Gentlemen -
Both of your leadership strengths and wisdom, as well as your experience and skills are necessary now, probably far more that either of you realize. My apology for not knowing public relations, media relations, campaign design, and field organization development.
I am just a human being. My motives that drove me to my knees and to my keyboard over and over - shut up in isolation - are what created the two new and the last Articles of the current California Constitution. What is behind my work is a deep passion for change. As one individual, I do not speak for my campaign organization, the Democratic Party of California, or for the People of California. I speak with my voice. I speak for my self. There is no other author of these two proposed Constitutional Articles. My work was guided with a full awareness of the full scope of the work at hand. I wrote the exact language to respect, empower and include everyone, in what I pray comes to pass: a real democratic California Constitutional Convention.
Yes I am personally seething underneath my skin. I am beyond upset over what has become of my native State of birth. I do not claim the skill of a Navy Seal in thought, speech, and action, without one moment, word, and deed wasted. Clearly, my thoughts, words, and deeds do not matter. That said, I do think, feel, speak, and act. My Grandfather told me that other peoples opinions of me are none of my business. I am not politically correct. I don't attempt to be other than I am. Something has to give. Not someone - something.
Clearly, the Democratic Party Leadership and the Republican Party Leadership have a common benefactor. The Big money behind both parties owns and controls the media as well as both parties. This is the very same cabal that President John Kennedy warned us of. So as to include the others who were also aware, and who also warned us as well, President Dwight Eisenhower spoke clearly of the threat from within America - of a cabal, a military industrial complex. This Plutocracy is who owns the controlling stock in most of the participant Corporations of the Bay Area Council. This is not a rant. This is fact. These major players are who fund both parties, and all major candidates. The corruption of money is endemic and marbled throughout our political structures. After all, our current Constitution was drafted so four men could build a railroad. The railroad is on the tracks and we are in it's headlight. Who will be road kill in this process? We the people of California are the target, not the passengers.
This is not about me. I wrote the proposed Articles. I posted them on line for public comment, and I solicited comment from 20 or more of the best Constitutional Law Professors alive. One friend (Kyndra Miller of Tony Serra's Pier 5 Law Office) forwarded the link to the first (final first drafts) to her law professors, and asked them to comment and pass the link around for other Law Professors to comment. Matt Gonzalez (VP Candidate on the 2008 Ticket with Ralph Nader) did comment: Paul, this is not law that is on the books yet. The scope and approach is too vast to wrap my mind around. Please blog your work and progress for us all.
Erwin Chemerinsky, the Dean of Law at UC Irvine did comment also. He added the need for language to provide for ratification. Other than that, his comment was that a California Constitutional Convention would take too long. The needs of the people of California, and California's State Government's immediate structural needed reforms, in his mind, were too important and too deep to allow a "waiting time" period - (to file, qualify, wait for a Statewide election, win, elect delegates, hold the convention, present the proposed new charter, go thru the public discussion prior to ratification, ratify, and elect or otherwise secure new Constitutional Officers, and then get on to healing California with the New Charter and New State Officers).
Larry Lessig is my friend. He did not even respond. Many others did not respond.
Jim Sutton, Lawyer for PG&E, and California Elections Finance Law and Elections Law at UC Hastings did respond. His criticism was pointed at "Free Expression", and the first amendment rights of big business and campaign independent entities to participate in the finance of campaigns out-side the structure of any political party or candidate or issue cause. He schooled me in the United States Supreme Court rulings, and he was correct. I don't have to like it, but everyone must accept it. The Articles I wrote - in final form - then incorporated Mr. Sutton's concerns, so we would be able to pass thru the Constitutional Tests to come - before the US Supreme Court.
Forget about my ego in this. It is not about me damn it. It is about you. It is about everyone - all of us.
If we do not succeed, California will have a new Constitution. That same team that both Eisenhower and Kennedy warned us of will draft it and spend any amount of money to push past the approval of the people of California, at the needed time of ratification. This Republican and Democratic Party Backed effort is what we are up against.
In opposition - there is only one David in this deal: the California Action Network, and we are rag tag at it's worst. We have no money. I don't even know if there is any support. I am not skilled at leadership and unity development. And I am one pissed off guy. I don't understand why no one else is pissed off either?
So I will start from scratch.
I will go scan the printers proofs from pre-press and create the pdf files of the two Articles.
I will re-write from scratch - the letter I hope opens the flood gates.
I will send it to you for approval - once more, and then go to work sending it all over California. I can't do this alone. I never could.
I wish we could all meet like real people.
Oh well....
I am off to lunch at Saint Anthony's now - and if you have a problem with my eating one hot meal a day at the soup kitchen like I have since May of 2008 - keep it to yourself.
I am just one guy calling for a sanity check .......
- Paul
Paul Talcott Currier
Author & Principle Proponent of:
Two Constitutional Initiatives for
Our "California Citizens"
Constitutional Convention
http://CaliforniaActionNetwork.com
California Action Network
41 Jones Street, Suite 609
San Francisco, California 94102
(Mobile) 415-571-1583
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
One Box: 80 Petition Sets and 20 Instruction Sheets, with 20 Legal Declarations, as Required by California State Law: Shipping !
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Campaign Finance: October 11, 2009
1,600,000 signatures needed - to assure the 700,000 needed to qualify for the NOVEMBER 2nd 2010 Statewide Ballot. (we have until January 11, 2010 to file, but our target filing date is Monday December 7th, 2009.
(10 signatures per Petition Set)
160,000 Petition/Sets to ship
____________
160,000 Petition/Sets
(80 Petition/Sets per box)
2,000 boxes of 80 Petitions Sets
10 signatures per set x 80 = 800 signatures per box)
____________
2,000 boxes at $80 per box sold
= $160,000.00 total cash in from website
2000 boxes x 800 signatures = 1,600,000
2,000 boxes at $40 per box cost to Campaign
= $80,000.00 total income from Petition Set Sales to Volunteers
Income to be spent on one office, tools, web team, and regional staff
Income also to be spent on development of buttons, bumper-stickers, banners, field manuals, training videos and support tools.
The campaign will cost $50,000 for month one and $100,000 for month two - beyond the cost of petitions, and distribution to the volunteers, political clubs, and organizations in the Citizens Voting Union or Campaign Coalition of Single Issue Teams. By December the Statewide core campaign costs will reach $150,000 to $200,000 per month.
The Regional and Zone Field Directors will organize training's, fundraiser's and political events throughout California. Our Campaign Staff needs everyone to learn from them, follow their directions, and follow their leadership as Trained and Seasoned Community Organizers. What we are focused on, may not seem important, but the goals include first qualification for the November 2nd, 2010 Statewide Ballot. We have tasks to complete that are coordinated across all 80 Assembly Districts. There are Seven Phases to this campaign and we are in phase two.
As we work together, we will recruit 80 Assembly District Community Field Organizers, and 160 to 200 Interns. We need to raise the money to pay these people. There are responsibilities and accountabilities that come with staff membership. We work as one team - even if all anyone sees is the volunteers, and our minimal staff membership present at our events. We have a whole Sate to Organize, so staff will be geographically disperse. Please attend the training's we will offer, as that is where more than a handful of staff will gather at the same time. Most of our organizational work will remain virtual and take place on line. The full rank and file 80 Local Teams will cost our campaign roughly $500,000 to $600,000 per month. Once we qualify for the November 2nd 2010 Statewide Ballot, and pass from phase two to phase three, we will move into community organizing locally across California in an effort that has never been done before.
This common cause of ours must be self supported by the people, as this is for the people and of the people. There are no major donors - it's all just us.
10,000 people contributing $20.00 per month is: $200,000.00
5,000 people contributing $50.00 per month is: $250,000.00
1,000 people contributing $100.00 per month is: $100,000.00
(there have to be 1,000 Progressive Lawyers in California)
500 people contributing $1,000 per month is: $500,000.00
100 wealthy citizens at $2,500.00 per month each is: $250,000.00
______________
Total Monthly from Individuals: $1,300,000.00
250 Democratic Clubs contributing $500.00 per month is: $125,000.00
100 Local Churches contributing $1,250.00 per month is: $125,000.00
100 Union Locals contributing $2,500.00 per month is: $250,000.00
(there are this many teachers unions alone in California)
______________
Total Monthly from Clubs, Churches and Local Unions:
$500,000.00
320 home meeting-fundraisers per month with $500.00 each is: $160,000.00
(80 Assembly Districts host one per week each - and that is 320)
Local bundling and fundraising from petition signers with cash and checks placed in campaign envelopes
(name, address, zip, phone, email, employer and job title) - ???
These are reasonable goals - where do you fit in - ?
Who can you talk to to be our representative - ?
Hip Hop, Rock, and other artists stage benefits - ???
Student Union's organize fundraising events - ???
Private Citizen Major Donors - ???
Single Issue Supporters and Fundraising Operations - ???
County Labor Councils - ???
Major Unions - ???
Major Church Bodies - ???
We should be able to raise $25 Million - one buck at a time. The opposition already said they are willing to spend $100 Million to $150 Million to get a California Constitutional Convention with computer selected delegates, and limit the scope of the Convention to only topics that are good for the Corporate Takeover and Privatization of the Property of the People of California, Privatization of our Government and Government Services. What are we going to do to counter this?
The cost of materials is our individual and collective burden:
To produce and ship 2,000 boxes of 80 Petition Sets per box will cost us $80,000 and raise the $80,000 needed to begin the next set of campaign activities. We all have to pitch in out of pocket forward. Some of you may be only be able to contribute $10.00 per month. That matters! Others can afford $100 per month. We all are equal. Do what you can according to your ability.
Our Petitions are for sale - so people can become stake holders, and our campaign can begin and remain self supporting. We started with no money, one person and a dream. All our campaign records of income and expenses will be posted on line, forward - within 30 days of the close of each month. As the author and main proponent, I refuse to go thru another set of experiences, like I endured this last 60 days. I really mean it. It is up to you. UNITED WE CAN !
____________
Press work and shipping expense per ream-of legal size Petition Sets, Legal Declarations and Circulator Instructions:
Paper -
$50.00 per 5,000 sheets
$50.00 / 5,000 = $0.01 per sheet
5 sheets (one Petition/Set) x 80 = $4.00
Press Cost -
Impressions Petition One (09-0018) 2 sheets, front & back - 4
Impressions Petition Two (09-0019) 3 sheets, front & back - 6
Total - 10 impressions.
$.02 per impression x 10 = $0.20 per Petition/Set
80 Petition/Sets = $16.00
Staples -
$0.02 x 2 staples per Petition/Set = $0.4
80 Petition/Sets = $3.20
Collation -
no charge from printer,
included in the press run
Press Carton (thin box) -
(one "snap up legal ream" per 80 P/Sets)
$0.73 x 1 single ream snap up box = $0.73
_______
Total per 80 Petition/Sets packed box = $23.93
Shipping per Box = $15.00
_______
Total Shipped Campaign Cost = $38.93
There are taxes that are included
and which are not included in this
number. Safely - cost = $40.00 per.
$40 x 2 (100% mark up to cover next press run) = $80.00 Sale Price for one box of 80 Petition Sets (with space for 800 signatures)
(10 signatures per Petition Set)
160,000 Petition/Sets to ship
____________
160,000 Petition/Sets
(80 Petition/Sets per box)
2,000 boxes of 80 Petitions Sets
10 signatures per set x 80 = 800 signatures per box)
____________
2,000 boxes at $80 per box sold
= $160,000.00 total cash in from website
2000 boxes x 800 signatures = 1,600,000
2,000 boxes at $40 per box cost to Campaign
= $80,000.00 total income from Petition Set Sales to Volunteers
Income to be spent on one office, tools, web team, and regional staff
Income also to be spent on development of buttons, bumper-stickers, banners, field manuals, training videos and support tools.
The campaign will cost $50,000 for month one and $100,000 for month two - beyond the cost of petitions, and distribution to the volunteers, political clubs, and organizations in the Citizens Voting Union or Campaign Coalition of Single Issue Teams. By December the Statewide core campaign costs will reach $150,000 to $200,000 per month.
The Regional and Zone Field Directors will organize training's, fundraiser's and political events throughout California. Our Campaign Staff needs everyone to learn from them, follow their directions, and follow their leadership as Trained and Seasoned Community Organizers. What we are focused on, may not seem important, but the goals include first qualification for the November 2nd, 2010 Statewide Ballot. We have tasks to complete that are coordinated across all 80 Assembly Districts. There are Seven Phases to this campaign and we are in phase two.
As we work together, we will recruit 80 Assembly District Community Field Organizers, and 160 to 200 Interns. We need to raise the money to pay these people. There are responsibilities and accountabilities that come with staff membership. We work as one team - even if all anyone sees is the volunteers, and our minimal staff membership present at our events. We have a whole Sate to Organize, so staff will be geographically disperse. Please attend the training's we will offer, as that is where more than a handful of staff will gather at the same time. Most of our organizational work will remain virtual and take place on line. The full rank and file 80 Local Teams will cost our campaign roughly $500,000 to $600,000 per month. Once we qualify for the November 2nd 2010 Statewide Ballot, and pass from phase two to phase three, we will move into community organizing locally across California in an effort that has never been done before.
This common cause of ours must be self supported by the people, as this is for the people and of the people. There are no major donors - it's all just us.
10,000 people contributing $20.00 per month is: $200,000.00
5,000 people contributing $50.00 per month is: $250,000.00
1,000 people contributing $100.00 per month is: $100,000.00
(there have to be 1,000 Progressive Lawyers in California)
500 people contributing $1,000 per month is: $500,000.00
100 wealthy citizens at $2,500.00 per month each is: $250,000.00
______________
Total Monthly from Individuals: $1,300,000.00
250 Democratic Clubs contributing $500.00 per month is: $125,000.00
100 Local Churches contributing $1,250.00 per month is: $125,000.00
100 Union Locals contributing $2,500.00 per month is: $250,000.00
(there are this many teachers unions alone in California)
______________
Total Monthly from Clubs, Churches and Local Unions:
$500,000.00
320 home meeting-fundraisers per month with $500.00 each is: $160,000.00
(80 Assembly Districts host one per week each - and that is 320)
Local bundling and fundraising from petition signers with cash and checks placed in campaign envelopes
(name, address, zip, phone, email, employer and job title) - ???
These are reasonable goals - where do you fit in - ?
Who can you talk to to be our representative - ?
Hip Hop, Rock, and other artists stage benefits - ???
Student Union's organize fundraising events - ???
Private Citizen Major Donors - ???
Single Issue Supporters and Fundraising Operations - ???
County Labor Councils - ???
Major Unions - ???
Major Church Bodies - ???
