I am running for President as an independent candidate who works directly FOR the People, unlike the bought-and-paid-for Republicans and Democrats, who answer only to Wall Street and the rich. And that is why I am encouraging YOU, the Working People, to run for Congress, to run WITH me. I want to fill the Congress with factory workers and Wall Street occupiers, line cooks and laborers, schoolteach
ers and homemakers; people who carry a lunch box to work and who pack that lunch box so that a worker can eat while they slave for Obama and Wall Street; folks who work two jobs to make ends meet. People like YOU and ME, who know what it is to live paycheck to paycheck,
or with no paycheck at all. I know a lot of folks don't take me seriously, because I don't have the money machine behind me that Elizabeth Warren or Barack Obama have, but here's my two cents again. I am not owned by the corporations or by the political machine. Not a Wall Street mouthpiece robed in false promises of populism. Not an Ivy League-educated lawyer with a web of powerful and dangerous connections. I am not a lawyer, but I have been reading the Law now for years... like another man you may have heard of... his name was Abraham Lincoln. I am tired of our current President and our current Congress tearing down our world. Every four years a new President come into office, and every four years, all the President does is work for the rich and for the war machine. And they continue to destroy and despoil our planet. There comes a time in the life of any man when he can no longer stand the cant of hypocrisy, or stand by the door while the legions of robbers trample down the fair fields, and pillage and destroy all that has ever been dear to him, and trample down and defile the temples of beauty and honesty and Truth. It is in times like these that he must stand up alone, and make restoration to the People for what has been stolen from their Land. I am not about Hope. I am about Deliverance. We can't have Change when we have no change. You are being told by Republicans, right-wing Democrats, and Tea Party defeatists that Government is broken. Government is NOT broken. It’s just been hijacked. It’s the bought-and-paid-for puppets of Wall Street in the Congress and in the White House that are robbing our future to fill their bank accounts. And it’s the two-party system that’s broken. We have proved that we can manifest positive political change in Middle Eastern countries using Facebook. Now YOU can help ME restore the sacred truths of OUR Constitution, and rebuild OUR Great Nation
into a place of Peace and Honor beneath the Sun, where every Citizen can flourish in the pursuit of their own happiness,
for we are a country of Dreams, who once made those dreams a reality. Help me restore that Reality. Make me your President in 2012. Come see me on facebook, at Nicholas Pierotti for President 2012
A Real warrior against Wall Street. A Real Warrior for the Environment. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nicholas-Pierotti-for-President-2012/294324130581411?skip_nax_wizard=true
Why do I want to be President? All I can say is that it is a Calling for me. I look at the mess that our Country is in right now, all caused by reckless and selfish profiteering by a few against the interests of the many. I watch the working people of our country struggling harder and harder, and the rich getting richer and richer. And there is no equity. The values of our great Democracy are being called into question. I can almost feel the hands of our forefathers reaching out to me, telling me that it is my time to walk the stony road they walked. The hands of Lincoln and Roosevelt and Jackson, who came forth when their Nation required them, to bind the wounds of their Nation, to fight for its founding values, to keep it strong and united against adversity and dissolution. I was raised in a time when folks still remembered the Great Depression, and we still remembered vividly, evil demagogues like Hi**er threatening the Peace and stability of our entire Planet. I remember going with my Mom to the grocery store during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and seeing the shelves empty, because the people had bought and stockpiled all the food, against the real possibility that we would all be visited within days by Nuclear annihilation. I remember vividly the words of JFK in his inaugural address:
"Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country"
and
"We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans - born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage - and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. "
