Just because the United States does not have its equivalent of the "National Endowment for Democracy", "Radio Liberty" or
"Voice of America" constantly bitching and complaining about "corruption", "election fraud" or the lack of
"free and fair" elections in the country, it
does not mean such things do not exist in the US. I
am not referring to the controversial electoral system in the US, which
is flawed enough by itself. I am actually talking about the lack of choice Americans are presented with - by design - every four years when they go to the polls.
Allow me to explain.
Watching the presidential elections in the US every four years actually feels like watching a tacky yet dazzling two ring circus.
Every four years we see the Republican ring on one side (with its
clown), the Democrat ring on the other side (with its clown) and the
ringmaster (the nation's financial/political elite) doing his magic (via the nation's television, print and radio media). Needless to say, the enthusiastic audience in this nation-wide circus are the nation's voters.
Anyone could predicted with 100% certainty that the next president of the US would have been either a Democrat or a Republican. There is no other option - by design. Another thing that could be predicted with 100% certainty
is that regardless of who won the presidential election, when it comes
to serious/core issues there can be no meaningful changes in US policy -
unless the nation's elite want it. This is why we see Barack Obama (the
Uncle Tom appointed in the White House to pacify the nation's growing
anti-war movement and to put a liberal/minority face on US war effort)
continuing the same policies of his predecessor.
In other words, the US is a duopoly, the rule by two exclusive political parties.
Two political clubs have been given the exclusive rights to administering the empire. The two main political parties in the US are cultivated to serve the empire's elite. Therefore,
in the big picture, it does
not matter which one of the two sanctioned political parties come up
victorious in any of the presidential elections in the US simply because
the reigns of power in Washington never really changes hands. The
American system is merely one political party away from a conventional
dictatorship. The following blog entries are previous commentaries related to this topic of discussion -
Although most
Americans these days are too busy waving their Chinese-made American flags to
realize it, the entire political system in the US is ultimately rigged. Unlike America's flag waving cattle, I
refuse to graze on the White House lawn because my American patriotism
is far greater and deeper than of those who are blindly standing behind a
bloodthirsty and gluttonous system that has been raping Americans
and placing the US on the path of ruin.
In
the Soviet Union, there was one political party - the communist party -
and this party was divided into many
factions. In the US, there are two political parties of one faction -
that of its financial elite. Therefore, it could even be argued that the
political order in the Soviet Union was somewhat more diverse or more
fragmented than the one in the US. Nevertheless, it is fact
that political reigns in Washington are completely in the hands of two
political players and these two political entities serve their masters
in the Federal Reserve; the military industrial complex; the pentagon;
the oil industry; the Zionist lobby; Wall Street; and to some extent the
pharmaceuticals industry.
Much
of what we see Washington engaging in around the world today is in fact
highly detrimental to the long-term health and well being of the US.
The US today is being run like a multi-national corporation. More
alarmingly, with nearly one thousand active military installations and
bases in foreign lands, the fighting forces of the US (who's budget is
much greater than the military budgets of all the world's nations combined)
has been tasked with shedding blood around the world for the sake of
preserving the global empire. How much longer can this last?
Democracy (the Western perception of what democracy should be) does not exist in the United States.
To
make America's duopoly a little simpler for Armenians to comprehend:
Let us imagine that President Serj Sargsyan created a
left-leaning political party and his close associate, former president
Robert Kocharyan put together
a right-leaning political party. Now let's imagine that these two
interconnected political parties that only slightly differ in approach
to political matters are able to rig the electoral
system in Armenia so that they remain the only two players within
the political
landscape in the country. Let's also imagine that these two political
parties get full support from Armenia's financial and military elite.
Now let's imagine that these two political parties eventually evolve
into a deeply entrenched, powerful duopoly that takes upon itself the
exclusive right and responsibility to give the Armenian nation its
political leadership for generations to
come.
Make any sense?
Well,
this is more-or-less what the political system in the US is all about; the
main difference being here is that Washington has well over two hundred
years head start over Yerevan. Ultimately,
the following is what we the sheeple need to keep in mind
about the political system that is currently in place in the US:
Elections
in the US is basically about two groups of well connected
people competing for the empire's control panels. There has not been
"free and fair" elections in the
US for generations. The system is rigged to be a two party show.
Democrats and Republicans are
ultimately two sides of the same coin. Every four years the
financial/corporate
elite in the US decide what shirt the sheeple will wear, and the sheeple
are given the
"democratic" choice of picking between two colors. The US political
system is like a two ring circus managed by a ringmaster that the
audience does not get to see. US presidents are appointed to be elected
by the sheeple. US presidents are tasked with being the
spokesmen or salesmen for special interests running the show
behind-the-scenes in the American empire. The US is being run as if it
is a multi-national corporation in which the American citizenry is its work
force.
As noted above, what makes the duopoly in the United States somewhat unique is
that it is heavily influenced (it could even be said fully hijacked) by
a number of multi-national mega-corporations, Wall Street firms,
major financial institutions, the military industrial complex, British interests, Jewish interests and
the privately owned Federal Reserve. Therefore, one can describe the
political system in Washington not only as a duopoly but also a corporatocracy and a plutocracy. Having said that, it must also be said top heavy is better for most nations.
Top heavy is better
I
do not believe in the silly notion that the ignorant masses are
entitled to make serious political decisions through a voting process,
nor do I think numerous political parties competing against each other
for power is a healthy thing for any nation, especially for poor and/or
developing nations.
Therefore,
I do not want to come across as if I'm totally rejecting the idea of an
elitist system of government (which is what we have in the West) as an effective form of governance. In
fact, in various degrees, much of the civilized world today is in fact
made up of elitist governments. A political system with few, well
established political players can in fact be very effective if such a system is practiced by a homegrown and nationalistically motivated political and financial elite, and if the citizenry of the aforementioned political system is well conditioned for participation.
Therefore, the
main problem I have with the political system in Washington is that is it
not the "democracy" it wants the world to think of it as, and the
duopoly that the US is in reality is unfortunately not controlled by a homegrown American elite that has the nation's best interests in mind.
The
type of democracy prescribed for the developing world by Western
officials today (increasingly at the tip of a sharp bayonet) is inherently flawed and destructive in nature. I
personally believe in top heavy nationalistic governments where limited
forms of democracy and highly regulated forms of capitalism are
practiced. I see
National Socialism and Constitutional Monarchy as the best forms of
government yet devised by man. Such forms of top heavy/authoritarian governments
are especially important for peoples without much experience in
statehood (i.e. Armenians), and for peoples with certain nonconforming
cultural/genetic traits (i.e. Armenians).
Close
observation of Armenians and Armenian history reveals that Armenians
tend to be by nature: fiercely independent, never satisfied, aggressive, possessive,
suspicious, clannish, arrogant, intelligent, crafty and
overly ambitious. These unique traits (which lies at the root of Armenian
success outside of Armenia) does not allow Armenians to be easily
governed (especially when the governing is being done by Armenians) inside Armenia.
More importantly, such traits do not encourage sociopolitical stability. Democracy and Armenians therefore do not mix well. Armenians therefore need to be ruled by a top heavy, authoritarian government. Russians likewise need authoritarian governments, but unlike us they seem to understand this. The following is essentially why Russia remains a powerful nation despite immense odds -
Speaking of Russia: They are
nationalizing their nation's assets, passing laws to curb foreign
influences, clamping down on corruption, promoting patriotism,
increasing funds
to their military, implementing social care programs and regulating
their nation's free market... I'm glad to report that the Russian
Federation is fast heading towards National Socialism, although
it would never
be categorized as such due to the negative connotation the term
continues to have thanks to the decades long propaganda against it by
the Anglo-American-Zionist-Bolshevik interests. The following article by the New York Times discusses Russia's
transformation into a top heavy, well-armed, Russocentric and a
regulated free-market democracy. But I would like to once again remind
you to read between the lines because the article is written by Western
presstitutes and is meant to cast a negative light on Russia and
Vladimir Putin -
Mankind
is
by-nature incapable of
efficiently governing itself. Because of man's nature, democracy cannot work. Those who control the levers of government in the Western world fully
recognize the inherent flaws found in a democratic system, which explains why
Western governments are by design elite based systems with very few political players. This is why I am an advocate of political systems where political parties and corporate entities are tightly
regulated and are made to operate under the close supervision of the nation's homegrown
political, financial and military elite. Two such successful forms of governments are China and the Russian Federation.
Armenia needs to follow Russia's footsteps
I would like to
see Yerevan recognize the severe long-term dangers that come with
dealing with the political West. I would like to see Armenia begin
moving away from Western institutions and abandon destructive/corrosive
Globalist concepts. Western institutions are designed to subjugate or
destroy nation-states via powerful sociopolitical, financial and economic levers.
Globalism is a form of Bolshevism in disguise and it is
being forcefully imposed on the world by Western neo-imperialsits.
As
a result of the rise of nations like Russia, China and India, we are
today witnessing the birth pangs of a
post-Western world. For the first time since 1945 we are beginning to
move away from a unipolar, English-language based Western global order
and towards an East oriented, multi-polar world.
This historic
transition will not be an easy one because the protectors of the status
quo, Anglo-American-Zionist alliance and those who feed off of it (e.g.
certain European nations, Sunni Islamist
monarchies in the Middle East and Turkey) will do all in their power to
stop it from happening. In fact, the global turmoil we have been
witnessing in recent years is directly linked to the aforementioned
effort by the Western alliance to preserve their global hegemony.
Controlling
virtually limitless amounts of natural resources and a vast Eurasian
landmass that connects Europe to Asia, the Russian state today stands
poised to play a very prominent role in the 21st century. Russia will be
in the driver's seat in this century. At the very least, I'd like to see Armenia in its passenger seat.
Armenians needs to curb their EUrotic fantasies and come to the somber
realization that the Western world is expiring. The future lies in the East. Until we get there, however, Armenia needs to be working diligently towards joining the
Moscow-led Eurasian Union. This is absolutely essential for a tiny,
remote, impoverished and landlocked nation blockaded by NATO and
threatened by Islamists and pan-Turkists.
The new religion
What exactly is "Democracy" anyway, and why is it being forced upon human society in recent decades?
Well, I may have just found the answer: The following comments made by
author Stephen Kinzer during an NPR interview are quite revealing -
“[The Dulles brothers] were able to succeed [at regime
change] in Iran and Guatemala because those were democratic societies,
they were open societies. They had free press; there were all kinds of
independent organizations; there were professional groups; there were
labor unions; there were student groups; there were religious
organizations. When you have an open society, it’s very easy for covert
operatives to penetrate that society and corrupt it”
Western powers look upon democracy and societal freedoms as a weakness in nations to exploit. This is essentially why Western powers regularly assess the degree of "democracy" found in nations around the world. Nations are rated on their so-called "freedoms". In
Western parlance, however, the term “free” simply means under Western
occupation; “not free” means politically independent from the West; and
“partially free” means not yet fully under Western occupation. Terms like democracy
and freedom have been the catchphrases that neo-imperialists in the Western world
have used to penetrate nations and manipulate masses around the world. Those
well versed in history recognize that this is all very similar to what the
Vatican
(the old West) did around the world in the name of God and Christianity
for well over one thousand
years.
Similar
to how the Vatican relentlessly pushed its version of Christianity
upon "Godless" societies for many centuries, Washington has in
similar fashion been pushing its version of a new religion known as
Democracy/Globalism upon the political infidels of the world in recent times. We are all expected by the apostles and proselytizers of the cult of Democracy and Globalism to offer sacrifices to their holy doctrine
because their god, the almighty Dollar is omnipresent; their only chosen one, the Zionist state of Israel is omnipotent; and if we dare to
displease this modern cult, its wrath shall be unleashed upon us.
Incidentally, Washington and the Vatican both offer humanity a better
life, one on earth via self-gratification, consumerism and entertainment (i.e. sexual
freedoms, shopping and Hollywood) and the other in the hereafter, via
the church establishment of course. At the end of the day, however, similar to what
religious terms had been in the centuries past, modern catchphrases
such as Democracy, Westernization, Freedom, Civil Society and Human
Rights are the powerful psychological tools of exploitation and
sometimes annihilation.
With regards to Armenia, what I'd like to see is that instead of importing "Westernization" Armenia needs to work on becoming the best that it can
be while drawing on influences from the US, Europe, Russia, China and elsewhere. The point being is that Armenia does not need Westernization - Armenia
needs Armenianization!
I'd
be the first to admit that there is much to love about the United
States, the nation, the culture, the people. There is a lot to admire about the libertarian and
entrepreneurial spirit of the first European settlers that set the
foundations of the nation and later immigrants that built upon it. There
is indeed much to be learned from the American experience.
But
we must
also be intellectually honest with ourselves by realizing that much of
America's alluring mystique (things that have drawn masses of people
from around the world onto its shores) has in fact been made in
Hollywood. American music and films have been the number one factor in
drawing the world's attention towards the US. We must also recognize
that the great experiment that had been America has been hijacked in recent times. Let's take a brief, alternative look at America's sociopolitical development:
What was the United States two hundred years ago? A slave plantation run by wealthy land owners.
What was
the United States one hundred years ago? A sweatshop run by robber barons.
What is
the United States today? A growing plutocracy run by a conglomeration of corrupt
multi-national, mega-corporations.
What
will become of the Unites States in the Future? If history of great
empires can be an indicator, it doesn't look too good.
The
good years for the people of United States were the years between the
end of the Second World War and the mid-2000s when the American Dream
finally came to an end. When people today swear by the American model,
its essentially because of this fifty year period that saw the rise of a
large, powerful middle class.
But
from America's founding fathers to the Cowboys, from Rock and Roll to
Hollywood, from Lincoln Town Cars to Coca Colas, the "American way" has
been very alluring indeed to the human animal. There
are many in Armenian society today that would like to see
Armenia adopt the
American way without even taking a moment to actually think about how America
got to where it is today. If
Armenians are seeking a system of
government
and cultural values that helped the US become what it is today,
Armenians then should first figure
out a way to initiate Armenian officials into international Masonry and
allow their leaders to enslave millions of lesser peoples,
exterminate tens-of-millions of lesser peoples, get involved in major
global wars for plunder,
occupy nations around the world... and then wait about two hundred years
before some of the accrued wealth trickles down to them.
Never
mind that
Armenia is not protected by two oceans; never mind that
Armenia is tiny and barren and is surrounded by larger more aggressive neighbors; never mind that Armenia will never be a
nation of low wage earning, hard working immigrants from around the world; never mind that
Armenians are by nature not as warlike or as disciplined as Europeans. The
point I'm trying to make here is that the US wasn't born this developed or this "democratic".
The US took a very long, hard road to development, prosperity and its current semblance of
civil society. Therefore, what
moral right does Washington have in forcefully
imposing its "values" on newly emerging nations?
The one size fits all
approach to sociopolitical matters has never been effective. Therefore,
Hollywood-struck Armenians should really think twice before they wish things for Armenia. What's
more, the American-republic-turned-global-empire is clearly in
decline. Does Armenia really need to follow in America's footsteps?
Armenia needs Armenianization. Armenia
needs to evolve naturally. Armenia needs to evolve independently and in
accordance to its inherent potential, not in accordance with Washington's self-serving wishes.
Having said that, long after the
Anglo-American-Zionist alliance ceases to exists,
I have no doubt in my mind that Armenia will still be around. In
fact, despite all the odds stacked against it (including the twenty
years old NATO blockade of the embattled nation), Armenia at 21
years of age is doing much better than any of the developed nations of
today when they were 21, including the Zionist state of Israel!
Yet,
those who required centuries of exploitation, slavery, ethnic cleansing
and wars to finally attain prosperity and a semblance of civil society
are expecting Armenia to do so in a few short years - and merely by
people power? Nonsense!
The funny thing called Democracy
Who was it gave us the stupid idea that the masses of any given society are
capable of deciding who their nation's leaders should be and how their nation should be run? Who gave us
the stupid idea that the masses are entitled to
a "free and fair" democratic process? Was this cruel fairytale placed into
the empty heads of our sheeple by the world's most corrupt and most blood-drenched criminals of
the Western world? Who gave reptiles in Washington the divine right to
categorize, label, rate or attack nations based on their self-serving perception or
expectation of how government should be practiced in any given nation? How
democratic was Washington for the first two hundred years of its
existence? Just how democratic is Washington today?
The
terms "oppressive government", "human rights", "corruption", "free and
fair elections" and "democracy" have been weaponized and used as a
simple yet powerful catchphrase to rally the self-destructive peasantry in targeted
nations. As we have seen
on numerous occasions around the world, for developing societies the
practice of democracy can prove suicidal. Even for developed societies,
unsupervised democracy
can cause stagnation or instability. In a true democratic system, a shrewd minority, or special interests, will always manage to co-opt the system of government. It's human nature. Two very interesting article titled "Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas" and "Why Ignorance Is Democracy's Bliss" are related to my theory that in a democracy it is in fact a minority that leads and the majority that follows. They can be read towards the bottom of this page.
In
the Western world, the practice
of democracy
is tightly controlled by their deeply entrenched elite. The democratic
processes in places like the United States or Great Britain for instance won't be
allowed to get outside of their clearly defined parameters. In fact,
Switzerland and Iceland may be one of the only nation-states on earth that
practice the closest, purest forms of democracy today. We Armenians on the
other hand must take a long, hard look at ourselves in the mirror
and recognize that we are not Swiss, we are not Icelanders, nor are we
Germans or Japanese. We are Armenians and we Armenians are emotional,
jealous, restless, arrogant, stubborn, unruly, fiercely independent,
individualistic, clannish, cleaver and ambitious... In other words, we
Armenians need
serious restraints.
Before the
leadership of any developing country is capable to allowing their
citizenry to participate in nation's political processes, political
system in the country first needs to develop well established national
institutions and political parties that are fully subservient to
them. Armenia's so-called "political opposition" today as well as the events of March 1, 2008 have clearly
demonstrated to us all that Armenia is at least several decades away
from being able to practice some forms of democracy without the danger of
committing national suicide. In their transitional phases, developing nations need powerful leaders
with courage and vision.
Having said that, however, I hope to see Russians and Armenians eventually begin
moving away from personality based political parties and
begin supporting ideology based political movements that operate
under the
umbrella of deeply rooted national institutions. Until that day arrives,
however, people like Russians and Armenians need strongmen in power. Speaking of strong men, Britain's Winston Churchill is said to have once said -
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter"
What this pudgy war criminal meant with that statement is painfully obvious and it supports my theses that mankind is incapable of governing itself and that the average citizen of any nation is incapable of understanding politics. In
societies that are highly developed and well established (e.g. US, Britain, France, Japan) the political
process with which the ignorant masses can participate in political decision making can
in fact be managed and manipulated to a great degree by the given society's elites via
its education system, its system of laws, its entertainment industry and its information media. Therefore, in a strong sense, in the Western world, the democratic process is all about social engineering, public relations and the careful management or psychological conditioning of society through mass propaganda. The
following are excellent documentaries that are ultimately related to this topic. Please devote some time and watch them all -
A genuinely educated populace is very undesirable for the
leadership of most established democracies with the notable exception
of perhaps some Nordic and Germanic nations. More importantly, societies that are essentially just
coming out of the middle ages and stepping into modernity (i.e. a vast
majority of societies in the world today, including nations such as
Russia, China, Iran and Armenia), the imposition of democracy and capitalism as per
Western demands and standards will only cause chaos, destruction, bloodshed, economic ruin and
cultural decay. In fact, there cant be a better argument against Western forms of democracy and capitalism than the Armenia and Russia of the 1990s... or the Libya and Syria of today.
The destructive characteristics of democracy are the main reasons why the political West has attempted to forcefully impose it upon
certain targeted nations but has given
some of its oppressive allies a free pass.
As it was in the past when imperial powers ruled the world under the banner of this or that religion, the
long-term/strategic purpose of bringing democracy (think of it as a modern religion) to undemocratic nations of the world (think of
them as political heathens or infidels) is ultimately subjugation and
exploitation, and in some cases destruction. Winston Churchill is said to have also made the following statement -
"Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
All the others that have been tried?!
National Socialism in Germany and Italy was working incredibly well, amazingly well before Western and Jewish interests joined hands to destroy it. Had they given any other form of government a chance to develop for this British war criminal to make such a statement?
In a certain sense, however, the evil war criminal who unsurprisingly
went unpunished for his genocidal crimes was right in his conviction. Besides the fact that the elite in Britain and America lived well within the Western system, democracy, the kind that has been practiced by the
Anglo-American world, is in fact the best way a ruling elite can
fool its pathetic subjects into thinking that it is partaking in political
decision making. This is more-or-less why Churchill preferred democracy. As long as a political system has a well entrenched
oligarchy and deeply rooted national institutions, the sheeple of that
political system can be allowed to participate in a semblance of
democracy. This in turn helps the Western elite in politically pacify the masses.
Nevertheless, despite
what a corrupt self-serving war criminal like Winston Churchill believes (or
wanted the sheeple to believe), it has also been said
that democracy
is when two wolves and a sheep vote on what to have for dinner. Democracy is also when a handful clever men attain levers to
control the vast majority. Besides
which, Britain and the
United States of America have never been true
democracies. Britain is obviously a "Constitutional Monarchy" and for
some time the US tinkered with a limited form
of democracy known as "Representative Democracy". They are both now an
elite based, oppressive political system and part of what I call the Anglo-American-Zionist global order.
What we need to understand here is that most of the world's most powerful, the most wealthy and the
most progressive nations today got to where they are
through oppression, war, plunder and exploitation (of humans and
of nature). Other than a handful of Nordic and Germanic nations in Europe that do
their best to maintain some form of a democratic process and genuinely try to
concern themselves with ecological matters,
true democracy has never been practiced by any nation at any time in
history. Honest forms of democracy
can be safely practiced in nation-states that have racial and cultural homogeneity; a
well educated citizenry; a well disciplined populace; deeply
entrenched national institutions; and a long political history.
Needless
to say, there aren't many nation today with these qualifications.
For nations that are more-or-less just stepping
out of the
dark ages - i.e. a majority of nations today that are coming out of
the old world (nations such as Russia) or out of centuries of occupation
(nations such as Armenia) democracy can prove fatal. Rule by the ignorant masses is
no way to develop a newly formed nation. Again, this is why the political West has been imposing democracy on certain
targeted nations. Undermining nations in such ways is part of their long-term-strategic planning. In other words, having fattened itself for hundreds of years at other
people's expense, the Western elite does want any competition in the world now! And what better way to undermine or subjugate your competitors by imposing democracy upon them.
A persuasive argument against democracy and capitalism is made by a venture capitalist named Eric Lee, a Chinese national who had once worked for former presidential candidate Ross Perot in Texas.
Please put aside your biases
and preconceptions and read his work with an open mind. The spirit of the article
encompasses a lot
of what I have been stating about the political West and the faulty
model of
government it has been imposing upon others. I also believe that the most stable and the
most efficient forms of governments are top heavy or authoritarian-
governments but not necessarily communist governments.
Similar to how we need training or a license to
operate machinery, the very complex and potentially volatile
machinery that is the nation-state today likewise needs to be operated by qualified individuals who truly appreciate
and understands its mechanism and by those who have a serious stake in
the
systems overall well-being. Generally speaking, those qualified to do
this in any given society are the educated, the military and the
wealthy.
Waning power
As noted above, the Western world's political and economic model is essentially based on social engineering (via its school curriculum, entertainment industry and controlled news media) and an economic model that is expected to grow perpetually by artificial means (e.g. active promotion of consumerism, printing money to stimulate the economy and waging wars to maintain global hegemony).
Needless to say, this system cannot be maintained indefinitely. Although Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945 and the Soviet Union's unexpected collapse in 1991 worked wonders for the Western world, the Western model is unsustainable and will fall apart sooner or later.
Perhaps sooner.
Because of these inherent flaws of the Western order, Washington's
levers of control have been in decline all across the world.
This decline is essentially the reason why we have been witnessing the
Anglo-American-Zionist order wage war in several strategic areas of the
world in recent years to satisfy the needs and expectations of its financial/political elite (i.e. it's powerful 1%), It's basically a race to protect Western global hegemony against rising nations that are causing concern for the Western elite. Despite
them having unleashed their massive war machine to protect their global
interests, Washington is increasingly finding that it can no longer
freely dictate global policy the way it had been
for the past few decades.
The unipolar English-speaking political world we have been living in for the past few decades is gradually giving way to a multipolar political world as newly
emerging powers like Russia, China and Iran begin making their global presence felt.
The
tragic events of September 11, 2001 (carried-out by extreme elements
within the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance with the help of their
Islamic allies in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) served to trigger the
American empire's concerted effort to maintain its global power. This
effort (much of it unsuccessful) has made the American empire
overstretched and economically stressed and there is no end in sight.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
While
we still have many idiots among us who think that Washington-led "democracy"
movements around the world are the way of the future, we may in fact be witnessing the birth pangs of a post-democratic and a post-Anglo-American
world. For the first time since
Napoleon Bonaparte's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, we may be seeing the dawning of a
none
Anglo-American era.
It would therefore be smarter for emerging nations to prepare for this brave new
world... instead of foolishly trying to board a sinking ship.
Too
much blood has been shed during the
past two hundred years directly and indirectly as a result of
Anglo-American-Zionist machinations around the world. It's high time for some fundamental changes. Classical
European/western culture has been
severely attacked and disfigured by these same interests for far too long. Their Globalism has become a serious menace to God,
family and country. It's high time we give new comers a chance. It is time
for a multi-polar world.
I would like to see the Russian Federation and China begin playing even bigger
roles
on the global stage.
There are signs that people living under Anglo-American-Zionist
occupation are gradually coming to the realization
that multiculturalism, ultra-liberalism, interracialism, consumerism,
corporatism and the rule of the ignorant masses (aka democracy) is not
best way forward. We may therefore expect a return of traditional values
in Europe
within this century. We can also expect proliferation of top heavy
representative
governments similar to what we have in the Russian Federation today, as
well as the spread of Constitutional Monarchies and the resurgence of
National Socialism.
The
technology-driven awakening of the global
masses that once American imperialists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski
eagerly sought
to
harness is beginning to get out-of-control. The internet has become one
of their worst obstacles for it is an effective remedy against their
social engineering and propaganda. While
significant numbers of third worlders and freaks are still under
Washington's
hypnotic grip, a larger number of people today are gradually waking-up
to the
harsh realities of an Anglo-American-Zionist dominated world - thanks to
information technology.
The
internet, as well as Western war crimes in
places like Vietnam, Ecuador, Venezuela, Cuba, Serbia, Palestine,
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria are helping the awakening
process. In the big picture, a well informed global
citizenry is the Western alliance's worst nightmare.
Western meddling in Armenia
Armenia is a
work in progress. A tiny, poor, remote, embattled, landlocked and blockaded nation in the
volatile Caucasus coming out of one thousand
years of Turkic/Semitic/Islamic/Bolshevik subjugation is going to have severe
sociopolitical matters even under best of circumstances. We must therefore be mature enough to recognize that Armenia's
sociopolitical ailments will most probably require several generations to remedy.
Having said
that, however, it also needs to be said that every single bad thing that occurs in Armenia
can also be observed occurring even in the finest
nations of the Western world. As Armenia evolves as a nation-state, the last thing we Armenians need
is Washington's
whores making matters worst in the fledgling country by importing Western infections into it.
Therefore, beware of the wolves in sheep's clothing. Beware of
their lofty rhetoric. Beware of their seemingly humanitarian agendas. And beware
of their impressive resumes. These people are the tools that the rabid empire
is using to undermine targeted societies
and despite what Armenians think, Armenia has been one of the targets of the Western world for decades. The troubling irony here is that most of Armenia's
so-called political activists, rights advocates and NGOs are in one way or another under the
influence of an empire that will never recognize the Armenian
Genocide and will never see
Armenia as a true or worthy ally.
Simply put:
Armenia is too
small, too poor, too remote, too weak, too landlocked, too pro-Russian and too
Iran-friendly for high level officials in the West to take it seriously. Moreover, having
serious problems with their regional allies such as Turkey,
Georgia and
Azerbaijan does not help Yerevan's
standing in the eyes of Washingtonian reptiles
either.
The West is seeking unhindered exploitation of energy resources in the Caucasus region as
well as the political isolation of the
Russian Federation and the destruction of the regime in Tehran. Without a
Russian presence in the Caucasus, however, the region
in question has the natural propensity/tendency to turn into a Turkic-Islamic cesspool. Therefore, as far as Armenians should be concerned, the formula is rather simple:
Russia's presence in the south Caucasus ensures Armenia's presence in the south Caucasus. Russia's presence in the south Caucasus protects Armenia against the
Anglo-American-Zionist alliance and its Turkic and Islamic friends. Therefore,
any individual within Armenian society
that criticizes Armenia's
close strategic alliance with Moscow or tries to undermine the
increasingly close relations between the two capitols is ultimately a traitor to
Armenia.
In
conclusion, the following thoughts need to be
branded within hearts-and-minds of all Armenians -
- Who
gave Washington the right to judge nations? What right does the political West have to rate,
label or categorize any nation? What right does the West have to impose
its system upon others? Who says the West is the standard all the rest have to follow? Why do tyrannical nation that are allied to
the West get a free pass while those who are not politically aligned to
it cannot do anything right? Why do we care what
politically motivated Western organizations have to say about
Armenia's "ranking" in anything?
- Was the Western world born this
developed, this progressive or this wealthy, or did it have to travel a
very long, bumpy path to get to where it is today? The
Western world, including the US, took hundreds years to
reach where it is today. In fact, the Western world is where it is
today due to numerous wars of plunder, grand theft, genocide and human
exploitation.
-
A little over century ago America's robber barons (e.g. Carnegies,
Rockefellers, Morgans, Goulds, Vanderbilts, Speyers, Du Ponts, Warburgs, etc.) used their
immense fortunes to buy into the American political system, forever blurring the line between politics and business. These
oligarchs used their powerful influences to impact the making of
political legislation. The political system in the US was
manipulated by America's oligarchs to serve their businesses and to
preserve their immense wealth. Although it has been in a decline in
recent years, the American middle class essentially grew as a result of
feeding on the crumbs that were falling off the lavish banquet
tables of the nation's super wealthy.
- The
Western world has severe forms of corruption. It can be argued that
Western corruption is by-far the most egregious, albeit more nuanced
and/or sophisticated. The main difference between corruption in the West
and corruption in a place like Armenia is that corruption in the
developed West is strictly reserved for the political/financial elite,
whereas
in an underdeveloped nation like Armenia all layers of society can
engage
in it. Moreover, Armenia is a tiny country, therefore any form of wrong
doing can
immediately be seen or felt by all. Through legislation, the practice
of
corruption in the Western world has evolved to become fully
institutionalized. Therefore, in the West, institutionalized corruption
is not for the common folk.
Institutionalized corruption in the US, for instance, is reserved for
the
American empire's elites (e.g. military industrial complex,
Zionist/Jewish groups, pentagon, oil industry, Federal Reserve, Wall
Street,
pharmaceuticals industry, etc).
- Similar to what imperial powers did in the past with religion the very notion of democracy and human-rights today have been weaponized
by Washington. As a matter of fact, everything today is becoming
weaponized by Washington. Money is weaponized. Religion is weaponized. Atheism is weaponized. Energy is weaponized. Food is weaponized.
Scientific research is weaponized. Narcotics is weaponized. Gay rights
is weaponized. Feminism is weaponized. Sexual perversions are weaponized. The news is weaponized.
Entertainment is weaponized. Humanitarian aid is weaponized. The
English language is weaponized. Globalism is weaponized. Anything and
everything that can in anyway be used against a targeted nation for a
political and/or economic purpose is systematically becoming
weaponized by Washington.
- Democracy for an adolescent nation like Armenia can prove fatal. As
the events of early 2008 clearly revealed, Armenians are not
yet politically mature enough to be given the responsibility
of electing their leadership. We
have seen the destruction democracy has visited upon undeveloped
or underdeveloped nations throughout the world. The destructive
nature of democracy on underdeveloped nations may be why some nations on
Washington's black list are being prescribed a
very heavy dose of it these days. A nation like Armenia, just
coming out of under a thousand years or Asiatic/Islamic/Bolshevik
rule simply cannot have the proper national institutions or the collective mindset with which
to flirt with a dangerous and potentially destructive political process.
- For the foreseeable
future Armenia will need a Russian style top heavy democracy... or simply, a benevolent
dictator.
Links
and articles found below are provided to the reader for additional
perspectives on the duopolistic corprotocracy that has been plaguing the
United States and the world for decades.
Arevordi
January, 2013
(articles amended in 2016)
The Fake
Election: 10 Arguments The Republicans Aren’t Making
Even authoritarian systems require legitimacy to retain the support
of the governed, and the new authoritarian America is no exception.
Since 2004, the brilliant public journalism advocate Jay Rosen has been
asking, what is the point of a political convention? No news is made,
yet over 15,000 journalists show up, ostensibly to cover the pomp. But
everyone knows that coverage isn’t so much the point; these conventions trade shows for
the political class, where party insiders, journalists, politicians,
celebrities, corporate types, and lobbyists mingle to organize political
hierarchies. The public is simply irrelevant, a mass of jeering and
cheering message imbibers or apathetic and cynical former citizens,
people who are unseen behind their TV screens. The only fresh elements
are protesters, and they are met by a police state, lest they disrupt
the insider deal-making.
In fact, elections, over the past few years, have become mechanisms
for sustaining the legitimacy of this political class, not contests
designed to be won by either side. Neither side would ever admit to not
trying to win, at least publicly. Privately, political consultants will
count their winnings happily after each election, regardless of the
outcome. So the way to see the lack of competitiveness now is to examine
the moves that both parties are not making.
The Republicans have a clear strategy to win, which they are not
using. Obama is liked but unpopular, seen as a pseudo-honest lightweight
who can’t govern, even as the GOP are considered more competent but
downright evil. In politics, you have to get more votes than the other
guy; you don’t have to prove you’re an angel. You can even change the
voting universe, rather than persuading people of your merits. And
indeed, a small but significant minority of Obama voters don’t really
want to vote for Obama, they are unenthusiastic but feel they have to
pick the lesser evil. They can be pushed into apathy. So the
Republicans’ best strategy would be to dampen enthusiasm for Obama among
these voters, while pulling a few weak Obama voters over to their side
with a populist campaign. Would it be dishonest for Republicans to
promise populist policies they have no intention of following through
on? Sure! Has that ever stopped them before? Of course not! Remember
George W. Bush and compassionate conservatism? Now that was some artful
lying. The Republicans were really trying to win that time. This time,
not so much.
If the Republicans were interested in winning, you’d see a very different campaign. Here are ten ironclad arguments you’d see. These are arguments the Republicans could make, but aren’t.
1) The Tax Cheat Administration – When the Obama
campaign brought out Bain and tax avoidance, the GOP would have gone
after health care czar Tom Daschle ‘s tax cheating and Treasury
Secretary Tim Geithner tax problems. Daschle didn’t pay over $120,000 of taxes, and had to withdraw from consideration for the cabinet. Yet Obama still used
him as a health care czar, even as he was on the payroll of big law
firms. And Geithner’s problems were worse. As Neil Barofsky noted in Bailout,
Geithner’s tax problems weren’t simple mistakes, they were more ominous
than that, and revealed someone willing to cheat to keep a few more
bucks. Geithner hadn’t been paying his full amount of taxes for several
years. This was discovered, and he paid back taxes. But at first, he
only paid back taxes for the years the statute of limitations hadn’t
expire, keeping his tax cheat winnings for prior years. Only when
prodded by the administration did he make up the full amount.
2) Obama Doesn’t Keep His Promises to You – During the 2008 primary, Obama promised to renegotiate NAFTA.
He didn’t. Obama also promised to raise the minimum wage, and index it
to inflation. He didn’t. The NAFTA promise is especially powerful,
because anti-NAFTA sentiment cuts across party lines, and Obama pretty
clearly was lying in 2008 when it emerged that his campaign economist
Austan Goolsbee had assured the Canadians that Obama did not intend to
honor his campaign promises.
3) Obama Administration, Brought to You By Wall Street
– The Obama administration has very few high level Treasury officials
who don’t have significant experience in large too big to fail banks.
