305 - Conservatives Confront the Ideas of Occupy

Program Notes

[NOTE: All quotations are by Bruce Damer.]

“I think it’s clear to everyone on the left, the right, the center, every walk of life, that we have to undo a mess that’s been created, a tangled mess. And we have to remake the System. There’s no way to reform the System. We must re-do it.”

“If you put out a powerful vision, the universe just lines up the stones and the pebbles and allows you to walk toward it. As long as you’re pure in that vision and you really vision it, and you really share it, it’s amazing how these things come to pass.”

“Silicon Valley and its progeny have reinvented the world, and [the tools they have created] are now the tools by which we will reinvent politics and the economy.”

“The Occupy Movement is like the tip of an iceberg, but underneath the water is 95% of the volume of the discontent and of the volume of the powerful organizing.”

The Radical Remake Wiki

Bruce Damer’s Web Site

The DigiBarn Computer Museum

Indian Man, Jadav “Molai” Payeng, Single-Handedly Plants A 1,360 Acre Forest In Assam

The Joe Rogan Experience

Transcript

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Greetings from cyberdelic space.

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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

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space. This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon. And to begin with,

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I want to thank our fellow salonners who either bought one of my books or made a direct donation to the salon. Your support is really heartwarming and greatly appreciated. And while I’ve written

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to the direct donors, I have no way of knowing who those wonderful seven people were who purchased

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one of my Kindle books on Amazon last month. but I feel your love and I thank you very much.

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Also, I want to give a shout out to my dear friends Ron and Claudia who have added so

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much to my life and my wife’s life all these past years.

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Hey you guys, we deeply appreciate all that you’ve done for us and all that you continue

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doing for us.

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You’re the best.

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appreciate all that you’ve done for us and all that you continue doing for us. You’re the best.

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Now, about today’s program, I’ve been wanting to podcast this interview for several months now.

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When Bruce Dahmer first gave this interview for KSCO Radio in Santa Cruz, California,

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it was right at the height of the first phase of the Occupy movement, and I was afraid that it would get lost in all of the other news about the movement.

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As you’ll hear in just a moment, Bruce is one of the people who has engaged with the

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movement in a very positive way, and one that hopefully you’ll find of interest and a way

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for you to connect with as well.

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The interview itself took place on November 19th of last year, which was 2011 for those

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of you who are joining

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us from the future.

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And this was shortly after Bruce first published his paper that was titled, that is titled,

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By and For the 99%, a Visionary Blueprint for the Radical Remake of America, or any

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other country, or simply Radical Remake for short.

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any other country, or simply Radical Remake for short.

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To me, one of the fascinating parts of this interview is listening closely to the comments of the callers.

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And I have to give a lot of credit to Bruce here, because my response to some of the callers,

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well, they’d be something to the effect that I think they’ve now got more than one screw

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loose and that they’re morons.

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You can see I’m kind of a grumpy old man these days, huh?

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But then, now that I’m an old guy, I get to be grumpy every once in a while.

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And while I don’t think that many of the callers had their facts even close to correct,

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nor was their logic very functional,

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what actually did impress me about them is that

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even in this very

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conservative tea party loving radio audience, they actually had more in common with the underlying

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thinking behind the Occupy movement than they really had any clue about. But that’s just my

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impression. Now let’s give it a listen and we’ll see what you think. Our country is in a turmoil

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and people are running around protesting,

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but rarely having any suggestions

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for fixing our monumentally complex problems.

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It’s becoming increasingly clear to many

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that we need a radical remake of our political system

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in order to preserve the greatest country in the world.

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Google Bruce Dahmer, D-A-M-E-R,

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and you will discover a most unusual and brilliant person

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who was recently featured on the Dr. Future program here on your favorite radio station.

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A serious thinker, world traveler, engineer, problem solver, and all-around good, nice person,

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Dr. Dahmer will present his fascinating visionary blueprint for a radical remake of America

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this Saturday, 10 a.m. to 12 noon, right here on 1080 KSCO.

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The reason we’re using the special music fanfare,

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it is so unusual to have something positive on talk radio.

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It’s so unusual these days.

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Everything in the news is negative.

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Everything on talk radio is bitching

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and moaning and no solutions. It’s about time we had something positive and some solutions

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to the problems offered here. Now, one thing we can all agree on, ladies and gentlemen,

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and you can all agree with me on this, I’m sure, is that there is something dreadfully wrong with our government and our country

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and our political system and our world, and everything’s all bleeped up.

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I mean, you can all agree with me on that, right?

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So it’s with a great honor and pleasure that I introduce Dr. Bruce Dahmer.

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Hey, Bruce, are you there?

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I’m here, MZ.

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Cool.

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You’re there via Skype.

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You sound almost like you’re here, right here in the studio with me.

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You were on earlier this.

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We’ve been on the station a number of times with our mutual friends, Dr. and Mrs. Future,

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who I’ve got to say are just been very good friends for many years, really, really special people.

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And they brought just a wonderful dimension of positivity to this radio station, including you.

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And, you know, I didn’t get to hear the program as it went out.

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But when I heard about it, I said, I wonder if Bruce would consent to being on the Saturday special, and you did.

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So welcome aboard.

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It’s great to be here.

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Hopefully it’s not the Saturday night special.

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Well, anyhow, what we’re doing here is we’re offering, you’re offering a solution to the problem.

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And did I state the problem okay?

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Or maybe you can state it a little more eloquently.

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Everything seems to be falling apart, I guess is what you think.

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It does.

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And this happens to countries.

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We’ve seen it happen to countries all over the world.

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We saw it happen to the Soviet Union.

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We saw it happen certainly in Eastern Europe.

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We saw it happen over generations.

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We’ve seen it happen in the dictatorships of the Middle East.

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And countries get themselves screwed up.

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They get themselves tied in a knot.

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And often there are many prescriptions to get this knot untied.

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And the United States, I think it’s clear to everyone on the left, the right, the center,

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every walk of life that we have to undo a mess that’s been created, a tangled mess,

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and we have to remake the system.

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There’s no way to reform the system.

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We must redo it.

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Well, you know, I seize every opportunity I can to remind our audience that the reason that I’m in this business of talk radio here is because back in the late 80s,

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the planning department of the city and county of Santa Cruz had such a horrible reputation, which really hasn’t changed much in terms of being an impossible, frustrating,

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high blood pressure-inducing agency to deal with anytime you wanted to do anything with your property.

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Going to get a permit was like an act of Congress almost.

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And it was because we started a group called Citizens for Planning Reform, CPR,

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and we did a talk show on this radio station, which was then a music station,

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except for that two hours once a week.

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It was on Monday nights where we did the Citizens for Planning Reform, or CPR, talk show.

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And it was mostly people complaining about the system and not too many suggestions about

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how to reform it, even though that’s what we called ourselves.

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You bring up a very interesting point right now.

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It’s just don’t even think about reforming it.

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Just dismantle it and restart again.

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Now, how do you do that in such a way where there isn’t total chaos?

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I mean, if you’re going to dismantle something,

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that means there’s going to be some period of time where there’s no government at all.

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So how do you deal with that?

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Well, in our radical remake blueprint document, what we spell out,

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and I ask the listeners to kind of roll forward their clocks for a second and consider,

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and this is a very California thing, vision the possibility,

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And this is a very California thing. Vision the possibility.

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I look at what if the ideal circumstance had had come about in our country?

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However it happens, we’re not sure right now. But what if there was a constitutional convention about to to open all across the country and where all the groups,

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all across the country and where all the groups, all of the stakeholders in the great nation are about to rebuild and remake the country?

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What if this actually occurred?

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And then you can kind of work backwards from there.

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And you can say, okay, and we Californians know, perhaps everybody does by now, that if you put out a powerful vision, the universe just lines up the stones and the pebbles and allows you to walk toward it.

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As long as you’re pure in that vision and you really vision it and you really share it, it’s amazing how these things come to pass.

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share it uh it’s amazing how these things come up come to pass i’m sure that you know like steve jobs and steve wozniak in 1976 when they founded apple they had a powerful vision they wrote about

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it i’ve got a lot of the documents in my digibarn those guys just visioned where they thought apple

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could go in the best possible uh the best possible way And by golly, they got there.

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And so the radical remake, its first goal is to say,

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we’re going to describe a future America that’s being remade, being reconstructed.

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A lot of things have happened.

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A lot of things are happening.

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And say, hey, everybody, wouldn’t this be great?

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Let’s shape this vision.

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And then I think you’ll start to see the pathway toward that.

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Now, who can argue with that?

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I sure can’t.

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And I doubt that any one of our listeners can do that,

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although we will give them an opportunity to do so when we open the phone lines later on in the program.

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You mentioned DigiBarn.

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I want to, you know, you brought it up first.

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I was going to during the program.

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I have been to your DigiBarn, which is, are we allowed to say exactly where it is?

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Or, I mean, how do you tell it?

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We want to hear about the DigiBarn.

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Somewhere up in the mountains.

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Okay.

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Somewhere up in the mountains.

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That’s good.

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And your Digibarn is, I think, if not the, certainly a world-ranking museum of computer technology development.

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And you’ve got every kind of a computer there from a Cray supercomputer down to an Altair and everything in history.

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And it’s just the most amazing thing.

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And you decided to put this thing together a few years ago, huh?

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a few years ago huh yeah and you know mainly it was the passion for trying to understand how you know relatively at the time small group of people decided to make technology to remake the

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world which which did i mean we are here connected through the computer because of a handful of

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people who built stuff in the 60s and then a bigger handful in the 70s

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and a bigger handful in the 80s.

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So in some sense, that background gave me the belief and the evidence that, you know,

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with a small group initially and the use of technology and the use of positive thinking

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and the use of investment, you can change the entire world because Silicon Valley

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and its progeny have reinvented the world and they are now the tools by which we will

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reinvent politics and the economy.

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And that’s absolutely true.

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And I keep being reminded about the statement that Steve Jobsve jobs made to uh john scully when he was trying to get

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him to uh um come over to apple from from pepsi corporation or pepsico do you want to spend the

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rest of your life making sugar water do you want to change the world uh and so yeah you’re absolutely

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right so uh all right what where are we right now in terms of changing the world?

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You have authored two or three drafts of a document that you call the Radical Remake of America document.

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Yeah, it kind of, it certainly was very inspired.

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We were here in new jersey at the moment

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and sort of surrounded by occupy wall street events and we were my wife galen and i were just so

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inspired by this bottom-up push this this push that turned into a shove on thursday with the

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new york city’s finest about occupy wally Wall Street and, of course, all

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across America and the world.

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And I’m from Canada, and so I’ve been a lifetime observer of America, as most Canadians are.

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We’re sort of armchair observers looking south.

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And I’ve always wondered, well, here’s, I’ll roll back my clock a bit.

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Yeah, please.

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That’d be great.

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Well, I’ll roll back my clock a bit.

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Yeah, please. That would be great.

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In the year 2000, so I emigrated in 1985, but in the year 2000, I finally got, because the INS had lost my paperwork,

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I finally got to be sworn in as an American citizen, a very proud moment.

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And in the hall, there were 1,000 of us in San Jose, and the federal judge came in and he was an amazing guy you know just a beautiful he said i love this job this job is i love this part of my job it’s so

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creative it’s so you know compared to what else i do in in my job and then he told us something

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that was a pretty big shocker he said you your hand, you’ve been given a voter registration card.

