Non-violent grass roots reform and Democracy: More Censored Candidates From The Underground

For decades politicians have often said they're proof that anyone can rise up to get elected to higher office, including the presidency; although they don't repeat this claim nearly as often as they used to, perhaps because it's obviously not even close to the truth.

Technically there aren't supposed to be many requirements to become president, including being a minimum of thirty five years old, being born in the United States and living in the United States for the past fourteen years; outside of that there are few additional requirements, including the term limit of ten years, assuming the previous president leaves office for one reason another after serving at least two years and the vice president finishes that term and gets elected for two more terms, otherwise it's of course, just two terms, since FDR.

However the most obvious additional requirement is to get an enormous amount of name recognition, which can't happen without the help of the media. There are only six corporations that control over ninety percent of the media and several of the biggest independent media outlets not owned by these six oligarchies, including the Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Time Magazine and several other national outlets are owned by billionaires.

These oligarchies can, and routinely do, rig elections so that only those they cover can get the name recognition necessary to have a viable chance of winning. The Democratic and Republican Parties both add to the advantage of establishment candidates by setting the rules so that only those they approve of can get into the debates.

All of this is controlled by a fraction of the public, primarily multimillionaires and billionaires that use their influence to rig the elections process and economic system in their own favor, which is why we have an enormous problem with economic inequality and many other things giving the rich overwhelming advantages at everything!

In 2016 The Democratic Party demonstrated how they felt they had the right to give an unfair advantage to candidates of their choice according to DNC to Court: We Are a Private Corporation With No Obligation to Follow Our Rules 05/02/2017, DNC attorney Bruce Spiva said, "We’re gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we’re gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have — and we could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That’s not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the Court well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions.”

A federal judge accepted this argument saying “To the extent Plaintiffs wish to air their general grievances with the DNC or its candidate selection process, their redress is through the ballot box, the DNC’s internal workings, or their right of free speech — not through the judiciary.” However the mainstream media hardly reported this court case to the vast majority of the public at all so most people aren't even aware of it essentially enabling them to continue rigging elections.

In 2016 they clearly gave an overwhelming advantage to Hillary Clinton, enabling her to defeat Bernie Sanders, who is by far the best candidate that the mainstream media has covered in a presidential election in decades. Just because they used a slightly more sophisticated method than going "into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way," doesn't mean they didn't rig elections as I pointed out at the time in Can Hillary Clinton win without cheating?

But at least Bernie Sanders got enough coverage to run a national campaign that many people supported.

As I pointed out previously in Censored Candidates For President By Mass Media there are hundreds of candidates that file for president every four years, yet the media not only doesn't cover them at all they practically never even mention the fact that so many people are running so most people don't even consider the fact that they're rigging the media coverage so that only candidates supported by mainstream media have a chance to get elected!

Now, of course, once you look at this long list of candidates it will be clear that there has to be some screening process to narrow it down; however, what we're doing now is allowing a small fraction of the public control the entire process without explaining it to the public or letting them participate in the decision making process. However, the criteria the mainstream media and political establishment use to decide which candidates should get some coverage has little or nothing to do with whether or not they're looking out for the best interest of the majority, instead providing enormous advantages to those collecting bribes thinly disguised as campaign contributions.

The mainstream media is run by multimillionaires and billionaires that make a fortune selling ads to candidates that collect money from Wall Street, using public airwaves. They only cover candidates that decline to question their preferential treatment enabling them to control the vast majority of media and these candidates know they can't get favorable coverage to get elected if they speak out against these oligarchs effectively ensuring that little or nothing can be done to stop election rigging unless there's a massive amount of education at the grassroots level!

The truth, according to the mainstream media, is for sale!

The mainstream media routinely provides an enormous amount of coverage for one billionaire after another presenting them as viable candidates of office, including Howard Schultz, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Bloomberg, Mark Cuban, and many more.