His chief of staff Bill Daley came from JP Morgan, an Jack Lew came from
Citigroup. The revolving door argument is a natural television
advertisement. The Republicans even cut an ad to portray Obama this way,
but never put any real dollars behind it.
4) Obama Administration’s Handling of the Foreclosure Crisis – The
Obama administration said that its main housing program would help 4
million homeowners. It came nowhere close. Recently, we’ve learned that
the entire premise of the administration’s housing efforts was based on
helping the banks, or “foaming the runway”, as Geithner put it, rather
than stopping foreclosures. This is directly at odds from what the
administration presented to the public. This is particularly significant
in certain swing states, like Florida, Nevada, and Ohio. The
Republicans could simply make this a broken promise argument, and again,
the ad writes itself.
5) Inequality Skyrocketing Under Obama – Growth of inequality is higher under Obama than under Bush.
This is because Obama reflated financial assets and not housing assets,
and has compounded that by legalizing fraud among elite financial
actors. The lack of prosecution angle isn’t just an ad that writes
itself, it was an Academy Award winning documentary (Inside Job).
6) Obama Administration Is Corrupt – The examples
here are numerous. There was the secret deal with pharma to spend money
on elections if pharma got certain multi-billion dollar concessions in
Obamacare. There’s the pay to play revolving door, such as Peter Orszag
going to Citigroup after running OMB. In the first chapter of Bailout, Herb
Allison essentially offered a bribe to Neil Barofsky if he’d go easier
on Treasury around TARP. This is corruption. It’s not hard to prove.
7) Obama Pushing Offshoring of American Jobs – The
massive Trans-Pacific Partnership, or NAFTA on steroids, is a global
secret deal to subordinate American sovereignty to international
tribunals of private corporate lawyers and offshoring whatever jobs are
left in America. I’m not kidding. It’s that bad. And it’s being
negotiated right now.
8) Subversion of the Rule of Law - This is
everything from refusing to prosecuting Wall Street bankers to having a
kill list to destroy real estate law through the mortgage settlement.
Any number of eminent lawyers or thinkers could, or has, made this
point.
9) Suppression of Dissent - The administration’s DHS collaborated with local and state law enforcement to get rid of Occupy encampments.
10) Endless war – Obama’s national security apparatus has been keeping us in Afghanistan, at higher troop levels, than Bush did.
These arguments, if put into widespread play, could keep voters at
home, or even shift some groups away from Obama. And because of outside
SuperPACs, none of these arguments have to be made by Romney himself,
there are a host of groups that could make them. Though you might think
it would be appallingly hypocritical if the Republicans made these
arguments, when has that ever stopped them before? It isn’t
honesty and integrity preventing the GOP from going there. Or if it is,
then one would have to concede that the Republicans are running a
principled campaign, on plutocracy. More likely, the answer is that
winning the race isn’t as important as ensuring that the political class
is protected from democracy.
The Republicans don’t want to discuss tax cheating, offshoring,
corruption, inequality, dissent, the rule of law, endless war, or Wall
Street criminality. They’d rather lose. It’s not that they want to lose
in 2012, it’s just that they aren’t going to go after every vote. It’s
the same reason no one talks about how Romney is a flip-flopper anymore,
or points out that Romney is the architect of Obamacare, or was a
moderate Republican governor in Massachusetts. Those arguments are worse
for the political class, and better for the public. And that is how
elections operate in authoritarian America. The secondary goal is to win
the election, the primary goal is to keep the public out of the
deal-making.
Two sides of same coin? US presidential debate underwhelms
President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney met in their first
presidential debate on Wednesday, exchanging the same arguments and
accusations they had before. The tepid debate stressed the lack of
choice the Americans are facing, analysts say. The debate centered on domestic issues, as both candidates basically
repeated their election platforms and slogans while discussing jobs,
the economy, and healthcare.
The Romney camp was thrilled with
their performance, as liberals blasted Obama for being underwhelming.
Romney's campaign spokesman claimed that Governor Romney had won so
clearly that “if this was a boxing match, the referee would have stopped it."
Obama analysts, for their part, while lamenting the missed opportunity
to essentially stop the Romney campaign cold, also pointed out that
Obama did not leave any weak spots to be attacked.
However,
many Americans may well be confused as to what exactly the differences
are between the two candidates, as the overlap of ideas between
America’s two dominant political parties has reached a fever-pitch in
recent elections cycles.
Obama and Romney have sparred
publicly over one of the keystones of the 44th president’s
administration: universal healthcare, or as it now more commonly known,
“Obamacare”. Romney has stated time and again that he will repeal
“Obamacare”, and that the centerpiece of the plan, “the individual
mandate” that requires every American to purchase health care or suffer
increasing tax penalties, places an unfair burden on the middle class.
“Obamacare is on my list,” Romney quipped in last night’s debate, as he reeled off a list of programs he wanted to cut. “When
you look at Obamacare, the congressional budget office has said that it
will cost $2,500 a year more than traditional insurance. So it’s adding
to cost…It’s expensive. Expensive things hurt families.”
But
voters get confused when they are reminded that the idea of the
individual mandate has already been used – by Romney himself.
“The irony is, we’ve seen this model work very well – in Massachusetts,” Obama shot back, defending his plan. “Governor
Romney did a good thing working with democrats in the state to set up
what is essentially an identical model, and as a consequence, people are
covered there, it hasn’t destroyed jobs, and we have a system where we
can start bringing down costs as opposed to leaving millions of people
out in the cold.”
As governor of Massachusetts, Romney
introduced the Massachusetts Health Reform Law in 2006. “Romneycare” in
many ways served as the de facto model for Obama’s Patient Protection
and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), and required all Massachusetts
residents to buy health insurance coverage or face escalating tax
penalties. That is, the mandate that Romney now calls unconstitutional
was, in fact, championed by Romney himself six years ago.
That
Obama adopted a Republican idea might reasonably anger many on the left.
That the individual mandate is viewed by those on the right as the
scourge of socialism proves how short American attention spans are and
how broken the political system may actually be. When talking
about reducing the deficit and creating jobs in America, both
candidates, overtly or otherwise, took aim at China, as if both
understood the need to look tough against the world economic giant.
In order to cut spending and reduce the deficit, Romney said “I
will eliminate all programs by this test: is the program so critical
it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? And if not, I’ll
get rid of it. I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to keep
borrowing money from China to pay for it.”
Obama seemed to say the same thing moments later, alluding to jobs being shipped overseas. “Part of the way to do that [reduce the deficit] is to not give tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas,” he said. “Right
now you can actually take a deduction for moving a plant overseas. I
think most Americans would say that doesn’t make sense.”
“You
said you get a deduction for taking a plant overseas? Look, I’ve been
in business for 25 years; I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Romney retorted minutes later. “Maybe I need to get a new accountant, but the idea that you get a break for shipping jobs overseas is simply not the case,” as
if to imply the strange idea that transferring factory jobs to
countries with cheaper labor would in no way affect a company’s bottom
line.
And there are other examples that have left voters
scratching their heads, trying to figure out who’s on the left and who’s
on the right.
In
2008, Republican Senator and former POW John
McCain regularly lambasted then-Democratic contender and presidential
hopeful Obama for being weak on national defense. But from
the death of Osama Bin Laden to the ever-expanding drone war and NDAA,
Obama has proven to be on par with several hawkish Republicans when it
comes to keeping the country safe. Obama even presided over a massive
troop surge in Afghanistan while simultaneously executing an
exit-strategy in Iraq.
Liberal commentator Rachel Maddow said on her eponymous show last month that there is a “responsible debate to be had here over the longest war in American history."
With some 70 per cent of Americans saying the US should immediately
withdraw Afghanistan, Maddow has a point, but there is no longer a party
representing it.
Right, left, or center?
Perennial
outsider and long-suffering third-party political candidate Ralph Nader
has consistently argued that the current two-party system in America
effectively presents the one agenda, providing no alternative for
Americans. From single-payer healthcare to a living wage,
renegotiating NAFTA to imperialism, poverty and special tax breaks for
corporations, Nader says the major beliefs of America remain chronically
unrepresented by America’s political system.
“That’s the
conundrum. A minority party fostering a majority agenda. The reason is
that the two-party duopoly has every conceivable way to exclude and
depress and harass a third party. Whether it’s ballot access. Whether
it’s harassing petitioners on the street. Whether it’s excluding them
from debates. Whether it’s not polling them. And with a two-party,
winner-take-all electoral system, it’s easy to enforce all those. Unlike
multi-party Western countries where you have proportional
representation, the voters [in America] know that if you get 10 per cent
of the vote, you don’t get anything. Whereas in Germany, you get 10 per
cent of the parliament. So [German] voters say, ‘Let’s just vote for
the least worst,’” he told Time Magazine in June.
Author and
historian Gerald Horne believes that none of the sides is a perfect
choice as the American voters are short on alternatives.“What
happens in the United States is that all the candidates of the left,
such as the Green Party, are barred from this kind of presidential
debate,” he told RT.
While the United States spends enormous amount of funds on “building democracy abroad, the candidates should focus on building democracy at home,” Horne argues. “These
kinds of debates basically exclude the critiques of the present
dilemmas and problems that the US people face, for example rising
poverty, rising unemployment et cetera.”
Both sides in the debate raised the issue of China in connection with America’s economic problems. “They don’t want to point the finger at themselves,”
Horne says. While many US cities are trying to attract Chinese
investment, both Obama and Romney are basically bashing China, he
argues. “We all know that that’s just song and dance, that after the election they will both be knocking on China’s door.”
Election 2012
What’s
particularly nervy — galling, really — about the idea
that the US ought to be spreading our democratic system across the globe is the fact that we don’t have anything close to
democracy in this country. Nor do we have what the Founders intended
to create: a republic, where the power of the state is limited by
the Constitution. This is underscored every time Americans go to the
polls, where they are confronted with “choices”
determined by lawmakers whose chief interest in life is getting
reelected with as little opposition as possible. These guardians of
the polity have made it virtually impossible for so-called third
parties — i.e. parties not controlled by corporate interests
and foreign lobbyists — to even get on the ballot.
And if you don’t
like this state of affairs, and take action, the State will smack
you right in the face. Take the
case of Richard Winger, the third party expert and
political analyst, editor of Ballot Access News,
who,
together with other interested parties, sued the state of California so
that all candidates would have an equal right to show their party label
on the ballot. With the passage of an “open primary” law, which
effectively abolished third parties, California’s third party
candidates couldn’t even identify themselves on the ballot.
The lawsuit failed, however, and the judge ruled that the plaintiffs
had to pay the court costs of the big corporate moneybags who had
sponsored the “open primary” legislation to being with.
Winger and his fellow third partiers got a bill for $243,279.50.
Isn’t
“democracy” wonderful?
Well, no, it isn’t,
not the current American version, which merely serves to legitimize — in a “legal” sense, at any rate — what is
in reality an oligarchy. As this election season dramatized once
again, the differences between the two state-subsidized
state-privileged “parties” is chiefly rhetorical: this
came through loud and clear during the Obama/Romney foreign policy
“debate,” but it’s true on domestic issues as
well. The bipartisan consensus is clear: maintain the
Welfare-Warfare State pretty much as it has existed since the New
Deal, with allowances made for trimming around the edges here and
there. No matter who wins this election, the victor will have to
impose a program of “austerity,” i.e. burdening the
lower and middle classes with new taxes and program cuts, while
granting new opportunities for corruption and cronyism to the
political class and the oligarchs, foreign as well as domestic.
Libertarians are not
small-‘d’ democrats: we don’t believe in the
efficacy or legitimacy of the system — but we don’t (or
shouldn’t) disdain it. For this is the one concession an
otherwise authoritarian-minded political class must make in order to
continue their system of “legalized” thievery and mass
murder. They must ask, if only symbolically, for the consent of the
governed — what Ayn Rand called “the sanction of the
victim.”
But we don’t
have to be victims: we can utilize this chink in the armor of the
State to drive a stake through its rotten heart — because any
and all weapons in the battle for liberty must be in our arsenal.
Yet we also should have no illusions: everyone saw how the GOP
leadership, in league with the Romneyites, stole a good half of Ron
Paul’s delegates to the national convention. It was such a
brazen display of thievery that the Republican governor of Maine —
where arguably the most egregious rip-off took place — refused to attend the Tampa coronation.
And it isn’t
just about the Paulians. Every dissident tendency in the country has
been silenced by repressive ballot access laws which give the
oligarchic parties ample “legal” ammunition to keep
outsiders off the ballot. Previously, Democratic party lawyers practically
followed Ralph Nader around the country as he tried to attain ballot
status, suing to keep him off as soon as he qualified and all too
often succeeding. The Republicans targeted Gary Johnson in the same way this
year. A more disgusting display of “legal”
repression” has never even occurred in such bastions of
“democratic” authoritarianism as Belarus and Putin’s
Russia. Indeed, it is easier for a political party to attain
national ballot status in Russia today than it is for the
Libertarian party or the Green party to get on the ballot in, say,
Pennsylvania.
Congressional
districts are so gerrymandered into shapes which give the incumbent
a job for life that we might as well make the office appointive, or
even hereditary. That way, the American political class can confer
on itself all the titled magnificence and glitz of its model and
progenitor: the British aristocracy. In the face of a
steady assault of election spending legislation attempting to limit
contributions, and requiring all kinds of “disclosure” —
conceivably subjecting donors to official retribution — the
near invincibility of incumbency is a fact of American political
life in much of the country.
The War Party has two
wings: the Democrats and the Republicans. All others are outsiders,
whose ability to storm the gates is “legally” restricted
by a nearly impassable series of bureaucratic obstacles
designed to keep them out while still maintaining the “democratic”
illusion, i.e. the phony two-party system, which is in reality a
single entity. It is a delicate
operation, in the course of which the political class must walk a
fine line between repression and allowing some degree of free
expression. This year how that line is drawn, and who draws it, is
going to make a big difference — and perhaps a decisive one.
There’s nothing
like an election to show up the essential fraudulence of the
democratic system, particularly how it’s practiced in America.
Nothing makes this point clearer than the Republican voter
suppression campaign, which is designed to keep African-Americans,
Latinos, and others from voting. Aside from the ugly racial
implications of this deplorable effort, one can kind of see the
Republicans’ point: after all, with a candidate so widely and
intensely disliked, even by his own supporters, what else can they
try? Asking people for all kinds of identification at the polls, and
putting partisan zealots on guard asking people to
identify themselves, is straight out hooliganism. Did you think the
Romneyites were above that?
As I write, we don’t
know who will win this presidential election, but I made my
prediction long ago and I’m sticking to it. I even
half-seriously averred that, by nominating a complete nonentity, the
Republicans were deliberately throwing the election. Romney’s
candidacy postponed the ideological blood feud that’s going to
break out when he goes down to a well-earned defeat, but the Karl
Rove/Fox News grand poobahs of the GOP can’t delay
it indefinitely. Just add the Ron Paul vote to the Republican column,
the day after the President declares victory, and see what you come
up with. Most of Paul’s voters stayed home on election day, or
else voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian standard-bearer this
time around.
And that, I predict,
will make all the difference.
When the President
spoke of voting as “revenge” the other day, the wimpish
girlish Republicans immediately started up a chorus of whining —
one reason why they’re such losers, and why they deserve to
lose. Yet I was heartened to hear Obama say it, not only because
revenge is such a major (albeit unacknowledged) factor in politics,
but because it’s particularly appropriate this election year,
and even more so from my own ideological perspective. Because what
we’ll see, this Election Day, might justifiably be called Ron
Paul’s revenge, and, as Ralph Cramden would put it:“How sweet it
is!”
Okay, I’m
posting this on Election Day, before the results are in: tune in
here for an update after we know who won, and by how much, to see me
either exult in the sheer accuracy of my prophecy, or else eat crow.
Update: It’s
8:13 pm PST, and the President has been reelected. Once again, the
neocons have dragged the GOP down to defeat. Netanyahu placed
his bet on the wrong horse. In spite of soaring
unemployment, a collapsing economy, and widespread disenchantment
with the incumbent, the Republicans still managed to lose.
Why?
Conservatives will
claim it’s because Romney stood for nothing — and that’s
true in terms of domestic policy. He reversed himself on every major
domestic issue, from health care to abortion and tax policy. But on
foreign policy he did stand for something: a huge increase
in the military budget in spite of our looming bankruptcy,
unconditional support for Israel on each and every issue, and war
with Iran. This was the main dividing line between the Ron Paulians
and the Romneyites, and the main reason why no endorsement from Paul
(the elder) was forthcoming. Given the closeness of the election in
several key states, particularly Ohio — the state that put the
President over the top — support from Paul’s voters
would have made the difference. Ron got over 113,000 votes there
in the GOP primary.
And that made all the
difference.
Source: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/11/06/election-2012-ron-pauls-revenge/
100
Ways Republicans Are Just Like Democrats: Here’s a look at the broader
similarities between the Democratic and Republican parties:
1. A large number
of Democrats and Republicans signed the National Defense Authorization
Act for the year 2012, which critics say allows for the indefinite
detention of American citizens on U.S. soil without due process.
President Obama pledged to veto the NDAA, but went back on his word and signed it into law with the indefinite detention provision included. Mitt Romney says that he would do the same.
2. Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly favor Keynesian economics rather than other schools of economic thought such as the Austrian School of economics.
3. The Bush-era Patriot Act, which allows for warrantless wiretapping, was passed with bipartisan support and recently extended by policymakers of both parties. Romney has voiced his support for the controversial legislation. Obama supported it as a senator and signed the extension into law as president.
4. Both the Republican and Democratic administrations have attempted to justify the use of extrajudicial targeted
killing, the killing of people without trial or substantive due
process, including American citizens. The use of these tactics increased under President Obama and has received praise from members of both parties. There was strong bipartisan support for the Obama Administration’s extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi and his 16 year old son without trial, which received praise from Republican Party members and was strongly supported by Mitt Romney.
5. The Democratic and Republican parties both generally support the
vastly-growing use of unmanned aerial combat drones in the Middle East:
- The use of unmanned drones to patrol foreign skies, which have been responsible for many civilian and child deaths, began under President Bush and drone use has drastically increased and expanded under President Obama. There has been little to no partisan opposition to these tactics and while the GOP platform advocates for increased drone use, the Democratic platform doesn’t mention their use at all.
- Drone warfare in Pakistan started under Bush, has been significantly escalated by Obama, and Romney has indicated that he will continue using drones in Pakistan if elected. Both parties also support the continued drone warfare being used in Libya, which Romney has stated he would likely continue.
- In Yemen, the Obama Administration has continued the fighting that the Bush Administration initiated, which Obama has done with the use of secretive drone warfare and by recently sending troops back.
6. Both parties will also allow drones to patrol the skies of the United States. The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, which calls for the use of up to 30,000 drones in U.S. airspace, passed the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support.
7. The Federal Reserve is allowed by both parties to continue to operate as an “ independent
government agency,” whose monetary policy decisions do not have to be
approved by the president nor any other elected member of the executive
or legislative branch. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was
appointed by George W. Bush and re-appointed by Obama. Mitt Romney has
flip-flopped on whether he would reappoint Bernanke, stating in 2010 that he would reappoint him, but stating recently that he would not reappoint Bernanke for a third term. Bernanke was reappointed for his second term in 2010 after a bipartisan vote of 70-30. However, the Audit the Fed bill has also received strong bipartisan support.
8. In an apparent direct conflict of interest, 130 Republican and
Democratic congressional members have invested in company stocks while
making legislative decisions that impact those same companies.
9. Democrats and Republicans both played a role in the founding of the Federal Reserve. Initial versions of the Federal Reserve Act were drafted by Republican Senator Nelson Aldrich and the final version was drafted y Democratic Congressman Carter Glass of Virginia, which then went to receive strong bipartisan support in Congress.
10. Both Republican and Democrats have allowed the Federal Reserve to inject trillions of dollars into the economy through their quantitative easing programs.
While many Republicans including Romney have said they are against the
third round of quantitative easing, neither party has or is likely to
introduce bills aimed at regulating or halting quantitative easing
altogether.
11. Republicans and Democrats love earmarks so much that even the
bipartisan earmark moratorium, while greatly cutting back on earmarks, couldn’t stop the pork from being slipped into bills. Approved earmarks in 2010 totaled over $15 billion and the amount of requested earmarks in 2011 exceeded $129 billion. Citizens Against Government Waste reports that $3.3 billion has been approved for 2012.
12. Both parties and their national, congressional and senatorial committees have spent more than one billion dollars on their 2012 campaigns.
13. The Democratic and Republican convention committees each received $17,689,800
from the U.S. Treasury for their conventions in 2012 and an additional
$600,000 to cover the cost of inflation. This is paid for through a
voluntary check off on federal income tax forms.
14. Both parties are largely backed by the same corporate contributors and interest groups. Congressional members also receive contributions from many of the same interest groups. Both parties are heavily lobbied by corporate America — to the tune of $3.3 billion in 2011 and $1.68 billion thus far in 2012.
15. The majority of both parties agreed that Wall Street should receive bailouts. The TARP bailout was signed into law by George W. Bush and initially drafted by Bush-appointed Secretary of Treasury– and Republican– Henry Paulson. Obama supported TARP as a senator and the bailout went on to receive overwhelming support from Democrats in the House. TARP also received largely bipartisan support in the Senate.
16. The same Wall Street TARP recipients who were top contributors to the Democratic presidential campaign in 2008 are now the top contributors backing the Republican presidential campaign in 2012. In 2008, Republican John McCain was backed by the same companies, although his campaign received less than the Obama campaign.
17. Both parties are private, non-profit corporations and are in no way
an official part of the United States government. Furthermore, neither
party is mentioned in the Constitution nor is there mention of a
two-party system, and a few of our founding fathers expressed concerns regarding the emergence of a rival two-party system.
18. As Glenn Greenwald points out in an article for The Guardian, Republicans and Democrats discuss certain general issues
during debates while ignoring other more controversial issues that they
may agree on, hoping to convince the public that there is a huge
difference of choice.
19. Both Democrats and Republicans seem to believe that voting for a
third party is equivalent to throwing away your vote while in reality,
if everyone voted their conscience and avoided voting for the “lesser of
two evils,” which 46 percent of those polled said they would be doing this election, the two-party stranglehold may actually be broken.
20. The Democratic and Republican parties have both sued third parties to prevent them from appearing on the ballot in key states.
21. Both the Democratic and Republican parties exclude third parties from the presidential debates. In 1987, the Democratic and Republican parties founded the nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates to regulate the presidential debates, which excludes third party candidates from participating in the only nationally televised presidential debates.
22. The Democratic and Republican parties have both been sued for conspiring to exclude third parties from the quadrennial presidential debates.
23. Both also both believe that taxpayers should provide funding to other countries around the world. The bipartisan Commission on Appropriations approved $40.1 billion in foreign aid for the 2013 year.
24. Both party platforms mention Israel, confirm Jerusalem as being the capital city, and both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidate have pledged their allegiance to Israel.
25. The Democratic and Republican parties both agree that a two-state solution should be pursued between Israel and Palestine.
26. No one other than a Democrat or Republican has been elected president in the last 160 years.
27. Lawmakers from both parties in Congress and the executive branch have been responsible for all foreign interventions since 1853,
keeping America in a near perpetual state of war. They are also
responsible for the assistance and direct involvement of the U.S. in at
least 31 instances of covert foreign regime change since the beginning of the Cold War.
28. There is cross-administration support of preemptive cyber attacks. The Obama Administration has continued the Stuxnet cyber attacks against Iran which were started under the Bush Administration.
29. Sanctions against Iran began under Carter and have received strong bipartisan support from every administration since, continuing under the Obama Administration.
30. Both Democrats and Republicans are eager to place even more sanctions on Iran, which harm innocent Iranian civilians, hoping to prevent Iran from developing nukes. The fact that eight other countries already have nukes is usually ignored.
31. The Democratic and Republican parties both agree that preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is a top priority. Obama and Romney also both agree that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is a top US security priority.
32. At least 360 former Democratic and Republican congresspeople
have left office and accepted jobs as lobbyists for corporations or
special interest groups who then attempt to influence the same federal
government they once worked for. As many as 5,400 congressional staffers have done the same in the past 10 years alone. Referred to as the “ revolving door,” members of both parties routinely move between influential private sector positions and policy-making positions in the executive or legislative branches.
33. Republicans and Democrats can agree that the economic stimulus package helped the economy. Romney has stated that he believes an economic stimulus package was necessary and many Republicans have spoke of the success of the Democratic economic stimulus package. Think Progress reports that
over half of the opposing GOP — 110 members from the House and Senate —
returned to their home states to either claim credit for popular
stimulus programs or to tout its success.
34. The large scale domestic spying program currently underway by the NSA, AT&T, Verizon and others, named Stellar Wind, was approved by Bush
and has been continued under the Obama Administration. There now exist
massive domestic spy centers which are designed to collect every single
communication made in the U.S., including e-mails, phone conversations,
financial transactions, and internet activity. These have been
conveniently ignored by the majority of both parties.
35. Both Republicans and Democrats stay relatively quiet about and generally support U.S. reliance on fiat money, fractional reserve lending and our debt based monetary policy. Both platforms are void of any mention of monetary policy reform.
36. The Democratic and Republican parties largely support continuing
the War on Terror in which Bush Administration policies have been continued and expanded by the Obama Administration. A Political.com poll found that 72 percent of those polled want troops home from Afghanistan now — not in 2014, and a Rasmussen Reports poll found that 59 percent of Americans polled want troops removed from Afghanistan either immediately or within a year.
37. Neither party has constitutionally declared
war since World War II. This election cycle, both the Democratic and
Republican parties have also chosen presidential candidates who believe that the president has the power to go to war without congressional approval. Like the Bush Administration’s unconstitutional war in Iraq, the Obama Administration is responsible for an unconstitutional war in Libya. A Romney Administration will consider sending more troops to Libya. Also like George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush, The Obama Administration has sent troops to Somalia. As demonstrated in the third presidential debate, despite who wins the election, foreign policies will likely remain the same.
38. There was strong bipartisan support in the Senate and House for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution, however congress never officially declared war.
39. Both parties believe that the U.S. should be intervening in Syria. The Obama Administration began arming the Free Syrian Army rebels, who are joined by Al-Qaeda factions, and Romney has stated that he supports and will continue arming the rebels in the proxy war with Iran and Russia.
40. The Bush Administration’s use of torture through extraordinary rendition,
which is when prisoners are sent from CIA black sites to other
countries where “information extraction” will be attempted, began after
Clinton signed PDD 39 and has continued under
the Obama Administration. By failing to speak out or attempting to
change these practices, Republicans and Democrats both allow for
“enhanced interrogation techniques” — such as waterboarding, sleep
deprivation, hypothermia and stress positions, among others– to be used
to extract information from suspects. The Obama Administration even granted final immunity to Bush’s CIA torturers.
41. Both parties use gerrymandering to gain a political advantage through more favorable district boundaries.
42. Despite the increase in use of illicit drugs in the U.S., a rising drug war death toll in Mexico, and the highest public support for marijuana legalization
ever, both parties generally avoid speaking about ending the War on
Drugs or legalizing marijuana in lieu of a more effective approach.
Since the beginning of prohibition in 1937, no administration has
attempted to legalize marijuana. Even though there is more scientific evidence
than ever indicating the benefits of marijuana, every administration
has kept marijuana regulated under Schedule I of the Controlled
Substance Act. A Schedule I classification places marijuana in a
stricter regulatory category than cocaine, labels it as having no
medicinal benefit, and prohibits doctors from prescribing it. Hemp
production, which would provide many environmental and economic benefits, continues to remain outlawed and ignored as well.
43. Both parties rigged
aspects of their 2012 conventions by using teleprompters with
pre-loaded and predetermined vote outcomes, and then ignored
overwhelming delegate dissent during voice votes.
44. Both parties generally ignore the fact that the United States has the highest incarceration rate per
capital in the world with over half imprisoned for nonviolent drug use,
and neither platform offers solutions to this problem.
45. It’s common for Republicans and Democrats to pander to various demographics, attempting to win them over.
46. The Bush Administration’s Guantanamo Bay has remained open under
Obama and although he did sign an executive order calling for the
closing, the Senate, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan effort,
blocked the federal funding to ship the prisoners to Illinois. Obama
then signed the federal fund-blocking bill into law when he could have
vetoed. The Obama Administration has also imposed new arbitrary rules for the prisoners and Romney has said that he would like to see it double in size.
47. Both parties rely heavily on marketing operations that use brand logos, names, messaging and colors to “sell” their candidate.
48. Under the Bush Administration, not one Senate member voted against the bill that founded the Transportation Security Administration and the House displayed overwhelming support as well. Obama supports the TSA and Romney claims he will make a few improvements but the TSA will remain.
49. A bill designed to ensure that the internet remains open and minimally regulated received strong bipartisan support in the House. On the other hand, there has been bipartisan support for bills such as SOPA and PIPA, which critics such as Google, Wikipedia, and Facebook say would allow severe internet regulation, censorship and provide the president with an “internet kill switch.”
50. Both platforms agree that “clean coal” is an essential resource for U.S. energy requirements. Romney and Obama both advocate for the use of clean coal as a way of furthering America’s energy independence.
51. Democrats and Republicans are responsible for the 16 trillion national debt and are largely responsible for the 58 trillion in total U.S. debt.
52. Both parties have failed to propose a plan for the immediate balancing of the budget. Romney and Obama both propose federal budget plans that would add trillions to the national debt.
53. Neither party plans on cutting defense spending, which is currently larger than the combined defense spending of the next 13 countries.
54. According to Gallup, Congressional Democrats and Republicans have record low approval ratings of only 10 percent and according to another poll, 81 percent of those polled have trust in the government “only some of the time or never.”
55. Both the Democratic and Republican platforms mention God and both parties are theistic in nature.
56. There is strong bipartisan support for increased gun control measures. Both Romney and Obama are also supporters of increasing gun control.
57. Republicans and Democrats allow the U.S. to maintain military bases in over 120 countries. A Rasmussen Reports poll found that 51 percent of Americans polled want all troops withdrawn from Western Europe.
58. The Bush-Clinton NAFTA free trade agreement was passed in a bipartisan effort. Obama has not only failed to renegotiate NAFTA, but is now pushing for more NAFTA style deals. Romney has stated that he will be a champion of free trade.
59. The U.S. Cuba trade embargo has been largely bipartisan and neither a Republican nor Democratic administration is likely to lift the embargo.
60. There was strong bipartisan agreement that the NFL lockout should end.
61. Both the Republican and Democratic platform agree that the death penalty should remain in place, which Obama and Romney also support.
62. Although 62 percent of
Americans polled said they want to get rid of electoral college in
favor of a more direct approach to democracy, neither the Republican or
Democratic Party present this as an option.
63. As Jon Stewart points out,
the last eight presidents have gone on television and pledged to move
America toward an energy-independent future. In 2012, both party
platforms as well as both Romney and Obama pledge to bring America into a new era of energy independence.
64. Voter fraud paranoia is largely bipartisan. Voters belonging to both parties are paranoid that the opposing party may be involved in voter fraud.
65. Political campaign advertisements from both parties have long focused on attacking the other candidate in often misleading ways. Gary Johnson takes a different approach to campaign ads, deciding to not mention his opponent by name.
66. Americans of both parties overwhelmingly
oppose the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that allows
corporations and special interest groups to spend unlimited amounts of
money, in secret, on political campaigning.
67. Yet both the Republican and Democratic parties continue to heavily rely on the same super PAC funded campaign strategies permitted by the Citizens United ruling.
68. Both Democratic and Republican parties
are exploiting loopholes that allow members of Congress and
presidential candidates to assist super PACs in their fundraising
efforts.
69. Among those polled, there is strong bipartisan support for Obama’s Keystone Pipeline project, and the bill passed the House with strong bipartisan support. Romney has indicated that he supports this project as well.
70. The Democratic and Republican parties refuse to ban contributions from corporations and interest groups, whereas the Green Party runs on a platform of refusing to accept corporate donations.
71. The two-party system continues to operate largely due to laws and regulations created by the two parties, which severely limit and regulate the ability of third party candidates to gain traction and ballot access.
72. There has been bipartisan congressional support of filibuster reform.
73. Neither the Democratic or Republican Party are willing to address the 130,000 plus Iraqi and Afghan civilian deaths that have happened as a result of the bipartisan Global War on Terror.
74. Republicans and Democrats are both responsible for the gutting of the welfare system.
75. Presidential signing statements have been a significant source of controversy, but have been employed heavily by every administration since Reagan.
76. Line item vetoes have been supported by
presidents and candidats of both parties: Reagan, George H.W. Bush,
Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney. Bills designed
to allow line item vetoes have also received bipartisan support in the House and Senate.
77. Both Republicans and Democrats are concerned about the public’s knowledge of their use of drones and the use of cyber weapons against Iran.
78. In the 2012 presidential race, both the Democratic and Republican campaigns have decided to not spend taxpayer money on their campaigns.
79. Both parties act as if the other party is the worst thing that has ever happened to America.
80. A new farm bill, which will finance dozens of price support and
crop insurance programs for farmers and food assistance for low-income
families, received strong bipartisan support in the Senate.
81. Among those polled, there is strong bipartisan agreement that conservatism is patriotic.
82. Federal term limits, which many say would be a huge step towards ending corruption in Washington, have been repeatedly rejected through bipartisan votes. In a poll conducted by Pollposition.com, 51 percent of those polled said they would support a one-term limit for members of the House and Senate.
83. Both parties largely believe that the government has the power
and right to take private property for public use, and sometimes private use, through eminent domain laws.
84. Both parties are responsible for continually growing the size of the federal government.
85. Multimillion dollar no-bid contracts are awarded to companies by both Democratic and Republican administrations.
86. Instead of encouraging an open press, Republicans and Democrats demonize
the leak publishing organization known as WikiLeaks, and its founder
Julian Assange, who are responsible for leaking information that has reportedly damaged U.S reputation. The U.S. military recently classified WikiLeaks as an enemy of the state, the same legal category that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are placed in.
87. Medicaid and Social Security were initially passed with strong support from both parties.
88. Republicans and Democrats often claim that their administrations are transparent, but there is plenty of evidence indicating otherwise.
89. The Bush Administration invoked a state of national emergency following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the Obama Administration extended the state of emergency, which allows for revocation of the right to habeas corpus.
90. Since the 1992 presidential debates — which was the only year to
include a Democratic, Republican and a third party candidate — the
Republican and Democratic candidates have refused to participate in
presidential debates that include third parties. Obama and Romney
campaigns both received invitations to the Free and Equal debates as
well as the IVN online debate, but neither candidate responded.
91. Both parties are reportedly routinely involved in voter fraud.
92. The United States Intelligence Community, which consists of at least sixteen various agencies, has grown out of control and has been left largely unchecked by either party, with some reports indicating that no one knows how much money is spent.
93. Both the Democratic and Republican parties routinely pander to the middle class as they blame their opponents for hurting the middle class, and both platforms advocate for middle class tax cuts. However, multiple studies have
demonstrated that the United States has more income inequality than
most other developed nations, with the poverty rate at 15 percent and the middle class suffering from almost a 40 percent
wealth loss between 2007 and 2010. The top one percent, which most of
our lawmakers belong to, has seen increased earnings up to 275 percent in the past 35 years with the top one percent now controlling 40 percent of the nation’s wealth.
94. The Republican and Democratic parties and candidate fail to adequately address the issue of peak oil, which is when the maximum rate of petroleum extraction has been reached and the rate of production begins to decline.
95. Both parties refuse to accept responsibility for the credit
downgrade and neither was successful at stopping the downgrade. When
S&P decided to downgrade the United States from an AAA credit rating
to an AA+ rating, they stated that the blame lies with Congress and policymakers from both parties, dating back to 2001 and the Bush Administration.
96. Thanks to our Democratic and Republican lawmakers, the United
States is one of only two countries in the world that permits
pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers. The pharmaceutical lobby is routinely the top lobbying industry, spending a total of $124,441,774 on lobbying in 2012 alone. Obama and Romney each received over one million dollars. In 2009, nearly three dozen former congressmen worked as lobbyists for a pharmaceutical or health product company.
97. Republicans and Democrats agree that the government needs more money.
98. This
Gallup poll suggests that many Americans — 46 percent of those polled —
believe that a third party is needed because the Republican and
Democratic parties are not doing an adequate job of representing the
people.
