(At Least) A 28th Amendment

  • Federal income tax exemption is hereby revoked for any “religious” church or not-for-profit organization or corporation registered in the U.S. – i.e. for any organization previously claiming tax exempt status to engage wholly or exclusively in acts of “charity” or any form of undemocratic, hegemonic, publically unaccountable  activism.  We hereby reclassify such acts as simply an alternative form of commerce inasmuch as commercial activity is generally only minimally regulated and taxed under free enterprise democracy and is therefore less and indirectly accountable to governments operating under the consent of the governed.  By contrast, democratic government sponsored activism is ultimately publically accountable and therefore the only entity synonymous with shared, public goals achievable through consensus by the exercise of a citizen voting franchise.

  • We hereby amend the Constitution of the United States, appending a 28th Amendment, as follows:

    • Corporations are henceforth entitled to none of the "personhood" provisions (e.g. The Bill of Rights) defined under the U.S. Constitution.  Only living people are entitled to personhood and the unalienable rights implicit in it.

    • Commerce is not speech.  One of the most important necessities of governments under a free enterprise democracy is to generally and minimally regulate commerce, not the other way around.  Moral objectivity unequivocally condemns the practice of fascism.  This implies that the exercise of fascism (or any form of undemocratic hegemonic or forced control of people) cannot morally or objectively be construed as free speech.  Money (spending) is an exercise of free will but not of free speech.  It is not legally defined or protected under the First Amendment.

    • Henceforth the U.S. Federal government must balance it's budget annually.  Further deficit spending is authorized only if the current ($15.1 TRILLION) U.S. Federal budget deficit is all or in part defaulted -- e.g. voluntarily settled or restructured with creditors (bond holders) for e.g. $0.40 to $0.6o on the dollar.

    • Elections must be democratically funded, either publicly or privately, so that unregulated money cannot unduly supersede the unalienable human right to exercise free speech by citizens through voting.  (For example, elections may be funded through a $50 annual individual tax credit and/or by legislating free media access for declared candidates garnering sufficient signatures from registered voters to warrant candidacy as qualified by duly elected, or appointed by elected officials, local/State/Federal election commissions.)

    • The Federal Electoral College is antiquated and hereby repealed.  For better or worse, it is past due for the U.S. "Republic" to become a more direct citizen democracy.  We assert that government by the rich, for the rich has failed the majority.  That “too big to fail” corporations and governments have at this stage of modernity stalled in their implicit obligation to deliver continuing, evolutionary economic and social progress for the majority of U.S. citizens.  Ergo, more local, direct and democratic government is a logical response to citizen exploitation by increasingly hegemonic corporations and governments.  To this end, it is conceivable that structural or temporal changes to the Legislative Branch of the U.S. Federal government may be required as well.

    • We hereby end the “War On [illicit] Drugs.”  A free people must be free to use any drugs responsibly if they so choose.  As such, local democratic ordinances legalizing or decriminalizing drug production or consumption shall supersede any Federal statute prohibiting same.

    • An end to wars of choice.  Henceforth, the government of the United States cannot declare, or through executive order, engage in war unless U.S. sovereign territory is directly attacked and U.S. social/economic/political interests are fundamentally threatened so as to risk national sovereignty and/or unalienable citizen rights to life, liberty and self-determination.

    • An end to permanent foreign bases.  It is hereby prohibited for U.S. military troops or assigns to establish permanent bases for operations on foreign soil, even if invited to do so by treaty or other  government declaration, foreign or domestic.  All present permanent bases established for defensive or hegemonic reasons other than active combat to defend U.S. sovereignty must be legislatively decommissioned and troops redeployed to U.S. soil or to active combat operations if and where the sovereignty of the United States of America is actively under attack.

    • Marriage (a k a civil union) between any two consenting individuals of sound mind and legal adult age, regardless of sex, creed or orientation, cannot be infringed at Federal, State or local levels.  The word “marriage” hereby formally implies no religious connotation or purpose, in accord with the separations of Church from State set forth under this Constitution.  A marriage is simply a civil union and contract between any two consenting individuals for the purpose of construing a binding, legal union between two adults and generally consisting of cohabitation, wealth sharing and/or child rearing.

  • Any Federal, State or locally funded charitable aid to individuals requiring offspring or other legal dependents as qualification shall not be granted to fertile  (capable of child bearing) women and men refusing temporary sterilization (e.g. Norplant) throughout the duration of the aid so as to prevent individuals directly benefitting from government funded largesse from producing offspring they either cannot or will not support through private enterprise.  Human reproduction is a privilege not a right and one’s inability or unwillingness to support one’s offspring legally revokes that privilege.

  • 100% Inheritance Tax

    • In modernity, capital (as fiat/standard currency) is the acknowledged basis for accumulating wealth and property.

    • However, we hereby acknowledge that all wealth is inherently derived, directly or indirectly, from the bounty of planet Earth.

    • Moreover, the inability and/or prior unwillingness of governments past to sufficiently recycle wealth from dead persons back to the Earth has created and perpetuated unsustainable social and ecological imbalances contrary to the unalienable rights defined under the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

    • Therefore, henceforth, Earthly derived wealth shall, upon death, revert to nature (Earth) for every U.S. citizen or resident, facilitated as follows:

      • Upon death, all physical assets (property/shares/deeds/titles) shall immediately transfer upon death to each State’s “Abandoned Property” division in accordance with the deceased person’s State of U.S. residence.  (These agencies exist solely to adjudicate and dispose of – e.g. through public auction -- unclaimed property within their legal borders and jurisdictions.)  Furthermore, dead persons or their assigns are hereby prohibited from filing asset ownership claims, for obvious reasons.

      • Upon death, all liquid wealth (e.g. account balances held as written and/or computed representations of accumulated capital) shall be voided (zeroed) and closed (effectively “recycled” from a fiat/standard currency and private property perspective).  Alternatively, where an outstanding U.S. Federal budget deficit exists, accumulated capital balances may be transferred from dead persons to the U.S. Treasury for use in retiring Federal debt or reducing the size of the Federal government’s “balance sheet” of government controlled assets maintained for the mutual benefit of U.S. citizens and legal residents as well as perpetual sustainment of the nation of The United States of America.

    • Only the existence of a living spouse holding a legal claim of marriage (a k a civil union) enforcing shared or in-common financial assets and property can supersede wealth recycling at death, until the death of the last person in a legal chain of one or more, serial, marriages.  In short, Earth derived wealth can only be transferred in common (shared property) from one dead person to another living person through a legal marriage (civil union).  No other form of inheritance, except to Earth, through auspices outlined herein, is legal.

    • Existing Federal, State or local statutes for transferring wealth as financial assets or property, among the living, continue as before.  But again, the transfer of wealth from dead persons to children or other appointed but unmarried “heirs” having no in-common property (“married”) status is prohibited by law.  To continue the arbitrary generational transfer of accumulated Earthly derived wealth from the dead to the living is tantamount to history’s prior failing in previously allowing perpetual transfer of nobility (“royalty”) as perpetual title – a practice morally, rightly and fundamentally ended by the Magna Carta in the year 1215.