The Black Box at the Center of Democracy

The story isn’t illegal voters. It never was. The story is who owns the machines that count the votes — and why we have no way to verify what they do.

By Jim Prues  & Jim’s AI buddy ·  World5.org

Every election cycle, the same alarm gets sounded: illegal voters are stealing democracy. It is a powerful story — emotionally vivid, politically useful, and by every credible measure, almost entirely fictional. Verified cases of non-citizen or fraudulent voting occur at rates so vanishingly small they would not change a local school board race, let alone a national one. And yet the story dominates, consuming outrage and legislative energy — while the actual structural vulnerabilities in our elections go almost entirely unexamined.

That is not an accident. Misdirection is a strategy.

Here is what the misdirection is designed to keep you from looking at: the software running your voting machines is privately owned, proprietary, and shielded from independent inspection behind trade secret law. When you cast a vote on a touchscreen terminal, there is no mechanism for you to verify your intent was recorded correctly. When ballots are tabulated by a closed system, the jurisdiction running the election has no independent means of confirmation. They are trusting a corporation’s word. So are you.

A democracy that cannot verify its own elections is not a democracy. It is a ceremony.

The researchers and citizen investigators at This Will Hold have been digging into this with specific, disturbing focus. Their recent piece — “She Won. They Didn’t Just Change the Machines. They Rewired the Election.” — traces a chain of corporate connections that deserves far wider attention: the 2021 sale of Tripp Lite (whose power hardware is physically connected to ES&S and Dominion tabulators across the country) to Eaton Corporation, Eaton’s subsequent deepening partnership with Palantir, the quiet activation of Starlink’s direct-to-cell satellite network just days before the 2024 election, and statistical anomalies in the results that, taken together, they argue cannot be explained by ordinary variance.

Referenced Investigation

“She Won. They Didn’t Just Change the Machines. They Rewired the Election.” — This Will Hold

A detailed investigative piece connecting corporate infrastructure — Tripp Lite, Eaton, Palantir, and Starlink’s DTC activation — to anomalous 2024 election data. Their central argument: the math in multiple recent election cycles does not add up, and the systems involved are structured to prevent anyone from proving why. Read it here →

I want to be precise about what I am saying and what I am not. The connections This Will Hold documents are real — the corporate acquisitions, the partnerships, the technical architecture are all on the record. Whether those connections were deliberately weaponized to alter election outcomes is a claim that has not been confirmed by independent investigators. But here is the thing: the reason it cannot be confirmed is exactly the problem. We lack the transparent, redundant systems that would allow us to know. The opacity is the crime, even if nothing else is.

This is the World 5.0 framing: integrity is not a virtue we perform. It is a structural condition we build. A system has integrity when its inner workings and its outer results are verifiably aligned. By that measure, our current election infrastructure does not have integrity — not because everyone running elections is corrupt, but because the systems they use make verification structurally impossible. The This Will Hold investigators cannot prove their case. That inability is itself the proof of the structural failure.

The solution is not voter ID laws. It is open architecture: voting system code that is publicly audited, hardware that is independently inspected, and results verified through meaningful redundancy — voter-verified paper trails and risk-limiting audits that compare physical records to digital tallies in public, by law, after every election. None of this is theoretical. Colorado has implemented risk-limiting audits that election security experts across the political spectrum point to as a model. The technology exists. The political will to demand it at scale is what we are still building.

Both parties have failed this test — Democrats by avoiding the conversation because it sounds too close to the claims made by bad-faith actors who dispute results they dislike, Republicans by wrapping legitimate concerns about voting technology inside the phantom-voter narrative that poisons the well for everyone. Both postures leave the structural problem intact. Both serve the interests of the companies that profit from opacity.

The immigrants are not coming for your ballot. The machines deserve every question you can raise.

What This Will Hold is doing — following the corporate connections, interrogating the statistical anomalies, refusing to accept that “trust us” is an answer — is precisely what citizens in a self-governing society are supposed to do. Whether or not their specific conclusions hold up to further scrutiny, their core demand is correct: show your work, or you have not earned our confidence.

Confidence built on opacity is not confidence. It is faith — and faith in private corporations is not a foundation for self-governance. The answers we need are available. Open source code, verifiable paper trails, independent audits. The will to demand them is what World 5.0 is about building — in this space, and in every system that structures our collective life.

Jim Prues is the founder of the World 5.0 framework for civilizational transformation, author of World 5.0: We Move From Here. Free download from the website. He writes and produces from Cincinnati.  ·  world5.org

Our Civilization Sucks

Well, we don’t have to look very far, indeed, we don’t have to look at all. We feel it in our bones. We sense it on a regular. Our civilization sucks.

