This weekend the major media revived the idea that Vice President Joseph (Joe) Biden could enter the Democratic Presidential primaries. That isn't as exciting as watching Donald Trump beating up on his Republican rivals, but it reveals much about Democratic Party and American politics.
The basic idea is that while the nation might be ready for a female President, that female might not be Hillary Clinton. She is taking a bit of a bruising from the "progressive" wing of the Democratic Party, now led by Bernie Sanders, who until recently was an independent socialist, not a Democrat at all. And of course the the conservative media, which is most of the media, treat Hillary like she is some combination of Bloody Mary and Joe Stalin's wife.
Joe Biden would be promoted as a fresh face that can unite the Party. Once its bureaucracy, donors, and likely even voters, reject the Bernie Sanders bid.
People forget what Joe Biden stands for and where he comes from. A narrative a personal grief and service as Vice President under Barack Obama is supposed to make us forget his deeper, darker, shadier past.
Joe Biden come from a pocket borough, and not just any pocket borough.
The term pocket borough came from Britain to indicate an election district where a very few people chose someone for Parliament. It did not so much result from corruption as from the migration from rural areas to cities, combined by leaving the districts drawn in ancient past in place. But once the pocket burroughs existed, it was easy for rich people to control them, and thus control Parliament.
A similar, if not quite as dramatic, situation exists in the United States, set in cement when the Constitution was drawn up. Each state gets two Senators, no matter how small its population.
Bernie Sanders is from the state of Vermont. It has a population of about 627,000. In other words, its entire population is equivalent to a mid-size city in one of the more populous states. Yet it gets two U.S. Senators. In this state we had liberal capture, or socialist capture if you will, or at least capture by Bernie Sanders. He has never accomplished much in the U.S. Congress, but he has somehow kept the voters in Vermont happy.
Before the Vice Presidency Joe Biden was Senator from Delaware. That state has a population of about 936,000, but is much more urban/suburban than Vermont. Most importantly Delaware is the most corrupt state in the nation, if by corrupt you mean rich people and their banks and corporations getting their way. Delaware is so corrupt that corruption (of the corporate type) is legal.
Most notably, Delaware has the loosest laws to control corporations in the nation. It is so lawless that most corporations of any size in the U.S. incorporate themselves in Delaware, even though their corporate headquarters are in other states.
So as Senator, Joe Biden was essential representing corporate America. The last time he tried to run for President I called him the Senator from Visa Card.
On the plus side Biden seems to have been less interested in pushing foreign wars than Hillary Clinton. When it comes to the Presidency, you have to pick your poison, if you want to have some chance of backing a winning candidate. If you want to vote your progressive conscience there is always the Green Party candidate. Though I think Hillary is actually reasonably environmentally friendly and progressive, when compared to the other choices.
Perhaps the bigger question is not who should be President, but why the Senate should be institutionally riddled with corruption. The Constitution should be amended to apportion the Senate to make each Senator represent roughly the same number of people, like other offices in the U.S.
Showing posts with label senate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label senate. Show all posts
Monday, August 3, 2015
Monday, December 12, 2011
Immigrants and Housing Proposal
I was surprised to find the following in the New York Times this morning:
"Two senators, Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, have proposed a bill that would offer three-year visas to foreigners who spent at least $500,000 to buy homes in the United States. But the idea has many opponents who fear expanding the nation’s oversupply of workers (a worry not shared by a fair number of economists)."
That was in a longer article, Goodbye House, Hello Pot Plantation by Catherine Rampell. There are over 1.2 million for sale and empty houses in the U.S. today, including hundreds of thousands repossessed by banks but being held off the market. On the other hand moving the unemployment number back to 5% would soak up all of this housing (partly in the form of rentals) and create more than enough demand for another construction boom.
We are in a massive housing and economic Catch 22. We probably can't get to 5% unemployment unless there is strong new construction. Housing construction requires local labor (can't be done overseas) and the materials used themselves are heavy enough that shipping is a large cost component, so they tend to be regional as well. In addition banks are reluctant to loan to home buyers. That would change if housing prices firmed.
I proposed moving house-buying immigrants to the front of the line back in A Cheap, Quick Housing and Economy Fix [November 18, 2008]. A number of people thought it was a good idea, but getting traction in anything related to immigration is difficult.
