 40% of the taxes collected will be used for roads: 24% of the total taxes for major arterials and 16% for residential streets.

What is worse is that there basically *is* no residential plan.  What passes for a plan to resurface residential streets is far to broad and overreaching, not at all specific, and far too ambitious.

Moreover, the RTA is already doing residential resurfacing through the end of the year, which will improve the conditions in the neighborhoods which most need the repairs.

Furthermore, Prop 101 backers continually cite a citizens oversight committee, which they say will dictate where repairs are being made, but this committee is never established in the actual text of the law.  That’s right, there is no provision to create an oversight committee, and City Council will have to meet and establish one, or perhaps not, in which case, no such committee would ever exist.

Given that this tax could be permanent, but would certainly last for five or more years, it is my guess that the City of Tucson is just raising taxes under the guise of street improvements, but may just be using this method to line its own coffers.

Police Militarization

The bulk of the money collected with this new additional tax on all city residents and visitors will actually be used for police.  That’s right, TPD would get the lion’s share of this money, and it is not being used for purposes which would benefit the city as a whole.  Some of this 60% also would presumably go for Tucson Fire, although the numbers are not even close to those given to TPD.

I do not agree that it is just honky-dory to give 60% of this new tax to further more Police Militarization of TPD.

There will be absolutely no money for the officers themselves.  This means that hard-working officers would get zero pay raises, no more money for pensions, and Tucson would have no more foot patrols, or any more money for community policing, which we so desperately need.

This is all just a classic “throw money at it” move without any positive effect to speak of.

In addition, Ward 4 would get most of the new sales tax money allocated for TPD.

Now I, Michael Oatman, am running for City Council in Ward 6, but Ward 6 gets absolutely nothing for TPD, and only gets $700K for one fire station.  This is along side all other wards, which get at least $24 million; WTF?!?!

This Proposition is just straight up BAD for Ward 6, and in no way could I vote other than NO on Prop 101.

You can view the full text of the proposed amendments to the law at the City’s website (https://www.tucsonaz.gov/files/clerks/2017_CIY_-_Special_Election_5-16-17.pdf).

Put An End To Regressive Taxes

This Proposition would raise money by the implementation of an additional one percent sales tax.  Now in general, and in this case specifically, a sales tax is a flat tax, which applies to everyone who purchases any taxable thing within the Tucson City Limits.

There are taxes which are progressive, like the federal income tax (unless el Trumpo changes that), which do not adversely affect those with lower and no or fixed incomes, and disproportionately tax the rich, who can already afford it.

There are also taxes which are regressive, like sales taxes, which tax everyone at the same rate.  This is inherently worse for middle and low income folks since the amount of tax charged to people who cannot afford it removes money from those people who need all the money they can get just to survive.

This is why a flat, or sales, tax is unfair.  Suppose you taxed someone with two million dollars a 50% tax rate (we wish, right?).  They’d still be a millionaire.  But if you taxed someone with only one dollar a 50% tax rate, that person would no longer even be able to take the SunTran bus.

People need a Universal Base Income in order not just to survive, but to thrive.  It is simply cruel to tax that.

For this reason, regressive taxes like a sales tax are inherently unfair to poor and middle income people, unless of course the law is written so that part of the money collected under the unfair sales tax goes to support those people with low and middle incomes.

This proposition includes no such provision.  With this sales tax increase, Tucson City is telling everyone that they do not give a crap about poor people or the middle class, which is pretty much everybody in Tucson.  What a great idea, NOT!

By passing this proposition, Tucson is making poor people pay for ever-increasing TPD militarization, which should not be happening in the first place!

An Election So Soon?

Now actually, I am a fan of short voting cycles, say, when it comes to electing the President: I think we do not need to drag it out for two or more years.  But the election cycle has to be *at least* a month at the very minimum for it *not* to be some sort of “sneaky election”.  In reality, this election cycle spans all of just three weeks!  This is a total sham which is being rammed through in no time, because if people had more time to vote, they would, and they would certainly vote NO! on Prop 101.

As a matter of fact, this election cycle was so sudden and brief, that in the election pamphlet itself, sent to voters by mail, there was simply no time for anyone to write an article supporting a “NO” vote or position on Prop 101.  Talk about sneaky.

The Democrats who support this chicanery are out of touch, and for that matter, so is the Tucson Weekly, as is obviously the Arizona Daily Star, who all somehow support a yes vote, despite the detriment to their consituents.

It is my conviction that the people of Tucson in general, and particularly those residing in Ward VI, can do far better for ourselves than by what is proposed in Tucson Proposition 101.  Please always vote, and certainly Vote NO! on Tuesday, May 16th!

SO PLEASE GO VOTE!  And Please Vote NO on Prop 101!

Thank you for all that you do,
Michael Oatman

 

Green Party of Pima County
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 4, 2017
The Green Party of Pima County joins a growing coalition to call for a “NO VOTE” on Proposition 101.
“The City of Tucson is asking voters to consider a half-cent sales tax increase over the next five years. The funds collected over the five-year period would be split with $100 million being used to restore, repair, and resurface City streets, and $150 million would be spent on vehicles, equipment, and facilities for the Tucson Police Department and Tucson Fire Department.”

 

The Green Party of Pima County, the Tucson Bus Riders Union, LUPE Tucson, Tucson SURJ, Black Lives Matter Tucson, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance unite in calling for a “NO” vote on Proposition 101.
This growing coalition of organizations agree that we need city funding to go towards a sustainable future and a community that is socially just to all.
Unfortunately, Proposition 101 is neither.  Instead of clean, affordable mass transit, Prop 101 will focus on supporting the decaying fossil fuel economy that is contributing to pollution, disease, and the global climate crisis.
In addition, instead of providing funding to make Tucson more secure for its people by providing a municipal I.D., local health services, schools, parks, youth jobs, recreational activities, and affordable public transportation, Prop 101 focuses on increased funding for a police department that repeatedly violates people’s constitutional rights. Prop 101 would fund a 27 million dollar new Southside police sub station and 4.6 million dollar new Southeast annex, yet this information is notably absent from most of the promotional materials for this proposition.

 

“Using a sales tax to increase funding for the police is an unfair burden on poor people and communities of color to pay for something that targets and surveils them. More policing means higher incarceration rates for poor people and communities of color, contributing to things like the school to prison pipeline”, says Edward Cott from LUPE Tucson.
Tucson requires bold and visionary solutions if we are to leave a livable world to the next generation and beyond and Prop 101 falls short by a long shot.

#  #  #

CONTACTS :  
Eduardo Quintana
eduardohqf@gmail.com  520-360-8710
 
Lena Rothman

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Filed under City Council, City Council, Classism, Debt & Defecit, Election, Government Intrusion, Green Party, Local Government, Poverty, really, Reform, Sales Tax, Tax Code, Tucson, Tucson Weekly

Hey, Everybody! I’m running for Tucson City Council!

It’s Official.

My name, Michael Oatman, will be on the 29 August 2017 Green Party primary ballot (provided my nomination petition signatures are turned in during May). Since I’m running unopposed in the Green Party, that will advance me into the 7 November 2017 General Election for Tucson City Council Ward VI, or six, or 6 if you prefer.

I’m running against Steve Kozachik, who used to be a Republican, and another Republican. But Ward 6 is filled with Progressive Democrats and Greens.

I think the choice is simple: “Ward Six, Vote Green! Vote Oatman in 2017!”

Click above to read more and help out! Contribute! Get Signatures!

You can also read my Endorsement Application form sent to Bernie’s campaign spinoff, Our Revolution.

Oh, and if anyone wanted a picture of me, just watch my TV show, Illegal Knowledge.

Here is my Press Release:

~ ~ ~

Hello, please circulate widely, thank you!

Contact: Michael Oatman
Michael Oatman For Tucson Ward 6
Tel: (520) 302-5465 (Tucson Offices)
Fax: (206) 202-2194
Email: wardsix@MichaelOatman.info
Website: http://MichaelOatman.info/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TUCSON, AZ (UFNPSI) — 19 April 2017

Michael Oatman is announcing that he is currently an official candidate for Ward Six of the Tucson City Council in 2017.

He will be representing the Green Party of Pima County in the 29 August 2017 Primary Election and in the 7 November 2017 General Election.

He will be attempting to unseat the current City Council member, Steve Kozachik, a former Republican-turned-Democrat.

Oatman has been registered nearly always with the Green Party or as an independent voter for over a decade. He has participated in the 2008 Arizona Presidential Preference Election as a Democrat and again in 2012 and 2016 under the Green Party. He placed third in 2012 Arizona Green Party voting, and won outright in Apache County. In 2012, he also placed tied for first with fellow Green Party candidate Richard Grayson in voting amongst candidates who participated in the Tucson Weekly’s Project White House contest.

Says Oatman, “The people in Ward Six are rather progressive,and want a new direction for the City Council. I feel that I can represent them in Council far more to their interests than either of the two Republicans currently running. Oh yeah, that’s right, Steve’s a Democrat”.

Oatman, a Tucsonan since 1999, is a local television show host, businessman and entrepreneur, and lives in Ward Six, just south of Columbus and Glenn in central Tucson.

This is his first run for a seat on the Tucson City Council.

# # #

Please see his website for further information: http://MichaelOatman.info/

Michael Oatman is currently accepting invitations for interviews from all news and media outlets. Please contact Mr. Oatman using any of the contact methods provided in the header of this release. Thank You for Your Interest!

With Love,
We Can All Take The Power Back!

Vote Green! Vote Oatman!

Thank You,
Michael Oatman.

~ ~ ~

wardsix@MichaelOatman.info
(520) 302-5465

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Filed under Bernie Sanders, City Council, Election, Energy & Jobs, General, Green Party, Local Government, Press Releases, Tucson, Tucson Weekly

Hey, Bernie! It is NOW time to run!

Senator Sanders, please hear this:

The media is telling everyone that “Head for the Red Right Arrow on the Hills” Clinton has a delegate count which is, and I would like to emphasize this, **HALFWAY** to a point at which HDRC has, and again, to emphasize, **HALF ** the delegates, of the total in which any Dem needs to win the Nom.

I’m hopeful that everyone reading knows how to multiply fractions and/or percentages.

For, if you are halfway to “getting half” (i.e.: “halfway”), you could represent the wins of HDRC as “one half of one half”, which by multiplication (0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25, or 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4) gives you 25% of all delegates. This obviously means that there are still 75% of delegates out for grabs. Not Superdelegates, but just the ones where you win them when people vote.

For everyone reading this, you should probably look at my Voting Rights Bill Of Rights, because that should happen immediately. Also, VOTE!!!!!

Oh, wait, yeah…….. FUCKING VOTE!!!!! I mean, you may get a ticket for indecency if you do that in the booth; I would recommend a nearby hotel; keep passing the currency. BUT VOTE!

The turnout in Nevada was 11.5K in 2016 as opposed to 105K in 2008. Bernie won 3/4 of those counties, but Hillary won Clark and Nye. Hillary got the majority of the delegates.

I believe that very many people want Bernie Sanders to be POTUS, but if we cannot get our collective asses out of our Google Cardboard 3-D what-the-fucks, then, we will, and will deserve to be, bound by the fruits of our collective inaction. And I really hope that will not end up being my least favorite DJ, TRUMP (please see http://CLUBTRUMP.COM/)!

In short, Bernie can win the remaining 75% of the delegates, and I say IF AND ONLY IF, we finally and all of us please do SHOW UP TO VOTE!

Come On!!! Really!!?!!

Luvvins and I Voted Early on 26 February 2016 For Bernie!
Michael

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Hey, Thanks Everyone! I’ll See You Again In 2020!!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TUCSON, AZ (UFNPSI) — 31 December 2015

Michael Oatman is announcing that his current 2016 Presidential Run is now suspended.

He will be seeking the office again in 2020.

His interim plans are to seek the office of Tucson Ward 6 City Council Member, unseating Steve Kozachik.

Please see this website for further information. Meanwhile, please consider voting for Bernie Sanders.

The 260 or so Arizona Presidential Preference Election Nomination Ballot Signatures have been appropriately disposed. Please Watch The Video to find out how. This video has been compressed to fit in the hosting service used. For the original MP4 @ 1080p 720×640, please send inquiries to FEC@MichaelOatman.info.

With Love,
We Can All Take The Power Back!

Vote Green!
Vote Oatman!

Happy New Year,
Michael.

~ ~ ~

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Filed under Arizona Legislature, Bernie Sanders, Corporate, Corporate Corruption, Election, Election Results, Endorsment, Energy, Energy & Jobs, General, Green Party, Local Government, National Election, Press Releases, Reform, Tucson Weekly

The Voting Rights Bill of Rights of 2016

Following several United States Supreme Court rulings regarding limits on monies in elections, it has become clear that we the People in the United States would be served better should some particularly sweeping election law reforms be instituted.  To that end, I have developed a dozen election law reforms that could be enacted by legislatures in the States and in the US Congress, and by Amendments to the Federal and States’ Constitutions, which I now present to you here.

Any Citizen Can Vote (No One Convicted of Voting Fraud May Vote)
Currently US citizens who are convicted of a felony may have their voting rights removed as a condition of their sentence. The only reason any US citizen should be prohibited from voting is if they are convicted of a crime involving multiple or fraudulent voting, or tampering or otherwise interfering with a local, State or Federal election, and that prohibition should last for the duration of that person’s sentence, including parole or probation, should also extend to prohibit that person from working, serving or observing in a polling place or election tabulation center, and should prohibit that person from assisting another US citizen in filling out a voter registration form.  All US citizens who are currently being denied their voting rights for non-election-related crimes should have their voting rights immediately reinstated.  All US citizens should be eligible to vote for all respective local, municipal, regional, territorial, State, and Federal offices, and every US citizen should be eligible to vote for US President.  No voting prohibitions should be made for US citizens either born or residing in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands, or any other territory or protectorate or otherwise, which is administered and/or under the jurisdiction of the Federal United States or any State.

Automatic Voter Registration
Any US citizen who is 18 years of age or older should be automatically enrolled to vote, with “No Party Preference” selected for party affiliation unless otherwise selected by that citizen.  Any US citizen who is 17 years of age or older, at any time, may fill out a form to “opt out” and therefore become disenrolled to vote and from any party affiliation.  Automatic forms use the last known address of the voter to decide which precinct and district in which the voter is enrolled, and any enrolled voter may visit or request by mail from their local elections agency a voter registration form to update their information. Local election agencies should make voter registration forms freely and widely available, including at motor vehicle departments, post offices, libraries, universities, courts, and any other public agencies as is possible.  Allow for same-day registration and registration updates at all polling places, particularly when a voter has moved or has no current address, with the voter registration form serving as an affidavit of veracity of the voter.

Extend Voting Period (And Allow Voting by Mail)
Polling places should be open for at least one week, for at least 12 hours per day, if not more, up to one month, ending on Election Day.  Voters should be encouraged by all elections agencies to vote by US Postal Service mail, as many States currently allow.  Local elections agencies’ offices should serve as regional polling places for voters who cannot locate their precinct polling place(s).

