Musing on the effects of the National Initiative
I have half a mind to interview Mike Gravel. My other half says “no”, and it wins out. This is as per George Ripley and the comment Do your readers a favor and interview Mike Gravel.. One of George Ripley’s job duties apparently appears to be to surf the Internet and find blogs that mention Mike Gravel and post a response, most interesting reoccuring sentence being Thank you for pointing out that Senator Mike Gravel is indeed in the race.
I do not believe Mike Gravel has any personal longing or desire or hope to become president of the United States. He simply has that as a platform to advocate a couple of pretty radical changes. Ladies and Gentlemen: The Next Evolutionary Change in American Democracy: The National Initiative.
The state wide initiatives are mixed enough already, in terms of corporate control. A good rule of thumb: never sign any measure from a signature gatherer peddling more than one (or maybe two, at the most) ballot measures — the norm seems to be about seven. The first one s/he’ll read off tends to fit “Progressive Portland”, and then it’ll get into some murky areas, and then hit the bottom with some retrograde measure — always with the selling point “Just trying to get it on the ballot. Let the Voter decide!”
I imagine the Congressional Authorization for military action in Iraq would have been the Citizen’s Authorization for military action in Iraq, under the new changes in the law advocated by Mike Gravel. And it would have passed. The good news for the politicians, such as John Kerry, is that this would allow him the wiggle room that having to publically vote for the war resolution didn’t allow him — a vote he over-rationalized to himself in casting and then could never explain. We still would have had the invasion — ironically the resolution might have been broader for the President who could easily stamp out public opinion at that time to suit that misbegotten policy.
Hm.