Thursday, April 26

Direct democracy in Colorado beats representative democracy anywhere

I challenge anyone to find a State legislature whose record compares to what Coloradans have done with ballot initiatives, a form of direct democracy:

In 2000 Colorado voters passed Amendment 20, legalizing medical marijuana, Amendment 22, closing the gun-show loophole and Amendment 23, raising K-12 spending. In 2002 we passed Amendment 27, one of the country's strongest campaign finance limits. In 2004 we passed Initiative 37, the country's first voter-approved renewable energy mandate for utilities. In 2006 we passed Amendment 41,  the country's strongest Ethics in Government law, and Initiative 42, raising the minimum wage. In 2008 we passed Amendment 54,  which prohibits government contractors from making campaign donations. In 2012 we passed Amendment 64,  the country's first legal marijuana AND hemp, and we voted 3 to 1 for Amendment 65, asking  our Congressional Representatives  to  work  to reverse Citizens United. (Only 1 of 7 did anything,  showing how poorly they represent us.) In 2016 we passed Amendment 70 for a $12/hr. minimum wage, Proposition 106, Medical Assistance in Dying for the terminally ill and Proposition 107, for Open Presidential Primaries. In 2018, we passed Proposition 111, which restricts payday loan interest rates. In 2020, we passed Proposition 114, which reintroduces wolves into the state, and Proposition 118, providing paid medical and family leave. 

(You can find details of each at ballotpedia.org by clicking on the names. )

During a similar time the Colorado Legislature has done much to prevent local communities from solving their own problems with preemptive laws, such as against local minimum wages, rent control, gun control, fracking control and cyanide mining control. 

The downside of initiatives is far less harmful than legislation as well. Contrast a few ballot initiatives impeding gay rights and abortion with all 50 state legislatures criminalizing sodomy and abortion and jailing people for decades. Not to mention interning Japanese-Americans during World War II, persecuting communists,  socialists and friends during the McCarthy era and imprisoning millions of marijuana smokers over the last 80 years. 

Media, not just in Colorado, have focused on the few problematic ballot initiatives, like Colorado's 1992 Taxpayer Bill of Rights Amendment 1, which voters gave a 5 year time out in 2005, by voting for Referendum C. Rather than act to finally fix TABOR, the Colorado Legislature keeps trying to make the initiative process harder, including with 2008's defeated Referendum O. The same forces finally succeeded with 2016's Amendment 71, by going the initiative route, to make it appear to be a grassroots effort, but it was funded mostly by oil and gas interests. 71 makes the process much more expensive for regular people, without inconveniencing wealthy users of the ballot initiative process.

Oregon has instead improved its ballot initiative process with Citizen Initiative Review. By having randomly-selected "citizen juries" deliberate each initiative, problems like TABOR's "racheting down provision," hidden in its back pages unnoticed, would have been exposed before we voted on it. 

Citizens in both Oregon and California have tried ballot initiatives to allow signing future ballot initiative petitions on the Secretary of State's voter registration website. This would open the process to groups without huge funds, save the SOS the expense of comparing physical signatures (ID would be by driver's license, etc., as with online registration in 37 states), reduce misrepresentation and harassment for signatures, get more voters to read more of the initiative texts before signing, and save gas, time and money.

I list four other improvements to the process in my article Why Bernie Sanders should put Direct Democracy at the top of our Agenda

The initiative and referendum process is the origin of most US reforms, from women's suffrage to sunshine laws to medical marijuana to term limits. See initiatives for references and more examples.

"On most major issues we've dealt with in the past 50 years, the public was more likely to be right...based on the judgment of history...than the legislatures or Congress." -George Gallup, Sr.

Friday, December 1

Why I Quest for Direct Democracy, What I learned

The brief story of how I, happy-go-lucky not-so-tight-rope artist Evan from Heaven, was treated by Boulder, Colorado, how my Guatemalan friends were killed by US-supplied weapons, what I decided to do about it 33 years ago, and what's happened since.


I performed on Boulder's famous Pearl St. Mall, but members of the Mall Commission who wanted to "curtail the circus atmosphere" shut me down repeatedly, in spite of our enormous popularity -and the Commission only having advisory power -as my volunteer lawyer Doug Thorburn later discovered.  I later found a letter  to the City Manager proving that Mall Commission Chair Richard Foy KNEW they had only advisory power!

 Among others banned was mime David Shiner who was arrested at least twice for "impersonating an officer" and went on to be Ringmaster of Le Cirque du Soleil, had his own show on Broadway, and is one of the most famous clowns in the world. When City Council, going against a petition of some 4000 supporting us (see below), gave the Commission licensing power, the Commission refused to license me.

Evan as JesusI left Boulder, performed in Aspen and Key West, and then Yelapa, Mexico. Arriving penniless in this fishing/tourist village, I was given a free hotel room with a view. The Mayor, known as Piri, fed me lunch daily at his restaurant at the foot of the town waterfall, where I entertained his diners by tightroping over the falls. What a contrast with Boulder! Doy gracias a la Dulce Morena y sus hijos. I made enough in tips to live there in paradise and in spring to travel back north. I was also honored to play Jesus for Holy Week celebrations there in 1986.