Use Ranked Choice Voting (Require Majorities)
To help prevent “spoiler” candidates like Ross Perot and Ralph Nader from unduly influencing elections, institute ranked choice voting, where the voter selects a “first choice” candidate, a “second choice” candidate, a “third choice” candidate, and so on throughout the list or ending where the voter decides, should the voter decide not to rank all candidates on the ballot for each office up for election.  This will work for both single-seat and multiple-seat offices, where a voter, if they wish, may select up to the number of seats in the office per each ranked choice, out of those who are running for each office, in the case of multiple-seat offices, but may not multiply select any one candidate to receive multiple different rankings, nor may multiply select more than one candidate to receive the same place number ranking (or in the case of multiple-seat offices, not more than the number of seats available for that office per the same place number ranking).  Should a mismarked ballot occur, and the voter’s intention cannot be understood, that individual voter’s vote will not count only for the election(s) to the office where the mismarking(s) occurred.  In the event no one (or multiple, in the case of multiple-seat offices) candidate receives a majority of the vote, require an instant runoff of the top two (or two times the number of seats available, in the case of multiple-seat offices) candidates within three weeks of either Primary or General Election Day, with the exception of States’ Presidential Elections, whose electors by State result to the respective parties’ National Conventions will be apportioned directly according to the votes tallied, and should not be “winner take all”.  In the case of multiple-seat offices, any candidate who receives a majority of the possible vote shall be elected, even if other candidates require an instant runoff, and the number of candidates to be included in the instant runoff will be two times the difference between the number of candidates who received a majority for that office and the number of seats for that office.

No Electronic Voting Machines (Allow Open Source, Contractor-free, Publicly Owned Counting Machines)
Require all voters to mark paper ballots, with indelible ink, preferably in scan-tron form, to allow for easy machine counting, and to allow for hand-recounting where necessary.  All counting machines should be publicly owned by the elections agencies and should never be outsourced to third-party contractors.  All software controlling all counting machines should be standardized and should use open-source software, with the software code publicly available on the elections agencies’ websites, or in print if requested.  All ballot forms should come with easily understandable instructions on how to mark the ballot form in order to vote so that the voters’ intentions are correctly understood.

Use Election Monitoring (Use United Nations If No Better, More Neutral Party Is Present)
Allow all parties’ representatives, all interested media, and any other interested US citizens to freely and publicly monitor all elections results counting procedures.  In the event of recounts or in any cases where requested, allow additional neutral parties, where available, to perform elections counting monitoring, and if no neutral parties are available, allow for elections counting monitoring to be performed by the United Nations representatives.  Under no circumstances should elections counting be performed behind locked doors and out of view of any interested public of any sort, and doing so should constitute a felony, where all persons involved should be tried and sentenced to a permanent removal of voting rights, at minimum.

End The Electoral College
It will require a US Constitutional Amendment to replace the Electoral College with a direct system of elections for US President for the US General Election, using ranked choice voting, with an instant runoff three weeks later between the top two candidates if no majority is reached.  This will require the introduction of such an Amendment by US Congress and passage of this Amendment by at least 34 States.  This current method of electing a President Of The United States is outdated, unique, not useful, and is often in contravention to the wishes of majority of the voters.  The current use of parties’ electors in nominating a US Presidential ticket in those respective parties’ National Conventions following States’ US Presidential Elections may be preserved, although in an apportioned basis only (this would end “winner take all” US Presidential Primaries, and would also serve to assist in shortening the election cycle).

No Gerrymandering
US House and State Assemblies’ districts should be redrawn by independent non- or multi-partisan redistricting commissions from each State to follow first County or Municipal boundaries where possible, and otherwise be as square as possible while retaining equal numbers of eligible voters per district, following every US decadal census.  Ideally, one single straight longitudinal or latitudinal line should be used to square off one district when numbers of eligible voters within a municipality are uneven between districts.  It will be the responsibility of the redistricting commissions to first ensure an equal number of eligible voters per district, to within 0.01% of the eligible voters in the district (or 200 eligible voters, whichever is greater), and second to maintain properly drawn boundaries of every district.  It is conceivable that this method of redistricting could be done using a computer algorithm, where the purpose of the redistricting commission would then be to check the work of the computer algorithm.  Redistricting commissions should not take the party affiliations of eligible voters into consideration when redrawing districts, and should not attempt to force the creation of “competitive districts”, nor should redistricting commissions try to force the opposite “uncompetitive districts”.

No Paid Lobbyists (Individuals Lobbying for Personal Causes Is Fine)
There is a multi-billion dollar per year industry thriving on K Street in DC which gets paid to lobby US Congresspeople for votes in exchange for election campaign contributions.  None of this should exist.  Any person lobbying their representative member(s) of the US Congress or their State Legislature, may not be paid to do so by any entity whatsoever, and should be lobbying for (or against) an issue or multiple issues which affect that person individually and directly.  Any registered voter wishing to lobby their member(s) of the US Congress or their State Legislature should receive a reasonable amount of unpaid time off from their employment for this purpose.  This will free up members of Congress and State Legislatures to meet with those people whom they are representing, and otherwise to do the work they were sent to Washington DC to do. No person should lobby a member of Congress who is not either their elected US House representative from the district in which the person is registered to vote, or one or both of their elected US Senators.  No person should lobby a member of a State Legislature who is not either their elected State House representative from the State and district in which the person is registered to vote, or one or more of their elected State Senators of the State in which the person is registered to vote.

Reduce The Campaign Cycle To Six Months Or Less
No other nation has a National Campaign Cycle which lasts at least two, and up to four, years, and all of this for one four-year term of office.  The problem exists even more so for those US House members wishing to retain their seats; they spend the majority of their time seeking election campaign contributions for the next election cycle upon the minute after taking their oath of office.  As a result, we are beset with a distracted legislature and first-term executive office holders.  We should prohibit any straw polls, primary and States’ elections, debates and electioneering otherwise from occurring prior to at most six and preferably four months from the General Election, with all States’ and Primary Elections occurring two to three months prior to the General Election, and with parties’ National Conventions occurring immediately after the Primary Election.  This will free up our elected representatives to do the work they were sent to Washington DC to do.

Equal Money For All Seeking Each Office (No Outside Money In Elections)
Require that no personal, corporate or PAC monies be spent for elections of individual candidates for any office, local, State or Federal, and require that no candidate shall accept any money or gifts as donations from any entity or person whatsoever, regardless of the appearance of a quid pro quo nature of the money or gift.  Personal, corporate and / or PAC monies may be spent on initiatives or other ballot measures where no individual is seeking to be elected to any public office.  All persons wishing to hold public office would be required to gather a certain number of signatures from a portion of eligible voters in the region or district to which that person is seeking to hold public office, and while that person may pay others to collect signatures on that person’s behalf, no fees should be charged otherwise to the person seeking office for the privilege to do so.  An Elections Fund should be established by each region or district, State and Federally as well, which pays equally to every person who is seeking public office monies to cover expenses only relating to that person’s campaign for public office.  Encourage taxpayers to contribute, as tax-exempt, to the Elections Fund on all annual tax forms, as the only method of incomes for the Election Fund should be such donations.  Prohibit television and radio stations from charging for campaign advertisements and establish some limit as to the amount of time any one such station may devote, equally to all candidates running for each particular public office, for such campaign advertisements; the cost to the station incurred by the airing of such advertisements may be deducted as a tax write-off for the business which operates that station.  The internet should not be subject to content, timing or money regulations which are imposed upon television and radio delivery methods.  Allow free US Postal Service mailing of elections materials by candidates.  During a Primary Election, for each party represented by a candidate running for a public office may elect one candidate for the General Election, who will then be the only candidate eligible to receive monies from the Elections Fund.  All Primary Election candidates who have met the signature requirement will receive Elections Fund monies in equal proportions up to the time of the Primary Election.  This may require a US Constitutional Amendment to achieve, so as not to conflict with the First Amendment, although legislation may suffice, where the restriction is based on harm reduction, akin to the prohibition of falsely yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre.

Place All Parties In General Debates (and Have Equal / Proportional Primary Party Debates)
Should there be a number of candidates seeking any singular public office which is greater than the number of seats for that particular public office, at least one debate should occur between all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, seeking that office prior to the General Election and following the Primary Election.  Should there be a number of candidates within a political party seeking any singular public office which is greater than the number of seats for that particular public office, at least one debate should occur between all candidates within that party seeking that office prior to the Primary Election.  Should more than one political party need to conduct at least one debate prior to the primary election, all other political parties which also need to conduct at least one similarly timed debate should have an equal number of debates for each party.  All debates for any particular office should be aired on an appropriate television station (or radio station where no television station is available) whose coverage extends to a geographical extent which matches or exceeds the geographical area over which the office presides.  There should be no cost to the candidates or to the political parties for the privilege of conducting and airing such debates; the cost to the station incurred by the airing of such debates may be deducted as a tax write-off for the business which operates that station.  Should no television or radio station elect or be available to broadcast any required debate, an internet-based broadcast of the debate shall suffice, on a website owned by the local or regional elections agency (or the Federal Government in the case of Federal elections).

With all non-citizen interests removed from elections in the United States, it is my hope that the public good will be best served, that the public apathy regarding elections which has been so obvious lately will disappear, and those candidates with the best ideas on how to serve the public good will prevail and be elected to the offices which they seek to hold.

“I invite you to help us all, while we all join to change the world.”

Thank you,

Michael Oatman For President of
These United States of America!
Email: 2016@MichaelOatman.info
Website: http://MichaelOatman.info/

With Love, We Can Take the Power Back!

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Filed under Corporate Corruption, Debates, Election, General, Local Government, National Election, Reform, Tax Code

Some Of Michael’s Presidential Campaign Platform

Here are some concepts which I am proud to make part of my 2016 Presidential Campaign Platform. I will be expanding these and other topics as the Campaign progresses, so please check back often for updates. So please sit back, read and enjoy, and imagine the bright shining beacon on the hill that our great nation could be when we actually accomplish all of these things.

End Gerrymandering – US House and State Assemblies’ districts should be independently redrawn to follow County or Municipal boundaries where possible, and otherwise be as square as possible while retaining equal numbers of eligible voters per district, following every US decadal census. We may need a US Constitutional Amendment to withstand a SCOTUS challenge, but federal legislation should suffice.

Build Out Green Infrastructure – Similar to the WPA and other 1930s agencies, we need to nationally create Sustainable Green Jobs by: rebuilding the electric grid to smart grid standards with built-in load balancing and storage, and incorporating all three national grid systems; rebuilding the federal and state highway systems to 20-year and bridges to 100-year lifetimes; replacing all nuclear plants with LFTR / Molten Salt Core Reactors; retrofitting commercial buildings with solar and light- and water-saving measures; using all coal stack outputs to create algal oil, and otherwise sequestering all major industrial carbon outputs; using the land in the Nellis / DOE Site to provide a massive area for solar panels whose energy would be added to the grid; developing wind, tidal and wave energy sources wherever possible; providing home solar and battery power for all residential owners interested; building out Gigabit Ethernet in all metropolitan areas, and incentivizing the broadband and telecom industries to provide the same service for all rural residents and businesses nationwide; plugging or eliminating methane leaks in fracking and other oil wells, and working to eliminate coal burning, mining, fracking and oil drilling altogether; recycling to an extent that we can nationally “close the loop” on all waste streams; and performing any other projects in the public interest as they should arise.

Return To Fair Trade – End NAFTA / CAFTA / WTO / GATT / TPP and all other free trade agreements and replace them with tariffs and Fair Trade policies which actually help workers in the US, and in developing countries; strengthen Unions in the US and internationally, while ending corruption in trade organizations; increase Primary and Secondary Public School Teacher Pay to three times the poverty level at lowest; and enforce commodity pricing structures to end price gouging for energy commodities like gasoline, heating oil and electric service.

Restrict Globalist Corporations – Require that all businesses engaging in sales to any US citizen from the US: be based in the US and pay taxes commensurate to the earnings of that business for its practices in the US; hire its final production workers from the pool of workers in the US; and where US hiring is unfeasible, pay a living wage to international workers and ensure Union standard working conditions in all international supply facilities.

Legalize And Tax Marijuana – Remove Cannabis, Hemp and all related plants and products from the DEA Drug Schedules (not on Schedule I nor II nor III nor IV nor V); promote the growth of Hemp and the manufacture, sale and export of Hemp-based products; create and enforce a federal taxation system for the growth, trade, manufacture and sale of cannabis and cannabis-based products; require the FDA to oversee safety of all inhalable and edible cannabis and cannabis-based products; and promote the use of cannabis and cannabis-based products over products based on either nicotine or alcohol.

End Homelessness – Require all homes which are on the market for more than one year be federally purchased at assessed value for use by those who are chronically homeless, at a zero starting rent to the new resident(s); encourage the building of housing to accommodate all resident groupings in the US; fit the homes as best as possible to match the needs of those who are in need (match homeless families to homes with an appropriate number of bedrooms and a yard; match homeless urban singles to apartments in city centers, etc.); allow for mental health counseling and evaluation for those in need or in want; seek to fit mentally and physically capable residents with appropriate Green Infrastructure Jobs; charge no more than 25% of residents’ incomes per unit as rent; allow lease terms for as long as the residents’ needs be present or until resident chooses to relocate; and assist in relocation where possible.

Reduce The Military Industrial Complex – Reduce the number of Aircraft Carrier Fleets from 11 to six; reduce dependence on private military contractors; require stringent standards relating to performance, carbon footprint, efficiency and ROI/cost for all private military contractors; and require that all branches of the US Armed Forces be carbon-neutral by 2020.

The following are portions of Bernie Sanders’ campaign platform with which I fully agree:

Income and wealth inequality: In the United States today we have the most unequal wealth and income distribution of any major country on earth — worse than at any time since the 1920s. This is an economy that must be changed in fundamental ways.

Jobs and income: In my view, we need a massive federal jobs program which puts millions of our people back to work. We must end our disastrous trade policies. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. And we have to fight for pay equity for women.

Campaign finance reform: As a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, American democracy is being undermined by the ability of the Koch brothers and other billionaire families. These wealthy contributors can literally buy politicians and elections by spending hundreds of millions of dollars in support of the candidates of their choice. We need to overturn Citizens United and move toward public funding of elections so that all candidates can run for office without being beholden to the wealthy and powerful.

Climate change: Climate change is real, caused by human activity and already devastating our nation and planet. The United States must lead the world in combating climate change and transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and sustainability.

College affordability: Every person in this country who has the desire and ability should be able to get all the education they need regardless of the income of their family. This is not a radical idea. In Germany, Scandinavia and many other countries, higher education is either free or very inexpensive. We must do the same.

Health care: Shamefully, the United States remains the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people. The United States must move toward a Medicare-for-all single-payer system. Health care is a right, not a privilege.