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Now, let me tell you, we do not have a democracy anymore at the national level.

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U.S. citizens have no access, but we still have a functioning democracy at the local level.

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So please fill out your card and try to get involved.

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And it was like, this is what a federal judge is telling new

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citizens. Of course, after that,

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the 2000 election

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fiasco happened, and it was like, that was the

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first time I voted in this country.

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It was clear to me, we don’t have,

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not only we don’t have a functioning democracy,

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we don’t even seem to have a functioning

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Supreme Court. We don’t

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have a functioning electoral

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system. It was just all broken it

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was clear it was that was almost 12 years ago yeah yeah and so then in the last 12 years i’ve

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been thinking well has america really ever had a full democracy that you might find in the sort

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of democracy 2.0 countries the countries that got democracy in the 19th or 20th century and

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i kind of concluded it never has had a full democracy and what i mean by that is there’s

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always been a major chunk of society that’s been disenfranchised whether in the beginning it was

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women people of color people who didn’t own land uh and now today it’s um everyone is disenfranchised by special interest lobbying

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and money so we we’ve never had a taste of full representative democracy with multiple parties

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with flexibility with voice with you know people that aren’t rich i’m dying to know your answer to the following question. What country has had such an exposure and does, if there is such a thing?

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Well, interestingly enough, you know, me being a Canadian, I’m a little jaundiced about Canadian politics.

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But frankly, you know, Canada almost broke up twice.

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We had a separatist movement in Quebec, and we’ve had many challenges to our confederation.

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And it was always through public votes.

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The people in Quebec basically said, no, we don’t want to separate.

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And so no matter what, the people really spoke.

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And we’ve got four or five federal parties.

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We’ve got no special interest money in politics.

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And it never really occurred to me that Canadian politics was something special.

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But then I moved to the United States, and I sort of thought, hmm, it’s different here.

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I then moved to Czechoslovakia, which was converting from communism

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and reestablishing an elected, you know, a democratic system.

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And I watched how that country did it.

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And they had 50 parties in the first poll.

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It was really a wonderful chaos as they reestablished public interest in their governance.

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And then I was in South Africa right after the fall of apartheid

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and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where they basically people who had committed crimes in the previous regime came up and admitted their crimes for immunity.

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And that’s how they karmically cleaned the society as it became a democratic society. So all over the world, there’s different formulas, but the representation that people are able to affect in many other countries is direct, is certainly much more convincing than it is here.

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Right. Oh, my gosh. We’re talking with Bruce Dahmer, who is a world traveler. How would you describe yourself in like a paragraph?

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I’m kind of an architect.

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I’ve architected software systems for a long time.

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I’ve architected scenarios for NASA to visit asteroids

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and designed architectures for origin of life research.

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And this latest blueprint is just kind of an architecture exercise.

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All right.

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Well, I’m looking at the draft completed November 14th, which was just a few days ago.

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I’m going to read just a couple sentences to it. And I’ve already emailed John to our webmaster and asked him to post this on ksco.com in a prominent spot.

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It probably won’t be on the home page, but what will be on the home page is a prominent banner where you click on it,

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and it will take you to this document that you can read or download.

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you know, banner where you click on it and it’ll take you to this document that you can read or download.

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Buy in for the 99% of visionary blueprint for a radical remake of America or any country.

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This happens to be draft 3C. Where do the Occupy and other progressive movements go from here?

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The grievances and the villains have been clearly identified,

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the philosophy and the operational

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principles established, and there is a sense of optimism in the air that change is possible.

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I respectfully ask you to roll forward your clock to a day not too far in the future when

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by some set of amazing and unforeseen events, the ideal outcome has arrived.

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Hold this thought for a moment.

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So what would this ideal world look like?

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Anything you can imagine.

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So let’s put it all together.

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To get us started, I’ve pinned a modest blueprint for a radical remake below.

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Why do this kind of exercise, you might ask?

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Having a vision for the best possible outcome is essential as it

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gives you a point in space to aim at and we have all experienced that when a shared clear vision

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is held and actively pursued the universe always seems to provide all of the steps to reach it now

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i’m not going to read the whole document if i did did, it wouldn’t take but maybe, I don’t know, five or ten minutes or so.

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It’s not a difficult read.

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If it was, I wouldn’t be so fascinated by it because I’m one of the world’s slowest readers and comprehenders.

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But it’s not a particularly long document.

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It’s very understandable in plain English.

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So, you know, be looking at ksco.com.

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It should be up hopefully today unless our guy is, you know,

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incommunicado all weekend or something.

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If you want, you can send me an email, mz at ksco.com,

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and I’ll shoot you a response.

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And we’re talking with the author of that document, Bruce Dahmer,

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who is our guest on the Saturday special today right here on your favorite radio station.

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Now, let’s get into some specifics about what you recommend that we at least consider in your document.

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What really jumped out at me is the whole idea of lobbyists and special interest groups have sort of taken control of everything.

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I mean, any group that’s powerful enough or rich enough to be able to afford lobbyists

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to wine and dine the lawmakers and, you know, influence them,

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chances are going to get their way to the detriment of more people than not.

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And that’s probably the number one thing that’s wrong with our system.

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Would you say, Bruce?

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Yeah, and literally the first part of the blueprint it envisions the day when the

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constitutional convention opens and i know uh a lot of people uh you know from their high school

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history of america read about the amazing process by which the found the framers and the founding

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fathers put together the United States.

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And they actually had two conventions.

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But the intelligence and the leadership and the debate that went on,

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it was absolutely breathtaking how that was done.

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So can you imagine a 21st century constitutional convention?

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Now, what would have happened?

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What will happen at that convention?

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Because it will both be

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online and in physical locations everywhere so people can show up they can get to it the first

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vote and it would be a direct citizen vote through the net and through polling stations connected to

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the net would be to basically outlaw the practices of lobbying and right on the spot by direct citizen vote.

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And that would cut the umbilical cord between moneyed interest and the body politic.

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That would be number one.

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And by the way, prior to the convention opening, this may be weeks prior or months prior, all

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sitting politicians down to a certain level will have resigned their posts.

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Now, I don’t tell you how this would happen, but can you imagine what would have agreed

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and have left their posts and left the government?

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See, it’s a different world.

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It’s not the same situation now than when the country, you know, began.

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When the country began, you know, we were breaking away from Great Britain.

00:24:09 ►

And we were starting with a clean slate.

00:24:11 ►

I mean, there was nothing.

00:24:12 ►

Now there is something and quite a something, you know, that needs to be, you know, changed.

00:24:19 ►

And I agree with you, it needs to be abandoned.

00:24:21 ►

But I’m not quite sure, you know know there’s got to be if it’s

00:24:25 ►

abandoned you’re talking about people resigning i mean who’s going to do that who’s who’s going

00:24:31 ►

to give up that lifestyle the the people who are elected to anything whether it’s city council

00:24:37 ►

right on up to the presidency of the united states and all they care about is being elected and all

00:24:42 ►

they care about once they are elected is staying in office.

00:24:47 ►

And it dominates their life.

00:24:49 ►

And the reason it dominates their life is because there are unbelievable perks to be had forever.

00:24:55 ►

So how is anybody going to give that up?

00:24:59 ►

Well, there are many models to do this.

00:25:08 ►

There are many models to do this, but the main model is a large citizen group that not only goes across ordinary folks like you and me,

00:25:11 ►

but into the moneyed interests that support this goal, legal expertise, top-rate lawyers,

00:25:20 ►

business enterprises, media outlets, religious groups that have formed together into a large conglomerate.

00:25:29 ►

You might call them the new 13 colonies, and they are united, and they persist.

00:25:38 ►

And what they do is a number of things, from lawsuits to blockading offices to blockading entire government agencies

00:25:49 ►

to funding various enterprises.

00:25:54 ►

If it’s 10 million of us, is that enough?

00:25:57 ►

But this kind of force and this kind of pressure over time can absolutely whittle down the system

00:26:04 ►

and whittle it down and burn it down

00:26:06 ►

and burn it down wait a minute isn’t that what the occupy movement is is trying to achieve right now

00:26:11 ►

and as as it becomes more um as as it’s more and more in the news

00:26:18 ►

that the authorities are clamping down more and more right isn’t that what’s happening

00:26:24 ►

but behind the scenes so the occupy movement is like the tip of an iceberg.

00:26:29 ►

But underneath the water is 95% of the volume of the discontent and the volume of the powerful organizing.

00:26:37 ►

So, for example, what’s been happening in the last week is a new sort of super organization called unitedrepublic.org

00:26:45 ►

has come together and what that’s doing it it not only pulls in the goals of occupy but it pulls in

00:26:53 ►

a large amount of financing sent the best legal minds on this subject in in the country

00:26:59 ►

business leaders uh uh former you know disgruntled and dismayed politicians who’ve tried to make changes,

00:27:08 ►

even former lobbyists, people who know the system, military people,

00:27:13 ►

people who really know the system, they’re of the system.

00:27:16 ►

They are uniting now.

00:27:19 ►

And so in some sense, you think of the catapult of occupy through the first volley but there’s a whole

00:27:28 ►

machine that is able to throw another and another and another and i think united republic.org is one

00:27:34 ►

of those uh emergent phenomena that you know uses the net it involves the tea party it involves

00:27:42 ►

people on the left the right the middle uh it’s extremely inclusive but

00:27:46 ►

it has it has uh staying power and force where it’s going to count which is at the institutional

00:27:53 ►

level well i like the sound of that now you’re calling from somewhere close to new york city

00:28:01 ►

you’re in the state of new jersey now, yes? Yes, indeed, yep.

00:28:05 ►

Okay.

00:28:08 ►

And do you have a home there, you and your wife?

00:28:10 ►

We do.

00:28:16 ►

It’s a little kind of like a summer cottage, ancient place, really funky,

00:28:20 ►

almost like it would have been from Santa Cruz, but plunked on a lake here in New Jersey.

00:28:21 ►

Oh, my gosh. And how far is it?

00:28:35 ►

Oh my gosh. And how far is it? If you were to ring off right now and head straight, make a beeline for the site of Occupy Wall Street, the actual site, how long would it take you for you to be there?

00:28:37 ►

We could be there in an hour, actually.

00:28:44 ►

And have you gone there? Are you what you would call a participant in the Occupy Wall Street movement? We actually haven’t.

00:28:46 ►

And we’ve been trying to get in.

00:28:48 ►

And, yes, Thursday we watched all of the activities and decided that for a baby boomer like us, it looked a little bit challenging.

00:29:00 ►

So we’re hoping to go down.

00:29:02 ►

In fact, this radio program and this effort on Radical Remake is what I’ve been focusing all my energy on. We have two wonderful volunteers that are also working on this, one of them from Occupy Santa Cruz. And I’m hoping that if this can get some traction, and it’s starting to, that I can go down to Occupy.

00:29:21 ►

And maybe get some time and be able to get up and make a talk.

00:29:25 ►

Yeah, we can use the human megaphone.

00:29:28 ►

So it’s not as if you’re too old for that sort of thing, you know, being a baby boomer.

00:29:32 ►

I mean, you know, it’s sort of a hassle to go over there.

