The format is LOCATION:	TEXT [EXPLANATION]


Add this to I A 1:	We support increasing the role of independent expository agencies, such as the General Accounting Office (GAO). We recognize the joint responsibility of government agencies to answer requests from the public. We propose establishing one-stop halls of government in every community that will address the needs of the public instead of sending people across town. [Reason : Federal agencies have become flagrant buck-passers. I've sent letters to the White House, asking direct questions about policy, that were never even acknowledged. In another case, the White House sent me a postcard telling me to write to a certain federal agency, instead of forwarding my letter to that agency. When were elected officials ever relieved of the responsibility to monitor responsiveness of agencies ostensibly under their control?]

Add this to I A 7:	We recognize the right of each individual voter to choose between several means of casting a ballot, including with pencil on paper. If elections are ever again to translate the will of the people into action, the process must be open to easy inspection by the press and the public.

Add this to I A 7:	We favor providing sufficient choice in every election so that voters will be able, should they choose, to retire incumbents without changing policy. [Reason: In many elections, one has the choice of rehiring an incumbent who has not served adequately or voting for someone of a party one does not support. There should always be sufficient candidates on the ballot to provide adequate choices.]

Add this to I A 8:	We favor requiring chief executives of government to answer questions from members of the legislative branch (as in the UK Parliament), allowing members of the minority to exercise an effective watchdog role.

Add this to I A 8:	Although we believe in majority rule of matters that must be uniform throughout the community, we do not support the right of the majority to deprive the minority of its right to live in a different matter.

Add this to modified I A 10:	We support the right of voters to choose individual electors from different slates, because restrictions on the freedom of voters cannot be tolerated. We favor transferring the appointment of a replacement vice president from the president and Congress to the Electoral College. Crooked administrations, like that of Richard Millhous Nixon, have to be banished, not perpetuated with interchangeable and beholden figureheads.

Add this to I A 15 or II I:	We support legal recognition that indigenous peoples, wherever they are in the world have rights at least as much right to run their own lives and communities as anyone coming from outside. [This policy can provide exceptions for environmental damage that spreads beyond their land, environmental damage that would ruin the sustainability of their land and force them to leave, abuse of individual rights, etc. It is not intended to negate the rights of refugees and immigrants.]

Add this to the end of I A:	We demand freedom from the tyranny small states (comprising a minority of the population) exercise through their control of the US Senate. Alexander Hamilton noted, "All states are a collection of individual men. Which ought we to respect most, the rights of the people composing them, or of the artificial beings resulting from the composition? Nothing could be more preposterous or absurd than to sacrifice the former to the latter. It has been said that if the smaller states renounce their equality, they renounce at the same time their liberty. The truth is it is a contest for power, not for liberty. Will the men composing the small states be less free than those composing the larger?"

Add this to the end of I A:	We advocate abolition of these agencies of the federal government:

	• ATF, whose malicious bumbling precipitated the Waco disaster of 1993;

	• Army Corps of Engineers, whose interference in natural equilibria exacerbates or moves problems rather than solving them;

	• CIA, which thwarts legitimate political reform, makes the USA enemies abroad, and has pushed drugs in neighborhoods that already had plenty;

	• Defense Department, which centralizes an insatiable pork barrel syndicate and abuses or persecutes its uniformed personnel;

	• DEA, a failure at interdiction and persecutor of cancer and glaucoma patients;

	• Department of Energy, which exists to promote large-scale fossil fuel development;

	• FAA, which has the foolish mission of promoting air travel (which is reaching the carrying capacity of airspace) to the detriment of surface mass transit on which it depends to get passengers to and from the airport;

	• FBI criminal division, which shields mobsters by imprisoning the innocent;

	• NSA, which operates beyond public scrutiny;

	• Navy, which has been obsolete for 80 years, along with the battleships with which it kills its own sailors.


Add this to the end of I A:	We favor repeal of Article III of the US Constitution, a patchwork of failed amendments that outlines an executive office with too much power for any one person to execute responsibly.