Mainstream media also provided obsession coverage for Joe Biden, who presumably will announce in April that he's going to run. This isn't the first time they've provided this obsession coverage for him, or misrepresented his record; they also did this in 2016 teasing the public with emotional appeals about his son Beau who supposedly urged him to run saying that his country needed him, that he was the best man for the job, or something like that. However, his record clearly favors Wall Street overwhelmingly as Norman Solomon pointed out in Joe Biden Isn't Coming to the Rescue 03/12/2019. It's standard operating procedure for the mainstream media to repeat propaganda over and over again while only reporting hard news briefly before letting it fall down the memory hole, enabling them to convince a large number of people that don't check facts that he's "progressive" as he falsely claimed this weekend.

Even in most alternative media outlets it's rare to find people,that mention the vast majority of these candidates ignored by mainstream media, but tehre are a few exceptiosn, often especially either the Libertarian or Green Parties, including You won't have Jill Stein to kick around any more 02/28/2019 who cited an article by the New Republic reviewing candidates in The Democrats Stole the Green Party’s Best Idea 02/22/2019 When Googling candidates from this list I found quite a few comments from the grassroots from people on discussion boards or low profile blogs but few better known media outlets, but another more extensive review was provided by Open Secrets in the following article, although they don't try to come up with details to point out many of the flaws in the rigged system or how to repair it:

Meet the 2020 presidential candidates you haven’t heard of 02/29/2019

If you think the 2020 presidential candidate field is crowded, head over to the FEC’s website to check out the scores of ordinary Americans who are filing paperwork every day to run for president.

On Feb. 21, the Center for Responsive Politics reached out to lesser-known presidential hopefuls to ask why they were running. Given that a successful presidential candidate has to raise in the neighborhood of $500 million to run for office, why file the paperwork? What is the best possible outcome an average citizen can hope to achieve mounting a presidential campaign that is certain to fail? ......

As a group, these candidates are overwhelmingly sincere in their desire to lead the United States as president and confront its problems and challenges. ..... Complete article

Open secrets briefly reviews eight or nine candidates including Joe Collins who has his web site up with a modest amount of positions on the issues, this could use more details but it's early so I wouldn't hold that against him, Mark Pierce, who also has a brief description of his positions focusing mainly on Climate Change but with some additional details on other issues and Crystal Bergfield who provides a little more detail on her page.

Crystal writes about education saying "What is the purpose of education? What is currently in the way of this purpose? If the purpose is to create a brighter future, we have lost our way. Our government should have a clear vision for education including the content in schools, the education of our teachers, and the implementation of practice must reflect this purpose. ..... All children should have an equal opportunity at supporting our nation and being an innovator who changes the world." Few if any of the mainstream candidates are serious about equalizing opportunities to prove education to everyone and when they do make promises like that they routinely break them.

She still could provide more information but this is already better than what many candidates covered by traditional media provide. Sanderson Beck, who I covered in my previous article provides a much more extensive web page covering his views on many issues including dozens of articles and books some that go back decades before he began his campaign for president. This is the kind of detailed positions on many issues that we should look for in all candidates, although few of them could go into as much detail. Most traditional politicians avoid doing this like the plague, because they routinely give one group of people one set of positions while speaking to them, then provide another for another group of people guaranteeing that they have to break many promises. Part of the problem is that many people fall for this, often even when informed of contradictory promises; which means, not only do we need to hear more from many different candidates, but we need to teach many people about how they're being manipulated to help them become more savvy voters. Often we should respect honesty more than false promises, even if we do disagree with them on some issues.

The best candidates should fill out the closest thing to a job application, which could include a detailed web site with clear positions so people know what to expect from them and filling an application, or the closest thing to it, which for now the best that I know of is a questionnaire from Project Vote Smart (Saving Project Vote Smart and improving it or replacing it) which I've previously said could use improvement that involves more input from the grassroots. They've had a few scandals about a sharp increase int he pay of the founder while, if anything the quality of their questionnaire might have gone down slightly instead of improving. Part of the reason for this might be because so many candidates refuse to fill them out so they made them shorter, but part of it might also be that they're cutting back perhaps getting fewer funds. I wouldn't recommend many if any donations to them unless they're willing to listen more to the grassroots, but they're still providing the best questionnaire that I know of a day or so ago Sanderson Beck informed me that they haven't prepared their questionnaire for this year yet but that he would be filling it out when they do.