00:29:37 ►

It’s just that they wouldn’t give you enough time or any time to get up and talk there.

00:29:43 ►

Well, we kind of we the goals

00:29:46 ►

this week uh literally the goal this week was the confrontation and then the counter confrontation

00:29:52 ►

and that’s you know that’s stuff for experienced people you know if you look at those helicopter

00:29:58 ►

views from thursday it’s like whoa um so the the time for discussion of possibilities forward, I think, is now dawning because the message has gotten across.

00:30:13 ►

Okay.

00:30:14 ►

We’re talking with Bruce Dahmer.

00:30:16 ►

I want to talk with you.

00:30:16 ►

As promised, our first caller will be Paul and Carmel.

00:30:21 ►

Paul, you’re on the air with MZN Bruce Dahmer.

00:30:25 ►

Good morning, gentlemen.

00:30:27 ►

As usual, you always have a stimulating conversation to start off the morning with.

00:30:32 ►

I cheated.

00:30:33 ►

I borrowed it from the futures.

00:30:36 ►

And I give them full credit for Bruce.

00:30:40 ►

And I’m just sort of riding on their coattails here.

00:30:43 ►

I have a question for Bruce because I like his concept.

00:30:48 ►

Of course, a conventional constitution is a very dangerous thing,

00:30:51 ►

especially when you don’t have the kind of deep thinkers that our forefathers were.

00:30:58 ►

They came from an oppression.

00:30:59 ►

They were driven.

00:31:01 ►

They lived it.

00:31:02 ►

They had this experience.

00:31:04 ►

They knew what they did not want.

00:31:08 ►

They believed in individual sovereign rights,

00:31:11 ►

and they knew that that was going to be the basis of this newfound world experiment.

00:31:18 ►

The problem is that my getting to the question for Bruce is,

00:31:24 ►

one of the things that our forefathers did not do

00:31:27 ►

is that when they looked at business as far as corporations,

00:31:30 ►

they had no intention of having businesses be sovereign entities.

00:31:36 ►

And I believe that that’s what we need to kind of get back to,

00:31:39 ►

is that when you have a business and you’re a single proprietorship,

00:31:43 ►

yes, you should have constitutional rights

00:31:45 ►

because you are taking all the risk.

00:31:47 ►

It is your business.

00:31:48 ►

It’s something that you gave life to.

00:31:50 ►

But I think we failed when we gave corporations, who are no longer a single sovereign person,

00:31:59 ►

corporate rights of constitutional rights.

00:32:02 ►

And I think that’s really a big issue because corporates, who do you answer to?

00:32:07 ►

Who’s the individual?

00:32:08 ►

Who’s the sovereign citizen that is actually being affected?

00:32:12 ►

In corporations, there is no entity.

00:32:14 ►

It’s a board.

00:32:15 ►

It’s their individuals.

00:32:16 ►

They’re protected from their own personal loss, unlike a single proprietor where, you

00:32:23 ►

know, if he loses his business, it’s his house that’s on the line.

00:32:25 ►

It’s his livelihood that’s on the line.

00:32:29 ►

And I think we kind of failed when we gave corporations that citizenship of constitutionality.

00:32:38 ►

What do you think, Bruce?

00:32:40 ►

Paul is absolutely right on the mark. And in fact, Larry Lessig, who’s just a tremendous legal mind and fighter,

00:32:50 ►

he’s been called the closest thing to a framer or a founding father of a new republic as anyone in the land.

00:32:58 ►

And his book, Republic Lost, How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It,

00:33:03 ►

has just come out and he’s touring the country.

00:33:05 ►

And if your caller will allow me, I’d like to read a quotation from there that’s relevant to his thought.

00:33:14 ►

Sure.

00:33:16 ►

That is, this is from Adam Smith, who, as you know, is the founding father of modern free market economics from the time of the founding of the nation.

00:33:28 ►

And he wrote that people of the same trade, and this is in, you’re talking 18th, 19th century language here,

00:33:34 ►

people of the same trade seldom meet each other, even for merriment and diversion.

00:33:39 ►

But the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices.

00:33:46 ►

So this was the thinking that was very much going on at the time of the founding of the republic.

00:33:53 ►

And one thing to point out that your callers may not know that Jefferson,

00:33:59 ►

one of the great framers of the founding document. When he left his presidency, he wrote a letter that said, I tried and I couldn’t.

00:34:10 ►

At the time, I wanted a constitutional convention to be held regularly between generations so

00:34:18 ►

that we could constantly allow the people to directly update the document and protect

00:34:24 ►

us.

00:34:26 ►

And all of the founding fathers were cognizant of the power of merchants

00:34:31 ►

and the self-interest because, in fact, they were all self-interested merchants

00:34:36 ►

who gave up that self-interest temporarily to come together for greater benefit.

00:34:42 ►

So one thing Larry Lessig calls for is the rollback of those two terrible Supreme Court decisions,

00:34:48 ►

and that’s actually in the Occupy.

00:34:50 ►

Now, who can argue with that? I can’t.

00:34:55 ►

Hello?

00:34:56 ►

Yes, Paul?

00:34:57 ►

I’m still here.

00:34:58 ►

When I said, who can argue with that? I can’t,

00:35:01 ►

there was a pregnant silence that just went on and on and on and i don’t know

00:35:05 ►

why yeah but see the other thing too is that what i’d like to argue is the fact that corporations

00:35:12 ►

aren’t aren’t don’t have that citizenship sovereignty and that that’s kind of where i’m

00:35:18 ►

coming from where they or they shouldn’t have it anyhow right they’ve sort of been granted it this

00:35:23 ►

is what’s bothering you, right?

00:35:25 ►

Well, yeah, because what happens is that when they have a right to control themselves

00:35:29 ►

and then if you try and do a regress as an individual, who do you regress to?

00:35:35 ►

You regress to a corporate board.

00:35:37 ►

You know, there’s not an individual anymore.

00:35:39 ►

Right.

00:35:39 ►

And, you know, this calls, we have our Supreme Court justices who presumably read American history,

00:35:46 ►

and they’ve read a lot of the commentaries at the time of the founding of the republic.

00:35:51 ►

How could they possibly pass laws that they do now, or rules?

00:35:55 ►

How could they make rulings that they do now with the clearly expressed warnings of the founding fathers and the framers?

00:36:04 ►

It just boggles the mind.

00:36:06 ►

And you ask the question, is this even a functional Supreme Court?

00:36:13 ►

Obviously, in the year 2000, it wasn’t.

00:36:15 ►

It failed the people.

00:36:17 ►

We may have to look at a radical remake there.

00:36:20 ►

Well, now, wait a minute.

00:36:21 ►

Wait, wait just a minute.

00:36:22 ►

Wasn’t it the supreme court that decided

00:36:25 ►

you know the outcome of the 2000 presidential election they basically threw it back to the

00:36:32 ►

state uh just before the deadline and it kind of fell apart they the one one supreme court justice

00:36:39 ►

uh at the time i remember his comment it was a written comment in the decision, which was, never have so few disenfranchised so many.

00:36:48 ►

Well, I think the other argument, too, is that, you know, our forefathers,

00:36:52 ►

they had this thing, and she believed in a certain amount of status

00:36:59 ►

in that they had a basic understanding of what a gentleman’s agreement is.

00:37:04 ►

You know, we selected officials, and we have judicial officials,

00:37:07 ►

and we have, you know, our representatives who take this oath to, quote-unquote,

00:37:12 ►

defend the Constitution of the United States, and, you know, some of them have never read it.

00:37:18 ►

They don’t, you know, those are just words that they’re swearing an oath to.

00:37:21 ►

I mean, I thought it kind of unusual that when Boehner, you know, actually

00:37:26 ►

read the Constitution in the House of Representatives for the very first time, that that was really,

00:37:32 ►

I mean, I was shocked at the idea that here we have a bunch of elected officials reading

00:37:37 ►

the Constitution for the very first time, and they’ve been spouting on it as if they

00:37:41 ►

knew anything about it.

00:37:43 ►

Yeah, it’s pretty outrageous.

00:37:47 ►

Hey, Paul, thanks for your call on Saturday special.

00:37:49 ►

We’ve got quite a number of other people here.

00:37:52 ►

We want to get to Ace and Live Oak Jack and Salinas, Jimmy and Scotts Valley.

00:38:03 ►

We’re talking with Dr. Bruce Dahmer about the notion of having a constitutional convention.

00:38:06 ►

In fact, having multiple constitutional conventions.

00:38:07 ►

Am I right, Bruce?

00:38:13 ►

I mean, the place needs to be rebuilt altogether, doesn’t it, the whole country? It does, and, you know, we see the stresses on the system.

00:38:17 ►

You know, our good friends over in the Tea Party, you know,

00:38:19 ►

they had a powerful movement and a very clear message,

00:38:23 ►

and what happened to them, of course, they were successful.

00:38:26 ►

They penetrated inside the beltway and the amoeba of the beltway.

00:38:29 ►

But then what happens?

00:38:31 ►

The dark bubble descends.

00:38:34 ►

And all those people who are inside the beltway, and if you’ve been to Washington, you’ve been involved, as I have in activities in Washington,

00:38:42 ►

as I have in activities in Washington,

00:38:46 ►

there’s a reality bubble that descends upon you,

00:38:50 ►

and then you realize, I don’t know where I came from.

00:38:54 ►

I’m now part of the organism, and I must raise money, must raise money. And you get gobbled up.

00:38:57 ►

I mean, sort of everybody’s like that.

00:39:00 ►

That’s just what I did when I told people that they should buy Kay’s book.

00:39:03 ►

Because we do need to raise money to keep KSCO.

00:39:06 ►

Everybody needs to raise money to keep everything going.

00:39:09 ►

I mean, that’s the economic reality of life.

00:39:12 ►

But not the kind of money that the politician must raise and the kind of money.

00:39:16 ►

Well, that is true.

00:39:17 ►

And or two.

00:39:18 ►

Incredible.

00:39:19 ►

By the way, Ellie Kramer has written a sort of nasty email here.

00:39:26 ►

I probably shouldn’t read it because of its nastiness.

00:39:30 ►

But I’m going to read it because it does bring up a point that I was going to bring up.

00:39:34 ►

And we keep talking about this being a democracy, and I always thought it was a representative democracy, a representative government.

00:39:42 ►

MZ, if I were the judge that granted your guests U.S. citizenship, I would ask for it back.

00:39:48 ►

It appears like other lefties of his ilk.

00:39:51 ►

He judges the health of the Supreme Court by how it decides a case to his favor or not.

00:39:59 ►

He thinks this is a democracy.

00:40:00 ►

What about the Democratic Republic that it actually is?

