Sovereigns Peacefully Take Charge: An Agenda for Liberty and Justice

By Allan Matthews

Reviewing how we the people became sovereigns, this book encourages citizens to become peaceful activists to supplement representative government. The author declares seventy-five grievances against the United States government. He proposes or endorses remedies in the forms of constitutional amendments or ordinary statutory law, some of them of popular initiative and referendum. Much of this entails transfer of powers from the national government back to the people or to local, state, or transnational governments. The proposals include reforms at the United Nations and measures to end world poverty, spread health care and education, and manage resources for a sustainable environment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 12, 2006
• ISBN: 9781465332561

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SOVEREIGNS—PEACEFULLY—TAKE CHARGE

An Agenda For Liberty and Justice

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ALLAN MATTHEWS

SOVEREIGN PEOPLE PRESS

Arlington, Virginia

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Review of the first edition of the manuscript and suggestions for improvement by the late Doris Haignere Matthews are acknowledged and deeply appreciated. Artist William Jensen created the front cover. Professor Jennifer Sims contributed helpful comments.

The author feels special obligations to the insights, writings, and actions of A. Powell Davies, Martin Luther King Jr., Clarence Streit, Ira Glasser, Jeremy Stone, Ralph Nader, Edmund Morgan, Samuel Beer, Frances Moore Lappe, Lester Brown, Jennifer Harmon, and Harry Lonsdale.

Copyright © 2005 by Allan Matthews.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Revised edition. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 96-092954

ISBN Number 0-9655953-0-7

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

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Contents

LIST OF GRIEVANCES AND PROPOSED REMEDIES

WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT

PART I

WE, THE SOVEREIGN PEOPLE

1

DECLARATION OF GRIEVANCES AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT

2

SOVEREIGNTY

3

THE PEOPLE ORGANIZE AND DIALOGUE

4

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

PART II

THE PEOPLE AMEND CONSTITUTIONS

5

POWERS OF THE PEOPLE

6

POWERS DELEGATED TO STATES AND COMMUNITIES

7

POWERS APPROPRIATE FOR DELEGATION TO TRANSNATIONAL GOVERNMENT

8

REFORMING NATIONAL CONSTITUTIONS

PART III

ORDINARY LAW AND TREATIES

9

NEEDED ORDINARY LAW

10

UNITED PEOPLES AND UNITED NATIONS

11

FAIRER WORLD

PART IV

AGENDA FOR TAKING CHARGE

12

EIGHT-STEP THREE-YEAR AGENDA

APPENDICES

For Kim and David Matthews

‘The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.’

—Abraham Lincoln, Second Annual Message to Congress, 1862.

TABLES

1.   Six Duties of Citizenship

2.   A Social Contract—Declaration of Sovereignty, Rights, and Responsibilities

3.   Employment and Expenditures, by Part of Government.

4.   Programs to Balance U. S. Federal Government Budget .

5.   Potential Receipts from New Federal Government Taxes

6.   Global Energy Resource Base

7.   Renewable Energy Targets

8.   Apportionment of U. S. Public Expenditures

9.   Eight Regions of the World

10.   Income of Low-Income Economies in 2005 and 2010

11.   Eight-Step Agenda

FIGURES

1.   The Sovereign People Exercise Four Powers

2.   Eight Seats on Proposed United Nations Security and Development Council

LIST OF GRIEVANCES AND PROPOSED REMEDIES

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WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT

It is time, as a last resort, to embrace self-government.

Each of us seeks adequate health care, jobs, comfort, and security. Most of us must get along with only part of what is possible. A relentless corrupt corporation-politician power structure obstructs progress and even rolls it back. The remedy is for the real sovereigns—we the people—to bypass the corporation-politician coalition and peacefully take charge of society. We can prudently leave most of the operations of government to our present system, admirable in so many ways, but only if there is far more openness, oversight, and regulation.

A way the majority of the people in the United States can improve their lot is to take these five steps: (1) Acknowledge that the citizens—not any governments—are the real sovereigns. (2) Reason that Article V is only one way to amend the U. S. Constitution. (3) Use a petition to insist getting on the ballot a proposal for an alternative way to amend the U. S. Constitution by means of a popular initiative and referendum system similar to the proposition system in California’s state government. (4) Use the alternative procedure to place on ballots proposals for new amendments to the U. S. Constitution on such long-term principles as human rights, regulation of corporations, and waging of war. (5) Use the alternative procedure to place on ballots proposals for new laws (having the same legal standing as laws passed by the Congress or state legislatures) on such short-term changing issues as universal health care, minimum wages, and environmental quality.