One of the few candidates the mainstream media was willing to cover was Marianne Williamson, (included in the list below) Oprah's Spiritual Adviser. There were dozens of relatively low profile articles on the web about her. Many people are skeptical of her, and she's been accused of being a fraud; Oprah, claimed she experienced “157 miracles” after she read the book, which I'm skeptical of; however at least some of her views on the issues are worth a close look on her page about crime and violence prevention she opens with a quote from Deborah Prothrow-Stith, M.D., Dean, Drew College of Medicine saying, "Gang violence is connected to bullying is connected to school violence is connected to intimate partner violence is connected to child abuse is connected to elder abuse. It's all connected. We operate in these silos that we've got to break down."

She goes on to say, in her own words, "Among all industrialized nations, the United States ranks at the top in violent crime. We have the highest homicide rates, seven times higher than the average for others. For much of the neighborhoods and communities throughout the country, our local governments have failed to supply effective crime prevention solutions. ..... In America, our approach to managing violence and crime has typically trended towards largely ineffective punitive approaches, ignoring the underlying causes of our problems. In addition, the punitive -- rather than rehabilitative -- approach to holding violent criminals accountable only increases the statistical probability that, once released, such criminals will again perpetrate acts of violence.

On her child advocacy page she writes, "A small child can’t feed, clothe, or educate herself. Children cannot vote against special interests that profit financially from activities that harm their health, deny them education, or profit off their problems. Advocacy for our children isn’t a charity issue, it’s a justice issue."

"The United States is the only country in the world that funds its education system through property taxes, thereby ensuring that children in a poorer neighborhood will get a poorer education. Even where states do their best to compensate for the disparity, the gaps are appalling."

There should be little or no doubt that we could greatly reduce violence, as I've pointed out in many articles including Research On Preventing Violence Absent From National Media, by preventing child abuse, including banning of corporal punishment in schools, and perhaps, even in the home. This should be accompanied by an educational effort to teach people how it leads to escalating violence. The murder rates are 22% to 31% higher in states that still allow corporal punishment in schools in our country; and the countries in Europe that ban it both in schools and at home have murder rates that are a small fraction of ours often below 1 per 100,000, while our national average is about 5.3 and Louisiana is routinely over 10.

She doesn't deserve any more recognition as a minor celebrity who associates with much better known celebrities, and I wouldn't completely trust her without a much better look, but clearly many of her positions are worth consideration. Even if she doesn't win the presidency, which seem unlikely, we should take a closer look at her views, along with Sanderson Beck and other candidates coming up with good ideas and push them at the grassroots level.

Darcie Allen also provides better positions on issues than corporate candidates writing about health care, "I propose getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid and implementing a healthcare for all program that covers basic, preventative and emergent care that is government funded but not government owned and operated. Pharmaceutical companies need to be capped and negotiated, the profit margins are too extreme in comparison to the life sustaining medications people require. ..... Out of 30 countries the United States spends on average three times as much in comparison and the health results and life expectancy rates are still lower. When compared to 12 other countries, more people have died from PREVENTABLE diseases before the age of 75!"

She also supports a flat tax, which probably won't go over too well with many progressives, including me, and a minimum wage of $12.00, which isn't as much as the $15.00 grassroots are currently pushing for and in some cases getting at the state level. I'm not sure she'll get a lot of grassroots support with those positions, even though her comments on health care are much better than traditional corporate candidates, but she should be heard.

I haven't found updated positions on the issues from Raymond Haigood, but he filled out a Candidate Questionnaire or positions for the 2016 Presidential Green Party Nomination, although he's running in 2020 as an independent. One of the issues he listed as his top priority was "Separation of Corporation and State – I would push to remove corporate donations to political campaigns. I’d remind politicians that they are supposed to be representatives of the people not of the corporations. Push to remove corporations involvement in policy and decision making."