If you want to look at the Lee-Schumer bill or track it through Congress, it is S. 1746: Visa Improvements to Stimulate International Tourism to the United States of America Act. Here is the key text:
"Two senators, Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, have proposed a bill that would offer three-year visas to foreigners who spent at least $500,000 to buy homes in the United States. But the idea has many opponents who fear expanding the nation’s oversupply of workers (a worry not shared by a fair number of economists)."
That was in a longer article, Goodbye House, Hello Pot Plantation by Catherine Rampell. There are over 1.2 million for sale and empty houses in the U.S. today, including hundreds of thousands repossessed by banks but being held off the market. On the other hand moving the unemployment number back to 5% would soak up all of this housing (partly in the form of rentals) and create more than enough demand for another construction boom.
We are in a massive housing and economic Catch 22. We probably can't get to 5% unemployment unless there is strong new construction. Housing construction requires local labor (can't be done overseas) and the materials used themselves are heavy enough that shipping is a large cost component, so they tend to be regional as well. In addition banks are reluctant to loan to home buyers. That would change if housing prices firmed.
I proposed moving house-buying immigrants to the front of the line back in A Cheap, Quick Housing and Economy Fix [November 18, 2008]. A number of people thought it was a good idea, but getting traction in anything related to immigration is difficult.
If you want to look at the Lee-Schumer bill or track it through Congress, it is S. 1746: Visa Improvements to Stimulate International Tourism to the United States of America Act. Here is the key text:
(a) Nonimmigrant Status- Section 101(a)(15) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended by section 5(a), is further amended by adding at the end the following:One of my complaints about the New York Times and other traditional web sources is that they hate it when a link takes you off their site, unless it is a paid ad. Not only do they not link to one of the bill tracking sites (there are several), they do not even give the official name of the bill, or its number. So getting more detail is unnecessarily difficult in this hyperlinked age. That is poor reporting, in my view. Probably not because of the reporters themselves, but because of "policy."
‘(X) subject to section 214(t), an alien who, after the date of the enactment of the VISIT USA Act--
‘(i)(I) uses at least $500,000 in cash to purchase 1 or more residences in the United States, which each sold for more than 100 percent of the most recent appraised value of such residence, as determined by the property assessor in the city or county in which the residence is located;
‘(II) maintains ownership of residential property in the United States worth at least $500,000 during the entire period the alien remains in the United States as a nonimmigrant described in this subparagraph; and
‘(III) resides for more than 180 days per year in a residence in the United States that is worth at least $250,000; and
‘(ii) the alien spouse and children of the alien described in clause (i) if accompanying or following to join the alien.’.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Obama's Luck Runs Out
Fishtailing is a good way to describe the American body politic these days. The Democrats only got in back in 1996, and here it is in 2010 and they are on the outs again, at least in the House of Representatives. Our grand Constitution ensures that clean sweeps are nearly impossible by having only one-third of Senators elected every 2 years, and of course Barack Obama has two more years guaranteed.
Unfortunately we can't toss out lobbyists every two years. The same lot of bloodsuckers is there in Washington (and in State capitals) no matter who is President or which party controls Congress.
Obama is beginning to remind me of Herbert Hoover, and certainly reminds me of the ancient Greek adage that you don't know whether a man has had a lucky or unlucky life until he is buried. Herbert Hoover was a great guy and swept the nation in his Presidential bid in 1928. He had served less than a year in office when the stock market crashed. The Democrats won the House of Representatives in 1930 after roughly the first year of the Great Depression, except that no one knew in 1930 that anything was much wrong beyond a rather sharp drop off in the business cycle. Everyone thought the economy would start back up in 1931.
By the time Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in 1933, blame for the Great Depression had firmly stuck to Hoover and the Republican Party. As far as I can tell, nothing they did caused the Depression and nothing they could have done could have prevented it. Even though the economy did not get much better under Roosevelt during his first term in office, most people failed to shift blame from Hoover to Roosevelt. World War II ended the Great Depression, not Roosevelt or the New Deal. I like some of the provisions of the New Deal, and some were helpful to people at the time, but it is false to give it credit for ending the depression.
Unfortunately we can't toss out lobbyists every two years. The same lot of bloodsuckers is there in Washington (and in State capitals) no matter who is President or which party controls Congress.