Then I remember JFK being gunned down in Texas by the same folks that now back Rick Perry, who back the Republicans and the Right-wing Democrats of Congress, and who back the wars that are continued by the warmonger Obama, who rode in on a smile and a wave, and on lies of "Hope for Change." We all know now that Obama is just another stooge for Wall Street, the multinationals, and for the World Trade Organization. I remember the innocence of going, as an eleven year-old child, to Monterey Pop, to watch Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and Janis Joplin electrifying the crowds with a new sound, for a new world. I worked as a child with the Diggers in the Panhandle in San Francisco, during the Summer of Love, handing out free soup to the hungry Flower Children. I was eleven years old. It made a big impression on me. I still believe in the power of Peace and Love. And then I saw the equally innocent and idealistic children, gunned down by the National Guard at Kent State. I saw America galvanized, outraged. I saw Watergate happen, and then I saw Watergate forgotten. Then years and years of Reagan and Bush and Obama, and Wars, and more Wars, and Wall Street bailed out, and the American Working People forgotten. We knew about struggle back in the Sixties, and about how the proper response to tyranny was to battle it with the moral force of a Great nation, built up out of great citizens. We knew that when the boots of oppression and of the robber barons came down to stomp on the aspirations and the Freedoms of the American working people, that the proper response was to rise up and say NO! That the ultimate arbiter of Freedom for the People, freedom guaranteed to us in our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and in our Bill of Rights, was the voice of the American People. In my lifetime I have watched many folk rise and attain the very office I am seeking. They had a Vision. I too have a Vision. I was raised to know right from wrong by working parents. I have debated in the streets and in the cafes of our great Nation. I have fought against wrong, and have championed the good and the right and the beautiful. I do not wear false patriotism on my sleeve, and I do not seek to debase or to oppress my fellow citizens. If I think that my neighbor is wrong about a belief, I will reach out, I will tug their sleeve, I will seek to have a dialogue and try to make them see the world through my own eyes. I see the potential of our Country, of our Planet. I see the suffering. I believe that none of us should suffer, neither the least of us, nor the most exalted. So I am standing up here, in my own town, where I live and do business with my fellow citizens, and I am throwing my hat up into the free and flowing breeze of a mighty and great country, and saying, as all of us should say -
"Why not ME?"
I will be asking for your support and for your votes in coming days and weeks, as an American who is ready to work for and exalt America to the great heights to which we all always have and should aspire. And I will help you. It is in the nature of every good citizen to do so. I am that citizen. As common as the rest of you. As great as the rest of you. Perhaps there are some others who think that I do not possess the qualifications to become President. How am I any different than anyone else that ever achieved that goal? Didn't you all grow up in the same America that I did? Weren't you all taught that anyone in America could become President? Do you think that I am less qualified to serve than an Obama, a Clinton, a Reagan, a Kennedy, a Roosevelt, a Jefferson? Than Lincoln? I am as educated and as brilliant as any of them, more so than some. I have supreme confidence in my abilities. I am not a lawyer, but I have been studying the Constitution, and reading the Law now for years... like another man you may have heard of... his name was Abraham Lincoln. My vision is like theirs, of a better America that I can be of assistance in bringing into existence. Americans are always being told by the media, by the Republicans, by right-wing Democrats, and by Tea Party defeatists that Government is broken. The Presidential relationship with Congress has become a seesaw in which legislation passed by one Congress is undone by the next. I am running for President as an independent candidate who works FOR the People, unlike the bought-and-paid-for Republicans and Democrats, who answer only to Wall Street and the rich. Together with the revitalized American People, we will break the gridlock in Congress. And that is why I am encouraging the Working People, to run for Congress, to run WITH me. People like YOU and ME, who know what it is to live paycheck to paycheck, or with no paycheck at all. As I have said, I am an independent candidate, beholden to none but the American Working People. If I were afraid of criticism, I would run as a Democrat or a Republican, or one of the "approved brand" parties. But I am not afraid of criticism. I welcome it! Criticism establishes a dialogue, and I can prevail in that dialogue. I can win any debate, with the power of the Truth of what I believe in, which are the Truths that this great Country was built upon. By the way, I have also received criticism from folks, saying that a third party win for the Presidency is untenable. I like to point out to those folks the election of 1860. Democracy once allowed a man whom both Jefferson and the Adamses would have considered an unlettered backwoodsman, to attain the Presidency:
Abraham Lincoln. He was a third party candidate. There is no reason that a third-party candidate cannot win. As a result of conflicting regional interests, the Democrats broke into Northern and Southern factions, and a new Constitutional Union Party appeared. In the face of this divided and dispirited opposition, Lincoln secured enough electoral votes to attain the White House with very little support from the South. Lincoln received only 39.8% percent of the vote. So arguing that new candidates from new parties somehow destroy our political system, simply ignores history, and ignores our greatest President. Without third party candidates, Lincoln would never have been President. My only problem at this point is that I have no been able to get media attention. Perhaps that is because my ideas are so radical that the media is deliberately ignoring me for the safe two-party choices. But my ideas are no more radical than our founders’ ideas. The American People like to believe that they are not radicals. But they ARE deep down, when times get tough. When we broke our chains of servitude to the British Empire, and fought our Revolution, and wrote our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, we were not Conservatives, we were not Liberals. We WERE Radicals. We can still be radicals, and keep our country free. Free from the slavery of the Congress's Wall Street masters. Free from slavery to Big Insurance. We must break the chains that keep us poor. That is one of the first priorities of my candidacy, to speak to the American People and remind them that they are a radical nation, who founded their Nation on some pretty radical ideas. To found a Nation on priorities such as Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Americans had to take a pretty radical leap of Faith. As a working person myself, with little financial resources, my original idea was
"Come see “Nicholas Pierotti for President 2012” on facebook
(if we can overthrow Middle Eastern dictatorships on FB, we can elect a President who works for the People, instead of for Wall Street) or write me at [email protected]. Let’s talk"
So the idea was, while Obama and Rick Perry were spending millions in public and private money to get themselves re-elected as the mouthpieces of Wall Street and multinationals, I could get myself elected as a President for the Working People, by using social networking on Facebook. Here are my top three priorities:
1.FIRST PRIORITY
THE ECONOMY-
Economic indicators for the country should not be tied to current conditions on Wall Street. Because of current electronic stock speculation, indicators such as the Dow can fluctuate wildly from day to day, hour to hour. Citizens with PCs, acting according to the wildly inaccurate suggestions and predictions of speculative investment software, can cause quantum fluctuations in the performance of the market. Companies that make up the stock market don't change from hour to hour, day to day. They are not worth 5-percent less one day and then 6-percent more the next. The stock market is a collection of the value of their underlying companies and that is how market performance should be measured. Basing value on the shifting fluctuation of investment is inaccurate and incorrect. The stock market is not and never should be a permanent thermometer for the economic health of our nation. Health of the economy cannot be tied to the health of investments and home values. Not every citizen has investments or owns a home. Citizens can and do live every day without investments and a home. What a citizen cannot live without is an income. Consequently, Employment is the greatest measure of the health of an economy. And of course, Government cannot actually create jobs, unless this is in the form of a stimulus such as under Roosevelt, where the Government literally hired people to do and to make things. But Government can create an environment that eases the burden for private companies to hire people: reducing payroll taxes for instance, or trying to accommodate companies that actually will go out on a limb and offer jobs to people. Under Capitalism, nobody is ever hired unless there is demand. And demand is tied to the health of the economy. I do not support bailouts for Wall Street. This is the nature of Capitalism. If you support and back a capitalist system, you must support and back the consequences. Capitalist performance is Darwinian. If you cannot perform, you must be allowed to go under. We should never pour money into large financial organizations whose performance has been proven to be inadequate. That is the breaks of the game. We do not reward failure. I want to implement new ways of living, new ways of structuring society into a peaceful and sustainable global civilization. I look forward to an alternative way of structuring our planet away from false values based on paper and speculation. We need to strive toward where human rights are no longer proclamations issued on paper, but a pattern of life implemented by the value of mutual Respect. I honor an Ancient Law. That law is Respect. Every Citizen deserves it. None should have to pay for it. We are Citizens in one great endeavor, and that endeavor is Democracy. We each pay in, and we each derive benefits from paying in that should be universal, to us All, regardless of the largeness or the smallness of the share we pay in. We rise up, or we fall, Together. You can apply that Universality to a lot of things. Health Care. Taxes. No citizen should pay less than his or her share into our country, and no citizen should be denied less than their share in getting out what is every citizen's right. No citizen should be allowed to rise above or oppress another citizen, by reason of his or her economic status. This is not class war. This is what is right and good and true. This is a Law that I live by