We should be able to raise $25 Million - one buck at a time. The opposition already said they are willing to spend $100 Million to $150 Million to get a California Constitutional Convention with computer selected delegates, and limit the scope of the Convention to only topics that are good for the Corporate Takeover and Privatization of the Property of the People of California, Privatization of our Government and Government Services. What are we going to do to counter this?
The cost of materials is our individual and collective burden:
To produce and ship 2,000 boxes of 80 Petition Sets per box will cost us $80,000 and raise the $80,000 needed to begin the next set of campaign activities. We all have to pitch in out of pocket forward. Some of you may be only be able to contribute $10.00 per month. That matters! Others can afford $100 per month. We all are equal. Do what you can according to your ability.
Our Petitions are for sale - so people can become stake holders, and our campaign can begin and remain self supporting. We started with no money, one person and a dream. All our campaign records of income and expenses will be posted on line, forward - within 30 days of the close of each month. As the author and main proponent, I refuse to go thru another set of experiences, like I endured this last 60 days. I really mean it. It is up to you. UNITED WE CAN !
____________
Press work and shipping expense per ream-of legal size Petition Sets, Legal Declarations and Circulator Instructions:
Paper -
$50.00 per 5,000 sheets
$50.00 / 5,000 = $0.01 per sheet
5 sheets (one Petition/Set) x 80 = $4.00
Press Cost -
Impressions Petition One (09-0018) 2 sheets, front & back - 4
Impressions Petition Two (09-0019) 3 sheets, front & back - 6
Total - 10 impressions.
$.02 per impression x 10 = $0.20 per Petition/Set
80 Petition/Sets = $16.00
Staples -
$0.02 x 2 staples per Petition/Set = $0.4
80 Petition/Sets = $3.20
Collation -
no charge from printer,
included in the press run
Press Carton (thin box) -
(one "snap up legal ream" per 80 P/Sets)
$0.73 x 1 single ream snap up box = $0.73
_______
Total per 80 Petition/Sets packed box = $23.93
Shipping per Box = $15.00
_______
Total Shipped Campaign Cost = $38.93
There are taxes that are included
and which are not included in this
number. Safely - cost = $40.00 per.
$40 x 2 (100% mark up to cover next press run) = $80.00 Sale Price for one box of 80 Petition Sets (with space for 800 signatures)
Friday, October 2, 2009
I gave it everything - now it's up to you
Note: I broke down this post into sections. Many tell me I am wordy. I write from my heart, and these topics matter to me. Being nice does not work with Tyranny and Tyrants. How many of you need to loose your homes, schools, parks, rights, and personal liberties before you wake up? The Separate Topics are in Bold.
My Report from San Diego: The California Democratic Council Grassroots Democratic Convention, September 26th and 27th, 2009.
I filed for a room and a slot on the agenda of the CDC GDC held late September in San Diego. I filled out the forms one week before the deadline, a full month before the event. I asked for one hour (the established time slot for a break out session), and a room so I could present the Petitions and Organize within the Grassroots of the State Democratic Party here in California. I did not ask for a debate. I did not ask for a moderator. I asked to present the program, for a Citizens Constitutional Convention, as my Initiatives are the only certified Propositions with the force of law. I sought to educate others about what we can do, and the seven stages of our campaign, which we (about 10 to 500 of us - as I work alone and can not see the others yet except on email) are executing. All I asked for was a chance to meet the grassroots from California and work with who wanted to work on the CCC.
What is the campaign? How will we win? What do we need to do personally and collectively? How do we work together? What needs to be done in each of all 58 Counties in California to succeed? Can we pull this off? These seemed important to me, so I applied. Good Democrats told me the event would have people with money to support our campaign. Our petitions have been printed at the printers now for a month. I can not get them into the hands of interested organizers as we are $1,500 short of the final payment to the printer and the cost of postage. Audacity? Me? I know I live on welfare grant of $104 per month. I raised $3,700 (in pieces) so far, and I am tapped out. Where is the campaign? It is in your hands personally. How will we win? We need to ship petitions and help the Students of California prime the pump. If you read the Seven Phases of our Campaign you would see clearly that we can do this - if we want to Change California. How do we work together? Look at the organization and plug in and do your part. It will take all of us. Some must lead. Are you a leader? Sign up and take a slot and see what you can make happen around your community. Why not? Maybe you support another one to two million Californians loosing their homes? No? Maybe you support the Los Angeles Democrats who want to sell 1/3 of the Public Schools in Los Angeles County to Private Developers - opps - charter school operators who will fail and build real estate developments? Maybe the children of California don't deserve an education? We already voted our schools to the 50th rank slot compared to all the other 49 States. Our Schools are the worst in America! That is not cool with me. Heart on my sleeve or not - that sucks!
The CDC waited until one week before the Convention to get back to me. Rather than being allowed to present and organize with people from across California, the CDC told me that I would not get a room. CDC Staff told me that I was on, but I was given a debate in the Main Hall, with a representative of Repair California. Clearly Repair California is the front group of the Bay Area Council (BAC), and a very deceptive move to Privatize our State and turn over our State Property to Corporations and the Owners of Wall Street. By marginalizing our work, we were not able to organize with anyone. The trip was a wash. Nothing came of it. No people, no money, nothing. I can't even get the tape of the debate to post on Youtube or Vimeo so others can see what happened. There was no News Media there. Another thing of great curiosity to me - there were no people there. I know the CDC claims 400 showed up. Maybe they did. What I saw was a San Diego County Democratic Party Event. By my guess, and by asking people, I noted that maybe 50 to 100 of the 400 there, were from out of San Diego. The Democratic Clubs did not send representatives. The DCCC's did not send representatives. And the Event was not a Grassroots Convention. What took place was a wash.
I have talked with many DCCC Members from across California who clearly state they do not want a CCC (California Constitutional Convention). My gut sense is that no political party wants a CCC. No one in politics wants to rock the boat, take a chance, or upset the flow of money from the Corporations of the BAC into the campaign bank accounts of the fat cats. San Francisco Senator Mark Leno just sold off our first State Park in California - right here in San Francisco - to the Lennar Corporation (Newsom's largest donor). Hello! The Democrats in Sacramento are selling our State Parks to Developers. Arnold basically gave away 500 square miles of State Forests that are now clear cut. Is that what you approve of? If you do nothing you approve of that. What is the Old Guard of the California Democratic Party doing? What are you doing? What are you going to do? Call Ghost Busters?
So San Diego was a wash. We drove down at an expense of $300 and got noting but the shuck and jive. Thats what we call it in the Tenderloin - just talk and a waste of time. The Greens don't organize. That is why I left the Green Party. Organizing means voters. Organizing means people. Organizing means money. From the look of the field today, I am worthless at both. This will not work on $1 here and $1 there. Campaign Staff need pay to work. Everyone does. I have done all I can from my position on welfare and I am tapped - financially, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. If there was some place I could go in Sacramento and throw my body into the gears of the fascism that is in motion - I would. But where do I go? Where do I jump? In a few short years there will be no more California as we knew it. Our schools will be Private Real Estate Developments owned by Banks not the Local Communities. Our Politicians will be fat with campaign contributions to sell off the rest of our Commonwealth. We will have no access to our Beaches as they will be privately owned and operated for fees. Our State Forests will become private ranches, oil fields, and raped ecologically. Why not? If your private corporation took over - wouldn't you plunder the resources as the Fortune 100 do where ever they operate? If you didn't, you'd be fired and the CEO would bring in a good mercenary to do what you refused to do for their corporate bottom line. Look at the Prisons in California. Both the Democrats and the Republicans want to privatize them. Who's going to fill them up? Why not just privatize our Courts also? Where do I sign up for that deal? It looks to me, like if we don't organize, we have already signed up. What is left of California anyway? Look around you. Going, going, gone...
There is a myth about the CDC. The Democratic Clubs dont participate. The DCCC's dont participate. If your a member of any Democratic Club, who from your Club attended? If you are an elected County DCCC member, who from your DCCC attended? One old timer told me it was different before. The California Democratic Party is not OFA and the DNC. From what I saw, we need to rebuild the CDC from the ground up. There is lots of room to build as no one attends. If there is no CDC and CADEM is owned by the Corporations what is left for real Democrats?
Status of the CCC Campaign:
Dreams, goals, visions, and realities... these matter.
My dream is for our Commonwealth to be operated as a Public Trust, held in common, for many many generations to come. I like both our National and State Parks. I remember good public schools, Community Colleges and State owned Universities. When I went to CAL it was the best University in America.
My dream is for those who love each other, that they be free to marry. Health Care should be a right. Unions should be free to organize, better - to own their businesses, and share in the profits. My dream is an end to rascism, and racial profiling by our Police. My dream is that the prohibition end so drugs were not illegal and therefor "cool" - but rather the free choice of anyone who aspires to become a loser. People can change. If drugs were not a flag of rebellion, people would not use drugs to rebel. We have enough rebels without a clue already.
My dream is to have top ranked health and wellness as a basic right. The elderly would not have to lose their homes to get care in their old age, and be run out of their homes, and reduced to poverty. We need to treat our community health problems as communities. When we are dealing with the one in ten that suffers from alcoholic addiction, we should never treat those problems with criminalization of sick people. What kind of civilization imprisons the sick?
My dream is that Corporations would be held to account and contribute to their communities, rather than plunder, use community resources and not pay their fair share. We need an end to monopolies, and more. We need strong State Regulation to counter the Private Interests who will always try to profit from that which is not theirs. We need new State Banks, to cover the needs of our Citizens. We need to favor our State Industries and not bow to the rulers of the new global fascist plutonomy.
My vision is not utopian. I am a Californian. There is more than enough for all. I can see past the old era ruled by the political/economics of scarcity, and see the new era where we are governed by the political/economics of abundance.
What is the realty? We need to collectively take a time out and run thru a sanity check. We must do this. We have not done any collective political and economic sanity check for 130 years. For 130 years the Standard Oil Company of California, now known as Chevron, has been pumping oil from California and paying not one cent to our State Treasury. Unocal did the same, as did Atlantic Richfield and others. Who allowed this? The Great States of Alaska and Texas run on those revenues. Those are California's natural resources these thieves have plundered. Our Politicians and Courts have done nothing to stop it and correct the problem. Does anyone trust a Democratic Party that will sell our State Parks to Private Developers think for a minute the greedy bastards will stop?
All or Nothing! (push all the chips to the center):
The winner takes it all... the loser loses all... People, we are in a jam. We got here by not being responsible and accountable, individually and collectively. I am just as guilty as you. I withered from any political responsibility for over 30 years. No more.
We must gather ourselves together and organize. We must dig into our bank accounts and contribute money - what ever we can afford. This is not revolution. This is our evolution. We have to all go to the next stage together. None of us are alone anymore. Forget the walls that appear around us. Those are the walls of tyranny and despotism.
We have seven phases to execute now. We are in phase two. We need every one to pitch in $100.00 per month, if you have a job. If your on welfare, you must commit to $10.00 per month. If your a student, pitch in $20.00 per month. If California has been good to you, pitch in $1,000 per month. There is no limit on Initiatives. If you are a movie star - pitch in $1 Million. None of us is getting out of this deal - or - the opposition will Privatize our State and California will pass on into what might have been. It's all or nothing time.
Banks, Fees, Finance, and Romance:
Here is a run down of my day - Thursday October 1st, thru Friday October 2nd, 2009.
I woke up. I prayed to be of service to God. I looked at the email and there was nothing from San Diego. The printer called. I tried to get 1/2 of the job to ship. His answer was no. He is a fear based human and I have compassion for him. Still - no means no. No money means another frustrating day ahead.
A few weeks ago, I met with the Facilities Manager of the San Francisco Friends Meeting. Others call the Friends - Quakers. I last attended San Francisco Meeting in High School - that was the late 1960's. The Friends Meeting House was on Lake Street then. I remembered their commitment to correct social action. I met with the Facilities Manager to see about space for a Community Meeting. One Quaker gave us $1,000 to cover the pre-press and paper, and other incidentals. The Quakers granted us the main room for Sunday Worship for our Saturday October 3rd CAN Meeting. I hoped to hand out petitions and train everyone on how to administer the oath and sign the legal declarations to become a petition circulator - required in California by Law. I canceled that meeting today. There are no petitions to review or hand out. They are at the Printers, and the Printer and US Post Office need $1,500 if we are to ship to our initial Petition Coordinators and Regional Field Organizers.
As it was already October, I just cried. San Diego was a wash. The website works, but no one contributes. I stopped asking on Facebook. When your drowning how many times do you have to ask for help - while every one on the beach watches you die?
I made phone calls, and wrote to people who promised to help. No answers, but I left the messages any fundraiser does. No one calls me. Michael Moore sent me an email and offered me a free ticket to see his new movie. I have not been to a movie for over a year. I went. The Rockefeller Center West (aka the Embarcadero Center) Movies were familiar. I remembered when I had money and could go to movies. I used to go once a week. I decided to go later and I did. The movie is good. The effect of the timing could not be better. Will anyone wake up?
At about 11 am, I went to Saint Anthony's for lunch. I dont have a kitchen in my 12 x 18 room. My room is big - as the SRO Rooms go, but no kitchen means no hot food unless I go to Saint Anthony's. So off to lunch. The meal was good. Bar-B-Que Chicken. Real Food. I have been eating one meal a day there since July 8, 2008, when I got off the street. I am not ashamed of having lived on the street for 4 months in 2008. Many people live on the street now. It's hard. Oh well. I have a room now and a bed. There are showers down the hall and I can do laundry once a month when my welfare check arrives. Up in my room later, the need to vent hit me. Time to blog. Matt Gonzalez asked if I was blogging back when I started. I had asked Matt to weigh in on the legal work I devoted to the language of our petitions. I had not blogged for a while. Why not. Nothing is moving. So I wrote these words - and if your reading these words - I wrote them for you.
The petitions are not about me. The CCC is about California. I am old. I am 56 turning 57, and I don't have the fingers and toes to count all my friends who did not live as long as I have. 200 years ago, most never saw 50. My spiritual clock tells me I am on borrowed time already. Each day is a gift. Mine are just filled with frustration. I have done all I can. The critics attack me. My kids dont talk to me. I have nothing. I am just an old guy now, and who wants an old guy around with nothing? I've been wealthy before. I've been poor also. When I hit poverty this time, I lost my fire. I don't listen to the critics. When all people have to give is vinegar, who cares. They can go drink their own words for themselves.
The mail came. No letters from anyone. CHASE sent me a bounce fee notice. The cost of the Merchant Account hits monthly and that overdrew the Campaign Account. Empty. The "1/8 a tank of gas and a quarter pack of cigarettes and 100 miles to Chicago" bit was over. Empty. I went for a walk. There are people I call when in despair and I did what I am trained to do. No one home. The City was beautiful. October in San Francisco is special. I turn 57 in a few days. My grandson turned 12 and I have nothing for him. His class size went from 30 to 45 this year. Blog..... Hemm.....