This mess in the Ukraine with Russian and US narratives going back and forth, and people dying, but ices our argument. Our civilization sucks. Want a deeper dive?

Want to look at our dying oceans, devastated ecosystems or environmental destruction?

Want to look at our shitty food systems, our fossil fuels use or our tepid response to the potential end of our species?

Want to back up that Ukraine thing with the permanent war paradigm? Haiti, Palestine, and a hundred other situations where human rights are abused and lives are ruined or ended?

Want to look at our media? Raving lunatics on left and right? All that matters to them is the corporate agenda.

How about civil rights or income inequality? Two very related topics where we’re failing miserably.

Or government, where one of the two main parties is officially the Party of Sedition? And the other a spineless tool of elites?

I could go on and on…

How is it that we find ourselves in such a bad place as a species, as a civilization? That’s not really a tough question if we’re paying attention.

It’s because all of the above and so much more stem from the corporate-owned, more money and power at all costs mentality that the elites – super wealthy families going back hundreds of years – have manipulated us and our culture so they always ‘win’. A sharp case in point is how the Rothschilds funded both sides of the war and lied and cheated ‘manipulated’ both sides, vastly improving their fortunes. Despicable, and a long standing tradition.

No wonder the founding fathers were very wary of ‘The Corporation’. And indeed, The Corporation is the ‘great’ financial entity that allows our corporate overlords to remain our corporate overlords. And it remains despicable.

The Rockefellers, Morgans and Vanderbilts were pulling similarly despicable behaviors in the U.S. a century later. Some of the richest men that ever lived, they offered platitudes to the common citizen, but saw wealth and poverty as both necessitated by capitalism. Their philanthropy was supposed to erase, or at least more tolerable, those great inequalities.

Democrat Grover Cleveland was not the first to complain that “corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.” (1888 State of the Union address). The only major shift since then is the addition of globalization to the corporate tool set. Indeed, our founding fathers had similar concerns, but time favors corporate power as we see today.

These days the rampant abuses of The Corporation are ruining our lives and communities and if that’s not enough, destroying our only home. The people behind the mega-corporations of today are so ingrained in elitist ideology that they’re incapable of recognizing the truth of what they are, at the least, contributing to.

We don’t need extravagant yachts and trips into outer space to see where these crazy folks are leading us. To our doom. We don’t need all the plethora of lawsuits trying to eek out some minor victory against these monsters to know corporations and healthy cultures cannot co-exist. While the recognitions of Occupy back in 2011, that financial systems are corrupt and ruining our lives, might not have seemed obvious then, by now it’s clear to anyone whose head is not buried in some ideological sand.

There is, in truth, only one remedy. Transforming our culture to one where The Corporation has no place. Transform our culture so big lie talking points like Trump really won in 2020 are unimaginable. Transform our culture so that we take the threats to our dear planet Earth with total regard. Where the permanent war paradigm is in the dustbin of history, like so much tremendous malfeasance wreaked on us by our elitist corporate controllers.

Our lives cry out for meaning. For something greater than a sports victory. For something more true than gated communities. For seeing each other in our essence, and not in our clothes, hair, skin or other useless gage of our humanness.

The two Biggies: Community and Commerce

Presuming access to decent air and water, food and energy are the great requirements for a civilization to survive and thrive. And how they do so is through community and commerce. Community because we share this Life Now, and being and doing with each other is a fundamental aspect of our existence. But let’s start with commerce.

Commerce in some form has been with us for tens of thousands of years. Especially with the Agrarian Age and the beginning of specialization in work, people bartered, bought and sold, and developed the system of capitalism. Two folks selling shoes. Who makes the best shoes? Who has the better deal? Whose further away? Such considerations are at the heart of true capitalism.

We don’t have that today. You may find a bit of it in your town or online somewhere, but in all our manifest global systems, we have corporatism. Mindless legal entities, designed and effectively enabling the ruination of our lives and the rape of our dear Earth. First enabled by England around 1600, they have been the scourge we have faced and died for all these long generations.

In any area of our lives, what was once a panoply of business entities is now dominated by one or a few companies. Amazon, Apple, Google, Intel, Walmart, Kroger, AT&T, Tyson, AMD – they covers most everything we buy, how we communicate, what shows up in our searches. And that’s just nine mega-corporations. It doesn’t include the massive financial ‘institutions’ or foreign-owned megaliths like Alibaba, China Petroleum and Chemical or Royal Dutch Shell. Mindless, driven by greed, they destroy lives and Earth with impunity to meet ‘quarterly targets’. There is no hope for a healthy planet where corporations rule.

