On my failed attempt to bring down the government

Before I get to the part about my failure to bring down the government, I’d like to explain why I felt it was necessary.

When President Obama took office, President Bush and the Republicans were held in such low esteem that they couldn’t have accomplished any of what Obama has done to undermine the public interest. The approval rating poll numbers for Bush screamed “lower than whale poop.”

Having realized this, the ruling Forces of Greed (FOG) went looking for a sycophantic body they could pass off as representing the public interest. Obama was selected and packaged as the opposite of his Senate voting record, where he showed absolute fealty to corporate greed at any cost.

Obama, who had campaigned as a peace candidate, immediately after taking office surged the troops by 30,000 in Afghanistan.

Obama increased the bloated defense budget of the Bush regime dramatically, and has increased it again every year he’s been in office.

Obama attempted several times to convince the government of Iraq to keep American troops in Iraq beyond the agreement of President Bush to pull them out by the end of 2011, and expanded wars in Pakistan, Yemen and Central Africa.

Obama illegally attacked Libya without the consent of the Congress.

This alone would have turned me completely against Obama, but he did so much more for his masters.

Just after taking office Obama bailed out the banksters with hundreds of billions of tax dollars (while behind the scenes the Fed was secretly loaning them trillions more), allowing their victims to lose homes by the millions and lose jobs by the millions. Senator Obama had voted for the bailout first under the Bush regime, and received more in campaign financing from banksters than any other candidate for office in history.

Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers under the espionage act than all other presidents combined, creating a government of extreme secrecy, expanding surveillance of citizens.

Obama took the Republican Romneycare, devised by the right-wing Heritage foundation, nationwide, never attempting a public health care program despite having massive Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress his first two years, including a filibuster-proof Senate and a majority of the public in support of such a program. Romneycare ensures that corporate executives get multimillion dollar salaries and transnational investors get billions in profits from what euphemistically passes as “health care.”

Obama has authorized funding for nuclear power, while taking loans from those interests who would benefit, for his political campaign. He has opened up offshore oil drilling previously banned, and is pushing “clean coal,” all massive environmental problems for the children of tomorrow.

Obama has authorized the murder of American citizens without evidence, charges, or a trial, and refuses to reveal his justification for this, apparently claiming he has the right to kill anyone on the planet on merely his own word.

If President Bush had done any of this, Democrats would be out in the streets screaming bloody murder. It is hard to watch the Dem faithful eating up his rhetoric, glassy eyed and seemingly unaware of anything he’s done in office. Many of them mumble from their zombie state that “Republicans made him do it,” apparently believing this to be a defense.

My friend Jodda calls them Obots. Obots cannot explain why the Democrats did not stop President Bush from performing his many crimes, if it is so easy for one group to stop the other. It appears that Bush did whatever he liked without opposition, in fact, the Democrats were only too happy to vote to invade wherever Bush pointed his finger.

There is no doubt in my mind Obama will be reelected. He will be more useful to the ruling FOG by far than can Romney. Partisan Democrats appear to wake from their deep sleep when Republicans take the White House, with help from the mass media who enjoy playing Democrats against Republican as part of the divide and conquer strategy which keeps an iota of democracy from breaking out in the land.

Obama will be the one to cut Social Security and Medicare, since no Republican can pull it off. Most likely he will do that early in his second term. He is the same kind of conservative Democrat that was Bill Clinton, who gave us NAFTA and GATT, thereby turning off organized labor and environmentalists so that the Republicans could take over both houses of Congress, pleasing the ruling FOG.

Clinton also got rid of welfare as we knew it, throwing millions of children into the streets, another thing Republicans could never get away with. He deregulated the banking industry, triggering the scams which led to the economic collapse and massive recession experienced by the working classes for the past four years, with no end in sight.

Clinton was handsomely rewarded in return for selling out the American people. Leaving the White House in debt, the ruling FOG gave him $200,000 per speech, night after night, until Clinton became quite wealthy, setting the example for Obama, who’s cloned the scam.