99. There is bipartisan agreement
that the Social Security payroll tax break should be allowed to expire,
which would raise taxes on 163 million Americans regardless of who wins
the election.
100. Presidential nominees for both parties are selected through a very complicated and expensive process which involves state caucuses and primaries that happen over the course of many months.
5 ways Obama is just like George W. Bush
On President Barack Obama’s second full
day in the Oval Office in 2009, he signed important executive orders
that signaled a clear break with the excesses of George W. Bush’s “war
on terror.” Obama decreed that the Guantanamo Bay prison camp would be
closed in a year and that the United States would no longer perpetrate
torture. No longer would men, some of them innocent, languish without
charges in what has been described as an American gulag by Amnesty
International. No longer would men be subjected to brutal interrogation
tactics that clearly amounted to torture, like water boarding.
The
orders would “restore the standards of due process and the core
constitutional values that have made this country great even in the
midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism,” said Obama.
Fast-forward
to today. Guantanamo remains open, warrantless wiretapping continues,
and drone strikes have accelerated, leading to the deaths of innocent
civilians and a burst in support for anti-American forces in Yemen,
Pakistan and Somalia. Instead of breaking with the Bush era, Obama has
codified and permanently institutionalized the “war on terror” framework
that has characterized American foreign policy since the September 11,
2001 attacks. And they have done all of this largely in secret, refusing
to open up about how drone strikes are decided on. So while torture has
been thrown out of the American playbook, other black marks remain.
Obama has done everything but restore “core constitutional values” to
how the U.S. conducts itself around the world.
Perhaps the most
potent symbol of Obama’s willingness to institutionalize Bush-era
frameworks for dealing with terrorism is his January 2013 appointment of
John Brennan as new Central Intelligence Agency director. Brennan was a
key supporter of many Bush-favored tactics used by the CIA, including
torture and extraordinary rendition. When Obama first contemplated
appointing Brennan in his first term to the post he’s been appointed to
now, the outcry was swift and Brennan pulled out from consideration.
Now, the reaction has been meek—a symbol of how Bush-era military and
intelligence tactics have become normalized to the extent that nobody
bats an eye when a man with a sordid record at the CIA is appointed to
head up the entire agency.
Obama
has kept the U.S. on a permanent war footing with no end in sight
through a variety of methods. Here are five ways the Obama
administration has institutionalized the never-ending war on terror.
1. Drones
The
image of the gray, pilotless aircraft flying through the sky to
eventually rain hellfire down will be indelibly tied to Obama. His
administration has made drone strikes in countries like Yemen, Somalia
and Pakistan the weapon of choice when it comes to dealing with
suspected militants. You have to look at the numbers of drone strikes
under the Bush and Obama administrations to truly appreciate how Obama
has taken this Bush tool and increased its use exponentially.
The
first drone strike in U.S. history occurred in 2002, when a CIA-operated
drone fired on three men in Afghanistan. The drone strikes have since
migrated over to battlefields away from U.S.-declared wars. In Pakistan,
the Bush administration carried out a total of 52 strikes, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
which closely tracks drone strikes. That led to the deaths of an
estimated 438 people, including 182 civilians and 112 children. But the
Obama administration has ordered at least 300 drone strikes in
Pakistan—and Obama’s second term has yet to begun. Those strikes have
killed about 2,152 people, including 290 civilians, of whom 64 were
children.
The drone strikes also have a devastating impact beyond the deaths reported. As a New York University/Stanford University study on
drone strikes stated, the constant buzzing of drones in the sky
“terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and
psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under
drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired
at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect
themselves.”
Instead of looking forward to how this permanent
drone war might end, the Obama administration has decided to
institutionalize the process. In October 2012, the Washington Post revealed that
the administration had undertaken a two-year long strategy to
institutionalize what has become known as the “kill list,” or the list
of suspected terrorists the Obama administration unilaterally decides to
kill by drone strikes. The administration calls it the “disposition
matrix,” which refers to the different plans the administration has to
“dispose” of suspected militants. The Post described the
“matrix” as part of “the highly classified practice of targeted killing,
transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure
capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war.”
2. Warrantless Wiretapping
One
of the enduring scandals of the George W. Bush years was that
administration’s practice of wiretapping American citizens with no
warrant in order to spy on suspected terrorists. TheNew York Times,
which broke the story in 2005, reported that “months after the Sept. 11
attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security
Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to
search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved
warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying.” The move raised
concerns that the Bush administration was crossing constitutional limits
on wiretapping Americans.
But the outcry from those concerned
with civil liberties has largely been muted in the Obama era. In late
December 2012, President Obama signed an extension of a law that allows
the U.S. to “eavesdrop on communications and review email without
following an open and public warrant process,” as NPR summed it up. The
law was an extension of the 2008 law that legalized the Bush
administration’s wiretapping of American citizens.
As national security blogger Marcy Wheeler notes in a recent piece for the Nation,
the president’s signature on the new bill on wiretapping means that the
U.S. “has nearly unrestrained authority to eavesdrop on those who
communicate with people outside the country. The government doesn’t even
need to show that these foreign targets are terrorists or that the
conversations center around a plot. This means any international
communication may be subject to wiretapping.”
3. Proxy Detentions
Under
the Bush administration, the process of “extraordinary rendition”
involved abducting people accused of terrorism and shipping them off to
another country where they were interrogated and tortured. The Obama
administration has continued to use foreign countries to detain and
interrogate suspects, but the details of how they do it are changed from
the Bush era. Still, the overall practice of using other security
forces to do your dirty work remains in place.
The Washington Postreported on January 1 that
“the Obama administration has embraced rendition — the practice of
holding and interrogating terrorism suspects in other countries without
due process — despite widespread condemnation of the tactic in the years
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.” While the Post used the term
“rendition,” the more accurate term would be “proxy detention,” as Mother Jones pointed out.
The
most recent iterations of the practice of using other countries to
detain suspects the U.S. wants to interrogate have been in countries
like Dijibouti and Nigeria. The Post reported on one December
2011 case in which an man from Eritrea “revealed that he had been
questioned in a Nigerian jail by what a U.S. interrogator described as
a ‘dirty’ team of American agents who ignored the suspect’s right to
remain silent or have a lawyer, according to court proceedings.”
Other cases have been publicized by Mother Jones. The
magazine reported on the case of Yonas Fikre, a Muslim-American from
Oregon who was detained in the United Arab Emirates. There, Fikre and
his lawyers claim, he was beaten and held in stress positions. He claims
there was cooperation between the FBI and UAE security forces. So the
FBI was using the UAE forces to detain people the U.S. wanted to
interrogate.
4. Guantanamo
Although the
continued operation of the Guantanamo Bay camp is hardly the sole fault
of President Obama, it does symbolize the abject failure to reject the
Bush administration’s approach to terrorism. While it’s important
to note that the Republican Party has blocked Obama’s desire to close
Guantanamo, he has not expended political capital on closing the prison
and has signed bills that restrict his ability to do so. The most recent
bill concerning Guantanamo Bay crossed his desk at the beginning of the
year.
Despite threatening to veto the bill because it restricted
the executive branch’s authority, Obama signed it, and curtailed his own
ability to move ahead on closing the infamous camp, where people have
languished without charge for years on end. The National Defense
Authorization Act of 2013, where the Guantanamo provisions are included,
restricts “the transfer of detainees into the United States for any
purpose, including trials in federal court. It also requires the defense
secretary to meet rigorous conditions before any detainee can be
returned to his own country or resettled in a third country,” according to theWashington Post.
Human
rights activists blasted the move. “Indefinite detention without trial
at Guantanamo is illegal, unsustainable and against U.S. national
security interests, and it needs to end,” Human Rights Watch’s Andrea
Prasow told the Post. “The administration should not continue
to just blame Congress. President Obama should follow through on his
earlier commitments and make the effort to overcome the transfer
restrictions.”
5. Indefinite Detention
This
issue, over all the others, says loud and clear that the Obama
administration is preparing for an endless war on terror. Domestically,
indefinite detention reared its ugly head back in December 2011, when
President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, a
defense funding bill. Included in the bill was a provision allowing for
indefinite military detention without charge or trial. Despite concerns
raised by civil liberties activists, Obama signed the bill into law,
although an executive signing statement vowed that the president would
“not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of
American citizens.”
That has not allayed the concerns of civil
liberties groups. The American Civil Liberties Union states: “The NDAA’s
dangerous detention provisions would authorize the president — and all
future presidents — to order the military to pick up and indefinitely
imprison people captured anywhere in the world, far from any
battlefield….Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide
detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on
U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the
NDAA should be used in the same way again.”
While no American
citizens have been detained under the law yet, indefinite detention has
been a hallmark of the war in Afghanistan. Thousands of detainees have
remained in Bagram Air Field, including non-Afghan detainees. Picked up
on the battlefield in Afghanistan, they have been held for years without
charge or trial. “Since 2002, the U.S. government has detained
indefinitely thousands of people there in harsh conditions and without
charge, without access to lawyers, without access to courts, and without
a meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention,” the ACLU notes.
So
as the Obama administration fills out its cabinet posts and prepares
for another four years, the permanent war on terror will stay with us.
From drones to proxy detentions to indefinite detention, the
constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office has institutionalized and
expanded some of the worst hallmarks of the lawless Bush era.Alex Kane is a staff reporter at Mondoweiss and the World
editor at AlterNet. His work has also appeared in The Daily Beast, the
Electronic Intifada, Extra! and Common Dreams. Follow him on Twitter
@alexbkane.
Barack Obama and the New Plantation
The ‘masters’ of this present-day New Plantation are the corporate
elite and their minions; the field slaves are the ordinary people.The
insidious role of many so-called ‘mulattos’ on slave plantations in the
U.S., Haiti, and elsewhere was to contain, control, and neutralize the
field slaves for the benefit of the plantation administrators and
‘masters.’ They were more articulate, and better fed and clothed than
the plantation field slaves. Their loyalty was to the plantation
masters, not the slaves.
Today however, there is a New Plantation, and everyday ordinary
Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people, in varying degrees, are all
on this 21st century plantation. The ‘masters’ and plantation
administrators of this present-day New Plantation are the avaricious
corporate elite and their unprincipled minions, and the field slaves are
the ordinary people of all colors.
This is the fiendish genius on the part of the U.S. corporate masters
having selected Barack Obama to head the U.S. Empire, which is a role
that he demonstratively savors and has carried out against ordinary
people in this nation (and around the world) with an insidiously
devastating effectiveness.
In less than four years the articulate Barack Obama has, in the name
of “hope,” “change,” and progress, 1) destroyed the single-payer
universal health care option, 2) in contravention of U.S. and
international law - launched many thousands of murderous predator-drone
missiles against the people of the sovereign nations of Libya (North
Africa), Somalia (East Africa), Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen, 3)
taken political subterfuge and non-transparency in government to new
lows, 4) signed into law the draconian NDAA indefinite-detention
provision, and 5) assumed unconstitutional and dictatorial powers with
his own bloody ‘Kill List’ etc.
Barack Obama has ushered into being a New Plantation in the U.S.
Indeed, Barack Obama has ushered into being a New Plantation in the
U.S. - complete with his own network of non-critically thinking
“sheeple,” who excuse his every act of murder abroad, destruction of
civil liberties inside the U.S., and his de facto collaboration with
corporate hegemony and economic austerity against the everyday people of
this nation and world. This 21st century New Plantation in ‘America’
represents a terrible mockery of the historical and contemporary
struggle and numerous sacrifices that so many ordinary people of all
colors have made.
Barack Obama’s (U.S. corporate/military) New Plantation has
psychologically and economically neutralized and re-enslaved an
overwhelming amount of people in this nation, including a large portion
of Black America.We everyday people of all colors are slaves on this New Plantation,
and will remain so, unless and until we recognize our own enslavement
and act to free ourselves and each other. In the words of Harriet
Tubman: “I freed a thousand slaves - I could have freed a thousand more
if only they knew they were slaves.”
Third Party debates: Ending the foreign policy monologue
Many watching US President Barack Obama debate Republican nominee
Mitt Romney on foreign policy issues were taken aback (or some even
pleased, I suppose) - each candidate functioned as an echo chamber for
the other.
The encounter may very well go down in history as the "me too
debate." If a viewer had little, or indeed any, knowledge of American
foreign policy, then he or she probably would have come to the
conclusion that the country's relationship with the world was just fine
and "American exceptionalism" stands on a solid moral foundation.
Both
candidates appeared satisfied with their performance too – both could
claim to be the winner in the debate. The fact is both candidates lost,
the American people lost and the world continues to be threatened by
America's unbridled power, from drones to starting wars of choice. But
it doesn't have to be this way. This is why America's voters should
tune-in to the Third Party debate which will be televised by RT America
in Washington on November 5.
Libertarian Party candidate Gary
Johnson will face-off Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Neither are
experts in foreign policy, but this does not matter. What does matter is
the refreshing fact that Johnson and Stein can speak openly without the
fear of what special vested interests and lobbies demand for support
and money. Expect to hear what some Americans say amongst themselves,
but hardly ever hear or read in mainstream media. Many voters are tired
of war, bloated government budgets, expensive (and essentially useless)
nation-building in foreign countries (after these same countries are
destroyed by the Pentagon and other actors never held to account).
The
Gary Johnson and Jill Stein debate is an important public service in a
country that claims to be the beacon of free speech and political
pluralism. Mainstream media long ago failed the American people – not to
speak of the countless millions around the world who have fallen victim
to a foreign policy that is rarely seriously debated in the US. This
Third Party debate is a small step toward reclaiming a more open and
democratic conversation about foreign policy among Americans.
The following is a short list of issues I believe need to be debated by voters and candidates of all parties:
* Presidential war powers
* The legality of using drones
* Foreign military aid to tyrants and dictatorships around the world
* Radically re-casting or completely shutting down the "war on drugs"
* Ending uncritical support of Israel and its illegal colonization of Palestinian lands
* Honestly engaging Iran through diplomacy
* Significantly scaling back or completely dismantling NATO
* Turning to the United Nations to resolve conflicts, not start them
* Stopping the export of "democracy" through the use of force
* Treating Russia as an equal partner to resolve conflicts
There
is nothing particularly radical or even original about calling for
debate on these issues. They are discussed all the time by scholars,
activists, and foreign policy experts. Sadly, they are purposefully
denied a place in mainstream politics and media. It is time to take back
the foreign policy debate. Those who control it today do not have the
interests of the voters (or the world) in mind.
Source: http://rt.com/usa/news/us-election-third-party-770/
Hacking Voting Machines: Easier Than Ever Imagined
Millions of Americans are already waiting for hours outside of
polling places to vote for the next president of the United States. All
of that might not matter though, as some security pros say the entire
election can be rigged all too easily. In one example, it wouldn’t take much more than ten dollars’ worth of
parts from any RadioShack store to steal and manipulate votes. It’s
called a man-in-the-middle attack and the computer program that logs the
results on electronic voting machines isn’t even compromised.
“It’s a classic attack on security devices,” Roger Johnston tells Popular Science. “You
implant a microprocessor or some other electronic device into the
voting machine, and that lets you control the voting and turn cheating
on and off. We’re basically interfering with transmitting the voter’s
intent.”
According to the magazine, anyone from a high-school
student to an octogenarian could corrupt the voting process. Johnston
is the head of the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National
Laboratory and has done it himself, even on camera. It wouldn’t be hard
for others, he says, and some fear that that could easily be the case on
Election Day. And with many prediction polls estimating a close contest
between President Barack Obama and Republican Party challenger Mitt
Romney this year, it wouldn’t take much to render the entire contest
corrupted.
On the website for
Argonne, Johnston says Americans believe too often that election
officials assume — incorrectly — that it takes a computer genius capable
of a nation-state cyberassault or a frazzled, Hollywood-designed hacker
to turn an electronic voting machine on its head. And while that route
is once that can be taken too, it isn’t the only way to ruin an
election. Insider threats from election officials or anyone with
access to a voting machine could easily alter contests, and monitors
aren’t necessarily on the look-out for that kind of unauthorized access.
“And a lot of our election judges are little old ladies who
are retired, and God bless them, they’re what makes the elections work,
but they’re not necessarily a fabulous workforce for detecting subtle
security attacks,”
Johnston tells Popular Science. In the example
of hijacking the computer transmission with a few bucks’ worth of
electronics, it wouldn’t require much more than walking into a polling
place and entering a booth with the right knowhow and intent, and most
machines can be access without even requiring a two-dollar lockpick and a
tiny tension bar.
“No one signs for the machines when they show up.
No one’s responsible for watching them. Seals on them aren’t much
different from the anti-tamper packaging found on food and
over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. Think about tampering with a food or
drug product: You think that’s challenging?” he asks.
Johnston
has recorded himself demonstrating how a logic analyzer, an Allen
wrench and a screwdriver is all it takes to change votes to register for
one candidate instead of another by using a man-in-the-middle attack.
Although it hasn’t been verified yet, a video posted to YouTube early on
November 6 from an account registered to “Centralpavote” shows what is
reported to be a similar machine showing signs typical of exactly that
kind of abuse —not in a test setting, though, but only hours before the
polls close for real [VIDEO].
This
Election Day, the touchscreen Diebold Accuvote-TSX will be used by
more than 26 million voters in 20 states, while the push-button Sequoia
AVC machine will be deployed to four states for use by almost 9
million voters. Johnston says purchasing a $10 logic analyzer from
RadioShack is easily enough to snoop and see who any voter intends on
electing, and from there those digital transmissions can be hijacked and
told to mean something else. For experts, though, there are even other
ways to wreak havoc on the polls.
Johnston says the machines
don’t transmit data with encryption, so anyone with a basic
understanding of digital communications can figure out how a user votes
if they’ve accessed the machine with one of those logic analyzers.
Sequoia — the company responsible for making a good share of America’s
electronic voting machines — do encrypt the results of each vote,
though. Well, kind of.
Andrew W. Appel of Princeton, NY bought a
few used AVC Advantage voting machine made by Sequoia off an online
auction site for only $82 just a couple of years ago. Once they arrived,
he accessed the machine’s innards and says it was easy to start to see
how things worked.
“I was surprised at how simple it was for
me to access the ROM memory chips containing the firmware that
controls the vote-counting,” Appel writes on his personal website. Despite claims from Sequoia that the machine wasn’t easily hackable, Appel says,
“The AVC Advantage can be easily manipulated to throw an election
because the chips which control the vote-counting are not soldered on to
the circuit board of the DRE. This means the vote-counting firmware
can be removed and replace with fraudulent firmware.”
In
another study carried out at The University of Iowa in 2003, Douglas W
Jones from the school’s Department of Computer Science found that
any voting machine purchased second-hand — like even those Diebold
machines deployed across a good chunk of America — can also be hacked
with ease.
“It appeared that the security keys for the encryption used by the I-mark software were hard-coded into the voting application,” he found when examining a Diebold Accuvote TS. “As
things stood, their system relied on security through obscurity, so
they must take measures to assure that their code remains obscure and
that no copy of their code ever leaks out into public. I told them that
the moment one of their machines goes to the landfill or is otherwise
disposed of, someone might extract their encryption key and all of their
security claims would become meaningless.”
According to
Jones, even claims made by voting machine companies that their devices
are secure are just that — mere accusations hard for the layperson to
verify without first learning a few things about electronics, encryption
or just how to disassemble the front panel from an electronic voting
machine. Viruses can also be sent to machines, malwares can corrupt code
and nothing sure by pristine, 100 percent out-of-the-box sterility can
assure voters that they aren’t casting ballots on a tampered machine.
“We've
all used ATMs, and most everyone (except my quasi-Luddite self) has
something such as an iPod. Now, have you ever, anytime, anywhere, had
one of these electronic devices switch data input on you?” asks Selwyn Duke of American Thinking in a recent article. “So
how is it that in our high-tech universe of flawlessly functioning
electronic gadgets, voting machines are the only ones prone to
human-like ‘error’? If there's an explanation other than human meddling,
again, I'd truly like to hear it.”
Given the post-election
discussion on fraud, intimidation, chads and corrupted computerized
tally machines that have come with seemingly every political contest in
recent years, explanations — valid or not — are expected to be rampant
following this week’s vote. If history is any indication, though, don’t
expect these things to work themselves out before 2016.
Source: http://rt.com/usa/news/voting-machine-election-hack-088
Voting machine password hacks as easy as 'abcde', details Virginia state report
Touchscreen voting machines used in numerous elections between 2002
and 2014 used “abcde” and “admin” as passwords and could easily have
been hacked from the parking lot outside the polling place, according to
a state report. The AVS WinVote machines, used in three presidential elections in
Virginia, “would get an F-minus” in security, according to a computer
scientist at tech research group SRI International who had pushed for a formal inquiry by the state of Virginia for close to a decade.
In a damning study published Tuesday, the Virginia
Information Technology Agency and outside contractor Pro V&V found
numerous flaws in the system, which had also been used in Mississippi
and Pennsylvania. Jeremy Epstein, of the Menlo Park, California, nonprofit SRI
International, served on a Virginia state legislative commission
investigating the voting machines in 2008. He has been trying to get them decertified ever since. Anyone within a half mile could have modified every vote, undetected, Epstein said in a blog post.
“I got to question a guy by the name of Brit Williams, who’d certified
them, and I said, ‘How did you do a penetration test?’” Epstein told the
Guardian, “and he said, ‘I don’t know how to do something like that’.”
Reached by phone, Williams, who has since retired, said he did not
recall the incident and referred the Guardian to former colleagues at
Kennesaw State University who have taken over the certification duties
he used to perform for Virginia and other states. “You could have broken into one of these with a very small amount of
technical assistance,” Epstein said. “I could teach you how to do it
over the phone. It might require an administrator password, but that’s
okay, the password is ‘admin’.” Bypassing the encrypted WEP wireless system also proved easy. The
password turned out to be “ABCDE”, according to the state’s security
assessment – and getting the password “would take a few minutes and
after that you don’t need any tools at all”, said Epstein.
The
commission that stripped the machines of certification also found that
the version of Windows operating on each of them had not been updated
since at least 2004, that it was possible to “create and execute
malicious code” on the WINVote and that “the level of sophistication to
execute such an attack is low”. The WINVote machine, manufactured by Advanced Voting Solutions, a
now-defunct Texas company, has been under siege by Epstein and others
for years; the units have been used in at least two dozen elections
across the state. Mississippi and Pennsylvania stopped using them
several years ago. Epstein said it is likely no one will ever know
whether or not they were tampered with.
“There are no logs kept in the systems,” Epstein said. “I’ve examined
them.” In order to determine anything about the machines’ histories, in
fact, a very high level of technical sophistication would be required,
on a level with the FBI looking at images of deleted files on a
suspect’s hard drive. “Bottom line is that if no Virginia elections were ever hacked (and
we have no way of knowing if it happened), it’s because no one with even
a modicum of skill tried,” Epstein wrote on his blog.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/15/virginia-hacking-voting-machines-security
Voting either Democrat or Republican is waste of vote – Scott Olsen
Both the main US parties are working for the same system and taking
money from the same people, so choosing between them makes no sense, war
vet and Occupy Wall Street icon Scott Olsen told RT. He added that now OWS is changing its strategies it may not be quite
as visible, but he believes the future will be a successful one for
Occupy.
RT: You are one of dozens of war
veterans who have returned their medals to NATO generals here in
Chicago, throwing the medals into the direction where NATO leaders were
meeting. What is the reason for this? Do you feel betrayed?
Scott Olsen:
I really do. And betrayal is the biggest fact here I think. We have all
joined the military for our own reasons. But we joined to help other
people, to be part of something bigger than ourselves and to defend our
country. And when we went over to Iraq, Afghanistan or wherever our
service was, we saw that it just was not true and we are destroying
people’s lives. We are not doing good work in Iraq or Afghanistan and
that’s why I don’t want these medals. Because they represent something
that is not important to me, it is meaningless to me. I am not proud of
being part of the system that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
civilians. That is not something to be proud of and that is not
something to get an award for.
RT: Your
injuries at Occupy Oakland clashes with police got people talking about
the fact that veterans sometimes really do get injured at home after
being injured abroad. Do you think that’s the case?
SO:
I don’t think there are more veterans getting hurt here. But there are a
lot of veterans getting hurt by the system, in a sense that they come
back to a broken system, a system that they feel disconnected from. And
that is why we have eighteen veterans a day committing suicide, that’s
why we have so many homeless veterans. It is the system hurting
veterans.
RT: Why do you think it is that
when billions of dollars are being spent on US warfare, as we speak, we
are seeing a staggering number of homeless and jobless veterans here in
the United States?
SO: Because people are
making money out of these wars. They are getting money from our
government to buy their toys, to buy their equipment and to fund these
wars. That’s how they make their riches. There is always money for war
but we never have money for schools.
RT: Do
you think the authorities, who recruit soldiers such as yourself to do
their bidding for them abroad, are essentially lying to get people to
join the military about the reasons behind the wars the US is involved
with?
SO: For military recruiters they at
least mislead people. They may not lie to you, but they will mislead
you, not give you the whole story. That’s why it is so important if you
think of joining the military to talk to as many veterans as you can
find and get as many points of view as you can.
RT: What do you think the majority of those veterans will say?
SO:
I think the majority would recommend against joining. It is a
life-changing thing and I wouldn’t take my joining back because it made
me who I am, but I would not recommend anyone else to make this mistake.
RT: It
is going to be a year in September since the Occupy Wall Street
movement kick-started. What stage is the movement at now? What should we
be expecting next?
SO: It is not as big now
as it should be. It could always be bigger and louder. We are changing
to other strategies that may not be quite as visible, working on
creating worker-managed businesses that are really going to take the
money away from money-borrowing to the corporate system. That is going
to be really successful for the future of Occupy.
RT:
Some critics of the Occupy Wall Street movement are trying to undermine
the substance of what it is all about by saying that it is almost a
year on and no unified strong single message. What do you say to those
people?
SO: Any time there is a large number
of people demanding change and someone feels threatened they are going
to attack in any way and every way. We do have a message. Everybody who
comes here has their own message. But it is very common, we are working
and we are not getting what we really deserve. We are working our asses
off. We work more than most other countries in the world. And our
salaries have not grown in years, our corporations are making billions
every day and our retirement pensions are being cut, our schools are
being cut.
RT: One of the things the Occupy
Wall Street movement is demanding is the accountability for bankers and
CEOs on Wall Street. Do you think it is naïve to expect this several
years after the economic crisis? Why still demand this?
SO:
I don’t really know if we are going to get the real changes we are
looking for just by asking. It has to be forced change. Banks will
always find a way to screw us over. They will always find a way to
maximize their profits and they maximize their profits without actually
doing any work. So by taking that money they take it from somebody else.
RT: Presidential
elections in the US are just around the corner and four years after
Barack Obama was elected critics are now saying that there is no
difference between Democrats or Republicans as they are two sides of the
same coin. Are you expecting any kind of change to take place after the
elections regardless of which of the parties wins?
SO:
Not particularly. Most likely people are either going to vote for
Democrats or Republicans and I think both those are wrong choices. They
are both working for the same system, they are both taking money from
the same people, from the same banks and you can see in their policy
that they are rewarding their donors. Voting for the continuing of this
policy is not going to change anything at all.
RT:
So considering both Democrats and Republicans essentially bring the
same thing to the table, what is the alternative? What could be the
other option for the United States?
SO:
That’s a good question. You can vote for the third party that may not
win. You may count voting for the third party as a waste of vote, but I
think voting for a Democrat or a Republican is a waste of vote. You are
shooting yourself in the foot if you are voting for either of those.
RT: When
the Occupy Wall Street movement first started, the mainstream media
were trying hard to undermine the protesters. They were saying that it
is a bunch of dirty hippies and later trying to say they have no
message. There was constant criticism and they could not take the
movement seriously. Almost a year on since it has started how do you
assess the way the mainstream media has been covering what the movement
is all about?
SO: They have covered it more
than I was expecting them to. I didn’t expect much of them. And that’s
why we come out here and we build our own media that we need. We build
websites and do web live stream events for everybody to know and to find
out what they are missing out. But it is a shame that the everyday
American is not going to see those things. The American who turns on the
six o’clock news, they don’t hear about these things, just like they
don’t hear about the wars we are still in. Most Americans probably do
not really know that we are at war. They aren’t affected by these
things.
Source: http://rt.com/usa/news/scott-olsen-ows-interview-201/
7 Ways Republicans and Democrats are exactly the same
Cats
vs. dogs. Coke vs. Pepsi. Democrats vs. Republicans. These are the
great divisions of life. But what if one of those rivalries isn’t
actually much of a division at all? Don’t worry, I’m not trying to
reignite the cola wars of the 90s.
(Besides, we all know Coke is the clear winner: Do you order a Jack and
Pepsi?) No, I’m talking about Democrats and Republicans—or rather, the
out-of-date and out-of-step establishments of both parties. For
libertarians, saying both parties are the same is a common theme.
Democrat and Republican partisans dismiss such critiques as cynical or unserious, but there’s a real case to be made if we look at the cold, hard facts.
Here are 7 big reasons there’s no difference between establishment Democrats and Republicans:
1. Both support endless war. It’s been more than a
decade since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and America’s
entanglements are far from over. Though Bush is remembered as the
consummate hawk, Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama has used his time in
office to start or maintain additional wars in Pakistan, Libya, Yemen,
and Somalia. Now, he wants to add Syria to the list. My generation can barely remember peace—and there’s no end in sight for a foreign policy with devastating human and financial costs.
2. Both engage in out-of-control spending. Yes,
deficit spending has accelerated under Barack Obama. But you know what?
There was also a massive acceleration under Bush. The fact is, debt is a bipartisan problem, and neither party is innocent. With $17 trillion of debt (and rapidly counting) as the consequence of decades of bipartisan irresponsibility, the time has passed for pointing fingers and dubbing a slightly slower rate of spending growth a “historic cut.”
4. Both have no respect for the rule of law. Obama swept into office promising a new attention to the rule of law after years of (correct) complaints that Bush often ignored it. “I take the Constitution very seriously,” he maintained to a nation weary for lawfulness. Bush and his GOP Congress were rightly critiqued for rampantly flouting the Constitution, especially the 4th and 5th Amendments (rights to privacy and a fair trial). But as Gitmo remains open, the NDAA makes indefinite detention a possibility for any American, and the list of NSA abuses reaches absurd proportions, Obama’s campaign promise is overdue for a death certificate.
5. Both are bought and paid for by big business. You know what’s the best original idea in politics today? Making politicians wear suits like NASCAR drivers, which display their biggest corporate sponsors. Democrats and Republicans alike would be plastered
with logos. So is it any wonder that many of these same businesses get
massive favors from the government at taxpayers’ expense? DC spends
upwards of $100 billion on corporate welfare annually, not to mention huge one-off expenditures like the bailouts.
6. Both care most about their own power. President Obama recently joked,
“That’s the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I
want.” And while he was just kidding around, his humor was in line with
the bipartisan presidential mindset. In the recent State of the Union
address, the President announced
his intention to continue expanding the power of the Executive at
Congress’ expense. Republicans were duly upset at this power grab, but
historically GOP Presidents have actually averaged slightly more executive orders than Democrats have.
7. Both have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty. Finally, take a look at the big picture:
Our government is reading our emails and monitoring our calls. It gropes us at the airport, wants to keep track of our cars, and plans
to subject us to random security sweeps at concerts and train stations.
We can’t decide for ourselves what to consume, whether to buy
insurance, or who to marry. All our income until mid-April goes directly to the government. America has the highest incarceration rate
in the world, and minorities are subject to unfair, disproportionate
punishment. Is this really the land of the free? In 2014, it’s very
difficult to answer that question in the
affirmative. But it’s easy to see that partisanship isn’t the answer—and
neither is bipartisan big government. As America moves toward a new,
liberty-friendly policy consensus, let’s toss this outdated left vs. right rivalry and focus on the real fight: Washington vs. us.
Source: http://rare.us/story/7-ways-republicans-and-democrats-are-exactly-the-same/#8U5KkO7U40AszEKP.99
Both Republicans and Democrats have forsaken our country and left it a shell of its former self
Taxes are too high. Taxes are too low. Healthcare is too expensive.
Healthcare is too poor. Drugs should be legal. Drugs should be illegal.
Pro-choice, pro-life, you can probably see where this is going. There
are a lot of questions that citizens have about society and its laws and
an equal amount of opinions, and the government seeks to answer them
all. There must be something wrong with the system though, for every
decision made seems to have an equal share of praise and loathe.
Every
so often the power shifts in Washington and the agenda of those in
power is pursued vigorously for a few years. As soon as the people are
fed up with that scheme another one is voted in to office. Inevitably
this "new" party of hope and change doesn’t amount to much either and
again, the people will re-elect the notions of the first party. We play a
game of political chess where those who have their temporary power put
as much of their ideals into affect as possible, until the next comes in
and changes it. On and on we go without ever truly going anywhere.
Republicans
and Democrats swear up and down that they completely oppose each other,
based on principle, on creed, on anything they can disagree on. They
claim to be the antithesis of the other, but neither of the parties
really separates itself in policy. We’ve become so accustomed to having
these as the only power brokers in Washington; we don’t consider that
these parties are really just two subsets of the same party, two sides
of the same coin, the Federalists.
When viewing the small picture
we lose sight that although the parties disagree on how to implement
big government they absolutely believe in an enormous, all-powerful
government and only disagree on how it should be implemented. The
question is never raised of why the income tax still exists; only how
much it should be. Neither asks why we’ve maintained a war on drugs for
decades, which has only led to greater drug problems and interventionism
in other nations. They only argue about which substances should be
legal or not. Remember that alcohol was legal until prohibition, then
illegal for a time, then legalized again. Again, the federal government
only asks which drugs should be legal, not if they should be making
those decisions at all.
Now this ideal of an all-powerful federal
government may not apply to true Republicans, as that party would
denounce such efforts to expand federal control, but the platform of the
current "Republican" party as it has been for several decades and as we
know it today, is very much attached to the idea of expansive control
and as such they belong to the same Federalist party.
The federal
government attempts to make its business as many decisions as possible.
Why? Quite simply it doesn’t believe that the decisions it makes should
be made by citizens, the very people who are most affected by them.
This should strike people as a gross injustice and a hypocritical
gesture. The very organization which is the pinnacle of inefficiency and
poor decision-making is making your personal decisions.
The
Republicans and Democrats both preach that the government is the sole
entity in place to run an effective market, to implement changes for
"the common good", to make the tough decisions. This strikes me as being
counter-intuitive. Anyone who’s ever been employed by local, state, or
federal government knows the inefficiency and bureaucracy of it. The red
tape, the legal jargon, the blanket regulations and poor
decision-making process. In fact, I would argue that citizens are the
only entity that should make those tough decisions. It is the citizens
who are most affected by policy; therefore, shouldn’t they have a more
concerned interest to make the best decisions possible for themselves?
There
is a reason why so many government tasks are outsourced to the private
sector, because government simply doesn’t handle business very well.
This is not to say that there aren’t intelligent people in those
positions, merely that the government is bogged down in regulation which
prevents it from implementing policy in a timely and effective manner.
Generally speaking, the federal government has stepped out of its lane
and cannot quickly or easily recover from costly mistakes. Again, I
bring up the point of inefficiency and bureaucracy.
In order to
further this point I will provide a short list of some of the policies
and departments put into affect that have had far reaching negative
consequences for the tax payer and individual liberty. Keep in mind that
a policy is much harder to repeal than it is to implement. Those placed
in power tend to stay in power; the same is true for policy no matter
how bad it may be. Here are a few:
The Federal Reserve, the IRS,
the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Education, the
Department of Energy, the income tax, social security, gun control, the
Patriot Act, welfare, and the war on drugs. These are but a few
examples. I will not burden the reader with an overwhelming account of
all poor policies in the U.S.
All of these programs were intended
to be for "the common good" and that seems to be a recurring theme in
the U.S. They have all strayed very far from their original intentions
though. Not because of you or me, because those "watchdogs" we put in
charge of monitoring them have allowed them to become an enormous
presence and burden on taxpayers. Regardless of their intentions they
have become overbearing and unsustainable.