In 1985, my volunteer lawyer Doug Thorburn talked some sense into Boulder's oligarchs and I was able to resume my shows, which I did until an old injury forced my retirement in 1998. I continued to live in Mexico and Guatemala seasonally into the 90s.


In Guatemala, I fell in love with Lake Atitlan, which Aldous Huxley called "the most beautiful lake in the world." I started building a house on Maya artist friend Raul Velasquez Barrios' land (photo below, with 2 of the 3 volcanoes by the lake in the background), but abandoned it when 3 other Maya friends were killed by the Guatemalan Army -with U.S.-supplied M-16s. Some 200,000 were killed, tens of thousands horribly tortured, mostly in the '80s.



I gave up the house and returned to Boulder, depressed. I read in Howard Zinn's "People's History of the U.S." that "polls showed by 1975 that 65% of Americans were opposed to all foreign military aid" -because it strengthened dictators. I realized if this was a binding vote and not just a poll my friends would still be alive -along with 200,000 other Guatemalans, and millions from Vietnam to the Americas. If we had real "government by the people", our shows would not have been banned in Boulder. The world would be a much better place.



So, I spearheaded Boulder's 1993 Voting by Phone ballot initiative, hoping this would make more direct democracy practical. We made the CBS Evening News, the Wall St. Journal, etc.

With the City Council dishonestly attacking our initiative it was defeated 59-41%. I started Vote.org in 1995 to promote citizen power via better and national ballot initiatives. I sold that domain in 2015 and that site is now at EvanRavitz.com/vote.

(Initiatives are controversial, thanks to media dwelling on the few bad ones. But the full record shows the results are far better than what politicians do. Because it was until 2016 easier in Colorado than most states to get initiatives on the ballot, we have a stellar recordWhen signing initiative petitions is allowed online, it will be even better.)

I soon got a call from Jared Polis, a Princeton student who'd enabled student voting by web. We've been friends ever since.

Jared became the wealthiest and most philanthropic person in Boulder. He sponsored 2 Colorado ballot initiatives which passed becoming Amendment 23 (raising K-12 school spending) and Amendment 41 (the country's strongest prohibition on lobbyist "gifts" to politicians.) Jared became our Congressman. He said on radio in 2008 that he would introduce a bill for national ballot initiatives in his first year. But he didn't realize it would take a constitutional amendment. 

In 2000 I devoted Vote.org to famed former Sen. Mike Gravel's project for better and national initiatives. I solicited endorsements from prominent people. Howard Zinn became one of the first, along with Patch Adams, Pete Seeger, Daniel Ellsberg, Julia Butterfly Hill, "Granny D," Michael Lerner, Ralph Nader etc. See the complete list. Gravel ran for President in 2008 and 2016 mainly to promote this project. But Mike is almost 90 and it has stalled.


But time has proved Direct Democracy has a better record than representatives, for the most part. Colorado is a relative paradise due to ballot initiatives, while "our" legislature does little but obstruct the process -they tried with Referendum O in 2010 and succeeded in 2016 with Amendment 71- and pass preemption laws to prevent localities from solving our own problems.


Boulder Colorado voted 71-29% in 2018 for Issue 2G which will allow the city to offer ONLINE petitions for future ballot initiatives, which we believe will be the biggest Improvement in direct democracy in its century in America. By a fluke, I was appointed to the city's Campaign Finance and Elections working group and our 11 members unanimously recommended it and Council unanimously put it on the ballot. Here is our working group's editorial for issue 2 G. 

Unfortunately, greater powers, probably Big Oil and Gas, and now-Governor Polis, who is afraid of them, seem to have corrupted the implementation of online petitions in Boulder, as well as stop it moving to the state level, where they've talked about this for several years. Here's my interview at the 7th Annual Election Reform Symposium and a presentation showing all the lying, cheating and defrauding taxpayers of $490,000, by City staff.

The system is finally working, clunkily, at petitions.bouldercolorado.gov.

Here is my latest editorial, which brings us to early 2022. Taipei is now implementing online petitioning for initiatives, so it looks like they won't be able to kill it in its infancy 

Let my people VOTE!

-Evan 'from Heaven' Ravitz

Friday, March 20

WHY NOT NATIONAL BALLOT INITIATIVES?

The Case for Direct Democracy
WHY NOT NATIONAL BALLOT INITIATIVES?
Vincent Campbell

Government is dysfunctional, many are saying, meaning that it doesn’t work.  Actually, it works quite well---for the rich. They are making a lot of money, often with help from the government, and are paying the lowest taxes in decades, while ordinary Americans who still have jobs work harder than ever at about the same pay, or less.  We complain that government is serving the top 1% much better than the other 99%, but we seem to be stymied at finding ways to do something about it.  Attempts to improve government have largely failed so far, to wit: 
  • Campaign finance reform  laws---but Congress waters them down and corporations find ways to work around them, now with the support of the Supreme Court.
  • Term limits---but cushy lobbying jobs follow anyway for those serving in Congress.
  • Ethics reform---big talk (shocked! shocked!), and a slap on the wrist for ethical violators.
  • Public financing of Congressional campaigns­­---always spurned by Congress.
Most Americans want such  reforms. They consistently fail, nevertheless, because of the close ties between Congress and big money.  It’s not hard to fathom why many Congressmen cater to the rich, when getting re-elected and later lobbying jobs depend on it.    
         
