An American Citizen's Toolkit:
How You Can Help Hold
Your Government Accountable

This resource provides American citizens with a full spectrum of resources for learning more about their government, and the politicans and judges whom they have employed to operate it.  Many of these resources serve the purpose of either enhancing an understanding of the true nature of democracy, or else of providing a performance appraisal for these employees.  (Such is the dismaying state of American democracy that a majority are currently not performing in accordance with democratic principles, and are indeed working actively against them.)

As CEOs, think tank fellows, journalists, lobbyists, judges and others have actively promulgated gross distortions of democratic principles, some resources will be found that pertain to understanding (and counteracting) their influence as well.

 

This section provides resources concerning the elements of democracy and US governance, both official and elected, and unofficial and unelected

Demoracy:  Not an Invention of the Founding Fathers, not Primarily Concerned with Freedom

So far as possible, the owners of the mass media in the US (which includes the publishers of most textbooks) have sought to obscure the nature and origins of democracy.

Democracy originated in ancient Greece in consequence of class warfare, of much the sort presently being waged against the American middle class and poor by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Koch brothers, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, conservative politicians, and others.  Please see this link for additional details:  democracy defined, and more.

Historically, the primary concern of democracy was the achievement o feconomic justice; and nothing has occurred in the intervening millennia to alter this priority.  The odds are excellent that nothing ever will.

The United States Constitution

What we now refer to as "the" US constitution was actually its second:  the first constitution, known as the "Articles of Confederation," had been previously ratified in 1781.  However, some of the wealthiest and most politically powerful Americans (known collectively as "The Federalists") were dissatisfied with the framework established by the Articles, as they felt it wasn't sufficiently authoritarian.  In particular, they felt that it provided too much opportunity for the middle class and poor to express their dissatisfaction with the grossly unequal distribution of wealth prevailing in the new nation.  Acccordingly, the revised constitution was designed with a number of anti-democratic structural defects that were corrected, to some degree, in the Progressive Era.  However, other defects, such as winner-take-all voting, remain uncorrected to this day.

As nearly all reference and textbooks omit the economic dynamic underlying the framing of "the" constitution, readers will do well to consult Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," particularly Chapter 5, for some long overdue correction.

Though remaining somewhat undemocratic, the constitution provides the legal bedrock of US law.  The text of that document may be found here: http://www.aclu.org/constitution-united-states-america

Branches of Government

The US Constitution provides for a system of checks and balances of power among the three official branches of representative government: the executive, the judiciary,and the legislative. 

However, the corporate sector constitutes an unelected, unrepresentative, unofficial, and therefore illegitimate fourth branch of government, which exercises profound influence over the official government through a system of legalized bribery. 

Another unelected, unrepresentative, and unofficial branch of government is constituted by the mass media, which is itself corporate for the most part.  This sector profits immensely from the US system of bribery, as campaign advertisements represent an unavoidable yet tremendously expensive cost to elected officials, and constitute a principal reason why such bribes are needed in the first place.

For a guide to the official branches of the government, see the following link, which also provides further detail concerning each branch:

http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/federal.shtml

The Legislative Branch of Government

The legislative branch of government is responsible for -- well -- legislating.  That is, this branch of government, comprised of the Senate and the House of Representatives, passes laws.  (Only about 4% of the bills proposing laws are ever actually passed.)  The process is little known and little understood by the average American.  The veil is lifted at Project Vote Smart:  http://www.votesmart.org/resource_govt101_02.php

Members of both houses of Congress are required to file financial disclosure forms, but they haven't been terribly eager to make these available to the public.  This is hardly surprising:  the income distribution in Congress doesn't look anything like America:  most of these guys are tremendously wealthy.  The Open Secrets organization has, fortunately, done some of what the government has failed to do.  Find the details concerning our fabulously wealthy legislators here:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/overview.php

The Library of Congress operates Thomas, the official resource for bills, the Congressional Record, and so on:
http://thomas.loc.gov/

Filibuster:  an action taken, typically by a minority of legislators, to block the passage of legislation by a majority.  While it may once have had some sort of purpose, Republicans have grossly abused it over the last few years.  Read more here:
http://www.filibusted.us/

Legitimate governments do not operate in secret.  This includes particularly the military and intelligence functions, which is where, under the cloak of "national security" the worst dirt is often buried — yet oversight with respect to this area of the government is astonishingly weak.  The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was intended to provide some tools for digging.  Find out more about FOIA at Sunshine in Government:
http://www.sunshineingovernment.org/

As the job of a US representative centers on drafting, evaluating, and voting upon bills that propose laws, and as 96% of the bills drafted are so much wastepaper, the primary output of the House and Senate is so much hot air.  Of the remaining 4%, roughly half are of little real significance.  And that's good, because it means that a sufficiently determined citizen can stay abreast of the most important bills.

And citizens should, because Progressive Living has determined that fewer than 8% of their representatives consistently vote for the best economic interests of working Americans.  Another 35% vote for the best economic interests of working Americans at least half the time.  The rest are there primarily working to make the rich richer — and by that we mean the very rich.  (In our survey, the worst offending politicians were all Republicans.)  As democracies are constructed precisely to prevent this sort of outcome, we think these misrepresentatives should be fired ASAP.

So then, how to keep track of legislation?  Again, Project Vote Smart comes to the rescue.  For legislation that has already passed, see:
http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote.php?state_id=NA 

For newly introduced bills and recently active legislation, Govtrack.us is your best resource:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/legislation.xpd

Just how responsive is your legislator to bribes?  MAPLight conjoins information concerning bribes with information concerning legislator's voting records:
http://maplight.org/about

The Judicial Branch of Government

Of course, those are your official legislators.  These days activist Supreme Court judges (all of them conservative in orientation) are legislating from the bench, and 5 of the 9 are corrupt.  (Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have broken laws so flagrantly that they should be removed from office.)  To keep track of their current activities see:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/

And to research previous rulings:
http://www.findlaw.com/

If you want to dig deeper for historical context, or for general background on a given topic, a great starting point is provided by the Oxford Guide to the Supreme Court.

The current court is responsible for handing down the worst decision in the history of the institution.  Read about it here: http://www.indypendent.org/2010/02/18/corporations-unleashed/

Judges are supposed to recuse themselves (stand down from participating in cases) when they have financial conflicts.  The current Justices (except for Thomas) are notably wealthy, and so there's lots of potential for conflicts of interest. A list of recusals can be found here:
http://www.law.com/

Speaking of financial conflicts, Justices are required to file financial disclosure forms to prevent these (although Thomas has been falsifying his).  The forms may be found here:
http://moneyline.cq.com

The Executive Branch of Government

The Executive branch of government isn't supposed to legislate; however, it has been doing so via so-called "Executive Orders."  All Executive Orders may be viewed at:
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/index.html

Details concerning the make-up of the Cabinet, advisory boards, and so forth may be found at the White House web site:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/

You won't find David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission included among the advisory boards, and rightly so: this is a group of unelected and anti-democratic plutocrats.  Yet every US executive since Jimmy Carter has appointed numerous individuals from this group.  Obama has included eleven members.  Read about his appointments here:
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/22-obamas-trilateral-commission-team/

These people — all of them — should go.

You can determine the financial worth of the members of the Executive Branch here:
http://www.opensecrets.org/

The Unelected Branches of Government:
Corporations and Media (also Corporations)

Corporations

Corporations are not people, and accordingly can no more have rights than a brick wall.  Moreover, to the extent that all corporations are comprised of people, these individuals already have rights, and corporate rights would be entirely redundant.  Nevertheless, the US Supreme Court has maintained that corporations are — somehow — people.  And, boy, are those "people" loaded.

Thanks to the worst Supreme Court decision ever made, it is now impossible to track all of the cash flows into campaigns.  But much can still be determined at two sites, Open Secrets, and The Huffington Post .

Follow the Money

Open Secrets presents the facts concerning some of our system of legalized bribery.  See:
http://www.opensecrets.org/

The Huffington Post has the goods on individual contributors:
http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/

ProPublica provides journalism in the pubic interest.  What a great idea!  When will the corporate media start doing some of that?  Want to know where all of that bailout money went?  ProPublica is keeping track — and is also looking into a lot of other issues.  BONUS:  they provide a nice little toolkit for budding citizen investigative journalists (we hope that's you!):
http://www.propublica.org/tools/

Following the Supreme Court judicial coup d'etat, it now becomes essential to follow the phony front groups running ads for political candidates sponsored by corporations.  People for the American Way and CorpWatch help here:
http://www.pfaw.org
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15635

The Corporate Agenda
Question:  What do these guys want, anyway?  Answer:  Everything

SourceWatch  provides perspective on the corporations behind all of that corporate loot that's ruining American democracy:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/

CorpWatch is the other invaluable resource in monitoring what CEOs and their wealth-concentrating toys are up to:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=945

Publicly-owned corporations must file a variety of documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These include Form10-K (an overview), 10-Q (financial statements), 8-K (events and changes), and Schedule 14-A (proxy statements, including executive compensation data).  See it all here:
http://www.sec.gov

Lobbyists

Lobbyists occupy very shady territory in a democracy.  We think they should be banned outright, particularly as these people also hand out bribes.  The Open Secrets site sheds light on this group, too:
http://www.opensecrets.org

Think Tanks (Policy Institutes)

The primary task of think tanks is to produce rationalizations for whatever policies their sponsors happen to favor.  Most are funded by corporations and hyperwealthy individuals.  Corporate media love think tanks:  whatever point of view they may favor, they can find one with an "expert" to tell us why we ought believe what the media think we should believe. Background to the think tanks can be found here:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/

Trade Accords & the Assault on National Sovereignty

In theory, conservatives are hard-core supporters of US and even state sovereignty.  In practice, they are vehemently opposed.  The back door to upending the US constitution was provided in the form of "trade accords" which , among other things, permit foreign corporations to sue governments for real or imagined losses of revenue at secret tribunals.  At fault are Chapter 11 of NAFTA and Chapter 10 of CAFTA.  More here:
http://www.adaction.org

The Media

The mass media in America have failed flagrantly to provide Americans with the information they need to make wise decisions concerning their society. Large corporations themselves, they're in bed with other large corporations to a staggering degree. Nearly all owners are members of the lobbying group the National Association of Broadcasters, which, from its very inception, has been profoundly anti-democratic in its orientation. And corporate media omissions and distortions are flagrant.

The following organizations try to police this situation to some degree:

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):
http://www.fair.org/index.php

Media Matters:
http://mediamatters.org/

Media Channel also scrutinizes the mass media:
http://mediachannel.org/

Media ownership can be checked here:
http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/front.shtml

To let the mass media know what 's on your mind:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=111

A compendium of legitimate (pro-democratic) media can be found here.  We suggest you turn off the TV, and get your news here.

Want to correct media bias yourself, or with a group of friends?  A media activist toolkit can be found here:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=119

Fact Checkers

First up, Political Correction.  Wow!  This is one site that gives readers some idea of just how much there is to fact check.  The best of the lot, in our opinion, but we still find a lot to disagree with:
http://politicalcorrection.org/

Next up is FactCheck.  We've found any number of occasions on which their "facts" weren't all that factual:
http://www.factcheck.org/

We give PolitiFact an overall rating of "half true," which means, on their account, "the statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context."
http://www.politifact.com/