Some will cry out that
these programs and policies aren’t bad, that they are pleasant or even
needed. Some will shrug their shoulders and continue not caring, but
some will have a lingering suspicion that maybe something is wrong. I
will tell you that there absolutely is something wrong. How can it be
possible that a politician in Washington knows what is best for a farmer
in Idaho, a mechanic in Michigan, a stay-at-home Mom in Tennessee, or
even another politician in Washington?
Blanket policies rarely
have the desired effect or support of the public. This is because
America is not simply one big nation that shares all the same beliefs.
We know that there are regions in America with differing values,
beliefs, cultures, and ideals. The Northeast and the Southeast, the
Midwest and the Southwest, the West Coast and rural America, all these
regions share a unifying theme (America), but vary greatly in beliefs.
The
U.S. is one of the largest countries in the world in terms of sheer
land mass and population. America covers more area than the entire
continent of Europe. Anyone with a passing familiarity of Europe knows
that each country is unique, with its own ideals and code of ethics,
values and beliefs. This is because of segmentation. Like-minded people
tend to stay together, thus allowing for differences in beliefs,
attitudes, and cultures. This is one of the facts that made America so
great. There are so many cultures and regions, yet all live under one
national roof. This doesn’t dictate that all will agree on everything,
and that’s fine, we don’t have to agree on everything as long as we
co-exist peacefully.
So how can we maintain a unified America and
still live in a land of differing beliefs? I’ve devised a simple,
implementable plan that would give voice to all, that would allow one to
maintain his or her beliefs without encroaching on the beliefs of
another, a plan that would breed economic prosperity while promoting
individual liberties and freedom. Sounds too good to be true, I know,
but I assure you it is very simple. Even better, it only takes two words
to describe and one of them is "the". The other is "constitution", put
them together and you have "The Constitution".
Whoa, calm down, I
know that’s a completely radical idea that would never work in today’s
age, in fact it’s almost blasphemous. The Federalists would have nothing
to do with it. It’s clearly a broken system and was intended for a time
long before ours. You see, we’re enlightened now and know that silly
notions like individual responsibility, hard work, and choice are a
thing of the past. Let’s not harbor ideas that clearly are outdated,
instead let’s continue to promote the ideals of ultimate government
control, for they are the only capable means of living your life.
Again,
the few of you who were skeptical earlier are even more skeptical now.
You’re right to be. As we’ve clearly seen, the path that we have allowed
our government to dictate to us for the past hundred years has all led
to a socialist nation incapable of protecting liberty and freedom, the
very essence of America. We have suffered countless atrocities to our
freedoms in the name of "national security". We have become a nation of
beggars looking for handouts, and have become dependent on the
Federalists to make all our tough decisions. Decisions once held in contemplation by ordinary citizens are no longer discussed at even the state level.
The
Constitution is very clear in its definitions of federal power. It
grants the federal government very little unifying power and gives
control almost entirely to individual states. There’s that idea again,
you know the one about regions and differing beliefs. The founders knew
that there would be different beliefs and ideals in many regions, we
call them states. The decision was made to give power to the states for
the express purpose of preventing the federal government from
encroaching on cultural (state) beliefs. Article 10 of the Constitution
declares;
"The powers not delegated to the United States by
the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to
the states respectively, or to the people."
For those
unfamiliar with the language and grammar of the day, this simply means
that power not given (delegated) to the federal government, and not
prohibited by the Constitution, is given to the state to decide.
Remember, the purpose of the Constitution is not to deny freedom to
citizens; it is to deny power to the government. Think about that, the
individuals who founded America purposely limited the role of government
in order to allow the people to govern themselves at a local level.
Under
this light, individuals have infinite rights, and the federal
government is very limited in its rights. In fact the sole
responsibility of the federal government, according to this doctrine
that we pretend to respect, is to protect our freedoms, not impose their will upon us.
What
this means for states is that they have the right to declare their own
laws, independent of the federal government. States can choose on their
own merit whether or not citizens may or may not do this or that, so
long as the state doesn’t violate any rights set forth in the
Constitution.
We have obviously strayed very far from this
mentality. Why? Is it more convenient to allow the government to
encroach upon our liberties in exchange for making those tough
decisions? Are all the taxes, legislation, and regulations worth losing
our freedoms over in order to avoid the headache of maintaining a
working republic? Some would say yes, again the Federalists have spoken.
Allow the federal government to make all the tough decisions that we as
citizens don’t want to think about, and in exchange all we have to do
is give up endless amounts of money and freedom.
I reject this
notion. Giving power back to the states, which they rightfully possess,
would allow groups of citizens (states, regions) to live and enjoy life
as they see fit, so long as they do not violate another’s rights in the
process. This may sound like some sort of utopian society, but we
followed that creed for far longer than we have lived with our current
iron-fist society. Of course these Federalist detractors would denounce
that and declare that people are either too lazy, too stupid, or
incapable or leading their lives in a respectable manner. You’ll never
hear it proclaimed in that manner, we just have to look at their actions
in order to understand it.
The federal government very rarely
gives up the power that it has gained; more often than not it tries to
amplify its power to become the supreme ruler. Again we must look at the
Constitution; it very clearly and plainly gives most powers to the
individual states.
The founders knew first-hand, the pains of
government oppression and restricted liberties, more than any of us can
claim today. We mustn’t deceive ourselves with the idea that they lived
in a simple age, without understanding of social progressivism. They
absolutely understood it completely and utterly. A simple understanding
of the pre-revolutionary period and the revolution itself will clearly
illustrate this, but that is for another article.
Following the
Constitution is inconvenient at times, it can be a burden and it was
always acknowledged that it would be. The founders knew that we as
citizens would have to be informed and involved if we were to truly
govern ourselves. They knew that the premises would require constant
vigilance to uphold. They knew that despite the struggles of maintaining
the freedoms outlined in the Constitution, there was no substitute for
self-governance, that ultimate freedom can only be sustained by strict
adherence to it. No matter how small a violation it may seem, any
unconstitutional act is a harbinger of corruption and restriction, even
when these acts are for "the common good". They also knew that the
ultimate threat to this doctrine would be from within, that it would be
the citizens’ lack of interest and complacency that would destroy it,
and destroyed it we have.
Merely uttering the words of the
Constitution elicits grumbling responses, yet this is not because of its
policies, it is because it has become misunderstood and regarded as
inapplicable to this time. A little research and reflection would result
in most citizens proclaiming it to be the greatest written work, that
it is the only logical and sustainable source of freedom. So how did we
get to where we are now? We have allowed our self-governing ways to be
hijacked by a small group who believe they know what is best for you and
me. They convinced us that their intentions were only for "the common
good", that these violations were only temporary and in the name of
"national security", that America would crumble if the program they were
preaching wasn’t implemented. The usurpations of our freedoms and
liberties continue with no sign of slowing.
However, it is not
too late. Fortunately, the Constitution has been designed in such a
manner that it is much easier to begin adhering to it even after
disregarding it for so many years, than it would be to try to start from
scratch.
What is required now is dedication to the principles of
this, the greatest governmental doctrine ever created. It will surely
require citizens to stand up and proclaim that this is a nation of
Americans, not politicians, and that we will govern ourselves as we see
fit. Most people can agree with this proposition as long as they know
that their voice really is heard, that their beliefs are important and
taken into account.
We must immediately begin taking power from
the federal hands and putting it in those of the states. Perhaps the
state you or I live in will not make the decision we were hoping for,
but isn’t that better than the federal government making that same
decision for all Americans? After all, it is relatively easy to move to
another state if you disagree with its stance, it is very difficult to
move to another country.
We can argue and bicker all we want
within our states about abortion, gay marriage, taxes, welfare, etc. Let
us not allow the federal government to impose their decision on all
states, if we make the wrong decision then it has only been for the
citizens of a single state, not all citizens in America.
The
debate of Republican vs. Democrat is age-old. I propose that it doesn’t
even matter anymore. The debate should be Federalist vs. not. To be
honest most Americans are not Federalists, despite the positions of
their party. They have simply been left behind by a small group of
politicians who think they know what is best for us and desire ultimate
control. Let us realize that in order to order to sustain true freedom
and liberty we must make do with these petty differences. Once we accept
this fact we can move forward and begin to live our own lives again.
We
must re-learn to exercise our right to petition the government like our
forefathers did. We must realize again that we the people are
responsible for making those tough decisions and governing ourselves. We
must place pressure on politicians when they forsake us by restricting
our liberty. We must take action to end this allowance of government
control over our lives.
As Natan Sharansky, the great Soviet dissident once said in regards to the Soviet empire; "Even the smallest spark of freedom could set their entire totalitarian world ablaze."
It
starts as a small unified voice and quickly becomes a fevered
following. In time this gives way to a massive movement that can change
lives, governments, and entire nations. Our time has come; we have lived
with the oppression and restriction of our liberties far too long. It
is time to set our totalitarian world ablaze, so that one day we may
flip the coin and see another side of it.
Source: http://www.nolanchart.com/article5855-two-sides-of-the-same-coin.html
Ron Paul: Chuck Hagel and John Brennan Will Carry Out Obama’s Foreign Policy
President Obama announced his choices for key national security
posts this past week, and there has been both celebration and gnashing
of teeth in Washington and around the country. There is widespread
belief that either or both of these nominees will have an immediate and
profound effect on US policy. However, this belief is really just a
mistaken over-emphasis on personnel over policy. We should not forget
that cabinet secretaries serve the president, and not the other way
around.
Many who object to our continued foreign policy of endless war and
empire overseas feel encouraged by Obama’s choice of Senator Hagel to
head the Defense Department. Hagel has shown some admirable willingness
to advise caution overseas. He is seen as unenthusiastic over the
prospects of a US war on Iran, which is certainly to be welcomed. But
let us not forget that he did vote for the war against Iraq, he has
expressed support for multi-lateral sanctions on Iran, and last year he
wrote in the Washington Post that, on Iran, he supports “keeping all
options on the table, including the use of military force.”
Nevertheless because he does represent a more moderate voice in
foreign policy than the neo-conservatives can tolerate, they are
dragging his name through the mud. In choosing Hagel, then, we can hope
the president is signaling that he will pursue a less aggressive foreign
policy in his second term. But we cannot count on it.
At the same time, the president has chosen John Brennan as Central
Intelligence Agency director — a man who is considered the author of
Obama’s destructive drone warfare policy, and who as such has been in
charge of the president’s secret “kill list” that has already claimed
the lives of three American citizens. He claimed in 2011 that there were
no collateral deaths from the US drone attacks on Pakistan, which is
simply not believable. We also should not forget that as then-CIA
director George Tenet’s right hand man during the Bush presidency,
Brennan was certainly involved in the manufactured intelligence and lies
that led the US to attack Iraq.
The real problem is in placing too much emphasis on the person the
president hires to carry out his foreign and defense policy, as it
ignores that policy itself. If the president has decided to continue or
even expand US military action overseas through more covert warfare and
use of special operations forces, which seems to be the case, it will
matter little who he chooses to carry out those policies. If the
president decides to continue to provide support to rebels in Syria who
have dubious ties to Islamic extremists, to continue to meddle in the
internal affairs of countless countries overseas, to continue to refuse
to even talk with Iran without preconditions, and so on, we will not see
a return to foreign policy sanity no matter who occupies what position
in the president’s cabinet.
So we should be optimistic that the president may see the wisdom in
pursuing a foreign policy that is truly in our national interest, but we
should always keep an eye on the policies over the personnel.
Source: http://www.ronpaul.com/2013-01-13/ron-paul-chuck-hagel-john-brennan-will-carry-out-obamas-foreign-policy/
Exposed! How the Billionaires Class Is Destroying Democracy
Out
of the guts of the internet, we find an endless stream of
misattributed quotes and made-up stories that end up in chain emails
that you eventually receive from your loopy uncle in Texas who's trying
to justify right-wing economics or anti-Obama conspiracy theories. It's
just one of the headaches of the Internet Age. But, there's one quote in
particular that's always attributed to an
obscure Scottish historian, Sir Alexander Frasier Tytler (as if that
gave it great credibility), and it seemed to both make sense and
prophecy the end of the American Republic.
Tytler was supposed to have said: "A democracy cannot exist as a
permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters
discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury.
From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising
the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a
democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a
dictatorship." Tyltler goes on to talk about the process by which democracies fail as a result of this "voter selfishness."
The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two
hundred years," he was rumored to have said. "These nations have
progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from
spiritual faith to great courage; from great courage to liberty; from
liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to
complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again to bondage."
Now, here's the reality: Tytler never said any of these words. They
can all be tracked back to right-wing American businessmen in the early
decades of the twentieth century. And why would right-wing businessmen
say such things? Because, in actual point of fact, the thing that
corrupts democracies is not "the voters" demanding "free stuff" (to
paraphrase Romney), but, instead, its businessmen buying off
politicians. It's not the powerless who corrupt democracies, as that viral
right-wing quote would suggest; it's the powerful who corrupt
democracies. And money is the source of that power.
Yes, over the last hundred years, average American people have voted
themselves benefits like Social Security, unemployment insurance,
Medicare, and Medicaid. But at the same time, they've also supported tax
increases to pay for all of these things. Remember, the Social Security
tax only applies to the first $113,000 of wages - earned income. People
like Paris Hilton and Mitt Romney, when they get all their money from
capital gains, dividends, and carried interest, don't pay a penny of
Social Security taxes on their millions of income. And the average top
CEO in America, with an income of $13.7 million a year, over a million a
month, only pays Social Security taxes on his first few days of income
every year - every other day is Social Security tax-free. Quite
literally, as Leona Helmsley famously said, only the "little people" pay
such taxes. The safety net program for working class people is
exclusively paid for by working class people.
On the other hand, when the Billionaire Class extracts benefits from
the government for themselves, the generally don't pay higher taxes. The
billions in taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil, trillions in bailouts and
bonuses for Wall Street banksters, and hundreds of billions for war
profiteers are always accompanied by demands for more tax cuts at the
top.
And, truth be told, billionaires aren't even receiving these benefits
by voting for them. Instead, they always get them through the simple
process of buying politicians. For example, Sheldon Adelson spent $150 million
in the last election. That's more than any American spent in any
election in American history. And he spent all that money to give
himself the "benefits" of derailing an Obama Justice Department
investigation into his casino in China and to get his taxes cut even
further.
Billionaires also corrupt democracy to get their benefits through
billionaire-funded think tanks, like the Koch-funded American
Legislative Exchange Council that writes legislation to benefit
Corporate America, and then has Republicans state lawmakers introduce
and pass laws in state after state, across the nation. But despite this very clear reality of who is demanding largesse from
our government, it's still working people and average voters who are
targeted by right-wingers and their viral emails as the selfish
"takers." That's the reason why the Business Roundtable
is saying the best way to fix insurance programs like Social Security
and Medicare is to raise the retirement age to 70 and voucherize
Medicare.
Of course, the average CEO for an S&P 500 company doesn't need
Social Security. But they know that by raising the retirement age,
they're shielding themselves from any tax increases that may come with
raising that payroll tax cap, so even billionaires pay into Social
Security, which will quickly and easily make that insurance program
solvent forever. America's fiscal problems have nothing to do with voters. In fact,
the Billionaire Class is trying to make it harder and harder for people
to vote by pushing for voter suppression ID laws and restrictions on
early voting.
America's fiscal problems are a direct result of the Billionaire
Class working behind the scenes of our democracy and syphoning off
massive amounts of wealth for themselves while paying lower taxes than
they've paid in a half-century. As Senator Bernie Sanders points out,
a quarter of all profitable corporations in America pay zero federal
taxes. And Mitt Romney and Paris Hilton's income tax rates top out at 20
percent.
Tytler didn't really say those words that the Billionaire Class
think-tanks and email shills attribute to him. But, had he said them, he
probably would have something more along the lines of this: "A
democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the billionaires discover that they can steal for themselves largess of the public treasury through buying politicians. From that time on the billionaires will always buy candidates promising them
the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a
democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a
dictatorship."
If we are concerned about the future of our American democratic
republic, the way to preserve it isn't to protect it from greedy Social
Security recipients by pushing the retirement age back to 70. It's to
get money out of government, thus neutering the political power of the
Billionaire Class. And that means reversing two core doctrines that the
US Supreme Court has created out of thin air (at the request of big
business and billionaires): that corporations are people, and that money
is speech. The best way to do that is through a constitutional amendment that
says corporations are not people, and money is property and not speech.
Source: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14011-exposed-how-the-billionaires-class-is-destroying-democracy
The Lies Of Democracy and the Language Of Deceit
In an increasingly media-driven age, language is everything and
is often used by officialdom to tyrannise meaning. With the deaths of
millions on its hands since 1945, the US has become the world’s number
one terror state. By the 1980s, former CIA man John Stockwell had put
the figure at six million. As a recent article has indicated, from mass
bombing in Southeast Asia to employing death squads in South America,
the US military and the CIA have been directly and indirectly
responsible for an updated figure of an estimated ten million deaths
(1). But it’s not called mass murder these days. Ironically, the US has
hijacked the word ‘terror’ to justify its brand of tyranny through a war on terror.
You can also add to that ten million, countless others whose lives
have been sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit, which did not
rely on the military to bomb peoples and countries into submission, but
on a certain policy. It’s not browbeating. It’s structural adjustment.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers have taken their
own lives over the past decade and a half largely as a result of US
agribusiness manipulating global commodity prices courtesy of policies
enacted on its behalf by the US government or due to the corporate
monopoly, or frontier technology, of terminator seeds that also landed farmers in debt which was just too much for them to bear (2).
The plight of Indian farmers is not unique. How many lives have been
cut short across the world because of the inherent structural violence
or silent killing of the everyday seemingly benign functioning of
predatory capitalism? The built-in inequalities of the system have
effectively stolen years from people’s lives, the health from their
bodies, the livelihoods from their hands, the water from their taps and
food from their plates. From the UK to Africa, the subjugated classes –
the now often discarded economic fodder, the cannon fodder during times
of war or the returning heroes to be thrown
overboard by the system on coming home, the people who are to be
manipulated and exploited at will via bogus notions of nationalism or
the national interest – have had their lives
cut short or stripped bare of opportunities due to the hardships imposed
by the iron fist of capitalism (3).
The appropriation of wealth through a system that funnels it from
bottom to top via a process of accumulation by dispossession (4) is
celebrated as growth, prosperity, and freedom of choice,
despite evidence that, from Greece to Spain, the reality for the
majority has been increasing poverty, the stripping away of choice and
misery. You wouldn’t know much about this if you just used the mainstream
media for information, though. Sure, you may have been told to tighten your belt because we are all in it together and must make some sacrifices in these difficult economic times.
And just for good measure, as much of the country (any country) is
thrown onto the scraphead because it is surplus to requirements now that
their jobs have been outsourced abroad, we simply must attack Mali,
Syria, Libya, Iran (the list goes on) because not to do so would let the
evil-doers take over the world. And then where would we be without such
high-minded notions? It’s not resource plunder. It’s humanitarianism.
Well, we would be precisely where we are right now because the
evil-doers are already in control and waging war not only on the people
of those countries just mentioned, but on the people within their own
countries too via the tools of surveillance, the penal system, the
comotosing effects of spymaster imported illegal drugs or the
infotainment industry and the barrage of legislation that is serving to
strip away civil liberties. The game is up, the dominant Western economy
(the US) is broken beyond repair (5). Imperialism and militarism won’t
save it, but dissent won’t be allowed.
And as private bankers entrap us all even further via their licence
to print and loan currencies to national governments then also loan them
the interest on it that spirals out of hand so it can never be paid
back (6), they are able to line their pockets even further by buying up
national assets on the cheap from the countries they bankrupted in the
first place. It’s not racketeering. It’s austerity.
“And now they’re coming for your social security. They
want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to
their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll
get it. They’ll get it all sooner or later because they own this place.”
Gorge Carlin, writer, critic and comedian.
And where is the mainstream media in all of this? Where are those journalists whose claim to respectability is their rigid professionalism, their accountability, their objectivity?
If you can call professionalism, accountability and objectivity being
in the pocket of and not wishing to offend advertising interests,
officialdom, lobbyists or corporate think tanks then they are paragons
of absolute virtue!
Peddling their high salaried lies, they have failed and continue to
fail the public. By shining their dim ‘investigative’ light on
‘parliamentary procedures’, personalities, the rubber stamping of
policies and the inane machinations of party politics, they merely serve
to maintain and perpetuate the status quo and keep the public in the
dark as to the unaccountable self-serving power broking and unity of
interests that enable Big Oil, Big Banking, Big Pharma, Big Agra and the
rest of them to keep bleeding us all dry.
Looking back to the BBC’s reporting of the NATO bombing of Libya
provides quite revealing insight into the mainstream media. The coverage
was disgracefully one-sided. Is the public to pay for a ‘public
service’ broadcaster in order to be misled and for it to secure our
compliance for illegal state-corporate policies? There was little
analysis of ‘mission’ drift’ or of where the insurgents where getting
their arms from despite a UN-sanctioned arms embargo. Much less of
NATO’s moral right to bomb a path into Tripoli. No talk there of what
University of Johannesburg professor Chris Landsberg said was NATO’s
violation of international law or of the 200 prominent African figures
who accused western nations of subverting international law.
On the other hand, though, what we are served courtesy of the
mainstream media each time Britain decides to wage war is a tasty dish
of nationalistic sentiment and the old colonial mentality of ‘our boys’
going out ‘there’ to help civilise the barbarians.
But that’s the role of the media: to help reinforce and reproduce the
material conditions of an exploitative and divisive social system on a
daily basis. It’s called having a compliant, toothless media. It’s liberal democracy. That’s the role not only of the media, but the education system and the political system too.
And that’s why former British PM was some years ago told by his
financial masters to sell of what was laughingly regarded as ‘the
nation’s gold’ at a knock down price on behalf of bankers’ (not the
nation’s) interests without being held up to genuine public scrutiny.
Some say that was the first ‘bail out’ (7). That’s why taxpayers’ money,
unbeknown to most of the taxpayers, is being used unaccountably and
undemocratically to help prop up banks and to topple various countries
and bring death and destruction to thousands via ‘covert ops’. Covert –
hidden from the public who remain blissfully unaware of where their hard
earned dollars, pounds or euros are actually going.
That’s why the state-corporate fraudsters, murderers and liars who wrap themselves in the language of freedom and democracy have been getting away with it for so long. Sadly, that’s why they continue to do so.
Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-lies-of-democracy-and-the-language-of-deceit/5319515
Why Ignorance Is Democracy's Bliss
The
Iowa caucuses marked the official beginning of the presidential
election cycle. For the next 10 months or so, the American public will
endure polls, pundits, canned stump speeches and negative ads—the media
circus that passes for 21st-century democracy. Despite this flood of
coverage, one troubling feature of our elections will go largely
unmentioned: The typical American voter is uninformed about political
basics. Consider these facts:
• The vast majority of voters can't name their congressman or a single congressional candidate.
• 45% of adults don't know that each state elects two senators.
• 40% of Americans can't name the vice president.
• 63% can't name the chief justice of the U.S.
This
isn't a recent phenomenon. In 1964, at the height of the Cold War,
only 38% of Americans knew that the Soviet Union wasn't part of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In December 1994, a month after the
Republican takeover of Congress, 57% of Americans had never heard of
Newt Gingrich. As Winston Churchill once said, "The best argument
against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average
voter."
Yet
despite this, voting remains the best way to elect leaders. Churchill,
as usual, said it best: "Democracy is the worst form of government
except all the others that have been tried."
Why
are democracies so vibrant even when composed of uninformed citizens?
According to a new study led by the ecologist Iain Couzin at Princeton,
this collective ignorance is an essential feature of democratic
governments, not a bug. His research suggests that voters with weak
political preferences help to prevent clusters of extremists from
dominating the political process. Their apathy keeps us safe.
To
show this, Dr. Couzin experimented on a rather unlikely set of
subjects: fish. Many different species, such as schooling fish and
flocking birds, survive by forming a consensus, making collective
decisions without splintering apart. To do so, these creatures are
constantly forced to conduct their own improvised elections.
The
scientists trained a large group of golden shiners, a small freshwater
fish used as bait, to associate the arrival of food with a blue
target. They then trained a smaller group to associate food with a
yellow target, a color naturally preferred by the fish. Not
surprisingly, when all the trained golden shiners were put in one
aquarium, most of them swam toward the yellow dot; the stronger desires
of the minority, fueled by the shiners' natural preference, persuaded
the majority to follow along.
But
when scientists introduced a group of fish without any color training,
yellow suddenly lost its appeal. All of a sudden, the fish began
following the preferences of the majority, swimming toward the blue
target. "A strongly opinionated minority can dictate group choice," the
scientists concluded. "But the presence of uninformed individuals
spontaneously inhibits this process, returning control to the numerical
majority."
Of
course, many political scientists have criticized this extrapolation
from golden shiners to democratic government, noting that not all
independent voters are ignorant—some are simply moderate—and that a
minority doesn't always represent an extreme view.
Nevertheless,
this research helps to explain the importance of indifference in a
partisan age. If every voter was well-informed and highly opinionated,
then the most passionate minority would dominate decision-making. There
would be no democratic consensus—just clusters of stubborn fanatics,
attempting to out-shout the other side. Hitler's rise is the ultimate
parable here: Though the Nazi party failed to receive a majority of the
votes in the 1933 German election, it was able to quickly intimidate
the opposition and pass tyrannical laws.
So
the next time a poll reveals the ignorance of the voting public,
remember those fish. It's the people who don't know very much who make
democracy possible.
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203471004577140713653796308.html
Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of
Ideas
Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an
unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority
of the society. The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive
Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used
computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where
a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The finding has
implications for the study and influence of societal interactions
ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political
ideals.
In this
visualization, we see the tipping point where minority opinion (shown in
red) quickly becomes majority opinion. Over time, the minority opinion
grows. Once the minority opinion reached 10 percent of the population,
the network quickly changes as the minority opinion takes over the
original majority opinion (shown in green). (Credit: SCNARC/Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute)
"When the
number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no
visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the
amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group
to reach the majority," said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the
Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. "Once
that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame."
As an
example, the ongoing events in Tunisia and Egypt appear to exhibit a
similar process, according to Szymanski. "In those countries, dictators
who were in power for decades were suddenly overthrown in just a few
weeks." The findings were published in the July 22, 2011, early online edition of the journal Physical Review E in an article titled "Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities."
An
important aspect of the finding is that the percent of committed opinion
holders required to shift majority opinion does not change
significantly regardless of the type of network in which the opinion
holders are working. In other words, the percentage of committed opinion
holders required to influence a society remains at approximately 10
percent, regardless of how or where that opinion starts and spreads in
the society.
To reach
their conclusion, the scientists developed computer models of various
types of social networks. One of the networks had each person connect to
every other person in the network. The second model included certain
individuals who were connected to a large number of people, making them
opinion hubs or leaders. The final model gave every person in the model
roughly the same number of connections. The initial state of each of the
models was a sea of traditional-view holders. Each of these individuals
held a view, but were also, importantly, open minded to other views.
Once the
networks were built, the scientists then "sprinkled" in some true
believers throughout each of the networks. These people were completely
set in their views and unflappable in modifying those beliefs. As those
true believers began to converse with those who held the traditional
belief system, the tides gradually and then very abruptly began to
shift.
"In
general, people do not like to have an unpopular opinion and are always
seeking to try locally to come to consensus. We set up this dynamic in
each of our models," said SCNARC Research Associate and corresponding
paper author Sameet Sreenivasan. To accomplish this, each of the
individuals in the models "talked" to each other about their opinion. If
the listener held the same opinions as the speaker, it reinforced the
listener's belief. If the opinion was different, the listener considered
it and moved on to talk to another person. If that person also held
this new belief, the listener then adopted that belief.
"As agents
of change start to convince more and more people, the situation begins
to change," Sreenivasan said. "People begin to question their own views
at first and then completely adopt the new view to spread it even
further. If the true believers just influenced their neighbors, that
wouldn't change anything within the larger system, as we saw with
percentages less than 10."
The
research has broad implications for understanding how opinion spreads.
"There are clearly situations in which it helps to know how to
efficiently spread some opinion or how to suppress a developing
opinion," said Associate Professor of Physics and co-author of the paper
Gyorgy Korniss. "Some examples might be the need to quickly convince a
town to move before a hurricane or spread new information on the
prevention of disease in a rural village."
The
researchers are now looking for partners within the social sciences and
other fields to compare their computational models to historical
examples. They are also looking to study how the percentage might change
when input into a model where the society is polarized. Instead of
simply holding one traditional view, the society would instead hold two
opposing viewpoints. An example of this polarization would be Democrat
versus Republican. The
research was funded by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) through
SCNARC, part of the Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance
(NS-CTA), the Army Research Office (ARO), and the Office of Naval
Research (ONR).
The
research is part of a much larger body of work taking place under SCNARC
at Rensselaer. The center joins researchers from a broad spectrum of
fields -- including sociology, physics, computer science, and
engineering -- in exploring social cognitive networks. The center
studies the fundamentals of network structures and how those structures
are altered by technology. The goal of the center is to develop a deeper
understanding of networks and a firm scientific basis for the newly
arising field of network science.
Source: http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2721&setappvar=page(1)
Scientists say America is too dumb for democracy to thrive
They know what's best for the country
The
United States may be a republic, but it’s democracy that
Americans cherish. After all, that’s why we got into Iraq, right? To
take out a dictator and spread democracy. “Government of the people, by
the people, for the people.” “One
person, one vote.” We are an egalitarian society that treasures the
mandate of its citizenry. But more than a decade’s worth research
suggests that the citizenry is too dumb to pick the best leaders. Work
by Cornell University psychologist David Dunning and
then-colleague Justin Kruger found that “incompetent people are
inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the
quality of those people’s ideas,” according to a report by Life’s Little Mysteries on the blog LiveScience.
“Very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because
most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea
is,” Dunning told Life’s Little Mysteries.
What’s worse is that with incompetence comes the illusion of
superiority. Let’s say a politician comes up with an ingenious plan that
would
ensure universal health care while decreasing health care costs.
According to Dunning-Kruger, no matter how much information is
provided, the unsophisticated would 1) be incapable of recognizing the
wisdom of such a plan; 2) assume they know better; and 3) have no idea
of the extent of their inadequacy. In other words, stupid people are too
stupid to know how stupid they are. If this seems elitist to you, you
are probably not alone. Maybe we
should only let Ph.D.’s, Mensa members and Jeopardy! champions vote? At
least require a passing an IQ test before you get to cast a ballot?
The scientists do say that the incompetent can be trained to improve,
but only if they acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, which
would seem to be a catch-22 since they are too ignorant to do so on
their own. Life’s Little Mysteries said that Mato Nagel, a sociologist in
Germany, ran a computer simulation of a democratic election based on
Dunning and Kruger’s theories: “In his mathematical model of the election, he assumed that voters’
own leadership skills were distributed on a bell curve — some were
really good leaders, some, really bad, but most were mediocre — and that
each voter was incapable of recognizing the leadership skills of a
political candidate as being better than his or her own. When such an
election was simulated, candidates whose leadership skills were only
slightly better than average always won.”
It would appear then that democracy dooms us to mediocrity and
misinformed choices. Not exactly encouraging news for the next round of
California’s ballot initiatives.
Source: http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2012/03/09/scientists-say-america-is-too-dumb-for-democracy-to-thrive/
The Decline of Democracy: Greece displays the post-liberal variety, Egypt the pre-liberal one. Both are rotten
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other
forms that have been tried from time to time. Everyone knows who said
this, and everyone thinks it's true. But is it, really?
After last weekend I've begun to have my doubts. In Egypt, the ruling
military junta reacted to the apparent victory of Muslim Brotherhood
presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi by stripping the presidential
office of its powers. That came just days after Egypt's top court
dissolved the Islamist-dominated parliament, which had been freely
elected only a few months ago. How arbitrary. What an affront to the Egyptian people. Now let's hope it works.
Then there's Greece, which also had an election over the weekend. The
Greeks are supposed to have made the "responsible" choice in the person
of Antonis Samaras, the Amherst- and Harvard-educated leader of the
center-right New Democracy party. Responsible in this case means trying
to stay in the euro zone by again renegotiating the terms of a bailout
that Greeks cannot possibly repay and will not likely honor.
Yet the more depressing fact about the election is that Mr. Samaras
didn't even get 30% of the vote. The rest was divided among the
radical-left Syriza (27%), the socialist Pasok (12.3%), the anti-German
Independent Greeks (7.5%), the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn (7%), the
center-left Democratic Left (6.2%) and, finally, the good old Communist
Party (4.5%).
In other words, the Greeks gave a solid 46%
of their vote to parties that are evil, crazy or both, even while erring
on the side of "sanity" with parties that are merely foolish and
discredited. Imagine that in 1980 Jimmy Carter had eked out a slim
victory over a Gus Hall-Lyndon LaRouche ticket, and you have the
American equivalent to what just happened in Greece.
Should anyone be surprised that democracy is having such a hard time
in the land of Pericles? Probably not—and not just because Greece is
also the land of Alcibiades. Despite its storied past, modern Greek
democracy, like much of modern European democracy, is of a post-liberal
variety. Post-liberalism seeks to replace the classical liberalism of
individual liberty, limited government, property rights and democratic
sovereignty with a new liberalism that favors social rights, social
goods, intrusive government and transnational law.
In
practice, post-liberalism is a giant wealth redistribution scheme.
It bankrupted Greece and will soon bankrupt the rest of Europe. What
happens to bankrupt democracies? Think Weimar Germany, Perón's
Argentina, and, more recently, Yeltsin's Russia.Now take Egypt. There,
instead of post-liberal democracy, you have the energetic stirrings of pre-liberal democracy.
What is pre-liberal democracy? It is democracy shorn of the values
Westerners typically associate it with: free speech, religious liberty,
social tolerance, equality between the sexes and so on. Not only in
Egypt, but in Tunisia, Turkey and Gaza, popular majorities have made a
democratic choice for parties that put faith before freedom and
substituted the word of God for the rule of law.
Apologists for this sort of democracy argue that it still beats the
alternatives, not just the coarse authoritarianism typified by Hosni
Mubarak but also the progressive-autocratic model that used to prevail
in Turkey. They also argue that democracy has a way of taming
ideologically extreme political leaders by tethering them to the needs
and wishes of the people, just as a talented cowboy will rope and halter
an unruly horse.
But there's a problem with this
analogy: In pre-liberal societies, it is the people who are the horse
and the leaders who do the roping, not the other way around. An Egypt
ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood will respect democratic procedure only
to the extent that it does not infringe on the Brotherhood's overarching
goals: "Restoring Islam in its all-encompassing conception; subjugating
people to God; instituting the religion of God; the Islamization of
life," according to Khairat Al Shater, the Brotherhood's de facto
leader.
That's the kind of democracy we can soon expect from Egypt unless the
military somehow gets the upper hand politically. Don't bet on it. If
post-liberal democracy is unsustainable ("They always run out of other
people's money," as Margaret Thatcher quipped), pre-liberal democracy is
irresistible. The objections of an aged and ambivalent junta will not
long stand in the way of millions of Egyptians demanding their right to
choose unfreedom freely.
The good news is that Egyptians may have a wider conception of
freedom in 30 years or so, about the same amount of time it took
Khomeinism to lose the masses in Iran. In 30 years, too, the Greeks may
have a better appreciation of the notion of responsibility, both
personal and political. As for what remains of the liberal democratic
world, maybe the weekend elections will be a reminder of another famous
political maxim: "A republic—if you can keep it."
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303836404577474312596058338.html
When Democracy Weakens
As
the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what
is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on
the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name
only. While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with
unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real
power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and
corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want.
The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.
So
what we get in this democracy of ours are astounding and increasingly
obscene tax breaks and other windfall benefits for the wealthiest,
while the bought-and-paid-for politicians hack away at essential public
services and the social safety net, saying we can’t afford them. One
state after another is reporting that it cannot pay its bills. Public
employees across the country are walking the plank by the tens of
thousands. Camden, N.J., a stricken city with a serious crime problem,
laid off nearly half of its police force. Medicaid, the program that
provides health benefits to the poor, is under savage assault from
nearly all quarters. The poor, who are suffering from an all-out
depression, are never heard from. In terms of their clout, they might
as well not exist. The Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion
dollars or more for the president’s re-election bid. Politicians in
search of that kind of cash won’t be talking much about the wants and
needs of the poor. They’ll be genuflecting before the very rich.