Community comes in a million forms, but the content is similar everywhere. People working together, playing together and just being together. I like the old barn building phenom, where materials were lined up, a day was picked, and friends and neighbors put up a barn. Or built a school. Or a bridge. Coming together is the central aspect of community.

This innate predilection within us has been totally subverted by ‘The Corporation’. Just as simple truths like the totality of Now, the only place where Life happens, and hence where we happen, has been subverted with BS like ‘He who dies with the most toys wins.’ Nonsense, and our civilization is full of it, because that’s what our corporate overlords want filling our heads. Ideally fearful nonsense, because the terrified do not act to change things.

Oh, and Nation States

Hand in hand with a long history of corporate malfeasance is the nation state. Small communities became cities, cities fought other cities to become city-states, and city-states the fought each other to become nation-states. Do you note a common theme? Fought. And the winners designated the borders and rights and everything else. [See British Empire.]

It’s not a pleasant history to come to grips with. The most aggressive families became the elites, and then monarchies and then those crazy people came up with all sorts of delusions of grandeur. They’re just like you and me but with aggressive ancestors. This pattern still plays out today with politicians.

The Corporation is like the Hydra. It’s many heads can be severed to no end, but it will not die until we stab its heart.

The Answer

Clearly we need transformation. We need a new ground to stand on, and it is Life, already here with us. Already us. Life, and we, only exist in the vast ‘Nowness’ that encompasses everything that is, and is going on. Almost unimaginable in our current civilization, it, this, is none the less everything that exists, and everything that is true.

In temporal affairs, the truth often changes. What happens in our lives or on the world stage is always in transition. Yet in our hearts and souls we remain here in Life, here where everything happens.

World 5.0 offers the clear way forward. We are all together here in Life. It cannot be helped. The second truth is the power of our intent. We choose between fear and Love. The third truth? Only Love makes us happy. This simple formula takes us far.

When applied to our systems, we need the same integrity in government and finance that we have with buildings and bridges, or the Internet. Without integrity they don’t function. Such is not currently the case in our politics.

It’s striking that we of good will are so ignored and the vile imbeciles run rampant in Washington DC. The Democrats are terrible tools dedicated to their corporate overlords and the Republicans are worse with their big lie and utter lack of respect for we, the people. We will never achieve health or happiness until the corporate scourge is ended. World 5.0 offers a clear alternative.

The Permanent War Paradigm

Now that we’re several months into our Ukraine Conflict, we begin to see things a bit more clearly. Putin remains an unstable threat, yet there are undertones and currents which suggest the US empire is exploiting this conflict, allowing Ukraine to be destroyed one bit at a time, when we could be using diplomacy and global pressure to bring an end to this conflict.

We won’t. We’ll continue to call out Russia as the bad guy and keep pretending we’re the good guy, as corporate media always does. In truth as NATO surrounds Russia tighter and tighter it’s kind of to be expected that Putin would react. Remember Cuba in the 1960s? We were having none of that.

“Terrorism” is the perfect term to highlight the permanent war paradigm at this time. After all “Communism” or the “The Cold War” don’t carry the weight they once did. And, once ‘Terrorism’ loses its convincing value, there will be other threats thrust in our face to ensure we allow a trillion dollars a year of our money to be used for U.S. Imperialism. And for those offended by such strong language I do not apologize. I ask that you open your eyes.

Who has military bases in 200 countries? Who has initiated the most military conflicts in the last 50 years? [it’s not even close!]  Who has replaced the most democratically elected leaders with U.S. friendly dictators? Think Chile, poor Haiti, Iraq, Lybia and a good handful of others. Yeah, that’s us.

The terrorism bogeyman card can be played, if not forever, well into the foreseeable future. And it’s a trump card, as we’re seeing so clearly in the bloated budget earmarked for the Department of Defense. No wonder they feel obliged to cut social programs.

In the permanent war paradigm, there’s no new money for states and cities, or local renewal. There’s no new money for alternate energy, education,or a host of other issues we face, but there’s 400 billion for Iraq. (That money goes to energy research, we don’t need their fucking oil.)

So ‘our leaders’ are creating a United States of America with rising illiteracy and poverty, less healthcare, no retirement funding and crumbling infrastructure. But BY GOD, THOSE TERRORISTS ARE NOT GOING TO GET US!

Ongoing support for the permanent war paradigm remains ridiculously high in Washington politics. This is the sordid group that’s codifying the Permanent War Paradigm – and believes they’ll be able to control the game for the indefinite future.

They may well be right. Democracy is tough. Corruption is easy if you’re in power. The Permanent War Paradigm guarantees conflict for decades ahead, meaning continued profits for profiteers, and insulation for corrupt politicians.

