Might I suggest the addition of three “revolutionary changes to the current OWS demand list. Please keep in mind that I am not a lawyer and my only purpose here is to convey the SPIRIT of the changes needed. I will include a brief discussion pertaining to and immediately following the text for each suggested addition to the list primarily as a background/ historical footnote. Each of the three priority additions to the demand list is demarked in bold text. Following each addition text is an associated footnote in normal text. The discussion provided in each footnote is intended to present additional information in the form of background information or explanatory opinion. The three additions to the demand list follow below.
(1) Change the Congressional legislation which not only permits American corporations from creating offshore divisions and other corporate associations for their businesses; but encourages this practice by providing tax incentives to American corporations that engage in such relocations.
Footnote # 1: [Here is some background for general information purposes. The original law was passed by Congress in the 1970’s to provide relief for the high unemployment in America’s urban areas, which were defined in the legislation as “enterprise zones”. The law provided significant tax incentives designed to attract business to relocate or build new manufacturing facilities in these inner city “enterprise zones”. Sometime later, during the late 1970’s, Puerto Rico suffered a severe economic downturn. Congress reacted to the dire emergency situation in Puerto Rico by simply editing the “enterprise zones” law to add the words “including OFFSHORE areas” (or similar language). With the modification of the law many high tech corporations (Hewlett Packard, Digital Equipment, etc.) responded to the situation by building new production manufacturing facilities on the island mainly to secure the attractive tax breaks and the lower cost labor pool. In the 1980’s up to the present other corporations have used this law to relocate factories to Mexico and eventually to China, and the rest is history.]
(2) The air space covering the United States of America belong to all of the people of the United States. The American Federal Government has been appointed administrator of this natural resource by the Articles of the U.S. Constitution. The American Congress as the legislative arm of the federal government provides controls over the distribution of this space for electromagnetic propagation transmission and reception into specific operational bands. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) performs an executive responsibility by providing management and individual control over the use of each of the respective operational bands. The framers of the Constitution never intended that any portion of any respective operational frequency band should be used for the uncontrolled broadcast of any form of pernicious anti-Federal Government, propagandistic demagoguism. Congressional legislation is necessary to prohibit the broadcast of propagandistic demagoguism the programming content of which is an advocacy of perdition, treason, anarchy and or violence against the U.S. Government and any elected member thereof.
Footnote # 2: [Over 40 years ago, AM broadcast networks and stations became an obsolete industry across the United States. Economically TV had finally sucked the lifeblood out of this dominate medium of the 1930’s thru the 1950’s. AM stations were abandoned just like the textile mills of old, and remained on the market for decades just for the bottom level price of the scrap value of the broadcast hardware alone. Nobody wanted AM radio period.
However, a few very rich political right wing individuals decided to buy up some of these old AM stations as their own personal hobbies, and use them as broadcast outlets for their so- called “conservative ideology”. They initially used an interview format in their programming format as this required the minimum amount of advance scheduling and virtually no programming resources to broadcast. Obviously, the guests selected for the interviews were well known strong supporters of “conservative issues”. Since these stations were completely subsidized by the wealthy owners, there was never any need to worry about making a profit from local advertisement revenues to keep the station operating and on the air.
The success of recycling these old AM stations as right wing propaganda outlets soon attracted other wealthy right wing individuals, and over a period of time various groups of AM (Talk) stations morphed into several network configurations, many of which exist today. The problem with the network configurations is that pre-recorded talk shows are broadcast from one central big city location to a myriad of “remote” AM stations located in small towns across various regions of the country. The local people were fed a carefully constructed diet of right wing hate propaganda and misinformation over the airwaves with no program input from people within the locality.
Democrats eventually became sensitized to this new political tactic and introduced legislation to provide” equal access” to these local stations by the people who actually lived in the area of each AM station. This became known as the “Fairness Doctrine” and was actively opposed by Republican members of Congress over the years. Like many other attempts by Congress to write legislation to solve a politically intensive problem by creating a governmental entity designed to serve the best interests of the public; this attempt also resulted in a weak watered down political “compromise”. The FCC was given jurisdiction of overseeing that AM stations abided by the “local access provisions” of the legislation. However since the members of the FCC serve at the pleasure of the President; the amount of vigor given to supervising just how well the local access provisions of the legislation are followed is obviously dependent on which political party currently controls the White House.