So the 99% want a government that acts more in the public interest.  At the core this means making better laws.  If Congress cannot do this, maybe the people can. Half the states in the U.S. allow direct popular votes as one way to make state laws. We could make federal laws by this initiative process as well, if the mechanisms were put in place. A project led by former Senator Mike Gravel would do this. (See vote.org for details.  Disclosure: I have advised on it.) But the effort to introduce direct democracy at the national level has had little success to date. As it is now, with only representative democracy, citizens can beg Congress to pass the laws they want, and Congress may do so, or may not. Mendicant democracy, some call it.  

But would ordinary people make better laws for the 99% than Congress does? Those who think elected leaders are better suited to legislate usually assert that the common people have inadequate motivation, skills or knowledge for the task. Social critic H. L. Mencken famously said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. And commentator Walter Lippmann insisted that we must abandon the notion that the people govern, and accept that their role is only to support or oppose those individuals who actually govern. Alexander Hamilton and John Adams would have agreed.

On the other side, Theodore Roosevelt  claimed, “the majority of the plain people will day in and day out make fewer mistakes in governing themselves than any smaller body of men will make trying to govern them.” Thomas Jefferson said: “The will of the majority, the natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of man. Perhaps even this may sometimes err; but its errors are honest, solitary and short-lived.”  Pollster George Gallup adds, “On the most major issues we’ve dealt with in the past 50 years, the public was more likely to be right…based on the judgment of history…than the legislatures or Congress.”          
               
Social scientists have recently provided some evidence bearing on the question. One of the more intriguing facts coming to light is that in many situations the average judgment of many ordinary people is superior to the judgment of almost any individual, however expert. This was found for estimation tasks, such as judging livestock weights, and for predicting complex events, such as election results, product sales, movie ticket sales, and stock values. Writer James Surowiecki summarized this evidence in The Wisdom of Crowds. A few individuals may do better than the average on one prediction, but the average judgment is better over the course of several predictions.
               
The conditions of voting on an initiative are much like those found favorable to crowd wisdom. That is, the group is diverse, and each voter makes an independent judgment, usually after reviewing basic facts and arguments pro and con. Voters may ignore these facts and arguments, but that is true of nearly all situations in which the wisdom of crowds has been demonstrated. Ordinary people, as a group, make amazingly accurate judgments in these conditions.
               
A limitation of the crowd-wisdom findings is that they usually involve near-term predictions. Would people do as well in predicting the long-term benefits of a social policy? How would they compare to elected leaders in this skill? Perhaps elected leaders have more relevant expertise than ordinary citizens in political, economic and social matters, expertise that might make their long term forecasts and policy decisions better.
        
Social psychologist Philip Tetlock tested this proposition. He compared experts of varying prominence and degrees of expertise to each other. What he examined was how well they could predict future economic and political events over a period of 15 years. He found that experts were on average no better than “dilettantes” (professionals with less expertise on that topic) at predicting the future. And experts did only slightly better than simply guessing that all outcomes were equally likely.  Another investigator, K.C. Green, found that college undergraduates playing the role of experts made more accurate forecasts than experts themselves.
        
If experts can’t predict much better than chance guessing, this does not give us much confidence that leaders will make wise civic choices, whoever they may consult,  and whatever their own political and economic expertise.  In highly technical fields, such as engineering and biology, there is little doubt that experts play a vital role in creating solutions to civic problems, but in any field involving human behavior, expertise is quite limited, and we should not be surprised if individual experts cannot predict complex events better than the average judgment of a diverse group of lay persons.
        
Accurate forecasting is only one indicator of decision skill, of course. Another is the soundness of the logic used by the decider. Decision scientists and psychologists have documented at length that most people make thinking errors of several kinds. But experts appear to make such mistakes no less than ordinary citizens. Take the vividness bias. In this error, a “Muslim terrorist strike,” for example, is predicted to be more likely than a “terrorist strike,” because the image is more vivid. Logically this is not possible. “Terrorist strikes” is a larger set of events that includes “Muslim terrorist strikes.” Yet experts make such errors just as lay persons do. No study has emerged of the logic of politicians, but it is hard to imagine they would do better than experts, who usually have more scientific training than politicians.
               
Thus, there is no clear evidence that elected representatives, or political leaders of any kind, are superior to citizens in their decision skills. So if their skills are no better, do leaders have any advantages over ordinary citizens?

 A common assumption is that the politicians spend a good deal more time studying the issue at hand than most citizens do, and so know more about it. This is often true for members of the mark-up committee that creates a bill, although more and more bills are drafted by lobbyists and accepted with little change by such committees.  Even when committees study the matter in detail it is rare that their colleagues in the full legislative body give the details much attention, especially in Congress. They rely instead on the advice of their party leaders and friends, or make a deal to swap votes. They usually devote very little time to one bill since there are so many bills, and since they spend half their time trying to get re-elected. So time spent on the task is at best a weak advantage for leaders when only five percent of Congress marks up a bill and the other 95 percent of those voting spend so little time on it.