00:40:04 ►

Learn about what you discuss before

00:40:05 ►

you open your mouth and that’s from ellie kramer who used to be a talk host on this station ellie

00:40:10 ►

you should call and engage a discussion here with uh with bruce it would be very interesting

00:40:14 ►

anyhow bruce what do you think i’d love to talk to ellie you know i hear the anger in his voice

00:40:21 ►

and i think uh the frustration that he has and there’s some

00:40:27 ►

energy there and obviously if you have a talk show host he’s got something to contribute and

00:40:31 ►

and this radical remake site that we’ve launched at radical remake.wikispaces.com

00:40:38 ►

is for input for him to put his words in for him to put his opinion in for him to to be heard this is not

00:40:47 ►

just about bruce damer i’m i’m hoping just to seed this i want to encourage 10 000 drafters there

00:40:54 ►

there ellie kramer now don’t you feel terrible that you were so nasty to to uh our guest and

00:40:59 ►

he’s so kind and gentle back to you anyhow here’s our next caller asa in live oak you’re on the air on ksco

00:41:05 ►

asa hi well i’m outclassed by all your callers however i’m more ancient than all your callers so

00:41:12 ►

i i presume the right of age to say a word or two and my from my standpoint i love our Constitution the way it is. I love our people the way they are.

00:41:27 ►

I love our mess the way it is.

00:41:29 ►

And I am frightened that there are people that want to change it into something that is much more rigid

00:41:37 ►

and gives me much less freedom and will not tolerate the fact that I’ve grown old.

00:41:43 ►

They want, you know.

00:41:44 ►

You know, Bruce, wait a second.

00:41:46 ►

Asa, just a second.

00:41:47 ►

We’ll let you talk.

00:41:48 ►

But, Bruce, I think you need to make it clear to people that you don’t want to kill the Constitution.

00:41:57 ►

You just want to sort of update it.

00:41:59 ►

Am I right?

00:42:00 ►

Yeah, we want to propose.

00:42:02 ►

We want to be true to what Jefferson wanted, which is Jefferson wanted a convention to be held regularly so that the citizenry and the whole member society could say, gee, we need to add this amendment. But the amendments would come directly from the needs of the day.

00:42:27 ►

We need to add this. We need to do that.

00:42:29 ►

We kind of do it in a haphazard way right now.

00:42:33 ►

But it’s it’s really about that.

00:42:35 ►

So that, you know, as easy as you could, if you had an idea, you could put it in.

00:42:40 ►

And if enough other people thought it was it held water.

00:42:44 ►

By God, it might be something

00:42:46 ►

that was added to to the fundamental document oh my god we have less than a minute for the news

00:42:51 ►

but go ahead yeah go ahead the ideas of freedom and individual liberty are precious and they are

00:42:56 ►

not to be lost by people’s little ideas of george soros and his ilk to help finance this whole thing. I really want our freedom and liberty and personal liberty and freedom to be preserved,

00:43:11 ►

and I don’t see how any great mass of people who are poorly educated,

00:43:16 ►

because our educational system has been so bad,

00:43:20 ►

creating a document that is in any way superior to our system.

00:43:23 ►

Asa, do you want us to hold you over?

00:43:24 ►

We’ve got the news in ten seconds.

00:43:26 ►

No, I’m not.

00:43:27 ►

Well, thank you for calling the Saturday special.

00:43:30 ►

It’s KSEO Santa Cruz, Salinas, Monterey, San Jose, back in six minutes.

00:43:35 ►

Our special guest is Dr. Bruce Dahmer,

00:43:38 ►

who has written an amazing treatise, an amazing draft of a radical remake of America.

00:43:45 ►

Bruce is here via Skype.

00:43:47 ►

He’s actually in New Jersey.

00:43:49 ►

Yes, Bruce?

00:43:50 ►

Yes, indeedy.

00:43:51 ►

Okay.

00:43:51 ►

And we’ve invited callers to 479-1080 and e-mailers to mz at ksco.com.

00:43:58 ►

We’re going to go back to the phones now and sort of zoom through this if possible here.

00:44:03 ►

We’re going to go to line three, and that’s none other than Jack in Salinas.

00:44:08 ►

Hey, Jack, welcome to KSCO.

00:44:09 ►

You’re on.

00:44:11 ►

Hello, Michael.

00:44:11 ►

Hi, Bruce.

00:44:12 ►

I just wanted to point out that you don’t have to look all the way to Washington, D.C.

00:44:17 ►

to see how the voters have been disenfranchised by our current government.

00:44:21 ►

You can see it right here in the California state government.

00:44:24 ►

I’m thinking Proposition 187 and more recently Proposition 8.

00:44:30 ►

And I’m sure, Michael, you can think of many cases where individuals have been disenfranchised

00:44:37 ►

and not given a voice right there in Santa Cruz County by the city council or the county government.

00:44:43 ►

I’m not concerned about them.

00:44:46 ►

They’re all given a voice on KSCO if they choose to use it.

00:44:50 ►

Right, but I’m just saying that you don’t have to look all the way to Washington, D.C.

00:44:54 ►

to see how voters have been disenfranchised.

00:44:57 ►

Here in California, the voters voted for Proposition 187.

00:45:02 ►

voted for Proposition 187.

00:45:04 ►

It was… They were disenfranchised by the state Supreme Court.

00:45:10 ►

They voted for Proposition 8.

00:45:12 ►

They were disenfranchised by the Supreme Court.

00:45:16 ►

And, you know, so that’s kind of the point

00:45:19 ►

that I wanted to bring up.

00:45:21 ►

It seems like the intellectual class in this country

00:45:23 ►

is kind of out of touch to me.

00:45:26 ►

And they, you know, I don’t know.

00:45:30 ►

Do you have any comments on that?

00:45:33 ►

Of course, Bruce probably doesn’t know what Proposition 187 is or Proposition 8.

00:45:38 ►

Sure he does.

00:45:39 ►

Don’t you, Bruce?

00:45:40 ►

Yep, I’m a resident of Santa Cruz County, actually.

00:45:44 ►

Here’s something to think, remembering back, remember when there was a few years ago

00:45:49 ►

when the election for governor was sort of thrown up in the air

00:45:53 ►

and all kinds of people came forward from Arianna Huffington to, of course,

00:45:58 ►

our last governor, Schwarzenegger.

00:46:02 ►

But lots of people decided they were going to throw their hats in the ring.

00:46:05 ►

And for a moment, for a moment, California had almost like a pluralistic electorate or electoral system, just a glimmer of it.

00:46:15 ►

And of course, it fell back down into just two parties, which is, of course, a huge problem that there’s only two political parties of power in the country.

00:46:23 ►

That’s it’s a ludicrous situation.

00:46:25 ►

No other country has such a situation.

00:46:28 ►

But that could only be addressed really at the national level.

00:46:33 ►

Right.

00:46:34 ►

It seems to me, though, that a lot of times people’s,

00:46:37 ►

the powers or the people in charge allow their ideological views

00:46:44 ►

to disenfranchise the will of the people.

00:46:50 ►

And I think that is a big problem.

00:46:52 ►

I mean, if you’re concerned about the will of the people,

00:46:57 ►

or are you concerned about your personal ideological views?

00:47:03 ►

Yeah, and of course there’s someone in between them and you,

00:47:08 ►

and it’s called a broker, and that broker is a lobbyist who represents powerful money interests,

00:47:14 ►

and that is their true constituency.

00:47:16 ►

And you may have remembered G.W. Bush, that famous dinner speech he did about, I don’t know,

00:47:22 ►

10, 12 years ago at a banquet for wealthy donors to his campaign,

00:47:29 ►

and he said, you are my base.

00:47:32 ►

That’s true.

00:47:33 ►

Money is a problem.

00:47:34 ►

Money definitely is a problem.

00:47:36 ►

But aside from money, I see an even deeper problem where individuals who are in power in government believe that they know better than the citizens

00:47:46 ►

and they are not willing to listen to the citizens.

00:47:48 ►

And when the citizens vote, they believe they have the right to tell the citizens,

00:47:52 ►

no, your vote is not correct, like they did in California several times

00:47:55 ►

with the initiative process.

00:47:58 ►

That is exactly my point.

00:47:59 ►

And I think that’s what I’m trying to say is I think the intellectual class in this country is not in touch with the population.

00:48:07 ►

Not the people who have the money and the time to sit in a park in New York City,

00:48:13 ►

but the people who are out there working 12-hour days to feed their kids.

00:48:17 ►

Those are the people I’m talking about.

00:48:18 ►

Salinas Jack is right, Bruce.

00:48:22 ►

There’s no question that he’s right.

00:48:23 ►

There is no question he’s right.

00:48:24 ►

In fact, Alan Lundell said it on the Dr. Future show. right, Bruce. There’s no question that he’s right. There is no question he’s right.

00:48:27 ►

In fact, Alan Lundell said it on the Dr. Future show. I wouldn’t have said

00:48:29 ►

it this way, but he said,

00:48:32 ►

well, then throw the bombs out.

00:48:35 ►

Yeah.

00:48:35 ►

Who would argue with that? That’s what

00:48:37 ►

everybody I know thinks. Hey, listen,

00:48:39 ►

we want to thank Salinas Jack for calling.

00:48:42 ►

It’s time for our good friend

00:48:43 ►

Jimmy in Scotts Valley to be on the air on everybody’s favorite radio station.

00:48:48 ►

AM 1080 KSEO, you’re on, Jim.

00:48:51 ►

Hey, MZ.

00:48:53 ►

Hey.

00:48:53 ►

Thanks a lot for having me on the air.

00:48:55 ►

You’re welcome.

00:48:55 ►

Thank you for calling and waiting.

00:48:57 ►

Bruce, thanks for being such a thoughtful person and looking out for the people

00:49:02 ►

and trying to come up with a great idea that could help them out.

00:49:05 ►

Stop gazing at me.

00:49:08 ►

Most welcome.

00:49:10 ►

Where do I start?

00:49:13 ►

I don’t know.

00:49:14 ►

It just seems to me that if you’re looking at the solution of a constitutional convention,

00:49:21 ►

you might have the same kind of problems that presented themselves with the

00:49:25 ►

election of Barack Obama. Because what happened with Barack Obama is he promised change, but

00:49:31 ►

change meant something different to every individual who heard him say it. And so when

00:49:37 ►

those people voted for Barack Obama, they thought that he was going to represent the change that

00:49:42 ►

they had in their mind, whatever that might be, and the war, you know, whatever, health care, whatever it was,

00:49:48 ►

he thought they were going to solve that problem.

00:49:51 ►

And so they elected him, and he got in, and he didn’t really do any of the things that he talked about doing.

00:49:56 ►

And the same thing would happen with a constitutional convention,

00:49:58 ►

because if you can entice the people into opening up a constitutional convention,

00:50:09 ►

then the people that are in control of that convention are the ones that are really going to dictate what changes are made to the Constitution.

00:50:13 ►

But actually, you are absolutely on target.

00:50:18 ►

And so when I drafted the blueprint, the preamble,

00:50:22 ►

there was a famous preamble written for our original

00:50:25 ►

constitution, but the kind of preamble to it said, you know what, all the sitting politicians

00:50:32 ►

are out of office, they have resigned their offices before the convention starts, and

00:50:38 ►

the first vote on the floor of the convention, which is done by direct citizen vote everyone online at polling stations connected

00:50:46 ►

online the first of maybe a dozen new laws that are voted directly in cuts the umbilical cord

00:50:53 ►

between money and the body politic it makes makes lobbying illegal so you’re now starting with a

00:51:01 ►

clean slate and all those lobbyists on K Street, they can go home.

00:51:05 ►

They can go have a barbecue, and they’re not participants.

