PUBLIC UPROAR
a journal for eclectic policy

Any comments or questions about the articles in this issue or past issues, feel free to E-mail me at dcr420dcr@hotmail.com. Thank you. - Darin Robbins, sole contributing author

HOW NIXON DISTRESSED THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM

Because of the recent presidential election, one is inclined to look at the history of the presidency. It seems that in regards to leaving the office prematurely, there has been only 9 times that this has happened. William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren Harding, and Franklin Roosevelt died of natural causes, while Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John Kennedy were assassinated, and Richard Nixon was forced to resign. On average, with the country being 225 years old and there being a total of 43 presidents, it means that about every 22 years or about every 4th or 5th president has left office earlier than scheduled. Applying this average distribution to our actual history has shown some amazing coincidences. After William Henry Harrison’s death, Zachary Taylor was the 4th president in succession, and after Zachary Taylor’s death Lincoln was 3rd in succession to be president. The average pattern becomes more aligned with history from Abraham Lincoln onward. James Garfield was assassinated around 1881, and was the 4th president after Lincoln. McKinley died from an assassin’s bullet 20 years later and was the 4th or 5th president after Garfield, depending upon if you count Grover Cleveland twice for his two non-consecutive terms. Harding died under mysterious circumstances roughly around 22 years later and was 4th in succession, while Franklin Delano Roosevelt died 22 years after that and was 3rd in succession. Kennedy was killed sooner than the average, 18 years later and was 3rd in succession, but considering any type of margin of error would allow for this. The pattern is disrupted by Nixon’s resignation, however. Richard Nixon was the 2nd president to occupy the Oval Office after Kennedy, and left that same office just short of 12 years after Kennedy’s death. From that point on, the pattern has been discontinued up to the present. It is my belief that, considering how accurately an average distribution such as this can overlay actual historical occurrences, Nixon was not meant to resign from the presidency in 1975. Two alternatives to what actually happened can lead to ideas of what should have happened in order for the pattern to continue. One is that Nixon should have been defeated in the 1972 election, and the other is that he remained in office until his term ended in 1976. Both alternatives point to the hypothesis that Richard Nixon was not meant to leave office early, but that instead Ronald Reagan should have died from the assassination attempt by John Hinckley. If Reagan had been assassinated, then the number of succession and the time interval would be accurate after Kennedy. Supposing that Nixon lost the election of 1972, George McGovern would have been president to at least 1976. Considering that Reagan was asked by the Republican party to run that year, it would make sense in our alternate reality that Ronald Reagan defeated McGovern in 1976. If he was killed in the early part of his second term in this reality, then George Bush would have taken over since he would be the vice president at the time. In 1984 Bush would have the option of running for president himself, winning that election, and winning a second term in 1988. His opponents in that reality would, in all probability, be the same as in our own reality for those elections. Bill Clinton in 1992 would have defeated a different Republican candidate, possibly Pat Buchanan or Bob Dole. After that, the elections of 1996 and 2000 would be identical to the elections we actually remember. If McGovern had served two terms, then the course of history would be even more identical to ours with Reagan elected in 1980, killed in his first term, Bush serving out the rest of the term, winning in 1984, reelected in 1988, and retiring in 1992. The other route of history is that of Nixon winning the 1972 election and never resigning. This, of course, does not exclude the resignation of Spiro Agnew on suspicion of bribery and his replacement by Gerald Ford. If Richard Nixon survived a turbulent second term, then this alternate reality could still see the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, as he defeated vice president Ford. It is curious to see that in all possibilities of the timeline, there is none that has the election of Gerald Ford either as president or vice president by the people. Carter would serve one term, and the rest of history in this reality would follow that of George McGovern serving two terms. In other words, Reagan would be elected in 1980, killed in his first term, that term completed by Bush, Bush running in 1984 and 1988, and Clinton elected in 1992. Richard Nixon has the distinction of being the only president to leave office prematurely while still living. The uniqueness of this event should point to the disruptive quality of his actions as our president during a time of great change. The crimes he committed not only affected how citizens viewed their president and their government, but also caused a rift in the fabric of time and space where the probability wave that included that part of history was decimated. Quantum physics has determined that time passing is actually the collapsing of a wave of probability, whereas when it collapses the events take place according to what we experience within the wave and in the other three dimensions of space. Other realities exist, formed when the other probable results of an event are not chosen according to what we experience. Taking into consideration the mathematical distribution pattern, and how it aligns with our history, it can be concluded that for our reality Nixon had caused a break with normal probability by acting as he did as president. This creates a new level of criminality to which he is guilty. The ironic nature of the past ten years can be explained better by knowing that probability has been thrown off balance by this man, who has sunk to a deeper pit of shame in retrospect.                              