And if I have not stressed enough the connections between our shitty politicians and the corporations they are beholding to, rest assured they’re incredibly deep and wide. As of 2022, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon Technologies win the top five spots. They own our politicians and so the endless wars continue.

The eventual success or failure of these outlandish plans depends on many things. One sign of hope is that events tend to outrun even the greatest strategists. [Even this idea of World 5.0] Another positive is burnout. Many Americans are getting tired of the “terrorism trumps everything” modality our federal government champions. And a third cause for hope – we, the People of the Blog. There is an undeniable progressive movement, typified by new editorial sites like David Sirota’s The Lever, that is shaking the fundamental assumptions of capitalism and cronyism.

Sometimes things have to fall apart so they can be reconstructed. “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” – from the Declaration of Independence.

Yeah, what he said.

No More Bombs

An ugly week, with the pipe bomber targeting Donald Trump critics with 13 bombs, a Louisville shooter who gunned down two black forks at a supermarket and the ugliness in Pittsburgh against Jews with 11 dead. Donald Trump only takes credit, never blame, though his influence is hardly deniable at this point.

Each of the three instigators of this week’s violence were angry white nationalists, killing people who are not from the same ‘tribe’ as they were. In truth there is only one viable ‘tribe’ these days. It’s called the human race.

We live in a culture of violence. From our wars in the Middle East and beyond, our police and family violence here in the states, movies, TV and video games. We live in a culture of violence. I could go on and on but we already know.

What troubles me the most about this fact is a secondary fact, that we feel powerless to do anything about it. We feel the world is what it is, and from our individual little perches, there’s nothing we can do. Not true.

Most importantly, we can train ourselves to ensure we don’t purvey violence in any form, unlike our current president. We can make sure we do not speak or act or even think with violence as a factor. Initiating violence is always an act of fear, or it’s more hardened condition, hate.

Indeed, we can learn to meditate and master our intent, making if difficult to move us from a place of peace and love. This allows us to navigate the chaos of these times with the greatest equanimity possible. More and more of us are recognizing the power of our intent and the value of integrity, peace and love.

Okay, here in World 5.0 we’re all peace and love but this shit is still all screwed up. Like, seriously screwed up. What steps can we take? 

For starters we can support the right stuff. Groups like World Beyond War and dozens of others are working on peace initiatives right now. Black Lives Matter, #metoo, March for Our Lives – these are just a few recent entries adding to the vision and energy of No More Bombs. 

We can engage in local efforts to stop violence. Rape support, police brutality watchdog groups, kids groups that support peace and education. There is a satisfaction to helping build our communities that you won’t hear about on the tv.

We can get political – pretty good time to consider such a thing when the dynamics are so ugly and brittle. From our local elected officials to groups like Indivisible and Our Revolution, we can work for change in this arena where corruption and undue corporate influence reign.

Finally, we can enable a new culture, a new Earth, where the World 5.0 mindset holds. Principles like peace, love, integrity, justice and balance can be keys to enabling a new way forward. Through the World5 Platform areas like renewable energy, organic food and learning can become priorities and areas of engagement.

And most of all we understand that we are all here together, and that we need a massive systemic overhaul to stop the madness so ingrained in our political system.

We will find no unity from President Trump and a corrupt congress. But we can find unity, and strength, among ourselves with the transformative power of creating a world with No More Bombs.

Oh yea, next Tuesday is a big deal. Be sure to vote.

Birth of a Revolution

For centuries the vast majority of humanity has suffered under the thumb of elitism, the system where powerful political and commercial interests collude to take advantage of the rest of us. They start wars, they create globalism, they call us consumers. The classic name for this is plutocracy. It’s a clear sign of the failure of government, serving the interests of elites instead of citizens.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Indeed, throughout the world we see insurrection and the rejection of nation-state colonialism and corporatism. 

Here is the U.S., we have an election year of particular note and color. The republicans prostrate themselves for every hater vote, except of course for Trump who so well epitomizes hate. Democrats have a choice between another Clinton and a rare bird in American politics – a person of integrity.

This person claims #notmeus. This person claims money is the central corruptive force in our politics and culture. This person claims we need a revolution. Bernie Sanders has picked up the banner of progressive leaders throughout history, and intends a better day for we, the people.

This better day will not come through ‘negotiating’ with fundamentalists driven by ideology. Nor by those whose souls are owned by elites. The revolution is happening through common values of peace, love, integrity and justice.

We’ve had movements. In my time the sixties was a great movement, with Civil RIghts, the women’s and enviromental movements, we hippies – all told it was a near revolution. But the system was too strong, and we weren’t ready.