00:51:11 ►

I think the thing is, the problem is that the first caller that called in, I don’t remember what his name was,

00:51:18 ►

but the thing is he brought up a very interesting and important point in this whole thing,

00:51:23 ►

and that is I don’t like lobbyists in any shape, way, or form.

00:51:29 ►

But the problem is the Constitution allows for redress of grievances.

00:51:35 ►

And so if you make a Constitution a citizen or a person

00:51:39 ►

and has the same rights as a citizen,

00:51:41 ►

then those corporations have the right to send lobbyists to lobby

00:51:47 ►

because they’re recognized as a person and they have rights to redress their grievances.

00:51:53 ►

If there’s laws or restrictions on them doing business, they have the right to go there

00:51:59 ►

and do that.

00:52:00 ►

But you know, you could even draft a proposal that the second law that was directly voted upon at the convention would be to roll back this whole idea of corporations being persons to previous accepted norms, which were in place.

00:52:21 ►

And because the people are directly voting,

00:52:29 ►

they will cut that second umbilical cord at this convention. You’re making it a majority rule, like a mob rule

00:52:33 ►

situation, because there’s a lot of people out there that want the Constitution to

00:52:36 ►

kind of stay the way that it is. So, I mean, you’d have to abolish

00:52:40 ►

the Constitution in order to have the type of change that you’re talking about.

00:52:44 ►

Not at all. not at all not at all uh in fact the convention and i’m sorry to

00:52:51 ►

interrupt but it would preserve the original constitution but most of the the bad doo-doo

00:52:56 ►

that’s come up is extra constitutional rules and amendments and things that the framers themselves that’s what needs to be thrown out

00:53:05 ►

it’s the dross around the document and and a lot of that stuff has has been kicked in in the last

00:53:12 ►

only about 15 years i mean you’re talking about stuff that i’ve just just from a political

00:53:17 ►

standpoint i mean i’ve heard i’ve heard people bring up the constitutional convention quite a

00:53:23 ►

bit in relation to real hot button issues

00:53:26 ►

that you can you can you know throw these issues out in any conversation and get a bunch of heated

00:53:31 ►

phone calls about immigration or abortion or these issues i think it’s really great that you’re

00:53:37 ►

trying to come up with a solution but i really think that like the 80 20 rule pretty much uh

00:53:42 ►

you know governs what happens and so 80 of the people are going to dictate what goes on.

00:53:48 ►

And if you have a direct voting, like you’re talking about, a direct democracy,

00:53:54 ►

it really goes against the democratic republic that we have.

00:53:57 ►

And I understand that a lot of the people in Congress are just not, you know, people that you want to have there.

00:54:05 ►

But unfortunately, I mean, the only way that you could really do the kind of change you’re talking about is to start from scratch.

00:54:13 ►

Absolutely.

00:54:14 ►

You hit the nail on the head.

00:54:15 ►

Yeah.

00:54:16 ►

It’s a starting from scratch.

00:54:17 ►

Well, start from scratch with the same template because everyone agrees that, you know, the original template is a damn good one.

00:54:25 ►

Hey, Jimmy in Scotts Valley, thanks for calling the Saturday special.

00:54:28 ►

Here’s our next caller, R.C. in Aptos.

00:54:30 ►

Thanks for waiting, R.C.

00:54:31 ►

You’re on the air.

00:54:32 ►

Yeah, great topic.

00:54:33 ►

Thank you.

00:54:34 ►

I believe that we do need a constitutional convention, and I would point to our representatives selling out our economy to the Wall Street bankers,

00:54:48 ►

our national debt, which how does the richest country in the world rack up a $15 trillion debt,

00:54:55 ►

and the wars that we’re always in.

00:54:57 ►

And I really don’t see how our representatives can take us down another path other than debt and war

00:55:05 ►

and selling us out to the banking lobbies.

00:55:10 ►

But the problem that I have is that it goes beyond lobbying.

00:55:19 ►

For example, the super committee right now, they can’t agree on cutting spending.

00:55:26 ►

It’s not that they disagree on the cuts that they need to make.

00:55:32 ►

It’s that both sides, both Republicans and Democrats in that super committee,

00:55:36 ►

they both agree that they’re not going to jump off a cliff together

00:55:39 ►

and support some type of massive spending cuts in either social programs or defense programs.

00:55:49 ►

They’re just not going to do it.

00:55:50 ►

Their biggest priority is their re-election.

00:55:55 ►

And if they do something ridiculous, in their mind, like begin to start cutting spending

00:56:00 ►

or pulling back our military to a certain extent.

00:56:07 ►

They’re not going to be re-elected.

00:56:08 ►

My solution, I don’t really believe you have to make lobbyists illegal.

00:56:15 ►

My solution, the problem that I have with our system is the campaign.

00:56:21 ►

The campaign, in my opinion, is what’s wrong. If you eliminate political campaigns,

00:56:29 ►

there won’t be any influence from lobbyists because they don’t have campaign money to

00:56:36 ►

bring to the system. So you eliminate campaigns altogether and you choose your representatives or you figure out a particular way to maintain our representative democracy

00:56:49 ►

without the elements of the campaign.

00:56:52 ►

Because as long as there’s a campaign to be run, in my opinion,

00:56:56 ►

we’re going to go down the same path that we’re on right now.

00:57:00 ►

Because it isn’t corporate lobbyists that are telling, for example, the Iraq war.

00:57:05 ►

It wasn’t corporate lobbyists that told John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards to take the country to war.

00:57:12 ►

It was their campaign advisors who had told them that if they didn’t sign on to a popular war,

00:57:17 ►

it would impact their ability to run for president, which they all wanted to do.

00:57:22 ►

to run for president, which they all wanted to do.

00:57:30 ►

They all were sorry about that vote when it was obvious that the award didn’t turn out as well as their campaign advisors told them that it would.

00:57:35 ►

But in my opinion, it isn’t the corporate lobbyists that are the be-all and end-all. It’s the political campaigns that our representatives are,

00:57:47 ►

that they have to give the most influence to,

00:57:51 ►

because campaigns mean that you’re going to be reelected.

00:57:56 ►

Okay.

00:57:56 ►

Thanks very much for your call, R.C.

00:57:59 ►

Our next caller is going to be Margaret in Santa Cruz.

00:58:02 ►

So let’s put Margaret on the air.

00:58:03 ►

Margaret, you’re on KSEO.

00:58:06 ►

Hi.

00:58:07 ►

Hi.

00:58:08 ►

Happy M-Trail Saturday to you all.

00:58:11 ►

The West Side shoreline was hammered this morning.

00:58:15 ►

All cloudy now.

00:58:17 ►

Anyway, this is Margaret, and I just want to say that don’t forget that President of

00:58:22 ►

Abortion has Elena Kagan warming the big white bench right now,

00:58:28 ►

and she never once stood before a judge as a lawyer, and she neither has President of Abortion.

00:58:34 ►

Now, neither of them have defended a legal case in a courtroom ever, and Kagan is a Goldman Sachs, you know, minion.

00:58:44 ►

And Kagan is a Goldman Sachs, you know, minion.

00:58:52 ►

So to get this country radically renewed, like your show promo analogy, a radical mastectomy, you have to begin with the courts, the core of corruption, and why are all these justices in there for life?

00:59:02 ►

I mean, that’s their preference, not their bosses, which is we the people.

00:59:10 ►

And instead of…

00:59:11 ►

Okay, these are all things that would come up in a constitutional convention, Margaret.

00:59:15 ►

I mean, that’s… which is great.

00:59:17 ►

What do you… Bruce, Margaret makes some good points.

00:59:19 ►

And that’s why we need a constitutional convention to update everything, right?

00:59:23 ►

Absolutely.

00:59:24 ►

Absolutely.

00:59:24 ►

And, you know, when you look at it, if you have the constitutional convention and you have people looking back through history and you can say,

00:59:32 ►

OK, the Supreme Court is actually nominated politically.

00:59:37 ►

And let’s do a comparison between other countries that don’t have political nomination of judges.

00:59:42 ►

Other countries that don’t have political nomination of judges, the judges basically promote and nominate themselves from within their own ranks based on merit

00:59:49 ►

versus a politically nominated Supreme Court.

00:59:52 ►

And you might determine at the convention, say, guys, this is creating a swinging back and forth

00:59:57 ►

that is so damaging, and we’ve seen the damage that it’s done,

01:00:01 ►

that we ought to change the way we nominate our justices.

01:00:04 ►

seen the damage that it’s done, that we ought to change the way we nominate our justices.

01:00:13 ►

Why don’t we, instead of adding to the Constitution, why aren’t we first and foremost just best being served by adhering to the original Constitution?

01:00:17 ►

The only reason we’re in this trouble is because our original Constitution isn’t being respected

01:00:24 ►

or adhered to.

01:00:25 ►

You know, our nation’s president can’t provide a birth certificate that’s actually qualifying him to be in that Oval Office.

01:00:34 ►

So here we’ve got a president who has his secrets and our nation’s secrets and Goldman Sachs and La Raza and White Bench Rummers.

01:00:47 ►

Well, on the other hand, she makes a good point there, too.

01:00:49 ►

Anyhow, Margaret, thank you very much for your call to the Saturday special.

01:00:53 ►

Downtown Al is the last caller before we do a world premiere of the latest K’s commentary,

01:01:00 ►

which everyone should listen to.

01:01:02 ►

Go ahead, Downtown Al, you’re on.

01:01:04 ►

Hey, great show as usual.

01:01:07 ►

I just wonder, it’s Bruce, right?

01:01:09 ►

Yep, that’s me.

01:01:11 ►

I’m sure you realize the inherent danger in what you’re proposing.

01:01:15 ►

And I might suggest actually a more modest proposal.

01:01:19 ►

Most of the regulations and problems that we have to deal with are at a local level.

01:01:23 ►

Most of the regulations and problems that we have to deal with are at a local level.

01:01:29 ►

And I think it would be more useful maybe to really look at like a county or city and do it kind of in an experimental way, basically trying to revise as many things locally.

01:01:36 ►

You know, I kind of look towards natural systems and particularly like evolution

01:01:41 ►

in terms of like you work with what you have and the cutting edge is out there kind of at the outer margins

01:01:50 ►

where basically where the rubber meets the road.

01:01:53 ►

And, for example, I think there’s a lot we could do just within our state to see how it works.

01:01:58 ►

And what’s been so great or successful, I think, in this country

01:02:01 ►

is the fact that we have had all these 50 states at this point

01:02:05 ►

that are individual little experiments in democracy and representative democracy.

01:02:12 ►

And I wonder if you have any proposals at that point,

01:02:14 ►

because there really is an inherent danger in a constitutional convention,

01:02:18 ►

because I’m not sure we have a unified American culture anymore.

01:02:23 ►

If you look back at the origins of the founding fathers coming from England

01:02:29 ►

and the systems that they were familiar with, I’m not sure that we have that.

01:02:36 ►

And it isn’t always just moneyed lobbyists that can create a lot of problems.

01:02:40 ►

For example, we have a lot of race baiters in this country,

01:02:44 ►

and I’m not sure that

01:02:45 ►

they’re heavily backed, but they seem to wield a huge amount of power. Now, just jumping in here,

01:02:54 ►

because I know our time is short, I want to address some of your excellent points. Yes,

01:02:58 ►

the 50 states are an ecological proving ground for new and wonderful ways to run our affairs.