Poverty: The United States has more people living in poverty than at almost any time in the modern history of our country. I believe that in a democratic, civilized society none of our people should be hungry or living in desperation. We need to expand Social Security, not cut it. We need to increase funding for nutrition programs, not cut them.

Tax reform: We need real tax reform which makes the rich and profitable corporations begin to pay their fair share of taxes. We need a tax system which is fair and progressive. Children should not go hungry in this country while profitable corporations and the wealthy avoid their tax responsibilities by stashing their money in the Cayman Islands.

Thank you all for your support!
Michael Oatman
2016 Presidential Candidate
http://MichaelOatman.info/
2016@MichaelOatman.info

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Filed under Banking, Bernie Sanders, Corporate, Debt & Defecit, Education, Election, Energy, Energy & Jobs, Environment, Jobs, Legalization, National Election, Poverty, Tax Code

An Open Letter To Mayor And Council Of The City Of Tucson, as delivered in chambers on 19 May 2015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TUCSON, ARIZONA, 21 May 2015 (UFNPSI).

An Open Letter To Mayor And Council Of The City Of Tucson,
as delivered in chambers on 19 May 2015.

Mayor, Council, thank you. My name is Michael Oatman, and I live in Tucson.

I am here to talk to you about dinosaurs … and while you might think I am refering to Access Tucson, … no. To which I refer *is* the Mayor and Council.

You are trying to privatize Tucson 12 and Access Tucson, through the RFP process, when so many of us in the community bear the conviction that our community media should remain fully funded through the City of Tucson.

Now, I thought privatization was a Republican thing ….

The amount you set, $300,000, when the current budget for both is somewhere between $550,000 and $650,000, is clearly not enough for both Tucson 12 and Access, and it is setting a very low bar. These both cannot be funded this way without draconian cuts, or, charging for programming time, or advertising, or all of these.

What’s worse is that you are still keeping millions of dollars in franchise fees which are earmarked to fund both these channels.

Now if you do not have enough pie to go around, please expand the pie and invest in projects, like providing Gigabit Ethernet, which is massively revenue positive, using the Copenhagen or Chattanooga models, as very many US cities are now doing.

Why do we deal with uncertainty? We all know what Access and Tucson 12 are like now. Why risk throwing that all away? Who knows what we will get with private enterprise handling these? It would be that much better to keep them as they are.

Or, is it actually your goal for the RFP process to fail, so that you can sell the property for another giant student housing complex?

Now, if you continue to pursue the RFP process instead of using City Funding … *you* will be DINOs … that is, Democrats In Name Only. Yes, you too will go the way of the dinosaurs, and *your* asteroid will be *your* loss in *your* next election.

Thank you.

~ ~ ~

Michael Oatman
Host / Producer,
Illegal Knowledge TV
(520) 302-5465
mac@IllegalKnowledge.com
IllegalKnowledge.com

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Filed under City Council, Corporate Corruption, Election, Election Results, Energy & Jobs, General, Green Party, Jobs, Local Government, Press Releases, Reform, still?

Okay, spoilers, it’s official.  Of Course I’m Running Again!

Hello Everyone!

After a long and perhaps undeserved respite, I will become a presence on this WP site yet again.

Shall you ask why?  There is nothing like a race-baited government-induced crisis to bring folks like me out of the woodwork, I suppose.  Obviously, I am referencing the obamACAre hating bigots of the far right, who seem to be making their own Golden Dawn-ish party faction of the Federalists, er Whigs, er Republicans.  And they say that Democratic-Republicans who were then spoken of as the Democrats are not the Grand Old Party.  I am registered as an Independent and I think I’ll be running under The Truth Party; we’ll see.  Let’s just get Single Payer and get it over with!

I don’t subscribe to the theory that with only crisis do you resolve to have action; we must be proactive in the future.  We need to stop monoculture, Monsanto, and we can sequester carbon by properly tilling the soil.  We need to bring back the Bison, the Wolves and the Bees.  These actions all will perpetuate the survival of humans, which is in prescient danger.

They set the bar intentionally higher this time in 2016 so as to prohibit people in general from exercising their civic duties by running for President, so I’ll need some statewide organizational help if we are to pull this off.  By “they”, I mean the states’ legislatures which now require both money and petition signatures to qualify for the ballot.

You may reach me at president [at] MichaelOatman [dot] (info|net) for now, until I get a really nice site up.  That would be either .info or .net after my name.  I’m still working on recovering my .com.  Damn cybersquatters.

So I wrote this on my TV show and business websites, http://IllegalKnowledge.com/ and http://HeyComputerMan.biz/ so please read:

The place in this world bears no more space for those ideologues of bigotry nor hatred.  The ancient thought that a betterment of one family or race or strain is somehow purity, that is now obviously not only quaint, but incorrect and patently obtuse and averse from reality.  The old lines are no longer to be sanely held.  We shall not now and ought not to ever more be alone.  I do not want to be this, only in, that only I am this; it is necessary this entire world needs to share that this immutable truth must be known, because, we all of everyone, we do collectively hold the highest and so care about our future, even when it is not our own.

And if that is not a blatant espousal of communism, then I don’t know what is.

That’s all for now, please take the poll, and please stay tuned!

Michael

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Filed under General

Liars, Liars Everywhere, And Not A Brain To Think!

Romney’s VP Ryan seems to have a similar memory affliction to Romney and Reagan, or perhaps they all just lie an awful much

Michael Oatman (G) Endorses Gary Johnson (L) for President!

You know, I was going to do all that research and fact-checking by myself, but thankfully, some people beat me to it.

There are many, many of these posts on the internet, so you could Google them or just try these:

Actually, what came up on my Google search of "paul ryan convention speech lies and more lies abound" was even more informative.

Well, that’s it for now.

Have fun not voting for Romney / Ryan, oh and don’t worry…  Next week, I will be equally as hard on Obama — it’s just that the angry sore losers, bigots and racists went first this year.

Gary Johnson (L) For President in 2012!
If you listened to my most recent TV Show on the 17th of August this year, you would know that I am endorsing Gary Johnson (L) who was the Governor of New Mexico a few years back.  I’ll be doing an election special on Illegal Knowledge TV in two months for more information about why I support him.

Please vote for him, since you will be literally throwing your vote away if you vote for either Romney or Obama.

This is also not to mention that you are voting against your self-interests if you vote for anyone except Gary Johnson (L) or Jill Stein (G).  The reason here is that it has been obvious that Obama is simply continuing Bush’s policies on building a fascist federal government which stealthily removes your liberties in no one’s name, and to think that Romney will not exhibit the same cronyism from the Cheney/Bush era is to simply bury your head in the sand.

If the Global Elites can give you a false choice between two equally destructive candidates and shut everyone else out, they will get their way, which is to force all but the top 0.0001% into global slavery by utilizing their global tyranny for which you voted.  We need two new parties and the Libertarians and Greens (not to mention The Truth Party) seem to be pretty fine candidates!  Again, do not throw you vote away!

See you soon!  Vote Gary Johnson (L) in 2012!  I’ll be running again in 2016!

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Filed under Bailouts, Banking, Bullying, Classism, Conventions 2012, Corporate, Corporate Corruption, Debt & Defecit, Election, Endorsment, Gary Johnson, GOP, Government Intrusion, Homophobia, Jobs, National Election, Poverty, Reagan, Romney

Romney Shares Something With Reagan After All: No Memory When Convenient

Sources: Washington Post, LA Times, Don’t take my word for it.

Well, talk about using a Bully Pulpit.

Not so fast though, it appears that Mitt Romney is actually a bully, and the worst kind at that, as if there were any other kinds.

As it turns out, Mittens might have been better named Scissors, since The Post recently revealed that:

Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenage son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.
A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

The LA Times goes on to report that:

After Romney’s campaign spokesperson initially denied the story, Romney went on Fox Radio to say he did not remember the incident but that he was sorry about it anyway. “I’m a very different person than I was in high school, of course, but I’m glad I learned as much as I did during those high school years,” he said in the radio interview.

So I’m now thinking, “isn’t it rather convenient to forget about these things?”  Reagan did, about authorizing the Iran-Contra affair, which is somewhat now paralleled by the infamous “Operation Fast and Furious” into which Obama seems to be needing a new recollection.

I do not forget things like this, and nor do I forget my own.

The one bully I had in high school, after he intentionally “spilled” pudding on my shirt, I, right there and then, decided to left-swoop back hand Alex MacKenzie into the side of the head, which sent him reeling backward onto the pavement, knocked out for a few.  It was the worst thing I have done to someone, but after he woke up, he suddenly decided to become my best friend the next day in school.

I think we just can do the same forgeting to Romney by simply not voting for him.

Ever.

It makes you wonder whether, between the crass class callousness combined with the elite aloof, whether someone like Romney is to ever be fit for the job.  If history is to be of any use, you would expect to be ripped off unless you are already rich and then bullied if you dare to be unlike “them”.

I wonder where Alex is….

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Filed under Bullying, Classism, Corporate, Corporate Corruption, Election, General, Homophobia, Reagan, really, Romney, still?

Michael Oatman Seeking LD-29 Seat Held By Daniel Patterson

HELP OUT NOW!  CALL (520) 740-8126 or (520) 724-8449 TO ENDORSE MY APPOINTMENT TODAY!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Michael Oatman Seeking LD-29 Seat Held By Daniel Patterson

Description:  Michael Oatman files for the Arizona Legislative District 29 seat vacated by Daniel Patterson.

TUCSON, AZ, 19 April 2012 — Michael Oatman reported today from his Tucson offices, that as of 4:15 pm on 18 April 2012, Oatman has filed the necessary paperwork to be considered by the Pima County Board of Supervisors’ Nominating Committee to be appointed to replace ex-Rep. Daniel Patterson, who resigned last Wednesday amid an ethics investigation.

Oatman had reregistered as an independent voter on 11 April 2012 after having been registered with the Green Party, in order to participate in the 2012 Arizona Presidential Preference Election.  He placed third in Arizona Green Party voting, and won outright in Apache County.  He also placed tied for first with fellow Green Party candidate Richard Grayson in voting amongst candidates who participated in the Tucson Weekly’s Project White House contest.

Oatman has been an independent voter for most of his last 12 years living in Tucson, having briefly registered Democrat to participate in the 2008 Presidential Preference Election where he received 192 votes, and having registered Green Party for about a year in order to assist in providing the party with enough voters on their rolls to qualify as a major political party in 2002.

When asked for a comment, Oatman replied, “I was appointed once to the Senate when I was at Penn State [in the Undergraduate Student Government], so I think there is a decent precedent that I would get appointed here.  I was in THIMUN [The Hague International Model United Nations] so at least I know parlimentary procedure.  In fact, I might be most qualified to be the replacement for Patterson, since we were both in Food Not Bombs together.”

Oatman is a local Tucsonan businessman and entrepreneur, and lives a few blocks north of the Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Legislative District 29.

                                    #     #     #

The Pima County Board of Supervisors can be reached by calling (520) 740-8126 or (520) 724-8449.

Michael Oatman is currently accepting invitations for interviews from all news and media outlets.  Please contact Mr. Oatman using any of the contact methods provided in the header of this release.  Thank You for Your Interest!

Michael Oatman For LD-29!
Email: LD29@MichaelOatman.net
Website: http://2012.MichaelOatman.net/

With Love, We Can Take the Power Back!

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Filed under Arizona Legislature, Local Government, Press Releases, State Legislature, Tucson Weekly

I Am Tied For First in PWH Voting!  Thank You To Everyone Who Voted!

I am rather pleased to report that after all the votes have been tallied, I placed tied for third place with 6.87% of the vote total in the Arizona Green Party results in the 2012 Presidential Preference Election.  First I would like to say thank you incredibly much to the people who voted for me this year, I would like to congratulate all the voters who made this election one of the most participated with a 45% turnout, and I will guarantee that I will be running again for US President as well as for other offices in the future.

I would also like to congratulate Jill Stein, the winner of the Green Party Election with 68.9% of the total vote, and her runner up, Kent Mesplay with 8.68% of the total Arizona Greens voting for him.  I would also like to congratulate all the Project White House (PWH) candidates who participated in this year’s election.

Among the PWH candidates, who were Richard Grayson, Gary Swing, and myself, it was Richard and I who tied for first place with 35.8% each of the PWH vote.  Gary Swing finished closely behind in third with 28.3% of the PWH vote and fifth overall with 5.42% of the total vote.  Jill Stein, Kent Mesplay and Gerard Davis (who received 3.25% of the total vote, thereby finishing last amongst the Arizona Greens) all chose not to participate in Project White House in 2012.

The PWH Greens kicked butt compared to their PWH Republican counterparts when it came to capturing the largest portion of the electorate, beating the Republican percentage by 18.4%, although not so much if you only count raw numbers of votes since there are far fewer Greens in Arizona.

There were 106 people in Arizona who voted for any of the Project White House Green Party candidates (19.1% of total Green votes), and (a huge!) 3,444 Arizonans who voted for PWH Republican Party candidates (well, not that huge, since those 3,444 people make up less than 1%, only 0.68%, of the total votes cast by Republicans).  Of those few thousand some Republicans, Sarah Gonzales was the clear winner at 44.7% of the PWH vote, and placed sixth in the total Republican vote (after Romney, Santorum yuck, Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Rick Perry) with 0.30% of the total.  I wholeheartedly offer my congrats to Sarah for her outstanding performance and participation in the debates.

Of the PWH Republicans, second place went to Cesar Cisneros with 12.2% of the PWH vote (placing ninth in total), third went to Mark Callahan with 10.4% of PWH voters, and in fourth, fifth and sixth places were “Dick” Perry, Don Benjamin and Kip Dean respectively, with 9.1%, 6.5% and 5.7% of all PWH votes.  The remaining five PWH Republican candidates were Ron Zack (4.4%), Matt Welch (2.5%), Jim Terr (1.7%), Charles Skelley (1.7%) and lastly Simon Bollander (1.5%).  The five lowest placing PWH Republicans totaled 11.8% of the PWH vote, and places 2 through 6 totaled 43.9% of the PWH vote for the Republicans.

Of all the votes which I received, Pima County voters accounted for only 21.1%, with the majority of my votes coming from voters in Maricopa County with 52.6% of the total.  I also received votes from voters in Yavapai (10.5%), Coconino (5.3%), Pinal (2.6%), Navajo (2.6%), Mohave (2.6%) and Apache (2.6%) Counties.  Thank you again to everyone in those counties who voted for me.  Actually, Jill Stein won the county-by-county in every county except Apache County, where I received the sole Green Party vote cast from the Lukachukai precinct, thereby actually winning the only county in Arizona which Jill Stein did not win.  Now, do I get delegates for that?

I would also like to thank the single Green Party voter in Oatman, Mohave County, Arizona who noticed the name similarity (the town was named after a branch of my family which moved out west about 180 years before I did) and voted for and carried your precinct for me.  It’s nice to have support from a town which shares your name.