He seemed to be new to the Green Party at that time, and might not have had the same priorities, but he did agree with their platform which included, "Abolish the Electoral College and provide for the direct national election of the president by Instant Runoff Voting. As a step in that direction, support National Popular Vote legislation which would guarantee the Presidency to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and the District of Columbia), which would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes — that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538)." However he didn't seem to think they would be his top priority in 2016, which might be why he's running as an independent this time.

Angela Glass's positions on issues according to her web page is mostly quotes from other sources, which although some of them are good she still need to clarify where she stands and what she would do, although it's still early. But she does have a domain name and fancy graphics, which may say a little about her priorities. Personally I'm not to impressed with fancy graphics or hype and would prefer that top priorities would be stating positions on issues, which can be done with a free web page, or at modest expense a domain name.

Raynette Kennedy Weiss also seems to have put more priority on fancy graphics than getting his positions out first coming up with many simple statements with little follow up about how he'll accomplish it, including "Repair the voting rights act, or update it. .... Have stronger gun control laws. .... Repeal citizens united. ...... A basic course should be given on how the Government works other than what is taught in school, so people are not at odds with the officials while they try to work with the Government which is a bit broken."

I would agree that a basic course should be given on how government and the election process, works and on how it's controlled by well connected people and what we can do to reform it. This should invite people to come up with their own ideas and people should recognize that the government is supposed to work for us, therefore we should have influence on the election process instead of letting media companies and political parties have total control without input on which candidates should be heard.

More of this should be taught in schools with some follow up in the media, that is partially controlled by grassroots organizations or researchers on various issues, not just organizations who's primary goal is profit, without serving the interests of the public. This needs to include warnings about how charismatic demagogues use hype to manipulate the people, and efforts to learn more details about many issues.

This is just a small fraction of the ideas that might be considered if the media was willing to listen to more diverse candidates, not just those collecting enormous amounts o campaign contributions, mostly from billionaires, or the billionaires themselves.

For example, Kirsten Gillibrand came out with a very passionate speech during her town hall Monday March the 18, that sounded very good and did a very good job making friends with the audience, who constantly applauded her. Thirty years ago it was recognized that excessive applause distracted from the issues and was often criticized when a tyrant like Stalin encouraged excessive applause from his people, even making a minister disappear when he thought it was going too far and stopped making everyone else feel relieved because they also thought it was going to far; now it's standard operating procedure, and there's little or no doubt that an enormous amount of it is staged, and designed to create the appearance of more support than the candidate actually has encouraging support from people that might not keep up just to go along with the crown like cult followers.

Now excessive cheering is the norm, and unless people stay focused and check facts independently, they can easily be misled by charismatic speakers. For example, when she was asked about trade she said that trade wars don't solve anything, only making prices higher, criticizing Trump, which is only partly true. His trade policy was wild and erratic, doing the opposite of what it was intended to, however being better than Trump isn't much to brag about. She did nothing to discuss how trade was used to reduce environmental protection, consumer protection, or workers rights; and her support of trade like almost all politicians plays into the hands of Wall Street corporations.

There was no discussion about the potential advantages of local economies including factory direct, or improved wages and reduced transportation that protects the environment and can lead to higher quality. In some cases prices ,might be higher but the products might last longer and people would have more money to pay for it, and with less pollution as a result of transportation reductions there would be less health effects from that and lower health care costs. There are, of course more details but they can't be covered in a brief emotional town hall speech where she's more concerned about making friends and flattering people than about going into details of complicated issues.

During Elizabeth Warrens's town hall, she wasn't much better; the first question she was asked was what she would do about Mississippi white people voting against their own best interest. Instead of thinking about the question and addressing it she went into a prepared passionate speech about inequality, which may have been fairly good, or at least sounded good, but it didn't actually address the question she was asked. This is typical of politicians that prepare their answers ahead of time without regard to what they're being asked which is incredibly phony.