Yet surely they must know a bit more than ordinary people. Conventional wisdom decries the general lack of information possessed by voters, who often cannot name office-holders and other similar facts about government. The implication is that they are therefore not fit to govern. But many of us doubt the relevance of such knowledge to making good judgments on civic issues. As discussed above, crowds can be wise without much information, and experts in political and economic matters are not so wise even though they possess a great deal of knowledge. So general factual knowledge per se seems to be overrated as a component of civic wisdom.

Still, few doubt that whatever the political wisdom of the people, it would likely be improved by more review of key assumptions and arguments on the specific issue at hand. To this end, some state initiatives present arguments pro and con. And political scientists have recently demonstrated  new techniques for enhancing deliberation by citizen groups before they vote on issues, such as letting them question experts on the issue, followed by further discussion.
               
In trying out direct democracy in San Jose, California in 1973, for the National Science Foundation we at the American Institutes for Research (AIR) found that citizen participation in deciding policy issues increases their knowledge of those issues, including greater awareness of arguments on both sides of an issue. It appears that participation and knowledge of the issue at hand are mutually reinforcing, so perhaps the more responsibility citizens have for deciding civic matters, the better they will be at it.
         
In all, ordinary people appear to be approximately as competent as the elite and the experts when it comes to judgment, fairness and the skills a civic decider needs.  So let’s look at the results of actual legislation by voters and by state legislatures. Have ordinary citizens up to now done any better than their leaders in deciding important civic issues at the state level? Opponents of direct democracy frequently cite some state initiative passed by the people that they think is disgraceful, such as California’s Proposition 13 that cut property taxes but impoverished state and local government. There is no doubt that occasionally initiatives produce results that are regrettable, as do legislatures. What is rarely noted by opponents, however, is that many good policies we now take for granted began as state initiatives, including women’s suffrage, child labor laws, and the eight-hour work day.
               
Some object to direct democracy because they fear ordinary people will abuse minorities.  In hard times, especially, people are sometimes hostile to foreigners or those of a different race or religion. Aroused mobs have done horrible things to minorities, it is true. But a street mob is quite different from voters privately marking ballots. In the Mideast, for example, Islamic extremists at emotional street rallies can arouse great antipathy toward Westerners or minorities, but polls of a representative sample in Muslim countries do not usually support the view that majorities there are hostile to either minorities or Westerners. And in the U.S. popular acceptance of diverse races, cultures and sexual orientations has increased markedly over the last century. Prejudice remains, obviously, but laws against ethnic or religious minorities have long been ruled unconstitutional by the courts, and the record over a century of initiatives shows that the electorate is no more likely to disadvantage minorities than are legislators.
         
 Elisabeth Gerber and other political scientists have compared states that have popular initiatives with states that make laws only through legislatures. These studies found that states with popular initiatives tend to have policies more aligned with public values and preferences than states that rely entirely on representative government.
               
Having ordinary people make laws to suit their values is only desirable if one agrees with the values, of course. And we do agree, I submit, on most values related to public policy.  For example, in measuring citizenship achievement for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, our team at AIR found that a panel of Americans from all walks of life agreed on nearly all behaviors and values (hundreds of them) proposed as criteria of good citizenship. Criteria such as participating in the community, caring for others, obeying the law, and thinking rationally about civic issues. Daily news gives the opposite impression because the media tend to highlight controversy rather than agreement, and clearly there are specific issues such as abortion where we do not agree. But we do seem to agree on most of the fundamental values and behaviors that are important in our civic lives. So perhaps Gerber’s evidence reflects well on ordinary people as lawmakers, at least to the extent of making laws that reflect their common values.
               
By far the biggest weakness of leaders, compared to citizens, is their corruption by power and money, as discussed earlier. Not that ordinary citizens are less susceptible to temptation. Greed seems to well up in many of us when we imagine we can indulge it secretly. It is doubtful that politicians as a group are inferior to ordinary people in ethics or character. Ordinary citizens are more likely to vote in the public interest, not because they are more upright morally than Congresspersons, but because they are not wooed by lobbyists. The role of leader invites corruption. The role of citizen does not. This difference alone is the most significant advantage citizens have over leaders in setting public policy.
               
The usual rejoinder from defenders of the status quo is that voters are influenced by big money too, through media campaigns to persuade people to vote for or against an initiative. This argument, true on its face, has some major weaknesses. First, at the national level it would cost corporations about a thousand times as much to influence voters as it does to buy Congressmen. Second, even after spending millions to persuade voters, the effort would often fail. Gerber’s analysis showed that while powerful interests are sometimes successful in defeating state initiatives, they generally do not persuade voters to pass initiatives. Third, their campaign advertising is out in the open where lies and distortions are more easily revealed, compared to the subtle ways in which lobbies manipulate Congress. So the powerful find the initiative process much more expensive and risky as a way to shape laws to their liking.
                 