I compiled a map which you can see here which contains the county-by-county results for the Green Party and how I placed (or, see the map of only the PWH candidate placements).  As it turns out, I either placed or tied for either first or second place in six of the 15 counties in Arizona, there were six others in which I made the top three, I tied for fourth twice, and I never placed last.  Aside from Jill Stein, who outplaced me (and everyone) in 14 of the 15 counties, of the four other Green candidates running, I was outplaced by no one in six counties, by Grayson in five counties, by Mesplay in four, and by Swing and Davis in just two.  So all in all I’d say I did pretty well.  Thank you all again for your support!

I’ll keep writing here; I will keep this blog active, so check back often, and please remember to comment if you would like!

Thank You for Voting Green, and Thank You for Voting Oatman!!!

2 Comments

Filed under Debates, Election Results, General, Green Party, Tucson Weekly

Announcing First Arizona Presidential Preference Election Debate in 2012 (press release)

Hello, please circulate widely, thank you!

Contact: Michael Oatman
Oatman for President 2012
Tel: (202) 642-4785 (D.C. Offices)
Tel: (520) 302-5465 (Tucson Offices)
Fax: (206) 202-2194
Email: 2012@MichaelOatman.net
Website: http://2012.MichaelOatman.net/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Announcing First Arizona Presidential Preference Election Debate in 2012

Description:  The first Arizona Presidential Preference Election debate of 2012 will be held on 18 February 2012 at 8:00 PM.

TUCSON, AZ, 15 February 2012 — All candidates whose names appear on either the Green Party or Republican Arizona Presidential Preference Election ballots have been invited to participate in the first debate of the 2012 election season.  The debate will be held at Access Tucson, 124 East Broadway Blvd. in Tucson, Arizona, at 8:00 pm on 18 February 2012.  All media outlets are welcomed to cover the debate immediately prior to and following the event.

The presidential debate will be produced by the television show entitled “Illegal Knowledge” and will be hosted by Tucson Weekly contributor and San Diego City Beat newspaper columnist Dave Maass.  It is being coordinated by Illegal Knowledge producer and candidate Michael Oatman and Tucson Weekly writer Jim Nintzel.  There will not be a specific topic to be debated, but will cover all areas of the social and political spheres.

There will also be a second debate to be held at Access Tucson on the following day, on the 19th.  This next debate will be produced by the Tucson Weekly in conjunction with Access Tucson and feature the winners from the debate on the 18th.  More details of the second debate will be given on the night of the 18th at the first debate.

A third debate has been scheduled to be held in Mesa, Arizona on the following Thursday 23 February 2012.

Green Party candidate Michael Oatman quipped, “We did this in 2008 and it worked really well, so I’m definitely looking forward to the debate this year”.

# # #

Michael Oatman is currently accepting invitations for interviews from all news and media outlets.  Please contact Mr. Oatman using any of the contact methods provided in the header of this release.  Thank You for Your Interest!

Vote Green!  Vote Oatman!

Michael Oatman For President of
These United States of America!
Email: 2012@MichaelOatman.net
Website: http://2012.MichaelOatman.net/

With Love, We Can Take the Power Back!

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Filed under Debates, General, Green Party, Press Releases, Tucson Weekly

Truth, Transparency & Trust: We Need It, And In the FDA

Genetic Hybridization has been a long standing pillar of those who use farming, herding and ranching to supply their means to make a living.  Unfortunately, it is no longer the “mom and pop” farms which manufacture the bulk of this nation’s produce.

Since the development of global agribusiness, which has been steadily encroaching upon the local output of the total production base of livestock, fruits and vegetables since the 1980s, the one agency which has been slated to regulate the quality of these consumer items, the Federal Drug Administration (as well as the USDA), has been rendered wholly toothless as a result of the incessant putsch for deregulation, perpetrated by those who stand to gain the most in the business.

Now, and particularly within the last 10 years, GMO foods (GMO is Genetically Modified Organisms) have penetrated our supermarkets, and GMOs are present in pretty much all non-organic preprocessed foods.

We are now exposed to more GMOs in our foods and produce than ever before, with little to no oversight of what actually comprises them.  We know that right now, most corn (corn and canola oil), alfalfa, soybeans (soy, soy lectin), sugar beets (sugar other than pure cane sugar), papayas, cotton (cotton seed oil), yellow squash, and some kinds of non-organic Golden Rice are either wholly or partially composed of GMOs (see the list).  All meat products produced in the US, since they are all fed 100% GMO feed stocks, are essentially 100% GM meats.  I think it’s time to go vegan.  Organic Vegan, that is.

We also know that somewhere in the neighborhood of 93% of Americans support the labeling of GM products.  Europe (the EU) already requires labeling of GM foods, and since the mid 2000s, the EU has banned most types of GMOs from being grown or produced within its boundaries.

So why does this matter?  Let’s go back into history a little bit.

In 1901, Monsanto was founded.  It started off making an artificial sweetener called Saccharin, which it marketed to Coca-Cola.  In the 1920s, Monsanto started producing vanillin, salicylic acid, aspirin, and basic industrial chemicals like sulfuric acid and rubber processing chemicals.

Odd that a company which makes food additives would also be making sulfuric acid (which will eat through your skin) and rubber processing chemicals (which can kill you), isn’t it?

Since the 1940s, Monsanto become a leading manufacturer of plastics, including polystyrene, synthetic fibers, the herbicides 2,4,5-T, DDT, Agent Orange, the artificial sweetener aspartame (NutraSweet), bovine somatotropin (bovine growth hormone or BST), PCBs, LEDs, 2,4-D, BT-Toxin, and most profitably, Round-Up and Round-Up resistant GM seeds.

Obviously, DDT (an “insecticide”) and Agent Orange (a “defoliant”) are no longer being produced, but 2,4-D is a very close cousin to Agent Orange, and what the BT-Toxin does to insects makes DDT look humane.  BT-Toxin is a GM toxin which alters the DNA of insects so that their internal organs turn to gel and explode.  Somebody at Monsanto really has it in for bugs, huh?  They put this stuff in Round-Up, and the GM seeds which are constructed to be Round-Up resistant have this same GM BT-Toxin in them.  It has been shown that when GM plants grown with these BT-Toxin-infused genes are consumed by some animals, the bacteria in those animals’ stomachs get their DNA altered so that they become miniature BT-Toxin factories.  Yes, that’s pretty gross, right?

So it is conceivable that if you eat enough, say, GM corn chips, your stomach bacteria will start producing BT-Toxin, causing your stomach to explode, just like the insects.  This will cause a very painful, and very certain death.  Maybe somebody at Monsanto really has it in for everyone who eats their GM seeds, actually.  Just as an aside, there were several Monsanto scientists who, having learned from their research the effects of BT-Toxin in the feeds which were then fed to cows, stopped buying non-organic beef and milk altogether, and one even went so far as to buy his own milk cow.

Now, it should be noted that they did have some help, from the inside.

From Wikipedia:

  • Justice Clarence Thomas worked as an attorney for Monsanto in the 1970s.  Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion in the 2001 Supreme Court decision J. E. M. Ag Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. which found that “newly developed plant breeds are patentable under the general utility patent laws of the United States.”  This case benefited all companies which profit from genetically modified crops, of which Monsanto is the largest.
  • Michael R. Taylor was an assistant to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner before he left to work for a law firm on gaining FDA approval of Monsanto’s artificial growth hormone in the 1980s.  Taylor then became deputy commissioner of the FDA from 1991 to 1994.  After he went back to Monsanto to become Vice President for Public Policy, Taylor was later re-appointed to the FDA in August 2009 by President Barack Obama.
  • Dr. Michael A. Friedman was a deputy commissioner of the FDA before he was hired as a senior vice president of Monsanto.
  • Linda J. Fisher was an assistant administrator at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) before she was a vice president at Monsanto from 1995 to 2000.  In 2001, Fisher became the deputy administrator of the EPA.
  • Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was chairman and chief executive officer of G. D. Searle & Co., which Monsanto purchased in 1985.  Rumsfeld personally made at least $12 million USD from the transaction.

One would wonder why the Republicans wanted to get rid of the EPA under Dubya, when their corporate cronies were actually running it, at least from afar, and mostly from the inside.

Not only this, but Michael Taylor is currently heading the FDA and has been appointed Food Czar by none other than Obama.  With Taylor leading the FDA, giving the FDA more money will not help unless all vestiges of Monsanto are removed from government.  Taylor will undoubtedly just continue to green light all Monsanto foods, without regard to the health and safety of the people who are eating the food.

And as for the poor who live on USDA subsidies?  Well, just talk about shoving it down their throats….

To achieve the Truth, Transparency & Trust which are required of the FDA, Taylor must go, along with Obama, and we must replace the void with real leadership who have actual respect, and not this apparent disdain, for We The People.

But all is not yet lost.

There is also a California Initiative to require labeling of all GM foods.  The theory is that food producers would rather not admit to the US public that they have GMOs in the foods they make, and rather than label them, the food producers would rather remove the GM ingredients from all their foods than admit they were there in the first place, and Monsanto will simply go out of business or something.

Now you would think that passing this initiative would be a no-brainer, but lobbying and false advertising by Monsanto have defeated a similar initiative in Oregon not but a few years ago.  Monsanto has and will claim that the companies who produce the food will have to charge, look out, way more money to print new labels, and therefore the food will become, oh, so much more expensive.  Pity then for the poor consumer, no, no.

The opposite is actually true. Not to mention that food producers change their labels all the time with no increase in consumer cost, the labels will not change (since the food producers will not want those labels on their foods), and the food producers will actually save money by not having to pay Monsanto extra money to put their GM foods in the food producers’ products in the first place.  Labeling is a win-win for everyone but Monsanto.  That must be why they at Monsanto really have it in for us.

Then there is SB 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.  This act will require little oversight by the FDA of GMOs, will encourage GMOs to be added to foods, will require organic farmers to submit to a litany of overburdensome regulations regarding the supposed “safety” of their foods which have been perfectly safe for millennia, and will actually outright prohibit anyone from growing their own food in their own garden.  If you grow food, you go to jail.

No, unfortunately, I am absolutely serious.  I wish I was kidding.

So obviously, SB 510 needs to be stopped in its tracks, and we need to get its sponsors and supporters out of office.  Immediately.  You really have to wonder if this is yet another Bilderberg ploy to cull more of the population.  Getting death into our foods would easily enable them to take out all but one of fourteen.

In the meantime, please protect yourself by making sure that you never buy GMO foods.  Please check out:

for more information, and remember, as always:

With Knowledge and Love, We Can All Take The Power Back!

Vote Green!!!  Vote Oatman!!!

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Filed under Corporate, Corporate Corruption, Education, Environment, Foods, General, Government Intrusion, Poverty, Reform

Happy Birthday, Arizona!

Just a quick Happy Birthday wish for Arizona:

I have noticed that Coal, Copper, Cotton, Cattle and Citrus has now become Copper (still!), Call Centers, Climate, Crazy Legislators and Corruption.

I sincerely hope your next 100 years will be better than your first.

With Love,
Michael

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Filed under General

On HSBC, Federal Reserve, CIA, Drugs, Leaders and Future Wars

It is truly about time someone put this all together.  Fortunately, I stand on the shoulders of giants.  Mr. Corsi is one.

Sources:  Jerome R. Corsi (in 3 articles: 1, 2, 3) and Coast To Coast AM interview with Corsi

I had a dream the other day, well, night, that I was attempting to extract snakes from the proverbial grass.  This imagery may have been brought on by the many recent news reports of an abundance of pythons within the everglades, or perhaps you could think of the serpent in E.DIN.

Someone was standing a few yards away from me (and was helping me get at these snakes) and would pull the head of their snake from their side, but then mine would retreat simultaneously from my grasp on the head end which I was handling, and conversely, when I would pull, their snake would retreat.

Somehow, a machete materialized in my hand and I began to hack away at the grass and weeds in which the snake was hiding, as did my compatriot.  Eventually we managed to hack away at the grass to a large enough extent that we could spot other snakes hiding in the weeds as well.

As we continued to pull and hack away, it became apparent that both of the ends of our snakes were somehow tied together, so that we were actually pulling on the same two headed snake.  As we cleared more brush it became even more apparent that all of the snakes which were present in the weeds were actually part of the same animal.

Then the ground shook, the brushy area in front of us bulged upward, and out of the soil arose a stone granite Medusa-head, atop of which all the snakes were joined.  I was taken aback, but that was where the dream ended as I woke up.  I mulled it over, and went back to sleep to a different, slightly less weird dream.

The next night, Jerome Corsi was on Coast.

For any of you who still have not heard (of) Coast to Coast AM (formerly with Art Bell, now with George Noory), I strongly suggest that you wiki it or just go visit the website.  In the first two hours of the show, Corsi was on, and he spoke of receiving about a thousand pages of documents from a HSBC Banking employee turned whistleblower named John Cruz.

As Corsi told it, Cruz started out life being poor, his mother having died and his father having left the family.  Living with his grandparents, he got through school and then worked his way up through positions in various banks until he got a break working to expand the client base and clients’ services for HSBC in 2008.  He was finally paid rather well at HSBC.

Cruz worked at the NYC branch of HSBC and was given business client account information for which he was to use to contact clients and attempt to have those clients purchase more services from HSBC.  He was basically a mid-level marketing guy with access to business accounts.

In the course of performing these duties, Cruz discovered that about 90% of the accounts he received were either fraudulent or suspicious.  That is, when he would attempt to contact any of these clients, say, at their businesses, he would find the business did not exist (think barren weeded warehouses), or that there would be no obvious activity happening (no office furniture, no workers, you get the picture).  When he contacted individuals, those people were unaware that their names were being used in conjunction with a business, and those people were either past HSBC customers or victims of identity fraud through credit cards.

Since numerous laws including the PATRIOT ACT required Cruz to notify at least one of his superiors of these many breaches in practice and law, if not other regulatory agencies as well, he went ahead and did so, lest he be seen as the one breaking the law.  After all, he liked his job at that point.

Well, this is what got Cruz fired not but two years after landing the job, for “poor performance”.  One wonders how one could perform well with only 10% of a client base with which to work.

When he brought these cases up to management, he was told that there was no problem and that he was imagining it, and when he went to HSBC security, they told Cruz they were “prevented by executive senior management of the bank from doing anything about accounts like this”.

Cruz noted that these accounts were being used to transfer via telephone (never with checks) large sums of money — in the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars — to and from accounts which were not on record with the bank.  This, Cruz guessed, would total something easily into the billions or even low trillions of dollars of money laundering.  Cruz further guessed, probably correctly, that HSBC senior management knew of and was participating in and likely profiting from the scheme.  “From what I saw, I came to suspect HSBC had become the Mexican drug cartels’ bank of choice,” he said.

So at this point, I’m thinking, “maybe I should check out my local HSBC Bank branch to see whether there is an account worth millions in my name.”  I’m thinking we all should check on this, just to be certain, and withdraw all funds if there is.