In
an Op-Ed article in The Times at the end of January, Senator John
Kerry said that the Egyptian people “have made clear they will settle
for nothing less than greater democracy and more economic
opportunities.” Americans are being asked to swallow exactly the
opposite. In the mad rush to privatization over the past few decades,
democracy itself was put up for sale, and the rich were the only ones
who could afford it. The corporate and financial elites threw astounding
sums of money into campaign contributions and high-priced lobbyists
and think tanks and media buys and anything else they could think of.
They wined and dined powerful leaders of both parties. They flew them
on private jets and wooed them with golf outings and lavish vacations
and gave them high-paying jobs as lobbyists the moment they left the
government. All that money was well spent. The investments paid off big
time.
As
Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson wrote in their book, “Winner-Take-All
Politics”: “Step by step and debate by debate, America’s public
officials have rewritten the rules of American politics and the American
economy in ways that have benefited the few at the expense of the
many.”
As
if the corporate stranglehold on American democracy were not tight
enough, the Supreme Court strengthened it immeasurably with its Citizens
United decision, which greatly enhanced the already overwhelming
power of corporate money in politics. Ordinary Americans have no real
access to the corridors of power, but you can bet your last Lotto
ticket that your elected officials are listening when the corporate
money speaks.
When
the game is rigged in your favor, you win. So despite the worst
economic downturn since the Depression, the big corporations are sitting
on mountains of cash, the stock markets are up and all is well among
the plutocrats. The endlessly egregious Koch brothers, David and
Charles, are worth an estimated $35 billion. Yet they seem to feel as
though society has treated them unfairly.
As
Jane Mayer pointed out in her celebrated New Yorker article, “The
Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower
personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and
much less oversight of industry — especially environmental
regulation.” (A good hard look at their air-pollution record would make
you sick.)
It’s
a perversion of democracy, indeed, when individuals like the Kochs
have so much clout while the many millions of ordinary Americans have
so little. What the Kochs want is coming to pass. Extend the tax cuts
for the rich? No problem. Cut services to the poor, the sick, the young
and the disabled? Check. Can we get you anything else, gentlemen?
The
Egyptians want to establish a viable democracy, and that’s a long,
hard road. Americans are in the mind-bogglingly self-destructive
process of letting a real democracy slip away. I had lunch with the
historian Howard Zinn just a few weeks before he died in January 2010.
He was chagrined about the state of affairs in the U.S. but not at all
daunted. “If there is going to be change,” he said, “real change, it
will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people
themselves.” I thought of that as I watched the coverage of the ecstatic
celebrations in the streets of Cairo.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/opinion/12herbert.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Trump and Political Circuses Are Nothing New
Roman politicians whipped up crowds, warned about ‘outsiders’ and insulted their rivals.
Ancient Romans would find the drama of American primary elections
eerily familiar. Like us, the Romans treated politics as theater,
attending speeches and rallies where political figures worked the crowd.
They held popular elections and supported charismatic leaders who
thrived on celebrity. When Cicero ran for consul around 63
B.C., his brother Quintus wrote a fascinating manual of political
advice. Quintus urged Cicero to be available night and day to citizens
who needed his services, to look alert and interested when voters spoke,
and to make them believe he cared. It was the beginning of a romance,
when followers come to believe that what leaders do, they do for them.
But before aspiring officeholders can be seen as worthy of public affection, they first must be seen. Reality-TV star Donald Trump
is a modern-day master at capturing public notice, but he is no
trailblazer. Those seeking power have always found ways to achieve
celebrity. Romans vying for office bleached their togas a
brilliant white, making them stand out. Candidates also surrounded
themselves with throngs of supporters to attract maximum attention. The
“social media” campaigns of Julius Caesar and Augustus featured
flattering portraits displayed in public places. After being elected,
they stamped their profiles on coins to further enhance their celebrity.
Star
power fueled narcissism then as it does now. Julius Caesar was a deft
schmoozer, adept at working the crowd. Affable and adored by soldiers,
he was the kind of guy you could drink the famed Falernian wine with.
But his narcissism undermined him. Caesar became hated for his
arrogance, and dozens of Roman senators joined the conspiracy to
assassinate him.
Winning political arguments has always required
style, not just substance. And nobody in the age of the Republic was
better at style than Cato the Censor. As the Senate debated around 149
B.C. what action to take against its old foe Carthage, Cato produced a
cluster of grapes from the folds of his toga. He declared, no doubt
falsely, that they had been picked in Carthage the same day. His
dramatic performance worked. Though Carthage hadn’t posed a serious
threat for over half a century, Cato energized his compatriots’ fears of
its resurgence, silenced critics and shaped a docile following. Rome
declared war and finally destroyed Carthage in 146 B.C.
Charismatic
leaders are good actors. Whether facing constituents, competitors or
enemies, they present themselves as dominant and fit. When Gaius
Popilius Laenas first encountered the Seleucid King Antiochus IV in 168
B.C., he used a stick to draw a circle in the sand around the king. He
ordered him not to cross it until he agreed to do Rome’s bidding.
Intimidated by the brazen act, the king acquiesced. Roman leaders knew
that anger stunts contemplation. Opponents excoriated one another with
vitriolic insults. Cicero accused Mark Antony
of having been a male prostitute in his youth and of frequenting
brothels later in life. Such slurs, difficult to disprove, distracted
attention from Antony’s achievements and Cicero’s flaws.
Shared
feelings and actions have always been used by charismatic leaders to
bring people together in common cause. At Julius Caesar’s funeral Mark
Antony whipped mourners into a collective frenzy by revealing the dead
man’s lacerated body. Today the synchronous chants of “Bernie!” and
“Hillary!” or the contagious booing and applauding at the Republican
debates help transform individuals into easy-to-lead collectives. Overstating
the threat posed by “outsiders” also reinforces the common identity of
the “insiders.” Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, suggested around
33 B.C. that his rival, Mark Antony, had become the plaything of the
enemy’s most famous seductress, Queen Cleopatra of Egypt. Octavian
warned that if Antony came to power, then a foreigner would become
Rome’s queen. Now Mr. Trump professes concern that the Canadian-born Ted Cruz could become president.
As
the politically savvy Quintus understood, voters are romanced more by
appearance than reality. Roman leaders knew that politics is theater,
and much depends on the power of the script and the stardom and charisma
of the performer. In this sense, political figures through the ages are
cut from the same bleached cloth.
Mr. Garland is a classics professor, and Ms. Keating a psychology professor, at Colgate University.
Super PACs a disaster for democracy
In 1907, Congress banned corporate
contributions to federal candidates in the wake of the robber baron-era
scandals. In 1947, the ban was formally applied to corporate
expenditures and extended to cover labor unions. In
1974, Congress enacted limits on individual contributions to federal
candidates and political committees in the wake of the Watergate
scandal. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United case
declared the corporate expenditure ban unconstitutional, holding that
independent expenditures could not be constitutionally limited in
federal elections, and implicitly that corporations could give unlimited
amounts to other groups to spend, as long as the expenditures were made
independently from the supported candidate. Subsequently, the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in the SpeechNow case held that the limits on individual contributions to groups that made independent expenditures were unconstitutional.
Thus was born the super PAC.
And thus was born the national campaign finance scandals that are unfolding daily in the 2012 elections. Super
PACs are federally registered political action committees that raise
unlimited contributions from the super rich, corporations, labor unions
and other entities and spend these funds to make "independent"
expenditures in federal elections. They are an unmitigated disaster for the American people. A recent study by Demos and the U.S. Public Interest Group found that, as Politico reported,
"Super PACs raised about $181 million in the last two years -- with
roughly half of it coming from fewer than 200 super-rich people." The
study also found that 93% of the itemized contributions raised by super
PACs came in contributions of $10,000 or more, with more than half of
this money coming from just 37 people who each gave $500,000 or more.
Super
PACs are a game for millionaires and billionaires. They are a game for
corporations and other wealthy interests. Meanwhile, citizens are pushed
to the sidelines to watch the corruption of our democracy. In
the 2012 presidential election, an even more insidious version of the
super PAC was born -- the candidate-specific super PAC. Every
significant presidential campaign has had a super PAC -- created and
run by close associates of the candidate -- that raises unlimited
contributions to spend only to support that presidential candidate. Presidential
candidate-specific super PACs are simply vehicles for the presidential
candidates and their supporters to circumvent the limits on
contributions to candidates enacted to prevent corruption. Most of the
super PAC money has been spent on attack ads.
We already have seen Sheldon Adelson and his wife give $10 million to the presidential super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich. One couple! $10 million! The
claim that these presidential super PACs are operating "independently"
from the presidential candidates, as is required by law, is absurd and
has no credibility. Last week,
President Barack Obama reversed course and agreed to send Cabinet
members, White House staff and campaign officials to speak at and
participate in fundraising events for Priorities USA Action,
the allegedly "independent" super PAC supporting Obama's re-election.
Days later, Mitt Romney's campaign announced that senior Romney
campaign aides would do the same and appear and speak at fundraising
events for Restore Our Future, Romney's allegedly "independent" super
PAC.
Sound independent?
According
to the Supreme Court's view, a corporation that spends $30 million to
elect a senator will not be able to buy corrupting influence over the
senator's positions because the corporation has not "coordinated" its
expenditures with the senator. Democracy
21 believes these super PACs are indeed engaging in illegally
coordinated activities and is requesting the Justice Department to
investigate. Super PACs corrupt our political system in two ways. First,
super PACs allow a relatively few super-rich individuals and other
wealthy interests to have greatly magnified and undue influence over the
results of our elections. Second,
super PACs allow the super rich and wealthy interests to buy influence
over government decisions, in the event the candidate wins.
The
Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case that unleashed this
is built entirely on a fiction: that "independent" expenditures by
corporations cannot have a corrupting influence on federal
officeholders. This is fantasy, not reality. Important
steps can and must be taken to deal with candidate-specific super PACs
within the boundaries of the destructive Citizens United decision. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, has introduced the DISCLOSE 2012 Act
to close gaping loopholes in the disclosure laws. It requires super
PACs immediately to disclose their donors and campaign expenditures, and
requires the PACs' top five donors, and the amounts they gave, to be
listed on each of their ads. This legislation is essential to inform
citizens about who is providing the money to influence their votes.
In
addition, Democracy 21 is preparing legislation to shut down super PACs
that are closely tied to the candidate they are supporting. The
legislation would treat these super PACs legally as arms of the
candidate's campaign and subject to the contribution limits that apply
to the candidate. Five Supreme Court
justices have done enormous damage to our country with one of the worst
decisions in the history of the court. This will not be allowed to stand. Citizens
will rise up to demand and achieve fundamental reforms, as we have
before when threatened with the systemic corruption of our government
and officeholders.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/15/opinion/wertheimer-super-pacs/
Just 158 families have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House
They
are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male,
in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black
and brown voters. Across a sprawling country, they reside in an
archipelago of wealth, exclusive neighborhoods dotting a handful of
cities and towns. And in an economy that has minted billionaires in a
dizzying array of industries, most made their fortunes in just two:
finance and energy. Now they are deploying their vast wealth in the
political arena, providing almost half of all the seed money raised to
support Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Just 158 families,
along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in
the first phase of the campaign, a New York Times investigation found.
Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so
much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized
by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision five years ago.
These donors’ fortunes reflect the shifting
composition of the country’s economic elite. Relatively few work in the
traditional ranks of corporate America, or hail from dynasties of
inherited wealth. Most built their own businesses, parlaying talent and
an appetite for risk into huge wealth: They founded hedge funds in New
York, bought up undervalued oil leases in Texas, made blockbusters in
Hollywood. More than a dozen of the elite donors were born outside the
United States, immigrating from countries like Cuba, the old Soviet
Union, Pakistan, India and Israel. But regardless of industry, the families investing
the most in presidential politics overwhelmingly lean right,
contributing tens of millions of dollars to support Republican
candidates who have pledged to pare regulations; cut taxes on income,
capital gains and inheritances; and shrink entitlement programs. While
such measures would help protect their own wealth, the donors describe
their embrace of them more broadly, as the surest means of promoting
economic growth and preserving a system that would allow others to
prosper, too.
Mostly Backing Republicans
“It’s a lot of families around the country who are
self-made who feel like over-regulation puts these burdens on smaller
companies,” said Doug Deason, a Dallas investor whose family put $5
million behind Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and now, after Mr. Perry’s exit,
is being courted by many of the remaining candidates. “They’ve done
well. They want to see other people do well.”
In marshaling their financial resources chiefly
behind Republican candidates, the donors are also serving as a kind of
financial check on demographic forces that have been nudging the
electorate toward support for the Democratic Party and its economic
policies. Two-thirds of Americans support higher taxes on those earning
$1 million or more a year, according to a June New York Times/CBS News
poll, while six in 10 favor more government intervention to reduce the
gap between the rich and the poor. According to the Pew Research Center,
nearly seven in 10 favor preserving Social Security and Medicare
benefits as they are. Republican candidates have struggled to improve
their standing with Hispanic voters, women and African-Americans. But as
the campaign unfolds, Republicans are far outpacing Democrats in
exploiting the world of “super PACs,” which, unlike candidates’ own
campaigns, can raise unlimited sums from any donor, and which have so
far amassed the bulk of the money in the election.
The 158 families each contributed $250,000 or more
in the campaign through June 30, according to the most recent available
Federal Election Commission filings and other data, while an additional
200 families gave more than $100,000. Together, the two groups
contributed well over half the money in the presidential election -- the
vast majority of it supporting Republicans. “The campaign finance system is now a
countervailing force to the way the actual voters of the country are
evolving and the policies they want,” said Ruy Teixeira, a political and
demographic expert at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.
Like most of the ultrawealthy, the new donor elite
is deeply private. Very few of those contacted were willing to speak
about their contributions or their political views. Many donations were
made from business addresses or post office boxes, or wound through
limited liability corporations or trusts, exploiting the new avenues
opened up by Citizens United, which gave corporate entities far more
leeway to spend money on behalf of candidates. Some contributors, for
reasons of privacy or tax planning, are not listed as the owners of the
homes where they live, further obscuring the family and social ties that
bind them.
But interviews and a review of hundreds of public
documents — voter registrations, business records, F.E.C. data and more —
reveal a class apart, distant from much of America while
geographically, socially and economically intermingling among
themselves. Nearly all the neighborhoods where they live would fit
within the city limits of New Orleans. But minorities make up less than
one-fifth of those neighborhoods’ collective population, and virtually
no one is black. Their residents make four and a half times the salary
of the average American, and are twice as likely to be college educated.
Most of the families are clustered around just
nine cities. Many are neighbors, living near one another in
neighborhoods like Bel Air and Brentwood in Los Angeles; River Oaks, a
Houston community popular with energy executives; or Indian Creek
Village, a private island near Miami that has a private security force
and just 35 homes lining an 18-hole golf course. Sometimes, across party lines, they are patrons of
the same symphonies, art museums or at-risk youth programs. They are
business partners, in-laws and, on occasion, even poker buddies.
Living Near One Another
More than 50 members of these families have made the
Forbes 400 list of the country’s top billionaires, marking a scale of
wealth against which even a million-dollar political contribution can
seem relatively small. The Chicago hedge fund billionaire Kenneth C.
Griffin, for example, earns about $68.5 million a month after taxes,
according to court filings made by his wife in their divorce. He has
given a total of $300,000 to groups backing Republican presidential
candidates. That is a huge sum on its face, yet is the equivalent of
only $21.17 for a typical American household, according to Congressional
Budget Office data on after-tax income. The donor families’ wealth reflects, in part, the
vast growth of the financial-services sector and the boom in oil and
gas, which have helped transform the American economy in recent decades.
They are also the beneficiaries of political and economic forces that
are driving widening inequality: As the share of national wealth and income going to the middle class has shrunk, these families are among those whose share has grown.
Mainly in Finance and Energy
The accumulation of wealth has been particularly rapid
at the elite levels of Wall Street, where financiers who once managed
other people’s capital now, increasingly, own it themselves. Since 1979,
according to one study,
the one-tenth of 1 percent of American taxpayers who work in finance
have roughly quintupled their share of the country’s income. Sixty-four
of the families made their wealth in finance, the largest single faction
among the super-donors of 2016.
But instead of working their way up to the
executive suite at Goldman Sachs or Exxon, most of these donors set out
on their own, establishing privately held firms controlled individually
or with partners. In finance, they started hedge funds, or formed
private equity and venture capital firms, benefiting from favorable tax
treatment of debt and capital gains, and more recently from a rising
stock market and low interest rates. In energy, some were latter-day
wildcatters, early to capitalize on the new drilling technologies and
high energy prices that made it economical to exploit shale formations
in North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. Others made fortunes
supplying those wildcatters with pipelines, trucks and equipment for
“fracking.”
In both energy and finance, their businesses, when
successful, could throw off enormous amounts of cash — unlike
industries in which wealth might have been tied up in investments. Those
without shareholders or boards of directors have had unusual freedom to
indulge their political passions. Together, the two industries
accounted for well over half of the cash contributed by the top 158
families.
Princeton Study Confirms 'US Is An
Oligarchy'
Despite
the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories
of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the
American public actually have little influence over the policies our
government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to
democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and
association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we
believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business
organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then
America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened. - From a recent study titled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens by Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern University
In response to the publication of an academic study that essentially
proves the United States is nothing more than an oligarchy, many
commentators have quipped sentiments that go something like “so tell me
something I don’t know.” While I agree that the conclusion is far from
surprising to anyone paying attention, the study is significant for two
main reasons.
First, there is a certain influential segment of the population which
has a disposition which requires empirical evidence and academic
studies before they will take any theory seriously. Second, some of the
conclusions can actually prove quite helpful to activists who want to
have a greater impact in changing things. This shouldn’t be particularly
difficult since their impact at the moment is next to zero.
What is most incredible to me is that the data under scrutiny in the
study was from 1981-2002. One can only imagine how much worse things
have gotten since the 2008 financial crisis. The study found
that even when 80% of the population favored a particular public policy
change, it was only instituted 43% of the time. We saw this first hand with the bankster bailout in 2008, when Americans across the board were opposed to it, but Congress passed TARP anyway (although they had to vote twice).
Even more importantly, several years of supposed “economic recovery”
has not changed the public’s perception of the bankster bailouts. For
example, a 2012 study showed that only 23% percent of Americans favored
the bank bailouts and the disgust was completely bipartisan, as the Huffington Post points out.
Personally, I think the banker bailouts will go down as one of the
most significant turning points in American history. Despite widespread
disapproval, Congress passed TARP and it was at that moment that many
Americans “woke up” to the fact they are nothing more than economic
slaves with no voice. That they are serfs. Even more importantly, once
oligarchs saw what they could get away with they kept doubling down and
doubling down until we find ourselves in the precarious position we are
in today. A society filled with angst and resentment at the fact that the 0.01% have stolen everything.
Another thing that the study noted was that average citizens
sometimes got what they wanted, but this is almost always when their
preferences overlap with the oligarchs. When this occurs it is entirely
coincidental, and in many cases may the result of public opinion being
molded by the elite-controlled special interest groups themselves. How
pathetic. I read the entire 42 page study and have highlighted what I found to
be the key excerpts below. Please share with others and enjoy:
Multivariate
analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups
representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on
U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest
groups have little or no independent influence. The
results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite
Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of
Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. Until very recently, however, it has been impossible to test the
differing predictions of these theories against each other within a
single statistical model that permits one to analyze the independent
effects of each set of actors upon policy outcomes.
A major challenge to majoritarian pluralist theories, however, is
posed by Mancur Olson’s argument that collective action by large,
dispersed sets of individuals with individually small but collectively
large interests tends to be prevented by the “free rider” problem.
Barring special circumstances (selective incentives, byproducts,
coercion), individuals who would benefit from collective action may have
no incentive to personally form or join an organized group.
If everyone thinks this way and lets George do it, the job is not
likely to get done. This reasoning suggests that Truman’s “potential
groups” may in fact be unlikely to form, even if millions of peoples’
interests are neglected or harmed by government. Aware of the collective
action problem, officials may feel free to ignore much of the
population and act against the interests of the average citizen.
As to empirical evidence concerning interest groups, it is well
established that organized groups regularly lobby and fraternize with
public officials; move through revolving doors between public and
private employment; provide self-serving information to officials;
draft legislation; and spend a great deal of money on election
campaigns. Moreover, in harmony with theories of biased pluralism, the evidence clearly indicates that most U.S. interest groups and lobbyists represent business firms or professionals. Relatively
few represent the poor or even the economic interests of ordinary
workers, particularly now that the U.S. labor movement has become so
weak.
What makes possible an empirical effort of this sort is the
existence of a unique data set, compiled over many years by one of us
(Gilens) for a different but related purpose: for estimating the
influence upon public policy of “affluent” citizens, poor citizens, and
those in the middle of the income distribution.
Gilens and a
small army of research assistants gathered data on a large, diverse set
of policy cases: 1,779 instances between 1981 and 2002 in which a
national survey of the general public asked a favor/oppose question
about a proposed policy change.
In any case, the imprecision that results from use of our
“affluent” proxy is likely to produce underestimates of the impact of
economic elites on policy making. If we find substantial effects upon
policy even when using this imperfect measure, therefore, it will
be reasonable to infer that the impact upon policy of truly wealthy
citizens is still greater.
Some particular U.S. membership organizations – especially the
AARP and labor unions– do tend to favor the same policies as average
citizens. But other membership groups take stands that are unrelated
(pro-life and pro-choice groups) or negatively related (gun owners)
to what the average American wants. Some membership groups may reflect
the views of corporate backers or their most affluent constituents.
Others focus on issues on which the public is fairly evenly divided. Whatever
the reasons, all mass-based groups taken together simply do not add up,
in aggregate, to good representatives of the citizenry as a whole.
Business-oriented groups do even worse, with a modest negative over-all
correlation of -.10.
The estimated impact of average citizens’ preferences drops
precipitously, to a non-significant, near-zero level. Clearly the median
citizen or “median voter” at the heart of theories of Majoritarian
Electoral Democracy does not do well when put up against economic elites
and organized interest groups. The chief predictions of pure theories
of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy can be decisively rejected.
Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over
policy decisions; they have little or no independent influence on policy
at all.
By contrast, economic elites are estimated to have a quite
substantial, highly significant, independent impact on policy. This does
not mean that theories of Economic Elite Domination are wholly upheld,
since our results indicate that individual elites must share their
policy influence with organized interest groups. Still,
economic elites stand out as quite influential – more so than any other
set of actors studied here – in the making of U.S. public policy.
The incredible thing here is that they use the 90th percentile to gauge the “economic elite,” when we well know that it is the “oligarchs” themselves and the businesses they run that call all the shots. It would have been interesting if they isolated the impact of the 0.01%.
These
results suggest that reality is best captured by mixed theories in
which both individual economic elites and organized interest groups
(including corporations, largely owned and controlled by wealthy elites)
play a substantial part in affecting public policy, but the
general public has little or no independent influence. In our 1,779 policy cases, narrow pro-change majorities of the
public got the policy changes they wanted only about 30% of the time. More
strikingly, even overwhelmingly large pro-change majorities, with
80% of the public favoring a policy change, got that change only about
43% of the time.
Amidst all of the bad news in this study, there is one conclusion from which we can find a silver lining.
The
importance of business groups’ numerical advantage is also revealed
when we rescale our measures of business and mass-oriented
interest group alignments to reflect the differing number of groups in
each of these categories. Using
this rescaled measure, a parallel analysis to that in table 4 shows
that on a group-for-group basis the average individual business group
and the average mass-oriented group appears to be about equally
influential. The
greater total influence of business groups in our analysis results
chiefly from the fact that more of them are generally engaged on each
issue (roughly twice as many, on average), not that a single
business-oriented group has more clout on average than a single mass
based group.
Relatively few
mass-based interest groups are active, they do not (in the aggregate)
represent the public very well, and they have less collective impact on
policy than do business-oriented groups – whose stands tend to be
negatively related to the preferences of average citizens.
These business groups are far more numerous and active; they spend much
more money; and they tend to get their way.
What the paragraphs above demonstrate is that the public has become
very, very bad at organizing and that they aren’t even in the same
ballpark as the the business groups. While mass-based interest groups
will never be able to compete financially, we now live in a world of
crowd-funding and a great deal of angst. Thus, there appears to be some
low hanging fruit available for the activist community to pick at and
become more organized.
Furthermore,
the preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy,
the preferences of “affluent” citizens) have far more independent impact
upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do. To
be sure, this does not mean that ordinary citizens always lose out;
they fairly often get the policies they favor, but only because those
policies happen also to be preferred by the economically elite citizens
who wield the actual influence.
But sure, keep chanting USA! USA! and keep sending your children to die overseas for no good reason.
Of
course our findings speak most directly to the “first face” of power:
the ability of actors to shape policy outcomes on contested issues. But
they also reflect – to some degree, at least – the “second face” of
power: the ability to shape the agenda of issues that policy
makers consider. The set of policy alternatives that we analyze is
considerably broader than the set discussed seriously by policy makers
or brought to a vote in Congress, and our alternatives are (on average)
more popular among the general public than among interest groups. Thus
the fate of these policies can reflect policy makers’ refusing to
consider them rather than considering but rejecting them. (From our data
we cannot distinguish between the two.) Our
results speak less clearly to the “third face” of power: the ability of
elites to shape the public’s preferences. We know that interest groups
and policy makers themselves often devote considerable effort to shaping
opinion. If they are successful, this might help explain the high
correlation we find between elite and mass preferences. But it cannot
have greatly inflated our estimate of average citizens’ influence on
policy making, which is near zero.
So what’s the conclusion? Well we aren’t a Democracy and we aren’t a
Constitutional Republic. As I and many others have noted, we have
descended into something far worse, an neo-fedualistic Oligarchy.
What
do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly
constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who
want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy
preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings
indicate, the majority does not rule -- at least not in
the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a
majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with
organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the
strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when
fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally
do not get it.
A possible
objection to populistic democracy is that average citizens are
inattentive to politics and ignorant about public policy; why should we
worry if their poorly informed preferences do not influence policy
making? Perhaps economic elites and interest group
leaders enjoy greater policy expertise than the average citizen does.
Perhaps they know better which policies will benefit everyone, and
perhaps they seek the common good, rather than selfish ends, when
deciding which policies to support.
But we tend to
doubt it. We believe instead that – collectively – ordinary
citizens generally know their own values and interests pretty well, and
that their expressed policy preferences are worthy of respect.
Moreover, we are not so sure about the informational advantages of
elites. Yes, detailed policy knowledge tends to rise with income and
status. Surely wealthy Americans and corporate executives tend to know a
lot about tax and regulatory policies that directly affect them. But
how much do they know about the human impact of Social Security,
Medicare, Food Stamps, or unemployment insurance, none of which is
likely to be crucial to their own well-being? Most important, we see no
reason to think that informational expertise is always accompanied by an
inclination to transcend one’s own interests or a determination to work
for the common good.
All in all, we
believe that the public is likely to be a more certain guardian of its
own interests than any feasible alternative. Leaving aside
the difficult issue of divergent interests and motives, we would urge
that the superior wisdom of economic elites or organized interest groups
should not simply be assumed. It should be put to
empirical test. New empirical research will be needed to pin
down precisely who knows how much, and what, about which public
policies.
Our findings also point toward the need to learn more about
exactly which economic elites (the “merely affluent”? the top 1%? the
top 0.01%?) have how much impact upon public policy, and to what ends
they wield their influence. Similar questions arise about the
precise extent of influence of particular sets of organized interest
groups. And we need to know more about the policy preferences and the
political influence of various actors not considered here, including
political party activists, government officials, and other non-economic
elites. We hope that our work will encourage further exploration of
these issues.
Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous
studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest
that majorities of the American public actually have little influence
over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many
features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections,
freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested)
franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful
business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then
America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.
So when Sam Zell or any other oligarch prances around on television
saying that the “poor should be more like the rich,” what he’s really
saying is you need to sell your soul and attempt to become an oligarch.
Otherwise, you’re fucked. This is a truly excellent study and I suggest you read the entire thing here, if you have the time.
Jimmy Carter Is Correct that the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy
On July 28th,
Thom Hartmann interviewed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and, at
the very end of his show (as if this massive question were merely an
aftethought), asked him his opinion of the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014 McCutcheon
decision, both decisions by the five Republican judges on the U.S.
Supreme Court. These two historic decisions enable unlimited secret
money (including foreign money) now to pour into U.S. political and
judicial campaigns. Carter answered:
"It violates the essence
of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's
just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of
getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And
the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress
members. So, now we've just seen a subversion of our political system as
a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get,
favors for themselves after the election is over. ... At the present
time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited
money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in
Congress has a great deal more to sell."
He was then cut off by the program, though that statement by Carter should have been the start of the program, not its end.
(And the program didn't end with an invitation for him to return to
discuss this crucial matter in depth -- something for which he's
qualified.) So: was this former president's provocative allegation
merely his opinion? Or was it actually lots more than that? It was lots more than that.
Only
a single empirical study has actually been done in the social sciences
regarding whether the historical record shows that the United States has
been, during the survey's period, which in that case was between 1981
and 2002, a democracy (a nation whose leaders represent the
public-at-large), or instead an aristocracy (or 'oligarchy') -- a nation
in which only the desires of the richest citizens end up being
reflected in governmental actions. This study was titled "Testing Theories of American Politics," and it was published by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page in the journal Perspectives on Politics,
issued by the American Political Science Association in September 2014.
I had summarized it earlier, on 14 April 2014, while the article was
still awaiting its publication.
The headline of my summary-article was "U.S. Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy Says Scientific Study."
I reported: "The clear finding is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, no
democratic country, at all. American democracy is a sham, no matter how
much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control
the nation's 'news' media)." I then quoted the authors' own summary:
"The preferences of the average American appear to have only a
minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public
policy."
The scientific study closed by saying: "In the United
States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule--at least not
in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes." A few
other tolerably clear sentences managed to make their ways into this
well-researched, but, sadly, atrociously written, paper, such as: "The
preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the
preferences of 'affluent' citizens) have far more independent impact
upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do." In
other words, they found: The rich rule the U.S.
Their study
investigated specifically "1,779 instances between 1981 and 2002 in
which a national survey of the general public asked a favor/oppose
question about a proposed policy change," and then the
policy-follow-ups, of whether or not the polled public preferences had
been turned into polices, or, alternatively, whether the relevant
corporate-lobbied positions had instead become public policy on the
given matter, irrespective of what the public had wanted concerning it.
The study period, 1981-2002, covered the wake of the landmark 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Buckley v. Valeo,
which had started the aristocratic assault on American democracy, and
which seminal (and bipartisan) pro-aristocratic court decision is
described as follows by wikipedia:
It "struck down on First Amendment grounds several provisions in the
1974 Amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act. The most prominent
portions of the case struck down limits on spending in campaigns, but
upheld the provision limiting the size of individual contributions to
campaigns. The Court also narrowed, and then upheld, the Act's
disclosure provisions, and struck down (on separation of powers grounds)
the make-up of the Federal Election Commission, which as written
allowed Congress to directly appoint members of the Commission, an
executive agency."
Basically, the Buckley decision, and
subsequent (increasingly partisan Republican) Supreme Court decisions,
have allowed aristocrats to buy and control politicians.
Already,
the major 'news' media were owned and controlled by the aristocracy,
and 'freedom of the press' was really just freedom of aristocrats to
control the 'news' -- to frame public issues in the ways the owners
want. The media managers who are appointed by those owners select, in
turn, the editors who, in their turn, hire only reporters who produce
the propaganda that's within the acceptable range for the owners, to be
'the news' as the public comes to know it.
But, now, in the post-Buckley-v.-Valeo
world, from Reagan on (and the resulting study-period of 1981-2002),
aristocrats became almost totally free to buy also the political
candidates they wanted. The 'right' candidates, plus the 'right'
'news'-reporting about them, has thus bought the 'right' people to
'represent' the public, in the new American 'democracy,' which Jimmy
Carter now aptly calls "subversion of our political system as a payoff
to major contributors."
Carter -- who had entered office in 1977,
at the very start of that entire era of transition into an
aristocratically controlled United States (and he left office in 1981,
just as the study-period was starting) -- expressed his opinion that, in
the wake now of the two most extreme pro-aristocratic U.S. Supreme
Court decisions ever (which are Citizens United in 2010, and McCutcheon
in 2014), American democracy is really only past tense, not present
tense at all -- no longer a reality. He is saying, in effect, that, no
matter how much the U.S. was a dictatorship by the rich during 1981-2002 (the Gilens-Page study era), it's far worse now.
Apparently, Carter is correct: The New York Times front page on Sunday 2 August 2015 bannered, "Small Pool of Rich Donors Dominates Election Giving," and reported that: "A
New York Times analysis of Federal Election Commission reports and
Internal Revenue Service records shows that the fund-raising arms race
has made most of the presidential hopefuls deeply dependent on a small
pool of the richest Americans. The concentration of donors is greatest
on the Republican side, according to the Times analysis, where
consultants and lawyers have pushed more aggressively to exploit the
looser fund-raising rules that have fueled the rise of super PACs. Just
130 or so families and their businesses provided more than half the
money raised through June by Republican candidates and their super
PACs."
The Times study shows that the Republican Party
is overwhelmingly advantaged by the recent unleashing of big-corporate
money power. All of the evidence suggests that though different
aristocrats compete against each other for the biggest chunks of
whatever the given nation has to offer, they all compete on the same side against the public,
in order to lower the wages of their workers, and to lower the
standards for consumers' safety and welfare so as to increase their own
profits (transfer their costs and investment-losses onto others); and,
so, now, the U.S. is soaring again toward Gilded Age economic inequality, perhaps to surpass the earlier era of unrestrained robber barons. And, the Times
study shows: even in the Democratic Party, the mega-donations are going
to only the most conservative (pro-corporate, anti-public) Democrats.
Grass-roots politics could be vestigial, or even dead, in the new
America.
The question has become whether the unrestrained power of
the aristocracy is locked in this time even more permanently than it
was in that earlier era. Or: will there be yet another FDR (Franklin
Delano Roosevelt) to restore a democracy that once was? Or: is a
president like that any longer even possible in America? As for
today's political incumbents: they now have their careers for as long as
they want and are willing to do the biddings of their masters. And,
then, they retire to become, themselves, new members of the aristocracy,
such as the Clintons have done, and such as the Obamas will do. (Of
course, the Bushes have been aristocrats since early in the last
century.)
Furthermore, the new age of aristocratic control is not merely national but international in scope; so, the global aristocracy have probably found the formula that will keep them in control until they destroy the entire world.
What's especially interesting is that, with all of the many tax-exempt,
'non-profit' 'charities,' which aristocrats have established, none of
them is warring to defeat the aristocracy itself -- to defeat the
aristocrats' system of exploitation of the public. It's the one thing
they won't create a 'charity' for; none of them will go to war against the expoitative interests of themselves and of their own exploitative peers. They're all in this together,
even though they do compete amongst themselves for dominance, as to
which ones of them will lead against the public. And the public seem to
accept this modern form of debt-bondage, perhaps because of the 'news' they see, and because of the news they don't see (such as this).
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/jimmy-carter-is-correct
Controlled by shadow government: Mike Lofgren reveals how top U.S. officials are at the mercy of the “deep state”
A corrupt network of wealthy elites has hijacked our government, ex-GOP staffer and best-selling author tells Salon
One of the predominant themes of the 2016 presidential campaign thus far
— and one that is unlikely to lose significance once the primaries give
way to the general election — is the American people’s exasperation
with a political system they see as corrupt, self-serving, disingenuous
and out of touch. It
is not an especially partisan or ideological sentiment; you can just as
easily find it among supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders as among fans of
Donald Trump. You can even find those who support paragons of the
status quo, like Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush, making similar complaints.
