Campaign Finance and Kai Arrested at the Supreme Court

I'm going to start this blog up again.  I'm planning on blogging on a mix of topics, including legal analysis and my dreams for ways to build better institutions.  I would like to start off by talking about campaign finance and a friend of mine who was arrested for speaking during the oral argument for the Supreme Court case McCutcheon v FEC.  This case involves a conservative businessman from Alabama suing the FEC to try to lift restrictions on his ability to give money to political candidates and parties.  Here is an article on the case and its effects.  I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will not overturn 40 years of precedent, but it is a possibility.  I'm of the opinion that the system is already so broken that, while this would certainly be a step in the wrong direction and have an impact, the overall tenor of the system would be the same... money controls politics.

Anyway, my friend, Kai, was arrested for speaking during court. Here is a Washington Post article on it.  Here is the video of him, a video that is also not allowed to have been taken in the court.  There is a real problem in our society when you are arrested for speaking out of turn but you can legally bribe politicians.  We are a part of 99Rise, which is a movement of people against government corruption.

I have been thinking about the social system of campaigns and campaign finance, and I wish there was a way to change it that did not undermine first amendment rights.  I disagree with the effect Citizen's United has had, it has extended the reach of big money.  And at the same time I would rather expand the right to free speech and change the campaign system in another way that limits how actors behave than do a frontal assault on the logic of Citizen's United and other free speech.  Attacking free speech is a slippery slope, the 1920s saw ridiculous restrictions on speech that I would never want to see happen again.

Just to be clear, I do not think money is speech.  The conduct of spending money may have speech dimensions, but I think it is more akin to commerce than speech.  I think we should consider how we can put restrictions on the flow of money using the commerce clause and in contracts law in such a way that it would be hard to claim that it limits speech.  Hopefully more ideas on how to do that later.

Brainstorming New Political Systems

The political system needs a good deal of reform. Now with corporations able to pump as much money as they want into elections, there is going to be a much larger amount of corruption than before. So I think it would be a good idea to try to dream up different political systems that would avoid the pitfalls of corporate domination and moral bankruptcy.

1. Electing Ideas. I do not think that politicians should be the prime electees. Voting on broad goals (not specific things, like the referenda in CA often take the form of) would be a much more fruitful system... the system wouldn't get stuck in personal attacks and mudslinging, and corruption would be a much less endemic because it is much harder to corrupt ideas than it is people.

2. Electing officials through a series of trials. We should have a set series of tests and trials that officials have to pass through to become elected. These trials would put the skills of the candidates to the test, and all trials would be broadcast and chronicled by the media. People would have discussion forums to discuss how the candidate did and who was the top competitor. And trials could last a long time. One trial could be One trial could be managing a small government agency. Another trial could be to live on welfare for 2 months. The trials would be designed to both test the individual as well as acquaint them with the country (or state or whatever) they are going to govern.

3. Local Townhall meetings to set general goals of the bureaucracy in small areas. Included in this are a webpage forum for people to discuss things.

4. Some sort of public forum that is more participatory than the current media structures. I am not sure what that would look like.

5. Organized volunteer public works - the government should be more involved in organizing people to improve their locality.

6. Free, voluntary education programs. Basic for any thriving democracy to thrive.

Ok, that is all I have time for right now.

Wars are Arguments

All wars are arguments about something.  This principle can even be expanded to conflicts. These arguments are about a wide variety of things... in the context of war between governments, the arguments are often over the assets that help create power; land, resources, rights to use common resources, and public perception of the government's credibility.  Revolutions and insurrections are often an argument over the role of government, how it treats people, and the government's and rebel group's credibility.  Even personal conflicts are arguments about something, such as money, or one party feels insulted and the other party refuses to apologize (which can also be boiled down to the perception of credibility).

Violence is not inherent in conflict, arguments are.  Conflicts end when the argument is resolved in a way that both parties can agree on.  Historically, the majority of both parties believed that if your armies were defeated in violent war, then you were defeated and should defer to the victor's will.  For the most part, war was seen for over two millennia to be the ultimate arbitrator to resolve international conflict.  This was possible thanks to the simple fact that everyone involved made an unspoken agreement that if you were defeated in violent combat then you stopped resisting.

This stopped being the case on the international scale around the time of the Napoleonic wars when the democratic and industrial forces changed the nature of warfare.  Famously the Spanish, who were defeated by Napoleon's armies, simply refused to be defeated.  They had shaken loose the mental straight-jacket that said violent war was the ultimate arbitrator.  Their resistance, while often violent, was a sign of things to come, where simply defeating an army was not enough to bring a solution to the argument.

You are not defeated as long as you still have the dignity and will to resist.  Threats of death and even death do not produce obedience or even an end to the argument.  "Fearful people do not act well."    The logic of violence presupposes that the opponent will act in a certain way, which is obedience.  This social construct is entirely escapable.  Refusing to embrace it confounds the violent opponent, because they simply do not know how to respond; conferring a significant advantage both tactically and strategically.

When a violent force confronts a non-violent opponent, it is the violent force's objective to provoke the non-violent opponent into becoming violent.  The violent force always has the advantage when it comes to violence, so it is to their advantage to deprive their opponent of the advantage of being non-violent.  If the non-violent force has the discipline to maintain it's dignity and remain non-violent, it deprives it's opponent of the ability to use violence in a legitimate way.  When violence is used against a stubbornly non-violent force, the violent organization loses its legitimacy and credibility, and is often shamed into surrender.