Cruz started wearing a wire, on his own, and copied about a thousand pages of documentation of the suspected laundering activity.  After recording conversations with management, he took his case to Jeremy Scileppi, bureau chief of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office on Long Island.

“Scileppi was no more interested in hearing what I had to say than was the HSBC senior bank management,” Cruz said.  “I got stonewalled.  That’s when I decided to write a book.”

Titled “World Banking World Fraud: Using Your Identity,” Cruz’s book was published on 7 October 2011.  Cruz then took his book and documents to Corsi, who talked about them on the Coast show on 6 February 2012.

That’s where it all gets interesting.

Corsi used to be in banking, before becoming an investigative journalist, and Corsi loves whistleblowers.

Corsi, on Coast, mentioned that there would be no way that such millions would be able to be transferred with such regularity to or from any bank, much less the London-based HSBC, without attracting the attention of the US-based Federal Reserve Banking System.

Now the Federal Reserve is not a government agency, but is a collection of private banks organized in a system with tight, and basically illegal, control over the United States currency supply.  So I agreed with Corsi; the Fed must have known about this, and if so, then they were obviously just as well involved in the money laundering and illegal profiteering.  After all, no sane person would let that many billions or trillions slide without at least taking a cut, unless they were being blackmailed or something.

So now to recap; we have the drug cartels laundering the drug money from the drug users in the United States through HSBC (and perhaps other institutions like PayPal and AmEx — see Corsi’s third article), while HSBC and the Fed take a cut and let the process go unhindered.  How many snakes is that?

So how does Corsi or Cruz for that matter know it was drug money?  Well, maybe it’s not, but who else makes that much money in that short of a period of time (I know, Big Pharma and Big Oil) and still needs to launder it through ficticious accounts?  (Right, drug cartels.)

And all the HSBC high level executives know about this?  Undoubtedly.  Will it be investigated?  Well, hopefully; let’s find out.  This should be one of the biggest news stories of 2012.  But will it be?  Again….

Now, you may ask, does Fed Chair Ben Bernanke know about this?  Quite possibly.  Do the individual twelve Fed Bank Chiefs know?  Almost certainly.  Does US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner know?  Maybe.  How about Dubya or Obama?  Hmmmm….  I wonder.

But I know who absolutely has to know, since it is their job to know these things, and that is the CIA.  And if the CIA knows, you can bet the FBI is out of the loop.  Corsi agrees with me using other logic.

Corsi figures that at least $2T (that’s two trillion dollars) annually goes to the US black market in drug use.  That might seem high, considering spreading that total out over the US population of 400M people gives you $5000 spent annually per person.  But then I thought about all those Wall Street Bankster and Hollywood Insider parties Featuring Charlie Sheen, and Corsi might be about right.  I’m going to leave Corsi in the dust for the rest of this article, though.

The CIA has a number of “Black Ops” (programs or operations which are to be kept secret from the public, like the Bin Laden raid) that need to be funded every year.  The problem with funding black ops is that by publicly funding them, even by just stating the actual total of the funding, you make the black ops a little less black.  So what does the CIA do to counter this problem?  They “earn” the money needed to fund their black ops.  Blackly.

We’re not talking about bake sales here.

The LA Times did an article about ten years back detailing how the crack cocaine epidemic was started in LA because the drug was created by the CIA (just add baking soda?) to fund a CIA black op in Nicaragua, giving arms and other support (like mining Contra ports) to the Sandinista government to keep the fight going between the US-publicly-backed Contras and the Sandinistas, so that more US taxpayer money could be thrown at the Nicaraguan civil war.  War costs more if you do it longer.  This is also good for banks.  The CIA also helped to intensify the US War on Drugs using this same operation (thereby providing even more money for various LEOs).  This is a great dual example of the use of the Hegelian Dialectic.  You can wiki any and all of this.

At any rate, the CIA was actively involved in selling drugs.  It still is (why are we in Afghanistan?  Opium!).  It has found that line of business quite profitable historically and quite useful when it comes to funding their black ops, and keeping that funding black.

And those are just two examples.  The CIA created the Mujahadeen (precursors of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda), and therefore the “war on terrorism”.  The CIA was deeply involved in the coup d’etat which in 1953 overthrew the popularly elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh so that they could install the Shah into absolute power, which immediately benefited Big Oil, setting the stage for the 1979 Iranian revolution which brought the Ayatollah and his Shiite successors to power, to now threaten Israel with nukes.  The CIA even created an asset (a person who will carry out tasks for the CIA when asked), internally known as Tim O’Brien, although most of us knew him as Osama Bin Laden (the CIA trained him in Egypt).

So you see, as it turns out, the CIA has quite a good track record (or bad, depending on who you ask) of getting the “correct” leaders in power using drugs and drug money directly, or indirectly through funding their operations.  In this case, correct means that those leaders will willfully do your bidding, or, in this case, the bidding of the CIA and the Bilderberg Group.

If you do not know what the Bilderberg Group is and who composes it, I again very strongly suggest that you read up on that, right nowI’ll save your place, just close the new tab or window after you’re done.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Okay, you’re back.  So now I take it that you have figured out that the Bilderbergers are an insanely wealthy group of oligarchs intent on world domination and a return to feudalism and serfdom for the rest of us who are not to be simply killed off, while they pursue life extension technologies and get to fly to other planets on our cool black triangular shaped AGV craft, right?  What, didn’t you read the part about the Georgia Guidestones?  Okay, I’ll wait; read the ten inscriptions, please.

All right then, let’s recap again.  Let’s see if I can get this right.

So the Bilderbergers who want to control everything, and who do control politicians of all parties in most countries, along with the CIA, and by extension most militias, wars, conflicts, and whatnot, do so all for the benefit of the banks, the owners of which mostly comprise the members in the Bilderberg Group.  The CIA uses the drug money which is laundered through these same banks (which create economic crises to make those already rich even richer) to accomplish the goals of the Bilderbergers, of which Ben Bernanke is a member, and all of whom directly benefit in both power and money from these processes.  I’ll bet anyone ten grand (even Romney) that there are about 3,600 snakes on that Medusa head.

So now we are all talking about a war between Israel and Iran.  I heard the other day that someone in the US government suggested that it was actually Iran that flew the airplanes into the WTC towers.  I guess Iran must have flown that invisible plane into 7 WTC.  No, silly, it was Pakistan’s ISI (their CIA) and Israel’s Mossad (their CIA) who organized the whole thing.  Aside from the fact that at least 13 of the 19 supposed terrorists turned up alive since 9/11 (yes, true, again, look it up), most of those suspected terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, and the others from Pakistan, with one from Afghanistan.  That, of course, is why we had to invade Afghanistan, and then Iraq.  What now, Iran?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt made sure that our aircraft carriers were not in Pearl Harbor and that the radar was down for repair on the morning of 7 December 1941 because his New Deal policies were not pulling the US out of depression, and he figured that a full-scale war with Germany, Italy and Japan could recreate the manufacturing base required to reinvigorate the US economy.  It turned out that he was right about the economy, but it did not prevent him from committing Treason that day.

The trouble making that 2012 analogy is that war between Iran and Israel would undoubtedly involve Russia and then China, and barring a new wave of isolationism within the US, it would involve our nation as well, and would very likely go nuclear, since Israel has built up quite a stockpile of nukes over the last 26 years since Mordechai Vannanu started reporting on it.

If we legalized drugs, regulated and taxed them, we would have plenty of money to give to Iran to stop them from developing nukes, not to mention for jobs, education, green energy development, ending poverty, social security and really whatever, but where would the CIA get all the black money for their black ops?  Into what new nefarious ventures might they delve, hurting everyone in the process?  Not that I’m arguing against legalization, because I’m not, but perhaps the CIA and all the Banksters are just too expensive to keep around.  I will need a body double before I travel to Dealey Plaza.

If the CIA wants to do something which is actually useful, it should get the Iranian Green Revolution which started in February 2010 into power, since most Iranians, by a landslide, do not want war with Israel.  No one who I know here wants war with Iran.  But then again, no one I know is a Bilderberger.  They want a situation where every 13 out of 14 people living now will be dead.  You’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?”  Well do ya, punk?

We cannot begin another Great Game, this time with Persia as the prize.

The problem is that we are making a repeat performance of the events leading up to the illegal invasion of Iraq in late 2002 and 2003, and while I suspect that Iran is actually enriching uranium and to a lesser degree plutonium to produce weapons-grade materiel, I think it would be wisest in this case to offer to lift all sanctions and restore diplomatic relations with Iran only if they would turn over all nuclear production to Russia and/or the IAEA, so that it could be used only for peaceful power generation.  In fact, I think it would be even more wise to convince Iran to drop the nuclear program altogether and pursue wind, wave, solar and tidal energies exclusively, just like we should do, and just like Germany is doing already.

The nightmare would be the prescribed culling of the population to 500 million via a nuclear WWIII, but that would be letting the snakes win, and I still have a machete.

I actually do quite often have prognosticative dreams which turn out to be metaphorical, and occasionally literal.  More often, they have happier endings, but there is no reason this one cannot have an ending where the figurative Medusa head is obliterated.

That kind of stuff/people absolutely hate(s) it when you shine the Light of Truth on it/them.

With the Light of Truth and Love, We All Will Take The Power Back!

Vote Green!!!  Vote Oatman!!!

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Filed under Banking, Corporate Corruption, Education, Energy, General, Government Intrusion, International, Iran Crisis, Jobs, Legalization, Poverty, Reform

At Last, GOP Admits They Want Slavery

Source:  Huffington Post

I’m not quite sure who at Huff Post didn’t manage to catch this the first time around.

From the above cited article:

The politicians pushing drug testing disagree. In South Carolina, where the unemployment rate is 9.9 percent, well above the national average of 8.5 percent, Republicans want the nation’s toughest requirements: blanket drug testing of every applicant for unemployment benefits and compulsory volunteer work for the long-term jobless.

Now, I don’t know if I need to give you the definition of the word “volunteer”, but I’ll give you the link.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/volunteer

Of course, the issue here is that Republicans want to mandate “compulsory volunteer work” for those on unemployment insurance.  Well, if, to volunteer, you must be actively willing to do whatever it is, then how exactly is the oxymoronic phrase “compulsory volunteer work”, presumably where, since the work would be compulsory (so you would not actually be volunteering, but would be mandated to work, and to work at no pay at that), how is it not an exact description of slavery?

With slavery, it is mandated that people perform work without pay, and with “compulsory volunteer work”, it would be mandated that people perform work without pay.  Ergo, “compulsory volunteer work” is just a euphemism for slavery.

Finally, the Republicans admit what everyone has been thinking.

The GOP wants to go back to the “good ole days”, um, where slavery was legal?  Really?  But there it is, in black and white, for all to see.  The GOP wants us all to be slaves.  I knew it.

Wait one minute.  If the GOP wants to go back and make us all “volunteer” slaves, could they perhaps get a few non-profits together that had people picking cotton and tobacco, and maybe even vegetables in the fields?  That way, the GOP could kill the DREAM Act, have their border fences, and not have to pay for any housecleaning and gardening labor.  They could still prevent any economic recovery, since all of us who were out of work would have to volunteer for the already rich, who, after all could pay for these jobs, but if they have slaves, then why bother?

This all has to do with the notion that the GOP thinks that anyone who is poor is on drugs, and that those people receiving any form of public assistance must be poor, and therefore on drugs.  I don’t know, but if I were to work for those assholes, I would need to be on drugs.

First of all, those people who get unemployment insurance (UI) are able to do so because they were just recently employed, and through no fault of their own, they were laid off, downsized, outsourced, or what have you, generally by an already rich Republican.  The money which pays for UI does not come from the individual taxpayer in the first place.  It comes from a tax on corporations which would never be given back to the corporation if left unpaid to the UI recipient, and generally comes out of the allocated employee salary funds from that former employer, so it really is the UI recipient’s money to begin with.

I know for a fact that there are quite a few Republicans who are employed and who use drugs (Rush Limbaugh to name one).  If there are individuals who are employed and who use drugs with the money they earn, it is their business (beyond the scope of not getting busted with the drugs, should they be illegal).  So if someone on UI wants to spend a portion of that retained earned income on drugs, it should be no one else’s business but the UI recipient’s.

The GOP nationwide in the states’ legislatures and in US Congress has been pushing for enactment of legislation which would remove welfare, TANF, SNAP, and UI recipients from having the ability to receive their checks unless they are able to pass a mandated random drug test.  Oh, and by the way, the recipient has to pay for the test.  I thought the GOP was against individual mandates, or perhaps that is just when it suits them.  One law in Florida mandating these measures was struck down because it clearly violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution against unreasonable search and seizure.

This all caught my eye because there is some pushback from the Democrats who are essentially saying that if you are going to test people who get public money (still not sure why they include UI), then we ought to be testing everyone who gets public money, including state and federal representatives.  Maybe not oddly, but at least effectively, this move made some of the GOP sponsors of the bills withdraw them, in what seems to be a direct admission of hypocrisy by the GOP.

Yes, once the Democrats pushed back by amending the bills so that the GOP bill sponsors would also have to get tested, those Republicans decided that the measure was not such a good idea after all.

I think that if we were going to institute this policy, it would be a good idea to make sure that ALL public money, like corporate banking bailouts for instance, will only go to people who have tested negative for illegal drug use, particularly cocaine, MDMA, and maybe ketamine in their case.  Oh, and how about all those oil subsidies?  No drugs for them.  No more partying with the regulators for you, Big Oil!  Imagine how much money this would save.  Do you really think the oil and banking barons would give up their drugs for public money?  I doubt it.

And the next time you see some sort of whacked-out SOPA/PIPA/NDAA/EEA type of legislation come out of Congress, well, test them too.

Vote Legalization!  Vote Green!  Vote Oatman!

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Filed under Bailouts, Banking, Corporate, Government Intrusion, Green Party, Jobs, Mandatory Drug Testing, Poverty, Reform, Unemployment Insurance

Thoughts on SOTU Address and Responses

Fortunately, I listen to NPR (National Public Radio), so unlike CNN viewers, I was not subject to having to view the GOP ad which aired immediately prior to the address, although I missed out on the video and what I’m sure were quite a few looks from some members of Congress.  I did get to hear the full text of the address, and I figured I would share some of my thoughts on what was said.

Obama opened with thanks to Armed Forces members, which was nice, but I was appalled by his statement that he thinks war makes us safer and more respected around the world.  We know for a fact that it does not.  Our supposed “war on terrorism” (you cannot make war on a tactic) is known to be used as a recruiting tool to enlist more members in Al-Qaeda, and only creates more resentment worldwide.  Claiming otherwise, at first pass which might seem naive, is not so, but is simply a move to create more taxpayer-funded business for the defense industry, and to extend our false imperialism in a battle with China for oil and other energy resources.

