The Next 100,000 Begins: Maui Elections, Long Strange Trips in Camaros, "You used to be so optimistic, what the hell happened to you?"

"You'd think I don't even mean
  a single word I say
   It's only words
    and words are all I have"

 Excerpt from "Words", by the Bee Gees (and Alan Barry)

"DuBois said that if elected he would look into government corruption.

He has worked for Maui County for seven years and said he has seen corruption at that level."

Incumbent faces newcomers in Senate race,

By MELISSA TANJI, The Maui News

November 3, 2014

    I have worked for Maui for almost 6 years now and I have seen different kinds of corruption, what I call "good" corruption and of course the not-so-good corruption. Admittedly, it is easy and tempting to say there is no such thing as good corruption, and generally I agree, but I will press on for a bit.

    By not giving me a license, the person bent the rules a bit, though not in any way in her own interest, and if so, would have been in my best interest, if intended as such. Another instance in the same vein, when I first got back to Maui I worked for various temp agencies. One day I left some work gloves on my bicycle attached to the front of the bus by mistake and they fell off. I pleaded with the driver to let me off at an unscheduled stop so I could retrieve them even though it meant I would then miss work.

    Missing a day's work at that time was bad. It meant not eating, but I would not have been able to work without the gloves either, and then I would be billed to replace them. I would have a negative gain that day, no money, no food, and added debt. The driver then blew my mind and did the unthinkable. She apologized and informed the passengers that it would take a few minutes longer but she then turned the bus around so I could retrieve them, then continued on. With the larger buses nowadays that is unthinkable but it was pretty much unthinkable then too. She literally put her own job on the line to help someone by breaking a rule. Doing so not only benefited her not in the least, because like I said, it was a fire-able offense.

    To follow the rules is necessary. What I have said here to be "good" corruption one can argue it is no different. When rules are bent to help people, it can be hard to trace sometimes how that is benefiting someone doing the bending, though often it does. For those in power who make "someone's parking tickets" go away, or help them out with inspector's, etc., it is often done even if for a good reason, but connotating having the idea, valid or not, of gaining some unspecified favor or help in the future.

    To guard against those abuses, and they ARE abuses even when done for good reasons, it often makes societies that much uglier, harsher, and unforgiving. Though they are the front-lines for abuse and corruption: the courts; the police; the politicians; they also need to have some flexibility in sentencing, in deciding whether to give someone a ticket or a warning, or to help a constituent. This "flexibility" will always be abused by some but to throwaway personal discretion as I said, that opens up a worse alternative, where all morality and goodness is only that which is expressedly permitted and formally written into laws and codes. And these give the only compassion or discretion possible. And these are often abusive by definition having been written by interest groups for interest groups and we the people are often an afterthought at best.

    Oversight is important, and Lord knows the graft machine in Washington needs oversight, but that oversight needs to be done by independent review boards with the public's interest in mind. As I have said before the law has not only been "bent" recently, laws and truth literally have been tortured just as much as people have been recently. Such oversights need to not be left to clever lawyers whose abilities to obfuscate and distort the meaning and purposes of laws for which they receive by far the highest paychecks for those abilities. Nor judges, often political hacks.

Runaways, "Good" and Bad Corruption, Still Wondering Why,

Jared DuBois, TruthRevival.org

April 30th, 2013

    Yesterday as people were voting in my State Senate race, I realized I was a bit unnerved while going over the numbers in my head. I had assumed I would get between 25% to 30% of the vote. First results showed a positive 28% and the final was a disappointing 23% in a 3 way race, but still as expected firmly second place.

    But the thought came into my head, as I am sure many have told themselves and often many more have been told the same by others, "You used to be so optimistic, what the hell happened to you?" Its not that I think to myself in the 3rd or 2nd person, but that is the best way to phrase what I was thinking. When did I stop believing really good unexpected things could happen and think strictly according to probabilities, even though they are most often extremely correct?

    Maui has been a special place to me, where I can be surprised often pleasantly. A place where if not believing in miracles per se, I have learned not to rule out magic, metaphorically speaking, from shaking things up now and then.