The voters have the right to do these things—not adequately tended to by federal or state governments—by directly exercising their own sovereignty. A majority has no need, on bended knee with hat in hand, to ask whether the elected representatives approve.

The validity of the proposed alternative way to amend the U. S. Constitution is affirmed by Yale University Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar and Hartwick College

Professor Alan Hirsch in For the People, The Free Press, New York, 1998. Supreme Court justices take a solemn oath to uphold the U. S. constitution as amended and therefore would have no legal basis for judging against the expressed wishes of a majority of the people.

The five proposed steps toward progress by the American people could also be taken by people in other countries. Anarchy is the senseless situation among the nations of the world. It is still supported by Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, which instructs the organization not to intervene in matters which are essentially within the jurisdiction of any state. Now the changed world necessitates replacing that provision, says Paul Heinbecker, formerly Canadian representative to the United Nations, so that the U. N. can legally stop humanitarian catastrophe, prevent the development and spread of weapons of mass destruction, deny international terrorists refuge and fight organized crime.

A concrete step to reduce world anarchy would be to federate the democracies, at least on a regional basis, into larger nations—not super states of a world government but rather federations governed by the people. Representatives of federations and of non-democratic countries could sit together in a reformed United Nations and manage world affairs peacefully and productively by treaties.

Surely a compelling reason for organizing better government is to continue the pilgrimage toward a fairer world. We must change our ways everywhere on earth to eliminate poverty, extend health and education, and manage resources for a sustainable environment.

Candor calls upon us to recognize that the status quo has benefitted many of us to a greater degree than justifiable. Bargain prices on consumer goods are made possible by exploitation of workers. Quite a few of our apparent home runs really resulted from being born on third base, as some wit said. Few have been sufficiently activist to earn fully the title of conscientious citizen in the public interest. The corollary is that advancement from the status quo to a more democratic and just society by definition must involve reduction of privilege and overcompensation which flowed from historical accidents and distortions. The well-to-do may at long last learn a somewhat different conception of what constitutes a good life. That may be considered a reasonable cost well worth the benefit—a fairer society.

What follows is one person’s recognition of human problems and some proposals—mostly originated by others—of what to do about them. The constraints of limited time, incomplete understanding, and solitary endeavor have unfortunately resulted in omission of many problems and remedies. Perhaps the most useful property of this book may be the conceptual framework. It could be used to help anyone fit together the elements of their particular value system. Whatever the sovereign people—not the government and not the market—want, that should always be the order of the day.

PART I

WE, THE SOVEREIGN PEOPLE

1

DECLARATION OF GRIEVANCES AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT

Representative government is not working as satisfactorily as it could in the United States or anywhere else. The fundamental defect is that policies in all governments are usually shaped by and for self-interested minorities and only occasionally reflect the will of the citizen majority. The principal abuses by government—either directly or through collaborating business corporations—are denial of certain human rights, corrupt election financing, overmilitarization, unfair distribution of income and wealth, unrepresentative upper legislative chambers, excessive allowances of environmental pollution, and inadequate stewardship of natural resources.

The failure of government to be truly representative is due primarily to the absence of sufficiently instructive constitutions ordained and periodically updated by the people. The practice of liberty, justice, and government are fundamentally flawed in the United States because the people who legalized (ratified) its original constitution—either themselves or their descendants—have failed to this day to uphold their sovereignty and have defaulted to state and national legislatures the essential function of proposing amendments to update and otherwise improve their constitutions. A most damaging and ridiculous interpretation of the U. S. constitution occurred when the Supreme Court ruled in 1886 that a business corporation was a person and entitled to the rights of a person.

It follows that the only way for the government of the United States to become really representative is major reform of the constitution. Two centuries of experience prove that the government—legislature, executive, and judiciary—cannot adequately reform itself. This is because elections—heavily influenced by big money and discriminatory procedures—are corrupt. The people can repossess their government only by reaffirming their sovereignty and taking all the steps—from proposal to ratification—basically to reform the constitution. The amendments would follow from—as did the original constitution from the Declaration of Independence—justifiable grievances and be responsive to them.