Obama is beginning to remind me of Herbert Hoover, and certainly reminds me of the ancient Greek adage that you don't know whether a man has had a lucky or unlucky life until he is buried. Herbert Hoover was a great guy and swept the nation in his Presidential bid in 1928. He had served less than a year in office when the stock market crashed. The Democrats won the House of Representatives in 1930 after roughly the first year of the Great Depression, except that no one knew in 1930 that anything was much wrong beyond a rather sharp drop off in the business cycle. Everyone thought the economy would start back up in 1931.
By the time Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in 1933, blame for the Great Depression had firmly stuck to Hoover and the Republican Party. As far as I can tell, nothing they did caused the Depression and nothing they could have done could have prevented it. Even though the economy did not get much better under Roosevelt during his first term in office, most people failed to shift blame from Hoover to Roosevelt. World War II ended the Great Depression, not Roosevelt or the New Deal. I like some of the provisions of the New Deal, and some were helpful to people at the time, but it is false to give it credit for ending the depression.
Obama's timing, like Hoovers, was just bad. By the time Obama was elected in late 2008 the economy was falling apart. George W. Bush was not to blame; he did not create the housing bubble. Keep in mind that most American's don't follow politics or economics closely. It takes time for reality to sink in. Reality was real clear for all but the most obtuse by mid-2009, but by then Obama was President. Also, he made big promises to get elected, and some fools believed him.
Federal money that could have been used to create temporary jobs for people had to be used for banking and auto-industry bailouts. Those bailouts probably did save us from a depression-style crash, but the average voter doesn't worry about what might of happened. They know what happened: if they did not lose their job, people they know did. And almost everyone had their hours of work cut back in 2009, and so felt poorer. Small businesses in particular were driven to the wall.
Another difference between Roosevelt and the 1934 Democratic Party and Obama and the 2010 Democratic Party is that there was no safety net to speak of in 1932. So between '32 and '34, people were just happy to be fed and sheltered. The safety nets were in place in 2008, so people wanted more. They wanted their jobs back.
The Republican Party has no solutions available. They want to cut the Federal budget, but they won't cut where the fat is: defense and homeland security spending. Cutting the federal budget means cutting jobs. Their idea of creating jobs is giving rich people tax breaks; job creation does not work that way, and tax breaks for anyone will just add to the federal deficit. The Tea Party and Republican ideology advocates do-nothing government. That may be a fine thing in some ways, but it does not create jobs.
But it probably does not matter. We are in an upswing of a business cycle, helped by robust demand from better-managed nations like China, India, and Brazil (all socialist, more or less). I doubt the Republicans in Congress will be able to do anything that would help or hurt the economy in a major way. But that won't keep them from taking credit for the improving economy. Of course, with Obama in the White House, he'll be working hard to take credit for the improving economy too. So maybe his luck will change again.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Afghanistan War and American Politics
The economic, military, and political stupidity of the United States of America's war against Afghanistan, and "War Against Terror," has been noted by an increasing number of American citizens over the last decade. The war makes sense only to the military-industrial complex. Watching President Barack Obama addressing disabled veterans on Friday, I saw the new mask of brutal Americanism. It is a smooth talking mask, crucial to keeping enough liberal voters in the war camp to keep the dollars flowing to the aggression industries.
Having dissected the real nature of the Taliban and the politics of Afghanistan on many occasions, here I want to focus on how the system is "fixed" [as in a crooked gambling game]. Most people remember that most Obama voters thought they were voting to get the U.S.A. out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Was Obama lying from the start, or did he really change his policy once he became President?
Now, of course, Obama claims that he never promised to withdraw from the war on terror. He offered "hope" and "change." It is like game of blackjack in a casino. The house always wins, but a new shuffle or pack of cards always offers hope to the chronically deluded gambler.
Barack Obama was a very confident man long before he became President. It is conceivable that during the campaign he imagined he could finesse his way out of Afghanistan. After all, the success of President Bush's surge strategy in Iraq, and the clear sentiment of a majority of Americans that we do not need to wage a large scale war to deal with the few dozen dingbats who actually are in Al-Qaeda, seemed to provide a lot of leverage against the national security establishment. Obama knew better than most Americans that Presidents don't make the laws, or even foreign policy: they only enforce them. But he probably thought that he would have the cooperation of the Democratic Party members of Congress. He may have even thought the Republican Party would be happy if the issue went away, and any blowback, like successful terrorist acts in the U.S., could be blamed on the Democrats.