    I wanted to run against all political parties (called 'no party' here) but the election laws here made that nearly impossible to do and still make it to November. That left choosing a party to run under (for State Senate, though some other races are nonpartisan) and none of them would have been a perfect fit. A seemingly unlikely pick for me but best for what I wanted to accomplish turned out to my surprise to be the Republican party, and they were agreeable. I had said before in my writings that I consider myself to be neither a Republican nor a Democrat, and agree with issues and people according to the merits of their arguments, not their ideologies.

    Since the Republican party is very much disliked here, I realized that though that would give me some votes, it would alienate many more people who consider themselves progressive such as myself. Those who say it is wrong to hook up with a political party for reasons of an election and pick one to run under, though I don't agree with it 100%, also bizarrely would not have said the same thing if I had chosen the Democrats. That I agree with them theoretically (the Democrats are hardly progressives here or practically anywhere else these days) is offset that if I had went with them, though I would not agree with them 100% either, that would have been not as wrong. But really, how is choosing a party simply because it is more popular not as bad as those many, many DINO (Democrat In Name Only) Republicans who have jobs for life simply because they call themselves 'Democrats' in this state?

    My bigger issue that I ran to talk about was to make it easier for people to get ballot questions on the ballots in November. That was why I wanted to run 6 years ago, and as a Republican, simply to get to November when a Constitutional Convention was on the ballot at the same time. It seemed a safe race to run in since then as now I would not have been expected to win, so had little to worry about in regards to negative campaigning against myself.

    Hawaii has in its Constitution that a referendum on holding a new Constitutional Convention must be put to the voters every 10 years. Since the Democratic Party has around 90% of the seats and gets reelected 90% of the time, often uncontested, with the table that much set in their favor and a constant super-majority to put their own constitutional changes forward whenever they wish, they understandably use that clout to defeat having new Constitutional Conventions.

    People claim to be upset with the way the "system" is rigged but are so easily distracted from doing what is possible to fix it or lessen its corruption. And a simple majority on a mandatory ballot question could set that in motion, even though the next one is still 4 years away. I figured this was the best chance I would get to get as far as I did. I was able to get my views heard in newspaper articles (including the front page above the fold in the main paper on the day before the election) and in public debates, so it was not a waste of time.

    But it was disappointing, though expected, that so many who vote Democratic or for 3rd parties would not even consider voting for someone who chose to run as a Republican. And for me, the very obvious fact that for any of those groups to succeed in any major changes to make ballot questions easier, or elections fairer and less corrupt, they would have to come mainly from the Republicans as they are the best organized, albeit practically non-existent, "opposition." Such changes can only be done by a Constitution Convention, and could only come from the public, and not sitting legislators invested in keeping the same system going that feeds them and empowered them in the first place.

    And though the National Republican party pretty much has earned the scorn of most here, they cannot look beyond labels to vote for people as individuals, not even for local offices. By automatically voting for Democrats no matter how bad their corruption or anti-environment stances, or any other views, they enabled the rot of corruption and anti-progressive views to spread, and has made the Democrats here nearly as bad as the Republicans for entirely different reasons that the reason it has happened in most other places. In other places it is because the Democrats volunteer for the corrupting influence of bigger and bigger funds from more elite forces to back them because of a threat of losing to better funded Republicans.

    Here it is because they have nearly absolutely no worries of ever being seriously challenged after their primaries, which are stacked toward party insiders, and certainly never having to worry about being seriously challenged from the center-left. And people automatically give their votes away to them no matter what, oblivious to that fact.

    Without any groups literally to work together to make any substantial changes which can reform the government, change is always snuffed out before it can ever take hold. And people pat themselves on the back for their own self defeating intransigence while being completely manipulated by those who run the show, and dominate the media, to keep everyone unable to come together, even when not doing so will only make things worse or lead to their own power, such that it is, from being ever more diminished.

    Now as then (2008), I had little hope of winning because the closer I came would only have made myself more likely to be attacked. I spoke as best I could in favor of the anti-GMO initiative without incurring the wrath of the record 8 million dollars spent to defeat it, and to defeat anyone who was willing to take a stand against it. So I really did nothing to make myself a target but tried to show that if you are in favor of direct democracy like this GMO initiative, which was practically impossible to get passed and meant to be so, to make that easier you need to change the Constitution, and to do that you need to learn to work with, and deal with, Republicans. Really it was like talking to a brick wall most of the time.