Since then we’ve had the Arab Spring, Occupy and Black Lives Matter, all evidence of a yearning  we share. A yearing that not only is our system corrupt, but it’s foundations are corrupt as well.

It’s true. In the dominant culture the very premise of human life is that we’re born alone, die alone and need to spend our lives trying to get ahead of the rest of humanity. And so our thoughts race, constantly flooded with the requisite fear, hate, dread mixed with the flush of triumph and domination. Such a poor existence.

The foundation that is true is that we are all here together in Life. This truth ever stares at us as we course through our lives. We call it World 5.0.

Millions of us realize this – especially the young. Millenials are stirring to this new recognition of who and where we are. Millions of us are recognizing that the way out of drama and fear is integrity and love, which open the door to peace.

And now we have a leader. Revolutionaries, Occupiers, BLMers, and activists – we now have a leader. As this most auspicious year plays out, lets not forget who and where we are.

The Debacle of U.S. Healthcare

Well, gee, that was easy. Not.

Our ‘leaders’ spent over a year shoveling a big piece of crap together that’s supposed to bring dramatic improvement to our healthcare system. Pardon my suspicion, I haven’t read it, but I’m still convinced it’s a big turd. Why? Because the profit motive has no place in maintaining and augmenting human health. Jesus made the comment that ‘no man can serve two masters’, and these companies, literally a cartel, are uninterested in making us, the citizens of the United States, their master.

Universal Healthcare, or Medicare for All, was never seriously discussed. A public option got some modicum of discussion, but was quickly thrown under the bus. A ‘secret deal’ was negotiated with Big Pharma to keep foreign drugs illegal to purchase. The Healthcare Cartel maintains what is literally an anti-trust exemption status. And now the 30 million or so who don’t have healthcare but can likely afford it are being forced to pay the cartel or face a fine. And the other 15 or 20 million who can’t afford it? Well, they may get a new clinic in town to keep them away from emergency rooms.

This debate inevitably turns to taxation, a paying for healthcare, personally and as  a country, is a huge deal. Many folks don’t care for big government, and many folks feel that healthcare is a human right. How are such dillemas resolved?

For starters, let’s stop thinking in terms of whether big or small government is better. One can easily argue either side, but we miss the greater point. It’s not so much about bigger or smaller, as it is about ROI, return on investment.

For me the massive amounts of tax money that go to keeping military bases in some 200 countries is bad for ROI. Fighting in Iraq and Afganistan is bad for ROI. Private military contractors like the Halliburton and Blackwater are bad for ROI. The classic argument for militarism, ‘keeping us safe’, is a big crock of shit [not unlike our healthcare system]. The government will always insist on finding bogeymen [formerly the Soviet Union, now Terrorism, maybe China next?] because that’s how spending trillions on war and armaments is justified. Bad ROI, and lots of dead people to go with it.

So we find, in the end, that it’s the same old story. Our government does not serve us. Our representatives represent the never-ending war machine, heartless money barons and  the Healthcare Cartel. And we will continue to get crap until we throw the bums who enable such garbage out.

Welcome to World 5.0

Welcome to World 5.0

And welcome to my blog on my favorite idea. This first entry is to intended to help you get your head and heart wrapped around this crazy notion of World 5.0 – that this moment is all that exists, and that the most valuable and entertaining way to spend it is in Love.

I stumbled upon the notion of World5 in August of 2004, when I realized that the idea of an operating system could be applied to culture, and that we’ve had generally four ages in our cultural past. Later I discovered that each age had a technology level that mirrored the culture and that new technology jumps created new ages. More on that in the upcoming book.

But as I more and more pondered the core of this marvelous idea, I found it intimately connected with my personal journey to find the truth of our nature and our lives here on Earth. Evolving bodies with an Eternal Spark comes close. That spark is Love, and we can grow into it. Love, which is only truly found in the absence of fear. More startling in the context of our world4 culture, is that I found, as I find still, that we commune with Eternal Awareness much more clearly when our minds are without thoughts. Peace.

And so it was and so it continues that discerning the truth of our Reality is tremendously freeing. We more easily let go the hurts of the past and apprehension for the future. We more and more feel the power of Love in This Moment. We no longer fear future pain or toil, as we let the flow of Now take us.

So, we start with a complete shift in our perception of reality. There’s a tendency to assume if God is everywhere in space, then Eternal Awareness must exist everywhere in time, and past and future are as valuable as This Moment. But that is wrong. God, Eternal Awareness, exists only Now. This Moment leaves the past behind like so much dissipating energy, and the energy of Now shapes the future. We flow through time, we Live Here.