I remember my last love affair. That was in 1999 and there was a marriage in it. Well, there was a ceremony. I had developed a phone company program in 1995. That was the sum result of 15 years of hard work. I remember the 1998 pitch at the VC Firm, Kliner Perkins, Caufield and Breyer. One gem of a guy (top telecom guy) told me that KPC (Breyer was not there then) was totally into DSL. They had $5 Billion into a project and did not want to work in wireless. They lost 100% of that investment. Maybe they should have invested in wireless? I think there are still some old pages up on the Net about my work then. The love affair came into my conscious memory for a while. Years without a kiss, you forget. Now I am just alone all the time. $55 Overdrawn is not so bad. It sure does not warrant suicide. I survived the loss of homes - twice - that were like watching the fires burn it all to smoke and ashes. I survived broken hearts also. More smoke and ashes. When these reflective times hit me, I wonder why I am still breathing. I have nothing left. The future looks bleak. I lost my work, means of living, home, ability to go out even alone, and more years ago. I remember the price tag on love. Some call love priceless. I know better.
Welfare to Work! That's the ticket for me. Welfare to work I tell ya! Hahahahhahhahahhahaaa. Now David Letterman should try that one on the audience. When your credit is ruined, and there is nothing left of life, and the dreams fade, welfare to work is not an option. I remember the GM at Safeway. Walter worked at the Safeway in the Fillmore Center for many decades. He was a great guy. Retired now. I had asked for a job in produce. I know produce. When I graduated from CAL in 1975, produce work was all I could get. I am good at it. There is an art to the rotation, placement, and presentation. It takes a touch. Try it some time. It's not so easy. Walter ran the credit report. He called me in for interview number four. My hopes were up. I was on my way! Back into America and into a steady pay check. Walter was down. He called me in to review the facts of life. I listened. He went thru how HR had refused me. No way could he pull Managers Rank. The problem was my credit report. I would never find work because my credit report! Wow. Then he went thru the New Deal. Everything is wired now. The leans from the court battles when I lost my (dreams, property, patent journals, income, cash position, and two homes) had left scars. Somethings don't get fixed.
I wondered about the men and women who were coming out of the Prisons of California. Who would hire them? If we ran statistics on those who have done time, I wonder if unemployment would be 90% or more? If I could not get a foot in the door in the country of my birth, how were the victims of Nixon's War On Drugs to make any entry back into society. Politics! It's dirty and disgusting. What is a man to do who can't even rotate produce? Starbucks just wished me luck. Business usually does not want anyone over 50. No one will say a thing as that is age discrimination. So what? The reality is when your life is over, what are you supposed to do when your still living it?
Romance? What a laugh. Finance? Another laugh.
As I walked out of the movie - Capitalism: A Love Story - last night, I stopped and looked at the crowd. What did they think? Couples were walking from the theater as couples do after a movie. Quiet talk. Arm in arm. Handholding. Some quiet laughter. Some deep in discussion. Should I leaflet the place this weekend. What's the point? I don't have petitions.
The Quakers called to ask me if I wanted them to open tomorrow. I canceled. What's the point? No petitions. All that work for nothing.
People only want to back a winner. People only want to bet on a winner. Ladies look to the bank account. Grandkids look to the bank account now too. Where is the humanity? Where is the solidarity? Where is the unity? Where is the community? When everyone is dead broke what then? Maybe we should just sell California's Collective Assets to Wall Street? Who needs homes, jobs, health care, recreation, and educations?
ATT and Bandwidth Fraud (current):
Today I called ATT to test my line. They lied to me. I set up a line tester on my own and discovered that ATT delivers 1/10 of what they sold me. How many American's have their Internet Service in any form with ATT. How many have DSL? How many have iPhones? With just those two products, I calculate ATT is ripping off the American Consumer at a rate of over $40 Billion per year. To me that is Anti-trust. But I seem to read black letter law differently than the US District Courts. The Sherman Anti-trust Act is relatively short. So is the Clayton Anti-trust Act. Have you read either lately. Each takes 5 to 10 minutes to read. They are written in english. I encourage you to have a look here.
Here is a graphic of what Bandwidth I get:
Notice the peak bandwidth provided. I pay for 1.5 Mbps down and 768 up. You can see that I get 1/10th that.
Get your own bandwidth speed test and test your own lines. ATT charges me $25.00 per month for 1.5 Mbps down and 768 up. What do they deliver? Today they delivered 167 Kbps down and 27 Kbps up. That is like going to Chevron and buying 15 gallons of gas and Chevron pumping 1.5 Gallon into your car: 1/10th for the same money, in my case $25 per month - I get $2.50 worth of service. When I multiply that across 100 Million DSL Customers, at ATT, that's a theft of $22.50 per month from 100 Million People. $2,200,000,000.00 per month theft is only a theft of $26 Billion per year from the American Consumer. US District Judge Ilston does not consider that Anti-trust. That is just for DSL with one company. The Apple iPhone is just a small 17 million Phone handset market for ATT. At $100 per month per phone - that is $1.7 Billion per month. ATT does not deliver the bandwidth to the iPhones that people pay for. When ATT is allowed to steal $25 Billion in false DSL Services and another $20 Billion per year from iPhone users - who don't get what they pay for by any honest test of bandwidth delivered.... That is just a little $40 Billion annual fraud of the American Consumer. No wonder ATT wants to re-write the California Constitution. If I was Jessie James I would want to re-write the law-books on Train Robbery also!
Memories of my Anti-trust Battle with the Who's Who of Telecom in America:
I still have nightmares. Process servers. Lawyers confiscating my possessions. Restraining Orders awarded on lies and false witness. I remember as I was put to the street and the last moment I saw my patent journals. That was August 2001. The litany of oppression that followed was brutal. The battles that had actually started in 1999 now were to consume the next 6 to 7 years of my life. By March of 2003, I was in 22 Court Actions in 12 Venues, without counsel. That was a wild time. One Lawyer can pretty much ruin your life. I had 7 kicking my ass. The attack was coordinated by Vincent Spohn. The story is a book in its own. At night now, I wake up at times dreaming of lawyers, doors getting kicked in. Seizures - not the medical kind - but the kind the Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect us all from in America. Well the Bill of Rights is toilet paper. There is a lot of pablum about how important the Bill of Rights is, but I am living proof that its all a big lie. The Law is not worth the paper and ink used to print it.
Let me see if I can remember the rough count. 1.) False Criminal Charges filed by Patmei; 2.) I answered with a filing for Annulment. Vince Spohn could gift my property to Patmei and transfer titles to her and her lawyer, but he could not serve her with papers on the business frauds or the Annulment; 3.) There was the Labor Court for Unemployment - that I had to fight to get some money. I had been living out of garbage cans and sleeping in the parks. Finally the Administrative Law Judge ruled that my working conditions were worse than slavery. Those were his words not mine; 4. & 5.) There were two law-suits brought on by Vince Spohn, who was my lawyer in the alleged criminal matter and the divorce. Vince had changed sides. Later he would plead to breach of ethics, yet to this day has never repaid the client trust fund of $35,000 which he stole from me. These law-suites were two fold. Vince used my company to sue me, and counseled Robert Chow of Hillsborough to also sue me personally. I prevailed at trial in a complete defense verdict (for me). Judge Goldsmith asked all the Lawyers why they had sued me - an indigent man? They all just looked at the floor in shame. A silent stare to the floor does not show up in a court transcript. 6.) There was the fraudulent false Bankruptcy of my business. Judge Montali referred that case to the US Dept of Justice for investigation and prosecution. The US Attorney did nothing. The Anti-trust went into the Bush Whitehouse. W wanted to reunify the ATT Bell System as a Texas Corporation. ATT was one of W's largest campaign contributors in 2000 and in 2004. 7.) There was a business eviction that got tied up in the false Bankruptcy. I lost my offices and home in that action forever. 8.) There was a legal auction of my home from storage. I lost maybe $750,000 there. How do you replace baby pictures, heirlooms, and more. I had produced recordings of a private Jefferson Airplane reunion. All my record of the Bus were gone. I dont want to even try to list the stuff. In the end, it was all just stuff. Museum stuff. Stuff that mattered to many. Still - in the end, just stuff: 9., 10., 11., and 12.) There were the District Attorney Actions against me for child support. Alameda County, Contra Costa County, San Francisco County, and Maricopa County in Arizona. I had earned all the money to pay these off. Vince Spohn made sure I could not pay. He sold me out and then worked with others to legally oppress me in case after case, to make sure I would never be able to file replies. 13.) I hired a lawyer in Palo Alto - Ric Saria to defend me in numbers 4. and 5. above. He stipulated to toss my cross-complaint and then got drunk or loaded on cocaine for years. Saria fell off the map. 14.) I sued Saria for malpractice and won. I secured a $750,000 judgement against him. There were only two trials of fact in this mess - the trial in the case where Robert Chow (ATT, World Com, Covad, and Metro-Fi) sued me - (number 4 above) - and the Labor Law Trial for Unemployment. The Labor Law Judge just about fell out of his chair. He could not believe what Chow had forced on me, and ruled 100% for me in that matter. He encouraged me to bring civil and criminal charges against Chow and his associates (the seven lawyers, which included my past counsel Vince Spohn of Napa California). Monthly, the four District Attorneys in the child support matters would weigh in. No one would help. At the trials where Chow and Spohn (my retained counsel) sued me with six other lawyers, I prevailed in court. I am not a lawyer. I told the truth and asked questions in cross-examination as they presented their groundless cases. I won. I waived defense, and closing argument. There was no point. They had no cases. One was tossed on their side to attempt to avoid malicious prosecution charges. The main case - I won out right! But it was not over.
That rough count added up to 14. There were other matters. Everything stemmed from the phony marriage of Patricia Melizza Bello Ruivivar and her relationships in Telecom - that crossed seas and included a collusion with ATT, and others. 15.) There was a case against Patmei and a cabal here in America who sought to steal my business. I had raised the original angle funding. The Marcos family wanted to steal everything and replicate the business model all over Asia including throughout the Peoples Republic of China. That case, Vince Spohn ruined and then hid from. The Chinese just went on alone, and implemented the infrastructure. The World saw ubiquitous high speed wireless Internet at the 2008 Olympics. I designed the infrastructure. ATT and other blocked any build out in America. Oh well. The law is not worth the paper its printed on here in America.
In 2004, I filed an Anti-trust action in Federal Court and a Malicious Prosecution Case in State Court.
Chief US Attorney Kevin Ryan lost his job over those matters. The Anti-trust went into the Bush Whitehouse. Karl Rove and others were involved. Ryan was fired because he asked for a case number. Both Attorney Generals Ashcroft and Gonzalez were involved. I remember when the lead FBI Agent of the Whitecollar Crime Task Force came out to talk with me before he retired. He told me that the FBI had asked to open investigations into over 20 criminal felonies that I had endured. He told me that Treasury had 30 to 50 counts of money felonies also. He apologized as what had happened was not supposed to happen in America, but the Prosecutorial Discretion was "Political" and my cases would never get numbers. He told in in his career at the Bureau he had never seen such dishonor of the law, but that the FBI was a Police Authority and not the US Attorney. I was ruined and he was sorry. He personally wanted to apologize as he did not feel he could retire in good conscience if he did not tell me what had happened.
The Malicious Prosecution died on special motions to strike. What an odd tool - the special motion to strike. The State Bar Covered up the mess, as Lawyers protect their own. There were a series of Appeals, but the fix was in. Corruption reigns supreme in California Courts. The Appeals? There were about seven. If you have not practiced law, my experience is the deck is stacked for those with money. Justice is an approximation - and often not near reality. Justice goes to the one with the most money. The Justice System - it's as bankrupt as America's Citizens. All Judges are corrupt. The only question is what's the price? Are there any good ones? Maybe. I have met three out of the twenty five I appeared before. People forget that the Prosecutors, the Lawyers and the Judges all work for who has the money. It's a King's Sport. That's why it's called "Court". Dead Peasants. Fitting words for Citizens on and all.
The Root Malicious Prosecution included three core cases in the California Superior Court of San Francisco County:
00-317432, 01-323391, 01-323394
The case is on file as: California Superior Court of San Francisco County Case No. 04-440882
The Appeal is on file as: Court of Appeal of California First Appellate District, Division Two: A113653
The Anti-trust depended on the Malicious Prosecution. Malicious Prosecution to block market entry is one definition of Anti-trust. I will never forget the day of opening arguments. There must have been 75 to 100 Lawyers in the Federal Court in San Francisco in Department 10. And there was me - alone. I did not plead the Anti-trust well. I am not a Lawyer. I tried though. I tried. Someone had to try. We all better try now. The move now is to privatize all of the Commonwealth of California. If we don't try, we will loose all our public assets in a complete State. That case was up at the Supreme Court - but the State Malicious Prosecution fell apart on Appeal and Sustained order of the California Supreme Court. We went to the US Supreme Court once, and they determined the case was not ripe for hearing. I think they expected to see the Anti-trust matter and decided to wait and hear that case. That would only have happened if I had won the Malicious Prosecution. I lost that and then lost the Anti-trust. Not bad for a novice with no training! (smile).
That Federal Case is on file as: N.D. Cal., San Francisco, D.C. No. C-04-3300 SI
The Federal Appeal is on file as: Ninth Circuit No. 06-15390
The Supreme Court first filing is known as: Record Lost - on file with the US Supreme Court
In the end America lost. Our Telecom in the USA is now 10 years behind that of 17 other Nations. If the Internet is the future of the global economy, we as a Nation are now set to slip into third world status. In many ways, we already are. But you have to travel to see what others are doing in other countries. The Anti Trust never stopped there.
One consolation was that in my Special Accusation against an Attorney (my direct charges against Vince Spohn) filed at the California Supreme Court, in that matter I won 9 - 0. In the over 10,000 special accusations against attorneys filed at the California Supreme Court over a 2 to 3 year time frame, mine was the only case heard. I won a total verdict. I wonder about the other 9,999 cases where people just got screwed by their lawyers. The State Bar then went on to cover up Spohn's theft of my client trust account. The Chief State Bar Prosecutor called that "Prosecutorial Discretion". Lawyers can steal from their clients in California. I know. It happens all the time and all the Lawyers get away with it. I heard those same words from the FBI. The reason Robert Chow, Vince Spohn and a cabal of Telephone Corporations got away was "Prosecutorial Discretion".