Add this to the end of I A:	We oppose career politics, especially for those who concentrate on one level of government. Incumbent legislators are nearly impossible to unseat. They make careers of service in single positions, without gaining experience in other roles in government or as private citizens. In particular, the US Congress displays inadequate knowledge or concern about the needs of local government -- such as schools, police, waste management, and social services. Politicians should gain expertise in the needs of society, not at how to rig the system to hold onto their jobs.

Add this to the end of I A:	We demand the counting of all votes in every election. Failure to acknowledge every voter's participation amounts to disenfranchisement.

Add this to I B 5:	We favor reforms that would give the voters the ability to choose between alternative reapportionment maps, including those submitted by the public. Because they have no incentive to consider public benefit and every reason to serve themselves, the politicians who intend to run in the districts should have minimal influence over district composition.

Add this to I C:	We favor amending federal racial categories in Office of Management and Budget Directive No. 15 to reflect anthropologic reality. The artificial "Asian" category that combines a diverse half of the earth's population (such as East Asians and the Dravidians of southern India) should be divided. "Alaska Natives" should be reunited with their cousins in Greenland, Nunavit, and Siberia).

Add this to I C:	In the interest of racial, economic, and geographic equality, we favor publication of federal statistics for large municipalities by neighborhood (as was done after the 1980 census), providing a level of detail closer to what is already published for suburbs and rural areas. [Although rural residents can find census figures for their communities of a few thousand population, often only a few miles wide. Residents of large cities are likely to find their communities aggregated together by the hundred, making them virtually useless to detect small-scale economic and social trends. It also forces urban residents to work harder to counter gerrymanders. This lopsided treatment cheats millions of urban Americans of the service they should be able to expect.]

Add this to I C:	We favor publication of federal statistics for real metropolitan areas rather than high-handed artificial constructs that distort the picture. A city and its suburbs should be able to join in a statistical unit. For example, Chamblissburg, Hardy, Goodview, Moneta, Montvale, Stewartsville, and Villamont should be able to join with proximate Roanoke in statistics rather than Lynchburg, an hour away across miles of rural land, where the Bedford County government places them.

Add this to the end of I C:	Because children learn through mistakes, they should not be afraid to make and correct them. As bowlers say, you raise your score by mastering spares, not strikes.

Add this to I D 8:	We favor creation of a world court system of appeal in which any government action, any treaty, and any trade arbitration, could be challenged by individuals who are adversely affected.

Add this to the end of I D:	We favor a tougher embargo on conflict minerals and gems, such as diamonds from the price-fixing DeBeers cartel.

Add this to the end of I D:	We favor ending diplomatic pressure to enforce US law in foreign courts. When used to lock up Americans in foreign prisons, it is a method of negating the rights of the accused supposedly guaranteed by the US Constitution.

Add this to the end of I D:	We favor binding the US government to US law, whatever the venue. US law provides the American people's only control over the federal government and its agents. Federal employees and funds should not be able to exterminate endangered species or interfere in foreign elections merely because they cross a border.

Add this to the end of I D:	We favor formulation of a consistent policy on diplomatic immunity that provides protection to diplomats from persecution and protection to the public from the personal misconduct of diplomats. Violent crime should be illegal for everyone, everywhere. [The son of a Brazilian diplomat got away with murder in Washington because he was immune to US law and outside the jurisdiction of Brazilian law.]

Add this to the end of I D:	We favor creation of a world civil court and arbitration system (as distinguished from a criminal court), so that people in one country can seek redress from other countries that injure them.

Add this to the end of I D:	We favor establishing international standards of warfare that would eliminate homicide, wounding, deforestation, and other forms of destruction as acceptable means of resolving disputes. The Geneva Convention has already prohibited chemical warfare and other weapons considered inhumane. Let's take that work further, by prohibiting bullets, grenades, mines, bombs, and missiles from being used in the next war. If primitive tribes in New Guinea can manage to conduct wars with extremely low casualty rates, what about "advanced" societies?