Speaking of energy and by extension jobs and the economy, we were asked by Obama to imagine our situation having a more positive outlook.  This is essentially the method employed by Family Guy’s Brian Griffin’s fictitious book, “Wish It, Want It, Do It” and is completely ridiculous.  I can imagine it, but why won’t Obama address the situation in any meaningful ways?  Programs can be instituted in various departments which will help things and which do not require congressional approval, but it seems to be more politically expedient to do nothing and blame the other party for lack of progress.  No wonder approval ratings for both parties are at an all-time low.

We could bring more manufacturing back if there were limits (taxes, tariffs and other fees) imposed on corporations which practice outsourcing to other nations, rather than having us all just wait for the Chinese wage to go up.  With corporate taxes, we need more sticks and fewer carrots.  We already have the biggest corporations paying next to nothing on record annual profits.  These loopholes need to be closed immediately.  Job training needs to work in conjunction with a reduction of military manufacturing and conversion of those defense industry plants and technologies to green energy production and sources.

I do agree that we should offer states something like a 3 to 1 match on state university and college funding increases, and incentivize universities to reduce or not increase tuition.  We also need to increase Pell Grants to twice higher than 2000 levels, and use the Treasury and not banking institutions to handle Student Loan repayments.

Some other thoughts on energy production:

  • We cannot afford more oil production, furthermore, we will need to keep the oil we have, and keep it in the ground.  We need to use only carbon-negative or -neutral energy sources.
  • We cannot afford to ruin all the water and create hundreds or thousands of earthquakes by further developing hydrologic fracturing (fracking).
  • We cannot afford to susidize oil production any longer.  We need to tax it, along with fracking, completely out of existence.
  • We can afford to develop wave energy generation, where strings of hinged booms and buoys float on ocean waves and where the hinges turn generators based on the wave movement.
  • We can afford to harness underwater tidal forces which can turn propellers like wind turning a windmill as the tides go in and out.
  • We can afford to make wind energy more efficient and more plentiful, including offshore.  Paint them to blend in if you are so concerned with your scenic view of the offshore oil rigs.
  • We can afford to make solar more efficient and more varied, and use the massive acreage located within the Nevada DOE site to make enough solar energy for all the homes in the US.
  • We can afford to place solar and wind installations on all manufacturing plants, with all new homes getting active and passive solar on the rooftops.
  • We can afford to make better batteries, so I agree with Obama on that one.
  • We can even develop (it has been done) GM bacteria which take greenhouse gases out of the air, and then which use the sequestered molecules to thrive and excrete oil which we can use.  I suspect the same method could be used to create natural gas.

Any idea to help alleviate the mortgage crisis is a good one.  What about getting peoples’ foreclosed and unpurchased houses back to them?

How about getting mercury out of vaccines?  Well, getting it out of the water is great also.  Strengthening the FDA and preventing mercury, dioxins and arsenic from entering fish and other seafood chains via stream runoff is wonderful.

Here’s a better idea, we can increase the taxes on corporate gains, etc. (Romney’s and Buffet’s incomes) and let the added 10-20% increase be earmarked by those taxpayers individually toward their choice of investments for R&D to colleges, universities and green energy businesses.

As for fixing the tax code, there are various numbers which could be used, but we should employ a progressive taxation system similar to the following, where individual incomes of:

  • >$1M should pay 40% on amounts at or above $1M,
  • >$500K should pay 25% on amounts between $500K and $1M,
  • <$50K should pay zero, and
  • incomes between $50K and $500K should pay 15% on amounts between $50K and $500K.

In addition, FICA & Medicare (at whatever percents, usually 2%-6% each depending on the national mood) are taxed on all incomes over $50K, with no upper limit.  There should be a 50% estate tax for liquidity over $1M, though not for real estate and investments.  The total tax levied on all corporate gains and investment incomes should be about 30%, and would be excluded from the calculation of the individual incomes above.  Married couples filing jointly would double the income requirements above, and dependants claimed would allow for a $25K deduction per dependant.  All income amounts would be COLA adjusted for successive years.  Therefore, if your household consisted of a married couple with two children filing jointly, and your combined annual income did not exceed $150K with no investment income, you would pay no taxes.  If you were single making $100K/yr, with $50K in investment income, you would pay $22.5K plus FICA & Medicare on $50K (somewhere around $2K to $6K), for an effective tax rate of about 18%.  This would increase current revenues compared to the current tax code (it would generate somewhere around $2.5T in income taxes, plus perhaps $2T in capital gains / investment taxes), and would create massive spending from the middle class, which would in turn create the largest economic expansion since the 1950s and 1990s, thereby generating even more tax revenue, particularly for states and localities.  Taxing corporations at a reasonable rate (20-25%) on incomes exceeding $500K with no loopholes would generate another $2T or so.  We would have a $2T surplus and the debt would be paid off in a record 8 years.  It only takes political will or better members of congress to accomplish this.

You can feel cynical about nothing getting done, but you could also just institute massive political reform.  Mandate shortened campaign seasons to a couple or a few months.  Ban all stock and commodities trading by congress people.  Limit lobbyists to genuinely interested parties, with no payouts.  Limit campaign contributions to individuals only.  Have no more filibusters in the Senate unless you actually take the floor and read something into the congressional record which pertains to the topic at hand.  Limit supermajorities in normal voting where a 50% majority is required.  End the Bush Cycle between lobbyists, regulators, other oversight positions, congress, and other federal positions.  Once someone takes one position within an industry, they cannot switch (from private to public sectors or vice versa) until having not been employed in that industry for at least five years.  The SEC needs more teeth.

The way you end the source of attacks against US is to get our bases out of Mecca & Medina, stop state funding Israel & Pakistan, get out of Afghanistan, and end the “war on terrorism”.

Finally, we can give better, free, jobs training to veterans, and really to everyone, and not just incentives for companies who hire them.

That would be my response to the 2012 SOTU address, but it was not the response given by Mitch Daniels, the GOP Governor of Indiana.

Instead, Daniels simply regurgitated the same old talking points from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show.  How does such an uncaring racist blowhard drug addict (Rush) get to be the non-titular head of the Republican Party anyway?  Perhaps that was too rhetorical.

Daniels talked about there being roughly a 20% unemployment rate, which was really odd, since Republicans never count those not actively job seeking as being unemployed, I suppose unless it suits them.

Republicans do not even want more employment.  Rather, they want higher profits for their corporate donors.  How exactly do you suppose we got into this mess in the first place?

Neither do Republicans want equality.  They want rich white land-owning males to have everything and for everyone else to be slaves, leave or die.

If a Republican cannot route a pipeline through a poor neighborhood, he (and not she) will route it through a wetland.  Daniels said that the XL pipeline deal is, and I quote, “pro-poverty”.  Now, I do not know if Daniels knows yes from no, good from bad, left from right, for from against, but he obviously does not know pro- from con-.  XL is pro-poverty alright.  It is also pro-environmental-destruction.  Tar sands are about the most inefficient and carbon-positive producers of oil known on the planet, and routing a pipeline through an aquifer, particularly the largest in the Midwest, is about as dumb an idea as not using hardened cement on a blowout preventer.  Between XL, drill-baby-drilling in the oceans, fracking, and trying to end the Clean Water Act and EPA, one would guess by their actions alone, that Republicans wanted all the potable water in the country to simply disappear.

Why do Republicans constantly state that raising their tax rates on largely investment earnings will somehow hurt jobs?  It will not.  People will continue to invest (unless the tax on investment earnings was 100%), and the higher the tax levied, the less risky the investments will be.  Graphically plotting gross tax revenue versus tax rate levied looks like a bell curve, and we are way down on the left side low end.

If Daniels wants growth, then his Senate and House compatriots ought to approve the jobs bills introduced this year.  If Daniels wants Obama to fail just like Rush and McConnell stated, he will not want growth.

If Republicans like saving money, they will use the goddamn energy saving light bulbs.  What a ruse!  I replaced 100% of the light bulbs in my apartment (even in the fridge and under the range hood) with the new energy saving kind (for a total cost of $25), and my monthly electric bill dropped by $20 overnight.  I’ll save $215 in the first year of using them.  They even now come encased in a coated glass bulb which acts to diffuse the light, so they shine light just like a normal incandescent, and they warm up to full brightness in about a minute.  You no longer need to get blinded by the compact fluorescent coil.  What a deal!  Buy them in packs of 5 or 10 to save money.

And finally, contrary to what Daniels said, to have national bankruptcy, our GDP (FY2011 was $15.0T — T is trillion) needs to be smaller than our annual interest on the federal debt ($15.23T total, and $0.457T of that is interest).  We are not even close, well, yet.  Our annual federal budget is about one quarter of our GDP, and is over seven times the annual interest on the debt.  If Daniels is concerned that the debt as a percentage of GDP is just over 100%, he should feel better to know that following WWII, the debt was just over 120% of GDP and in 35 years, under Jimmy Carter, we managed to get that percent down to just over 30%.  Reagan/Bush proceeded to bring that figure back up to nearly 70%.  Clinton brought it down to about 55%, and Dubya brought it back to 70%.  Obama did the rest.  However, the debt needs to be $500T (over 30 times the current amount) to get to where interest payments (at 3% interest) exceed the GDP, at which point the US would become insolvent.  Even if we run a $2T defecit every year (the largest defecit ever in 2009 was $1.9T), it would still take 242 years to reach that point (the United States will be 236 years old on 4 July 2012).  Now, we absolutely do need to pay down the debt, but we do not need to make such draconian austerity measures like the EU is doing, and by doing so, shoot ourselves in the foot by preventing our economic recovery.  Apparently Daniels does not know how to use a calculator, either.

So, that response got four Pinocchios.  Neither Republicans nor Democrats know what they are doing, and if they do, then they know that all they do is make the already rich richer, and be damned with the rest of the populace.  Here’s not quite a joke: What’s the difference between a neo-conservative (Republican) and a globalist (Democrat)?  Well, the neo-conservative wants the corporation which controls everything to come from this country, while the globalist cares not from which country that corporation comes.  Or, alternatively, the Democrat charges too much for the meal, but the Republican leaves the restaurant before the check arrives and sticks you with the bill.

So what’s the better way?  It is to not elect either to office again.

Vote Green!!!  Vote Oatman!!!

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Filed under Corporate, Debt & Defecit, Education, Energy, Environment, Green Party, International, Jobs, Mortgage Crisis, Reform, State Of The Union, Tax Code

The Republicans Are In Disarray, The Democrats, About As Much (so Vote Green!)

After watching the State Of The Union speech last night, I would like to make a few brief comments on the state of things regarding the presidential election cycle this year prior to publishing my rebuttal here.

I thought the speech itself was well delivered and polished (minus the spilt milk joke of a joke), but lacking in the intensity of programs which were proposed to solve the jobs crisis.  Obama was just trotting out the same old lines which had previously gone nowhere with the GOP and which would have little actual impact on the situation regarding the placement of the US in the new economic model of sustainability, and in actual job creation and retraining.

I was thinking how this speech was in no way going to help him against his GOP rivals, and that his chances of reelection were waning.

But then I thought about his GOP rivals.

So maybe all hope is not lost for Obama, but why do we always have to settle for the lesser of two evils?

I was, of course, thinking of the Republican disarray which is the progression of the nominating process so far in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

After Newt won in The Palmetto State, following on the heels of a GOP certified Santorum win in Iowa, and Romney winning New Hampshire, with Ron Paul close on his heels, you get the distinct conclusion that there will not be for some time in the GOP primary, any distinct conclusion.  Even the comedian Stephen Colbert, made a last minute pseudo-run in South Carolina, his home state, instructing his followers to pick “Cain” on the ballot as a vote for Colbert, and he actually placed a solid fifth place, ahead of Rick Perry, who placed sixth.

There has got to be a better way.

Even the Republican’s SOTU response, delivered by Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, was bland, lacking, regurgitated, hating-Obama-for-no-reason-other-than-that-Rush-told-me-to, outright distortions, which should earn it four noses on the Pinocchio scale.  What was that bit about “pro-poverty” and why do you hate those light bulbs so much?

If Obama drops the ball and the GOP cannot come along and pick it up and run with it, then it is truly time to give up on both sides of that fence.

One thing that truly did matter happened this morning.  Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords officially retired from the floor of the House.  In a tearful speech delivered by her friend, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chairman, Giffords announced that she was retiring to work on her recovery, and that she would return eventually to public service.  It was so moving that even John Boehner was in tears, or perhaps that is too low of a bar.  In a final tribute to Gabby, 408 House members voted unanimously (!!!) to approve a border security bill she had sponsored.  Gabby was the one good thing Southern Arizona had going on in the US House, and unless Steve Leal wants to take her place, we are headed for a wasteland with the Democrats, as equally as with the Republicans.

But there is another option.  We all have until next Monday 30 January 2012 to renew our voter registrations and turn them in to the Recorder’s Office (on the north side of the courtyard in the Pink Dome Building in downtown Tucson), but this time, we need to register for the Green Party!

With the Green Party there will be no more partisan blockades, and there will be an actual genuine putsch to actually improve things!  You will get jobs, actual manufacturing base, no stupid fake wars, and no reliance on foreign oil!

Plus, I’m running as a Green Party candidate, so you can …

Vote Green!  Vote Oatman!

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Filed under Education, Energy, Environment, Green Party, Jobs, Reform, State Of The Union

Michael Oatman Announces Green Party Presidential Candidacy (press release)

Hello, please circulate widely, thank you!

Contact: Michael Oatman
Oatman for President 2012
Tel: (202) 642-4785 (D.C. Offices)
Tel: (520) 302-5465 (Tucson Offices)
Fax: (206) 202-2194
Email: 2012@MichaelOatman.co.cc
Website: http://2012.MichaelOatman.co.cc/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Michael Oatman Announces Green Party Presidential Candidacy

Description:  Michael Oatman is seeking the Green Party nomination for United States President in 2012, and is on the ballot in the 2012 Arizona Presidential Preference Election to be held statewide on Tuesday 28 February 2012.

TUCSON, AZ, 23 January 2012 — Green Party presidential candidate Michael Oatman today formally and publicly announced his candidacy from his Tucson offices, by stating his intention to seek the nomination by the Arizona Green Party for the office of United States President.

Mr. Oatman, a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has lived in Tucson for the past twelve years.  He works as a computer and internet services consultant in the Tucson area, and has owned and operated several businesses in the Tucson downtown area.  He is also the host and producer of the Access Tucson televised call-in talk show entitled “Illegal Knowledge”.

“I’m all for creating jobs in the green energy sector, including here in Tucson and Southern Arizona, where they are certainly needed,” says Oatman.  He believes the United States needs to derive most of its energy sources from technologies employing exclusively solar, wind, wave and tidal forces.  “I’d say my platform is about being fiscally conservative and socially progressive.  We desperately need massive political reform.  I would spend much more on education, less on defense, more on research for developing new technologies which can bring us energy independence, and we can re-tool our manufacturing industries to that end.”  The website 2012.MichaelOatman.co.cc contains more information about his candidacy and regarding what Oatman would bring to the nation’s highest office.