It may seem odd that a violent enemy can be defeated through non-violent means.  But remember, all conflict is an argument.  The point of the conflict is to get the other side to concede to a mutually agreed-upon conclusion.  Convincing the other side to agree will never again be as simple as it was before the Napoleonic Wars.  Non-violent resistance to violence will always sway the opinion of onlookers in favor of the non-violent party, it is a principle of human nature.  It will even go so far as to make the violent party question themselves and their actions.  That is the power of non-violence, it creates allies who pressure the other party, it undermines the other party's power (support from their population/allies), and makes the other party question itself about its own actions and motives.  This pressure, both external and internal, will always lead to a more beneficial agreement to the conflict for the non-violent party.

Reflections on Organization

I am convinced more and more that effective organization combined with a vision for the future are essential to changing this society. Nothing short of this will have the ability to shift the debate decisively toward justice. My college experience has taught me this vital lesson.
The first student group I started in college failed because it was all vision and no organization. I learned so much about organizing by doing that, and taking that responsibility. It was a crash course in organizing, and I am so glad that I had that experience. The next clubs I helped found showed me the importance of organization. Operation Iraqi Freedom (Brown's anti-war group, abbr. as OIF) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) gave me a good contrast to look at what effective organization can do. As much as I love OIF, it does not have as much of a vision as SDS, mostly because it is narrowly defined as an anti-war group. SDS is multi-issue and is able to articulate a much broader and more compelling dream of a better world. OIF was able to draw alot of attention to the war issue, but I think it has been unable to significantly shift the debate about the war in the Brown community (yet!). It is almost like preaching to the choir. Brown students already mostly agreed that the war was terrible and needs to be ended, so raising awareness did not need to be the primary goal. The primary goal would have needed to be trying to mobilize people, creating a forum for people to discuss what they could do, and setting goals to achieve. I feel that OIF has not managed to do that, and I think that is because its politics did not embrace a vision for the future that would have spawned goals.
SDS was better able to push the public dialog because it could look at a problem, apply its vision to the problem, and come up with a novel goal that was generally new to the dialog on Brown's campus. Presenting new ideas and giving people a concrete, local goal to "hope for" and work toward will mobilize people. And if there is effective organization behind that mobilization, it can really do amazing things (like signing up 1/6 of the student population into a new student union in two weeks. YEAH SDS!).
So, having had experience with groups that had vision, but no organization; organization but no vision; and one with both organization and vision, I have found that having both is far more effective at changing things. These groups are also more appealing (to me).

Governments are an interesting entity to analyze through this lens. They have plenty of organization, but no vision. Even when certain politicians have vision, and actively express it, the organizational inertia of the government often seems to be unmovable. This may be why so many people are cynical about government, because even if you have strong organization, you cannot do much without the proverbial compass of vision to point you in the right direction. However, like all organizations, governments are movable through outside pressure. A large movement of people can push a government toward doing something.
But this is not the way governments are supposed to be. Theoretically, a government is supposed to be a forum to discuss the issues on people's minds, a representation of the collective will of the society, and the organ which is supposed to act on that will. People always blame the government when social problems arise and/or continue to exist. That is because
the government is the institution charged with protecting, reinforcing, helping and stabilizing society (and the people within it). It seems that the current governmental structure in these United States does not fulfill its goal. I think that part of the reason for this is because government is no longer defined as just another institution in society that has a specific purpose.
I am not sure what the government is now defined as, but I have the feeling it varies between different groups of people.
Anyway, I want to figure out how to structure a government so that it can really be what it is supposed to be.

What is the government?

I have been thinking about the concept of "the government." It is a tricky idea, because it has mutated into such an odd organization. It used to be, mainly, the forum for the public (or those appointed by the public) to make decisions about what needs to happen for the benefit of the entire public; a tool to enact those decisions; and a social space for conflict resolution. Hence, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. But, it has separated itself from the public and ceases to play this role in its entirety.
I have come to the conclusion that the government should literally be the public. It should not be this conceptual "other" that is has power over you. It should be the place you go to exercise your power. But how would one construct a government that is re-merged with its community?
I do not know the answer to that question, yet. I am certain it would look quite different from the government we have now, which gives off an aura of all-powerfulness and authority. It would embrace participatory democracy, certainly, but I am still trying to figure out the institutional organization. I have managed to narrow it down, though, to some needs and goals. The decision-making arm needs to be directly democratic, and have a vibrant and accessible public forum for the discussion of issues and problems. Every citizen should feel able to engage in these debates and input their opinion, while being able to directly act on their beliefs through regular referendums. I think we should elect ideas instead of people. Of course, necessary in this system would be a culture of participation and consensus. This would be harder to create than anything else.

In other news, I have not heard back from the PIRGs about whether I got the organizing job with them or not. I guess that probably means not. oh well. And sadly, the ac adapter cord for my laptop has stopped working, so I have had to order a new one of those. My laptop will be out of commission for the next week. I have been thinking about starting to look for day laborer jobs until I find a long-term job, so I will atleast be able to make alittle money to support myself. I will probably start that after I get back from Christmas.