People are just starting to ask me, what about your foreign policy, Nick? Same as my economic policy. It all boils down to that same one word. Respect. Respect for the sovereignty of other Nations. Respect for our commonalities. Respect for our Differences. Respect for what they fear, and to never become what they fear. To stand up as an example of what I stand for, and what America can offer you. To listen to see what makes you unique, to listen for the resounding chord of the Common Good, and to extend a hand in friendship. The behavior of society in our Nation and worldwide can be changed, directed toward constructive activity rather than our present self-destructive activity. We must not only change our thinking , we must learn to think like a planet, like one people. And channel our technology and resources toward the positive, towards a positive benefit for the entirety of the populations on our planet, a covenant of People with nature and resources. For are we not all One, and as one must seek out new ways of thinking and living that emphasize and celebrate the vast potential of the human spirit and the spirit of the world. A spirit of Respect. We have the tools at hand to design and build that future that is the natural and inevitable goal and solution of our human and planetary potential. We are all currently Slaves to Wall Street and the multinationals. Our current Congress and president are puppets who dangle from their strings. Our hard-earned dollars flow from our pockets through big box stores into foreign bank accounts. Americans need a President who is an ordinary citizen who has worked and struggled all his life like they have. Who has wondered on occasion if he can make ends meet, who has actually lived paycheck to paycheck. Americans are looking for a common man, like me, a common man with an uncommon Vision. Wouldn't you like a President who isn't bought and paid for? A President who speaks for you? Who speaks for the Working people of America, who does not follow the orders of the rich and the corporations who have the money to buy their own mouthpieces to broadcast their vested interests. But the American people are slow to change and recalcitrant. Pure capitalism has never worked for me. And it does not work for the people and the multitudes of species upon this Planet. We need to change over our economy to a sustaining service/based resource system or we will continue to be plagued by monetary oppression. Under our current money based economic system multinationals continue to control and oppress people, our Planet, our food supply, in order to derive profit. Our current form of democracy under our present economic money based system is still a form of dictatorship where the very rich make or control who makes the rules for the benefit of themselves just as what has been happening for thousands of years. That's why we need to kick-start the current system by replacing the multinational and Wall Street puppets in Congress and the White House with working people, people who know the struggle; not Harvard educated lawyers who have been groomed to be stooges for the Money Machine. But even with new legislation directed against Wall Street and the Money Machine, people will continue to be oppressed and struggling. Until we evolve the system into something New that works FOR and is run BY the working people, that nourishes society, that feeds the hungry, that does not waste and destroy and deplete our resources as people, and the resources of our Earth. But we need to work within the old system while we grow the new one. We can't just dismantle everything that got us out of the Great Depression. Wall Street got us into the Great Depression. I'm not ready to dismantle programs that work for the working people. But I think that FDR’s New Deal should be made newer. Saul Alinsky, the great radical organizer, said: "There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families – more than seventy million people – whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default." My feelings on regional and world trade are as follows:
I was opposed to Nafta. Nafta was an attempt to create an EU in our hemisphere. Nafta was a bad idea because NAFTA was written specifically to drive down wages. We lost millions of jobs. We lost those jobs because corporations sought out other countries where wages were lower; where workers didn’t have any rights at all; where they could make a bigger profit. It was a democrat who passed NAFTA – Bill Clinton. When he passed it, the Democrats lost the Congress in the next election. Why? Because people just lost confidence that Democrats would protect their wages and protect their jobs. There should be no trade agreements unless they include workers rights, human rights, and environmental quality principles. Let’s look at where we are right now. We’ve lost millions of jobs to NAFTA. We’re losing millions more due to trade with China, to outsourcing jobs to the sweatshop countries, and because we have let China into our economy by letting them sell their cheap, poor quality, and sometimes dangerous goods through Wal-Mart and other big box stores, where the profits do not pour into American pockets, they pour into Chinese bank accounts. So we face a double-whammy of losing jobs to overseas sweatshops, and having the little money the American worker has left pour through Wal-Mart cash registers into foreign hands. How about my