Unable to stomach any more of this without doing something, I decided to petition for Jill Stein in Virginia in an attempt to get her on the ballot. My only intention was to be able to have someone on a presidential ballot for whom I could vote. Virginia does not allow write in votes, although I wrote in Cynthia McKinney last time as a protest against Obama/McCain.

Earlier this year, four prominent Republicans were denied ballot access in the Virginia primary election, and all four were backed by millions of dollars. I knew I would be facing a near impossible task, but had no idea the opposition I would be confronted by would be so great.

After getting help from the state Green Party, I scouted locations for petitioning. Everywhere I tried to go I was asked to leave. Nearly every place where there are people is now private property, and there is no right to be there, the public square is a thing of the past.

I asked to petition in front of the new Hampton Convention Center. I was told the businessmen there would not welcome me. I wrote back to its managers that as a Hampton homeowner, I’m sure the businessmen were happy that I paid for it with my real estate taxes.

I asked to petition at Christopher Newport University, from which I have a degree, and was told I would have to pay $105 to stand on their state-supported grounds to collect petitions, although it is summertime and there is nobody there.

I complained to the mayor of Hampton that the system should at least make some pretense of allowing a bit of democracy, and finally got a response from the city attorney that it would be okay for me to petition outside City Hall with a warning not to obstruct people, as though I might be dangerous. I went there and waited two hours, during which time three people passed me, two workmen who had the wrong building and were not registered to vote so could not sign, and one guy in a suit who was very rude to me, acting as though I were committing a crime by ruining such a perfect election system as this.

It appears that petitioning is okay as long as no people are present where the petitioning takes place. I had many other experiences such as this in which I got no signatures at all.

My last attempt was in Norfolk attempting once again to get signatures with my friend Dr. Phil Murray, when a German woman approached me and said “Don’t you understand you are taking votes away from Obama, as Nader did to Gore?” I explained to her this is a myth, that Nader did not cost Gore anything. I voted for Nader, but would not have voted for Gore if Nader was not on the ballot.

In Florida, Nader got 90,000 votes if I remember right, and pointed out that Bush got over 250,000 votes from registered Democrats alone. Had Gore run as a progressive, rather than a Democratic Leadership Council flack, he might have got those 250,000 votes from likely organized labor guys or environmentalists annoyed at him for supporting NAFTA and GATT. Gore admitted he had a terrible congressional voting record on environmental issues, but said the people of Tennessee expected him to vote that way. If they did, he didn’t please them enough to win his state of Tennessee, which went to Bush despite Gore’s sellout of the environment to please them.

But the big fallacy in this is that Greens take votes away from Democrats. Democrats are far to the right of the Republicans of my youth. Richard Nixon, who I thought of as a far right-winger when he was president, is to the left of Obama. Nixon gave us the EPA, OSHA, the ABM Treaty, and many other things far more progressive than anything modern Dems even consider doing.

Democrats seem to think their candidates can support the 1% who finance them against the 99% and still get the vote of progressives. They like to say, “You are not going to win, but you can win if you vote Democrat.” Apparently one should take joy in winning the right to have expanded wars, bankster bailouts, all the things the Republicans do, but on steroids.

To make my point, I wondered if Republicans think Greens help them, so contacted the state Republican Party to see if they could get one of their businessmen to allow me to petition in front of his business. I pointed out to them that Democrats seem to think Greens cost them votes, and if this is true I could help the Republicans win the race in Virginia, which the corporate media say is a close race. I never got a response from them. Obviously, the Republicans agree with me that Green votes could make a difference—if Greens were to get on the ballot—opposing the Republicans every bit as much as Democrats.

Thankfully for the two party system, it is unlikely they will face competition. In Virginia, the Democrats and Republicans don’t have to gather one signature. Democrats and Republicans get the TV time, and millions of dollars in bribes. Virginia has no limits on the bribes, you can give a candidate for office whatever it takes to buy their loyalty. What a system, the best government money can buy.

Jack Balkwill edits LUV News, a free daily “beyond corporate media news and opinion.” To join LUV Newsm send an email to libertyuv@hotmail.com with the subject “join.” He has written for publications as varied as the little-read English Honor Society’s Rectangle to the millions of readers USA Today.