This is not the first time Oatman has run for the office of US President, although it is the first time he has run as a Green Party candidate.  In 2008, registered as a Democrat, he received 17 votes, all from early balloting, which he says is remarkable “considering there was absolutely no budget whatsoever to work with, and that the campaign was exclusively word-of-mouth.”

This year, Oatman hopes to receive the endorsement of the Tucson Weekly newspaper, working with what Weekly writer Jim Nintzel calls “an exercise in reality journalism” known as Project White House.  The project pits candidates whose names are on the ballot for the 2012 Arizona Presidential Preference Election against one another to compete for the Weekly’s endorsement of a candidate from each of the Republican and Green parties.  The Democratic Party elected to not participate in this year’s Presidential Preference Election in Arizona, and no Democrats will be listed on this year’s ballot.

                                                                          #   #   #

Michael Oatman is currently accepting invitations for interviews from all news and media outlets.  Please contact Mr. Oatman using any of the contact methods provided in the header of this release.  Thank You for Your Interest!

Vote Green!  Vote Oatman!

Michael Oatman For President of
These United States of America!
Email: 2012@MichaelOatman.co.cc
Website: http://2012.MichaelOatman.co.cc/

With Love, We Can Take the Power Back!

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Filed under Education, Energy, Energy & Jobs, Press Releases, Reform, Tucson Weekly

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE QUESTIONNAIRE

From Project White House.

Saturday 14 January 2012

Jim Nintzel
Senior Writer
Tucson Weekly

Thank you Jim!  Here are my responses.

Name: Michael Oatman

Contact/Email:2012@MichaelOatman.co.cc

Website: 2012.MichaelOatman.co.cc

Social media —
Facebook: facebook.MichaelOatman.co.cc
Twitter: @MichaelOatman

Occupation: Webmaster
Website: HeyComputerMan.co.cc

Birth Town: Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Residing in: Tucson, Arizona

Pets: Fish

Favorite food: Baked Ziti, or pizza, both of which I make.

99% or 1%?

  • There will always be a 99% and a 1%.  The issue is the difference of incomes and standards of living between the two.  Eventually, the differences will become less, but it is only now a question of whether that difference reduction is accomplished via social, economic and political reforms or via revolution.
  • I prefer reforms, but I will always assist in the revolution, should reforms fail.

How many houses do you own? None, I rent.

General Questions

Who is your first choice for a running mate? Cynthia Ann McKinney

Make us a campaign promise: “I Do Solemnly Swear To Read The Tucson Weekly, Weekly!”

Spaceships appear above every major US city: How would you handle it?

  • 1) Find out whether they are ours and whether this is an exercise or a coup d’etat.  If it is an exercise, deny it.
  • 2) If they are ours (and not an exercise), quash the coup and hang the treasonous bastards.  If they are not ours, well, fucking negotiate.
  • 3) If they (not ours) refuse to negotiate, and it is understood what they want, and that is our annihilation, then nuke them.  Cooperate to our mutual benefit otherwise.  Let’s get on board!

Name two people you would bring together in a beer summit.

  • Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, just to test them.
  • Other than those two, neither of whom would likely have a beer, an effective beer summit might include myself and the leaders of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Brazil, EU people, Palestine, and Israel.  One can only imagine the tremendous range of topics to be hammered out.  We would need absinthe, not beer, for this one.

Priority Evaluation

Please order the following threats in terms of biggest priority to least priority (1-6):

First of all, I’d like to explain my numbering scheme.  I have these listed in order 1-6, and also in percent importance priority, 0%-100%.  The latter percent is where the issue falls in relative importance overall.  I will use this percent importance scale in further posts.

Order  Pct. Importance  Issue
-----  ---------------  -------
1.     92%              Climate Change
2.     90%              Iran
3.     85%              Unemployment
4.     60%              Food recalls
5.     25%              Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen
6.     0.00002%         Piranhas

FYI, I would place the possibility of Asian Carp invading the Great Lakes at number 4.5 with a percent of 30%.  Additionally, I would give 100% to overall political reform of elections involving the federal government.

Issues (stated):

Abortion – Safe, Legal, and Rare.  Birth control should be freely and widely available so that abortion effectively exists only to protect the life and well-being of the mother.

Guns – For the Second Amendment, and for the argument that a background check (instantaneous) does not impinge on it.  I also support free public gun training, particularly for those who wish to carry concealed.

Death penalty – Only for the offense of Treason.

Marijuana – For decriminalization, for removal from Schedule I, and for treatment like and taxation beyond Alcohol and Tobacco.

Israel or Palestine or is it complicated? I support a One-State solution, where everyone’s votes are equal under a united government.

Justin Bieber – I’m for kids with talent.  This excludes Bieber.  I’m morally against mommies trying to relive their youth by entering their daughters into beauty pageants, but there should be no law.

Waterboarding – For the Geneva Conventions for all nations.

Gays in the military – Are we seriously still talking about this?  It has been resolved correctly, finally.

Bigger threat to the institution of marriage: Sinead O’Connor;  Las Vegas?

Obamacare – I support (and have since 2007) a single payer, possibly multi-tiered system.  Please see the website for details.

Boehner’s tears – As fake as his tan.  Where In The World Is Jon Boehner?

Border fence – For a reasonable guest worker program, some version of the Dream Act, drug legalization (except meth and heroin), the cessation of state funding for Israel and Pakistan (our businesses can still sell them weapons), and the removal of our bases from Mecca and Medina.  The fence was historically used simply to mark the national boundary.  Oh, and no Canadian fences.  If we remove the reasons for which people want to come here illegally and/or attack us, we need no fences.

English as the U.S. official language – Je parle Francais aussi.

Amnesty for undocumented immigrants – Yes for the kids; Guest Worker for the adults.

Koch brothers – BANG, ZOOM!  Straight to the moon!

Net Neutrality – 1000% FOR!  100% against SOPA/PIPA!  100% FOR COPPA!  Let corporations make their own limited internet, parallel to the real one.  Let’s see which one people want to use.

Increased defense spending – As if we really have the money to spend — but if we just print it, could we at least print 3 times that much for education, please?

Should text message abbreviations be taught in schools? AFAIK ABVS RNT GRMR.  If you could understand that, then maybe we *should* teach people how to communicate with you, or perhaps better vice versa.

Childhood vaccinations – I’m against mercury in particular and any other toxins in vaccines.  Yes, mercury is still in there.  You should really read the packaging ingredients on everything.  The underlying principle of vaccination is fine, medically speaking.

Disclosure

Please list all:
love-children: none
sexual harassment allegations: none
illegal immigrant house help: no house, no help; I rent
criminal convictions: public record
draft dodges: none
bribery scandals: none
other ethics challenges: I’m NOT for bestiality, incest, rape, the Bohemian Grove, Sharia Law, Vulture Capitalism, or closed minds.

  • God Is Everything And Everything Else.  God does not require religion, but the opposite is not true.

Please remember to register with the GREEN PARTY on or before Monday 30 January 2012!

Please Vote for Michael Oatman on Tuesday 28 February 2012!!!

Thank You ALL For Your Amazing Support!

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Filed under Corporate, Education, Energy, Environment, General, Government Intrusion, International, Jobs, Reform, Tucson Weekly

A Call to Investigate the Causes of the Great Recession

From: http://action.workingamerica.org/c/575/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=3380

Foreclosures and the abuses of the Big Banks are crippling our economy.  In neighborhoods like mine and across the state, we’ve seen people underwater on their mortgages and even losing their homes.  Even worse, in many cases the Big Banks broke rules, falsified paperwork or defrauded homebuyers—and gambled with our homes to enrich themselves.  They have yet to be held responsible.

Families like mine are depending on you to stand up for us and put our needs ahead of protecting the banks.  We can’t just let banks get bailed out and escape consequences for their irresponsibility and greed.

I urge you to fight for a strong settlement with the banks that really will hold them accountable for their misconduct and the damage done to the economy.  Any settlement must reflect the harm done to homeowners and provide large-scale relief for underwater homeowners.  And before you agree to any settlement, there must be a full investigation into misconduct and fraud by the banks.

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Filed under Bailouts, Banking, Corporate, Jobs, Mortgage Crisis

What is Necessary For National Defense, And For Exactly Whose Defense

On 31 December 2011, President Obama silently signed an act into law.

This act was named the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA.

There was much furor over this act becoming law, for a number of reasons, which I will write about here, and about the implications of those governing sections of this act.

Let me first state that the NDAA for 2012, unlike other Defense Spending Acts passed in years prior, which were used to simply supply the military of the United States with the funds needed to operate, the current NDAA has been written to be much more far-reaching, to include executive branch limitations on where and how to combat terrorism, conditions on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and detentions of individuals from within the United States, and the fundings for these entities and practices.

The original version which passed the House of Representatives was written to bind the executive branch from moving Guantanamo by removing all funding for doing so. The detainees there would be left there indefinitely. The Senate version was no better.

Now, President Obama did not like having his executive powers limited (see Title XII) and he threatened a veto of the bill, but the reconciled version, struck in committee, did allow more powers to the executive regarding these things.

Obama was then agreeable to passing the act one the powers of the executive were not so restrained.

Regardless, it was written (see Sec. 1021 and Sec. 1022) that individuals can be held indefinitely (or until the “War On Terrorism” has ended, which according to Senator John McCain, will be “never”).

Now, we suppose that all of this has nothing to do with you and me, correct?

That assumption is very unfortunately dead wrong.

Both versions, and the committee version which was passed by Obama, which is the actual law, allow for indefinite detentions or military tribunals of ANYONE.

Let me make that perfectly clear. ANYONE. Any individual.

This includes United States Citizens, living in the United States, since this country is a front of the War On Terrorism.

The remedy is indefinite detention.

This a completely arbitrary and includes classes of individuals which, according to the law, are now described as “any person who has committed a belligerent act” (see Sec. 1021(b)2).

So, if I am walking down the street, say quickly, and pushing through a crowd, am I being “belligerent”?

If I write this, am I being “belligerent”?

If I am, I can now be held indefinitely, without trial or Habeas Corpus, in a military prison or even in Guantanamo Bay.

This is certainly NOT what the Founding Fathers intended.

Furthermore, the law allows for the executive branch to assert a power to identify any particular individual and hold them indefinitely (see Sec. 1022(a)4).

You can be kidnapped by the military off the streets and be held and never heard from again. No trial. No jury. No Habeas Corpus.

If you are lucky, you might get a military trial. You might even get a regular trial.

It is not up to you. You might get deported to face trial in your home country, or maybe not (see Sec. 1022(a)3). This is the way the NDAA has been written. Please read it.

Do that here http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1540enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1540enr.pdf or here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012

Thank you.

Now, I would like to restate that Obama only had a problem that the powers of the executive branch were limited, and one those powers were given, Obama figured the NDAA was a good thing that he wished to sign in secret on 31 December 2011.

No ceremony, no 15 pens given out, no press.

I have an idea on how to define “belligerency”.

I think that it was a clear act of belligerency against the United States that any act, such as the NDAA, has been passed, and I do hold as “belligerents” those who had any part in passing the NDAA for 2012.

If they make their bed, they must lie in it.

Yes, the fact of the passage of the 2012 NDAA is, in itself, an act of belligerency against the United States, and any individual who took part in its passage and enactment into law should be subject to its terms.

This would include the 93 Senators, the 322 members of the House Of Representatives and President Obama.

Their punishment for this act of belligerency shall be indefinite detention within the confines of the US base in Cuba, named Guantanamo Bay, D-4.

Once they are gone, We The People should set about to be repealing this indescribable repugnancy of an act which should never have seen the light of day.

There are simply too many of us, even for the FEMA camps.

More importantly, this is construed as an act for “National Defense”.

The question really is “whose defense, from whom and against whom exactly?”. I think that this act smacks of being an enactment of defense of the US Government from its own people.

We The People should not allow this, and if necessary, take up arms to resist the obvious coming of the Federal Police State, enacted under our noses, by “law”, in our own nation.

Let us now join together and take the ownership back for ourselves from those who falsely govern out of fear.

With Love, We Will Be Our Own Sovereigns!

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Filed under General, Government Intrusion

Corporations Are Not People, But The People Who Compose Them Are

I suppose that, in the face of Citizens United, demanding that corporations should not be People is now the new fad.

This was never the case with me.

It is simply, Prima Facie (on the face of it), that corporations, which have not an expiration, nor a Corpus Delecti (think, a gravestone), amongst other oddities, do not quite fit the general description of Persons, nor, as a whole, People, who are themselves rather distinct.

It is with this in mind that I do propose a new set of Rules which shall govern corporations. These rules hearken back to the days of the founding of The Dutch East India Company, which was, and still remains, the very first corporation to come into being, way back in the year 1602 Anno Domini. It itself was only chartered originally for 21 years, but quite obviously, things in this regard have gotten very far out of hand.

We, The People, should now exercise our Collective Will to remand these entities and their progeny back into a more manageable state. I have some ideas.

1) Corporations must be chartered. This really sounds obvious, but it is really not so. Today (and only the other day I in fact have done this), corporations can be created by any individual person or entity without limit. They can exist only by the stroke of my (or anyone’s) pen.

This is not the way it used to be.

Corporations used to be created to perform a duty, and would so be regulated by a chartering commission (now the Commerce Division or some such), and could not become chartered unless they were to serve some obvious purpose.

Corporations should be chartered by a body with actual oversight which can rule on whether their charter is valid.

2) Corporations must serve the Public Good. This is another baby which was thrown out with the bathwater.

Corporations, in their original charter, must state for what Public Good they will provide. The Chartering Commission will have due public input to hear the yeas and nays of why and why not the new corporation will or will not serve the Public Good.

It is ultimately up to the People to determine what, if anything, is in the Public Good.

3) Corporations shall exist for a definite amount of time, during which, they shall either perform or not perform, according to their charter, the stated Public Good via which they were originally chartered.

If a corporation fails to perform in the Public Good, according to the dictum set forth in its charter, then the charter and so the corporation’s license to operate, shall be revoked. This extends to that corporations must pay their fair share of taxes and not outsource their labor to foreign countries, but provide work for those in Our Nation.

An annual renewal of all corporate charters should be the litmus test, and that renewal should be held in public, with public approval.

4) Corporations are not a shield for liability, but a “collection of fools” over which that liability is spread.

I could write a number of names of corporations here which would bring up horrific images of disaster to most folk. I will not, but rather I will focus on what can be done to improve corporate liability.

The limited liability which corporations now enjoy should extend only between its members (who are actual People and not other corporations), so as not to exclude any member from liability, so long as that member has any part in the issue from which the liability had originated.

If there was one bad apple in the corporation, and that one apple made the Gulf Oil Spill or Bhupal, then it is solely up to the other members of the corporation to prove their innocence, or, otherwise, the entire “ship of fools” goes down and shares plural personal liability.

This may just be a start. Please tell me what other rules governing corporations which you would like to see. I am very open to popular opinion on this matter.

We are The People — Let Our Love Be The Way!