It is not easy to identify and define accurately the principal political, social, and economic grievances of the majority and at the same time give due weight to the rights of individuals and minorities. The grievances about to be specified are those of the author. He hopes they may be a pattern in the sense of coinciding with the present or latent grievances of the majority of his associates on earth. At the end of each stated grievance is an assigned number in parentheses, corresponding to numbered remedial constitutional amendments proposed in Part II (Chapters 5-8), or an assigned letter in parentheses corresponding to lettered (lower case at first, followed by capital letters) remedial ordinary statutory law or treaty proposed in Part III (Chapter 9)

So here are serious grievances—seventy-five of them—which one sovereign delivers to government, followed in later chapters with considered opinions by him or others for remedy:

Democracy o Initiative and Referendum—When the Congress and state legislatures take action—or fail to take action—against the will of the citizen majority, there is no recognized remedy for the sovereign people to overrule them. Waiting up to several years for a voting opportunity to replace poorly performing representatives is usually too lengthy and too useless a recourse (1).

Democratizing Business o Corporation Charters—Business corporations often obstruct competition, block unionization, exploit foreigners with practices illegal in the United States, exert undue influence on legislators, and are deceptive in contract negotiations and advertising. The government allows an inadequate crackdown on corporate crime, fraud and abuse, while the biggest corporate criminals remain at large, says Ralph Nader (2).

o Rights of Corporations—Corporations were outrageously ruled by the U. S.

Supreme Court to have the rights of persons (3).

o Size of Business Corporations—Some business corporations are too large to avoid near monopoly or to be consistent with democracy. Family-scale farmers, organized in the Nebraska Farmers Union in 1982, demonstrated how to counter such a problem by persuading voters to amend the state constitution to outlaw further corporate farmland purchases or production of livestock. Encouraged by Alfred Dreyfus Samuelson, they won the relevant ballot vote by 56-44 percent, despite a big-business coalition outspending them 15:1. They also survived a challenge taken to the U. S. Supreme Court (a).

o Membership of Board of Directors—Directors of business corporations represent only one section of society—stockholders—and in corporate decision-making undemocratically have their votes weighted by amount of stock possessed (b).

o Contributions to Candidates and Officeholders—Corporation money corrupts political elections and the actions of political candidates and office-holders (4).

Delegation of Powers to Governments o Powers to Nations or Localities—Bureaucracy at the national level is too centralized and distant from the people. This diminishes the quality and effectiveness of public programs in health, education, social services, public safety, housing, and public works (5).

o Powers to Nations or Federations—Many people of the world continue to be exposed to war, tyranny, poverty, and environmental degradation largely because there are no transnational laws to limit the aggressions, injustices, and degradations committed by national governments in the national interest, by organizations, and individuals. Treaties such as NATO and the United Nations are insufficient and undependable (6).

Human Rights o Freedom of Speech and Privacy—The USA Patriot Act, 342 pages signed on October 26, 2002 as Public Law No. 107-56, is in crucial parts unconstitutional. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against it on July 30, 2003. It explains that the act violates the First Amendment by authorizing the FBI to investigate individuals for questionable speech without probable cause of a crime and by prohibiting a person interrogated from disclosing that fact to others. The act also violates the Fourth Amendment by allowing secret intrusive surveillance without probable cause and without a judge’s warrant. That provision was declared unconstitutional by New York District Judge Victor Marrero on September 29, 2004.

Although most states have shield laws protecting the anonymity of persons who give information to journalists, some states do not. Furthermore, federal courts do not offer such protection and sometimes threaten imprisonment of journalists refusing to divulge their sources. Freedom of speech, partly because constitutionally guaranteed from suppression only by the government, is often denied by police in the streets and parks and by proprietors in private property serving the public such as business offices and malls. Efforts are frequently made to impose censorship on the basis of vague, imprecise, or unwarranted terms such as indecent, patently offensive, and unsuitable for children." Persons telephoning while driving are as likely to be involved in a crash as if they were drunk, reports Dan Carney. They take three times longer to brake, weave in and out of lanes, and are oblivious to some events around them, his research indicates. Hands-free phones are of little help, because the real hazard is mental and physical distraction. (7,c)