My Special Accusation against Vince Spohn is known as: XXXXX
Will Obama's Administration be different? I hope so. Is the Anti-trust Branch of the US DOJ open for work? I don't know. I gave up on Washington DC personally. My focus is on California.
Patmei and the Philippine Government:
Patricia and I met on line. Typical Yahoo! romance really. Marriage followed later. Motives? Theft of a business, wholesale Immigration Fraud (as in 20 to 50 intended cases per week). Money Laundry work for the Marcos family. Offshore bank accounts, and so much drama it seems unbelievable now. Secrets and lies. Normal. She posed as a local San Francisco Lady. She wanted a relationship. We have all seen the ads. Soul Mate Wanted, followed by a couple of paragraphs of drivel, signed by "Summer Rain". Fools and babies fear no warning signs. I answered. Later she identified herself as "Patmei".
Patmei had a crew on the project. There were maybe 3 to 7 at a time. All answered the Yahoo! Personals Ad - and used a set of 5 response letters. The letters were all standard. Patmei wrote them all, but not the responses. Her crew did the back and forth with the 400 plus suitors. The crew each took turns changing the names to match the person they wrote back to. That team ran a well oiled machine. Jack in one, John in another. Jimmy in one, and Chris in another. Hundreds and hundreds of letters. Later, after we married, I found the templates on her laptop. She incouraged me to work from home as her affairs took her all over Manila. Patmei was not a local San Francisco Lady. She was the Chief of Staff of the Executive Secretary of the President of the Philippines. His name was/is Ronaldo Zamora. Tubba Ching Ching. The Little President. Ronny - Tubba Ching Ching - did not know of his "staff project". Patmei had secrets with so many. I wonder if she knows her own real name?
After nine months of back and forth, the crew winnowed the list to 3 prospective suitors. I was the lucky pick. I won the lotto to hell and back. I never would have come out alive except for the grace of God, truly. That February of 1999, Patmei landed in San Francisco with her government entourage, and her mom. Little did I know that three of the crew of "selectors" traveled with her then. She was not as her photos pretended. Once very lovely to be sure, she had put on the weight of a human under great stress. We all know that 50 lbs overweight look. Anyone can look around in America and that look is normal now. Everyone seems obese. Regardless, the romance took off. Two weeks later, I proposed. Thirty days after that, I landed in Manila. We married at the end of April, and she held a charade ceremony on May Day. Not a good sign. I remember the public ceremony. As politicians do, she went on for what seemed like hours - thanking everyone. The heat was unbearable, and my shoes were new and small. My feet cramped. The pain of that day was only a foreshadow of what would quickly follow. Tubba Ching Ching did not attend. But all the waring parties in Mindanao were there. The Army had a few Generals. There were Senators and Governors, Congresspersons, and their Muslim Combatant Counterparts. The New Peoples Army delivered security - with the perimeter sealed by jungle fighters for the Maoists who controlled the interior of Mindanao. There were others too. Marcos Blue Ladies. Rebel Red Men. It's Mindanao after all. Everyone is related to everyone, and all the guns go away when there is a good pig roast. It's Mindanao.
I had met some of the other suitors. I had met the who's who of the Philippine Islands. I was married after all to a Queen (deba?). As I write in my welfare hotel room in the Tenderloin it is not a fantasy or a longing for. That was the worst decision of my whole life, worse than my first drunk. As I struggled with ATT today and the technicians who lied to me, and told me I was getting what I was paying for, I remembered why I wanted to start a competitive phone company and the full weight of the corporations who run the oligarchies of the non-communist world. Patmei was just a front for the Marcos Goons. The United States will end up like the Philippines if there is not a major change from the people. In real terms - in Telecom as an example - the USA is already a third world country. The development of the Internet is at the heart of the struggle. Will the Net become a force of liberation and freedom? Will the Net lead to global advanced education? Will the promise of medical advances and quantum leaps (plural) come to pass for humanity due to the Net and peoples everywhere instant access to real information? Or will the dark side prevail? We all make our own decisions in life. What kind of future do you dream of? Patmei worked for the owners of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company, and ally of ATT and the Rand Corporation. Her real boss was not Tubba, but his older brother Manny. Manny is the trustee of the controlling trust of now dead Ferdinand Marcos. There are five trusts. Thru those trusts and the allied political and economic interests of a handful of families in the Philippines, there is still no freedom in those Pacific Islands. Who cares? It's just the Philippines. I am grateful I got out with my life. The alternative? Well, I would not be alive. So my life in the Tenderloin, ruined economically, and ruined in pretty much every area of my life is actually pretty good, considering the alternative. Every day above sea level is a good day.
From my experience - I have arrived at the point where I accept injustice in America as the norm. But when you look at Michael Moore's new movie, ask yourself what you are willing to put up with? Injustice is the norm if we allow injustice to be the norm.
Or, we can draft a new State Constitution and make some waves!
There is one thing I can guarantee to everyone who has read my blog, and everyone who cares about the campaign for a Citizens Constitutional Convention: if we all work for this - it will work and we can change the world. If we fail... Let me quote Benjamin Franklin: "We had better hang together - as certainly we will all hang alone". When I say I give up, I submit to God. There is no other place for me to go for help. I place all my work down now. If you want it, it is there for you to pick up.
I have nothing left to give.
My Report from San Diego: The California Democratic Council Grassroots Democratic Convention, September 26th and 27th, 2009.
I filed for a room and a slot on the agenda of the CDC GDC held late September in San Diego. I filled out the forms one week before the deadline, a full month before the event. I asked for one hour (the established time slot for a break out session), and a room so I could present the Petitions and Organize within the Grassroots of the State Democratic Party here in California. I did not ask for a debate. I did not ask for a moderator. I asked to present the program, for a Citizens Constitutional Convention, as my Initiatives are the only certified Propositions with the force of law. I sought to educate others about what we can do, and the seven stages of our campaign, which we (about 10 to 500 of us - as I work alone and can not see the others yet except on email) are executing. All I asked for was a chance to meet the grassroots from California and work with who wanted to work on the CCC.
What is the campaign? How will we win? What do we need to do personally and collectively? How do we work together? What needs to be done in each of all 58 Counties in California to succeed? Can we pull this off? These seemed important to me, so I applied. Good Democrats told me the event would have people with money to support our campaign. Our petitions have been printed at the printers now for a month. I can not get them into the hands of interested organizers as we are $1,500 short of the final payment to the printer and the cost of postage. Audacity? Me? I know I live on welfare grant of $104 per month. I raised $3,700 (in pieces) so far, and I am tapped out. Where is the campaign? It is in your hands personally. How will we win? We need to ship petitions and help the Students of California prime the pump. If you read the Seven Phases of our Campaign you would see clearly that we can do this - if we want to Change California. How do we work together? Look at the organization and plug in and do your part. It will take all of us. Some must lead. Are you a leader? Sign up and take a slot and see what you can make happen around your community. Why not? Maybe you support another one to two million Californians loosing their homes? No? Maybe you support the Los Angeles Democrats who want to sell 1/3 of the Public Schools in Los Angeles County to Private Developers - opps - charter school operators who will fail and build real estate developments? Maybe the children of California don't deserve an education? We already voted our schools to the 50th rank slot compared to all the other 49 States. Our Schools are the worst in America! That is not cool with me. Heart on my sleeve or not - that sucks!
The CDC waited until one week before the Convention to get back to me. Rather than being allowed to present and organize with people from across California, the CDC told me that I would not get a room. CDC Staff told me that I was on, but I was given a debate in the Main Hall, with a representative of Repair California. Clearly Repair California is the front group of the Bay Area Council (BAC), and a very deceptive move to Privatize our State and turn over our State Property to Corporations and the Owners of Wall Street. By marginalizing our work, we were not able to organize with anyone. The trip was a wash. Nothing came of it. No people, no money, nothing. I can't even get the tape of the debate to post on Youtube or Vimeo so others can see what happened. There was no News Media there. Another thing of great curiosity to me - there were no people there. I know the CDC claims 400 showed up. Maybe they did. What I saw was a San Diego County Democratic Party Event. By my guess, and by asking people, I noted that maybe 50 to 100 of the 400 there, were from out of San Diego. The Democratic Clubs did not send representatives. The DCCC's did not send representatives. And the Event was not a Grassroots Convention. What took place was a wash.
I have talked with many DCCC Members from across California who clearly state they do not want a CCC (California Constitutional Convention). My gut sense is that no political party wants a CCC. No one in politics wants to rock the boat, take a chance, or upset the flow of money from the Corporations of the BAC into the campaign bank accounts of the fat cats. San Francisco Senator Mark Leno just sold off our first State Park in California - right here in San Francisco - to the Lennar Corporation (Newsom's largest donor). Hello! The Democrats in Sacramento are selling our State Parks to Developers. Arnold basically gave away 500 square miles of State Forests that are now clear cut. Is that what you approve of? If you do nothing you approve of that. What is the Old Guard of the California Democratic Party doing? What are you doing? What are you going to do? Call Ghost Busters?
So San Diego was a wash. We drove down at an expense of $300 and got noting but the shuck and jive. Thats what we call it in the Tenderloin - just talk and a waste of time. The Greens don't organize. That is why I left the Green Party. Organizing means voters. Organizing means people. Organizing means money. From the look of the field today, I am worthless at both. This will not work on $1 here and $1 there. Campaign Staff need pay to work. Everyone does. I have done all I can from my position on welfare and I am tapped - financially, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. If there was some place I could go in Sacramento and throw my body into the gears of the fascism that is in motion - I would. But where do I go? Where do I jump? In a few short years there will be no more California as we knew it. Our schools will be Private Real Estate Developments owned by Banks not the Local Communities. Our Politicians will be fat with campaign contributions to sell off the rest of our Commonwealth. We will have no access to our Beaches as they will be privately owned and operated for fees. Our State Forests will become private ranches, oil fields, and raped ecologically. Why not? If your private corporation took over - wouldn't you plunder the resources as the Fortune 100 do where ever they operate? If you didn't, you'd be fired and the CEO would bring in a good mercenary to do what you refused to do for their corporate bottom line. Look at the Prisons in California. Both the Democrats and the Republicans want to privatize them. Who's going to fill them up? Why not just privatize our Courts also? Where do I sign up for that deal? It looks to me, like if we don't organize, we have already signed up. What is left of California anyway? Look around you. Going, going, gone...
There is a myth about the CDC. The Democratic Clubs dont participate. The DCCC's dont participate. If your a member of any Democratic Club, who from your Club attended? If you are an elected County DCCC member, who from your DCCC attended? One old timer told me it was different before. The California Democratic Party is not OFA and the DNC. From what I saw, we need to rebuild the CDC from the ground up. There is lots of room to build as no one attends. If there is no CDC and CADEM is owned by the Corporations what is left for real Democrats?
Status of the CCC Campaign:
Dreams, goals, visions, and realities... these matter.
My dream is for our Commonwealth to be operated as a Public Trust, held in common, for many many generations to come. I like both our National and State Parks. I remember good public schools, Community Colleges and State owned Universities. When I went to CAL it was the best University in America.
My dream is for those who love each other, that they be free to marry. Health Care should be a right. Unions should be free to organize, better - to own their businesses, and share in the profits. My dream is an end to rascism, and racial profiling by our Police. My dream is that the prohibition end so drugs were not illegal and therefor "cool" - but rather the free choice of anyone who aspires to become a loser. People can change. If drugs were not a flag of rebellion, people would not use drugs to rebel. We have enough rebels without a clue already.
My dream is to have top ranked health and wellness as a basic right. The elderly would not have to lose their homes to get care in their old age, and be run out of their homes, and reduced to poverty. We need to treat our community health problems as communities. When we are dealing with the one in ten that suffers from alcoholic addiction, we should never treat those problems with criminalization of sick people. What kind of civilization imprisons the sick?
My dream is that Corporations would be held to account and contribute to their communities, rather than plunder, use community resources and not pay their fair share. We need an end to monopolies, and more. We need strong State Regulation to counter the Private Interests who will always try to profit from that which is not theirs. We need new State Banks, to cover the needs of our Citizens. We need to favor our State Industries and not bow to the rulers of the new global fascist plutonomy.
My vision is not utopian. I am a Californian. There is more than enough for all. I can see past the old era ruled by the political/economics of scarcity, and see the new era where we are governed by the political/economics of abundance.
What is the realty? We need to collectively take a time out and run thru a sanity check. We must do this. We have not done any collective political and economic sanity check for 130 years. For 130 years the Standard Oil Company of California, now known as Chevron, has been pumping oil from California and paying not one cent to our State Treasury. Unocal did the same, as did Atlantic Richfield and others. Who allowed this? The Great States of Alaska and Texas run on those revenues. Those are California's natural resources these thieves have plundered. Our Politicians and Courts have done nothing to stop it and correct the problem. Does anyone trust a Democratic Party that will sell our State Parks to Private Developers think for a minute the greedy bastards will stop?
All or Nothing! (push all the chips to the center):
The winner takes it all... the loser loses all... People, we are in a jam. We got here by not being responsible and accountable, individually and collectively. I am just as guilty as you. I withered from any political responsibility for over 30 years. No more.
We must gather ourselves together and organize. We must dig into our bank accounts and contribute money - what ever we can afford. This is not revolution. This is our evolution. We have to all go to the next stage together. None of us are alone anymore. Forget the walls that appear around us. Those are the walls of tyranny and despotism.
We have seven phases to execute now. We are in phase two. We need every one to pitch in $100.00 per month, if you have a job. If your on welfare, you must commit to $10.00 per month. If your a student, pitch in $20.00 per month. If California has been good to you, pitch in $1,000 per month. There is no limit on Initiatives. If you are a movie star - pitch in $1 Million. None of us is getting out of this deal - or - the opposition will Privatize our State and California will pass on into what might have been. It's all or nothing time.
Banks, Fees, Finance, and Romance:
Here is a run down of my day - Thursday October 1st, thru Friday October 2nd, 2009.
I woke up. I prayed to be of service to God. I looked at the email and there was nothing from San Diego. The printer called. I tried to get 1/2 of the job to ship. His answer was no. He is a fear based human and I have compassion for him. Still - no means no. No money means another frustrating day ahead.
A few weeks ago, I met with the Facilities Manager of the San Francisco Friends Meeting. Others call the Friends - Quakers. I last attended San Francisco Meeting in High School - that was the late 1960's. The Friends Meeting House was on Lake Street then. I remembered their commitment to correct social action. I met with the Facilities Manager to see about space for a Community Meeting. One Quaker gave us $1,000 to cover the pre-press and paper, and other incidentals. The Quakers granted us the main room for Sunday Worship for our Saturday October 3rd CAN Meeting. I hoped to hand out petitions and train everyone on how to administer the oath and sign the legal declarations to become a petition circulator - required in California by Law. I canceled that meeting today. There are no petitions to review or hand out. They are at the Printers, and the Printer and US Post Office need $1,500 if we are to ship to our initial Petition Coordinators and Regional Field Organizers.