But probably he knew how Washington D.C. really works: some policies can change with changes of the popular will, but most change comes only with the permission of, and when it is to the benefit of, a set of power brokers. The military-industrial complex, with its secretive national security, black-ops adjuncts, knows all the tricks of power. The election of Barack Obama did not diminish its power one inch.
Recall that during the electin the nation was in a deep economic crisis, caused primarily by the Bush tax cuts for the rich and the incompetence of the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. This made it possible for small groups of Senators and Representatives to hold the nation hostage to their special interests.
One of those small, but certainly not tiny, groups were the committee and subcommittee chairs who were (and are) in the pockets of the security establishment or the military contractor corporations. Progressive Democrat like to assume that these men and women are mostly Republicans, but the group has been dominated by Democrats ever since President Franklin Roosevelt began the largest military buildup in American history in the late 1930's with the objective of conquering Japan. In the Senate this included Joseph Lieberman chairing the Homeland Security Committee, Carl Levin chairing Armed Forces, and Diane Feinstein chairing Intelligence. Levin, Feinstein, and Liberman have always favored U.S. funded aggression against Palestinians and other Moslems. All are Jewish. Levin is also chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security.
In the House of Representatives, on the all-important Appropriations committee the Defense subcommittee is chaired by Norman D. Dicks, while the Homeland Security subcommittee is chaired by David E. Price. The Armed Services Committee is chaired by Ike Skelton; its Terrorism subcommittee is chaired by Loretta Sanchez. The Foreign Affairs Committee chair is Howard L. Berman. Committee on Homeland Security chair is Bennie G. Thompson. Its subcommitte chairs are Jane Harman for Intelligence, Sheila Jackson Lee for Transportation Security, Henry Cuellar for Border and Maritime, Christopher Carney for Investigations, Yvette Clarke for Cyber & Science, and Laura Richardson for Emergency Communications. The Judiciary Committee also has a Terrorism subcommittee chaired by Robert C. Scott.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is chaired by Sivestre Reyes. Its numerous subcommitteees are headed by Mike Thompson, Anna Eshoo, Dutch Ruppersberger, and Janice Schakowsky.
Traditionally almost ever congressional district was given some sort of military base or factory with a defense contract, giving the military the ability to put pressure broadly on Congress. Thus the servants become the masters, while preserving the illusion of civilian control of the military.
Barack Obama was an Illinois State Senator representing the 13th District, basically Chicago's South Side, from 1996 to 2004 [he ran unopposed in the Democratic primary because he successfully challenged the nomition petitions of 4 other candidates]. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 and served their from 2005 until 2008. Chicago and Illinois are bloated with defense contracting industries, including the corporate offices of the world's largest defense contractor, Boeing. Obama would have worked closely with his state's defense contractors while holding his U.S. Senate seat.
To get anything done after becoming President, given that he was unlikely to pick up Republican votes in Congress, Barack Obama needed a Democratic Party that was 100% behind his program. Even one defecting vote in the Senate could derail any agenda item, as we have seen several times. But with important Democrats demanding the continued expansion of homeland security and Pentagon spending in their districts, Obama folded almost immediately. He took credit that was due to George Bush for winding down the war in Iraq, but bought into transferring troops and budgets to the Afghan war. Exaggerating the power of Al Qaeda and vilifying the Taliban became necessary to provide political cover for Obama's lack of balls. The problem is that if Obama had the balls to take on the Pentagon, they would have made his domestic agenda impossible.
No one person, not even a President, can change the system. Many Presidents have tried to put the Pentagon on a modest diet, only to find Congress injecting all the pork they can think of into the budget.
It is a little house of horrors scenario. At some point the Pentagon, CIA and homeland security will eat every living thing in America. Then the have two choices: eat up other nations in a more openly imperialistic manner, or collapse with the rest of the American economy.
Having dissected the real nature of the Taliban and the politics of Afghanistan on many occasions, here I want to focus on how the system is "fixed" [as in a crooked gambling game]. Most people remember that most Obama voters thought they were voting to get the U.S.A. out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Was Obama lying from the start, or did he really change his policy once he became President?
Now, of course, Obama claims that he never promised to withdraw from the war on terror. He offered "hope" and "change." It is like game of blackjack in a casino. The house always wins, but a new shuffle or pack of cards always offers hope to the chronically deluded gambler.