There is a strong case, then, for having direct democracy work alongside representative democracy in making national laws, as it already does in making laws in many states. In the future, the key decisions of government will be made, for better or worse, either by ordinary citizens acting in concert or by leaders and their wealthy backers. Americans can go on searching for leaders who will make the federal government work for all of us.  Or, if they believe that ordinary people will usually make good laws, national initiatives may become a reality. Most politicians will object strenuously to such direct democracy, as they always have, but they can be bypassed, just as they were in 1787 when we created our constitution. Some think the Constitution forbids anyone but Congress from making national laws. It does not, and even if it did, the people could change it. But few people know this.  As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”
               
 It’s our choice.  Maybe we are the ones we have been waiting for.
 
Vincent Campbell is a social psychologist. He directed research on citizenship and democracy at the American Institutes for Research.  Email: vincecampbell@cableone.net


Thursday, October 17

Ballot Initiatives are what made Boulder, Colorado great


                     Boulder's famous Flatirons, unsullied by development, thanks to the Blue Line.

Most of the great things about Boulder were voted in by citizens, after a ballot initiative petition, NOT by City Council! This includes keeping development off the mountains (the 1959 "Blue Line" which prevents City water from being supplied above 5800' elevation), Open Space ( the country's FIRST voter-approved open space, 1967), the 55' Height Limit for buildings (1971) Slow Growth so we wouldn't sprawl like Colorado Springs (The "Danish Plan," 1976), banning discrimination based on sexual orientation (again, the country's FIRST, 1987) and Public Campaign Financing (1999). We also kept the Library downtown when the City wanted to move it East, and put an end to the practice of City Council members resigning at just the right time so they could help appoint their successors, instead of voters deciding. The City website often uses phrases like "Boulder adopted" to make it sound like THEY did these things, taking credit for what WE did, and which Council mostly opposed.

Wednesday, November 14

National Ballot Initiative News

Greetings, democracy fans. There's no recent news on national ballot initiative progress, but last week's state initiatives show that initiatives are where most reforms start, how initiatives need to be improved, and the need for national initiatives. To convince your friends who doubt that initiatives are the way to go, the proof is in the pudding:

1. Initiatives are winding down the 75-year war on marijuana users. While Congress put an end to alcohol prohibition after 13 years of profits to the mafia and deaths by rotgut, it is now too beholden to the alcohol, prescription drug and other interests threatened by marijuana and hemp to act. Colorado's legalization Amendment 64 passed 54.9% to 45.1% as did Washington's Initiative 502 with a 55.3% to 44.7% vote. Medical marijuana also passed in Massachusetts with a stunning 63% to 37%, but Arkansas' medical marijuana and Oregon's legalization both failed. 

The Federal government will still prosecute marijuana users when they want, a demonstration of the need for national ballot initiatives like Senator Mike Gravel's project: http://Vote.org   http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/legal-battle-looms-over-marijuana-initiatives/2012/11/07/cce5033e-28f5-11e2-bab2-eda299503684_story.html

2. Here in Colorado, the City of Longmont banned oil and gas "fracking" in town by 60% to 40%, in spite of the oil and gas companies outspending proponents by more than ten to one, becoming the first citizens to vote on this: http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_21943036  Longmont is now facing off against the governor (a former petroleum geologist) the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission, and the fossil corps, who have filed suit. The people who organized this initiative are so juiced, they're talking about a similar Colorado initiative, and are enthused over the prospect of national ones.


3. For the first time, same-sex marriage was legalized in states across the country using ballot initiatives rather than legislation. Maine, Maryland, and Washington all voted to allow same-sex couples the right to marry in their states. Minnesota also became the first state to have voters reject a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.  This was all predicted by the prescient Nate Silver last year at  http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/the-future-of-same-sex-marriage-ballot-measures/

Having your personal life discussed in the media is no fun for gays, but this is how prejudice gets dispelled. I was raised in the '50s and '60s and never learned about gay people back then. My vague distaste for gays vanished in 1992 when Colorado was debating Amendment 1, which banned gay rights laws (and was overturned by all the courts including the Supreme Court.) During the debate I recalled hitch-hiking through San Francisco in 1970 at age 18 and getting rides from gay men who had their hands all over me. Once I realized where the distaste came from, and that most gays, like most straights, arent' like that, I gained many gay friends including my current Congressman Jared Polis, who happens to favor national ballot initiatives: http://spryeye.blogspot.com/2008/12/my-congressman-jared-polis-on-record.html

4. Californians, after enduring over $1 million a day of ads from major food companies, narrowly defeated Proposition 37, which would have mandated the labeling of GMO foods. The pro-GMO forces outspent the labeling advocates 5 to 1, defeating what polls show is nationwide an overwhelmingly popular idea.
This shows that voters need the kind of objective information that legislators get from public hearings, expert testimony and deliberation. This is just what Oregon's Citizen Initiative Review has provided for three election cycles: http://HealthyDemocracyOregon.org  Gravel's proposal also incorporates this, as Deliberative Committees. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, 18 state legislatures have tried and failed to label GMO foods: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Biotech-food-measure-Prop-37-on-ballot-3788811.php