As it was already October, I just cried. San Diego was a wash. The website works, but no one contributes. I stopped asking on Facebook. When your drowning how many times do you have to ask for help - while every one on the beach watches you die?
I made phone calls, and wrote to people who promised to help. No answers, but I left the messages any fundraiser does. No one calls me. Michael Moore sent me an email and offered me a free ticket to see his new movie. I have not been to a movie for over a year. I went. The Rockefeller Center West (aka the Embarcadero Center) Movies were familiar. I remembered when I had money and could go to movies. I used to go once a week. I decided to go later and I did. The movie is good. The effect of the timing could not be better. Will anyone wake up?
At about 11 am, I went to Saint Anthony's for lunch. I dont have a kitchen in my 12 x 18 room. My room is big - as the SRO Rooms go, but no kitchen means no hot food unless I go to Saint Anthony's. So off to lunch. The meal was good. Bar-B-Que Chicken. Real Food. I have been eating one meal a day there since July 8, 2008, when I got off the street. I am not ashamed of having lived on the street for 4 months in 2008. Many people live on the street now. It's hard. Oh well. I have a room now and a bed. There are showers down the hall and I can do laundry once a month when my welfare check arrives. Up in my room later, the need to vent hit me. Time to blog. Matt Gonzalez asked if I was blogging back when I started. I had asked Matt to weigh in on the legal work I devoted to the language of our petitions. I had not blogged for a while. Why not. Nothing is moving. So I wrote these words - and if your reading these words - I wrote them for you.
The petitions are not about me. The CCC is about California. I am old. I am 56 turning 57, and I don't have the fingers and toes to count all my friends who did not live as long as I have. 200 years ago, most never saw 50. My spiritual clock tells me I am on borrowed time already. Each day is a gift. Mine are just filled with frustration. I have done all I can. The critics attack me. My kids dont talk to me. I have nothing. I am just an old guy now, and who wants an old guy around with nothing? I've been wealthy before. I've been poor also. When I hit poverty this time, I lost my fire. I don't listen to the critics. When all people have to give is vinegar, who cares. They can go drink their own words for themselves.
The mail came. No letters from anyone. CHASE sent me a bounce fee notice. The cost of the Merchant Account hits monthly and that overdrew the Campaign Account. Empty. The "1/8 a tank of gas and a quarter pack of cigarettes and 100 miles to Chicago" bit was over. Empty. I went for a walk. There are people I call when in despair and I did what I am trained to do. No one home. The City was beautiful. October in San Francisco is special. I turn 57 in a few days. My grandson turned 12 and I have nothing for him. His class size went from 30 to 45 this year. Blog..... Hemm.....
I remember my last love affair. That was in 1999 and there was a marriage in it. Well, there was a ceremony. I had developed a phone company program in 1995. That was the sum result of 15 years of hard work. I remember the 1998 pitch at the VC Firm, Kliner Perkins, Caufield and Breyer. One gem of a guy (top telecom guy) told me that KPC (Breyer was not there then) was totally into DSL. They had $5 Billion into a project and did not want to work in wireless. They lost 100% of that investment. Maybe they should have invested in wireless? I think there are still some old pages up on the Net about my work then. The love affair came into my conscious memory for a while. Years without a kiss, you forget. Now I am just alone all the time. $55 Overdrawn is not so bad. It sure does not warrant suicide. I survived the loss of homes - twice - that were like watching the fires burn it all to smoke and ashes. I survived broken hearts also. More smoke and ashes. When these reflective times hit me, I wonder why I am still breathing. I have nothing left. The future looks bleak. I lost my work, means of living, home, ability to go out even alone, and more years ago. I remember the price tag on love. Some call love priceless. I know better.
Welfare to Work! That's the ticket for me. Welfare to work I tell ya! Hahahahhahhahahhahaaa. Now David Letterman should try that one on the audience. When your credit is ruined, and there is nothing left of life, and the dreams fade, welfare to work is not an option. I remember the GM at Safeway. Walter worked at the Safeway in the Fillmore Center for many decades. He was a great guy. Retired now. I had asked for a job in produce. I know produce. When I graduated from CAL in 1975, produce work was all I could get. I am good at it. There is an art to the rotation, placement, and presentation. It takes a touch. Try it some time. It's not so easy. Walter ran the credit report. He called me in for interview number four. My hopes were up. I was on my way! Back into America and into a steady pay check. Walter was down. He called me in to review the facts of life. I listened. He went thru how HR had refused me. No way could he pull Managers Rank. The problem was my credit report. I would never find work because my credit report! Wow. Then he went thru the New Deal. Everything is wired now. The leans from the court battles when I lost my (dreams, property, patent journals, income, cash position, and two homes) had left scars. Somethings don't get fixed.
I wondered about the men and women who were coming out of the Prisons of California. Who would hire them? If we ran statistics on those who have done time, I wonder if unemployment would be 90% or more? If I could not get a foot in the door in the country of my birth, how were the victims of Nixon's War On Drugs to make any entry back into society. Politics! It's dirty and disgusting. What is a man to do who can't even rotate produce? Starbucks just wished me luck. Business usually does not want anyone over 50. No one will say a thing as that is age discrimination. So what? The reality is when your life is over, what are you supposed to do when your still living it?
Romance? What a laugh. Finance? Another laugh.
As I walked out of the movie - Capitalism: A Love Story - last night, I stopped and looked at the crowd. What did they think? Couples were walking from the theater as couples do after a movie. Quiet talk. Arm in arm. Handholding. Some quiet laughter. Some deep in discussion. Should I leaflet the place this weekend. What's the point? I don't have petitions.
The Quakers called to ask me if I wanted them to open tomorrow. I canceled. What's the point? No petitions. All that work for nothing.
People only want to back a winner. People only want to bet on a winner. Ladies look to the bank account. Grandkids look to the bank account now too. Where is the humanity? Where is the solidarity? Where is the unity? Where is the community? When everyone is dead broke what then? Maybe we should just sell California's Collective Assets to Wall Street? Who needs homes, jobs, health care, recreation, and educations?
ATT and Bandwidth Fraud (current):
Today I called ATT to test my line. They lied to me. I set up a line tester on my own and discovered that ATT delivers 1/10 of what they sold me. How many American's have their Internet Service in any form with ATT. How many have DSL? How many have iPhones? With just those two products, I calculate ATT is ripping off the American Consumer at a rate of over $40 Billion per year. To me that is Anti-trust. But I seem to read black letter law differently than the US District Courts. The Sherman Anti-trust Act is relatively short. So is the Clayton Anti-trust Act. Have you read either lately. Each takes 5 to 10 minutes to read. They are written in english. I encourage you to have a look here.
Here is a graphic of what Bandwidth I get:
Notice the peak bandwidth provided. I pay for 1.5 Mbps down and 768 up. You can see that I get 1/10th that.
Get your own bandwidth speed test and test your own lines. ATT charges me $25.00 per month for 1.5 Mbps down and 768 up. What do they deliver? Today they delivered 167 Kbps down and 27 Kbps up. That is like going to Chevron and buying 15 gallons of gas and Chevron pumping 1.5 Gallon into your car: 1/10th for the same money, in my case $25 per month - I get $2.50 worth of service. When I multiply that across 100 Million DSL Customers, at ATT, that's a theft of $22.50 per month from 100 Million People. $2,200,000,000.00 per month theft is only a theft of $26 Billion per year from the American Consumer. US District Judge Ilston does not consider that Anti-trust. That is just for DSL with one company. The Apple iPhone is just a small 17 million Phone handset market for ATT. At $100 per month per phone - that is $1.7 Billion per month. ATT does not deliver the bandwidth to the iPhones that people pay for. When ATT is allowed to steal $25 Billion in false DSL Services and another $20 Billion per year from iPhone users - who don't get what they pay for by any honest test of bandwidth delivered.... That is just a little $40 Billion annual fraud of the American Consumer. No wonder ATT wants to re-write the California Constitution. If I was Jessie James I would want to re-write the law-books on Train Robbery also!
Memories of my Anti-trust Battle with the Who's Who of Telecom in America:
I still have nightmares. Process servers. Lawyers confiscating my possessions. Restraining Orders awarded on lies and false witness. I remember as I was put to the street and the last moment I saw my patent journals. That was August 2001. The litany of oppression that followed was brutal. The battles that had actually started in 1999 now were to consume the next 6 to 7 years of my life. By March of 2003, I was in 22 Court Actions in 12 Venues, without counsel. That was a wild time. One Lawyer can pretty much ruin your life. I had 7 kicking my ass. The attack was coordinated by Vincent Spohn. The story is a book in its own. At night now, I wake up at times dreaming of lawyers, doors getting kicked in. Seizures - not the medical kind - but the kind the Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect us all from in America. Well the Bill of Rights is toilet paper. There is a lot of pablum about how important the Bill of Rights is, but I am living proof that its all a big lie. The Law is not worth the paper and ink used to print it.
Let me see if I can remember the rough count. 1.) False Criminal Charges filed by Patmei; 2.) I answered with a filing for Annulment. Vince Spohn could gift my property to Patmei and transfer titles to her and her lawyer, but he could not serve her with papers on the business frauds or the Annulment; 3.) There was the Labor Court for Unemployment - that I had to fight to get some money. I had been living out of garbage cans and sleeping in the parks. Finally the Administrative Law Judge ruled that my working conditions were worse than slavery. Those were his words not mine; 4. & 5.) There were two law-suits brought on by Vince Spohn, who was my lawyer in the alleged criminal matter and the divorce. Vince had changed sides. Later he would plead to breach of ethics, yet to this day has never repaid the client trust fund of $35,000 which he stole from me. These law-suites were two fold. Vince used my company to sue me, and counseled Robert Chow of Hillsborough to also sue me personally. I prevailed at trial in a complete defense verdict (for me). Judge Goldsmith asked all the Lawyers why they had sued me - an indigent man? They all just looked at the floor in shame. A silent stare to the floor does not show up in a court transcript. 6.) There was the fraudulent false Bankruptcy of my business. Judge Montali referred that case to the US Dept of Justice for investigation and prosecution. The US Attorney did nothing. The Anti-trust went into the Bush Whitehouse. W wanted to reunify the ATT Bell System as a Texas Corporation. ATT was one of W's largest campaign contributors in 2000 and in 2004. 7.) There was a business eviction that got tied up in the false Bankruptcy. I lost my offices and home in that action forever. 8.) There was a legal auction of my home from storage. I lost maybe $750,000 there. How do you replace baby pictures, heirlooms, and more. I had produced recordings of a private Jefferson Airplane reunion. All my record of the Bus were gone. I dont want to even try to list the stuff. In the end, it was all just stuff. Museum stuff. Stuff that mattered to many. Still - in the end, just stuff: 9., 10., 11., and 12.) There were the District Attorney Actions against me for child support. Alameda County, Contra Costa County, San Francisco County, and Maricopa County in Arizona. I had earned all the money to pay these off. Vince Spohn made sure I could not pay. He sold me out and then worked with others to legally oppress me in case after case, to make sure I would never be able to file replies. 13.) I hired a lawyer in Palo Alto - Ric Saria to defend me in numbers 4. and 5. above. He stipulated to toss my cross-complaint and then got drunk or loaded on cocaine for years. Saria fell off the map. 14.) I sued Saria for malpractice and won. I secured a $750,000 judgement against him. There were only two trials of fact in this mess - the trial in the case where Robert Chow (ATT, World Com, Covad, and Metro-Fi) sued me - (number 4 above) - and the Labor Law Trial for Unemployment. The Labor Law Judge just about fell out of his chair. He could not believe what Chow had forced on me, and ruled 100% for me in that matter. He encouraged me to bring civil and criminal charges against Chow and his associates (the seven lawyers, which included my past counsel Vince Spohn of Napa California). Monthly, the four District Attorneys in the child support matters would weigh in. No one would help. At the trials where Chow and Spohn (my retained counsel) sued me with six other lawyers, I prevailed in court. I am not a lawyer. I told the truth and asked questions in cross-examination as they presented their groundless cases. I won. I waived defense, and closing argument. There was no point. They had no cases. One was tossed on their side to attempt to avoid malicious prosecution charges. The main case - I won out right! But it was not over.
That rough count added up to 14. There were other matters. Everything stemmed from the phony marriage of Patricia Melizza Bello Ruivivar and her relationships in Telecom - that crossed seas and included a collusion with ATT, and others. 15.) There was a case against Patmei and a cabal here in America who sought to steal my business. I had raised the original angle funding. The Marcos family wanted to steal everything and replicate the business model all over Asia including throughout the Peoples Republic of China. That case, Vince Spohn ruined and then hid from. The Chinese just went on alone, and implemented the infrastructure. The World saw ubiquitous high speed wireless Internet at the 2008 Olympics. I designed the infrastructure. ATT and other blocked any build out in America. Oh well. The law is not worth the paper its printed on here in America.
In 2004, I filed an Anti-trust action in Federal Court and a Malicious Prosecution Case in State Court.
Chief US Attorney Kevin Ryan lost his job over those matters. The Anti-trust went into the Bush Whitehouse. Karl Rove and others were involved. Ryan was fired because he asked for a case number. Both Attorney Generals Ashcroft and Gonzalez were involved. I remember when the lead FBI Agent of the Whitecollar Crime Task Force came out to talk with me before he retired. He told me that the FBI had asked to open investigations into over 20 criminal felonies that I had endured. He told me that Treasury had 30 to 50 counts of money felonies also. He apologized as what had happened was not supposed to happen in America, but the Prosecutorial Discretion was "Political" and my cases would never get numbers. He told in in his career at the Bureau he had never seen such dishonor of the law, but that the FBI was a Police Authority and not the US Attorney. I was ruined and he was sorry. He personally wanted to apologize as he did not feel he could retire in good conscience if he did not tell me what had happened.
The Malicious Prosecution died on special motions to strike. What an odd tool - the special motion to strike. The State Bar Covered up the mess, as Lawyers protect their own. There were a series of Appeals, but the fix was in. Corruption reigns supreme in California Courts. The Appeals? There were about seven. If you have not practiced law, my experience is the deck is stacked for those with money. Justice is an approximation - and often not near reality. Justice goes to the one with the most money. The Justice System - it's as bankrupt as America's Citizens. All Judges are corrupt. The only question is what's the price? Are there any good ones? Maybe. I have met three out of the twenty five I appeared before. People forget that the Prosecutors, the Lawyers and the Judges all work for who has the money. It's a King's Sport. That's why it's called "Court". Dead Peasants. Fitting words for Citizens on and all.