Barack Obama was a very confident man long before he became President. It is conceivable that during the campaign he imagined he could finesse his way out of Afghanistan. After all, the success of President Bush's surge strategy in Iraq, and the clear sentiment of a majority of Americans that we do not need to wage a large scale war to deal with the few dozen dingbats who actually are in Al-Qaeda, seemed to provide a lot of leverage against the national security establishment. Obama knew better than most Americans that Presidents don't make the laws, or even foreign policy: they only enforce them. But he probably thought that he would have the cooperation of the Democratic Party members of Congress. He may have even thought the Republican Party would be happy if the issue went away, and any blowback, like successful terrorist acts in the U.S., could be blamed on the Democrats.
But probably he knew how Washington D.C. really works: some policies can change with changes of the popular will, but most change comes only with the permission of, and when it is to the benefit of, a set of power brokers. The military-industrial complex, with its secretive national security, black-ops adjuncts, knows all the tricks of power. The election of Barack Obama did not diminish its power one inch.
Recall that during the electin the nation was in a deep economic crisis, caused primarily by the Bush tax cuts for the rich and the incompetence of the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. This made it possible for small groups of Senators and Representatives to hold the nation hostage to their special interests.
One of those small, but certainly not tiny, groups were the committee and subcommittee chairs who were (and are) in the pockets of the security establishment or the military contractor corporations. Progressive Democrat like to assume that these men and women are mostly Republicans, but the group has been dominated by Democrats ever since President Franklin Roosevelt began the largest military buildup in American history in the late 1930's with the objective of conquering Japan. In the Senate this included Joseph Lieberman chairing the Homeland Security Committee, Carl Levin chairing Armed Forces, and Diane Feinstein chairing Intelligence. Levin, Feinstein, and Liberman have always favored U.S. funded aggression against Palestinians and other Moslems. All are Jewish. Levin is also chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security.
In the House of Representatives, on the all-important Appropriations committee the Defense subcommittee is chaired by Norman D. Dicks, while the Homeland Security subcommittee is chaired by David E. Price. The Armed Services Committee is chaired by Ike Skelton; its Terrorism subcommittee is chaired by Loretta Sanchez. The Foreign Affairs Committee chair is Howard L. Berman. Committee on Homeland Security chair is Bennie G. Thompson. Its subcommitte chairs are Jane Harman for Intelligence, Sheila Jackson Lee for Transportation Security, Henry Cuellar for Border and Maritime, Christopher Carney for Investigations, Yvette Clarke for Cyber & Science, and Laura Richardson for Emergency Communications. The Judiciary Committee also has a Terrorism subcommittee chaired by Robert C. Scott.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is chaired by Sivestre Reyes. Its numerous subcommitteees are headed by Mike Thompson, Anna Eshoo, Dutch Ruppersberger, and Janice Schakowsky.
Traditionally almost ever congressional district was given some sort of military base or factory with a defense contract, giving the military the ability to put pressure broadly on Congress. Thus the servants become the masters, while preserving the illusion of civilian control of the military.
Barack Obama was an Illinois State Senator representing the 13th District, basically Chicago's South Side, from 1996 to 2004 [he ran unopposed in the Democratic primary because he successfully challenged the nomition petitions of 4 other candidates]. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 and served their from 2005 until 2008. Chicago and Illinois are bloated with defense contracting industries, including the corporate offices of the world's largest defense contractor, Boeing. Obama would have worked closely with his state's defense contractors while holding his U.S. Senate seat.
To get anything done after becoming President, given that he was unlikely to pick up Republican votes in Congress, Barack Obama needed a Democratic Party that was 100% behind his program. Even one defecting vote in the Senate could derail any agenda item, as we have seen several times. But with important Democrats demanding the continued expansion of homeland security and Pentagon spending in their districts, Obama folded almost immediately. He took credit that was due to George Bush for winding down the war in Iraq, but bought into transferring troops and budgets to the Afghan war. Exaggerating the power of Al Qaeda and vilifying the Taliban became necessary to provide political cover for Obama's lack of balls. The problem is that if Obama had the balls to take on the Pentagon, they would have made his domestic agenda impossible.
No one person, not even a President, can change the system. Many Presidents have tried to put the Pentagon on a modest diet, only to find Congress injecting all the pork they can think of into the budget.