01:03:06 ►

And in fact, at a convention, they would all be presented as models.

01:03:11 ►

But the second thing, I think it’s a more vital point, is the national political system,

01:03:16 ►

the moneyed industrial military financial system is running off the rails.

01:03:21 ►

We may not have that many more years to go before we have a full-on crash so in a sense the uh the patient has already been wheeled into the emergency room

01:03:31 ►

and something needs to be done soon otherwise you know we could have a dire situation and in that

01:03:38 ►

circumstance it’ll be very hard to to get a common American convention together or anything in a reasonable sense

01:03:45 ►

because we’ll have had a full failure.

01:03:48 ►

And so it’s kind of late in the day, but the power of innovation out in the hinterlands where we are

01:03:55 ►

is going to come, and I believe that Americans are still Americans,

01:03:59 ►

and they will come together, and they’re decent to each other, they’re friendly to each other,

01:04:03 ►

and the extremists

01:04:05 ►

that are out there won’t have much of an ability to have a voice when ordinary Americans get

01:04:10 ►

going.

01:04:11 ►

I mean, I hope you’re right about that, because, you know, a lot of these religious interests,

01:04:14 ►

they’re not necessarily driven by money, they’re driven by ideologies, okay?

01:04:19 ►

And the same with a lot of those race baiters, that I’m not sure there is heavily, you know,

01:04:25 ►

moneyed interest behind them.

01:04:27 ►

It might be just a lot of individuals who really believe in what they’re talking about, you know,

01:04:31 ►

and that includes the anti-abortion people too, as well as the pro-abortion people.

01:04:37 ►

So it isn’t just well-moneyed lobbyists that can create a lot of havoc in this country.

01:04:44 ►

Yeah, I completely agree, but you’d probably also agree that it’s probably a fairly small number of people

01:04:50 ►

who create most of the havoc, whether they be in ideological sense, money sense.

01:04:55 ►

It’s actually probably fewer than 500 people that have gotten us into this mess.

01:05:00 ►

I want to thank you downtown, Al, for your call to the Saturday special.

01:05:04 ►

Always a great caller.

01:05:06 ►

That’s it for the calls for right now.

01:05:09 ►

I should read this short email from Bob Champion.

01:05:16 ►

We do not need to change the Constitution.

01:05:20 ►

We simply need to elect more people and appoint more judges who are strict constitutionalists.

01:05:27 ►

That’s the Tea Party’s position with which I most fully agree.

01:05:33 ►

And that’s Bob and Carmel.

01:05:35 ►

Okay, thank you, Bob and Carmel.

01:05:37 ►

Is there something else here?

01:05:38 ►

Let’s see.

01:05:39 ►

Okay, White Paper says constitutional convention would be a disaster.

01:05:45 ►

I agree with Ellie Kramer.

01:05:46 ►

Number one, for the guest to continually call the country a democracy discredits everything he says.

01:05:52 ►

The word democracy doesn’t appear in the U.S. Constitution or in any state constitution.

01:05:57 ►

Number two, 80% of the problems, like war that he mentioned, would be cured by our present constitution if we defeated those politicians ignoring it.

01:06:06 ►

Number three, his stakeholders, in quotes, the foundations, multinationals,

01:06:11 ►

lobbyists, billionaires, plus their thousands of non-profit fronts,

01:06:15 ►

would swamp the bedraggled group that might borrow enough money to show up.

01:06:19 ►

Number four, Americans are in no position to throw out what is left and be raped by forces that already have drafted a number of new constitutions.

01:06:32 ►

He doesn’t mention those, showing more naivety.

01:06:36 ►

Number five, how about teaching the Constitution in the schools once again?

01:06:40 ►

And end the habit of reflecting and re-electing and re-electing the dopes to office.

01:06:47 ►

We need to inform ourselves about our Constitution and dump the traitors.

01:06:51 ►

A constitutional convention would be a disaster and the end of America.

01:06:56 ►

And that’s from Gary Richard Arnold, a.k.a. White Paper.

01:07:03 ►

Okay, back to the phone lines we go now.

01:07:07 ►

Let’s go to Phil in Santa Cruz who’s on line one.

01:07:11 ►

Phil, welcome to the Saturday special with Bruce Dahmer and M.C.

01:07:15 ►

You’re on.

01:07:16 ►

Hi.

01:07:17 ►

I think that it would be a very simple fix to the Constitution.

01:07:21 ►

The Constitutional Convention, I think, would probably deteriorate, especially the way he’s outlined it, into a disaster that was predicted about 3,000 years

01:07:30 ►

ago by the Greeks. We’re slowly getting there. That is, the majority, when they find out they

01:07:35 ►

can vote themselves largesse at the expense of the minority, it’s all over from there,

01:07:39 ►

and we’re about two-thirds of the way there. But anyway, I think it would be a simple thing, one amendment to the Constitution that states something to the effect that voter fraud,

01:07:52 ►

there would be a required ID for each voter required in every state for federal elections,

01:07:58 ►

and voter fraud would be punished as the highest felony that the land has up to and including death

01:08:05 ►

because I think voter fraud is the highest form of treason,

01:08:09 ►

no matter what side you’re on.

01:08:10 ►

Right now it’s laughed at.

01:08:11 ►

It’s been found out, dug out here in this county,

01:08:14 ►

and the judge just throws it out and says,

01:08:15 ►

well, by my calculations it didn’t affect the election.

01:08:19 ►

It doesn’t matter.

01:08:20 ►

I think that then the mechanism intended by the founding fathers

01:08:24 ►

of the root of power being in the people

01:08:27 ►

and their voting would be preserved and let them campaign all they want to, let them spend all they want to.

01:08:34 ►

It would depend on the intelligence of the people and their common sense.

01:08:38 ►

And if they fail that test, so be it.

01:08:40 ►

It seems a little harsh what you’re suggesting.

01:08:43 ►

Who would be executed under your plan?

01:08:48 ►

The perpetrator of the voter fraud?

01:08:58 ►

Yes, I think they would have their full rights to a trial by jury.

01:09:02 ►

They would have to be proven guilty beyond the reasonable doubt, just like a murderer. And then they would either be sentenced to

01:09:09 ►

a life in prison or a death, depending on if they were organizing a voter fraud movement,

01:09:15 ►

as it were. If they were behind it, then I think that would warrant the death penalty.

01:09:19 ►

Because what they’ve done is they’ve taken the lives of our soldiers who’ve died in battle

01:09:23 ►

to defend the freedoms of this country and totally crapped on their graves wow not unlike what i know what some people are

01:09:31 ►

thinking right now well not unlike some people are thinking that our president is is one of those

01:09:36 ►

people he may be but he’d have to be proven guilty um in a fair trial. To jump in here,

01:09:49 ►

one of the perhaps the biggest voter fraud of all is the disenfranchisement of, you know,

01:09:52 ►

a huge proportion of the voters

01:09:54 ►

by the fact that even if you elect people,

01:09:58 ►

they are going to answer to very, very few,

01:10:00 ►

a handful of people who are the money power

01:10:03 ►

behind the campaigns and behind changing laws so

01:10:06 ►

you know you’re being defrauded every time you elect your official but the uh that’s why i say

01:10:12 ►

if it’s a fair election if it’s a free election and the people make a foolish choice and who they

01:10:17 ►

put in there then they have no one to blame but themselves that’s just why they’re um they’re

01:10:21 ►

not making the choice other people are making the choice. Other people are making the choice.

01:10:28 ►

They put the individual… What happened?

01:10:31 ►

He’s going to be corrupted.

01:10:33 ►

But to corrupt the whole process, that to me is the highest crime.

01:10:38 ►

Voter fraud in Chicago in the election that elected Kennedy

01:10:42 ►

was when I first became aware of it.

01:10:45 ►

And right on down the line, whether, you know, you can say Kennedy is a good man, a bad man, it doesn’t matter.

01:10:50 ►

The voter fraud is the knife at the throat of our freedom, at the throat of the Constitution,

01:10:55 ►

because the founding fathers intended for the people to have the ultimate say.

01:11:00 ►

And in a representative democracy, they put the checks and balances in there so that in the heat of the moment,

01:11:07 ►

a rabble of angry people wouldn’t do the wrong thing,

01:11:10 ►

which we’ve seen in the French Revolution and a lot of history.

01:11:14 ►

You get a direct democracy and you’re in trouble.

01:11:17 ►

And you know, there’s in the blueprint, if you take a look,

01:11:21 ►

a total revamping of the system of electoral uh voting uh like many other countries

01:11:28 ►

have with just as you order on amazon and you do secure things on the internet and even our

01:11:33 ►

military uses the internet to do secure things they’ll have a whole new voting system run by an

01:11:38 ►

independent non-profit uh group which has an electoral commission to look over them, an independent citizen commission,

01:11:46 ►

and they will make sure our elections are fair.

01:11:51 ►

And the voter fraud is a thing of the past,

01:11:53 ►

as dozens of countries around the world have done over 10 years ago.

01:11:57 ►

You know, there’s an oxymoron, though, in your statement

01:12:00 ►

when you say an independent commission.

01:12:03 ►

There’s no such thing.

01:12:04 ►

Every commission is going to be influenced.

01:12:06 ►

It’s going to be hand-picked.

01:12:08 ►

How do you pick the commission?

01:12:09 ►

Who’s going to decide who the elite are who decide how our election should be done?

01:12:13 ►

But right now we have no oversight at all.

01:12:16 ►

All I ask is look at the example of how things are done much better in other countries,

01:12:21 ►

and we can copy their example.

01:12:23 ►

Well, that’s all I’m saying is let’s have oversight in a constitutional amendment

01:12:26 ►

and put it in there for federal elections, not for the states.

01:12:30 ►

They can be as corrupt as they want.

01:12:31 ►

But if you’re electing a congressman, a senator, a president, someone at the federal level,

01:12:37 ►

have that constitutional amendment.

01:12:39 ►

Make sure voter ID is shown.

01:12:41 ►

Make sure that there is no fraud.

01:12:42 ►

And if fraud is detected, prosecute

01:12:45 ►

it with the full fury of the law for the crime that it is.

01:12:49 ►

Including the death penalty.

01:12:50 ►

Including the death penalty if, you know, it’s warranted.

01:12:55 ►

And I’m not talking about people that are too stupid to figure out which hole to punch.

01:13:00 ►

You know, it has to be intentional voter fraud, someone who’s voted five times,

01:13:05 ►

someone who is not a citizen but voted and they’re not really eligible to vote in that election.

01:13:10 ►

That wouldn’t be the death penalty.

01:13:11 ►

That would be five years in prison and hard labor and deportation.

01:13:15 ►

What would be the death penalty?

01:13:17 ►

What Acorn is accused of doing, would that be the death penalty?

01:13:22 ►

Some of that, I think, would warrant the death penalty, yes, i think would warrant the death penalty yes because that’s organizing this fraud that’s that’s facilitating and organizing

01:13:28 ►

the fraud the poor dupe that’s talked into doing it no i think they should uh they should get a

01:13:33 ►

stint in the prison at hard labor making you know as for your past program growing their own food

01:13:39 ►

learning how to do some work and and i think that this group, most of the group, not all because they’re varied,

01:13:47 ►

but I think this group in Occupy Washington or Occupy all this stuff, they’re just asking for

01:13:52 ►

free stuff. They’re the kind of rabble that could totally destroy this democracy if their voices

01:13:59 ►

were given this way in a constitutional convention. They’d say they’d vote themselves,

01:14:01 ►

way in a constitutional convention.