The Root Malicious Prosecution included three core cases in the California Superior Court of San Francisco County:
00-317432, 01-323391, 01-323394
The case is on file as: California Superior Court of San Francisco County Case No. 04-440882
The Appeal is on file as: Court of Appeal of California First Appellate District, Division Two: A113653
The Anti-trust depended on the Malicious Prosecution. Malicious Prosecution to block market entry is one definition of Anti-trust. I will never forget the day of opening arguments. There must have been 75 to 100 Lawyers in the Federal Court in San Francisco in Department 10. And there was me - alone. I did not plead the Anti-trust well. I am not a Lawyer. I tried though. I tried. Someone had to try. We all better try now. The move now is to privatize all of the Commonwealth of California. If we don't try, we will loose all our public assets in a complete State. That case was up at the Supreme Court - but the State Malicious Prosecution fell apart on Appeal and Sustained order of the California Supreme Court. We went to the US Supreme Court once, and they determined the case was not ripe for hearing. I think they expected to see the Anti-trust matter and decided to wait and hear that case. That would only have happened if I had won the Malicious Prosecution. I lost that and then lost the Anti-trust. Not bad for a novice with no training! (smile).
That Federal Case is on file as: N.D. Cal., San Francisco, D.C. No. C-04-3300 SI
The Federal Appeal is on file as: Ninth Circuit No. 06-15390
The Supreme Court first filing is known as: Record Lost - on file with the US Supreme Court
In the end America lost. Our Telecom in the USA is now 10 years behind that of 17 other Nations. If the Internet is the future of the global economy, we as a Nation are now set to slip into third world status. In many ways, we already are. But you have to travel to see what others are doing in other countries. The Anti Trust never stopped there.
One consolation was that in my Special Accusation against an Attorney (my direct charges against Vince Spohn) filed at the California Supreme Court, in that matter I won 9 - 0. In the over 10,000 special accusations against attorneys filed at the California Supreme Court over a 2 to 3 year time frame, mine was the only case heard. I won a total verdict. I wonder about the other 9,999 cases where people just got screwed by their lawyers. The State Bar then went on to cover up Spohn's theft of my client trust account. The Chief State Bar Prosecutor called that "Prosecutorial Discretion". Lawyers can steal from their clients in California. I know. It happens all the time and all the Lawyers get away with it. I heard those same words from the FBI. The reason Robert Chow, Vince Spohn and a cabal of Telephone Corporations got away was "Prosecutorial Discretion".
My Special Accusation against Vince Spohn is known as: XXXXX
Will Obama's Administration be different? I hope so. Is the Anti-trust Branch of the US DOJ open for work? I don't know. I gave up on Washington DC personally. My focus is on California.
Patmei and the Philippine Government:
Patricia and I met on line. Typical Yahoo! romance really. Marriage followed later. Motives? Theft of a business, wholesale Immigration Fraud (as in 20 to 50 intended cases per week). Money Laundry work for the Marcos family. Offshore bank accounts, and so much drama it seems unbelievable now. Secrets and lies. Normal. She posed as a local San Francisco Lady. She wanted a relationship. We have all seen the ads. Soul Mate Wanted, followed by a couple of paragraphs of drivel, signed by "Summer Rain". Fools and babies fear no warning signs. I answered. Later she identified herself as "Patmei".
Patmei had a crew on the project. There were maybe 3 to 7 at a time. All answered the Yahoo! Personals Ad - and used a set of 5 response letters. The letters were all standard. Patmei wrote them all, but not the responses. Her crew did the back and forth with the 400 plus suitors. The crew each took turns changing the names to match the person they wrote back to. That team ran a well oiled machine. Jack in one, John in another. Jimmy in one, and Chris in another. Hundreds and hundreds of letters. Later, after we married, I found the templates on her laptop. She incouraged me to work from home as her affairs took her all over Manila. Patmei was not a local San Francisco Lady. She was the Chief of Staff of the Executive Secretary of the President of the Philippines. His name was/is Ronaldo Zamora. Tubba Ching Ching. The Little President. Ronny - Tubba Ching Ching - did not know of his "staff project". Patmei had secrets with so many. I wonder if she knows her own real name?
After nine months of back and forth, the crew winnowed the list to 3 prospective suitors. I was the lucky pick. I won the lotto to hell and back. I never would have come out alive except for the grace of God, truly. That February of 1999, Patmei landed in San Francisco with her government entourage, and her mom. Little did I know that three of the crew of "selectors" traveled with her then. She was not as her photos pretended. Once very lovely to be sure, she had put on the weight of a human under great stress. We all know that 50 lbs overweight look. Anyone can look around in America and that look is normal now. Everyone seems obese. Regardless, the romance took off. Two weeks later, I proposed. Thirty days after that, I landed in Manila. We married at the end of April, and she held a charade ceremony on May Day. Not a good sign. I remember the public ceremony. As politicians do, she went on for what seemed like hours - thanking everyone. The heat was unbearable, and my shoes were new and small. My feet cramped. The pain of that day was only a foreshadow of what would quickly follow. Tubba Ching Ching did not attend. But all the waring parties in Mindanao were there. The Army had a few Generals. There were Senators and Governors, Congresspersons, and their Muslim Combatant Counterparts. The New Peoples Army delivered security - with the perimeter sealed by jungle fighters for the Maoists who controlled the interior of Mindanao. There were others too. Marcos Blue Ladies. Rebel Red Men. It's Mindanao after all. Everyone is related to everyone, and all the guns go away when there is a good pig roast. It's Mindanao.
I had met some of the other suitors. I had met the who's who of the Philippine Islands. I was married after all to a Queen (deba?). As I write in my welfare hotel room in the Tenderloin it is not a fantasy or a longing for. That was the worst decision of my whole life, worse than my first drunk. As I struggled with ATT today and the technicians who lied to me, and told me I was getting what I was paying for, I remembered why I wanted to start a competitive phone company and the full weight of the corporations who run the oligarchies of the non-communist world. Patmei was just a front for the Marcos Goons. The United States will end up like the Philippines if there is not a major change from the people. In real terms - in Telecom as an example - the USA is already a third world country. The development of the Internet is at the heart of the struggle. Will the Net become a force of liberation and freedom? Will the Net lead to global advanced education? Will the promise of medical advances and quantum leaps (plural) come to pass for humanity due to the Net and peoples everywhere instant access to real information? Or will the dark side prevail? We all make our own decisions in life. What kind of future do you dream of? Patmei worked for the owners of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company, and ally of ATT and the Rand Corporation. Her real boss was not Tubba, but his older brother Manny. Manny is the trustee of the controlling trust of now dead Ferdinand Marcos. There are five trusts. Thru those trusts and the allied political and economic interests of a handful of families in the Philippines, there is still no freedom in those Pacific Islands. Who cares? It's just the Philippines. I am grateful I got out with my life. The alternative? Well, I would not be alive. So my life in the Tenderloin, ruined economically, and ruined in pretty much every area of my life is actually pretty good, considering the alternative. Every day above sea level is a good day.
From my experience - I have arrived at the point where I accept injustice in America as the norm. But when you look at Michael Moore's new movie, ask yourself what you are willing to put up with? Injustice is the norm if we allow injustice to be the norm.
Or, we can draft a new State Constitution and make some waves!
There is one thing I can guarantee to everyone who has read my blog, and everyone who cares about the campaign for a Citizens Constitutional Convention: if we all work for this - it will work and we can change the world. If we fail... Let me quote Benjamin Franklin: "We had better hang together - as certainly we will all hang alone". When I say I give up, I submit to God. There is no other place for me to go for help. I place all my work down now. If you want it, it is there for you to pick up.
I have nothing left to give.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
My Full Response to Gavin Newsom (9/23/09 - Huffington Post)
There is an effort underway to call a Constitutional Convention in California that is not in the media. The three main components of this Citizens Initiative are: 1.) We demand to Elect Our Delegates in fair open democratic processes; 2.) We require that all Candidates for Convention Delegates receive $200,000 of public funding for their campaigns and that the campaigns for delegate be restricted to this public funding only, so the playing field remains level and is opened to all who want to serve California as an Elected Constitutional Convention Delegate; and 3.) That all 35 current Articles of the current California Constitution be opened up for a thorough re-write by a California Citizens Constitutional Convention to convene as sequestered in Asilomar Conference Center until the new Constitution is Drafted.
The website of the grassroots campaign is the California Action Network.
Our campaign has no sponsors other than you, each of you and all of you. Our campaign is grassroots, and as such is opposed to the Corporate Takeover and Privatization of California. This will not work if you do not join in - fund - work - organize - and continue to fund, work and organize all our Citizens in our common effort to re-frame our State. We are not here to fear the future, we are here to frame it! The list of constituencies who should join together include those who want to fund education and defund Prisons. Others who want Single Payer as a State Right, should join us. All who want Marriage Equality and the end of discrimination against the LGBT members of our society should join. If you think that three strikes (25 to Life) for shoplifting is fascist, join us. If you want to end the Prohibition in California and put Nixon's failed War on Drugs to the graveyard, join us. We never should have criminalized the medical and social problems of alcoholic addiction in the first place. If you want to legalize cannabis, join us. If you want to restructure the Constitutional Offices of our Democratic Republic, so that we have one Legislator per 100,000 voters, so as to end the Lobbyist Control of Sacramento by campaign contributions and other legal bribes, join us. Let's put an end to the corruption in our State Government, and end the corruption at all levels of Public Service in California. If you want Majority Rule in governance and a two thirds rule to change the New Constitution forward, join us. If you want to remove Term Limits, join us. If you want to restore and rebuild the Social Safety Nets of a Civilized State, for the 21st Century and beyond, join us. We are the voices for those who can not speak for themselves, the mentally ill, the sick, the aged, and poor. We are the voices for the children who need the best education possible to prepare for their future in a new global economy. We are the voices for all the living things who share our ecology and environment that have lost their river waters necessary for life itself. We are the voices of all the living things who have lost their migratory wetlands to corporate agriculture, tract housing, and water diversions in the peripheral canal. We are the voices of those who have lost their forest habitats necessary for life it's self, as we have clear cut their forests and destroyed their woodlands. If you support the desalination of our vast ocean resources so we may begin to make all the fresh water we need as a State, join us. We can invent the new technologies to create a sustainable State that should be he envy of the world, not the laughing stock we have become. The issues are many - too many to correct one at a time as our current Constitution now limits Initiatives. It is time for a California Constitutional Convention.
I am the author of the only two Constitutional Initiatives that are certified at this time. A year ago I was homeless for four months in San Francisco, and Gavin Newsom was nice enough to allow me to sleep in the bushes, as his Care Not Cash paid me a $67 dollars per month pittance for welfare. For the last year, I have lived in a welfare hotel in the Tenderloin on a General Assistance grant of $104 per month. I eat at Saint Anthony's Dining Room, as I can not get work, and have no kitchen. I lost my career in a brutal malicious prosecution that lasted from 2000 thru 2007. I was sued by rich and powerful Telecom Executives in an Anti-trust battle no one would assist me with - not the SF District Attorney, not Jerry Brown, our California Attorney General, nor the United States Attorney Generals Ashcroft and Gonzalez. Then President Bush sought to re-group ATT as a Texas Corporation. Bush succeeded. I was ruined. In 1997 - 1999, I designed and built the first WiFi Networks in California. Due to my work to bring market disruptive technology into our allegedly free markets, I was ravaged in what the FBI said were felonies that went into the Whitehouse, and to which they were powerless to investigate and bring charges on, as the case was "political". I know fascism. I have endured it here in my native California. I have tasted first hand what Corporate America has to offer. I am one voice. I ask you - the reader - to help me. Help your self. Help your children. Help your communities and those who can't take care of themselves. Do it now. Do it because it is the correct action now. We need to - we must reorganize California. Our work ahead requires that we work block by block, precinct by precinct, County by County, and to exercise our ownership and control of California. I warn everyone now. To walk away from democracy is to allow the Corporate Takeover of California - by the Bay Area Council and their front group - Repair California. We all must resist the privatization of our State Commonwealth by the 1% of America who owns 95% of the wealth. This is what we are up against. Look at the membership of the Bay Area Council and ask yourself if any of those private businesses care about anything other than avoiding taxes and plundering our markets?
We need a new State. We need to protect our children and grandchildren and provide for their health education and welfare. We need to defend and protect our Commonwealth and then pass it on intact to the many generations into the future who are not even born. We need to stop the Democrats from selling off any more of our State Parks - as Mark Leno has already done with his Senate Bill 792 that sold State Park Property to the Lennar Corporation. Shame on Mark Leno and his friend Gavin Newsom for allowing this first ever "dangerous precedent" move that just took place in San Francisco. Leno and Newsom accomplished the sale of State Park Land to Private Developers in just the last 30 days! We need to stop Diane Feinstein's efforts to divert our Northern California River Water to her Agribusiness Campaign Supporters in the Central Valley. Diane Feinstein has already moved to continue the Dick Cheney attack on the fisheries of Northern California to benefit the same people now paying Diane's campaign coffers. We need to stop all the Republican Party's love affair with Prisons. Where is the Liberty and Freedom in Prisons? We need to look with care for new Leadership in California. Jerry Brown is bought and paid for (as was Grey Davis) by the CCPOA, the Prison Guards Union (who does not like the Union Label), the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. No one in Sacramento will stand up to these fascists. The only check on the California Prison Industry is the People. I get so angry I could spit. The assaults on our environment and our liberties are just a few of the problems that are now past critical mass. The Social Safety Nets are now slashed. Our Educational Systems are ruined. And the oil companies pay not one penny in royalties for the oil they pump from our ground. Alaska and Texas pay for their State Governments with those oil royalties. We are not broke. Our State is broken, and has been systematically disassembled. We need new blue prints, new designs, and new systems for all our futures.
I was born in California. I grew up in California. I remember when California worked, before we became a Police State. I was educated in California Public Schools and graduated from CAL in 1975. I support the walk outs and strikes at UC and in all our Higher Education Institutions. Hell! It is time for a General Strike! But for what? What good will signs and yelling do for anyone? MOST importantly - it is time to organize with the force of law and take back our State. I am not advocating Militia yet. Not yet. We still have the power of the vote. The ballot-box is both King and Queen now. And we need to temper the Initiative process in our new Constitution as well. I know that the motion to all of California that we take a sanity check and re-frame our State is about as sexy as a car wreck. What must happen forward is not a quick fix, but a plan for the long view. Everyone must participate, and be included, and the process must be democratic, if we as a people are to ratify the New Charter.