It is a little house of horrors scenario. At some point the Pentagon, CIA and homeland security will eat every living thing in America. Then the have two choices: eat up other nations in a more openly imperialistic manner, or collapse with the rest of the American economy.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
The Tea Party's Fundamentalist Constitution, Taxes, and Federalist No. 62
I get a fair amount of Tea Party people sending me email disagreeing with my essays on republics and democracies. Until recently Tea Party people were characterized in the "liberal" media (yes, I read the New York Times) as a hodgepodge of angry, mostly white, right-wing anti-tax, anti-immigrant, anti-Obama types. Now a new consensus is emerging, both in the Tea Party and for its observers: the main theme is going back to "the original United States Constitution."
Before I lose you, copy this to your clipboard, and then put it somewhere in your handy intellectual ammunition belt: But it is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but "of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable." That is in The Federalist Papers No. 62, attributed to John Hamilton or James Madison. While it specifically refers to the decision that each state should have two senators in the Federal Senate, it also admits that a bunch of politicians got together and hammered out a Constitution based on mutual backscratching. If God entered the writing process, it was in mysterious ways.
Even though I disagree with many Tea Party positions, I love the idea that people are getting together and talking to each other about fundamental political ideas, unmediated by the corrupt major political parties.
My favorite email from a Tea Party guy so far said, "Bill, u r so wrong about democracy vs. a Republic lets see, I pledge aleigance to the flag , and the democracy for which it stands, no i dont think that is how it goes. And there was no such thing called u.s.citizenship until 1868, and it was created for the slaves. I dont have civil rights, I have unaleinable rights. But I can promise u this, the people of' this country are starting 2 wake up. The republic that was stolen from the people by that traitor, FDR is on its way back. Aint there is nothing u new world order people can do 2 stop it." [don't judge by the spelling, this was email, after all]
Since Tea Party people are reading the Constitution, maybe that will put an end to the tax-scam idea that the Federal Income Tax is illegal because we are all citizens of the States, not of the Federal Government. On the first page of my handy U.S. Consitituion it says "No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have ... been seven Years a Citizen of the United States." That seems pretty clear. Federal citizenship began when the first Federal government convended. Find a better excuse to not pay your income taxes. [I suggest becoming an oil company]
And since they are reading the Constitution, maybe they will read about the events leading up to the Constitution. It may shock the Tea Party faithful to know that one of the main reasons for doing away with the Articles of Confederation was an armed tax revolt in Massachusetts, Shay's rebellion. And one of the first acts of the new Federal Government was the armed suppression of the Whiskey rebellion, which was also an anti-tax rebellion.
So if you are really anti-tax, and want a fundamentalist document to hang your hat on, you would want to go back to the Articles of Confederation. Which is all right by me. As far as I can tell, the declaration that the Constitution had superceded the Articles was a power play. When most people voted against the new Constitution, the elites had to use highly questionable methods to get it in place.
One thing I do agree with the Tea Party on is the misuse of the Commerce Clause. It was gradually made into a "Congress and Presidents and bureaucracies can do anything they want" clause. If Congress wants to regulate business in general, instead of leaving that power to the states, there should be an Amendment to the Constitution giving Congress that power, and clearly defining the extent of the power. [Best Commerce Clause book: Gaveling Down The Rabble
]
Reading the Constitution with a fundamentalist mindset is not a bad thing, if you have not read the Constitution before or thought about it. On the other hand, thinking the Constitution was written by God is just idiotic. It was written by just a another bunch of corrupt politicians who mostly whoreshipped at the altar of Wealth. The Constitution has needed amending and interpreting. In fact, I can think of a bunch of amendments I would like to add, like one giving Congress the explicit power to protect the environment.
But if you really want to see a bunch of idiots interpreting the Constitution, look at almost any Supreme Court decision of the last 20 years. Where do they find those guys?
Before I lose you, copy this to your clipboard, and then put it somewhere in your handy intellectual ammunition belt: But it is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but "of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable." That is in The Federalist Papers No. 62, attributed to John Hamilton or James Madison. While it specifically refers to the decision that each state should have two senators in the Federal Senate, it also admits that a bunch of politicians got together and hammered out a Constitution based on mutual backscratching. If God entered the writing process, it was in mysterious ways.