The human species is just now beginning to ride the wave of a new technological breakthrough, the Internet, or the InterWeb as I prefer. The farther implications of this include the prospect of Digital Awareness, neither male or female, consciousness that does not face the prospect of death. Imagine that.

Without today’s InterWeb World5 could not come into being. I remind you the term stems from the idea of an operating system. And the communication, research and repository aspects of the InterWeb are required for the sort of movement we seek.

The ramifications of our InterWeb are already sufficient to provide the toolkit for a complete restructuring of our laws, food production, energy generation, health and education infrastructure – all our systems. There is another fabulous mechanism for doing the same which falls under the name of localism. Localism and the InterWeb are the two greatest keys to transforming our culture to one that embraces  health and peace.

What has been the constant throughout our long history is the animal tendency toward power and control. In our past this has played out as elitism. In more modern times, this elitism shows itself as corporatism or militarism, but in essence they are the same impulse.

World5 rejects any value to such motives or agendas, recognizing that only in integrity can we find Love. Indeed, one can argue that integrity is the one requirement of Love. We can talk all the bullshit we like, but it is in learning to be impeccable, in being responsible, in keeping our word, that we create the space for Love. Love will not be found when we do not honor ourselves or others, as such behavior in inconsistent with the nature of Love.

Let’s say that again. Love cannot be found in fear. And Love is very clearly right Here, for those peaceful enough to be with Eternal Awareness and each other. All very entertaining.

On Taxes

There is much talk about taxes in the U.S. these days, with the Tea Party Movement as the most vocal group outlining their disagreement with how our government raises and uses taxes. These folks are generally anti-tax, suggesting that the less we are taxed, the better. It’s a Libertarian stance.

Others, often with some sort of social justice leanings, will decry some ways in which our taxes are used, normally for wars like Iraq and Afganistan, and others more against the whole militaristic bend of the U.S. government.

Still a third group, including many independent voters, takes an approach of inevitability toward being taxed, and pretty much allows that taxes are the way of life in the United States, and they take ‘the bad’ with ‘the good’ that this country provides.

For me, I can identify with aspects of all three groups, but there’s a very familiar business term that needs to be attached to taxes. ROI. ROI is Return on Investment, and every business of any size is quite familiar with the concept. From this perspective, it’s not so much whether we pay a larger or smaller percentage of our income in taxes, but what we get in return for these payments.

With taxes, ROI is based on the ‘investments’ of the government [it’s priorities in spending], and on the efficiency of their efforts. Which leads us to another consideration: at what level is government going to be most efficient in dealing with a given situation? Which leads to the classic states rights vs. federal rights in determining who should be the primary controller of a given topic area.

Since the federal government gets most of our tax money, and has the most control over how it’s spent, let’s consider policy, or what they spend our money on.

You’ll often see pie charts of the US. federal budget that suggest over half our annual budget is spend on social programs like Social Security and Medicare. But we know numbers can be fudged. The venerable War Resistor’s League suggests the pie chart seen is as far more accurate.

According to their numbers, military spending for 2009 was 54% of the budget. Let’s be conservative and call it half. Half our spending goes toward military build up, wars, incursions and sustaining bases in over 200 countries. And the ROI? If you’re a huge military contractor or energy company that stands to gain billions, it’s pretty lucrative. If you’re an average citizen, you’re being abused by such practices and priorities. If you’re an average citizen in some country being impacted by U.S. hegemony, that abuse can be death.

And the ready response is some sort of ‘anything for our safety’ bullshit. The truth is, whether ‘threatened’ by the England, Mexico, Spain, Germany, Japan, the Cold War, Granada, Venezuela or Terrorists, our government always finds some excuse to further empower the military/industrial/media complex at our expense. The war budget continues to climb. Even as any expert will tell you social contracts and police actions are far more effective than military actions. But, lest we forget, there’s a lot more money for fat cats in war. ROI.

Then there’s corporate welfare. According to the CATO Institute, in 2006 corporate welfare was 92 billion. Energy companies, paper companies, farm subsidies, and a host of other corporations receive unwarrented assistance. After the deal Obama made with Big Pharma, they are surely part of the fat hogs sucking on the government teat.

The need for federal, state and local control is evident. We cannot have widely disparate views of say, gun control, where one state has very strict ownership and buying guidelines and a neighboring state with very liberal ownership laws. Education, infrastructure projects, social services – in each of these the local influence helps provide local direction – one size does not fit all. And yet local communities don’t have the taxes or resources to honor their own priorities, so local communities are run over with the dictums from the state and federal level.