We must all organize now to put a People's Check against the Corporate Theft of our State and our America. What is at stake is all that is good in a Golden State that has delivered Golden Dreams for so many. If we do not use our signatures and ballots now - we are to blame for all that happens forward. All of us. These are drastic times. Which side are you on? I ask you to join us and help organize your Community College, your CSU Campus, your UC, and our Communities from Del Norte County in the North to the Imperial County in the South and all points in between. You must organize like the Farm Workers did before us in the 1970's, and the International Longshoremen and Sailors did before us in the 1930's. There will be no more middle class in America if you - yes you the reader - do not do this.
Our website is pathetic. Join anyway. Send money so we can hire the professionals to redesign it. We are small and few. Join anyway. We need to grow our numbers to the hundreds of thousands within 30 to 60 days so we can get the 1.5 million signatures and qualify for the November 2010 Ballot. We have no money. Give $5, $10, $20, and $100 and ask your friends and fellow workers, students and teachers to do the same. Join us as rain drops join into little streams and creeks in the high country only to join with others from other areas into rivers and mighty waterfalls and raging torrents. Join us as your life, your liberty, and your freedom depend on everyone now joining together to make anew California! We are the shining star of the world. That is the destiny of our State of California. The People of Iran and China will look to us and study what we did - now in 2009, 2010, at our Convention in 2011 and how we birth our new State in early 2012. We can do this. We have to.
We are all accountable and responsible. Let's get to work.
The website of the grassroots campaign is http://CaliforniaActionNetwork.com
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gavin-newsom/lets-get-our-priorities-s_b_297374.html
The website of the grassroots campaign is the California Action Network.
Our campaign has no sponsors other than you, each of you and all of you. Our campaign is grassroots, and as such is opposed to the Corporate Takeover and Privatization of California. This will not work if you do not join in - fund - work - organize - and continue to fund, work and organize all our Citizens in our common effort to re-frame our State. We are not here to fear the future, we are here to frame it! The list of constituencies who should join together include those who want to fund education and defund Prisons. Others who want Single Payer as a State Right, should join us. All who want Marriage Equality and the end of discrimination against the LGBT members of our society should join. If you think that three strikes (25 to Life) for shoplifting is fascist, join us. If you want to end the Prohibition in California and put Nixon's failed War on Drugs to the graveyard, join us. We never should have criminalized the medical and social problems of alcoholic addiction in the first place. If you want to legalize cannabis, join us. If you want to restructure the Constitutional Offices of our Democratic Republic, so that we have one Legislator per 100,000 voters, so as to end the Lobbyist Control of Sacramento by campaign contributions and other legal bribes, join us. Let's put an end to the corruption in our State Government, and end the corruption at all levels of Public Service in California. If you want Majority Rule in governance and a two thirds rule to change the New Constitution forward, join us. If you want to remove Term Limits, join us. If you want to restore and rebuild the Social Safety Nets of a Civilized State, for the 21st Century and beyond, join us. We are the voices for those who can not speak for themselves, the mentally ill, the sick, the aged, and poor. We are the voices for the children who need the best education possible to prepare for their future in a new global economy. We are the voices for all the living things who share our ecology and environment that have lost their river waters necessary for life itself. We are the voices of all the living things who have lost their migratory wetlands to corporate agriculture, tract housing, and water diversions in the peripheral canal. We are the voices of those who have lost their forest habitats necessary for life it's self, as we have clear cut their forests and destroyed their woodlands. If you support the desalination of our vast ocean resources so we may begin to make all the fresh water we need as a State, join us. We can invent the new technologies to create a sustainable State that should be he envy of the world, not the laughing stock we have become. The issues are many - too many to correct one at a time as our current Constitution now limits Initiatives. It is time for a California Constitutional Convention.
I am the author of the only two Constitutional Initiatives that are certified at this time. A year ago I was homeless for four months in San Francisco, and Gavin Newsom was nice enough to allow me to sleep in the bushes, as his Care Not Cash paid me a $67 dollars per month pittance for welfare. For the last year, I have lived in a welfare hotel in the Tenderloin on a General Assistance grant of $104 per month. I eat at Saint Anthony's Dining Room, as I can not get work, and have no kitchen. I lost my career in a brutal malicious prosecution that lasted from 2000 thru 2007. I was sued by rich and powerful Telecom Executives in an Anti-trust battle no one would assist me with - not the SF District Attorney, not Jerry Brown, our California Attorney General, nor the United States Attorney Generals Ashcroft and Gonzalez. Then President Bush sought to re-group ATT as a Texas Corporation. Bush succeeded. I was ruined. In 1997 - 1999, I designed and built the first WiFi Networks in California. Due to my work to bring market disruptive technology into our allegedly free markets, I was ravaged in what the FBI said were felonies that went into the Whitehouse, and to which they were powerless to investigate and bring charges on, as the case was "political". I know fascism. I have endured it here in my native California. I have tasted first hand what Corporate America has to offer. I am one voice. I ask you - the reader - to help me. Help your self. Help your children. Help your communities and those who can't take care of themselves. Do it now. Do it because it is the correct action now. We need to - we must reorganize California. Our work ahead requires that we work block by block, precinct by precinct, County by County, and to exercise our ownership and control of California. I warn everyone now. To walk away from democracy is to allow the Corporate Takeover of California - by the Bay Area Council and their front group - Repair California. We all must resist the privatization of our State Commonwealth by the 1% of America who owns 95% of the wealth. This is what we are up against. Look at the membership of the Bay Area Council and ask yourself if any of those private businesses care about anything other than avoiding taxes and plundering our markets?
We need a new State. We need to protect our children and grandchildren and provide for their health education and welfare. We need to defend and protect our Commonwealth and then pass it on intact to the many generations into the future who are not even born. We need to stop the Democrats from selling off any more of our State Parks - as Mark Leno has already done with his Senate Bill 792 that sold State Park Property to the Lennar Corporation. Shame on Mark Leno and his friend Gavin Newsom for allowing this first ever "dangerous precedent" move that just took place in San Francisco. Leno and Newsom accomplished the sale of State Park Land to Private Developers in just the last 30 days! We need to stop Diane Feinstein's efforts to divert our Northern California River Water to her Agribusiness Campaign Supporters in the Central Valley. Diane Feinstein has already moved to continue the Dick Cheney attack on the fisheries of Northern California to benefit the same people now paying Diane's campaign coffers. We need to stop all the Republican Party's love affair with Prisons. Where is the Liberty and Freedom in Prisons? We need to look with care for new Leadership in California. Jerry Brown is bought and paid for (as was Grey Davis) by the CCPOA, the Prison Guards Union (who does not like the Union Label), the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. No one in Sacramento will stand up to these fascists. The only check on the California Prison Industry is the People. I get so angry I could spit. The assaults on our environment and our liberties are just a few of the problems that are now past critical mass. The Social Safety Nets are now slashed. Our Educational Systems are ruined. And the oil companies pay not one penny in royalties for the oil they pump from our ground. Alaska and Texas pay for their State Governments with those oil royalties. We are not broke. Our State is broken, and has been systematically disassembled. We need new blue prints, new designs, and new systems for all our futures.
I was born in California. I grew up in California. I remember when California worked, before we became a Police State. I was educated in California Public Schools and graduated from CAL in 1975. I support the walk outs and strikes at UC and in all our Higher Education Institutions. Hell! It is time for a General Strike! But for what? What good will signs and yelling do for anyone? MOST importantly - it is time to organize with the force of law and take back our State. I am not advocating Militia yet. Not yet. We still have the power of the vote. The ballot-box is both King and Queen now. And we need to temper the Initiative process in our new Constitution as well. I know that the motion to all of California that we take a sanity check and re-frame our State is about as sexy as a car wreck. What must happen forward is not a quick fix, but a plan for the long view. Everyone must participate, and be included, and the process must be democratic, if we as a people are to ratify the New Charter.
We must all organize now to put a People's Check against the Corporate Theft of our State and our America. What is at stake is all that is good in a Golden State that has delivered Golden Dreams for so many. If we do not use our signatures and ballots now - we are to blame for all that happens forward. All of us. These are drastic times. Which side are you on? I ask you to join us and help organize your Community College, your CSU Campus, your UC, and our Communities from Del Norte County in the North to the Imperial County in the South and all points in between. You must organize like the Farm Workers did before us in the 1970's, and the International Longshoremen and Sailors did before us in the 1930's. There will be no more middle class in America if you - yes you the reader - do not do this.
Our website is pathetic. Join anyway. Send money so we can hire the professionals to redesign it. We are small and few. Join anyway. We need to grow our numbers to the hundreds of thousands within 30 to 60 days so we can get the 1.5 million signatures and qualify for the November 2010 Ballot. We have no money. Give $5, $10, $20, and $100 and ask your friends and fellow workers, students and teachers to do the same. Join us as rain drops join into little streams and creeks in the high country only to join with others from other areas into rivers and mighty waterfalls and raging torrents. Join us as your life, your liberty, and your freedom depend on everyone now joining together to make anew California! We are the shining star of the world. That is the destiny of our State of California. The People of Iran and China will look to us and study what we did - now in 2009, 2010, at our Convention in 2011 and how we birth our new State in early 2012. We can do this. We have to.
We are all accountable and responsible. Let's get to work.
The website of the grassroots campaign is http://CaliforniaActionNetwork.com
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gavin-newsom/lets-get-our-priorities-s_b_297374.html
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Audacity? Urgency? Hope? Change?
This is where I stand - NOW ! ! ! Where do you stand?
Audacity? Urgency? Hope? Change?
We allow others to frame us and our message at our peril. I promised to chronicle my walk toward a New California here on this blog. Excuse my remiss over the last two to four weeks. Today is catch up time. So many ask the questions:
• Why a California Constitutional Convention?
• What will the Convention do?
• Who will be the Delegates?
• How do we know the Elected Delegates will do what we hope for?
• Why is California the "Battleground State" of 2010?
• Why would a coalition of interests pool resources, people, and efforts?
• What are we really up against?
• Why would anyone want to join in?
• Who is sponsoring the Initiatives?
• Why should I help, and how can I make a difference?
What is the message, Paul? Your website sucks! Your logo sucks! You communicate that your unorganized, at loose ends (maybe past your wits end), and appear disparate. Who would ever support a man in your position? All good questions and accurate statements.
One message, is that I am doing my best with what I have regardless. I refuse to sit with the crowd and do nothing but whine, moan, and comment. I took action, and I am walking. I am not stopping. Yes, the website sucks. So? Where is yours? Yes, the logo sucks. So? Where is yours? I maybe unorganized, but I have teams willing to work for our California Constitutional Convention in every County, and Assembly District in California already. Where are yours? Who is supporting you? Who is endorsing you? I never asked for anyone to support me. I ask and will keep asking for support for two Initiatives to call a California Constitutional Convention with fairly elected delegates, as that is what I support. California is broken - fractured - bankrupt. What are you doing about it? What is your plan? Will you move to Texas? Washington DC? Boston? I was born here and I am not going anywhere. I agree with real Republicans about the fiscal culture of Sacramento, and the waste, corruption, and graft hidden in campaign finances, safe Districts, and back-room deals. I agree with real Progressives about the real needs most of us have that our government should address. I agree with the Greens on matters of Social Justice and Environmental Protections. I agree with most of California in our common disgust at the political culture of Sacramento expressed by both the Democratic and Republican Parties. I agree with the Pot Growers, that Marijuana should be legalized and taxed. I agree with all the States that Ratified the United States 21st Amendment regarding booze - and I agree that it is time to end the Prohibition on all other controlled drugs now. Legalize and Tax. I agree with the Second Amendment supporters that we have a right to possess and bare arms. I agree with the Marriage Equality People, that personal liberty and personal choices are personal and are not the business of government. Everyone needs their private rights protected by a Constitution - not denied by others due to the religious, moral, or political views divergent to theirs. I do not like the KKK, but they have their right to Hate anyone they want to hate, as long as they dont act on it. I agree with most that our children and grandchildren have a right to the best public education in the world. I agree with Labor Unions, that everyone should have their right to organize and use collective bargaining in any public or private workplace. I agree with both the Religious Right and the Nation of Islam that every people must have their right to worship as they so choose - sacred and protected. I agree with free speech, expression, and artistic license. I am not politically correct. So? I do not agree that the tyranny of the majority trumps the rights of any minority. I believe in Political Equality, and I know this is not possible without Majority Rule. I am not bound by the chains of slavery, and proscribed thought control. Everyone has the right to their opinion - no matter how stupid and/or ignorant. I subscribe to both science and spirituality, and believe in the laws of physics and nature as well as the laws of decency and spiritually moral conduct, regardless of faith. I am a free Californian. I see all in my communities as family, including the insane, afflicted, and mentally challenged.
What I hear unaddressed are the questions I long for. Why did you write the two proposed final Articles of the California Constitution? What is your motive? What is your plan and what do you hope to accomplish? Mary Jane Sanchez put it clearly: Paul, what do you want?
Today, as of September 2nd, 2009 I will do my best to address each of these points. Of course I have my personal narrative, my story, and my dreams. I have my vision and my personal hopes. I have a rude audacity and personal fierce urgency. Where to begin?
I am wordy. To all the editors out there in the universe, I make no apologies. I am not embarrassed of my humanity, nor my participation in discourse. All our lives and times are shared. This is our destiny, or you would not be reading these words now. How do you edit personality? What is the point of missing out on the magic each person brings to the whole? I tend to be first person - present tense - in all I do, as I live a life. My walk is the walk of millions of others, not so unusual, and rather common. Daily, I awaken from my sleep (again...), and cycle through my routine. I leave my bed and hit my knees in prayers. I have a meditation routine as well. There are normal components to my day, similar to many, and for others - surely unimportant. Who really cares if someone else showers, brushes their teeth, and considers their personal presentation in their days and nights? For me, there is a sacredness to the moments - all. My time here is important to me. Others opinions of me are none of my business. This is not a popular position in politics. Shaping one's political opinions are how so many sculpt their "presentation". With me - what you see is what you get. What it is is what it is, and what it ain't is what it ain't.