01:14:03 ►

They’d say, they’d vote themselves free educations,

01:14:06 ►

free lunches, free vacations,

01:14:08 ►

free whatever, provided by

01:14:09 ►

the government. Just like

01:14:11 ►

what all the legislators do now.

01:14:13 ►

Exactly. I’ve heard so many Europeans

01:14:16 ►

talk about their government provides

01:14:17 ►

this and their government provides that

01:14:19 ►

and I just look at them and sometimes I challenge

01:14:21 ►

them but I just look at them and I think, you idiot,

01:14:24 ►

it’s some poor hard-working sap that’s being taxed to death that’s providing it.

01:14:29 ►

It’s not your government.

01:14:32 ►

Well, what do you think of the notion of Phil in Santa Cruz for president?

01:14:41 ►

Well, I don’t know.

01:14:44 ►

I don’t know.

01:14:56 ►

I would invite Phil to come to Radical Remake either in Facebook or on the web. We’ve got a site, and I would invite him, please, to put his ideas in there.

01:15:01 ►

These are needed.

01:15:03 ►

We need a critical mass of people to put their ideas in there because these are necessary these are needed we need a critical mass of people to

01:15:05 ►

put their ideas in there i get these uh surveys from various political organizations so take this

01:15:13 ►

survey and uh you know fill out this thing and tell us what you think about 15 or 20 different

01:15:19 ►

things and then at the end it’s no by the way give us money and i that that’s the same attitude i

01:15:24 ►

have toward giving you my ideas,

01:15:26 ►

because it’s like all you’re after is to placate somebody, maybe get a contribution.

01:15:30 ►

Do you have a contribution checkbox in your website, by the way?

01:15:34 ►

Absolutely not.

01:15:35 ►

This is a volunteer effort.

01:15:37 ►

Now, aren’t you ashamed, Phil, in Santa Cruz?

01:15:40 ►

Don’t you feel ashamed now?

01:15:42 ►

I just asked the question.

01:15:43 ►

But Bruce has just proven to you that he’s not what you suspected he might be.

01:15:48 ►

Someone just like me who will happily accept donations to KSCO.

01:15:53 ►

Well, then I must ask Bruce, where does he get his funding for the website?

01:15:57 ►

Hello?

01:15:58 ►

I put my own money into it, Phil.

01:16:01 ►

Well, good for you.

01:16:02 ►

You don’t get anything from moveon.org or any of

01:16:06 ►

those other organizations.

01:16:07 ►

It’s all your own money. No, I just have

01:16:10 ►

to answer 100 emails a day

01:16:11 ►

and it takes up way too much time.

01:16:14 ►

Bruce is a very competent

01:16:16 ►

and well-rewarded, in fact

01:16:18 ►

probably very wealthy man.

01:16:20 ►

And I think he’s putting his money where his mouth is.

01:16:22 ►

Well, good for him. I just think

01:16:24 ►

he needs to study be aware of the dangers of a runaway constitutional convention and the rabble of the majority.

01:16:33 ►

The whole of the Constitution.

01:16:35 ►

I wish I was wealthy, by the way, but I have to report not.

01:16:39 ►

Okay.

01:16:40 ►

But you do put your money where your mouth is if you’re self-funded.

01:16:44 ►

I think that’s great.

01:16:44 ►

My hat’s off to you for that, wealthy or not.

01:16:47 ►

And everybody’s definition of wealthy.

01:16:48 ►

In fact, I think you are wealthy.

01:16:50 ►

You’re a very wealthy person in terms of being a good person and being someone who wants to help.

01:16:57 ►

The founding fathers were very…

01:16:58 ►

They wanted solutions instead of just bitching.

01:17:01 ►

They were very concerned about the tyranny of the majority in a pure democracy

01:17:05 ►

you can if you can convince a majority you know like abe lincoln said uh you can convince most

01:17:13 ►

of the people some of the time and if you had a pure democracy that’s all you would need to do

01:17:16 ►

is to convince most of the people at one moment in time and it would be all over that’s how history

01:17:22 ►

that’s how hitler took over germany to move on to other callers here.

01:17:25 ►

Let’s go to Ben and Salinas.

01:17:28 ►

Quick, Ben, you’re on the air.

01:17:29 ►

This is the great Ben responding to Phil.

01:17:31 ►

Yes, he made the comment about people too stupid to know what those screwed up voting machines in Florida.

01:17:38 ►

I agree with Phil.

01:17:40 ►

Yes, the people that stole the election in 2000 should be executed for the damage that the Bush crime family did to America.

01:17:48 ►

America is not yet spelled with a K, y’all.

01:17:52 ►

And remember, on the Constitutional Convention, on the first day that you will bring up, and it can happen because my dentist is also a lawyer,

01:18:01 ►

he says on the first day of the convention, they will, not maybe, but they will suspend the entire Bill of Rights and you will never get it back.

01:18:09 ►

So swallow that one, tea baggers.

01:18:11 ►

Have a nice day.

01:18:12 ►

Was that a nice thing to call the tea partiers, tea baggers?

01:18:16 ►

That’s a terrible nasty.

01:18:17 ►

Everything Ben just said was negated when he said when he called them tea baggers.

01:18:22 ►

Don’t you agree, Bruce?

01:18:23 ►

Yeah, I think that the, and I’ve had to address this online,

01:18:27 ►

so some of the comments on Facebook, I’ve said,

01:18:29 ►

look, if we can’t be respectful of others and groups and opinions and wishes that people have,

01:18:38 ►

then, you know, if someone can’t be respectful, if someone is downright disrespectful.

01:18:43 ►

That was the most disrespectful call of the day.

01:18:46 ►

No question.

01:18:47 ►

They’re not getting themselves a seat at the table.

01:18:50 ►

I mean, that’s just normal human decency.

01:18:52 ►

Right.

01:18:53 ►

Okay, here’s Sun in Santa Cruz, a.k.a. Mrs. Future.

01:18:56 ►

Yes?

01:18:57 ►

Hey, hi.

01:18:58 ►

Hi, Mrs. Future.

01:18:59 ►

How are you?

01:18:59 ►

Nice show, stimulating conversation.

01:19:01 ►

Thank you.

01:19:01 ►

show, Stimulating Conversation.

01:19:02 ►

Thank you.

01:19:09 ►

I just wanted to say that, you know, people have all these fears about what happens when we reexamine our institutions and, you know, there’s all this idea that somehow if we have

01:19:16 ►

a constitutional convention or if we try to use real democracy instead of representative

01:19:22 ►

democracy, that that somehow throws away the freedom that we believe in.

01:19:27 ►

And I’d just like to say that I think that we have tools available now that we did not

01:19:34 ►

have available in the past.

01:19:36 ►

And in the past, the reason that we were able to formulate our ideas as clearly as we did and create the Constitution and the Bill of Rights

01:19:46 ►

is because we had a civilized procedure for conducting a conversation.

01:19:54 ►

And I think that the way that the Internet facilitates the voices of so many more individuals

01:20:01 ►

than was ever possible in the past, and the way that the availability of all of those various opinions

01:20:09 ►

can be sifted for the best ideas

01:20:12 ►

and the way that we can map those ideas for true consensus,

01:20:19 ►

these tools have never existed before.

01:20:22 ►

And if anything, they will help us with our democracy

01:20:26 ►

so that even if it’s not majority rules, 50% is the tyranny of the majority of the other 50%,

01:20:37 ►

which really, if you look at how the elections are right now,

01:20:41 ►

the stagnation is all about the fact that so many people don’t get their vote because such a minority gets theirs.

01:20:50 ►

That, you know, true plurality is good for democracy.

01:20:55 ►

And coming up with ways to include more voices and have more levels of democracy, you know,

01:21:03 ►

like if we could assign different votes to, you know,

01:21:07 ►

sometimes we need 90% of the people to agree,

01:21:10 ►

and sometimes we need like, you know, 10% of the people to agree.

01:21:15 ►

Oh, I don’t know about 10%.

01:21:17 ►

But anyhow, we want to thank you for your call.

01:21:19 ►

We have just a minute left.

01:21:21 ►

I want to get Rory in.

01:21:22 ►

But thank you, son.

01:21:22 ►

Appreciate the call to the Saturday special.

01:21:24 ►

Yeah, thanks. Good job. Okay, thanks. Here’s Rory. Go ahead get Rory in. But thank you, son. I appreciate the call to the Saturday special. Yeah, thanks.

01:21:25 ►

Good job.

01:21:25 ►

Okay, thanks.

01:21:26 ►

Here’s Rory.

01:21:27 ►

Go ahead, Rory.

01:21:27 ►

You’re the last call today because Richard and Watsonville hung up.

01:21:31 ►

Okay.

01:21:32 ►

Number one, Phil in Santa Cruz for Congress, you should consider running.

01:21:37 ►

I agree with many of the callers that a constitutional convention is scary

01:21:42 ►

because you can throw the whole Constitution out as it stands.

01:21:46 ►

And that’s the way the founders made it.

01:21:48 ►

That’s the way they drafted it.

01:21:49 ►

They put that in there.

01:21:50 ►

So you can throw the Bill of Rights out.

01:21:52 ►

You get rid of the Second Amendment, First Amendment.

01:21:54 ►

So I don’t think we need to go that far.

01:21:56 ►

We can certainly amend the Constitution.

01:21:59 ►

And then the other thing is we are not a democracy.

01:22:02 ►

We are a representative republic.

01:22:04 ►

I can’t overstate that.

01:22:06 ►

Hey, want to say it’s the end of the show?

01:22:08 ►

Sorry, Bruce, thanks for being with us.

01:22:10 ►

That’s it.

01:22:11 ►

See you next week, Paul.

01:22:17 ►

Here’s a B, here’s a B, here’s a B, and that’s all, folks.

01:22:20 ►

You are listening to KSCO, Santa Cruz, Salinas, Monterey, San Jose.

01:22:27 ►

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.

01:22:34 ►

Before I get to the actual issues that Bruce went on the radio to speak about,

01:22:38 ►

I’ve got to ask you, how do you feel about my very petty assessment of some of the callers as being morons?

01:22:46 ►

And trust me, that’s my kind way of putting it.

01:22:49 ►

For example, one of the guys who actually made me laugh was the one who thought that all of the problems we now face as a nation

01:22:57 ►

could be solved simply by punishing voter fraud with the penalty of death.

01:23:03 ►

I’ve just got to believe that nobody is that ignorant and that

01:23:07 ►

the guy was really some college kid putting us on. In any event, it was a memorable moment for sure.

01:23:14 ►

But I have to admit that as positive as I am about the value and importance of the Occupy movement,

01:23:20 ►

I really get terribly discouraged whenever I hear some of these stupid people who have absolutely no idea that they not only have no idea about what is going on,

01:23:30 ►

they also have absolutely no idea about the Occupy movement and that it is actually based on the same underlying principles as they claim to have.