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Filed under Corporate, International, Jobs, Reform

On Ron Paul, The Federal Reserve, And What To Do About Banking

I like Ron Paul. I always have. I particularly like his philosophies on the reduction of the Federal Reserve Banking System’s influence on the Treasury and federal monetary policies.

That is essentially where it ends.

Ron Paul used to be in favor of nationalizing the Federal Reserve; he is no longer in favor; I still am.

The Constitution of These United States of America States (in Article I Section 8), verbatim:

Section 8 – Powers of Congress

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States; […]

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States; […]

… and so to impugn or disguise this under any other authority is clearly in breach. Firstly, I would prefer to strictly nationalize the Federal Reserve Banking System and place its powers back squarely under the purview of the Congress Assembled. For those who disagree on the basis of that the powers would be therfore politicized, I give you the last 25 years of the history of the Fed from Greenspan/Reagan.

The monetary policy of this nation will always be politicized, and naming one chair under the auspice of a clearly partisan president to further the economic and monetary policy of the entire nation is not solution. It never was.

Secondly, the Glass–Steagall Act must be re-enacted, so that speculation is controlled, banking institutions have control over banking, investment institutions have control over investments, the FDIC is not left holding the bag, and so that securities can become more secure, as overseen by the proper agency in charge, the SEC.

If banks want to betray their investors by giving billion or million dollar golden parachutes to failed CEOs, it will then be up to the stockholders, and certainly no more the taxpayers, to bail on or to revive those commercial institutions.

Thirdly, I would like to see, a hedge to the US Dollar’s performance overseas, a new plethora of local currencies, to be governed by those who participate in their creation.

These would be patterned after various LETS systems and would be wholly autonomous, as in the days of the independent banks which where in abundance during the days of the presidency of Andrew Jackson.

With all these reforms in place, we as a People could certainly initiate a more abundant and populous-serving system run in conjunction with the People and the State.

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Michael Oatman for President in 2012!

Hello Everyone,

Please allow me to introduce myself; my name is Michael Oatman and I am seeking nomination as a candidate for the office of President of these United States of America from the Green Party, seeing as how the Democratic Party has chosen not to participate this year.

I am submitting my Candidate Nomination Paper via the Tucson Weekly for the Arizona Presidential Preference Election to be held on the 28th day of February 2012.

Now, I would like to tell you a little about my platform. Actually, unlike just about every candidate who is currently running for president, I would like to describe fully (to a practical extent) the platform upon which I will be running for the office of President of these United States of America. For more complete information, you may view my website, currently at http://MichaelOatman.wordpress.com/ where you may also participate by asking questions and leaving comments.

We all have heard the push-button issues about which the current candidates have made their televised sound bites: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; universal health care; reduced deficit, and particularly debt; middle class job sector improvement; a federal executive trashing the Bill of Rights and the Constitution; the border and migration issues; the failing housing market and economy; and many more. Then, there are the usual suspects like gun control, abortion and gay marriage. In a moment, I will address all of these issues. What is truly amazing and mostly depressing is that I have not changed the above wording in this paragraph since four years ago.

However, I think it is important for all of us to step back and look at the whole of things, “the big picture” so to speak. These issues, while debating and discussing them is extremely important when finding a solution, they have tended to do more harm to the peoples of this country, at least in their attitudes toward one another. We can see that we are becoming increasingly intolerant to what we consider “the other side”, when usually there are many shades of grey.

I think that the Peoples of the several States of these united States of America ought to truly and finally set aside their differences and do come together in order to be completely themselves. It would be a marvelous day when we can all say that we fully know who we are, and who each other are, and have understanding and show respect for this; this which is not exactly the current state of affairs.

With that said, I would like to say a little about myself. I consider myself to be, first and foremost, a logician. My profession is a computer scientist, or an “IT Guy”. The way I approach problem solving is with the goal of *actually solving the problem* rather than giving lip service to some group or a sound bite or two to the media. When the latter is done by politicians, the goal is not to necessarily *do* anything about the issue, but rather simply to quell the populace, or a particular group; to spin the media so that the issue becomes a “non-issue” is the immediate goal of this rationale. I employ no such rationale.

Having hosted and produced a television show entitled “Illegal Knowledge” on the local public access stations, Access Tucson (http://access.tucson.org/), whose tagline is “Everything we should have known, but were never supposed to find out”, and the issues in this season, season two, have ranged from the Question of the Middle East, to 9/11 Revisited, to Media and Corporatism, to A Discussion of Non-Valuation, and even featured an Election Special with Proposition 200 author John Kromko as guest, I am keenly aware of the subtleties of the global events happening today, and I will not hesitate to bring that knowledge to my Administration.

Let us now go onward and discuss various specific issues relating to topics of today. I am and will be always open to input from the People of this Nation, and I currently will make my email address available for this purpose; it is oatman [at] geocities [dot] com and all who wish may write to me there, or to Post Office Box 304, in Tucson, Arizona, 85702, for those of you who prefer snail mail (parcels will not be accepted). If anyone emails me with generally important issues, they will also be answered on my blog at WordPress (http://MichaelOatman.wordpress.com/). I will first state that I am generally, although not without exception, socially left-leaning and fiscally conservative.

In the arenas of jobs, the debt, our banking system and government intrusion, I would like to side fully with the bulk of the People who are disaffected as a result of this as well as the past two administrations’ policies. We must support the People who support this Nation, and we can do that by providing green jobs for every person capable of working, tax heavily corporations who wish to outsource jobs overseas (if not prevent it outright), reduce defecits and debt by completely reforming the banking system and the Federal Reserve, and keep the government from otherwise meddling in People’s affairs. More on exactly how to accomplish this will appear on my blog in the near future.

In issues of federal and executive importance, I strongly believe in the efficacy of our Constitution and give myself as a strict constructionist if not an originalist; that is I will use the executive to interpret the Constitution in its original meaning, with emphasis given to the Articles and Amendments themselves. This means I will roll back all domestic spying, NDAA, limitations on internet use (I’m against SOPA/PIPA and for Net Neutrality), and the myriad of other executive abuses perpetrated by the Bush administration as well (and it seems as much or more) by the Obama administration, I will work to end the deficit *AND* debt, partially by bringing to and end by political means the war Afghanistan (and wherever else by the end of Obama’s term), all while maintaining good relations with nations which are needed for us to prevent any terrorist acts.

I will write much more on these and many issues later, but for now I will ask all of you this: where would you like to see this Nation be in five years? Please visit http://MichaelOatman.wordpress.com/ and share your thoughts with myself and others today!

I look forward to representing We the People of these United States of America in the next general election in 2012.

This is now the time to register (Green Party) to vote and, most certainly, to vote for me, Michael Oatman, on election day, Tuesday 28 November 2012, and I thank you well in advance for your vote that day.

Sincerely,

Michael Oatman

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A new Facebook page for the Truth Party

Here’s a post to the Facebook group called the Truth Party. The idea is that there should become a new political party in the US, called the Truth Party, since both the Democrat and Republican parties have made themselves out of line with the common goals of the People of this nation, and therfore should be made irrelevant.

The Facebook page for the Truth Party is at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=38182145308.

Here’s the post:

Hello,

I came across this group while looking for a new political party, which had its ideals based in Truth and not in lies, rhetoric and mass public manipulation, as do the Democrat and the Republican political parties. I myself do not think that the policies of the Libertarian political party are pragmatic enough, and the limited scope of both the Green and Communist political parties do not provide them with the capacity to ever draw large numbers of voters “into their tent”. I had thiought that a new political party which is capable of representing the wide range of popular policies which benefit the People of the United States of America has been sorely needed since the 1980s, obviously so during the 1990s, and painfully so since the election of Barack Obama and the plurality of Democrats in both the House and Senate, any and all historical significance aside.

Therefore, I thought that a new political party had been needed to accurately represent the will of the majority of Americans. I thought a really good name for this party would be the Truth Party. Republicans have become (over the space of time since president Eisenhower) ever increasingly shown to be outright liars, starting with Nixon and crew in 1960 and worse yet when elected following the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968. The entire basis of (G.H.W. Bush and) Reagan’s “trickle down” economic policies have been shown time and again to be an outright fabrication produced only for the benefit of the already rich, and George W. Bush has been widely viewed as the worst president in the history of the nation for nearly every single action he performed while in office. Democrats have fared no better since president Carter, insofar as that president Clinton seemed intent on rejecting unions and workers rights and standards for the benefit of Global Fascists and their corporate shills on the same level as Reagan. President Obama, who was elected just as Clinton was, on a tidal wave of popular “hope” regarding “the economy, stupid”, has so far failed as horribly as Clinton in terms of providing a better standard for the workers of this country, the majority of the populace, at 70-80% of the total workforce. Obama has done noting for the workers, while simultaneously giving trillions to the already rich banks and bankers in the form of bonuses. He may publicly speak against it, but he has done absolutely nothing to prevent it (the “Pay Czar” has no teeth), and has encouraged it by giving the banks the money in the first place, rather than, say, spending less money by simply bailing out every underwater mortgage in the country. Obama obviously believes (or at least acts), like Reagan, that “trickle down” policies work, where it is painfully obviously to the majority of americans that he is completely incorrect and out of touch.

Both the Democrat and Republican parties are entirely Fascist, being completely beholden to global businesses and their lobbyists to have the ability to get elected or even cast a vote. The People of these United States of America deserve the opposite of this, and the Truth Party should be beholden only to the People. In fact, despite their acted public quarrels, the Democrats and Republicans have almost everything in common on issues of monetary and economic policies, favoring global capitalism as a means of resource extraction to benefit the already rich, foreign policy often to the same end, and policies on outsourcing the military and prison functions to private contractors owned by the already rich. The Truth Party will oppose all of these policies, so as to benefit all of the People of these United States of America.

The false dichotomy between the brands of Republican and Democrat provides the People of this nation with the illusion of a choice while presenting a singlar choice of complete Fascism (which is rule by the corporate structure) on a global scale, and our Fascist Supreme Court today has underscored this when they did not even bat an eye while they unanimously equated corporations with people (the ruling itself was 5-4 on the question of campaign financing, but no one on the bench questioned that corporations were people, which they are quite obviously not). The Truth Party must seek to remove the personhood from corporate law, and revert corporations to limited chartered activities for the good of the People of these United States of America.

The Truth Party need not have a position on so-called “wedge” issues, like abortion rights, gay marriage, flat taxes and the like, but rather should concern itself with corporate personhood, monetary, economic and foreign policies, workers’ rights and standards, and the betterment of the overall lives and livelihoods of we the People of these Unioted States of America. The Truth Party should not be confused with the 9/11 Truth movement, although there may be many shared ideals, and should never be comingled with the “Birthers” and other crazies. The Truth Party should demonstrate itself to be the salvation of the 95% or so of the People who are not already rich, and should therefore wrest control of goverment from the Fascists currently in charge.

I propose that we use this dormant Facebook group to organize and publicize these efforts to return control of the nation back to the People of these United States of America. Please post a reply to this topic if you agree and then spread the word, so that work can begin!

Thank You!

Michael Oatman

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On “Change”, Understanding, and Personal And Corporate Responsibility

Hello, my name is Michael Oatman and I am running for President of these United States of America.

People in this campaign are using the word “change” so much anymore that is becoming nothing more than a buzzword.

But speaking about change without understanding the true nature of the problems facing this nation is really nothing more than giving simple lip service.

Similarly, talking about these problems without addressing the root cause is much the same, like pulling up a weed but neglecting to take up the roots.

The root causes of which I am talking stem from the policies of several organizations in this country — and abroad — and the members of those organizations are often in government and are leaders of big business, and often their allegiances cross party lines, because of a dialectical policy, which is the nature of these organizations.

I will name some of the organizations of which I speak, and some names may be familiar to you: the Council on Foreign Relations, the Project for the New American Century, the Bildeburg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Heritage Foundation.

These organizations’ primary objective is to attempt to control and direct the future of this nation and the world.

Their goal is to eventually form a one world government, a New World Order, over which they will have a direct control, or they may have an indirect control, but if so only through the same manipulative practices.

The manifestation of that goal in this nation is seen in what Greg Palast so adeptly calls “The Bush Cycle”, where we see leaders from business becoming lobbyists or even presidents and vice presidents, or secretaries of defense, and then when their term is done — or their lies are discovered and they are forced to resign — they retreat back into the business sector.

Now, at first blush, that seems fine, to augment a distinguished career in the business world with one in public service, but this is not the sum of it.

What happens is that these people will bring their industry’s concerns to their roles as head of some oversight agency or another, but that agency which they are heading seems always to be the one which provides oversight to the industry of which they had just been a part. As such, industry always gets its way.

Then when they retreat back into the shadows of the world of big business they are rewarded handsomely for providing taxpayer-funded windfalls to that industry.

Now, why this mechanism happens to be the vehicle for control in this nation is because of the nature of corporations in the United States.

The laws in this nation are largely written by corporations, for corporations, and at the expense of the public and the resources of the public, with the blessing of the judiciary.

There is legally no liability of a corporation to the public at large, but only a responsibility to the stockholders to maintain the highest return possible to those investors.

Corporations are neither required to recognize any externalities which may figure into their computations on how to maximize their profits, nor are they required to work for the public good.

In fact, corporations are essentially required to do neither of these things in order to keep the profits up for shareholders.

What a quandry.

Some people consider this to be a “Culture of Greed” which started in the 1980s under president Ronald Reagan, but it goes much further back.

Please see the Timeline of Personhood Rights and Powers for detailed information on this subject.

Corporations used to be chartered for a specific, time-defined purpose, for a particular common good which was spelled out in their charter, and would dissove after that.

Nowadays, corporations are global in scale, timeless in scope, and We the People seem to be getting more powerless against their collective will, all with the help of the judiciary, but mostly the Supreme Court.

This is why we see that this so-called “Culture of Greed” has manifestations in all areas of corporate malfeasence, namely: the mortgage and housing crises, global outsourcinng and national job level migration to the service sector, the health care crisis, the worsening quality fo good and particularly toys, environmental destruction and climate change — or if you prefer — Global Warming, the skyrocketing prices of oil and gas, and the total lack of development of alternative energies in this nation to name only a few.

Furthermore, this influx of corporate leaders into the highest echelons of government has produced: all of the wars and secrecy surrounding those wars, spying on the people of these United States of America, massive constitutional subversion and an extreme rise in power of the executive branch of the federal government, the absence of any meaningful campaign finance reform or restrictions on lobbyists, and massive, massive foreign policy errors which have the potential to set our nation back for years before those errors are healed.

When I am elected, I will call on all of us to teach and or require that corporations begin and continue to act responsibly toward the people of this nation and toward the resources of the people of this nation.

We can do this if we are determined and we act as if we are even more determined.

Let us all vote for Michael Oatman on election day 2008 and let us all Take The Power Back!

Thank You,
Michael Oatman

————–

Michael Oatman For President of
these united States of America!
Blog: http://blog.MichaelOatman.com/
Website: http://2008.MichaelOatman.com/
MySpace: http://ms.MichaelOatman.com/
Take The Power Back!

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