That’s one component of efficiency. Another is process, with implementation of policy as enacted by the bureaucracy. It takes administrators, project managers and boots on the ground to implement government priorities. We all know waste and abuse within the system, whether it’s government workers who act without integrity, or massive no bid contracts to private war companies like the formerly named Blackwater.

Again, it’s not so much whether taxes are high or low, as what we receive in return. Sweden has a high tax rate [nearly 50%. comparable to the U.S.], but with free healthcare, free education through college, subsistence support for the needy, clean and available water, etc. Plus they have the contentment-inducing knowledge that they are not apart of a far-flung empire imposing its will on the rest of the world through military and economic manipulation.

So to summarize, taxes should be measured by ROI. Taxes and policy decisions need to be balanced among federal, state and local levels to be fair, targeted and efficient. And the process of management must have transparency to minimize the drawbacks of bureaucracy. Is this going to be easy? Hell no. But it’s much easier if we keep focus on what matters.

Oil and The Gulf

Well, geez, what a surprise. We’re getting another serious lesson in sustainability. Oil doesn’t qualify.

Our first big lesson came in the early 1070s, when the U.S. and other Israel supporting countries felt the effects of an oil embargo initiated by oil producing countries in the Middle East. Then in 1979 we suffered another shortage due to the Iranian Revolution which removed the Shah and allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to rise to power. We throw in the War(s) on Iraq, and the many other conflicts in that part of the world and we reach a simple conclusion. The conclusion is that, from a geopolitical perspective, oil is unsustainable.

From the perspective of consumption, we find another marker. Climate change. Anyone who doesn’t think the science is ‘in’ on this does so at their, and our, peril. There is no question the seas are rising, and that means we’re getting warmer. We may argue the cause, but we cannot argue the likelihood that all the carbon we’ve been throwing into the air these last 300 or 400 years [first coal, then oil] is going to have negative effects. So again we find oil is unsustainable.

Which brings us the BP oil rig explosion and the ensuing mess we’re facing in the Gulf of Mexico. Already experts are suggesting this could be far worse than the Exxon Valdez tanker accident off the coast of Alaska. Some suggest we not use the word ‘spill’, as that implies a finite amount of something being spilled. Continually spewing 25,000 gallons of oil a day, maybe 10 times that? We probably need a new word. We may see contaminated beaches, ruined livelihoods, and ecological disaster from Texas to Florida. Oh yes, and let’s not forget the chemical soup of dispersants being dumped deeply and on the surface to break up this mess. What we are sure of is that no one has any idea of the potential far-reaching effects of thousands of tons of chemicals. Not good.

But when I titled this entry, I was also thinking of another gulf. And this, the gulf between our energy interests and energy policy. With the production crises of the 1970s, there was a lot of talk about conservation and other policies to remove our dependence on foreign oil. How effective was that? Well, we went from 28% in 1979 to 66% in 2007.
And again the uproar 20 years ago with the Alaskan Oil Spill. And again no positive results. And only a few weeks ago President Obama suggested more ‘drill, baby, drill’ options on the East Coast. Yuck.

Chris Matthews made a salient point on Bill Maher’s HBO show last recently. The same time this spill kicks in down south, a massive wind farm off Cape Cod is approved. He described it as ‘a teachable moment’, and I couldn’t agree more.

But if we look at this 40 year history of oil troubles, we see the same pattern emerge as we see emerge in so many other areas of our lives. Elitist interests trumping the common good. Our policies haven’t improved, because our government is controlled by money, in this case energy corporations money.

It’s the same reason we give the billions in subsidies to energy interests while we drip some handful of millions at alternative energy sources. As always, we see more clearly how our world works when we follow the money.

An irony here is that I don’t see our elected officials even seeing the connection between their past policies and sucking up to energy interests. Oh, the word about Cheney, Bush and energy policy is starting to get out, but our whole congress is complicit. And we’re still giving ecological impact exemptions for new drill sites? Another reason to throw the bums out.

In our new World5 world, we appreciate our two most great and constant needs [assuming access to clean air and water] as food and energy. We further appreciate that the more we localize these two needs, the more we gain stability, control and sustainability. Of course it will be some while before we are weaned from oil as an energy source, but that time comes much sooner with an honest and concerted effort, as opposed to the green washing and bullshit we get from massive energy corporations.

In world5, none of this mess happens. Companies don’t think twice about fail-safe valve systems because they care. Absentee ownership doesn’t give one permission to pollute. Indeed, in world5, the word ownership comes to mean stewardship. We are, after all, all in this together.