01:23:44 ►

So I deeply admire all of you young occupiers out there in the front lines who are able and willing to patiently stand up and discuss these issues with arch conservatives like

01:23:49 ►

the Tea Party people.

01:23:52 ►

You guys still give me hope and I sincerely appreciate you doing the heavy lifting for

01:23:56 ►

guys like me who no longer have the patience to have a discussion with the abysmally ignorant

01:24:02 ►

among us and who seem to be found in such large

01:24:05 ►

numbers nowadays. But hey, let me get away from all of my negative griping and get back to the

01:24:12 ►

interview that we just listened to. Now, there were a whole lot of new ideas that Bruce put forth in

01:24:18 ►

this interview, but for me, the one thing that I think that is key to all this is that we consciously include technology in our new plans.

01:24:27 ►

In particular, the new technologies that allow one-to-one communication between people,

01:24:33 ►

such as what is now being called social media.

01:24:36 ►

Just look at how the citizens of Iceland have begun to transform their nation

01:24:41 ►

with a new constitution that was in part developed over the net by ordinary people. Transcription by CastingWords themselves into better ways of living. And with a better educated populace, not one that is

01:25:05 ►

primarily taught how to pass a standardized test rather than one that actually educates them,

01:25:11 ►

with an informed populace, I think it’ll be much easier to change things such as forced vaccinations

01:25:17 ►

and genetically modified food and widespread use of pesticides, all of which are already having a very detrimental effect on those who don’t know any better.

01:25:28 ►

Another thing that came to my mind while listening to this interview with you just now

01:25:32 ►

was that when the interviewer made the comment that back in 1776 it was different,

01:25:38 ►

that it’s not the same situation now.

01:25:41 ►

But I have to disagree with his logic there because he said,

01:25:44 ►

when the country began,

01:25:46 ►

we were breaking away from Great Britain. And that’s true. But let’s think about that

01:25:52 ►

for a minute. Just when did this country begin? And what was here before it began? Without

01:25:59 ►

spending a lot of time on this, my argument is that whenever a new country is formed, it is generally breaking

01:26:05 ►

away from some other political entity. So the way I see it is that even if 236 years

01:26:12 ►

from now this nation is still called the United States of America, that doesn’t necessarily

01:26:17 ►

mean that we aren’t in the process of, right now, breaking away from the existing USA and

01:26:23 ►

forming a completely new country that is based upon

01:26:26 ►

ideas that really weren’t very popular back in 1776.

01:26:31 ►

For example, how about restarting or rebooting without things like slavery, without prohibiting

01:26:37 ►

women and non-property owners from voting, without lobbyists, without corporations being

01:26:43 ►

people?

01:26:44 ►

The way I see it, a new constitution of necessity implies a completely new country.

01:26:50 ►

It’s just that instead of we the people organizing ourselves to break away from Great Britain this time,

01:26:56 ►

we instead break away from today’s version of the USA,

01:27:00 ►

which is, if you’re being honest with yourself,

01:27:03 ►

well, it’s a fascist, oligarchic police state

01:27:06 ►

in which our children are being brainwashed

01:27:08 ►

into thinking that their worth, their self-esteem,

01:27:12 ►

comes only from how much money they earn

01:27:13 ►

and how much stuff they can consume.

01:27:17 ►

Isn’t it about time to break away from a political system like that

01:27:21 ►

and take control back from the few ultra-rich families

01:27:24 ►

who are calling most of the shots today? Thank you. in this interview, you’ll continue to hold our so-called founding fathers in such high regard.

01:27:46 ►

Granted, they did a good job of getting the ball rolling, but once you study U.S. history more

01:27:51 ►

closely, it should become obvious to you that not only were these guys the richest people in the

01:27:56 ►

country, they purposely crafted the Constitution so as to ultimately keep most of the power for

01:28:02 ►

themselves and their wealthy friends. For example, that’s one of the reasons that we the people don’t even get to elect the president.

01:28:09 ►

That’s done by the somewhat mysterious electoral college.

01:28:13 ►

Those are the people who actually have the power to vote for the president.

01:28:17 ►

And can you tell me even one of their names?

01:28:21 ►

So, let’s not anoint the founding fathers as some kind of gods or saints, because they

01:28:26 ►

weren’t. Mainly, they were very rich white men who wrested power from a king, and they

01:28:31 ►

did it by shedding a lot of the common people’s blood. And if you disagree with me, I hope

01:28:37 ►

that you will at least read Howard Zinn’s book before posting your comments on our salon

01:28:41 ►

blog, which, as you know, you can get to via psychedelicsalon.org.

01:28:48 ►

Now, since I’ve been on kind of a negative rant here today,

01:28:51 ►

I want to end with a couple bits of more positive and fun stuff.

01:28:56 ►

First of all, I want to mention a story that I read about a man named Molai,

01:29:00 ►

who lives in India.

01:29:02 ►

And back in 1979, when he was still a teenager, he noticed that a flood had

01:29:07 ►

washed a lot of snakes onto a sandbar near his home. But since there was no ground cover, the

01:29:13 ►

snakes all died in the heat. He said that seeing the dead and dying snakes caused him to weep.

01:29:20 ►

So he asked the forest department about planting trees. However, they told him that nothing except bamboo would grow there.

01:29:26 ►

And so he began planting, all on his own.

01:29:30 ►

Today, that once barren sandbar is a sprawling 1,360 acre forest.

01:29:36 ►

Home to several thousand varieties of plants and a significant amount of wildlife,

01:29:42 ►

including birds, deer, apes, rhino, elephants, and even tigers.

01:29:47 ►

Now, stop and think about this for a moment.

01:29:50 ►

Here was a teenage boy with essentially no resources and no help,

01:29:54 ►

yet over the past 30 years he has done something that even the professional foresters and government thought was impossible.

01:30:01 ►

Today, a molai who single-handedly planted this forest, lives there

01:30:06 ►

on the sandbar in the forest in a hut with his wife and three children, and earns his living

01:30:12 ►

selling cow and buffalo milk. To me, this man represents the pinnacle of human achievement.

01:30:18 ►

What an astounding accomplishment, and what a wonderful gift he has given to life on this planet. It took him over 30

01:30:25 ►

years to accomplish this feat, but look what his hard and unsung work has done. As I look back on

01:30:32 ►

the past 30 years of my life, when I was quite often whining about not having enough money or

01:30:38 ►

resources to make the world better, I realized that the only thing I actually lacked was imagination, and what my mother used to call, get up and go.

01:30:48 ►

So, if you’re looking for a hero to emulate, I suggest that maybe you should go look in the mirror to find her or him.

01:30:55 ►

Because the main hero in your own life is you, at least if you put your mind to it.

01:31:02 ►

Now, my final comment is to plug another podcast. It’s one that I’ve been listening

01:31:07 ►

to for a long time, mainly in the evening when I’m preparing dinner and want a little company

01:31:12 ►

while I’m working. Actually, I’ve thought about mentioning this podcast for quite a while now, but

01:31:17 ►

I didn’t think that it would appeal to all of our fellow salonners, at least to our women’s salonners.

01:31:23 ►

But about a month ago, I was startled to hear the salon mentioned very favorably on it.

01:31:28 ►

And shortly after that, the number of our monthly downloads had a big uptick.

01:31:33 ►

And I realized that we now have a lot of new friends here in the salon as a result.

01:31:38 ►

And so I want to welcome all of our new salonners to this podcast.

01:31:53 ►

Welcome all of our new salonners to this podcast, and particularly those who first heard about us on the famous, or maybe I should say infamous, Joe Rogan podcast, which is actually titled the Joe Rogan Experience.

01:32:06 ►

As you know, Joe is a popular comedian here in the States, and you’ll often hear a few soundbites from him on Lefty’s Lounge, which is another of my favorite podcasts that comes to us via dopeveen.co.uk on their podcast network.

01:32:08 ►

Although I’ve actually been following Joe Rogan’s comedy for many years, I also realize

01:32:14 ►

that he has an edge that men instantly relate to, but which can sometimes be a little off-putting

01:32:19 ►

for our ladies.

01:32:21 ►

However, in the videos that I’ve watched of Joe doing stand-up routines, it appears that

01:32:26 ►

there are as many women in the audience that are laughing as there are men. However, besides

01:32:31 ►

wanting to return the favor of Joe giving the salon a plug, I also figured out a good reason

01:32:37 ►

why some of our women salonners may want to at least listen to a couple of his programs.

01:32:43 ►

You see, right now there’s a woman lecturer traveling around Southern California

01:32:48 ►

with a seminar that is supposed to teach women the ins and outs of how men think.

01:32:54 ►

Of course, cynical old me at first questioned why there were no men speakers involved,

01:32:59 ►

and hey, why didn’t women just ask men how they think,

01:33:02 ►

rather than spend all that money for a workshop?

01:33:05 ►

But then I realized that, well, a lot of men, myself included,

01:33:09 ►

kind of shudder whenever a woman says, let’s talk.

01:33:12 ►

And it’s actually next to impossible to get some of us into a discussion about how men think.

01:33:19 ►

Well, now Joe’s podcast, I think it’s up over 200 right now.

01:33:24 ►

But if you go back and listen to his podcast number 190,

01:33:27 ►

and of course this is very self-serving because that’s the one where he mentioned the salon,

01:33:31 ►

but it’s really a great example of how men think.

01:33:35 ►

Now it may take some sensitive women a bit to get through the first 20 minutes or so

01:33:39 ►

when the talk is mainly about sex,

01:33:42 ►

but that’s quite often the way men, at least men under 60 years old,

01:33:47 ►

well, that’s the way they often begin a conversation.

01:33:50 ►

However, I think that you’ll be blown away,

01:33:53 ►

particularly if you’re a sociologist,

01:33:55 ►

at the trend of the conversation from then on.

01:33:58 ►

Because, among other things, Joe and an old friend of his

01:34:02 ►

even speak about us all being one with the universe and all other living beings.

01:34:07 ►

Not to mention that they then dredge up an old argument they had many years ago,

01:34:12 ►

one that caused their friendship to go on the rocks for quite a while.

01:34:16 ►

Yet, until this podcast, those old emotional scars had been left untouched.

01:34:21 ►

But right there on the air, they worked through their issues and resolved them so

01:34:25 ►

satisfactorily that they seem now to be closer friends than ever before. And of course, if I

01:34:31 ►

remember correctly, they ended their two-hour podcast back on the topic of sex. So ladies,

01:34:37 ►

you can save a lot of money if you really want to know how men think simply by tuning in to the Joe Rogan experience. And us guys, well,

01:34:46 ►

we already know how we think. But Joe and his compatriots also make our inner lives so much

01:34:52 ►

richer by adding the humor that is one of the three things that I find most important to a

01:34:57 ►

healthy life. For me, music is number one. Psychedelics are number three, but comedy is number two in my book. And though he

01:35:07 ►

may be a bit on the crude side for some people, I admit that at times I like to let my hair down

01:35:12 ►

and be as rude and crude as the next guy. But hey, just don’t tell my granddaughters about it,

01:35:17 ►

because they still think I’m just a sweet old man. Well, that’s got to do it for now. And so this is Lorenzo signing off from

01:35:26 ►

Cyberdelic Space. Be well, my friends.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

305 - Conservatives Confront the Ideas of Occupy

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Program Notes

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