    I was always trying to be respectful to the Republicans who helped me, and to reach out to those who would never have voted for a Republican. Literally the Anti-GMO crowd proved so hostile to the Republicans that it would have been nearly impossible to win them over to vote for me no matter how much they knew, and many did, that I agreed with them. It was the supposed Republican "addenda" that must have been behind me, or I behind it, that turned them off.

    Yes, parties are thought of as having "agendas" but really they are made up of individuals. Under President Reagan there was a not so subtle "purge" of most progressive elements within the National Republican party, but it still had moderates well into the 1990's. After my part-time Senate internship in Boston, I did apply for Washington-based internships with at least 2  moderate Republicans whom I respected: at John McCain's (more normal than today's version) and Bob Dole's offices. Being from Massachusetts, there was not much chance of having been selected by a Republican Senator so I concentrated mostly on Democrats.

    But that is the half of the equation most people see, the Liberal, and then the Moderate "purges." They don't seen the constant complicity of the Democrats. I watched as Joe Lieberman came to power in Connecticut. It was not even subtle. The Republicans all but endorsed him during his "Democratic" primary helping him win it, and withdrew funding from their own incumbent. And Lieberman showed himself true to the people who "brought him to the party" and the Democrats not only took it, but acted like it was their own idea, and that he was really with them no matter how much he constantly screwed them over. And that was surpassed here, in my opinion, with Tulsi Gabbard. The Republicans wanted her in so much that rather than put up any respectable Republican with any experience they had the "Homeless handyman," as their nominee, twice!

    So yes I think both parties collude together and both have brought about this constant shift to the right. The obvious things like what Obama has done, as Clinton did before, erasing any substantial differences to Republican policies and then, when predictably they lose, say we lost because we are not far enough to the right. Really, they have brought this shell game to the clueless Europeans and their "Lefts" have become so neutered they are predictably turning to open or semi-fascists (Which Direction: Tea Party, Idignados, Occupy, Bill 78; "They've already lost") because those are the only non-neoliberal choices left as the conservatives and the leftists have become ever increasingly indistinguishable from each other. (Look to the policies of the Socialists in France and Greece in recent elections, as Obama did, doing a 180 immediately after taking office.)

    I have made mention before of the running count of my Super Bonus Days since I really began to start to heal from the car accident in 2003. The first day I could stand without falling over or things spinning constantly I called Day One. Each day since then was an unexpected gift and treated as such. I write this post now because I just looked it up again an hour ago and looked at the date wondering how many days it was after that in which I came in 2nd for State Senate (I had no aspirations for 1st place and did absolutely no campaigning nor tried to raise funds) for the same town I lived in back then, despite the whole trying to get political asylum against the United States in Europe, which was probably as you can imagine was a low point of my relationship to my government and normally one would think would have precluded this whole course of events and election run (lots of weird twists to get this far).

    The day count was not at any significant number, and I only check it a few times a year. Then I noticed the "hours since." It did not include today, and then I started doing the math to add in today, and then looked at it again. When I saw that and immediately started writing this it was at Super Bonus Hour 100,000. That was an odd time and pure coincidence to have looked it up exactly at that time, and a pretty round number too. I can't really say as I did with the days, "800 days of living as if there was possibly no tomorrow" because literally many of those 100,000 hours were spent sleeping. And a surprising number were spent playing video games. But as I said in the previous post, it has been a mixed bag of accomplishments too. Since the political run took years to set up, I pretty much had to take a long term view and not do too much too soon, which is not always easy for me. But I hit most of the important bases I wanted to with the extra bonus time.

    The "Bike Me" post, ("did I say bike me, I'm sorry, I meant Biden" (wanted to use that line for years)) I have been intending to write a sequel to because it obviously had other levels to it. Basically I was pissed off thinking that no matter what, I will be "stuck here" (on Maui, I know, who else would complain about that) for at least 5 more years. It was that much, and more, and has passed 8 years now and 'Island Fever' has long since subsided to hopeless acceptance, but with a light at the end of the tunnel anyway of leaving soon, if only for a little while.

