Watchdogging That Makes The World That Goes Around Come Around.
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We must take the watchdog concept and process to a much greater level. No person, politician, party, or profit pursuer is immune from the influences of power. The facts are absolutely in. We all know of someone close who has failed to make the cut. If you are human, you have been tempted to take the supposedly easier path rather than fight the power, and even fallen short of perfection yourself. If you think your perfection is still solid, you may be less trustworthy with power than those who admit to a fall, or a fail.
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Since transgressions of power will happen, with potential in every entity, our citizenship requires us to be massively more vigilant, and always strong when fighting the power is required. To accomplish this task, we need an extensively watchful, wary, skeptical eye doing the work, along with counteracting stature and influence. That solution is what I present below, between linked vignettes that showcase the ways power and secrecy corrupts.
Whistleblowers
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. A magisterial exploration of whistleblowing in America, from the…www.audible.com
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Unfortunately, there is no consistent and comprehensive entity covering everything we need covered. The media cannot be everywhere, and is not always ready or willing to take on, for an extended time, specific entities of corruption, or their years between corrupt activities. The windows, doors, and escape hatches must be constantly and forever covered. Trapdoors must be avoided or overcome quickly. The pushback by the powerful must be nullified. We The People must have our freedom to roam so we can see what must be seen.
The Secret Tapes of a Suburban Drug War | The United States of Anxiety | WNYC
Kai Wright: Hey everybody, just a heads up before you listen to this episode, there's a good bit of salty language in…www.wnycstudios.org
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I don’t know about you, but I am tired of learning the details of activities that have harmed us, many years or decades after it was perpetrated by local, state and federal government, or private entities. And even if we knew about their abuses, how nothing was done to the perpetrators, little was cleaned up, and barely anything was fully dealt with so it ends up happening again. Oftentimes the whistleblowers are also penalized for letting the American public know. Then the coverup that’s worse than the crime is covered up, too!
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What I am going to explain next is a solution to the problem of corruption in every form, lack of vigilance, and many other 21st century morasses. The solution requires a rethinking of our direct responsibilities to our local communities, and the world around us including the state, federal, and international community. Not a one world government, but an updated democracy for Americans. Nothing in our current system needs to be replaced. Consider the solution an augmentation, or a parallel auxiliary system. It is a We The People layer of scrutiny and protection. In addition, think about how the technological advancements in the last two decades have made it possible to deliver a more robust democratic process.
ThinThread Whistleblowers
ThinThread Whistleblowers Thomas Drake, William Binney, and J. Kirk Wiebe Former United States National Security Agency…whistleblower.org.
Here, let’s imagine some of the possibilities in implementing and utilizing an advanced augmentation of democracy. Take into consideration on all the technology we use at home, on the road, on the line, at universities, and in the businesses we work for, or manage. Now delete in your mind all the usages of that technology; and erase all your personal or business connections with them. Lastly, release each one of them into the public and citizen space. Some of that technology may never be applicable in this space, but keep an open mind. If you could only use them for improving how we approach any societal, government, or political problem, plug them into congruous places.
Crisis of Conscience
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. “A call to arms and to action, for anyone with a conscience, anyone alarmed…www.audible.com
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We will begin by calling our new system the We The People (WTP) Intranet. There are no direct connections to the government, our employers, or political parties. It should also be parallel to the worldwide web, or fully encrypted. The WTPI is for our purposes alone. We are the 99%. Yet, we must begin with at least 60% of workers and citizens to achieve the full breadth of system capacity, then growing in size as its content value rises for more and more Americans.
SEC Charges Issuer, CEO, and Lobbyist With Defrauding Investors in AML BitCoin
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2020-145 The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged NAC Foundation, its Chief Executive…www.sec.gov
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The system will make it possible to manage various watchdog elements throughout the nation. A matrix of interests and entities would be mapped out, and citizens would choose their area of concern and/or expertise, and use the system to monitor every entity, and investigate those situations where threatening problems, and potentially dangerous inconsistencies, are lurking.
The war on whistle-blowers
If there is any doubt about how the Bush administration treats government whistle-blowers, consider the case of Teresa…www.salon.com
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To avoid any conflicts of interests, there would be counter research efforts performed by disinterested parties as well. For example, citizens from one area reviewing the data from another: one group monitors your police department as your group monitors theirs, or random selections are made. The Hanford nuclear site in Washington is a good example where local citizens or state residents are protecting their financial benefits, but they may not be as concerned about the effects a nuclear disaster would create for communities down stream, or in Oregon, Idaho, and etc.
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Hanford is just one of many precarious places in the nation; I chose it because of its decades of controversies, and its matrix of combined federal, state, local, and international corporate power that have a huge potential of causing great harm to the nation via one event.
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Is anyone actually looking out for the interests of distant communities and our nation, if locals are potentially compromised by the financial benefits of a corrupted process, and incompetent handling of dangerous materials?.
What if the government is merely protecting its back side, after misleading the American people for decades about their terrible foot dragging, massive overspending, and their fucked up processes? (See Youtube story above.)
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We know each administration will end up with some kind of cover up or malfeasance, or at least the perception of one. Therefore, the watchdog element must be nonpartisan. Each citizen involved will be focused on problems as if it was their own family or community being endangered by a malfeasance, or cover up. The citizens best suited will lack a clannish perspective, where they will not cover up for their side, and only sanctimonious about transgressions by the other side.
This Is the Real Story Behind Kill The Messenger
Investigative reporter Gary Webb linked CIA to America's introduction to crack time.com
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However, to make sure this never goes sideways, again, as noted above, there will also be a countervailing team approach so no inappropriate perspective can become dominant. The system ideals will also not allow conjecture or supposition to rule, only facts and due diligent deliberation.
Michigan Knew Last Year That Flint's Water Might Be Poisoned But Didn't Tell Anyone
Michigan governor Rick Snyder declared last week that the poisonously high levels of lead in drinking water in Flint…slate.com
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Of course, the bounds of the watchdog also reach into the private business area. However, to be clear, in none of the watchdog ideals would there be illegal espionage. Our surveillance ability would come from individuals reporting, also aggregating other sources including media and monitoring devices, such as detecting air and water pollution, and identifying systemic racism in real time, throughout the nation.
Report: Water Contamination Widespread Across U.S.
Millions of Americans may be exposed to contaminated drinking water systems that are dangerous for their health, an…www.usnews.com
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Watchdogging and whistleblowing have many things in common. However, the big difference is that whistleblowing often has one main focus, and is initiated by one person on the inside. A watchdog, as I am using it, is initiated from the outside, and not meant as an automatic critique of what, or who is being watched. While nine out of ten companies may never come under suspicion, let alone act corruptly, each company may have one personalized incident every so often. Such individual whistleblower incidents, affecting one or two people, would be dealt with in a more specific manner, or via a societal campaign to improve work environments.
Death by Civilization
Thousands of Native American children were forced to attend boarding schools created to strip them of their culture. My…www.theatlantic.com
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Something like sexual harassment can happen in any business or government entity. Yet, the watchdog is likely to focus on general patterns that are publicly noticeable and available, whereas specific cases can be dealt with by a legal arm of the WTP system. Although a very large entity that is making a general societal impact will be monitored, since it can be more easily traced and tracked due to available data being greater and more publicly evident.
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Climate change is also another area where the WTP can keep track of the progression, who is doing or not doing what, and what we need to do to reach our goals. Showing the American public what the truths actually are, and explaining the impact it is having and will have, can help us move faster.
Unpatriotic? Whistleblowers are ‘as American as apple pie’
It was 1777. The Revolutionary War was raging, and a small band of officers and seamen in the Continental Navy faced a…www.latimes.com
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I am not sure if Edward Snowden was right in everything he did, or if Julian Assange of Wikileaks is anyone we should aspire to emulate (I don’t), but the overall idea of secrets being continually amassed is bad for the long term. The problem is the short term of human nature. Only living 80 years on average, with our first 15–20 years barely aware, and the last 15–20 winding down, for most of us, or we are gone by then, means our window from a societal perspective is miniscule.
Iran-Contra Affair | Definition, History, Oliver North, Importance, & Facts
Iran-Contra Affair, 1980s U.S. political scandal in which the National Security Council became involved in secret…www.britannica.com.
That being said, notice how fifty years later we are all aghast at what “they” didn’t tell us. This is a dead giveaway to our short term focus. Meaning we are dead, or basically out of the picture, before we can do anything about it. We must be very careful not to allow secrecy, from government or business, to undermine our future.
Why big business can count on courts to keep its deadly secrets
"The federal judiciary's commitment to open justice has come under sustained attack by corporate lawyers and…www.reuters.com
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Waiting long term to find out the truth can be as risky as the government supposedly protecting us in the short term with many secrets, or the private sector hiding harmful product developments, or lying about their efficacy via unethical corporate privacy manifestations. There is a fine line, but we cannot blindly take the word of an entity keeping each and every one its secrets either, no matter the cost to the common good.
NSA surveillance exposed by Snowden was illegal, court rules seven years on
Seven years after the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass…www.theguardian.com
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My father was an internal whistleblower, against Bendix Corp. in the early 1970s. Internal means no one would ever really know what he did, why he did it, or what the problems he pointed out were, except his superiors. His actions cost him a secure financial future. Calling out an employer is only done by a very tiny percentage. That’s because workers who do it are bound extremely tightly to their own ethics.