One old friend used to say things to me, and I will quote him often. Some ask "who was that guy"? He was my very close personal friend. He is dead now. He had five silver stars from his time as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps, all earned in World War II. In 1933 and 1934, he was a Union Organizer, the body guard to another gentleman known as Harry Bridges. He was a roustabout, a ruffian, a golden gloves boxer in NYC at the age of 15, years ago. He was raised by Nuns, as his parents could not deal with him, and dropped him off at the orphanage due to his being such a troubled boy. I knew him from his death bed. He told me to write and keep it in the present - tense. People will get what they want to get, and others will not. Keep writing. Keep walking. Keep into the moments, as each are too precious to miss. Taste your words well before you spit them out. If its not true, don't say it. If it's not yours, don't take it. If it's not right, don't do it. As you read my blog - in any order - that is my order regardless. Why would I gather so much from a man, a self admitted murderer, a tough-guy, a friend of Pope John Paul II, the kidnapper of the kid of the Mayor of San Francisco in 1934, and also a man many considered a Saint? We all live lives. Things happen. My destiny with my friend was in our stars. We were as close as two hearts can get. We admitted our humanity. His wisdom is now yours, if you want it. I can't live your life for you. You can't live mine for me. My path has been long, at times as steep as the face of El Capitain in Yosemite. At other times, my path was as smooth and never ending as the pavement of Highway 50 in Nevada. "Be brief. Be clear. Be seated", he used to say. I met him while he was in a coma having died twice in a few days. No one expected him to re-open his eyes. He used to say, that I first appeared blue to him then, as he came back to consciousness from his second death. We all have our moments. He laughed when Sister Germaine asked him how he felt. Laughing a deep husky laugh, he exclaimed that he had to admit he felt fine now, but he had become a little concerned though, as they read him his last rights. It is times like those when any and all of us get the opportunity to recognize what really is important and what is not.
Why did I spend the time to write two Articles that will end California and allow us to reboot a State - our California - just one of 50 States in our Union, called worldwide as the United States of America? Why? Because some one had to do it. Frank told me to never shy away from the job at hand. I asked why me? Why not you, he would laugh and ask? The next right thing is the one under your nose. When we look around at our hearts (from the inside out), and then to our rooms, our homes, and our communities, some one has to do the work. Why not you? Why not me? We play roles here that are not of our choosing. That is my reflection. When I went to work here in my room, at Suite 609 of the Hotel Boyd in the Tenderloin, here in San Francisco, as my friend had told me to - that if I was conscious of the task at hand: to get to work; hit the bricks; roll up your sleeves and get the job done. That job is yours - or you would never have had the conscious awareness that the task needed to be done. It's about doing. Do it. The results are not up to you, he used to say. So I did it. I have no idea what the results will be. I know it needed to be done, as each of you knows that as well - as a community - it is our work (individually and collectively) to change. If we do not embrace the work at hand, it will not get done. As adults, no one will do this for us. We are going to have to learn how to work, and live together in better ways, with new solutions, that discard all our old ideas. Why? The future demands it. I remember when California worked. It is time to live that dream again. Brian Wilson used to say "Surf's up". If you have never caught a wave, you only cheated yourself out of the experience of a life time. Why do surfers hit the water? I wrote what I wrote for the benefit of as many living things as possible. The fruits of our work now, will be the rewards for generations to come later. Let us all hope, we live to taste some of the rewards personally, in our lifetimes.
Today, I will work in segments. I plan to write five sections and post in reverse, so you can read thru, in sequence, to President Obama's comments on Ted Kennedy. In these five segments, I hope to address my responses to the initial questions, which I hear so often now, as I move around in California and meet some of you. When I was a kid, I never imagined I would propose changes to our State Constitution. I never imagined I would answer the call of an inner drumm. I never imagined I would campaign for anything, especially something dressed in public controversy. I guess I will campaign to become a delegate for a California Constitutional Convention in November of 2010. I hope others feel the same calling. We have a lot to do. I encourage you all. There really is nothing to fear. If we don't do this, who will? I smile now, as I can sense the echo's in the minds of many from the Big Business Interests of the Bay Area Council as they think - well, we will do it for you, with our "computer selected and well programed" Grand Jury! You can trust us! I laugh to myself. When did Big Business do anything in the public interest - ever? Profits are by definition - private remuneration. After my life appeared ruined by the Monopoly Telecom Cartel in America, from my position of homelessness, and still alive on the streets, to survive one hour at a time, with all I held dear gone, stripped from me, my awareness was simple: If I do not do what ever I can, to stop the machinery that manufactures misery, then my life is not worth living. God put me here do take care of the business at hand. We all have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I am no man's slave. Neither are you. I am free. Are you? Political Equality, Majority Rule in Community Decisions, and the Personal Liberties of my self and others are our banners. So out of the vault - I drew my strength from an invisible source, and I remembered the directions of my old friend: "Be Responsible! Be Accountable! Remain Reachable and Teachable! Lead By Example! Follow the drum beat of your own heart! To Thine Own Self Be True! Don't leave anyone behind! And, Paul, remember - I love you. I never asked you do to anything that would ever hurt your self or another human being, don't ever ask anyone to do anything that would hurt them or another human being either! God made no mistakes when he made each of us!" Simple words. Try living it! I am not much, yet I am my own best friend. I encourage each of you to endorse yourself! Be your own best friend! Your worth it! How do I know? Because I am too. No one can steal my honesty from me. I have nothing to hide and nothing left to loose.
Audacity? Urgency? Hope? Change?
We allow others to frame us and our message at our peril. I promised to chronicle my walk toward a New California here on this blog. Excuse my remiss over the last two to four weeks. Today is catch up time. So many ask the questions:
• Why a California Constitutional Convention?
• What will the Convention do?
• Who will be the Delegates?
• How do we know the Elected Delegates will do what we hope for?
• Why is California the "Battleground State" of 2010?
• Why would a coalition of interests pool resources, people, and efforts?
• What are we really up against?
• Why would anyone want to join in?
• Who is sponsoring the Initiatives?
• Why should I help, and how can I make a difference?
What is the message, Paul? Your website sucks! Your logo sucks! You communicate that your unorganized, at loose ends (maybe past your wits end), and appear disparate. Who would ever support a man in your position? All good questions and accurate statements.
One message, is that I am doing my best with what I have regardless. I refuse to sit with the crowd and do nothing but whine, moan, and comment. I took action, and I am walking. I am not stopping. Yes, the website sucks. So? Where is yours? Yes, the logo sucks. So? Where is yours? I maybe unorganized, but I have teams willing to work for our California Constitutional Convention in every County, and Assembly District in California already. Where are yours? Who is supporting you? Who is endorsing you? I never asked for anyone to support me. I ask and will keep asking for support for two Initiatives to call a California Constitutional Convention with fairly elected delegates, as that is what I support. California is broken - fractured - bankrupt. What are you doing about it? What is your plan? Will you move to Texas? Washington DC? Boston? I was born here and I am not going anywhere. I agree with real Republicans about the fiscal culture of Sacramento, and the waste, corruption, and graft hidden in campaign finances, safe Districts, and back-room deals. I agree with real Progressives about the real needs most of us have that our government should address. I agree with the Greens on matters of Social Justice and Environmental Protections. I agree with most of California in our common disgust at the political culture of Sacramento expressed by both the Democratic and Republican Parties. I agree with the Pot Growers, that Marijuana should be legalized and taxed. I agree with all the States that Ratified the United States 21st Amendment regarding booze - and I agree that it is time to end the Prohibition on all other controlled drugs now. Legalize and Tax. I agree with the Second Amendment supporters that we have a right to possess and bare arms. I agree with the Marriage Equality People, that personal liberty and personal choices are personal and are not the business of government. Everyone needs their private rights protected by a Constitution - not denied by others due to the religious, moral, or political views divergent to theirs. I do not like the KKK, but they have their right to Hate anyone they want to hate, as long as they dont act on it. I agree with most that our children and grandchildren have a right to the best public education in the world. I agree with Labor Unions, that everyone should have their right to organize and use collective bargaining in any public or private workplace. I agree with both the Religious Right and the Nation of Islam that every people must have their right to worship as they so choose - sacred and protected. I agree with free speech, expression, and artistic license. I am not politically correct. So? I do not agree that the tyranny of the majority trumps the rights of any minority. I believe in Political Equality, and I know this is not possible without Majority Rule. I am not bound by the chains of slavery, and proscribed thought control. Everyone has the right to their opinion - no matter how stupid and/or ignorant. I subscribe to both science and spirituality, and believe in the laws of physics and nature as well as the laws of decency and spiritually moral conduct, regardless of faith. I am a free Californian. I see all in my communities as family, including the insane, afflicted, and mentally challenged.
What I hear unaddressed are the questions I long for. Why did you write the two proposed final Articles of the California Constitution? What is your motive? What is your plan and what do you hope to accomplish? Mary Jane Sanchez put it clearly: Paul, what do you want?
Today, as of September 2nd, 2009 I will do my best to address each of these points. Of course I have my personal narrative, my story, and my dreams. I have my vision and my personal hopes. I have a rude audacity and personal fierce urgency. Where to begin?
I am wordy. To all the editors out there in the universe, I make no apologies. I am not embarrassed of my humanity, nor my participation in discourse. All our lives and times are shared. This is our destiny, or you would not be reading these words now. How do you edit personality? What is the point of missing out on the magic each person brings to the whole? I tend to be first person - present tense - in all I do, as I live a life. My walk is the walk of millions of others, not so unusual, and rather common. Daily, I awaken from my sleep (again...), and cycle through my routine. I leave my bed and hit my knees in prayers. I have a meditation routine as well. There are normal components to my day, similar to many, and for others - surely unimportant. Who really cares if someone else showers, brushes their teeth, and considers their personal presentation in their days and nights? For me, there is a sacredness to the moments - all. My time here is important to me. Others opinions of me are none of my business. This is not a popular position in politics. Shaping one's political opinions are how so many sculpt their "presentation". With me - what you see is what you get. What it is is what it is, and what it ain't is what it ain't.
One old friend used to say things to me, and I will quote him often. Some ask "who was that guy"? He was my very close personal friend. He is dead now. He had five silver stars from his time as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps, all earned in World War II. In 1933 and 1934, he was a Union Organizer, the body guard to another gentleman known as Harry Bridges. He was a roustabout, a ruffian, a golden gloves boxer in NYC at the age of 15, years ago. He was raised by Nuns, as his parents could not deal with him, and dropped him off at the orphanage due to his being such a troubled boy. I knew him from his death bed. He told me to write and keep it in the present - tense. People will get what they want to get, and others will not. Keep writing. Keep walking. Keep into the moments, as each are too precious to miss. Taste your words well before you spit them out. If its not true, don't say it. If it's not yours, don't take it. If it's not right, don't do it. As you read my blog - in any order - that is my order regardless. Why would I gather so much from a man, a self admitted murderer, a tough-guy, a friend of Pope John Paul II, the kidnapper of the kid of the Mayor of San Francisco in 1934, and also a man many considered a Saint? We all live lives. Things happen. My destiny with my friend was in our stars. We were as close as two hearts can get. We admitted our humanity. His wisdom is now yours, if you want it. I can't live your life for you. You can't live mine for me. My path has been long, at times as steep as the face of El Capitain in Yosemite. At other times, my path was as smooth and never ending as the pavement of Highway 50 in Nevada. "Be brief. Be clear. Be seated", he used to say. I met him while he was in a coma having died twice in a few days. No one expected him to re-open his eyes. He used to say, that I first appeared blue to him then, as he came back to consciousness from his second death. We all have our moments. He laughed when Sister Germaine asked him how he felt. Laughing a deep husky laugh, he exclaimed that he had to admit he felt fine now, but he had become a little concerned though, as they read him his last rights. It is times like those when any and all of us get the opportunity to recognize what really is important and what is not.
Why did I spend the time to write two Articles that will end California and allow us to reboot a State - our California - just one of 50 States in our Union, called worldwide as the United States of America? Why? Because some one had to do it. Frank told me to never shy away from the job at hand. I asked why me? Why not you, he would laugh and ask? The next right thing is the one under your nose. When we look around at our hearts (from the inside out), and then to our rooms, our homes, and our communities, some one has to do the work. Why not you? Why not me? We play roles here that are not of our choosing. That is my reflection. When I went to work here in my room, at Suite 609 of the Hotel Boyd in the Tenderloin, here in San Francisco, as my friend had told me to - that if I was conscious of the task at hand: to get to work; hit the bricks; roll up your sleeves and get the job done. That job is yours - or you would never have had the conscious awareness that the task needed to be done. It's about doing. Do it. The results are not up to you, he used to say. So I did it. I have no idea what the results will be. I know it needed to be done, as each of you knows that as well - as a community - it is our work (individually and collectively) to change. If we do not embrace the work at hand, it will not get done. As adults, no one will do this for us. We are going to have to learn how to work, and live together in better ways, with new solutions, that discard all our old ideas. Why? The future demands it. I remember when California worked. It is time to live that dream again. Brian Wilson used to say "Surf's up". If you have never caught a wave, you only cheated yourself out of the experience of a life time. Why do surfers hit the water? I wrote what I wrote for the benefit of as many living things as possible. The fruits of our work now, will be the rewards for generations to come later. Let us all hope, we live to taste some of the rewards personally, in our lifetimes.
Today, I will work in segments. I plan to write five sections and post in reverse, so you can read thru, in sequence, to President Obama's comments on Ted Kennedy. In these five segments, I hope to address my responses to the initial questions, which I hear so often now, as I move around in California and meet some of you. When I was a kid, I never imagined I would propose changes to our State Constitution. I never imagined I would answer the call of an inner drumm. I never imagined I would campaign for anything, especially something dressed in public controversy. I guess I will campaign to become a delegate for a California Constitutional Convention in November of 2010. I hope others feel the same calling. We have a lot to do. I encourage you all. There really is nothing to fear. If we don't do this, who will? I smile now, as I can sense the echo's in the minds of many from the Big Business Interests of the Bay Area Council as they think - well, we will do it for you, with our "computer selected and well programed" Grand Jury! You can trust us! I laugh to myself. When did Big Business do anything in the public interest - ever? Profits are by definition - private remuneration. After my life appeared ruined by the Monopoly Telecom Cartel in America, from my position of homelessness, and still alive on the streets, to survive one hour at a time, with all I held dear gone, stripped from me, my awareness was simple: If I do not do what ever I can, to stop the machinery that manufactures misery, then my life is not worth living. God put me here do take care of the business at hand. We all have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I am no man's slave. Neither are you. I am free. Are you? Political Equality, Majority Rule in Community Decisions, and the Personal Liberties of my self and others are our banners. So out of the vault - I drew my strength from an invisible source, and I remembered the directions of my old friend: "Be Responsible! Be Accountable! Remain Reachable and Teachable! Lead By Example! Follow the drum beat of your own heart! To Thine Own Self Be True! Don't leave anyone behind! And, Paul, remember - I love you. I never asked you do to anything that would ever hurt your self or another human being, don't ever ask anyone to do anything that would hurt them or another human being either! God made no mistakes when he made each of us!" Simple words. Try living it! I am not much, yet I am my own best friend. I encourage each of you to endorse yourself! Be your own best friend! Your worth it! How do I know? Because I am too. No one can steal my honesty from me. I have nothing to hide and nothing left to loose.
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