feelings on TAXES? Taxes are the price you pay to live in a Democracy. The problem is equity in taxation. Today’s income tax rates are strikingly low relative to the rates of the past century, especially for rich people. For most of the century, including some boom times, top-bracket income tax rates were much higher than they are today. Contrary to what Republicans would have you believe, super-high tax rates on rich people do not appear to hurt the economy or make people lazy: During the 1950s and early 1960s, the top bracket income tax rate was over 90%--and the economy, middle-class, and stock market boomed. The problem is, reasonable and unreasonable taxation. Clearly people earning less than, say, $30,000-50,000 per year (it depends upon your geographic location and the cost of living in that location) should hardly be taxed at all. They have enough trouble making ends meet. I know, because that is about what I am currently making. When the bubble burst in the Silicon Valley, the frivolous nature of the electronic industry became obvious, and the companies dropped salaries accordingly. People who earn between $50,000 and $100,000 per year should be taxed a little more, and so on… (at the very least, a flat rate should apply for all those above a certain income.) However, in the spirit of Tolstoy’s “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” - I propose a sliding scale that the more you earn above a certain point, the higher percentage of your income the tax rate should be, with deductions for contributions to public service. Morally at least this is only right. Thereby, people who earn more than $200,000 per year should be taxed at a higher rate. And for people who earn more than a Million dollars per year, I believe the rate should be much higher, I would say Draconian. How much money should a rich citizen be allowed to squirrel away, when the poorer citizenry are eating Ramen Soup and rice and beans to make ends meet? If people earning excessive amounts of money were taxed appropriately, we could make a real dent in our debt. I do not support repealing the sixteenth amendment. I support instead reforming taxation as I have outlined above. And the “Fair Tax” system? Who is that fair to? You may notice that only the Republican Right, folks like Huckabee and Herman Cain, support such an inequitable tax solution, which only favors the rich, particularly the super-rich. “Fair Tax” places an unfair burden on the lower and middle classes. It would tax everyone who spent everything they earned (and that's a lot of us) at 23% of their income, while those who made enough money to set some aside would, in effect, pay a lower overall rate. The “Fair Tax” would weigh far heavier on lower-income households, because they spend a larger proportion of what they earn. Compared to our current income tax system, the Fair Tax would be a boon to the highest earners, who spend a relatively low share of their income each year and would no longer have to pay taxes on capital gains. For instance, what if a worker is now paying less than 23 percent of his income in federal taxes? In this case, he is clearly worse off. Under “Fair Tax,” the prices of the things he buys will rise by more than his income rises from the elimination of income and payroll taxes. Conversely, if one is wealthy and in a tax bracket above 23 percent, that person would be much better off. His income and payroll taxes would FALL by much more than the prices of goods and services he consumes would rise. What if a Wall Street mogul has a good year and earns $1 billion. If he can somehow manage to scr**e by, by spending, say, $100 million, the other $900 million is TAX FREE! He'll have paid about 2% of his income in taxes that year. So, to sum up, those who can afford to save a large chunk of their income pay less, and the burden of taxes in any given year likely shifts to lower earners. And you can see there is nothing fair about a “Fair Tax.” No wonder the Republicans support it. How about the debt ceiling and our servitude to China? A few things could lessen our servitude to countries like China, and reduce our national debt:
We should not allow our money to pour directly into the coffers of foreign countries. When you shop in a big box store like Wal-Mart, the money goes directly to China, so it makes it as if we are in double debt to these countries. Sure, you may pay less initially for the inferior goods that China sells through Wal-Mart, but none of the money goes into the pockets of your local merchants, or your local citizens, who are forced to sell goods at higher prices, and thereby go under. So we must punish the companies that pour American dollars directly into foreign coffers. We must ensure that those dollars go back into the communities where these institutions do business. We should not encourage or allow outsourcing to foreign countries. It takes jobs from Americans, and thereby dollars out of our economy that American workers could be earning and spending to provide a real stimulus to our economy. If more money is earned within our country, it will stay within our country and provide a free stimulus to our economy. And keeping jobs in America ensures that we our not sold the tainted and inferior goods produced in foreign sweatshops. We should end the Wars and end frivolous Military spending. (see below in next priority).