San Juan County, Washington DID pass Initiative Measure No. 2012-4, making it illegal to "propagate, cultivate, raise or grow plants, animals and other organisms which have been genetically modified." http://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/washington-county-bans-gmo-cultivation.html


5. Two states and over 120 cities (including mine, Boulder) passed initiatives or referenda to call on Congress to over-ride the Supreme Court's notorious Citizens United decision:  http://truth-out.org/news/item/12638-millions-of-voters-demand-constitutional-amendment-to-overturn-citizens-united

To further convince people, you can show them the record of the last 20 years of initiatives in Colorado: http://spryeye.blogspot.com/2012/01/case-for-ballot-initiatives-and.html   and some national initiative history: http://Vote.org/initiatives

You can see the World-Wide Direct Democracy Newsletter at: http://www.elefant-studio.cz/download/newsletter3.pdf

The 4th Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy just concluded in Montivideo, Uruguay: http://2012globalforum.com/

 I always say: "You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can buy most of Congress (and the legislatures) most of the time."

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Evan

Thursday, November 8

Country wakes up to Climate Change! For real.


Wow, 350.org's  Do the Math Tour to stop climate catastrophe starts with a triple bang. Here's what Bill McKibben just emailed me -Evan

Off like a rocket.I'd be lying if I said I'd expected it to start quite this well.We launched the Do the Math tour in Seattle last night -- even though we had sold the out first venue and moved to a bigger one, we still had a hell of a time squeezing in the crowd. Check out the crowd of 2000 people with their fists in the air:

The show was a nonstop high -- people on their feet again and again, pledging to cross the country to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable. If you can still get a ticket near you you're going to want one: dothemath-boulder.eventbrite.comBut here are the day's two huge unexpected stories, the things that have us grinning ear to ear as we drive south in the biodiesel bus towards Portland and tonight's show:

1) Seattle mayor Mike McGinn took the stage to tell 2000 of his constituents that the city's treasurer has begun investigating divestment options for the city's money. I had lunch with him, and knew he was taking this seriously -- but this is the kind of forthright action that defines leadership, and he won huge cheers from the crowd when he made his announcement from the stage.

2) Unity College in Maine just announced that they're divesting from fossil fuels -- the first college in the country! On the night this campaign begins! Here's what president Stephen Mulkey said at our press conference this morning: "I know from speaking with other presidents that many more colleges in America are already grappling with this." They won't all move this boldly and proudly -- but we're in business, folks. This is happening: dothemath-boulder.eventbrite.comOn to Oregon!Bill

Monday, May 21

Cure Intestinal Parasies Naturally

How to cure amoebic dysentery, giardia and worms with Quassia
People traveling in 3rd world countries are often afraid of intestinal parasites, but, having lived for 3 years in poorer areas of Mexico and 2 in Guatemala, I learned there are easy solutions. I picked up amoebic dysentery several times while on long bicycle trips, and knowing how to deal with them, I was able to continue with no problems. This method is for healthy people only!
Here's how I do it: If my gut hurts, I wait two days. If it's just a bacterial infection, you should start to feel better. Coconut milk is very soothing. Definitely avoid alcohol and sweets, which bacteria and other parasites love.

If after 2 days, you feel as bad or worse, you should start treatment with a “full-spectrum antibiotic” -or the herb Quassia, which is used in much the same way -especially if there is mucus in your feces and sulphur in the gas you pass. In most of Latin America, just go to a Pharmacia and ask for Flagyl (or the generic Metronidazole), the cheap drug available everywhere, or say “tengo amebas” (“I have amoebas”) and they'll almost certainly give you Flagyl. In the U.S. you need a prescription, so DON'T WAIT until you return or you'll have to pay for expensive tests to get treatment -while the amoebas are eating your lunch, dinner and breakfast and you are getting weaker. If you have a weak liver from drinking, etc.  -or from continuing untreated parasites- they can get inside, and you need a doctor, quick.

Quassia won't make you feel as bad as Flagyl, but neither is fun. Both are killing everything in your gut, so you need to replenish the beneficial bacteria with probiotics, like yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, miso, etc., after the treatment.
Often people with amoebas will wait longer until they're really sick and go to a doctor for a stool test. If they don't find the amoebas with a microscope the first time (not a fun job), and you wait, it will take weeks or more to recover your strength after you take the treatment. That's why I assume I have them if I don't feel better in 2 days. Neither treatment is pleasant, but you'll function fine, which is nearly impossible with amoebas.

Quassia is available at herb and health food shops. It will be either shredded or chopped. Take a large handful on your trip, which should cost a few bucks.

Procedure:

With either Flagyl or Quassia, take it 3 times a day about an hour before meals for 10 days. If you're traveling for an extended time in an area with poor sanitation, where re-infection is likely, consider taking the treatment for only 2 days -to control rather than eliminate the amoebas. They will grow back in 20-24 days -and you will know it. Take the treatment another 2 days and so forth, until you get back home -or to civilization. Then take the full 10 day treatment to eliminate all the amoebas.

