Toward a Bioregional State:

Why the Electoral Congress is Important to Keep,
and how to make it Popular and Geographic;

Read the first 25 pages for free under 'browse before you buy' here:
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0595346146

Making Bioregionally Sensitive Congressional Districts, that would be more competitive for all parties, instead of the 'pocketed' clientelistic districts that the majoritarian parties have created for themselves alone

Instant Run-off Voting as Another Bait for the Majoritarian Parties, however, a change that leaves third parties out of the picture, and minimizes low voter turnout.

IRV (Instant Run-off Voting) on the state level for the presidency has been suggested by several in the Green party as a route towards 'electoral change.' However, it is 'change' that would create an even more secure two party context,
in the United States, and one which would undermine third party contexts even further. Third parties are spoliers? Third parties fail to be spoliers, because they are the ones generating a competitive party context, one of the requirements of democracy. All they are spoiling is the ability of the Democrats and the Republicans ability to gatekeep the political agenda, instead of spoiling 'democracy.' It is the gatekeeping of the Democratic and Republican parties (because of a lack of competitive elections) which spoils democracy.

IRV would allow the Democratic and the Republican parties to maintain this democratic spoiler context. It is only third party contexts that bring out democracy.

The two party context is the democratic spoiler, and it can be changed.
However, IRV only institutionalizes two party 'minimum majoritarianism' even further. (See previous page, bioregion3.htm, for the difference between a 'minimum majoritarian' context and a 'maximum majoritarian' context, and why a maximum majoritarian context is one of the requirements for having a competitive democracy.) The two party context allows parties to minimalizes and marginalize 50% of the voting population. This minimum majoritarian context and is one of the rationales (I list four in letter #10) why the Democratic and the Republican parties achieve power by systematically marginalizing 50% of the
voting population.

More competitive elections, that would come out of proportional representation with a majoritarian allotment, would lead parties as a requirement to appeal to more than 50% of the population. IRV maintains the Democratic and the Republican context where elections are only run by appealing to 50% of the population.

#16

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#17

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Bioregional Hellenism: Districting the States of the World for Environmental Sustainability and Democratic Accountability

In this letter, I describe four rationales why bioregional based districting is integrally involved with setting up sustainable states--and for setting up more democratically representative states--which amounts to the same topic.

Bioregional based districting can solve more issues in a single swoop than any other framework. Plus, bioregional districting represents a universalistic principle for institutionalizing sustainable states, a principle that takes into account (and in actuality, requires) the institutionalization of voice for local variation, instead of institutionalizing a process that is unfortunately and typically based on distanciated political expression and demotion of localities in a political process. I imagine that the typical critique of any universalistic frameworks is that they demote locality. However, this is a framework that integrates several issues that are rarely if ever discussed--border area problematics, for one, and their connection with urbanization--while assuring local voice is institutionalized in the state framework as a material expression, instead of a gerrymandered expression.

Bioregional districts can be another framework principle for other changes that are required to move to the sustainable state. This is discussed as a change toward formal state frameworks only, however, bioregional districting can be influentially important in the applied issues of science and agriculture extension programs, important in financial infrastructures (banks, loans, etc.) for rural as well as urban area peoples, as well as consumption frameworks. (More on these issues in later essays.) Bioregions can be a guide to institutionalized focuses for many frameworks.

The sustainable state is above all a developmental state, though it is a political developmental state, one based on institutionalizing equity in development instead of institutionalizing inequity, one that institutionalizes variation instead of demotes it. In the sustainable state, policy prioritizations can be decided upon democratically with the particular geographies of areas in mind.

#18

Word
File

power-
point
pres.
(use
Internet
Explorer
to view)

This bioregional letter moves into the intersection between consumption and formal state structures: by discussing the nascent movements towards state level food policy councils. It is an analysis of how how sustainability (and unsustainability) is related to food. It touches on how human and environmental health difficulties are the same phenomenon of distanciated (despatialized) consumption.

THE POLITICS OF HEALTH: COMPARING AND CONTRASTING NASCENT STATE LEVEL FOOD POLICY COUNCILS IN CONNECTICUT AND (the ongoing attempt in) IOWA

Why are the states of Connecticut and Iowa the first state level Food Policy Councils in the United States? This paper describes how rural Iowa and urban Connecticut are materially the most extreme cases of distanciated consumption, and how it effects health and environment in these states the worst over other states. There are many color graphs describing data of the 50 states as well. [1.75 MB Word 2000 file, many color charts of cancer prevalence, pollution streams, food insecurity/hunger, farmers markets, CSAs, etc. watersheds, aquifers, etc.]

#20

[208K]
#9

#10 (draft in process)

Constitution of Sustainability

external link: sign the petition at ipetitions.com --->

http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/constitution_of_sustainability/

The appended text to the left is a transcription of the Constitution of the United States of America. It has the required additions and changes for checking and balancing against the process of unsustainability, that, unless addressed explicitly in the formal frameworks of government, will plague all societies and all governments.

In a nutshell, the process of unsustainabilty comes about through an unrepresentative government that institutionalizes unsustainable informal consumptive political relations. It effects state representation issues, science issues, financial issues, and consumption issues directly.

Thus, this is a Constitutional blueprint for sustainability, regardless of geography or epoch, as it represents general requirements of governments in administrating and creating the conditions of sutainability, and maintaining the process of sustainability. To read it with a critical eye as to the origin of the ideas and phrasing:

Items in black text are the same as the United States Constitution.

Items in green text are additions.

Items in faded light blue have since been amended or superseded in the Constitution of the United States, or appear in blue to avoid duplication as already folded in black text in this 'update' for sustainability. For example, many later amendments (in blue) have become black-text Articles in this update, or appear folded in as Sections in particular Article. Thus, all that is in black text is already part of the United States Constitution. What is in green text represents additions.

The Signature Area at the ipetitions.com website can be signed, by you, on the webpage. From that page, it is suggested that you could, if you wish, send this copy to any of your present government's representatives or officials. Send it to academics to get them thinking about the formal political requirements of sustainability.

After any email is sent, then you can see the total number of people who have signed this Constitution for Sustainability, organized by their origin in existing unsustainable governmental frameworks--which of course are obsolescent in the Constitution for Sustainability, because they abet unsustainability.

Within the Constitution of Sustainabilty is a process of how existing unsustainable formal frameworks can be adapted to sustainability, for unsustainable States around the world. These sections describe how entry in the Constitution of Sustainability is possible for such States wishing to join the Union or claim their rights under the Union as politically and consumptively externalized trade colonies. These trade colonies experience "extraction without representation." At present, they are socio-financially manipulated from afar by other States, and denied political feedback into these unsustainable relationships. It is demoting that difference, a difference that facilitates the unsustainabilty of trade relationships, that this addresses.

The aim of the petition is both recognition of the Constitution of Sustainability, as well as promoting State level activism toward setting in motion existing U.S. Constitutional machinery for establishing a Constitutional Convention that would institutionalize sustainabilty instead of unsustainability in the present frameworks of the United States government.

(Of course, I reserve the ability to edit and adapt the text, though I will explain the changes and show the changes by keeping a record on the drafts on the left.)

Civic Democratic Institutions

Featured in Article I. of the Constitution of Sustainability (Bioregional Letter #20), is a framework that provides checks and balances between:

informal, local, geographically specific coalition and leadership building--

and external, clientelistic, ideological, party politics.

The CDI thus provides a check and balance between informal and formal politics, making sure that formal politics, through informal parties, is unable to gatekeep and frustrate the political agendas of citizens of local, state, and/or federal governments, due to lack of organization on the local level by citizens.

You can read the short description of the CDI in Bioregional Letter #20 above, or you can go to the website below, which has longer descriptions. One of the links on that website is a 30 page essay describing the interactions more thoroughly. It was written in 1997. The idea for CDIs was originally written up in 1994, as a general local citizen-based pool of representatives and local ideas serving as an informal checking and balancing against a potentially unrepresentative party political framework. Only after it was integrated into the bioregional state in early 2002, this feature deserves its own bioregional letter designation.

http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~mwhitake/cdi1.htm

[Editor's note: What is linked was written well before the ideas of the website Toward a Bioregional State that commenced in November 2001, well before I began to be interested in specifically a formal ecological faciliation and a specifically ecologically sound democratic theory of politics as the route towards sustainability. This was written before I had ever considered the CDI in terms of grounding it ecologically as a watershed's facilitation tool. Thus after November 2001, CDI thus became the "Article I." of Bioregional Letter #20 Constitution of Sustainability. If the ideas in Toward a Bioregional State all represent a common lineage from around November 2001 when I began to consider formal democratic procedural changes as the route towards sustainability, the CDI represents a separate lineage of informal democratic facilitation in general. I found the CDI ideas important in their formal repercussions later, when they were added as an important check and balance against any corruptions that may accrue within the formal frameworks of representation in the bioregional state.]

Multi Member Districts have been voiced as another strategy for expanding multiple parties and voter choice. However, I argue they are only an inferior Trojan Horse to IRV for expanding multiple parties and voter choice.

Like IRV frameworks, multi member districts have drawbacks in that they both fail to analyze what happens to the slate of party appeals in aggregate once these frameworks are institutionalized and how it they demote voter choice in party strategies--forcing all parties in practice to fit in a single mold of minority appeals, without allowing for registering of potential majority appeals.

Multi member districts formally demotes majoritarian appeals which serve as a form of informal check and balance against the singular option of multiplying small parties in multi member district frameworks.

In this letter, three drawbacks of multi member districts are mentioned (issues that proportional representation with majoritarian allotment solves). Additionally, multi-member districts and instant runoff voting (IRV) are compared and contrasted with proportional representation with majoritarian allotment.

Multi member districts and IRV are seen as only Trojan Horses, useful for widening the field for pressures for other changes, with IRV actually the better Trojan Horse. I explain why.

More benefits of proportional representation with a majoritarian allotment come to the fore. Multi member districts are an inferior choice to proportional representation with a majoritarian allotment. References: previous bioregional letters.

More on political strategies towards formal sustainability, and getting it done in the present two party gerrymandered context: tackle this directly instead of indirectly. Change the partisan conflicts of interests in the drawing of the districts first.

This is a recommendation: deal with the gerrymandered districts first as a political strategy. Any subsequent pressures, including IRV (Instant Runoff Voting), will come out of the larger and more accurate party contention when the districts are drawn by groups of interests instead of one party. This unclientelistic district framework can only be set up more readily as a systemic base when the districts are more representative of particular geographies--instead of dealing with it as a secondary and latter issue. I of course recommend a bioregional district framework, districts based on watersheds to give more accurate feedback and evaluation through voting from the very people influenced by state developmental policies.

This is more on how the incumbency-selected and hand-tailored districts in the United States are presently based less on competitive parties and more on "one party" government on the particular geographies of how the districts are drawn.

This is a letter addressed to the Center for Media and Democracy on their present strategy of IRV as their tool of choice.

It has evidence that such a strategy of dealing with the gerrymandered districts first is reaching people. The evidence is from Jim Young's campaign platform (Jim Young is running Green Party, for Governor in 2002.). For documentation purposes, a Jim Young media release focusing on the issues of the present gerrymandered districts is enclosed, in a letter concerning his political platform on dealing with cleaning up corruption in Wisconsin state government.

How did Nation-States Become Innately Environmentally Degradative? Part One.

A Short History of how Unsustainability Was Instituted into Early Nation-States through the Demotion of Jurisdictional Localisms

To Assemble These Localist Jurisdictions in a Nation-state instead of Demote Them is How to Turn Unsustainable Nation-States into Sustainable Bioregional States

This is only an introductory and theoretical section from another longer and more comparatively empirical work, analyzing and evaluating the political and ecological contexts of where public participation in land use planning has struck first in the United States.

The introductory section of this paper is included in Towards a Bioregional State because it has an historical section discussing the environmental and political changes that the nation-state typically inflicted on the widespread more localized frameworks of representation--taking much representation away and localist participation away in the process of nation-state consolidation of jurisdictions instead of bringing more.

I am arguing that it is the nation-state's unfortunate removal of much of this subsidiary jurisdiction and localization of politics which has been very influential in explaining why abstract formal democratic frameworks are innately environmental degradative, despite a discourse around nation-states as being more representative frameworks than what came before.

To bring back more jurisdictional localism through the bioregional state is the route towards sustainability. In other words, a bioregional state is less creating something entirely novel in terms of human jurisdictions, it is only adding to the nation-state what it removed and shallowed in its initial consolidation: many more examples of localist jurisdictions and localist citizenship participation which were replaced with clientelistic participation in the nation-state context.

The ideas in Toward a Bioregional State if anything are a maturing and filling out of the promise of the macro-state context of nation-state representation, adding what it has systemically and ecologically left out and left divided and conquered and unvoiced: the multiple particular localisms based on bioregions and watershed based developmental externalities in human health, ecology, and economics. Addressing this politics that is there already is a reflexive manner of dealing with the unsustainable aspects of the nation-state's frameworks. A more -more analytical description of six separate points that lead to environmental degradation in all nation-state frameworks of citizenship so far is described in Bioregional Letter #25

This was written as an explanation to someone of the institutional ideas of Toward a Bioregional State in terms of how it differs from existing democratic theory. This is because the bioregional state starts on a different premise about what the state is, pointing out the flaws and oversights in existing democratic theory that have let unsustainability and systemic unrepresentation be expanded with the rhetoric of democracy.

The era of sustainability means an entirely different sense. An ecological democratic theory is required. Here are a few notes for that purpose: six separate points that lead to environmental degradation in all nation-state frameworks of citizenship so far without the changes of the Bioregional State.

List of 38 Additional Checks and Balances Required in the Bioregional State:

Overhauling Formal Democracy in the Era of Sustainability with Four Types of Checks and Balances instead of only One

This can be used as Toward a Bioregional State's "index" so far.

It pieces together all the issues mentioned in the Constitution of Sustainability and discusses them separately, in terms of the four different types of checks and balances that are the additional requirements for linking democracy and sustainability that are missing in exising democratic frameworks which lead to environmental degradation and state corruption.

An Introduction to the Bioregional State:

A short abstract describing the goals of the Bioregional State, followed by a preface and an elaboration of four points that make the political theory of the bioregional state different.

These are the four points that were left out of the existing Enlightment democratic theory which have set us on the road to an informally managed and very undemocratic unsustainabilty--instead of toward a democratic sustainability.

Getting to sustainabilty means adding these four aspects to the formal institutions of democracy, which are described in detail in other Bioregional Letters.

Upcoming: Local National Global, theoretical sections perhaps