It’s about as close to a consensus position as you’re likely to find
nowadays in American politics. Yet
despite the widespread agreement that something is seriously wrong
with democracy in the U.S., there’s much less of a consensus as to what
that something is — and, crucially, how to fix it. The answers Bernie
Sanders offers, for example, are not exactly the same as those proffered
by Donald Trump. Is the problem too much government? Not enough
government? Too much immigration? Not enough immigration? Too much
taxing and regulating? Not enough taxing and regulating? Our lack
of a systemic analysis of the problem is part of the reason why our
answers are so diffuse and ill-fitting. And that’s just one of the
reasons why “The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government,”
the new book from ex-longtime GOP staffer turned best-selling author
Mike Lofgren, is so valuable. Lofgren puts a name and a shape to a
problem that has often been only nebulously defined; and while his
conclusions are not exactly uplifting, the logic and sophistication of
his argument is hard to resist. Recently, Salon spoke over the
phone with Lofgren about his book, the deep state and his read on the
current sorry state of American government and politics. Our
conversation, which also touched on President Obama’s relationship with
the deep state, was edited for clarity and length.
How should
we think about the deep state? Is it an elite conspiracy? A loosely
defined social group? A network of specific institutions? How should we
conceive of it?
Well, first of all, it is not a conspiracy. It
is something that operates in broad daylight. It is not a
conspiratorial cabal. These are simply people who have evolved [into] a
kind of position. It is in their best interest to act in this way. And
given the fact that people would rather know about Kim Kardashian than
what makes up the budget or what the government is doing in Mali or
Sudan or other unknown places, this is what you get: a disconnected,
self-serving bureaucracy that is … simply evolving to do what it’s doing
now. That is, to maintain and enhance its own power.
When do you think the American deep state first started?
Probably,
it started in WWII, when we had the Manhattan Project, which was a huge
secret project that required tens of thousands of people to be working
in complete secrecy — and we actually built enormous cities [for the
project’s workers] … and no one knew they existed. You also had the so-called Ultra and Magic secret
[operations], the decoding of the Nazi and Japanese codes that required
an enormous number of people to be doing absolutely top secret work
that they did not reveal to anybody for decades. So, WWII created this
kind of infrastructure of the deep state, which increased and
consolidated during the Cold War.
What are the key institutions and players within the deep state?
The
key institutions are exactly what people would think they are. The
military-industrial complex; the Pentagon and all their contractors (but
also, now, our entire homeland security apparatus); the Department of
Treasury; the Justice Department; certain courts, like the southern
district of Manhattan, and the eastern district of Virginia; the FISA
courts. And you got this kind of rump Congress that consists of certain
people in the leadership, defense and intelligence committees who kind
of know what’s going on. The rest of Congress doesn’t really know or
care; they’re too busy looking about the next election.
So that’s the governmental aspect. What about in the private sector?
You’ve
got Wall Street. Many of these people — whether it is David Petraeus
… or someone like [Bill] Daley, who is the former chief of staff
to President Obama … or Hank Paulson, who came from Goldman Sachs to
become Treasury Secretary and bailed out Wall Street in 2008; or the
people that Obama chose to be Treasury secretary — like Tim Geithner.
They all have that Wall Street connection. And the third thing now is Silicon Valley.
Oh? Why is Silicon Valley now so central?
Because
they generate so much money that they are rivaling and sometimes
surpassing Wall Street. The heads of Google or Apple make more money
than the guys running Wall Street. They make more money than Jamie
Dimon. So that’s the new source of cash to run the deep state.
Silicon
Valley provides a lot of money. But it also has access to an
unfathomable amount of information. Which do you think is more valuable
to the deep state — the cash or the info?
I think you can’t
distinguish the two. There is a tremendous amount of money coming, in
terms of lobbying, for Silicon Valley to get what it wants in terms of
intellectual property and so forth. At the same time, NSA insiders
have told me that they couldn’t even operate without the cooperation of
Silicon Valley, because the communication backbones that are set up and
operated by Silicon Valley provide the vast majority of
information that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are going to
exploit — and they can’t do it themselves. They need the willing or
unwilling cooperation of Silicon Valley.
But when the
Snowden leaks first hit, a lot of Silicon Valley elites implied they
didn’t knowingly or willingly work with the government, no?
There was a certain amount of deception there, after the Edward Snowden revelations. They claimed, Oh, well, the NSA made us do all these things! — but
not really, because NSA, CIA, and these other intelligence
organizations were also involved in giving seed money or subsidies to
various Silicon Valley companies to do these things.
Source:
http://www.salon.com/2016/01/05/controlled_by_shadow_government_mike_lofgren
Public Trust In The U.S. Government Has Plummeted To Historic Lows
Overview
A
year ahead of the presidential election, the American public is
deeply cynical about government, politics and the nation’s elected
leaders in a way that has become quite familiar. Currently, just 19% say
they can trust the government always or most of the time, among the lowest levels in the past half-century.
Only 20% would describe government programs as being well-run. And
elected officials are held in such low regard that 55% of the public
says “ordinary Americans” would do a better job of solving national
problems. Yet at the same time, most Americans have a lengthy to-do list for
this object of their frustration: Majorities want the federal government
to have a major role in addressing issues ranging from terrorism and
disaster response to education and the environment. And most Americans like the way the federal government
handles many of these same issues, though they are broadly critical of
its handling of others – especially poverty and immigration.
A new national survey by Pew Research Center, based on more than
6,000 interviews conducted between August 27 and October 4, 2015, finds
that public attitudes about government and politics defy easy
categorization. The study builds upon previous reports about the
government’s role and performance in 2010 and 1998.
This report was made possible by The Pew Charitable Trusts, which
received support for the survey from The William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation. The partisan divide over the size and scope of government remains as
wide as ever: Support for smaller government endures as a Republican
touchstone. Fully 80% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents
say they prefer a smaller government with fewer services, compared with
just 31% of Democrats and Democratic leaners.
Yet both Republicans and Democrats favor significant government
involvement on an array of specific issues. Among the public overall,
majorities say the federal government should have a major role in
dealing with 12 of 13 issues included in the survey, all except
advancing space exploration. There is bipartisan agreement that the federal government should play
a major role in dealing with terrorism, natural disasters, food and
medicine safety, and roads and infrastructure. And while the
presidential campaign has exposed sharp partisan divisions over
immigration policy, large majorities of both Republicans (85%) and
Democrats (80%) say the government should have a major role in managing
the immigration system. But the partisan differences over government’s appropriate role are
revealing – with the widest gaps on several issues relating to the
social safety net.
Only about a third of Republicans and Republican leaners see a major
role for the federal government in helping people get out of poverty
(36%) and ensuring access to health care (34%), by far the lowest
percentages for any of the 13 issues tested. Fully 72% of Democrats and
Democratic leaners say the government should have a major role in
helping people out of poverty, and 83% say it should play a major role
in ensuring access to health care. Moreover, while majorities of Republicans favor a major government
role in ensuring a basic income for people 65 and older (59%),
protecting the environment (58%) and ensuring access to high-quality
education (55%), much larger shares of Democrats – 80% or more in each
case – favor a large government role. However, these differences are a matter of degree. Overwhelming
numbers of Republicans and Democrats say the federal government should
have either a major or minor role on all 13 issues tested. Relatively few in either party want the government to have no role in these issues, though 20% of Republicans say the government should have no role in ensuring health care.
Source: http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/beyond-distrust-how-americans-view-their-government/
The Myth of U.S. Democracy and the Reality of U.S. Corporatocracy
Polls show that on the major issues of our time -- the Afghanistan
and Iraq wars, Wall Street bailouts and health insurance -- the opinion
of We the People has been ignored on a national level for quite
some time. While the corporate media repeats the myth that the United
States of America is a democracy, Americans, especially Wisonsiners and
Ohioans, know that this is a joke.
On March 3, 2011, a Rasmussen Reports
poll declared that "Most Wisconsin voters oppose efforts to weaken
collective bargaining rights for union workers." This of course didn't
stop Wisconsin Governor Walker and the Wisconsin legislature from passing a bill
that -- to the delight of America's ruling class -- trashed most
collective bargaining rights of public employee unions. Similarly in
Ohio, legislation to limit collective bargaining rights for public
workers is on the verge of being signed into law by Governor Kasich,
despite the fact that Public Policy Polling on March 15, 2011 reported that 54 percent of Ohio voters would repeal the law, while 31 percent would keep it.
It is a myth that the United States of America was ever a democracy
(most of the famous founder elite such as John Adams equated democracy
with mob rule and wanted no part of it). The United States of America
was actually created as a republic, in which Americans were supposed to
have power through representatives who were supposed to actually
represent the American people. The truth today, however, is that the
United States is neither a democracy nor a republic. Americans are ruled
by a corporatocracy: a partnership of "too-big-to-fail" corporations,
the extremely wealthy elite, and corporate-collaborator government
officials.
The reality is that Americans, for quite some time, have opposed the U.S. government's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but We the People have zero impact on policy. On March 10-13, 2011, an ABC News/Washington Post
poll asked, "All in all, considering the costs to the United States
versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war in
Afghanistan has been worth fighting, or not?"; 64 percent said "not
worth fighting" and 31 percent said "worth fighting." A February 11,
2011, CBS poll
reported Americans' response to the question, "Do you think the U.S. is
doing the right thing by fighting the war in Afghanistan now, or should
the U.S. not be involved in Afghanistan now?"; only 37 percent of
Americans said the U.S. "is doing the right thing" and 54 percent said
we "should not be involved." When a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll
on December 17-19, 2010, posed the question, "Do you favor or oppose
the U.S. war in Afghanistan?" only 35 percent of Americans favored the
war while 63 percent opposed it. For several years, the majority of
Americans have also opposed the Iraq war, typified by a 2010 CBS poll
which reported that 6 out of 10 Americans view the Iraq war as "a
mistake."
The opposition by the majority of Americans to current U.S. wars has
remained steady for several years. However, if you watched only the
corporate media's coverage of the 2010 election between Democratic and
Republican corporate-picked candidates, you might not even know that
America was involved in two wars -- two wars that are not only opposed
by the majority of Americans but which are also bankrupting America.
How about the 2008 Wall Street bailout? Even when Americans believed
the lie that it was only a $700 billion bailout, they opposed it; but
their opinion was irrelevant. In September 2008, despite the corporate
media's attempts to terrify Americans into believing that an economic
doomsday would occur without the bailout, Americans still opposed it. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll
in September 2008, asked, "Do you think the government should use
taxpayers' dollars to rescue ailing private financial firms whose
collapse could have adverse effects on the economy and market, or is it
not the government's responsibility to bail out private companies with
taxpayers' dollars?"; only 31 percent of Americans said we should "use
taxpayers" dollars while 55 percent said it is "not government's
responsibility." Also in September 2008, both a CBSNews/New York Times poll and a USA Today/Gallup poll
showed Americans opposed the bailout. This disapproval of the bailout
was before most Americans discovered that the Federal Reserve had loaned
far more money to "too-big-to-fail" corporations than Americans had
been originally led to believe (The Wall Street Journal
reported on December 1, 2010, "The US central bank on Wednesday
disclosed details of some $3.3 trillion in loans made to financial
firms, companies and foreign central banks during the crisis.")
What about health insurance? Despite the fact that several 2009 polls
showed that Americans actually favored a "single-payer" or
"Medicare-for-all" health insurance plan, it was not even on the table
in the Democrat-Republican 2009-2010 debate over health insurance reform
legislation. And polls during this debate showed that an even larger
majority of Americans favored the government providing a "public option"
to compete with private health insurance plans, but the public option
was quickly pushed off the table in the Democratic-Republican debate. A
July 2009 Kaiser Health Tracking poll
asked, "Do you favor or oppose having a national health plan in which
all Americans would get their insurance through an expanded, universal
form of Medicare-for-all?" In this Kaiser poll, 58 percent of Americans
favored a Medicare-for-all universal plan, and only 38 percent opposed
it -- and a whopping 77 percent favored "expanding Medicare to cover
people between the ages of 55 and 64 who do not have health insurance." A
February 2009 CBS News/New York Times poll reported that 59 percent of Americans say the government should provide national health insurance. And a December 2009 Reuters poll
reported that, "Just under 60 percent of those surveyed said they would
like a public option as part of any final healthcare reform
legislation."
In the U.S. corporatocracy, as in most modern tyrannies, there are
elections, but the reality is that giant corporations and the wealthy
elite rule in a way to satisfy their own self-interest. In elections in a
corporatocracy, as is the case in elections in all tyrannies, it's in
the interest of the ruling class to maintain the appearance
that the people have a say, so more than one candidate is offered up. In
the U.S. corporatocracy, it's in the interest of corporations and the
wealthy elite that the winning candidate is beholden to them, so they
financially support both Democrats and Republicans. It's in the interest
of corporations and the wealthy elite that there are only two viable
parties--this cuts down on bribery costs. And it's in the interest of
these two parties that they are the only parties with a chance of
winning.
In the U.S. corporatocracy, corporations and the wealthy elite
directly and indirectly finance candidates, who are then indebted to
them. It's common for these indebted government officials to appoint to
key decision-making roles those friendly to corporations, including
executives from these corporations. And it's routine for high-level
government officials to be rewarded with high-paying industry positions
when they exit government. It's common and routine for former government
officials to be given high-paying lobbying jobs so as to use their
relationships with current government officials to ensure that corporate
interests will be taken care of.
The integration between giant corporations and the U.S. government
has gone beyond revolving doors of employment (exemplified by George W.
Bush's last Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, who had previously been
CEO of Goldman Sachs; and Barack Obama's first chief economic adviser,
Lawrence Summers who in 2008 received $5.2 million from hedge fund D. E.
Shaw). Nowadays, the door need not even revolve in the U.S.
corporatocracy; for example, when President Obama earlier in 2011
appointed General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt as a key economic advisor,
Immelt kept his job as CEO of General Electric.
The United States is not ruled by a single deranged dictator but by
an impersonal corporatocracy. Thus, there is no one tyrant that
Americans can first hate and then finally overthrow so as to end
senseless wars and economic injustices. Revolutions against Qaddafi-type
tyrants require enormous physical courage. In the U.S. corporatocracy,
the first step in recovering democracy is the psychological courage to
face the humiliation that we Americans have neither a democracy nor a
republic but are in fact ruled by a partnership of "too-big-to-fail"
corporations, the extremely wealthy elite, and corporate-collaborator
government officials.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-e-levine/the-myth-of-us-democracy-corporatocracy_b_836573.html
We are Becoming a Plutocracy
Call it Crony Capitalism, or the 1% versus the 99%, or the the tension between Wall Street
and Main Street: One of the major themes in America today is how the
wealthy use their money and position to influence policy and the idea of
success. The accepted notion that our capitalist democratic system is
excessively deferential to people with money will be the theme of
President Obama’s State of the Union speech this coming week. It is the
theme of the Pope’s 2014 message to the world, and was a major topic of
conversation in Davos last week. And it is in the looking glass of
progressive folk around politics like Sen. Elizabeth Warren,
members of the academy as well as the media. And it isn’t going away.
Think of it. Fifty years after LBJ called for a war to eradicate
poverty, there are 47 million people using food stamps to provide food
for their families. The true rate of unemployment, if you add in those
no longer looking for a job, is probably 12-13%. And there are millions
of families with income around $26,000 a year, which is the cutoff point
for being considered in poverty.
By now most Americans who read the press are aware that the top 1% of
Americans are pulling away from the 99%. The top 1% grew their incomes
by 86.1% since 1933; the top 5%, or 15 million individuals, have seen
their incomes rise while everyone else is flat to down. But the real
plutocrats are the top 1/10th of 1%: the 350,000 individuals that
receive 11.33% of overall income. At the very peak are the 1/100th of
1%: the 35,000 individuals with 5.47% of overall income. This is the
amazing cohort at the very peak of our economy, and I believe they, or
others who will replace them, are likely to receive these benefits well
into the future. I don’t rightly see what countervailing power there is
to reduce their take or level it out. They are the individuals with
foundations, hedge funds, private equity firms and social media magnates
who are the new symbols of financial firepower. They help make
Presidents, defeat or pass special legislation, build hospitals, museum
wings, endow universities, libraries, music halls and more.
I’d say whatever corruption of the political process is believed to
happen is overshadowed by charitable philanthropy and the creation and
support of good works NGOs. That’s why I reckon proposals to raise taxes
seriously on the 1% are going to fall on deaf ears from the power
center of the nation. At most, the capital gains tax might be nudged a
bit higher and the deduction for interest on mortgages perhaps capped.
But then again, maybe not, due to the very influence of effective
lobbyists in this ever-growing pot of money.
In short, we’re bound to always have the Koch brothers and the
Sheldon Adelsons who spent more on 2012 elections than the citizens of
12 states taken together. I don’t think you can reverse this trend
unless there is another economic and financial disaster that wipes out a
good portion of these obscene fortunes held by several of the 1%.
(Gates and Buffett and their ilk excluded) Those with the outsize
fortunes are bound to have the outsize influence to influence public
policy. What does need to be slowed down is the ability of the 1% to
mobilize the distribution of even more resources to themselves. For the
mobility of the 39% is at stake in the U.S. As Sen. Marco Rubio put it
the other day — and he is no lefty, progressive ‘tax the rich’ fellow —
“It is the lack of mobility, not just income inequality that should be
focused on.” On Tuesday night, we’ll find out if the President has any
fresh, innovative, credible programs to achieve that end.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2014/01/26/those-with-affluence-have-all-the-influence-in-america/#75f260e13b6d
Dark money, gerrymandering, super-majorities, undemocratic actions that leave the plutocrats in charge. It's coming
The third week in December brought two startling stories
highlighting the ongoing Dixiefication of the Midwest, a key ingredient
in how the GOP, with its aging white male demographic base, is
nonetheless strategically outmaneuvering the Democratic Party on
multiple fronts. They are sharp reminders of how our politics are being
reshaped in state legislatures and on the ground—and how inattentive to
basics the Democrats have become since the demise of the 50-state
strategy.
The story from Wisconsin concerns the secret signing of two laws, which Common Cause of Wisconsin called
an “assault on democracy in Wisconsin,” that “sets good government back
to the 19th Century,” while Rep. Terese Berceau, a Democrat, earlier called the bills nothing short of “an effort to create a permanent one-party state.” The
story out of Michigan is about the sort of dire consequences that can
come from such crippling of democracy: specifically, how the state, via
the dictatorial rule of an appointed “emergency manager,” actively, horrifically poisoned the young children of Flint with lead, leading the mayor to declare a state of emergency
in hopes of getting the state and federal assistance her citizens so
desperately need. It wasn’t just the young children, of course, but
young children are the ones most heavily impacted, their thinking
ability impaired for the rest of their lives. The story from Flint is
most shocking and devastating, but it cannot be understood outside of
the larger framework, which is why I’ll turn to the Wisconsin story
first, where that framework itself is the story, and deal with Flint’s
story in a followup.
First,
a short note about what I mean by “Dixiefication.” It’s a complex
process—economically, a regressive shift toward low-wage, deregulated
oligopoly; culturally, an anti-modernist shift toward backwards-looking,
fear-infused myth and fantasy obsession; politically, an authoritarian
shift toward culture war, demonization, exclusion, and erosion of
accountability. It’s been reflected in both states in a variety of
ways—for example, both Michigan and Wisconsin have become so-called “right to work” states since 2010—a hallmark anti-labor measure pioneered in the South, which severely weakens both the bargaining power and political influence of unions. But
what most clearly situated their Dixiefication in national politics was
their key roles in the extreme anti-democratic gerrymandering that
helped the GOP keep control of the House in 2012, despite losing the
popular vote for House seats by more than half a million votes—which at the same time gave them a stranglehold on state government ever since.
From Union-Busting to Election-Busting
Although
other aspects were also present, in Wisconsin its dynamic was centrally
driven by its core economic logic, a drive toward a corporate-friendly,
low-wage, Deep South-style economy, as described by Ed Kilgore in relationship to Governor Scott Walker’s purported “budget bill”
aimed at crippling public employee unions. That bill began the story,
which culminated in the recent secret bill signings giving free rein to
political corruption in Wisconsin—another common feature of
Dixiefication. The budget bill sparked massive protests and a powerful recall movement, which Walker survived with massive outside spending assistance
from dark-money groups, which in turn led to a judge-supervised, grand
jury-like “John Doe” investigation looking into potentially illegal
coordination and campaign contributions between Walker’s campaign with
outside dark money groups. The probe was halted last July by a controversial 4-2 decision
by the ethically compromised Wisconsin Supreme Court, which effectively
gutted Wisconsin campaign finance law. Two of the justices involved had
received substantial support from Walker’s backers, but refused to
recuse themselves from the case—a further demonstration of Wisconsin’s
rapid slide into corruption.
In October, Republicans introduced three bills to consolidate and extend the damage the court had done. The first, passed that month,
prohibited John Doe investigations of political corruption. The other
two were just signed into law by Walker on Dec. 16, cementing the GOP’s
power grab into place. One eviscerates state campaign finance laws,
retroactively legalizing everything Walker and his allies did, and
allowing virtually unlimited corporate spending. The other gets rid of
the state’s highly respected Government Accountability Board—a
nonpartisan body composed of six retired judges overseeing elections,
campaign finance, ethics and lobbying, considered a model for other
states—and replaces it with two partisan-appointed bodies, designed for FEC-like gridlock at best. “The
destruction of the eight-year-old, non-partisan Government
Accountability Board was based on completely discredited charges, false
premises, character assassination and outright falsehoods,” Common Cause of Wisconsin charged, adding:
The
entire process under which Assembly Bills 387 and 388 were first
unveiled in October, fast-tracked through a single public hearing in
Madison only, and then rammed through committees and rushed to the floor
of the Wisconsin Assembly and slammed through, before being stalled for
a week in the State Senate, has been among the most abusive,
disrespectful, secretive and utterly anti-democratic in the history of
the Wisconsin Legislature.
The
hurried, haphazard process described, although shocking by traditional
Wisconsin standards, is a microcosm of “normal politics” in a Dixiefied
state, which the two laws were designed to help foster. The
campaign finance law doubles the limits on direct contributions to
candidates, and allows unlimited donations from individuals to political
parties. It also allows corporations to give directly to political
parties, for the first time in over 100 years in Wisconsin, and it
allows candidates to coordinate with outside dark-money groups. In fact,
there’s not much it doesn’t allow. The GAB was established in 2007,
with overwhelming bipartisan support following a major corruption
scandal. It passed the State Senate 33-0, and passed the Assembly 97-2.
“Twelve Republican State Senators who voted to establish the GAB in
2007, voted to destroy it,” Common Cause pointed out. “Nothing changed
in the intervening 8 years except the politics. So these 12 State
Senators were all for the GAB before they turned against it.” The
politics that changed was all about the money. And to really grasp what
the new laws will do, it helps to trace that change, starting just after
Walker’s election in 2010.
The Role of Money
Even before the union-busting budget bill was taken up, Walker had signed $117 million in tax cuts. When his first two-year budget bill was signed in June 2011, Citizens for Tax Justice reported
that cuts to Medicaid and a range of other programs “amount to $2
billion worth of support yanked out from underneath the working poor.
Yet, in his frenzy of service cuts, Governor Walker somehow found room
for $2.3 billion in tax breaks over the next decade.” The big picture
here is straight out of the scenario Kilgore described when, during the
initial union-busting battle, he wrote:
Walker
also has an economic vision for his state….based on a theory of
economic growth that is not only anti-statist but aggressively
pro-corporate: relentlessly focused on breaking the backs of unions;
slashing worker compensation and benefits; and subsidizing businesses in
order to attract capital from elsewhere and avoid its flight to even
more benighted locales….. [S]tudents of American economic history will
recognize it as the “Moonlight and Magnolias” model of development,
which is native to the Deep South.
But
even beyond massive tax breaks, there were plenty of very targeted
favors for big donors. In 2010, Walker campaigned on a promise to create
250,000 jobs in his first term, a target he missed by more than 100,000
jobs. As I’ve written about before,
his primary job growth mechanism was to replace the state commerce
department with a private nonprofit, the Wisconsin Economic Development
Corporation, but in 2014 it was reported
that, “nearly 60 percent of some $975 million in assistance distributed
by WEDC went to firms that had contributed to Walker or the Republican
Governor’s Association…. Walker received more than $1 million in direct
campaign funds and another $1 million via the RGA from WEDC aid
recipients.” This all came in very handy when it came to fighting the recall election. As the Center for Public Integrity reported:
The
Wisconsin vote captured national attention, and a flood of out-of-state
money. Of the $63.5 million spent, $45 million came from Walker’s
campaign and supporters, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
The record spending total was made possible thanks to the Citizens
United U.S. Supreme Court decision—which had the effect of invalidating
Wisconsin’s century-old ban on independent expenditures by corporations
and unions—and a state law that allowed unlimited contributions to the
incumbent in recall elections.
The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign listed special interest group spending,
including $3.7 million from the Koch Brothers’ Americans for
Prosperity, $4 million from Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and
$9.4 million from the Republican Governors Association’s Right Direction
Wisconsin PAC. So,
to review: Walker comes in with a reverse Robin Hood agenda, cuts
billions in support for the working poor, while giving billions away in
tax cuts, plus a lucrative side dish of paybacks to funders through the
WEDC, and gets floods of money from out-of-state big money interests to
fight off a recall by the citizens of his state. It’s picture-perfect
illustration of Dixiefication in action. Neatly connecting that backstory to the laws just signed, a recent analysis
by Brendan Fischer of the Center for Media and Democracy explained how
these monied interests and the politicians they fund were motivated to
pass the new laws, the better to hide what they’re up to. Regrading the
WEDC, Fischer recounted:
In one case, Walker’s administration urged WEDC
to give a $500,000 unsecured loan to a company owned by Bill Minahan,
who a few months earlier had maxed-out on contributions to Walker’s
campaign. The Minahan loan didn’t go through the underwriting required
by law, and his company ultimately went bust, with the taxpayer-funded
half-million-dollar loan not being repaid. WEDC
handed out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the form of
bonds, grants, loans, and tax credits to Walker donors, and could only
account for 5,680 jobs as of 2014, according to a Center for Media and Democracy analysis.
All
this was uncovered by the press “because
those donations were disclosed,” Fischer wrote. But the new campaign
finance law would keep that secret forever. If politicians and donors
know what’s going on, but the media and ordinary voters don’t, that
informational imbalance can translate into enormous political power.
It’s like a basketball game with one team wearing blindfolds. Fischer
went on to cite an example of how this was already working in Wisconsin:
The other centerpiece
of Walker’s job creation effort was a rewrite of the state
environmental laws to pave the way for a Florida-based mining company,
Gogebic Taconite, to build an open-pit iron ore mine in a pristine area
of Northern Wisconsin. A year after the proposal became law, documents
emerged in the John Doe probe showing that G-Tac’s CEO had secretly donated more than $700,000
to a dark money group associated with Scott Walker’s campaign. The
public and press had no knowledge of these contributions as the
hotly-contested mining bill was being debated; the secret donations were
more than 22 times the amount of disclosed contributions to candidates.
With
the chance of normalizing and legalizing such underhanded dealings,
it’s not surprising that people oppose what they’re trying to do, while
Walker’s donors eagerly support them. Regarding popular opposition,
Fischer noted, “Common Cause Wisconsin has counted thousands of calls
and messages from Wisconsinites to state senators urging them to reject
these bills,” in line with consistent polling showing that voters in
both parties want less money in elections and more transparency about
where it’s coming from.
On
the other side, Fischer noted a small handful of well-funded groups
supporting the three laws introduced in October. The only group lobbying
to support the bill replacing the GAB was David Koch’s Americans for
Prosperity, which also lobbied for the bill exempting political
corruption from John Doe investigations, along with Wisconsin Family
Action, “a group that was implicated in the John Doe probe,” Fischer
noted. The third bill’s supporters were an instructive bit of a suprise.
The avowedly pro-corporate groups stayed out of it, with the forced
childbirth group, Wisconsin Right to Life, taking the lead instead.
Tellingly, however, their executive director was a former AFP leader. In
summary, Fischer wrote, “[These special interest groups], funded by
out-of-state billionaires like the Koch brothers, are apparently calling
the shots within the Wisconsin legislature, regardless of what voters
think.” And with these new laws in place, that will only become more
commonplace in the years ahead.
Gerrymandering creates undemocratic situation
One would hope that the crazy
behavior shown by some Republicans in the U.S. House would be mitigated
with the next election cycle by turning these obstructionists out of
office and replacing them with more level headed adults. But don’t hold
your breath. The fact is that
so many U.S. House districts have been gerrymandered so badly that it is
impossible to change the structure of the House without either changing
the outlines of the districts or changing the perspective of the voters
that keep sending them to Washington.
A casual look at a district map will
show you that if you took a twenty five square mile area that contained
10,000 eligible voters, that square has been so gerrymandered that you
have only thirty percent of the voters in that square holding all of the
power while the other seventy percent have been alienated. It puts a
lie to American democracy. It would be as if the
entire state of Wyoming were a single district but only Cheyenne and
Gillette got to choose who we send to Washington. It is inherently
wrong. So that leaves trying to
get those few voters that hold all of the power to cast off their dogma
and really look at what’s in the best interest of the nation. I hope
that one day, before those extremist representatives have so fouled up
this country that a Gordian knot would be simpler to unravel, these
voters see how they are being manipulated by the entrenched corporate
entities that are behind the tea party movement.
Remember the old adage of, `follow
the money’. Ask yourself who has been making money under the current
health care system? Insurance companies for sure. Medical device
manufacturers for another. These are the people opposing the Affordable
Care Act and they’ve hoodwinked conservative voters into believing many
of their lies while their puppets in Congress make fools of themselves
and risk the future of America just to keep the money flowing. No,
we won’t see House districts changing anytime soon and we won’t see
these corporate tools thrown out of Congress. It’s sad to think that
such a small portion of the nation's voters can bring the entire thing
down. Such is a republic.
Despite Bernie’s landslide victory, Hillary receives more New Hampshire delegates
Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire’s
primary with 60 percent of the vote, but that’s not the end of the
story. Because of a peculiarity in the Democratic Party’s nominating
system, Clinton will likely receive more delegates from the state. New Hampshire has 24
pledged delegates that are assigned based on the proportion of the
popular vote received. Sanders received 60 percent of support in New
Hampshire’s Democratic primary, giving him 15 pledged delegates. Hillary
Clinton received 38 percent of the votes, putting her pledged delegate
count at nine. This
seems simple enough, but Democratic National Committee’s method of
assigning delegates complicates the matter. There are eight
“superdelegates,” party officials that are free to support any candidate
they please – even if that support does not align with the wishes of
voters. Six of those superdelegates have committed to Clinton, giving
her a total of 15 delegates from New Hampshire as of Wednesday
afternoon. The two remaining superdelegates have not committed for
either candidate yet. Clinton had a razor-thin victory in Iowa followed up by a crushing
defeat in New Hampshire, putting her pledged delegated of 32 behind
Sanders’s 36. However, Clinton has an imposing lead over Sanders thanks
to her 45-to-1 superdelegate advantage. She now has 431 delegates of all
types supporting her, while Sanders only has 52, according to CNN. There
are 712 superdelegates in the DNC primaries. A Democratic presidential
candidate needs 2,383 delegates of any type out of the 4,763 total to
win the nomination.
Rigged Election: Hillary secretly STOLE New Hampshire
It’s the headline on every newspaper and website
around the country: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won a resounding victory
over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in yesterday’s New
Hampshire Democratic primary. But there’s another story the media
has been much slower to pick up on. Because despite his 22-point
victory, Sanders didn’t walk away with the most New Hampshire delegates.
Clinton did. And party insiders have been secretly working for months
to rig the delegate count in Clinton’s favor, no matter what the voters
of New Hampshire decided. Voters handed Sanders a blowout win
yesterday. He received 60 percent of the votes, compared to 38 percent
for Clinton. But that only assured Sanders a majority of New Hampshire’s
pledged delegates, 13 to Clinton’s 9. But he still came up two short in the total count, because six New
Hampshire superdelegates — party insiders from each state who can
support any candidate of their choice — pledged their loyalty to
Clinton.
In other words, despite losing by 22 points in votes, Clinton still
managed to win the total delegate count in New Hampshire, 15-13. And
it’s these delegates who decide who the Democratic presidential nominee
will be, not majority vote. This story isn’t limited to the Granite State either. All across the
country, Clinton holds a massive lead in the overall delegate count due
to the overwhelming support from these Democratic superdelegates.
Before
a single
voter had showed up at a caucus or a booth, Clinton had amassed 392
delegates to her side. The magic number to clinch the nomination is
2,382. So with this
guaranteed insider support, the Clinton campaign’s tie in Iowa and
crushing defeat in New Hampshire matter little — she’s still at 431
total delegates, 18% of the way to the party nomination and over eight
times Sanders’ delegate count. Ironically, exit polling in New Hampshire
showed that Democratic
presidential candidate Bernie Sanders won the support of about 9 in 10
voters who thought honesty was important. Should Clinton continue to
have her way, such opinions — and the votes that they sway — may not
matter much at all. Thanks to years of insider work, Clinton is set to
repeat her quiet New Hampshire victory again and again in 2016.
Super-duper-delegates: 'Undemocratic system used by Democratic Party'
Any grassroots candidate in the Democratic Party like Sanders
could be run out by the use of the undemocratic superdelegates system
which favors the party elite and Congress people, says Patrick
Henningsen from 21st Century Wire.com. Bernie
Sanders won the New Hampshire primary on February, 9 but due to
peculiarities in the Democratic National Committee’s method of assigning
delegates Hillary Clinton received the same number of delegates as
Sanders. "The difference between the Democrat and Republican
primaries is that in a DP primaries there are no winner takes all
states. They are all proportional. So, the delegates will be divided
proportionally. Each candidate has to be very aggressive in their
delegate strategy. And there is a number of superdelegates as well that
could decide this election - maybe for the first time since
superdelegates have come on the scene in the US electoral system on the
Democratic side. They could decide this election more than any other
election in the past. It could even go: Bernie Sanders could win the
popular vote and Hillary Clinton could win the delegate count based on
superdelegates. If we look the AP early polls showed that
superdelegates, 98 percent of them in early polling say they would vote
for Hillary Clinton, no matter what at the convention, as opposed to two
percent for Sanders. I mean, that could swing a ‘neck & neck’
election, come convention time", Patrick Henningsen told RT.
"In total I think for the Democratic Party there are 700
superdelegates, there are a number there pre-pledged to Hillary Clinton
absolutely. But there are also a number of undecided as well. The
problem with this and the big criticism about the superdelegates system
is that it is highly undemocratic. So, this is basically something that
came in as a result of George McGovern election in 1968; the McGovern
commission that came out of that came up with this plan which allow
people to think as outsiders. So, anybody like a grassroots candidate in
the Democratic Party like Sanders could be absolutely run out by the
use of the superdelegates system. It is undemocratic, it favors the
party elite, high party office holders within the Democratic hierarchy,
but also Congress people who get one superdelegate…one vote in real
terms is equal to 10,000 average American voters in a Democratic primary
if you map it out mathematically. It is ironic that the Democratic
Party would have such an undemocratic system factored into their sort of
party politics. Clearly, the Democratic Party elite are backing
Hillary because she is coming into this with her own power base which
she has accumulated over two decades. And also through her time in the
Senate and through past campaigns, and her husband, former president
Bill Clinton," he said.
The undemocratic Electoral College
"The world's greatest democracy?"
does a great job of skewering the myth that the U.S. electoral process
is anything close to truly fair or democratic, and calling out John
McCain's absurd claims about ACORN trying to "fix" the election for
Barack Obama. A closer look at the Electoral College, particularly with
regards to
the 2000 election, illustrates how it functions to limit democracy. The
Electoral College, which decides who is president of the United
States, consists of 538 winnable votes: one for each of the 435 members
of the House of Representatives, one for each of the 100 senators, as
well as three for the District of Columbia.
Except for Nebraska and Maine, each state awards its votes by "winner
take all," so that a candidate who wins a state 48 percent to 47
percent, for example, would get all of that state's electoral
votes. The 47 percent who voted for the other candidate are effectively
disenfranchised, as their votes will not impact the final outcome. As
Schulte points out, the Electoral College ensures that popular
votes from smaller (more rural, more white) states are overrepresented,
since each state gets at least three electors regardless of population.
Even more troubling about the Electoral College system is that
relatively arbitrary factors can decisively impact the outcome of a
presidential election.
Consider the 2000 election. In their 2003 article, "Outcomes of Presidential Elections and the House Size,"
Cal State Northridge mathematicians Michael G. Neubauer and Joel
Zeitlin show how, in a race that is close in terms of the popular vote,
the outcome can depend on the number of seats in the House of
Representatives. Proponents of "lesser-evilism" who would like to lay at the feet of
Ralph Nader responsibility for George W. Bush's "win" in 2000 have
overlooked the true culprits: the members of Congress who, in 1911,
picked 435 for the new number of House seats.