o Discrimination—In employment selection, setting pay rates, promotions, educational admissions, and insurance rates, there is frequent discrimination against women, racial and ethnic minorities, homosexuals, and aliens. Such discrimination in voter registration, credit, housing, public accommodations, education, and employment in the past has produced unfairness in the present which can be equalized only by affirmative action and other means. (8,d). o Separation of Church and State—Pressures are constantly applied by certain religious adherents to breach the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. Some government agencies, especially at the local level, have yielded to a wrongful degree (9). o Treatment of Prisoners—Visiting psychology professor Robert Jay Lifton at Harvard Medical School recognizes an ’atrocity-producing situation’—one so structured, psychologically and militarily, that ordinary people, men or women no better or worse than you and I, can regularly commit atrocities. He similarly believes, also very probably erroneously, in sadistic impulses, dormant in all of us. The weakening of U. S. resolve about humane treatment of prisoners and other detainees was discussed by Eyal Press. The journalist reported the proposal of Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz to allow judges to issue torture warrants to try to prevent suspected terrorist assaults, and the opinion of U. S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner that if the stakes are high enough, torture is permissible. President George Bush, according to his counsel Alberto Gonzsales, issued the edict in February 2002 that, the Geneva Conventions do not apply to al Queda and that, under the Third Geneva Convention, Taliban detainees are not entitled to prisoner of war status, i.e. its protections. Then came news of the U. S. torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Iraq (10).

o Executions—Thirty-six states and the national government, after court trials, condemn certain convicted citizens to death and kill them. Retired U. S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. calls this barbaric and inhuman punishment that violates our Constitution … . The state does not honor the victim by emulating the murderer who took the victim’s life. Massachusetts Chief Justice Paul Liacos judges that the death sentence is torture in the guise of civilized business (11).

o Health Care—Most people in democracies consider that universal payment of reasonable medical costs from public funds is a human right. The U. S. government neglects that right. Private and public medical costs in the U. S. as of 2002 were about $5,000 per person compared with $3,000 or less in Europe, Canada, and Japan (OECD). Yet the U. S. lags behind Canada and twenty other countries in life expectancy, infant mortality, and maternal mortality. (U. N. Development Programme and OECD). A significant part of the excessive cost of U. S. medical care is the fragmented payment system requiring doctors and hospitals to deal with hundreds of different insurance plans and complicated rules and submit paperwork on each treatment not only to patients but to a variety of companies and agencies for approval and payment. … the market-based model has not worked and has only pushed health care costs higher. Meanwhile, over 41 million Americans have no health insurance and many more are under-insured. A national health insurance program would be modeled after Medicare and would save over $200 billion annually … . Physicians and patients alike are being held hostage to decisions of for-profit insurers, according to the Physicians’ Working Group for Single-Payer National Health Insurance. (Richmond and Fein) (12)

o Health Assessment—Diagnostic and court decisions on health and medical matters are often inconsistent and extreme. There is a compelling need for a well-funded semi-autonomous agency to carry out technology assessment in health care. A center for the assessment of new and existing technologies could help physicians, hospital administrators, private insurance companies, government agencies, and the public to distinguish innovations that are truly valuable from those that provide small or no benefit at great cost, say Fuchs and Garber (14).

o Antibiotics—The U. S. government allows antibiotics to be used excessively in animal feed, irrigation water, and other commercial uses. The residues going into human bodies develop resistance in bacteria and thus in many instances block the effectiveness of antibiotics previously useful in curing disease. (e).

o Tobacco—The U. S. government has not signed the U. N. Framework Connection on Tobacco Control, adopted by the World Health Organization, even though 9 percent of world deaths in 2000 were associated with cigarette smoking, and deaths attributed to tobacco are projected to reach 10 million by 2030. (Brandt and Richmond) (f).

o Medical Marijuana—The U. S. government, through its Drug Enforcement Administration, has inflicted pain and prison threats on persons growing, selling, and using marijuana (cannabis) for medical purposes. Up to 80 percent of Americans approve of medical marijuana, according to Nieves (g).

o Education—Thomas Jefferson believed, "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves. And if we