THE COMMUNAL SPRING OF THOUGHT

Property, and the rights of ownership, is the most unstable aspect in a public and private debate. Ownership of physical materials is more apparent, but in terms of creations that are defined as intellectual property there is a legal and perceptive grey area. Focusing on copyright, it must be stated that any creation or invention emerges from a community background. In other words, previous achievements or other shared traits allow for the context of a creation by an individual. It is true that the public arena must recognize that the creation was formed by one individual, and so there is the need for patents and other copyright privileges. However, current economic structures that reduce consumer choice and engage in price gauging, coupled with new technology in data storage, has caused copyrights to be reevaluated by customers. Napster is the prime example of individuals sharing computer files that contain songs by musicians who have copyright ownership over them. The songs at some point were purchased from a music store, then recorded as files on a computer and made accessible to others for no price. This same practice was conducted earlier with the use of blank audio tape cassettes among small circles of friends, but with the Internet connecting the entire globe, many more people are able to get the music of musicians who are not getting paid for it. Those who use Napster point out that record companies who sell these songs unfairly increase the prices making it impossible for loyal fans to make traditional purchases at stores. The musicians charge Napster users of stealing. Everyone who uses Napster knows who created the song they are looking for, since it is part of the reason for their acquisition. That aspect of patenting is not infringed upon. Rather, it is the silent demand of customers for the record companies to reduce the price of albums and make it possible for customers to buy single songs, for the amount that would be the proper division from its album. The practice of file sharing questions the limiting methods of corporate institutions, who overpower smaller businesses but are the reason for most of the employment of some communities, thereby insuring their survival from government punishments and downsizing. For some time customers have been unaware of these limiting methods, because in urban areas there are smaller stores with a wide array of goods in a centralized geography. Those in rural or suburban areas naturally demand the same quality in service and goods, and larger corporate stores are able to meet that demand in one place, which is something the local smaller stores can not do. Taking advantage of that situation, corporations further their interests by limiting the choice of the consumers once a standard of satisfaction has been reached. This results in the fallout of a homogenized popular culture whose artifacts originate from the same source. This source, it should be noted, merges in various business partnerships with other corporations of different goods and services, thus facilitating the limitation of market choices. On another level, these businesses expand beyond borders and profit from unfair labor practices in other countries and a disproportion of trade rules and wages. In regards to music, the musician is made to believe that his interest coincides with that of the record company, which can be labeled a corporation. What actually occurs is the record company making it monetarily difficult for loyal fans to get the artist’s creations by purchasing them, so in the larger more eternal marketplace of ideas people use file sharing like Napster to get the songs because the technological concept is more appealing. If there were no system like Napster, then the songs would not be purchased at all for a period of time until there was money available. What the musicians should do, as well as others who are worried about their personal copyright in the corporate system, is to create direct lines of communication to their consumers acknowledging their needs as a first priority. From this new community of buyer and seller there can be sustained the communal environment that makes any type of inspiration and private creation possible. Throughout historical periods property has remained a constant, but economic structures that have a relationship to property have changed to fit the use of technology as well as the current social and power configuration. What is vital is that new types of commerce be created in order to allow for copyright and patent statements to have meaning, but not be an obstacle to the reason for property in the first place.

AMENDING BUCKLEY VERSUS VALLEO

Any attempt to enact campaign finance reform must meet the obstacle of a Supreme Court decision on a case called Buckley versus Valleo. The case concerned the brother of conservative commentator and great elder William Buckley. The brother was running for mayor of New York City, and monetary contributions to his campaign were challenged as a type of bribery. However, the Supreme Court did not agree and stated that giving money to a campaign was an act of political speech and therefore was protected under the 1st amendment of the Constitution. Since then, attempts to ban soft money and PAC contributions in campaigns have been limited by the argument that it is through these donations that individuals express their support and political beliefs. Because of the ironclad logic behind the connection between donations and political expression, it is impossible to overturn Buckley versus Valleo. What should be offered is a way to make the court decision conform to the protection of free speech rather than a loophole for concentrated big-money interests to subvert the democratic election process and its expression of the will of the people. Looking at the legal protection of an act of speech, one sees that there are limits to that right. The prime limit is that no speech act of one citizen is protected which takes the right of expression away from another citizen. From this primordial base it is possible to limit hate speech, or the proverbial “yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre”, since that type of speech can pose a threat to other citizens directly. There is also ingrained in the Constitution the principle of equal protection under the law, whereby the law is carried out to the same degree for each citizen for whom the law originally applies. Moving on to the subject of monetary contributions to political campaigns, giving money is an act of speech that expresses personal political beliefs. However, the ability of rich individuals and corporations to give large unlimited amounts of soft money, money given to a candidate’s political party instead of directly to the candidate, makes those contributors the only influence on the candidate. These same contributors often donate to the opposing sides in the same election in order to insure that the winner will be answerable to their narrow interests, whoever that winner may be. The gigantic amounts of money given by a few overpower the ability of smaller contributions, and other ways of influence, of everyday individuals to be expressed in order for candidates to be responsive. In other words, contributions as an act of speech by a powerful few prevent the expression of dissenting political views through smaller and more humble donations to either the same candidates or an alternative guided by populist will. Speech, as contributing money, is protected but the protection is applied unequally due to the disparity of monetary resources between most of the nation’s population and the few who control major corporations and businesses. Campaign finance reform must address the unequal ability to give money, and from there to gain influence, by limiting campaign contributions and banning soft money which is very difficult to track and monitor. Monetary donations can not be eliminated, because of its ability to express political beliefs, but must be pulled back to allow more direct forms of political expression and speech to be used to have the concerns of citizens met equally by their candidates for public office. Candidates must be beholden to our needs and desires rather than our ability to give large amounts of money. Since money augments any type of expression, and is needed to fund any political campaign, the unequal ability to donate prevents many from practicing their right to free speech.