In general, the larger the size of the House of Representatives, the
closer the Electoral College outcome gets to an accurate reflection of
the popular vote, since additional House seats would be awarded to the
states with the greatest ratio of population to number of House seats,
which offsets somewhat the advantage that small states get from the
awarding of votes based on Senate seats.
In the 2000 presidential election, despite the widespread
disenfranchisement of African Americans and various other fraud, Bush
lost the popular vote to Al Gore. However, because of the undemocratic
nature of the Electoral College (and with a little help from both the
Supreme Court and Gore's spineless complicity), Bush won a majority in
the Electoral College and became president.
Analysis by Neubauer and Zeitlin shows that Bush would have won for
any House with 490 seats or less. However, the 491st and 492nd seat
would have been apportioned to New York and Pennsylvania, respectively,
both of which Gore won, putting Gore in the lead in the EC. So if the size of the House had been set at 492 instead of 435 in
1911, or if it had been increased to 492 at some point over the last 89
odd years to reflect population gains, Gore would have been president.
Even more absurdly, based on current apportionment methods for House
seats, "for House sizes between 492 and 596, the winner goes back and
forth many times without much rhyme or reason. For those 105 different
House sizes, the election ends in a tie 23 times, Gore wins 29 times,
and Bush wins 53 times." Since Gore won the popular vote, for House
sizes of 598 and above, Gore wins every time. All else remaining the same, the outcome of the 2000 election hinged
upon an arbitrary decision made in 1911 by people who were all dead at
the time of the 2000 election. It appears that the fabric of even the most formal mechanism of
democracy in the United States was shoddy long before ACORN even came
into being.
The Anti-Democratic Electoral College
America was once a world leader in democracy, with innovations like
the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with its Bill of
Rights. While the early republic had major flaws, our nation was
nonetheless an innovator in democracy at a time when monarchies ruled.
Since that time, many nations have adopted the American principles of
separation of powers in government but they have avoided many of the
idiosyncrasies in the American system. Most modern democracies avoid
our single-seat winner take-all-elections, using some form of
proportional representation instead. No modern democracy has adopted the
American system that denies citizens in their national capital the
right to have a voting representative in Congress. For the purposes of
this article, I will focus on the fact that no other country uses our
anti-democratic Electoral College.
Often when I discuss the Electoral College with Americans who don't
spend much time thinking about politics, they suggest, "it's been
working for hundreds of years, so whatever problems it has are probably
not so bad." This reflects a basic pattern in American society where we
want the latest technology for our computers, televisions and cell
phones but we complacently trudge along using archaic voting technology
while ignoring the improvements that have occurred since the late 1700s.
Defenders of the status quo start to perk up when I mention that the
Electoral College makes it possible to capture the presidency by winning
only eleven states and disregarding the rest of the country or that
four times the presidential candidate that won the popular vote lost the
election. When I remind them that no country uses the Electoral
College model for electing a leader, they start wondering what aspects
of the Electoral College are most problematic.
That is when I emphasize that, by design, the Electoral College
fundamentally undermines the basic principle of one citizen-one vote
mentioning democratic lowlights such as: (1) States with smaller populations have far more representatives per
population than states with larger populations. For example, residents
of the three least-populated states -- Wyoming, Vermont, and North
Dakota -- have one congressional representative for every 200,000
people, while those in the three states with the highest population --
California, Texas, and New York -- have only one congressional member
for every 670,000 people. This representational inequality clearly gives
citizens from small population states a much stronger voice per citizen
than those residing in large states when it comes to electing the
president (see graph).
(2) Forty-eight states allocate all of their Electors to one
candidate (Maine and Nebraska use proportional representation). This
state-level decision of how to allocate Electors produces the issue of
swing-state distortion, where citizens in states that are relatively
evenly split between the two parties have far more influence in
selecting the president than citizens in states where a majority are
clearly voting for one party. Moreover, citizens are often discouraged
to vote in presidential elections if they know that the allocation of
all of their state's electors is a foregone conclusion. Campaign
activity exemplifies the implications of this all-or-nothing allocation
issue and its egregious undermining of the principle of one citizen-one
vote. Candidates rarely invest campaign funds in states that aren't "in
play" -- i.e., states whose electoral votes are considered to be already
won or lost based on large margins of victory in previous elections and
on current polling. For example, in the 2008 presidential election, the
campaign of then-candidate Barack Obama spent nearly $40 million on
advertising in Pennsylvania, a swing state with twenty-one electoral
votes, and about $25,000 in Illinois, with an equivalent number of
electors. The Obama strategists knew that there was no reason to spend
any time courting voters in his home state, Illinois, since he would
clearly win the majority of Illinois's popular votes and all twenty-one
of its electoral votes. Republican and third-party supporters in
Illinois had no chance of having their voices heard and citizens living
in Illinois were being told very clearly that they are much less
important than those living in Pennsylvania.
(3) "Faithless" Electors: After all of the undermining of one
citizen-one vote that we described above, there is still the issue that
the Elector doesn't actually have to vote for whom they pledged. For
example, in 2000, D.C. elector Barbara Lett-Simmons abstained rather
than vote for Al Gore as she had pledged. Her feeble protest resulted in
silencing the voices of thousands of D.C. residents.
Few Americans would contend today that if we were designing a system
to elect a president from scratch, the Electoral College would be the
optimal solution. Using the popular vote would be the most obvious
choice and a majority of Americans support this change.
it would be easy to implement since the popular vote is already
counted and some variant of preferential voting could be introduced so
that third-parties can have a stronger voice.
Yet, inertia is a powerful force and so I don't anticipate America
discarding this system anytime soon. Until the time comes when America
drops the Electoral College or there is sufficient support for the
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, all states should mirror the
practice of Maine and Nebraska of allocating their electoral votes based
on proportional representation. This corrects the current
all-or-nothing system used in forty-eight of the fifty states and its
resulting overweighting or underweighting of votes based on whether or
not you live in a swing state. More importantly, it will force
candidates to take the votes of every American seriously, not just that
small percentage living in swing states. Unfortunately, self-interest
often trumps what is most fair or appropriate. Consequently, it is
unlikely that many other states will follow Maine and Nebraska's lead
since proportional allocation diminishes the power of the majority party
in the state and opens the opportunity for third parties to have a
stronger voice (an action that leadership in both the Democratic and
Republican parties wouldn't want).
How Money Corrupts American Politics
Money cannot always buy election
results; weak candidates often lose even when they outspend their
opponents. Nor is outright bribery very common; elected officeholders
rarely sell specific votes directly Yet the perfectly legal flood of
money that pervades American politics has fundamentally corrupting
effects. The effects of money are manifold, subtle, and
hard to pin down, but a number of pathways of influence can be laid out.
Most are based on judgments about the best available evidence, short of
irrefutable proof. But on certain key points the quantitative evidence
is fairly conclusive. Political scientist Gary Jacobson and other
scholars have pinned down how monetary advantages affect chances of
winning congressional elections Large amounts of money are virtually
essential if a candidate is to have any serious chance of winning.
Inability to raise big money leads to losing general elections, losing
party nominations, or giving up even before getting started. Thus the
need to raise money acts as a filter, tending to eliminate public
officials who hold certain points of view – even points of view that are
popular with most Americans.
The need for money tends to filter out centrist candidates.
Most congressional districts are gerrymandered to ensure a big
advantage for one party or the other, so that election outcomes are
actually decided in low-salience, low-turnout, one-party primary
elections. Primaries are usually dominated by ideological party
activists and money givers, who tend to hold extreme views and to reject
all but the purest partisan candidates. This contributes to party
polarization and legislative gridlock in Congress.
The need for money filters out candidates on the economic left.
Democratic as well as Republican candidates have to raise big money,
most of which comes from economically successful entrepreneurs and
professionals who tend to hold rather conservative views on taxes,
social welfare spending, and economic regulation. As a result, few
candidates whose views are not broadly acceptable to the affluent are
nominated or elected.
The quest for money tilts candidates' priorities and policy stands.
Countless hours spent grubbing for money from affluent contributors
changes candidates' priorities and sense of constituent needs. As they
speak with potential donors, candidates hear repeatedly about resentment
of progressive taxes and "wasteful" social spending. Special tax breaks
for corporations and hedge fund managers start to sound reasonable.
Affluent citizens get extra influence by turning out to vote, working in campaigns, and contacting officials.
Campaign contributions are not the only way in which affluent people
get involved in politics; these same people tend to be active in other
ways too, underscoring their importance to candidates.
Money can tip the outcome of close elections.
Money spent on media, organizing, and turnout tends to increase vote
totals, giving a significant advantage to candidates favored by money
givers.
Money buys access to officials. When big
contributors contact officials they tend to get attention. Their
economic resources enable them to get a hearing, to offer help with
information and expertise – even to draft bills. Research shows that
these processes boost the influence of the affluent on the policy topics
and ideas officeholders consider, biasing the public agenda toward the
concerns of the affluent.
The quest for re-election money affects officials' priorities and policy stands.
From the moment they win office, candidates look ahead to the money
they must raise for reelection, and this is bound to steal time from
official duties and slant their attention toward constituents who are
substantial donors.
In sum, the net effects of money in politics
include distraction from the public business, exacerbation of
polarization and gridlock, and distortion of policy making in wasteful,
inefficient, and anti-democratic directions. These are not trivial costs
to American democracy, and their impact raises the obvious question:
what can be done? There is little immediate prospect for a Supreme
Court decision or Constitutional amendment to reduce the impact of
money on politics. But the effects of big private money could be greatly
diluted through public funding – for example, by letting all citizens
contribute with "democracy vouchers" (as legal expert Larry Lessig has
proposed) or instituting some other system of matching small
contributions. To make something like this happen – over the likely
resistance of wealthy big contributors – would require a broad,
bipartisan social movement. Citizens of various ideological persuasions
would have to join together, much as Americans once did in broad reform
movements during the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century.
Benjamin Page is the Gordon Scott Fulcher Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University. Click here to learn more about Ben's research and advocacy.
Source: http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/how-money-corrupts-american-politics
The Age of
Authoritarian Democracy
The world is currently being shaken by tectonic changes almost too
numerous to count: the ongoing economic crisis is accelerating the
degradation of international governance and supranational institutions,
and both are occurring alongside a massive shift of economic and
political power to Asia. Less than a quarter-century after U.S.
political scientist and author Francis Fukuyama declared "the end of
history," we seem to have arrived at the dawn of a new age of social and
geopolitical upheaval.
Dramatically, the Arab world has been swept by a revolutionary
spring, though one that is rapidly becoming a chilly winter. Indeed,
for the most part, the new regimes are combining the old
authoritarianism with Islamism, resulting in further social stagnation,
resentment and instability. Even more remarkable, however, are the social — and antisocial —
grassroots demonstrations that are mushrooming in affluent Western
societies. These protests have two major causes.
First, social inequality has grown unabated in the West over the last
quarter-century, owing in part to the disappearance of the Soviet Union
and, with it, the threat of expansionist communism. The specter
of revolution had forced Western elites to use the power of the state
to redistribute wealth and nurture the growth of loyal middle classes.
But when communism collapsed in its Eurasian heartland, the West's rich,
believing that they had nothing more to fear, pressed to roll back
the welfare state, causing inequality to rise rapidly. This was
tolerable as long as the overall pie was expanding, but the global
financial crisis in 2008 ended that.
Second, over the past 15 years, hundreds of millions of jobs shifted
to Asia, which offered inexpensive and often highly skilled labor.
The West, euphoric from its victory over communism and its seemingly
unstoppable economic growth, failed to implement necessary structural
reforms, although Germany and Sweden were rare exceptions. Instead,
Western prosperity relied increasingly on debt.
But the economic crisis has made it impossible to maintain a good
life on borrowed money. Americans and Europeans are beginning
to understand that neither they, nor their children, can assume that
they will become wealthier over time. Governments now face the difficult task of implementing reforms that
will hit the majority of voters hardest. In the meantime, the minority
that has benefited financially over the past two decades is unlikely
to give up its advantages without a fight.
All of this can only weaken Western democracy's allure in countries
like Russia, where, unlike in the West or to a large extent the Arab
world, those who are organizing the massive demonstrations against
the government belong to the economic elite. Theirs is a movement
of political reform, demanding more freedom and government
accountability. It is not a social protest — at least not yet.
A few years ago, it was fashionable to worry about the challenge that
authoritarian-style capitalism — for example, in China, Singapore,
Malaysia or Russia — presented to Western democratic capitalism. Today,
the problem is not only economic.
Western capitalism's model of a society based on near-universal
affluence and liberal democracy looks increasingly ineffective when
compared to the competition. Authoritarian countries' middle classes may
push their leaders toward greater democracy, as in Russia, but Western
democracies will also likely become more authoritarian.
Indeed, measured against today's standards, former French President
Charles de Gaulle, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
and former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower were comparatively
authoritarian leaders. The West will have to readopt such an approach or
risk losing out globally as its ultraright and ultraleft political
forces consolidate their positions and its middle classes begin
to dissolve.
We must find ways to prevent the political polarization that gave
rise to totalitarian systems — communist and fascist — in the 20th
century. Fortunately, this is possible. Communism and fascism were born
and took root in societies demoralized by war, which is why all steps
should be taken now to prevent the outbreak of war.
This is becoming particularly relevant today, as the smell of war
hangs over Iran. Israel, which is facing a surge of hostile sentiment
among its neighbors in the wake of their "democratic" upheavals, is not
the only interested party. Many people in the advanced countries,
and even some in Russia, look increasingly supportive of a war with
Iran, despite — or perhaps owing to — the need to address the ongoing
global economic crisis and failure of international governance.
At the same time, huge opportunities beckon in times of far-reaching
change. Billions of people in Asia have extricated themselves
from poverty. New markets and spheres for applying one's intellect,
education and talents are appearing constantly. The world's power
centers are beginning to counterbalance one another, undermining
hegemonic ambitions and heralding a creative instability based
on genuine multipolarity, with people gaining greater freedom to define
their fate in the global arena.
Paradoxically, today's global changes and challenges offer
the potential for both peaceful coexistence and violent conflict.
Whether fortunately or not, it is up to us — alone — to determine which
future it will be.
Source: http://indrus.in/articles/2012/03/16/the_age_of_authoritarian_democracy_15173.html
Why China’s Political Model Is Superior
THIS week the Obama administration is playing host to Xi Jinping,
China’s vice president and heir apparent. The world’s most powerful
electoral democracy and its largest one-party state are meeting at a
time of political transition for both. Many have characterized the competition between these two giants as a
clash between democracy and authoritarianism. But this is false. America
and China view their political systems in fundamentally different ways:
whereas America sees democratic government as an end in itself, China
sees its current form of government, or any political system for that
matter, merely as a means to achieving larger national ends.
In the history of human governance, spanning thousands of years, there
have been two major experiments in democracy. The first was Athens,
which lasted a century and a half; the second is the modern West. If one
defines democracy as one citizen one vote, American democracy is only
92 years old. In practice it is only 47 years old, if one begins
counting after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — far more ephemeral than
all but a handful of China’s dynasties. Why, then, do so many boldly claim they have discovered the ideal
political system for all mankind and that its success is forever
assured?
The answer lies in the source of the current democratic experiment. It
began with the European Enlightenment. Two fundamental ideas were at its
core: the individual is rational, and the individual is endowed with
inalienable rights. These two beliefs formed the basis of a secular
faith in modernity, of which the ultimate political manifestation is
democracy. In its early days, democratic ideas in political governance facilitated
the industrial revolution and ushered in a period of unprecedented
economic prosperity and military power in the Western world.
Yet at the
very beginning, some of those who led this drive were aware of the fatal
flaw embedded in this experiment and sought to contain it. The American Federalists made it clear they were establishing a
republic, not a democracy, and designed myriad means to constrain the
popular will. But as in any religion, faith would prove stronger than
rules. The political franchise expanded, resulting in a greater number of
people participating in more and more decisions. As they say in America,
“California is the future.” And the future means endless referendums,
paralysis and insolvency.
In Athens, ever-increasing popular participation in politics led to rule
by demagogy. And in today’s America, money is now the great enabler of
demagogy. As the Nobel-winning economist A. Michael Spence has put it,
America has gone from “one propertied man, one vote; to one man, one
vote; to one person, one vote; trending to one dollar, one vote.” By any
measure, the United States is a constitutional republic in name only.
Elected representatives have no minds of their own and respond only to
the whims of public opinion as they seek re-election; special interests
manipulate the people into voting for ever-lower taxes and higher
government spending, sometimes even supporting self-destructive wars.
The West’s current competition with China is therefore not a face-off
between democracy and authoritarianism, but rather the clash of two
fundamentally different political outlooks. The modern West sees
democracy and human rights as the pinnacle of human development. It is a
belief premised on an absolute faith.
China is on a different path. Its leaders are prepared to allow greater
popular participation in political decisions if and when it is conducive
to economic development and favorable to the country’s national
interests, as they have done in the past 10 years. However, China’s leaders would not hesitate to curtail those freedoms if
the conditions and the needs of the nation changed. The 1980s were a
time of expanding popular participation in the country’s politics that
helped loosen the ideological shackles of the destructive Cultural
Revolution. But it went too far and led to a vast rebellion at Tiananmen
Square.
That uprising was decisively put down on June 4, 1989. The Chinese
nation paid a heavy price for that violent event, but the alternatives
would have been far worse. The resulting stability ushered in a generation of growth and prosperity
that propelled China’s economy to its position as the second largest in
the world. The fundamental difference between Washington’s view and Beijing’s is
whether political rights are considered God-given and therefore absolute
or whether they should be seen as privileges to be negotiated based on
the needs and conditions of the nation.
The West seems incapable of becoming less democratic even when its
survival may depend on such a shift. In this sense, America today is
similar to the old Soviet Union, which also viewed its political system
as the ultimate end. History does not bode well for the American way. Indeed, faith-based
ideological hubris may soon drive democracy over the cliff.
Eric X. Li is a venture capitalist
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/opinion/why-chinas-political-model-is-superior.html?_r=0
Armenia: What Could Democracy Be?
Some
older readers may recall a statement by one of the self-described
“Velvet Revolutionaries” in Eastern Europe a quarter of a century ago,
to the effect that there is no such thing as proletarian democracy or
bourgeois democracy; rather, he said, there is just DEMOCRACY, plain and
simple. Unfortunately, my internet searches have not succeeded in
locating the exact quote, but it went like that. Back then one heard
many such statements. By 1990, Yerevantsi’s were fed up with
high-handed bosses who called themselves communists and claimed to rule
in the name of some higher form of democracy. They were fed up with
one-party rule, and they wanted responsive, representative leaders.
Democracy—and, of course, Free Markets--were catchwords inscribed on
the hearts of protest leaders in Yerevan. At the same time, the protest
leaders insisted that the people of Soviet Armenia should not
participate in the Union-wide March 17, 1991 referendum on whether to
keep their confederation and reform it. Armenia abstained from the
referendum, but voting took place in nine of the fifteen Soviet
republics, and by the end of the process 76% of voters in those
republics—an absolute majority of eligible voters in the Soviet
Union--opted to retain and reform the union.
As we know, the August 18 coup, followed by Boris Yeltsin’s
counter-coup, scuttled the democratic decision. When Yeltsin dismantled
the Soviet Union in defiance of the expressed democratic will of the
referendum, he did so in the name of democracy.
Democracy-talk served as a powerful
ideological bulldozer to destroy the last remnants of socialism in
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. But in the years since then,
surveys and studies have described a U-turn in public opinion. As a Pew
Global Attitudes report released in December 2011 stated, “Enthusiasm
for democracy and capitalism has waned considerably over the past 20
years, and most believe the changes that have taken place since 1991
have had a negative impact on public morality, law and order, and
standards of living.”
In case after case, as we know, the inflated hopes have shriveled,
and the former Captive Nations have ended up with capitalist bosses even
more imperious than their Soviet predecessors--and far less
constructive. Two Czech writers recently described the aftermath of
their “Velvet Revolution” in terms that Armenians will recognize:
After 25 years, Czech society finds itself in crisis, yet the rest
of the world seems not to know about it. Few listen to the concerns of
ordinary people. In 1989, most of them believed that victory belonged to
all. However, the narrative of the Velvet Revolution serves today to
maintain the truth of a very narrow class of people who have made a new
cult. The elites claim that there has never been a better time than now
and never will be. It makes sense for them to say so. But we do not
believe it.
(Lukas Rychetshy and Jaroslav Fiala, “Czech’s Look Back on 1989, a Revolution Betrayed,” originally published in A2 Cultural Bi-Weekly, November 17, 2014.)
If citizens of the Czech Republic or the Republic of Armenia have
lost enthusiasm for democracy, this is because their thought-trainers in
the West have succeeded in neatly identifying democracy with
capitalism. If you succeed in convincing recently impoverished Armenians
that there is just democracy plain and simple, and that it must come
with capitalism, then a large number of them will conclude that it is
not something worth wishing for.
The resulting demoralization works to the benefit of the rulers,
since it leads those whom they rule to dial back their expectations
about democracy “plain and simple.” Demoralized people are easier to
rule. But what if another sort of democracy were possible?
Definitions of Democracy Differ
The word democracy is certainly more ambiguous than the Velvet
Revolutionaries and their admirers in Yerevan had assumed. It does not
come pre-packaged with its own definite meaning, and it does not name
one and only one political setup. Consider, for example, the common
conception of democracy as majority rule. We know that this definition
does not stand up to the record: where, across the panorama of
democratic regimes today does the majority rule? Actually, it is
fortunate for minorities that majority rule has been so rare.
In Azerbaijan and Armenia twenty-five
years ago, self-described democratic movements had no problem evicting
Armenian and Azeri minorities from their homes in these respective
countries. These examples illustrate the familiar view that democracy,
conceived ONLY as rule by the majority, opens the door to the abuse of
minorities, whether national, ethnic, or otherwise.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines democracy as “a system of
government in which all the people of a state or polity […] have the
right to take part or vote.” When we consider the cases of, say,
ancient Athens, the American South, and the apartheid Republic of South
Africa, we encounter the technical but crucial question: what
constitutes a “person”? Native birth, skin color, and ownership of
property have loomed large when it comes to citizenship and the
franchise. Gender, too: the United States of America, that
self-designated global custodian of democracy, had been in existence for
144 years before the ratification of the 19th Amendment to its
constitution, extending voting rights to women. By contrast, Article 22
of the first Soviet Constitution had established the right of women to
vote two years earlier, right after the October Revolution.
If democracy is the rule of the many, then what are we to make of the
constitutional “checks and balances” in the most powerful states
today? The framers of the U.S. Constitution, a document that was widely
admired as a prototype of other constitutions, were profoundly opposed
to majority rule, to the detriment of “the minority of the opulent,” as
James Madison, “the father of the American constitution,” put it. To
this day, democracy in the United States of America is not EVEN the rule
of the majority.
American-style democracy has lost much of its glitter these days.
Judging from the proposals to reform Armenia’s constitution along
parliamentary lines, our compatriots today are more likely to look to
Europe for their democratic models than to the United States.
The Appeal of Western Democracy
What Armenians admire most about liberal democracies in the West are
such things as their alleged emphases on limited government, “rule of
law,” civil liberties, individual rights, due process, and
accountability, as well as their smoothly functioning judiciaries, the
right of appeal, and so on. But let us not forget that, with few
exceptions, these features of the most admired political systems and
political cultures in the West have, with few exceptions, been wrenched
by force from resistant capitalist rulers, thanks to pressure from
below: the abolition of child labor, the right of workers to bargain
collectively, the eight-hour work day, universal suffrage, consumer
safety legislation, civil rights gains, safeguards for individual
liberties, social security, and one thousand other achievements—none of
these were the concessions of soft-hearted rulers; rather, they were the
results of stubborn popular resistance to those rulers.
In country after country, thousands of people lost their lives in
these struggles. When this resistance has been sustained, it has
typically developed in the direction of greater self-organization by
workers, farmers, former slaves, women, and civil rights advocates. But
as soon as the pressure from below has ebbed, the achievements have
disappeared, one after the other.
Democracy for Whom?
We have seen that there is no such thing as democracy plain and
simple. But who defines democracy? It seems that this, too, is a stake
of political struggle, of class struggle. We have witnessed what
happens when organized resistance recedes in countries like the United
States of America, as wages have slipped, the super-rich have become
enormously richer, personal freedoms have eroded, and state agencies
have subverted democratic rights and the last vestiges of privacy. And
we have seen what has happened in countries like Armenia when workers
are stripped of every last remnant of institutional power. No number of
constitutional provisions or checks and balances can safeguard the
achievements of liberal democracy without organized vigilance from
below.
Here, at long last, we have a lesson that regular folks in Armenia
can profitably learn from the West: if one day Armenia is to obtain the
kind of democracy that will redound to the benefit of most of its
citizens, then the least advantaged of them will have to come together,
organize themselves independently, and fight for the democratic and
civil rights they claim. And after that, they will have to fight to
defend and extend those rights.
There are reasons to believe that if we reach far enough, this goal
is not beyond our grasp. For one thing, the numbers are there: In
Armenia, households headed by wage earners, the unemployed, the
underemployed, the self-employed, small farmers, and people on fixed
income make up a large majority demographic. If small business owners
join this alliance, then we have a potential constituency for a very
broadly based democracy.
The big capitalists that have been ruling Armenia for the past
twenty-five years have diminished the population, dispossessed and
impoverished the majority, debased the security and status of women,
depleted large swaths of the forests and water, and otherwise despoiled
the country.
Unfortunately, this ruling class is not likely to give up state power
unless it is forced to do so. To challenge it will require organizing
along working-class lines. To this end, Armenia needs militant unions
and a party of labor that is willing and able to defend the rights of
minorities while fighting for a democracy of the working class majority.
Markar Melkonian is a philosophy instructor and an author. His
books include Richard Rorty’s Politics: Liberalism at the End of the
American Century (1999), Marxism: A Post-Cold War Primer (Westview
Press, 1996), and My Brother’s Road (2005).
What Could Democracy Be?
Part II of III: Democracy and the Dangers of Demoralization (Part I)
Adults in Yerevan these days seem to have doubts about the word
democracy. In view of the record, this is not surprising. But the doubt
comes with its own dangers, including the danger of masking a very
different sort of democracy from the sort that exists in Armenia. The doubt has been a while coming, and it was born in part by
confusion. A focus-group survey conducted fifteen years ago by a
Washington-based foundation concluded that, “Democracy is a hard concept
to understand in Armenia today. It means many things to many different
people.” (Thomas Carson and Gevork Pogosian, “Public Attitudes toward
Political Life,” International Foundation for Election Systems, August,
2000, p. 21)
Participants in the survey described democracy variously as
“conducting free elections,” “protection of rights and freedoms” of
citizens, and even state provision of “equal financial conditions for
everyone.” No wonder, then, that it has been so hard to understand what
Armenians have meant by “democracy.”
Democracy-Talk Has Lost Its “Wow-Power”
According to the survey report, a majority of the target population
had by then come to associate democracy with “bad economic conditions,
unemployment, and lower standards of living.” After noting low voter
turnout, the authors wrote that, “The main reason many do not
participate in elections is the belief that their vote does not
count.” “As proof of this claim,” they wrote, “participants pointed to
the unexpected (and popularly rejected) results of the 1996 and 1998
Presidential elections” in Armenia. (Carson and Pogosian, p. 3)
The career of the first President of the Third Republic of Armenia
shadowed that of Russia’s first post-Soviet President, Boris Yeltsin,
and both account for the waning fortunes of democracy-talk in Armenia.
After the grotesque 1996 presidential election in Russia and the
contested reelection that same year of Levon Ter-Petrosyan,
democracy-talk lost its “wow-power”, just as the 1998 devaluation of the
Ruble flopped a wet blanket on the Free Market fever. And so it was
that the counterrevolutionary figureheads who captured power in Moscow
and Yerevan in 1991 relinquished their respective offices in 1998,
without much in the way of public regret. By that time, though, the damage had been done. David Satter, a
senior fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, writing in the
conservative Wall Street Journal, described the consequences of the
victory of Democracy in Russia:
Between 1992 and 1994, the rise in the death rate in Russia was so
dramatic that Western demographers did not believe the figures. The toll
from murder, suicide, heart attacks and accidents gave Russia the death
rate of a country at war; Western and Russian demographers now agree
that between 1992 and 2000, the number of “surplus deaths” in
Russia–deaths that cannot be explained on the basis of previous
trends–was between five and six million persons. (http://www.hudson.org/research/4893-boris-yeltsin; accessed April 8, 2015)
Within roughly the same range of years the average life expectancy of
a Russian male fell from 65 to 57.5 years. Even the likes of the
anti-Soviet journalist Paul Klebnikov described Yeltsin’s legacy as “one
of the most corrupt regimes in history.”No wonder, then, that by the
time Yeltsin left office, he had an approval rating of 2%. (CNN,
2002) But by that time it didn’t matter: “democracy” had stolen the
election from the Communist candidate in Russia, reinstated a pliant
client in Yerevan, and advanced the interests of Berlin and Washington.
Since then, contested elections have continued apace in Yerevan as in
Moscow, and more recent surveys have indicated that the disillusionment
has only deepened. Instead of the promised Free Market prosperity,
privatization plunged most inhabitants into abject poverty; unemployment
soared, and Armenia slid into years of recession, from which the
country had not yet emerged before it felt the effects of Western
sanctions against Russia and falling oil prices. Between rigged
elections and economic ruination, the street-level euphoria about
Democracy and Free Markets went the way of Vano Siradeghian.
Democracy as a Cloak for Class Rule
One of the most salient functions of democratic institutions these
days—electoral arrangements, legislatures, constitutional set-ups, and
so-forth—is their powerful role in legitimizing plutocracy. Democratic
institutions function to legitimize the rule of capitalists as a class
the way divine right used to justify the king’s absolute authority in
the Middle Ages.
Indeed, as the eminent Canadian political thinker C.B. Macpherson
noted in his book, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy, “The concept
of a liberal democracy became possible only when theorists—first a few
and then most liberal theorists—found reasons for believing that ‘one
man, one vote’ would not be dangerous to property, or to the continuance
of class-divided societies.” Over the course of the last two
centuries, democracy itself has been defined and redefined in keeping
with the practices that have proven effective in this legitimating
function. Where “rule by the many” has not been conducive to capitalist
class rule—such as workplace democracy--it has been rejected. In such
supposedly exemplary democracies as the United States of America, for
example, democracy goes hand in hand with the power of Corporate America
over “the people.”
Democracy, then, legitimizes
established political rule. In this sense representative electoral
political systems are “merely formal”: real power is never at stake in
elections, and as we have seen time and again—from Iran to Guatemala and
from Chile to Egypt—the poor can never capture political power through
the ballot box alone.
The widespread recognition of this fact accounts for democracy’s
diminished prestige in places like Russia and Armenia today. Among the
opposition leaders in Yerevan there are ambitious men, would-be saviors,
who offer nothing more than a return to the disastrous policies of the
first post-Soviet administration. Despite their best efforts and their
personal fortunes, these personalities have failed to capture the
imagination of the public. When the “democratic” opposition fails to
gain support against an unpopular administration, the disillusionment is
complete.
The Danger of Disillusionment
But disillusionment with “democracy” poses its own dangers. When the
prescribed version of democracy fails to perform its legitimating
function, ruling classes, or factions of them, have time and again
adopted anti-democratic methods of control, by state institutions as
well as non-state ones. Europeans witnessed this process eighty years
ago in Germany, Italy and then again twenty-five years ago in places
like Croatia, Kosovo, and a dozen locales in the former Warsaw Pact
countries.
More recently, in Georgia, Central Asia, Ukraine, and half a dozen
other former Soviet locales, anti-democratic regimes have stepped in to
save the day for capitalist rule, in the face of widespread
dissatisfaction with democratic capitalist regimes. In times of rising
anger, it is child’s play for capitalist rulers to blame their own
democratic institutions for the problems that their economic system
created. When widespread disaffection with democracy sweeps a country,
the first horse out of the gate is fascism. And job number one for
fascism is to terrorize workers—the very social force that holds out the
best long-term hope for countries like Armenia.
Deepening economic crises and mounting social conflict could lead to
greater and greater repression in Armenia, too. Until Armenia has a
mass-based democratic opposition that has built a sustainable
institutional presence on the ground and that presents a realistic way
forward, the country could face the damaging political upheaval and the
pointless radicalism that has been so disastrous in Georgia, Ukraine,
and elsewhere.
The debacle in the name of democracy in the former Soviet Union could
not have taught a clearer lesson if it had been scripted by a Disney
screenwriter: elections in Russia and Armenia show that democracy, at
least the version operating in Russia and Armenia these days, functions
to legitimate the rule of oligarchs and their foreign benefactors over
everyone else. So far, elections have served as little more than a
scrim hiding the dictatorship of capitalists as a class and legitimizing
its monopoly of power. If people have been convinced that democracy
consists of little more than casting futile votes in fixed elections,
then the stage is set for demagogues of the strongman variety to step in
to save capitalist rule.
But democracy--at least some form of it--can do more than just
legitimize plutocracy. In the next installment of this series, we will
consider a couple other functions of democracy, conceived more broadly
and taken more seriously.
Markar Melkonian is a university instructor and an author. His
books include Richard Rorty’s Politics: Liberalism at the End of the
American Century (1999), Marxism: A Post-Cold War Primer (1996), and My
Brother’s Road (2005).
What Could Democracy Be?
Part III of III: More than a Pretext for Plutocracy (Pt. 1, Pt. 2)
Democracy, or rather liberal democracy, advertises itself as a
system of government in which individual rights prevail, but more
accuratelyit is the name given to various political systems in which the
“consent of the governed” legitimizes the political monopoly of
capitalists as a class. As it turns out, though, there is an
alternative model of democracy for a system that could actually benefit
the majority population of the country. To see what this alternative
model could bring, we should first take a closer look at the limited
sort of democracy that prevails in places like Armenia today.
The Market Model of Democracy
Western agencies prescribe a certain model of democracy for
vulnerable countries like Armenia, namely, “the market model of
democracy.” According to this model, democratic participation is an act
of separate individuals, each with his or her own pre-given
preferences. It is the job of a democratic systemmerely toregister
these individual preferences and pile them together, to determine
policy, legislation, and candidate choice. That is the official story. In actuality, this version of democracy
has a lot to do with WHAT KINDS of preferences it registers; but that is
another discussion for another time. The point to stress here is that
for most of the population, the decisive political act is voting, which is little more than choosing this or thatpre-selected candidate.
Like shopping,then, democracyis supposed to be another way for individuals to pursue theirprivateinterests.
American-funded economics textbooksexplicitly connect democracy to
shopping, though in a typically backwards and one-sided manner:
consumer choice, they say, is “economic democracy,” and shopping amounts
to casting votes for and against goods and services. My decision to
vote for candidate A over candidate B is all about which of them is
likely to serve my private needs and the private needs of my most
immediate family. Customers are voters, and voters are customers;
candidates are would-be service providers, and electoral campaigns are
advertising campaigns.
Liberal democracy characteristically appeals to self-interest
narrowly conceived, rather than a collective good. In this view, the
goal of democratic politics is the optimal compromise among private
interests. Back-and-forth haggling in the market of democracy produces
diminished expectations, cynicism, and the priceless lesson that the
rich will always be in power. The resulting low voter turnout and
limited participation--an effect of the system--further strengthens that
very system by constricting the range of choices and destroying hope
for real change. Thus, the market model of democracy reduces
participation of a large part of the electorate, usually without
compromising its legitimacy.
And yet in Armenia as elsewhere, candidates and politicians still
know that they can advance their interests by conjuring “the will of the
people,” “national interests,” and various flavors of nationalism.
Collective ideals die hard, even in a country where the electorate is
exhausted and disillusioned.
The market model of democracy could only prevail in Armenia by doing
violence to deeply held traditional assumptions and motifs that
emphasize the broader welfare of the neighborhood, the town or village,
and “the people.” Our older compatriots, women and men who lived
longest within the Soviet order, could tell us this, if we would for a
moment listen to what they have to say instead of constantly denigrating
their lives and ideals.