2. SECOND PRIORITY
Ending the Wars -
End the Wars and end frivolous military spending. The current American adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan is doing nothing to end terrorism and nothing to protect our citizens. Most of our military budget goes to funding private military contractors, and War is maintained simply to provide continued employment for these military contractors, while our brave soldiers continue to die. These military contractors' services are provided at grossly over-inflated prices, and the War is extended merely to provide a continued influx of our tax dollars to these organizations. And the big box stores and McDonalds are in Iraq now. All the corporate criminals are earning money from these Wars. They all want a piece of the pie, while our soldiers continue to die. The amount of money spent on Wars every year could rebuild our infrastructure, pay for better education, both for our children and to retrain unemployed workers for new skills and higher paying jobs. We would not have to shop out high-paying middle class jobs to India, pour our money through the big box stores into Chinese bank accounts. Our workers could be retrained. The wages could stay in our communities. I will introduce legislation to keep jobs at home, make it financially punitive to send a job overseas.
3. THIRD PRIORITY
The Environment -
I stand with the environment. We are involved in one web on interconnectedness and interrelation. We are one Planet, and we stand or fall together. Didn't Lincoln once say-
A House Divided Cannot Stand. I stand at the portal of the door of the house undivided. We cannot pillage and destroy our planet any more than we can continue to reap gain by pillaging and oppressing the Human Spirit all across this Planet. There is no first world or second world or Third World. There is only One World. That must be the basis of our economy. It is all about Respect again. Respect for the soil, the air, the Earth, and the tillers of that soil, and the breathers of the one Air, and the Working People of the One Earth. How do we cut down on the burning of fossil fuels? Renewable Energy, Oil, Gas and Coal - I believe we should invest widely and wisely in alternative energy, wind solar, hydro, but NOT Nuclear. And mountaintop removal for coal is unacceptable. As is fracking for natural gas from shale. Do we need to r**e our planet so that we can drive SUVs? I think not. I believe our reliance on fossil fuel energy is too injurious to our environment. Look at the disasters in the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of Alaska. Those disasters were intolerable. This is ONE Planet. We must learn to think like a Planet. We must devise new engines. I have heard of water engines. I have heard of wind and sun engines. These technologies must all be exploited so that the Planet can no longer be exploited. And our greatest resource of all is the Human Mind and the Human Spirit. Let them flower. To wrap up, here’s just one other of my other Green Solutions:
How about an Offsite Worker’s Union? Since more and more jobs today can be done using a laptop and a phone, why not cut down on fossil fuel consumption, and cut down on the energy required to run giant centralized workplaces, by allowing workers who CAN work from home to do so. Really, many jobs today where workers are required by inefficient Middle Management to be onsite, could just as easily be done from home. You’re only there for the dead wood to justify their jobs. Let’s cut out some of that dead wood, and conserve the dwindling fuel supplies we have…
Just another big idea that nobody else is thinking of. Really, I could go on and on. Come and see me on Facebook at “Nicholas Pierotti for President 2012.”
Or contact me at [email protected]
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(This profile is also available on my profile page at http://www.facebook.com/notes/nicholas-pierotti/priorities/330599870297896?ref=nf)