However, the failure of the enforcement of the Fairness doctrine cannot be attributed to the Republicans alone. The Democrats have also been complicit in allowing these pernicious right wing Talk Networks to continue broadcasting bold statements, which are clearly the very essence of slander, perdition, treason, and anarchy. Many of these statements are outright urgent calls to members of their listening audience to commit acts of violence against selected members of Congress, and have extensively included President Obama.
In 2007 a group of Democrats tried to pass legislation that would have prevented the Fairness Doctrine legislation from expiring. It was heart breaking to see that there was but one lone person, Senator Byron Dorgan (D- North Dakota) fighting against overwhelming odds just to get the legislation to the floor for a vote. He was ignored by virtually the entire Democratic caucus, including the Majority Leader, Senator Harry Reid. Needless to say after a week of fighting to raise interest among his fellow Senators, Dorgan was forced to retire. Even President Obama refused to sign an extension for the Fairness Doctrine in a fruitless effort to appease Republicans as he deemed their support necessary at the time for his ambitious legislative agenda. Over the entire the life of this legislation, the Democrats have constantly traded support of the Fairness Doctrine for Republican support for some other bill that they considered more important. ]
(3) This is the sworn oath for all members of the Federal Government including all members of Congress.
“I ______. Do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation feely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
We the citizens of the United States hereby demand that ALL violators of this oath regardless of Federal office or position must be subject to immediate impeachment and removal from said office. Further, any elected member to any position in the Federal government who belongs to any organization foreign or domestic that espouses an ideology advocating destruction, elimination, or incapacitation of the Federal Government either on the legislative or revenue level, acting individually or in conjunction with any other individual or organization domestic or foreign shall be deemed guilty of treasonous conduct and shall be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Footnote #3. [The question of holding officials elected to federal office accountable for their sworn oath of office is currently being widely discussed in Blogs and postings published on the web. The overwhelming majority of these publications appear to be raising the issue of enforcement of faithful commitment to all the provisions of the official Oath of Office. This issue has become part of the national conversation primarily due to the hundreds of Congressmen who are currently serving whom also are signatories on a pledge to Grover Norquist (head of the Americans for Tax Reform organization) not to support any legislation to raise taxes at any time under any circumstances. The Norquist pledge stands in sharp contradiction to the intent and scope of the formal Oath of Office required to be taken by all federal office holders prior to assuming their respective positions in the government; in particular the words in the oath that read, “I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion”. I fully agree that this division of loyalty constitutes a prosecutorial offense and must be speedily addressed.
However, my reason for addressing this problem is not confined to Grover Norquist and his “No Tax” pledge. My concern is the number of officials currently holding government positions that are members and supporters of the ideology of Libertarianism. The ideology of the Libertarians has the well-defined goal which demands the destruction of all government including first and foremost the American federal government. Since many members of the Libertarian Party were brought into Ronald Reagan’s first presidential campaign as Republicans, Libertarianism was given the cover of legitimacy by the Republican Party and has been subsequently ignored as a threat ever since. The Main Stream Media (MSM) likes to use the expression “”Libertarian leaning Republican” whenever it is forced to consider Libertarian/Republicans in terms of their personal motivational ideology. My contention is that “Libertarian leaning Republicans” would still do everything within their power to eliminate the federal government even if no such Grover Norquist pledge existed. Therefore it is my contention that any legislation that addresses this loyalty problem must not be specific to any one individual, or organization that is attempting to share any level of loyalty with government officials; its scope must be written so as to generally cover all potentially divisive situations that could affect a person’s loyalty to the American Government. The long and short of it is simply this, if one has any other loyalty that would interfere with his/her unquestionable loyalty to the American Government, they should not take the Oath while refusing to take the respective office.