She received an enormous amount of applause after this without any one commenting on the fact that her response ignored the question. my best guest is the town hall had a lot of supporters that were inclined to clap no matter what she said, which seems to be par for the course.

There's little or no doubt that large portions of CNN's town halls are clearly staged, they even require audience members to submit their questions in writing to be screened, and you can see them reading from their own questions on camera, which means they have the opportunity to censor questions or leak them both of which they've been caught doing in the past. MSNBC and other networks also do some sort of planning and screening of their audience without informing the public about it, which is part of the rigging process even if we don't know all the details.

Another question asked shortly after that involved whether or not she would eliminate private insurance which is routinely demonized in the media, and Warren went into another speech that distracted from the issue before saying that she wouldn't and that even Bernie Sander's plan wouldn't do that, although that's probably not entirely true.

A courageous politician that actually represents the people might have explained that an enormous problem with the private insurance industry is epidemic levels of waste and fraud, which should be eliminated. When it comes to lost jobs there could be some discussion about retraining for other jobs; the same corporations that are so concerned about insurance jobs, that primarily shift wealth to the rich, routinely cut many more jobs when it increases profits, clearly indicating they're not interested in jobs or efficiency, except when it comes to efficiently shifting wealth to themselves!

To put it simply the more money from premium dollars they spend on advertising, lobbying against the interests of the public, or huge CEO salaries, the less they have to pay for legitimate claims which is why health care is so expensive.

There's nothing wrong with eliminating industries that are almost entirely based on fraud!

In depth discussion of this issue and many others could help inform the public about the details of flaws in our economic system, instead we just get soundbites repeated over and over again. Many thorough reviews are available in the academic wold, library books, alternative media outlets or at the grassroots level, but is virtually completely absent from the mainstream media.

Recent news show that Beto O'Rourke has allegedly risen quickly in the polls again with him and Kamala Harris coming in third and fourth after Biden and Sanders. However this followed an enormous amount of obsession coverage about O'Rourke, and Kamala Harris also received an increase int eh polls following an enormous amount of obsession coverage when she made her announcement. The media and candidates have been using these polls to study how people react to their coverage and what causes the polls to rise, which enables them to learn how to more effectively manipulate the public with their coverage.

However the image they provide with this obsession coverage doesn't even come close to matching the records of these candidates. This weekend Joe Biden claimed that he was the most progressive candidate running, or that would run, which they reported as a slip of the tongue, and repeated over and over again. One media pundit even pointed out that this isn't true, but the mainstream media didn't repeat that part, instead letting it fall quickly down the memory hole, however alternative media outlets have reported repeatedly that none of these candidate, except Bernie Sanders are nearly as progressive claim, including a couple more articles cited below.

And most people seem to have forgotten that Joe Biden has an incredibly long history of saying foolish things, like getting caught at an open mike saying "this is a big fucking deal;" Obama had to caution him on several occasions to be more civil. We can expect many more blunders like this when his campaign begins and he starts speaking more, which may remind every one why his past runs for president failed so bad. It's only the media's positive propaganda and the public's short memory that makes him seem so appealing.

Norman Solomon's article also pointed out his previous comment saying “It doesn’t matter whether or not they were deprived as a youth, It doesn’t matter whether or not they had no background that enabled them to become socialized into the fabric of society. It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re the victims of society. The end result is they’re about to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe, shoot my sister, beat up my wife, take on my sons.” However, he routinely votes to ensure that they continue to have the economic system rigged against them and that they can't get educational opportunities to prevent this, while routinely looking the other way at massive white collar fraud and helping rig economic system in favor of the wealthy. If not for this some of them wouldn't have become so resentful in the first place not to mention that he's exaggerating this fear.

In depth discussion on the research around this would also help solve the problem with more education and less prison, although mainstream media refuses to cover that research.

This doesn't, of course, mean that all these candidates are serious candidates, many of them are treating it almost like a joke, and there are a lot of them running for religious reasons, including some that seem fanatical, and at least one white supremacist. I clearly wouldn't recommend all of them but that doesn't mean we shouldn't hear about at least a few of them, preferably the best, but there's no doubt that the mainstream media and political establishment isn't doing a good job screening them, instead they're looking out for the best interests of their wealthy donors or investors.