With Flagyl you just pop a pill. With Quassia you make tea. If the herb is shredded, just put a small palmful -about ½ ounce- in about a pint of cold water, and wait 20 minutes. If it's coarsely chopped, you'll have to boil it a bit -a minute should do it. Either way, it will taste quite bitter. Drink it down. That will kill most of them, so when you eat your meal, you will get most of the food, not them. The few that are left will recover somewhat, but after 30 doses, they will all be gone.
Add more water to the same wad of Quassia and drink it before the next meal, and so forth, until the tea becomes weak after about 3 days; then toss that wad and start another. So it will take about 3 wads or 1 ½ ounces for a complete 10-day treatment.


Enough Quassia for 3 days treatment. This grind will make tea in cold water.


Worms & Giardia

Once when I was taking Quassia on a bike trip in Guatemala, I found a 9” long white worm in my stool -I believe it was the common Ascaria worm, which probably infects 25% of the world and 2% of Americans. I was scared enough to also take Flagyl when I got to town, but nothing further came out. So the Quassia killed that too.
Flagyl and Quassia will also kill Giardia. Doctors say to take only 1/3 the dose of Flagyl for Giardia as for Amoebas, and for only 5 days, so you could reduce the Quassia treatment accordingly. If you don't take enough, you will know 20-24 days later, and can try again. I guess it was overkill to treat my only case of Giardia the same as I did amoebas. 

Etc:
Quassia is on the FDA's Generally Regarded as Safe list, but probably should not be used during pregnancy. It is said to also be effective against malaria, pinworms and even lice. It contains the phytochemical quassin, the bitterest substance found in nature. To understand the seriousness of amoebas and their treatment I recommend you read at least this about Flagyl. If you've had amoebas for awhile they may lodge in your liver and treatment is harder.

I am not a doctor and do not know your condition! Please discuss this treatment with your doctor before you go!

Friday, April 20

The Grinch who tried to steal 4/20

from the Cannabis Therapy Institute:
 (Phil DiStefano is CU-Boulder's Chancellor, a repeat DUI offender who leads today's attempt to stop CU's famous 4/20 cannabis smoke-in/prohibition protest. They're posting hundreds of cops to stop anyone without a CU ID from coming on campus, and spreading smelly fish fertilizer where the celebration occurs. -Evan)

Here's video from 2009:
  
The Grinch who tried to steal 4/20

"Pooh-Pooh to the Stoners!" Phil was grinch-ish-ly humming. "They're finding out now that no 4/20 is coming!"

"They're just waking up! I know just what they'll do!"

"Their mouths will hang open a minute or two. Then the Stoners down in Boulder will all cry Boo-Hoo!"

"That's a noise," grinned Phil, "That I simply MUST hear!" So he paused. And DiStefano put his hand to his ear. And he did hear a sound rising over the snow. It started real low. Then it started to grow...

But the sound wasn't sad! Why, this sound sounded merry! It couldn't be so! But boy was it merry!

He stared down at Boulder! Out popped Phil's eyes! Then he shook: what he saw was a shocking surprise!

Every Stoner in Boulder, the tall and the small, Was singing and smoking! With no permits at all!

He HADN'T stopped 4/20 from coming! IT CAME! Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And DiStefano, with his feet ice-cold in the fish fertilizer, stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?" "It came without permits! It came without speeches!" "It came without Frisbees, or costumes or bleachers!" And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore. Then DiStefano thought of something he hadn't before!

"Maybe 4/20," he thought,"doesn't come from a permit." "Maybe 4/20...perhaps...means a little bit more!"

And what happened then...? Well...in Boulder they say, DiStefano fired up a fatty and had a very nice day!


YOU CAN'T STOP 4/20 from Coming!

HAPPY 4/20!

Sunday, January 1

The case for ballot initiatives, and improving them

I challenge anyone to find a State legislature  whose record compares to what Coloradans have done with ballot initiatives, a form of direct democracy:

In 2000 Colorado voters passed Amendment 20, legalizing medical marijuana, Amendment 22, closing the gun-show loophole and Amendment 23, raising K-12 spending. In 2002 we passed Initiative 27, one of the country's strongest campaign finance limits. In 2004 we passed Initiative 37, the country's first renewable energy mandate for utilities. In 2006 we passed Amendment 41,  the country's strongest Ethics in Government law, and Initiative 42, raising the minimum wage. In 2008 we passed Amendment 54,  which prohibits government contractors from making campaign donations. In 2012 we passed Amendment 64,  the country's first legal marijuana AND hemp, and we voted 3 to 1 for Amendment 65, asking  our Congressional Representatives  to  work  to reverse Citizens United. (Only 1 of 7 did anything,  showing how poorly they represent us.) And in 2016 we passed Amendment 70 for a $12/hr. minimum wage, Proposition 106, Medical Assistance in Dying for the terminally ill and Proposition 107, for Open Presidential Primaries. (You can find details of each at ballotpedia.org. Just search for "Colorado Amendment [or Initiative or Proposition] X")

During a similar time the Colorado legislature has done little but prevent local communities from solving their own problems with preemptive laws, such as against local minimum wages, rent control, gun control, and banning fracking.  