How Whistleblowers Have Taken Down the Titans of American Business
American whistleblowers have exposed all kinds of corporate shenanigans over the years-from the creation of fake bank…fortune.com
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Those who don’t end up following their own personal ethics may be coerced (often not literally, like myself) due to fear of losing their job, a different personal reason, and-or they have a clannish loyalty to the employer. While most everyone of us have a high level of ethics, few of us will ever need to make do or die decisions. That said, it is only when the shit hits the fan that we find out whether our own ethics will rule the day. Therefore, we need many levels of redundancy.
The FIVE ways tobacco companies lied about the dangers of smoking cigarettes
In 1982, the National Institute of Drug Abuse confirmed that nicotine is addictive.A 1994 R.J. Reynolds document…truthinitiative.org
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I have learned over the years that I am not always my father. From 1988–89, I was working as an apartment caretaker in south Minneapolis when I seemed to exhibit both forms. One was a clear failure of my own ethics, and the other was me being true to my personal ethics, or what I originally thought was that. The shame it all continues to engender cannot be whitewashed away.
The Crédit Mobilier Scandal | American Experience | PBS
The Transcontinental Railroad | Article For Union Pacific executive Thomas Durant, it was a money-making machine. It…www.pbs.org
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The apartments could be rented using Section 8 government funds, and each unit had to be up to code. So the White landlord told us to switch out newer accoutrements from another unit to make it look nicer for the city inspector. I did it once because I needed to keep my apartment discount, my only pay, but never again would I do his bidding. For example, I refused to send mail to a renter who had moved out without giving notice. The landlord could possibly get his Section-8 money a month or two longer since the renter had been paying his rent via his disability insurance. While I came finally through here, ending Mr. Larsen’s mail scam, the paragraph below is where I thought I had done an honorable thing.
The Truth About Lies in Vietnam
Karl Marlantes went to war in 1968 as a 23-year-old lieutenant and led a Marine rifle platoon through months of intense…www.historynet.com
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A few months later, three gang members, wearing the same style sweat suits (Nike or Adidas), took up residence in the unit next to me, bringing metal safes into it after 1am. I called the police, and the now very angry gang members were arrested, loudly letting me know what I had done, and what would happen to me. The MPD told me later it was a Chicago gang, that was selling cocaine. Although I was scared, I had done my duty. Of course, I was using my whitewashing, white privileged brain.
Interior Dept whistleblower resigns; bipartisan former appointees object to Zinke's…
An Interior Department executive-turned-whistleblower who said the Trump administration retaliated against him for…www.washingtonpost.com
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See the landlord was a racist fuck. He had made many comments, when I was around, using the “n” word. Hating on Black people for using section 8, while he happily cashed it in. Instead of turning him in, or at minimum eviscerating him verbally about his racism, I turned in people who are doing the only job they can in the environment they were forced into due to FHA sponsored ghettos, and white supremacy racism.
Black ghettos are no accident - how state-sponsored racism shaped US cities | Aeon Videos
Black ghettos are no accident - how state-sponsored racism shaped US citiesaeon.co
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Many Black, men especially, are forced to sell drugs*, similar to how I was forced to do my landlord’s bidding. In reality, as a White person all I needed to do was find another place to live, where I could get at least a somewhat better job. It would be easier for me to acquire both, and not worry about racist housing restrictions, or job discrimination as a Black adult would experience with or without a criminal record, or even if the Black person had a somewhat higher education.
Drug Use/Sales Rates; Rates of Drug Related Criminal Justice Measures, by Race
Over the next ten years, approximately $4 trillion of deficit reduction are set to take place through the Budget…www.hamiltonproject.org
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*Note: Whites sell as many drugs, and use more of them, yet Blacks are arrested at six point five times the rate of Whites.
Conclusion.
The watchdog entity would give everyone the ability to turn in their racist, scamming, criminal, or polluting, public or private employer without ever jeopardizing their financial future. Smaller incidents, like my landlord’s racist activities noted above, are routed to a WTP legal entity. Although publicly known patterns could be traced to determine many types of one-off problems that are occurring in many industries and government offices including landlord housing discrimination and abuses.
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We can save our government money, protect our civil liberties, the environment, keep our taxes lower even with higher spending on what is needed, as well as make every American citizen and worker safer and better off inside our nation, without making us vulnerable from outside threats. This is possible because it will be developed and managed by We The People.
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Learn more about other parts of the We The People System, start here:
A Parallel To Politics Platform
We have one chance to get it right, otherwise, we may not have time to claw back all of Trump’s penalizing losses, & do…richard-the-chwalek.medium.com
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