As much as I would like to believe that one of these candidates has a major chance of getting elected this hardly seems likely, baring some dramatic circumstances of some sort, especially with Bernie Sanders running, who will attract many of the progressives. Bernie Sanders is one of the few progressives they provide a reasonable amount of coverage for, but they still try to smear him on many occasions. The most likely explanation why they cover him seems to be that he's been at it so long developing a good reputation at the grassroots and attracted so many crowds they felt they couldn't ignore him without losing the last shred of their credibility. In all fairness, even Bernie Sanders benefits from appeals to emotion and what I might consider excessive applause; however, if you check the facts, he keep his promises, and unlike other candidates he's been supporting progressive causes for decades, not just during the campaign.

However, even if Bernie Sanders wins the nomination, which will be the hard part, then goes on to beat Trump, we still need major reforms in the system and we may not be able to count on him to do all of it unless there's an enormous amount of grassroots pressure on him and he get a lot of help from progressive candidates from Congress.

After all, after the primaries were rigged last time, instead of calling it out, perhaps supporting the Green Party Candidate Jill Stein, he caved and supported Hillary, even trying to patch together the reputation of the Democratic Party when the leadership constantly sabotaged his efforts at reform, with Nancy Pelosi even signalling health care executives not to worry about all the campaigning for Single Payer. For this year anyway, he appears to be the only real chance of getting elected and helping with major reforms.

But there also needs to be many more people running at the local level; and we need the same media and campaign reform for local candidates, enabling them to get elected.

Run For Office.Org is trying to recruit people to do just that; and it might be a great help. However, some caution should be taken when dealing with this organization, or perhaps others; some of the supporting partners look reasonably progressive, and might be a great help but there are also some traditional campaign advisers like Jay Godfrey, who previously worked for the Mitt Romney for president campaign. He might have experience at running things the traditional way but that may involve collecting money from the same corporate donors and some of these people might be reluctant to support the reforms that we need including ranked choice voting or major challenges to the two political parties and media rigging the coverage for candidates supporting Wall Street.

If some of these advisers try to discourage real reforms we need people that are willing to speak up to them and rally the grassroots to end corruption of the system!

Some of the following people have already gained a significant amount of coverage at the grassroots level challenging the system, and even though most of them haven't won they've done a great deal to educate the public preparing for possible wins in the future. In the article from Open Secrets they claim that "Unfortunately, Facebook and Twitter disabled [Michael James Ott's] accounts, perhaps due to an overabundance of caution about fake election websites." When I checked them they were back up but several of these candidates also had the same problem temporarily, often only restoring it when there's a large complaint at the grassroots level, although it's not reported in the mainstream media, which is another way of rigging election coverage in favor of candidates supported by the establishment.

Ro Khanna

Gayle McLaughlin

Sema for U.S. Senate

Tim Canova

Paula Jean Swearengin

Stephen R. Jaffe

For more on how I think we could create a much better interview process see Saving Project Vote Smart and improving it or replacing it and Election Reform

The establishment is also constantly trying to cut back on small reforms enabling alternative parties to get some additional coverage as indicated in HR 1 Cuts Green Party Campaign Funding, Sics Homeland Security and Political Police on the Left 03/07/2019 Providing matching funds to campaigns isn't nearly as good as financing an interview process as I recommend in previous articles; however, the current system is much worse; which means they're trying to do away with even minor improvements!

Kamala Harris Was Not a ‘Progressive Prosecutor’ 01/17/2019

Beto O'Rourke is the new Obama. And that's the last thing we need 12/22/2018

The following are a few list of many more presidential candidates, which I used for this search:

Ballotpedia: Presidential candidates, 2020

Project Vote Smart: Presidential candidates, 2016

Project Vote Smart: Presidential candidates, 2020

Non-violent grass roots reform and Democracy

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Wednesday, March 20, 2019

More Censored Candidates From The Underground

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