The downside of initiatives is far less harmful than legislation as well. Contrast a few ballot initiatives impeding gay rights and abortion with all 50 state legislatures criminalizing sodomy and abortion and jailing people for decades. Not to mention interning Japanese during World War II, persecuting communists,  socialists and friends during the McCarthy era and imprisoning millions of marijuana smokers over the last 80 years. 

Media, not just in Colorado, have focused on the few problematic ballot initiatives like Colorado's 1992 Taxpayer Bill of Rights Amendment 1, which voters gave a 5 year time out in 2005, by voting for Referendum C. Rather than act to finally fix TABOR, the Colorado Legislature keeps trying to make the initiative process harder, including with 2008's defeated Referendum O. The same forces finally succeeded with 2016's Amendment 71, by going the initiative route, to make it appear to be a grassroots effort. 71 makes the process much more expensive for regular people, without inconveniencing wealthy users of the ballot initiative process.

Oregon has instead improved its ballot initiative process with Citizen Initiative Review. By having randomly-selected "citizen juries" deliberate each initiative, problems like TABOR's "racheting down provision," hidden in its back pages unnoticed, would have been exposed before we voted on it. 

Citizens in both Oregon and California have tried, using ballot initiatives, to get their Secretaries of State to allow signing ballot initiative petitions on the SOS website. This would open the process to groups without huge funds, save the SOS the expense of comparing physical signatures (ID would be by driver's license, etc., as with online registration in over half the states), reduce misrepresentation and harassment for signatures, get more voters to read more of the initiative texts before signing, and save gas, time and money.

I list four other improvements to the process in my article Why Bernie Sanders should put Direct Democracy at the top of our Agenda

The initiative and referendum process is the origin of most US reforms, from women's suffrage to sunshine laws to medical marijuana to term limits. See initiatives for references and more examples.

"On most major issues we've dealt with in the past 50 years, the public was more likely to be right...based on the judgment of history...than the legislatures or Congress." -George Gallup, Sr.

Wednesday, December 21

 9/11 Truth-seeking made huge strides since September's 10th anniversary:

10/9/11 NY Times: Scientists’ Analysis Disputes F.B.I. Closing of Anthrax Case

The anthrax attack was just a secondary terror event.. But these doctors say the FBI dropped a main forensic lead which points at the most advanced US labs -and the FBI is actively trying to block a new investigation. It's also the first crack in the NY Times subtly snide propaganda against "truthers," and by implication, truth.

9/15/11 Fmr Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chair [Democratic] Sen. Bob Graham calls to re-investigate the Saudi role in 9/11 AND the government's active cover up such as flying Saudis, including Bin Ladens, out of the country while the rest of us were grounded right after 9/11. [See DemocracyNow]

9/11/11 SecrecyKills was set to release their expose podcast naming some very critical names, but the CIA threatened them at the last minute. They released it a couple of weeks later, in spite of the threat. Their statement about the shut-down and fmr. FBI Director's Tenet's response to them say plenty, even if you don't listen to the whole podcast. For a summary it's quicker to view this video at FBI whistleblower/translator Sibel Edmonds website Boiling Frogs: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/?s=secrecy+kills

9/09/11 Release of "Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out," the new full-length documentary featuring 43 of the over 1600 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth members, including the lead electrical engineer of the WTC, one of its structural engineers, Boulder structural engineer Jonathan Smolens, etc. With Boulder psychologists Bob and Marti Hopper and Denver psychologist Fran Shure in the epilog. 

The 43 engineers & architects merely expound High School level physics showing that NIST's (changing!) explanation of what made THREE buildings of the WTC fall down is a pack of violations of 1. The Law of Conservation of Momentum and 2. Principles of Symmetry.  Photos of WTC buildings 3, 4, 5 and 6, which were completely burned and gutted by thousands of tons of falling steel from the very close Twin Towers, show they didn't collapse, just as much larger fires lasting many hours or days  have never made a steel-framed skyscraper fall. ONLY WTC 1, 2 and 7 fell in identical symmetrical fashioned, though all were damaged VERY unsymmetrically and relatively slightly. Here are photos of 5 & 6.

Better science education is probably a big part of why 89.5% of Germans don't think the US is telling the whole truth about 9/11:

9/08/11-9/11/11 The International Hearings on the Events of Sept. 11, 2001 concluded with Sen. Mike Gravel explaining his tri-state ballot initiative campaign for an independent investigation with grand jury powers. Then, French actor/director Mathieu Kassovitz, who played the lead in "Amelie," gave $50,000 to Sen. Gravel for the campaign.   A DVD of this event will soon be available.

Mike Gravel has noted that the government will never really investigate itself. He's carefully crafted the Citizens 9/11 Commission so any 1 state can convene it if its initiative passes, but other states can join in, etc. He DEFINITELY needs more money: 

Please everyone, circulate this widely. Thanks!

Evan

"There is no god higher than truth." -Gandhi