    There has been many full circles and weird semi-circles completed. I moved to Hawaii originally because it was the most heavily "Blue" Democratic state which if I was going to run for Congress from, (yes I am a carpetbagger but at least now an extremely long-termed one) because I had a successful software company and could pick anywhere I chose, that I wanted to live in. I also figured that the stench of Washington would be eased by getting to come back here constantly, and even required too (and all expenses paid to come back here many times a year)! But I did not realize that though you can buy your way into parties, even the Democrats, (not that I can nowadays,) the Democratic party here at the national level was mostly shut out completely to outsiders. To run against the corruption here, the Republicans were the most logical choice. And one party states breed corruption like no others, though I never would have seen that coming, coming all this way to run as a Republican with that carrying a nearly built-in guarantee to fail. But William Jennings Bryan proved you can succeed more by failing sometimes than you can achieve by getting elected. Obama maybe best personifies the other end of that equation.

    Its not that the Republican party was so much the worse fit. Both major parties here seem to use candidates to raise money for themselves, and sometimes outright seem to sell their nominations too. If I had the money to have gone to Oahu, I could have spoken for free at the Republican Convention, whereas the Democrats charged a mere $500 a minute to speak at their convention. It makes sense that getting the support of a party comes at a price but since the Republican party gave me no money and in many ways no support (the state and local volunteers were helpful but the Maui party was absolutely not present), for me that was fine because I would have gotten even less help from the Greens or Libertarians.

    It would have been a full circle to actually have run against Tulsi Gabbard, but the Republicans said no. They had their chosen candidate again after all. You can't do Tea Party challenges here because you need the permission of the party to run in a race or they can remove you from the race if they don't want you to run. The Green's said they did not have enough time to decide and I contemplated running as a Libertarian, although that would have been a worse fit than the Republicans. While I have often quoted Ron Paul here, and even posted one of his speeches in full, "Torturing the Rule of Law," Libertarians tend to have views far beyond the most radical Republicans, though it may get harder to tell the way things have been going.

    Which is I think the reason why more people ought to run, even in parties you don't agree with them 100%. If you agree with them on enough issues to find common ground and work toward common goals, you can air your own beliefs as I was able to air my own. The Greens actually had a more restrictive platform in many ways than even the Republicans.

    The Green party in their platform actually forbid ever speaking out publicly against any of their positions whereas the Republican platform said only to work towards those issues if elected. Only one issue did I have any real problems with, as the others were vague enough, and that one had no chance of ever passing anyway. Unlike most people who judge without reading platforms, and most candidates ignore them anyway, I actually did my homework before deciding on which race to enter and what year to do it in.

    I can't say I anticipate getting another 100,000 bonus hours, and if I did, more and more of them will probably be spent sleeping, but I did get some interesting things done. I am glad that what campaigning I did do was entirely based on words and ideas (except for a web site, some slogans, and a bit of showing-off self-advertising images), and not throwing parties, harassing people with phone calls, and all the gimmicky things most politicians do. And certainly no empty promises were made. I was proud when I said before, "I promise nothing but can do much, the reverse of politics." 

    Although I was not able to reverse politics, nor the Democrats or Republicans rightward drifts, maybe I did succeed in throwing the transmission into reverse a bit while they tried to go forward in that direction.

    I literally did that as a small child to my sister's 1969 Chevy Camaro while traveling at high speed down a highway. That's what happens when you let a child sit on the console with a shifter right in front of them to play with. I was told the transmission was never the same after that. If I was ever to make that much of an impact, in any small way on politics, I can only imagine that it would be for the best. 

   The way things are going, the math and odds are overwhelming in that direction, with the room for improvement so vast. But that still hasn't made an impact yet. The ways of getting worse may be fewer than the ways things can get better, but they are easier, more in the interest of the powerful, and more popular to the ever more clueless and apathetic pubic. But hopefully there will always be those who will know where the shifter is and can reach it.

"Sometimes the lights all shining on me
  other times I can barely see
   Lately it occurs to me
    what a long strange trip its been"

excerpt from "Truckin'" by The Grateful Dead (Bob Weir, Phillip Lesh, Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia)