National Initiative for Democracy may sound like a silly idea because we are already have a Democracy, don’t we? Or did that fall by the wayside when we surrendered are Constitutional Rights to CORPORATISTS Bush and Cheney? Since we evidently have no practicing representation because the Democratic Party and the Republican Party has merged into one. This new joint ‘partnership’ can be called the CORPORATION PARTY (although Washington and Adams would turn in there graves if they knew). I think debbie.wonderkitty has presented a very practical idea and I would suggest that this new branch of government would be known as THE DEPARTMENT OF THE OMBUDSMAN. Since a balance of power concept has proven to be faulty and our government was never intended to be ANYTHING except a government “OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, AND FOR THE PEOPLE”, the Department of Ombudsman should have veto power over any decisions made by the other branches. Of course for the first Director of the Ombudsman Department should be the only Ombudsman that the American people ever had. This man has worked for us tirelessly for over 20 years with no official capacity and that is RALPH NADER. I think the American people OWE HIM ONE.

Technically, we don't currently have a democracy, we have a republic (or a representative democracy). Senator Gravel formed the National Initiative with a number of legal scholars who determined that it is legally viable to enact this legislation to allow the people to have more of a voice in how they are governed.

Our form of government was initially created to have checks and balances so that no branch of government would become all powerful. Unfortunately, DIRECTLY because of people like Nancy Pelosi, those checks & balances are not being utilized and the executive branch continues to warp our government to the point that we are on our way to becoming a fascist dictatorship.

Now, most of congress is only looking out for corporate best interests. Everyone seems to have bought into Reagan's trickle-down economics but those of us waiting for the trickle are well-aware that this form of economics DOES NOT WORK. Every time our government has attempted to deregulate an industry it has had disastrous consequences: airlines, energy, communications, banking/brokerage... We are not blind. It is time that our representatives be reminded of the fact that they represent US and not corporations. Corporations should not be considered as persons, but more and more that is what our government is doing.

We have seen in recent weeks and months how our tax money is being misused to bail out corporations that have been irresponsible, but when many of us request that the government help out INDIVIDUALS who are in trouble, the government turns a blind eye.

Now, with the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac debacle, we have a pseudo government agency that uses OUR TAX MONEY to fund home loans, cooks the books, pays its executives far more than they are worth while the companies are losing money and then when they get into too much difficulty, the government YET AGAIN funnels OUR TAX MONEY into this agency to bail it out. Republicans constantly speak about responsibility and rugged individualism, but they are the first ones with their hands out for tax payer dollars as long as it goes to corporations.

The National Initiative is the only thing that will fix this. We need to take power over our own government.

As has been stated many other places: "People should not fear their government, their government should fear the people."