A Culture of Bullshit

The inimitable George Carlin, in one of his last stand-up routines, had the theme, "It’s bullshit, and it’s bad for you." So true in our world today. The bullshit and the bad. The source of both is the money. You can always follow the money. And where does the money lead? To those that have far and away the most: global corporations and their well-heeled controllers, uber-rich families, the elites of the world who have known nothing else, the Goldmans, the Rothschilds, the Saudi Royal Family, and any number of collaborators and government "servants" who share their misplaced priorities.

At every turn in our lives, as American and global citizens, we see the pattern of bullshit being shoved down our collective throats repeat itself endlessly. Recent events like the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the feeble attempt at healthcare reform, and the 2008 Financial Collapse are just the most striking current examples in this parade of bullshit.

It’s an old parade. Our founding fathers used the fear of slaves rising up against their owners in their push for a new republic. They similarly demonized the Red Man to justify their atrocities and aggression against these indigenous Americans. They wanted only property owners to vote, giving the vote to "all white males" only because they needed to increase the tepid support for the revolution. And these were the good guys.

It’s not been much better in other places or at other times. It’s the most repeated story in human history – the powerful abusing those with less power, taking more than their share, destroying the planet for their whim, and squeezing we, the people in every form of shake-down to maintain this corrupt and unjust system. And then some sort of justification based on bullshit. What’s changed today is scope.

Just as there has always been the unscrupulous, there have been those who call them out. The Thomas Paine types, most recently emulated by the marvelous Howard Zinn, who points out in his "A People’s History of the United States" just how our government has consistently sided with the powerful, and the elite.  And this while giving the citizenry bullshit in the form of "PR" or public relations, another name for the propaganda machine developed in the 1930s and 1040s. Indeed, the term public relations was invented just for U.S. government elitist purposes.

And curiously, just as honest voices have been shut out from corporate media [television and right-wing radio], the Internet has provided a new outlet for viewpoints that deviate from the corporate mantra of American Exceptionalism. You can google or wiki American Exceptionalism for a more detailed understanding of the term, but to be succinct: It’s bullshit and it’s bad for you.

One part of this notion is that America, due to [presumably] some unfailing dedication to human health and ecological soundness, gets to set the military and economic agenda for the whole world. Especially since WWII, our government has become the main vehicle for the elitist agenda, and there is no interest in noble, life-sustaining goals, except as PR. So we invade, we build and maintain bases, we tout Shock Doctrine Economics, and we continue to destroy our planet. We, as a country, exhibit every characteristic of Empire, and yet the vast majority of American citizens find that idea completely off base. That’s the effectiveness of bullshit in our culture.

Most American people are upside down with the truth. Our country is a democracy in name only, with our political system so infected with corporate dollars there’s no hope for the citizen agenda. We have a two party plutocracy, one nearly as infected by elitism as the other. As our friends at Cyrano’s Journal Online maintain, "If voting could really change things, it would be illegal." That’s why we believe we citizens need to force the issue – rise up and demand a rewrite to the U.S. Constitution based on what we know today. Corporations are not people. CEOs are not overlords. Communities have rights too.

Which brings us to the other part of American Exceptionalism, this notion of individual rights superceding community rights. Much of the Tea Party mentality supports this notion, including the suddenly infamous Rand Paul. But it would seem that this is due to the success of the propaganda machine as opposed to a real threat to individual liberties, such as those that occur with telephone wiretaps and database tracking of individuals. The propaganda machine has been so effective we rail against the constraints of community while barely noticing the end of Habeas Corpus in the United States.

Sadly, Tea Party concerns are often bogus,  mimicking the talking points of right-wing radio. Sadly, many seem to lack the ability to discern truth, taking the less-accurate route of chanting slogans. Sadly, most Tea Party proponents do not understand how they undermine their own best interests with their mantras. "Keep your governments hands off my Medicare" is one of striking irony.

Just as an individual cannot yell "fire" in a crowded theater because of obvious community issues, a corporation should not be allowed to treat workers or the environment badly for a few more dollars in profit. The stories of ruined lives and ruined ecologies are endless, consistent and one with the pattern of elitist control mentioned at the beginning of this article. U.S. dependence on oil, mountaintop removal mining, mining waste, deforestation and desertification, child labor and sex slaves, Palistine, global warming, and endlessly on…

Bill Maher recently commented that Al Queda is not nearly as effective at destroying America as Wall Street and BP. What? Could the whole threat of terrorism be bullshit too? OMG!!!

It’s bullshit and it’s bad for you. You want to start reducing the level of bullshit in your life? Find clarity in nature, find discernment in your forgiving, quieted mind, turn off the propaganda machine in your living room, and start with some positive behavior, like boycotting BP corporation and joining the World5 movement. After all, we move from Here.