Armenians are understandably angry about bribery, ballotstuffing,
back-room deals, fraud, and other “irregularities” of the election
process in their country. It is surprising that the most brazen of
these “irregularities” have persisted for so many years. Perhaps
Armenia’s plutocrats have made the mistake of assuming that the coming
generation will remain as docile in the face of theirdepravities as
thecounterrevolutionary generation has been. In any case,
patronage,back-room haggling, and the manipulation of the electorateare
natural expressions of a liberal democratic political culture in which
public institutions are, at best, just service providers for
customer-voters.
“Political scientists” in the West have long acknowledged this. In his book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
(first published in 1942), for example, the Austrian economist Joseph
Schumpeter argued that the electorate is inveterately ignorant and
easily manipulated by politicians, who set the agenda. Instead of the
“rule of the people,” Schumpeter argued that democracy is—and should
be--a mechanism whereby leaders compete for influence the way private
companies compete for business. Although periodic elections legitimize
governments and keep them accountable, the participatory role of
individuals is severely limited, and the policy program is—and should
be--very much in the hands of an elite leadership.Schumpeter’s views are
influential among academics in the West, but for obvious reasons
Western propagandists do not showcase these views. They have convinced
us to accept what they themselves do not really believe, namely, that
liberal democracy is all about popular sovereignty, and that elite
leadership was the sole province of non liberal-democratic states, such
as the old Soviet Union.
In the absence of a robust conception of the greater good, what
remains of public office aside from payment for services rendered? If
the pursuit of private interests is job number one in politics as in
daily life, thenit is not surprising that politicians, bureaucrats, and
even traffic cops should view their “customers” as a source of
income.This cautionary observation applies to the liberal opposition
groups in Yerevan today just as much as it does to the current
government that they denounce.
Indignation is growing, though, and it is likely that in the coming
years the most blatant of the“irregularities”will disappear, as it
becomes clear that continued abuses threaten to undermine the political
legitimacy of the regime. But even at that, the country’s electoral
politics and official political culture will remain every bit as
limited, one-sided, and rigged in favor of the candidates of the
plutocracy.
If the market model of democracy is the only game in town, then aside
from the “irregularities,” Armenia today already has a rather pure form
of liberal democracy. And even when it comes to corruption, it is not
clear that it is worse in Yerevan today than it was in, say, theUnited
States of America (that self-imagined paragon of liberal democratic
rectitude)during the Gilded Age. The pro-Western liberal democratic
opposition in Yerevan really does not have much to complain about--or at
least they do not have solutions for the problems that they identify,
because they do not provide a genuine alternative.
Democracy and the Common Good
As it turns out, there is an alternativeconception of democracy, one
in which democratic institutions open up a public space for discussion
ofcollective interests, instead of exclusively private interests.
Within this public space, or forum, open discussion and debate transform
personal preferences, creating new conceptions of the greater good.
Open debate discourages the public expression of blatantly
self-serving preferences.In open debate, if a party with narrowly
self-serving aims does not castits proposals in terms of public
good,then it risks losing the debate. Itsself-serving arguments will
come up against counterarguments, whether self-serving or not. Before a
mining company can buy votes for politicianswho will look the other way
when it dumps waste water into a river, the corporation’s mouthpieces
will have to come to the forum with arguments, strong or weak, to the
effect that their preferred candidate will pursue the greater good.
They will have to change the minds of voters, by making the casethat
their “market solution” actually will redound to the benefit of more
people. Environmentalists, local residents, and farmerswill come to the
forum with a different perspective, presenting their own arguments to
make the opposing case.
The forum, then, will function very differently from the market.
Rather than merely registering pre-given preferences and then pretending
to come up with a compromise, politics would change preferences through
public debate. Rather than merely casting votes for pre-selected
candidates, the decisive political act would beengaging in public debate, with a view to transforming preferences of participants in the broader democratic process.
This alternative model sometimes goes by the name of deliberative democracy.
This model of democracydoes not require the participation of every
citizen in politics. People are different, and many people simply do
not wish to engage in the political process. (In this respect,
political deliberation differs from the market, which requires the
participation of pretty much everyone.) Nevertheless, it is likely to
bring many more into the political process than currently bother with it
under the existing regime. It is certainly the case that deliberative democracy operates, to
greater or lesser degrees, within many contemporary liberal
democracies. In the major examples that come to mind, though,
deliberation is highly constrained and deliberative democracy is
subordinate to the market model.
There are reasons to believe that, in capitalist Armenia today, a new
political culture is taking form, outside of the framework of official
political institutions. To a limited extent, as we know, deliberative
democracyalready exists in Armenia, thanks in large part to the work of
investigative journalists, community and environmental groups,and
consumer advocacy groups, applying external pressure on the political
system. Public deliberation and ground-level activism have scored
victories, at least marginally, against the ruling class. The victories
and near-victories include the closure of polluting mines and rapacious
logging operations, the removal of corrupt magistrates, the prosecution
of cronies, successful protests here and there against evictions and
the privatization of public land; strikes for payment of back wages, and
campaigns against domestic violence, bus fair increases, and repression
of political dissidents. Even within the context of capitalist
political systems, public debate and the activism that comes with it
have forced the windows open and pointed beyond prevailing relations of
domination.
We should keep in mind, though, that what has made these victories
possible was action OUTSIDE of the rigged political system. The lesson
is that if anyone but the plutocrats and their foreign benefactors are
to make themselves heard, then they must apply pressure from below. The
political system itself, whether it calls itself democratic or anything
else, is an obstacle to the power of the working-class majority of
Armenia.
Deliberative democracy alone, then, is not a cure-all. The decisive
difference between a well-functioning deliberative democracy and the
market model of democracy could and should lie in the character of state
institutions themselves: are they committed at the outset to the
political power of the working class majority, rather than a handful of
plutocrats? But a well-functioning deliberative democracy at the level of state
institutions will not simply arrive on the scene of their own accord.
There is no way around considerations of the class character of the
state: if the state is a capitalist state, then every conflict between a
corporation and the greater good will be rigged against the greater
good.
Expanded deliberative democracy could also play a pivotal role within
a future context of workers’ power. Here, unfortunately, the
historical record provides tragic lessons as to what NOT to do. Soviet
leaders, starting with Stalin, failed to make the connection between
democracy and accountability, and this had disastrous effects: in the
absence of democratic oversight, inefficient, brutal, and ultimately
self-defeating policies proliferated. Open debate is the closest thing
there is to a safeguard against inefficient and dysfunctional
legislation, leadership, and state policies—or at least against the
indefinite continuation of them. It would be hard to overstate the
importance of this point.
* * *
The Republic of Armenia is a state in which big capitalists as a
class hold a monopoly on political power. The prevailing market model of
democracy is part of a closed and privatized political culture that
legitimizes an economic and political order that has dealt one blow
after another to the majority of households in Armenia. An alternative
model, deliberative democracy, could help set the stage for the
emergence of a new unofficial political culture. In fact, there is
evidence that this is what is taking place in Armenia today, as a
younger generation is repudiating—in practice, of not explicitly—the
political, economic, and philosophical assumptions of the
counterrevolutionary generation of 1991. But until and unless thestate
itself is changed fundamentally, it is folly to expect state policies
and status-quo politicians of their own accord to pursue a greater good
that will actually benefit the majority population of the country.
Markar Melkonian is a philosophy instructor and an author. His books include Richard Rorty’s Politics: Liberalism at the End of the American Century (1999), Marxism: A Post-Cold War Primer (Westview Press, 1996), and My Brother’s Road (2005).
Source: http://hetq.am/eng/news/60542/what-could-democracy-be.html
Capitalism Run Amok Is Just Plain Capitalism
The source of Armenia’s misery and
humiliation, we often hear, is not capitalism per se, but rather
“gangster capitalism,” “a broken system,” “capitalism run amok.” The goal for the future, then, is to
“fix the system,” to reform capitalism, to make it more like regular,
pure, genuine Free Enterprise, the kind of capitalism that works. But
what if Armenia’s actually existing capitalism already is genuine
capitalism? An economist once observed that the
only existential meaning of “enterprise” in the term free enterprise is
“whatever capitalists happen to be doing at the time”--and “free” is the
accompanying demand that they be allowed to do it.
In Armenia, successive presidents,
legislators, ministers, and mayorshave certainly allowed them to “do
it.”Post-Soviet cliques have privatized public land, seized factories,
and plundered resources. They have shredded the social safety
net,unleashed the “job creators” on child labor; eliminated overtime
pay; dispensed with job safety standards, trashed even the most minimal
environmentalregulations, and generally done everything they can
toenrich themselves and their cronies, seemingly without a thought to
the welfare of the vastmajority. Over the years, Hetq.am has done a
truly admirable job of reporting the daily pillage.
Armenia’s plutocrats justify their
actions in the name of free enterprise, and their point is well taken.
After all, a law prohibitingthe exploitation of child labor or the
poisoning of drinking water is nothing if it is not state regulation of
the market. Building public schools and enacting laws that protect
forestsmake markets less free.So if Free Enterprise really were as
important as the IMF and the advisors from Chicago say it is, then
Armenia’s oligarchs really are the national heroes they think they are.
One of the Ronald Reagan admirers who
led Armenia’s charge down the road to ruinexemplified the wisdom of
Yerevan’s Free Marketeers: “free market reform,” he wrote, is the path
“which has been traveled by many other nations and which leads to
happiness.”(Vazgen Manukian, quoted in Jirair Libaridian (ed.), Armenia
at the Crossroads, 1991, p. 52.) In the years since he made this
announcement, we have beheld the happiness that free market reform has
wrought in many other nations, from Mexico to Greece, and from Iceland
to India, where in recent yearsa quarter of a million farmers have
committed suicide.
The oligarchs and their IMF advisors,
of course,are willing to pay this price for the sake of their Free
Market utopia. Or rather, they are willing to make the poor pay this
price. For decades, sensitive commentatorsin the West excoriated Joseph
Stalin for his “blood-curdling” suggestion that the end justifies the
means. These days, those same commentatorsdo not give a passing thought
to the hundreds of millions of lives consigned to
displacement,drudgery, fear,and early death in the name of free market
reform.
A quarter century ago, the Ter
Petrosyan administration set Armenia off on the path to happiness by
doling out state property to cronies and racketeers,guttingthe
industrial infrastructure, and shredding the social safety net.
Hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs, anduntold thousands of
Armenians, especially the elderly and the very young, have died of
exposure, food poisoning, preventable accidents, and lack of access to
basic healthcare.
Since then, aparade of alternating
opposition figures and national saviors have come into office, enriched
themselves and their cronies, and then left the scene with the loot, one
after another. Despite the personnel changes, though, economic policy
has continued to benefit the rich few, at the expense of the poor
majority.
Armenia has undergone twenty-five
years of foreign-directed reform: privatization, shock therapy,
conditionalities, and so on. Every time we turn around, it seems that
more “reform” is needed. And the reform always seems to require further
wage cuts, further cuts to social programs, further deregulation, and
ever more sacrifice from the have-nots. Consider the much-ballyhooed
Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) of earlier years: for Armenia, as
for other poor debtor countries, SAPs required:
- selling off state enterprises to the private sector;
- eliminating price controls and producer and consumer subsidies for agricultural goods;
- devaluing the local currency;
- cutting consumer subsidies and charging user fees for social services such as health care and education;
- dropping protectionist measures and reducing regulation of the private sector;
- providing guarantees, state-funded infrastructure, tax breaks, and wage restraints as incentives for investment;
- dismantling foreign exchange restrictions (which has allowed wealthy
locals to export funds overseas, as capital flight, worsening
balance-of-payment deficits).
As a result of these policies,
Armenia today can boast of Enterprise that is as Free as anywhere on
Earth. Readers of Hetq.am are aware of the consequences: sky-high
unemployment; proliferating poverty; the depopulation of the
countryside; deforestation; plummeting birth rates; falling life
expectancies, and, of course, the catastrophic outmigration of one third
of Armenia’s population. Successive plutocrats have lengthened the
work week, lowered the legal work age, evicted families from their homes
in order to build “elite homes for elite guys,” demanded ever-higher
bus fares for a privatized transport system; raised university fees far
beyond the means of most families, attempted to privatize social
security, and so on and so forth, ad nauseam.
It is a sad commentary on the state
of intellectuals in Armenia today that few of them are even aware of the
work of the great social geographer David Harvey, who has so accurately
described the process of “capital accumulation by dispossession” that
characterizes scores of countries like Armenia. When is someone going
to translate Harvey’s book, The New Imperialism, into Armenian? In Armenia, as we know, “free market
reform” has taken place against the background of official impunity, the
jailing of dissidents, electoral manipulation, and fraud so pervasive
that it would have astonished even the most cynical Armenians of the
Soviet period.
Let us remind ourselves that these
measures were undertaken under the tutelage of the IMF and the World
Bank, in strict adherence to Free Market doctrines. All the while,
Western agencies and bureaucracies have heartily congratulated their
Armenian followersfor rapidly privatizing state property, “making hard
choices,” and faithfully carrying out Washington’s directives.
David Brooks, one of the more
thoughtful American Free Market columnists, recently acknowledged that,
curiously, post-Soviet success stories are rare. (“The Legacy of Fear,”
New York Times, November 10, 2014.) Despite the generalized
“wreckage,” however, he was able to identify several success stories,
including none other than Azerbaijan and Armenia! That’s right:
according to Brooks, Armenia today counts as one of “only five countries
that have emerged as successful capitalist economies” from the former
Soviet bloc.
This should surprise the Free Market
faithful in Yerevan, who were hoping that ultimate success lay in the
bright future, not in the dark present. If this is what a successful
capitalist economy looks like, then the question naturally arises: What
was the point of letting capitalists take over the country in the first
place?
The Free Market coercion and rhetoric
has come full circle: right-wing politicians in the USA, exemplified
by Scott Walker, the governor of the state of Wisconsin, have tried to
enact many of the same policies in the USA that the IMF, the CIA, and
the economists from Chicago have foisted on vulnerable countries like
Pinochet’s Chile and today’s Armenia. In their arguments for, say,
privatization of social security, the Scott Walkers have pointed to
policies in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet
republics as examples of an irresistible global trend that America must
follow.
When the Scott Walkers have failed to
achieve their maximal demands, it is because traditional constituencies
in the United States with independent organizational presence—notably
labor unions—have fought against free market “solutions.” Here,
ironically, America does provide a valuable lesson to Armenia:
resistance to Free Market reform must be organized, sustained, and based
in the working class.
The tide of misery rises ever higher,
and there is no good reason to hope that further reforms along the same
lines will change the trajectory. And yet capitalism still escapes
blame for the disasters it has created. Instead, we are told that
“capitalism run amok” is to blame, and that the only antidote is—more
capitalism! This has happened over and over again.
At what point will skepticism kick in?
Free Marketeers love to sermonize
about accountability and the responsiveness of the market. But the Free
Marketeers escape all responsibility for their policies and get to
prescribe more of the same poison to the patient. As long as we are unable to describe
the problem accurately, we will not even begin to address it in an
effective manner. The first step is to start calling the thing by its
name: the main source of Armenia’s devastation in the past twenty-five
years is not “capitalism gone amok”; rather, it is capitalist rule.
(MarkarMelkonian is a nonfiction writer
and a philosophy instructor. His books include Richard Rorty’s
Politics: Liberalism at the End of the American Century (Humanities
Press, 1999), Marxism: A Post-Cold War Primer (Westview Press, 1996),
and My Brother’s Road (I.B. Tauris, 2005, 2007), a memoir/biography
about Monte Melkonian, co-written with Seta Melkonian)
Armenians Need to Lose Their Faith in the Free Market
In a best-selling book, the late
Nobel-laureate economist Milton Friedman wrote that, “…if inequality is
measured by differences in levels of living between the privileged and
other classes, such inequality may well be decidedly less in capitalist
than in communist countries.” (Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, p. 169.) Friedman built his career on confident pronouncements like this.
A quarter of a century ago, a
generation of intellectuals in Yerevan seized on such statements, which
became articles of a Free Market faith that seemed new and exciting at
the time. They hoisted the banner of capitalism high above their heads
and waved it around furiously. Since then, they have had many cold
winters to reconsider the claim that capitalism would narrow the gap
between rich and poor.
Armenians, of course, have not been
alone in their disillusionment. According to a recent report by the
international relief organization Oxfam, “In 2014, the richest 1% of
people in the world owned 48% of global wealth, leaving just 52% to be
shared between the other 99% of the adults on the planet.” Almost all
of the remaining 52% of global wealth, the report claims, is owned by
the richest 20%, leaving only 5.5% of global wealth to the remaining 80%
of the human population of Earth. (Deborah Hardoon, “Wealth: Having
It All and Wanting More,” Oxfam G.B. for Oxfam International, January
2015, p. 2.) The eighty percent at the bottom, presumably, includes the
population of the Republic of Armenia.
Oxfam reports, furthermore, that the
wealth of the poorest 50% of the human population of Earth is less in
2014 that it was in 2009, while the wealth of the richest eighty
individuals doubled in nominal terms between 2009 and 2014.In fact, “The
wealth of these eighty individuals is now the same as that owned by the
bottom 50% of the global population, such that 3.5 billion people share
between them the same amount of wealth as that of these extremely
wealthy 80 people.”(Hardoon, pp. 2-3.)
The Oxfam report is just the latest
of a long series of reports and studies that point to a huge and growing
gap between the super-rich and the rest, both in the former Soviet
republics and across the globe.These reports come as no surprise to some
of us, but theyplainly contradict the claims of Friedman and the Free
Market faithful, from Washington to Yerevan and beyond. TheAmerican
journalist and former hedge-fund manager, Jim Cramer, summarized the
lesson: “The only guy who really called this right,” he said, “was Karl
Marx.” (Time magazine, “Ten Questions for Jim Cramer,” May 14, 2009.)
There is much evidence that within
the wealthiest and most powerful countries, too, the gap between the
richest and the rest is growing. A quick way to fathom the dimensions
of that gap is to examine the American Profile Poster, a graphic representation of a large amount of data collected from the U.S. Census Bureau. (Stephen J. Rose, Social Stratification in the United States: The American Profile Poster, The New Press, 2007.)
The figure at the very top of the
poster’s main chart represents 190,000 individuals with the highest
reported incomes in the United States. The chart is evenly calibrated
and the poster itself measures about one meter in height. If it were to
represent the 20,000 individuals with the highest income as a separate
figure, the chart would have to extend twenty stories above the poster!
That is the distance that separates the income of America’s super rich
from the rest of the country.
(The latest edition of the poster was
published in 2007, using data collected before the Great Recession. If
anything, the recession has further skewed the trends registered in
that edition. Every indication is that an updated chart will represent
an even greater gap between the super-rich and the rest.)
The Occupy activists of a few years
back denounced “the 1%” of the wealthiest Americans. In fact, the
super-rich in the United States make up less than one-one hundredth of
one percent of the population of the country. Indeed, according to U.S.
Census Bureau data, the 400 richest Americans control more than 38% of
the country’s wealth, and 10% of the population of the U.S.A. controls
70% of the wealth. No wonder, then, that even the current administration
in Washington D.C. publicly expresses alarm at the growing gap.
The United States of America enjoys
huge advantages that Armenia will never enjoy. A vast country of 316
million people, with immense natural resources and thousands of miles of
coastline, the United States dominates its own hemisphere--and most of
the rest of the globe, too--economically, culturally, and militarily.
And yet forty percent of the U.S. population has a net worth of zero;
they have no assets. If it were not for social security, tens of
millions of these Americans would be destitute. This is the country that the leaders of the counter-revolution in Yerevan twenty-five years ago looked to as a model.
But perhaps the past quarter of a
century of poverty and misery is just a passing phase. Perhaps, under
more propitious circumstancesand in the even-longer run, Free Enterprise
mightyet narrow the gap between the super rich and the rest, as Milton
Friedman claimed it does. Perhaps, despite appearances to the contrary,
Armenian is on the way to a natural equilibrium state in which the
markets will work their magic happily ever after.
This is a claim one hears these days,
as it has become clear that capitalism has failed to make good on its
promises. The economist John Maynard Keynes once noted that “in the
long run” we are all dead. This observation becomes worse than ominous
in the case of Armenia, in view of the long-term economic, strategic,
and security consequences ofits dramatically diminished population. But even setting that consideration
aside, the facts of capitalism wipe out the “passing phase” article of
faith, too. Thomas Piketty’s much-discussed book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century,
has shown that, over the course of the last two centuries, the rate of
return on capital has exceeded the rate of economic growth.
Piketty’s book, a popular
presentation of exhaustive research, shows that in the West no less than
in Armenia, capitalism left to its own “free market” devices leads to
greater and greater disparities of wealth. Without state intervention,
the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, even as productivity
soars. For all of his confidence, then, Friedman was clearly wrong:
even in the long-run, capitalism left to its own devices leads to
greater and greater inequalities. But this would hardly come as a shock to most residents of the Republic of Armenia today.
If by now Armenia’s Free Marketeers
have not seen the error of their ways, they never will. Indeed, why
should they? The leaders of Armenia’s counter-revolutionary generation
have by now safely squirrelled away their loot and either left the
country or ensconced themselves in mansions, behind gates. Capitalism
certainly has worked for them. But what about Armenia’s
wage-earners, the unemployed, the under-employed, those on fixed
incomes, and the poor? These people, together with their dependents,
make up the larger part of the population of the Republic of Armenia.
People who care about Armenia had
better hope for a generation of working-class Armenians who will break
with the delusions of their parents and grandparents as thoroughly as
the counter-revolutionary generation twenty-five years ago blotted the
lives and hopes of their Soviet Armenian predecessors. We had better hope for a generation that will recognize that the guy who really got this right was Karl Marx.
The Great Democracy Meltdown: Why Democracy is Failing Across the World
As the revolt that started this past winter in Tunisia spread to
Egypt, Libya, and beyond, dissidents the world over were looking to the
Middle East for inspiration. In China, online activists inspired by the
Arab Spring called for a “jasmine revolution.” In Singapore, one of the
quietest countries in the world, opposition members called for an
“orchid evolution” in the run-up to this month’s national elections.
Perhaps as a result, those watching from the West have been positively
triumphalist in their predictions. The Middle East uprisings could
herald “the greatest advance for human rights and freedom since the end
of the cold war,” argued British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
Indeed, at no point since the end of the cold war—when Francis Fukuyama
penned his famous essay The End of History, positing that liberal
democracy was the ultimate destination for every country—has there been
so much optimism about the march of global freedom.
If only things were so simple. The truth is that the Arab Spring is
something of a smokescreen for what is taking place in the world as a
whole. Around the globe, it is democratic meltdowns, not democratic
revolutions, that are now the norm. (And even countries like Egypt and
Tunisia, while certainly freer today than they were a year ago, are
hardly guaranteed to replace their autocrats with real democracies.) In
its most recent annual survey, the monitoring group Freedom House found
that global freedom plummeted
for the fifth year in a row, the longest continuous decline in nearly
40 years. It pointed out that most authoritarian nations had become even
more repressive, that the decline in freedom was most pronounced among
the “middle ground” of nations—countries that have begun democratizing
but are not solid and stable democracies—and that the number of
electoral democracies currently stands at its lowest point since 1995.
Meanwhile, another recent survey, compiled by Germany’s Bertelsmann
Foundation, spoke of
a “gradual qualitative erosion” of democracy and concluded that the
number of “highly defective democracies”—democracies so flawed that they
are close to being failed states, autocracies, or both—had doubled
between 2006 and 2010.
The number of anecdotal examples is overwhelming. From Russia to
Venezuela to Thailand to the Philippines, countries that once appeared
to be developing into democracies today seem headed in the other
direction. So many countries now remain stuck somewhere between
authoritarianism and democracy, report Marc Plattner and Larry Diamond,
co-editors of the Journal of Democracy, that “it no longer seems
plausible to regard [this condition] simply as a temporary stage in the
process of democratic transition.” Or as an activist from Burma—long one
of the world’s most repressive countries—told me after moving to
Thailand and watching that country’s democratic system disintegrate,
“The other countries were supposed to change Burma. ... Now it seems
like they are becoming like Burma.”
Twenty or even ten years ago, the possibility of a global democratic
recession seemed impossible. It was widely assumed that, as states grew
wealthier, they would develop larger middle classes. And these middle
classes, according to democracy theorists like Samuel Huntington, would
push for ever-greater social, political, and economic freedoms. Human
progress, which constantly marched forward, would spread democracy
everywhere. For a time, this rosy line of thinking seemed warranted. In 1990,
dictators still ruled most of Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia; by 2005,
democracies had emerged across these continents, and some of the most
powerful developing nations, including South Africa and Brazil, had
become solid democracies. In 2005, for the first time in history, more than half the world’s people lived under democratic systems.
Then, something odd and unexpected began to happen. It started when
some of the leaders who had emerged in these countries seemed to morph
into elected autocrats once they got into office. In Venezuela, Hugo
Chávez is now essentially an elected dictator. In Ecuador, elected
President Rafael Correa, who has displayed a strong authoritarian
streak, recently won legislation that would grant him expansive new
powers. In Kyrgyzstan, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who led the 2005 Tulip
Revolution, soon proved himself nearly as authoritarian as his
predecessor. And, in Russia, Vladimir Putin used the power he won in
elections to essentially dismantle the country’s democracy.
But it wasn’t just leaders who were driving these changes. In some
cases, the people themselves seemed to acquiesce in their countries’
slide away from free and open government. In one study by the Program on
International Policy Attitudes, only 16 percent of Russians
said it was “very important” that their nation be governed
democratically. The regular Afrobarometer survey of the African
continent has found declining levels of support for democracy in many
key countries. And in Guatemala, Paraguay, Colombia, Peru, Honduras, and
Nicaragua, either a minority or only a small majority of people think
democracy is preferable to any other type of government. Even in East
Asia, one of the most democratic regions of the world, polls show rising
dissatisfaction with democracy. In fact, several countries in the
region have developed what Yu-tzung Chang, Yunhan Zhu, and Chong-min
Park, who studied data from the regular Asian Barometer surveys, have
termed “authoritarian nostalgia.”
“Few of the region’s former authoritarian regimes have been thoroughly
discredited,” they write, noting that the region’s average score for
commitment to democracy, judged by a range of responses to surveys, has
recently fallen.
But what about the middle class? Even if large segments of the
population were uninterested in liberal democracy, weren’t members of
the middle class supposed to act as agents of democratization, as
Huntington had envisioned? Actually, the story has turned out to be
quite a bit more complicated. In country after country, a familiar
pattern has repeated itself: The middle class has indeed reacted
negatively to populist leaders who appeared to be sliding into
authoritarianism; but rather than work to defeat these leaders at the
ballot box or strengthen the institutions that could hold them in check,
they have ended up supporting military coups or other undemocratic
measures.
Thailand offers a clear example of this phenomenon. In 2001, Thaksin
Shinawatra, a former telecommunications tycoon turned populist, was
elected with the largest mandate in Thai history, mostly from the poor,
who, as in many developing nations, still constitute a majority of the
population. Over the next five years, Thaksin enacted several policies
that clearly benefited the poor, including national health insurance,
but he also began to strangle Thailand’s institutions, threatening
reporters, unleashing a “war on drugs” that led to unexplained shootings
of political opponents, and silencing the bureaucracy. In 2005, when
the charismatic prime minister won another free election with an even
larger mandate, the middle class revolted, demonstrating in the streets
until they paralyzed Bangkok. Finally, in September 2006, the Thai
military stepped in, ousting Thaksin. When I traveled around Bangkok
following the coup, young, middle-class Thais, who a generation ago had
fought against military rulers, were engaged in a love-in with the
troops, snapping photos of soldiers posted throughout Bangkok like they
were celebrities.
The middle class in Thailand had plenty of company. In 2001, urban
Filipinos poured into the streets to topple President Joseph Estrada, a
former actor who rose to power on his appeal to the poor, and then
allegedly used his office to rake in vast sums of money from underworld
gambling tycoons. In Honduras in 2009, middle-class opponents of
populist President Manuel Zelaya began to protest his plans to extend
his power by altering the constitution. When the military removed him in
June of that year, the intervention was welcomed by many members of the
urban middle class. An analysis of military coups in developing nations
over the past two decades, conducted by my colleague David Silverman,
found that, in nearly half of the cases—drawn from Africa, Latin
America, Asia, and the Middle East—middle-class men and women either
agitated in advance for the coup, or, after the takeover, expressed
their support in polls or prominent press coverage.
Even as domestic politics in many developing nations has become less
friendly to democratization, the international system too has changed,
further weakening democratic hopes. The rising strength of authoritarian
powers, principally China but also Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other
states, has helped forestall democratization. Moscow and Beijing were
clearly rattled by the “color revolutions” of the early and mid-2000s,
and they developed a number of responses. First, they tried to
delegitimize the revolts by arguing that they were not genuine popular
movements but actually Western attempts at regime change. Then, in
nations like Cambodia, Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Moldova, Moscow
and Beijing intervened directly in attempts to reverse democratic
gains. The Kremlin’s youth group, Nashi, known for its aggressive
tactics against democracy activists, launched branches in other Central
Asian nations. In Kyrgyzstan, Russian advisers helped a series of
leaders emulate the Kremlin’s model of political control. In part
because of this Russian influence, “[p]arliamentary democracy in
Kyrgyzstan has been hobbled,” according to the International Crisis
Group. China and Russia even created new “NGOs” that were supposedly
focused on democracy promotion. But these organizations actually offered
expertise and funding to foreign leaders to help them forestall new
color revolutions. In Ukraine, an organization called the “Russian Press Club,” run by an adviser to Putin, posed as an NGO and helped facilitate Russia’s involvement in Ukrainian elections.
But China and Russia are only part of the story. In many ways, the
biggest culprits have actually been stable democracies. Consider the
case of Myo, a Burmese publisher and activist who I met four years ago
in a dingy noodle shop in Rangoon. The educated son of a relatively
well-off Burmese family, he told me he had been working for a publishing
company in Rangoon, but had to smuggle political messages into pieces
he published in magazines that focused on safe topics like soccer or
Burmese rap. “It’s kind of a game everyone here plays,” he explained,
“but after a while it gets so tiring.”
When I next met Myo, it was in Thailand two years later. He’d finally
grown weary of trying to get his writing past the censors and left for
India, then for Thailand. “I’d heard that, before, India had been very
welcoming to Burmese activists, particularly after 1988,” Myo said,
referring to a period of anti-government rioting in Burma. At one time,
Indian officials had assisted Burmese democracy activists, and India’s
defense minister from 1998 to 2004 was George Fernandes, a prominent
human rights advocate who even gave some Burmese exiles shelter in his
family compound. By the time Myo came to India, however, Delhi had
stopped criticizing the Burmese junta. Instead, it had reversed itself
and was engaging the generals under a policy called “Look East.” When
Than Shwe, the Burmese junta’s leader, paid a state visit to India, he
was taken to the burial site of Mahatma Gandhi, a cruelly ironic
juxtaposition that Amnesty International’s Burma specialist called
“entirely unpalatable.” For Myo, India’s chilly new pragmatism was a
shock. “I expected China to work with Burma,” he said. “But to see it
from India, it was so much more disappointing.”
Like Myo, many Western officials had expected that stable
developing-world democracies like India, Indonesia, South Africa,
Brazil, and Turkey would emerge as powerful advocates for democracy and
human rights abroad. But as they’ve gained power, these emerging
democratic giants have acted more like cold-blooded realists. South
Africa has for years tolerated Robert Mugabe’s brutal regime next door
in Zimbabwe, and, in 2007, it even helped to block a U.N. resolution
condemning the Burmese junta for human rights abuses. Brazil has cozied
up to Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and to local autocrats like
Cuba’s Castros. When a prominent Cuban political prisoner named Orlando
Zapata Tamayo held a hunger strike and eventually died, former Brazilian
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva seemed to ridicule Tamayo’s
struggle, likening the activist to a criminal who was trying to gain
publicity.
There are exceptions to this trend. Poland, for one, has used its
influence to support reformers in other post-Soviet states like Belarus.
But Poland is unusual, and by playing a limited—or hostile—role in
international democracy promotion efforts, countries like South Africa
or Brazil or Turkey have made it easier for autocratic leaders to paint
democracy promotion as a Western phenomenon, and even to portray it as
an illegal intervention.
Why have regional democratic powers opted for this course? It seems
hard to believe that a country with, say, Brazil or South Africa’s
experience of brutal tyranny could actively abet dictators in other
nations. But it now appears that the notion of absolute sovereignty,
promoted by authoritarian states like China, has resonated with these
democratic governments. Many of these emerging democratic powers were
leading members of the non-aligned movement during the cold war and
weathered Western efforts to foment coups in their countries. Today,
they feel extremely uncomfortable joining any international coalition
that could undermine other nations’ sovereignty, even if potentially for
good reason. And many of these countries, such as Turkey and Indonesia
and India, may simply be eager to avoid criticism of their own internal
human rights abuses.
Then there is the United States, still the most influential nation on
earth. Its missteps, recently, have been serious. Barack Obama’s
efforts to distance himself from the Bush administration—which greatly
undermined America’s moral authority-have combined with the country’s
weakened economic position to downgrade the importance of democracy
promotion in U.S. foreign policy. While Obama has delivered several
speeches mentioning democracy, he has little obvious passion for the
issue. When several prominent Iranian dissidents came to Washington in
the summer of 2009, following the uprising in their country, they could
not obtain meetings with any senior Obama administration officials.
Rabeeya Kadeer, the Uighur version of the Dalai Lama, met with Bush in
2008 but found herself shunted off to low-level State Department
officials by the Obama administration.
More substantively, the administration has shifted the focus of the
federal bureaucracy. Though it has maintained significant budget levels
for democracy promotion, it eliminated high-level positions on the
National Security Council that, under Bush, had been devoted to
democracy. The administration also appointed an assistant secretary for
democracy, human rights, and labor who in his previous work had been
mostly focused on cleaning up America’s own abuses. This was not a bad
thing—the Bush administration indeed left major issues to resolve—but it
meant that he had far less experience than many of his predecessors
with democracy promotion abroad.
To be fair, the White House has to grapple with an increasingly
isolationist American public. In one poll taken in 2005, a majority of
Americans said that the United States should play a role in promoting
democracy elsewhere. By 2007, only 37 percent thought the United States
should play this role. In a subsequent study,
released in late 2009, nearly half of Americans told the Pew Research
polling organization that the United States should “mind its own
business” internationally and should let other nations work out their
challenges or problems themselves. This was the highest percentage of
isolationist sentiment recorded in a poll of the American public in four
decades.
There is an obvious appeal to the constantly touted notion that the
march of human freedom is inevitable. But not only is it simple-minded
to treat history as a story with a preordained happy ending; it is also,
for those who truly want to see democracy spread, extraordinarily
dangerous. After all, if democracy is bound to triumph, then there’s no
reason to work too hard at promoting it. This overconfidence can spread
to developing nations themselves, lulling democrats into a false sense
of security once an election has finally been held, and dissuading them
from building the institutions that are necessary to keep a country free
over the long-term. Democracy is not a simple thing: It’s a complex
system of strong institutions and legal checks. Very few nations have
mastered it fully. And sustaining it is a never-ending effort.
Stopping the global democratic reversal, then, will require giving up
the assumption that democracy will simply happen on its own—and instead
figuring out what we can do to promote it. At the most basic level, the
United States can be much less abashed in its rhetorical advocacy of
democracy and much more consistent. Condemning autocracy in places like
Bahrain and Saudi Arabia—where the United States has significant
strategic interests—would help to counteract the notion that democracy
is merely a concept the West wields to serve its own geopolitical aims.
In addition, the United States and its allies should do more to make
democracy promotion pay off for emerging powers. New democratic giants,
like Brazil, should be granted more power in international institutions
like the United Nations—if, that is, they show a commitment to helping
expand human rights and free government around the globe.
Right now, few of these lessons have been learned. Instead, we seem
content to watch events unfold across the world and assume that things
will work out for the best, because history is invariably headed in the
direction of freedom. We should stop telling ourselves this comforting
story and instead do what is needed to give democracy a fighting chance. Joshua Kurlantzick is Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on
Foreign Relations. This article originally ran in the June 9, 2011,
issue of the magazine.
Source: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/world/magazine/88632/failing-democracy-venezuela-arab-spring
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