Even though I disagree with many Tea Party positions, I love the idea that people are getting together and talking to each other about fundamental political ideas, unmediated by the corrupt major political parties.
My favorite email from a Tea Party guy so far said, "Bill, u r so wrong about democracy vs. a Republic lets see, I pledge aleigance to the flag , and the democracy for which it stands, no i dont think that is how it goes. And there was no such thing called u.s.citizenship until 1868, and it was created for the slaves. I dont have civil rights, I have unaleinable rights. But I can promise u this, the people of' this country are starting 2 wake up. The republic that was stolen from the people by that traitor, FDR is on its way back. Aint there is nothing u new world order people can do 2 stop it." [don't judge by the spelling, this was email, after all]
Since Tea Party people are reading the Constitution, maybe that will put an end to the tax-scam idea that the Federal Income Tax is illegal because we are all citizens of the States, not of the Federal Government. On the first page of my handy U.S. Consitituion it says "No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have ... been seven Years a Citizen of the United States." That seems pretty clear. Federal citizenship began when the first Federal government convended. Find a better excuse to not pay your income taxes. [I suggest becoming an oil company]
And since they are reading the Constitution, maybe they will read about the events leading up to the Constitution. It may shock the Tea Party faithful to know that one of the main reasons for doing away with the Articles of Confederation was an armed tax revolt in Massachusetts, Shay's rebellion. And one of the first acts of the new Federal Government was the armed suppression of the Whiskey rebellion, which was also an anti-tax rebellion.
So if you are really anti-tax, and want a fundamentalist document to hang your hat on, you would want to go back to the Articles of Confederation. Which is all right by me. As far as I can tell, the declaration that the Constitution had superceded the Articles was a power play. When most people voted against the new Constitution, the elites had to use highly questionable methods to get it in place.
One thing I do agree with the Tea Party on is the misuse of the Commerce Clause. It was gradually made into a "Congress and Presidents and bureaucracies can do anything they want" clause. If Congress wants to regulate business in general, instead of leaving that power to the states, there should be an Amendment to the Constitution giving Congress that power, and clearly defining the extent of the power. [Best Commerce Clause book: Gaveling Down The Rabble
]Reading the Constitution with a fundamentalist mindset is not a bad thing, if you have not read the Constitution before or thought about it. On the other hand, thinking the Constitution was written by God is just idiotic. It was written by just a another bunch of corrupt politicians who mostly whoreshipped at the altar of Wealth. The Constitution has needed amending and interpreting. In fact, I can think of a bunch of amendments I would like to add, like one giving Congress the explicit power to protect the environment.
But if you really want to see a bunch of idiots interpreting the Constitution, look at almost any Supreme Court decision of the last 20 years. Where do they find those guys?
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Should the Seventeenth Amendment be Repealed?
The other day I learned, through commercial media, that some Tea Party activists have included the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment (17th or XVII) to the U.S. Constitution on their agenda. The 17th Amendment changes the way that U.S. Senators are elected. Before its ratification the Senators were selected by their state legislatures, as per Article I, Section 3. Since its adoption Senators, two per state, have been directly elected by the voting citizens of their states. [See also brief history of 17th Amendment]
I mentioned in America: Republic or Democracy? that "The main Amendment that tipped the scales from the national government of the United States being a mere republic to being a true representative democracy was the often-overlooked Seventeenth Amendment, which took effect in 1913. Since 1913 the U.S. Senate has been elected directly by the voters, rather than being appointed by the state legislatures. That makes the national government democratic in form, as well as being a republic."
Just last year the idea of repealing the 17th Amendment, to help return America, formally, to a minority-ruled republic, was considered quaint fringe material. But recently repealing the 17th made news because a few Republican Party candidates for major offices included this idea in their speeches. Response from the public was negative, so they have backed off the idea, for now. [See, for instance, Repeal the 17th Amendment by Gene Healy or Should We Repeal the 17th Amendment by John A. Tures.]
While I follow mainstream wisdom here, that electing U.S. Senators is better than having them selected by state legislatures, the Tea Party people have at least one interesting point mixed in with other arguments. The Federal Government was intended to be federal, that is, only a limited degree of sovereignty was given up by the states to the national aspect of the system. The idea that the states had any real sovereignty was decided not by a vote or by the Supreme Court's interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, but by the Civil War. Post civil war, states had little or no real power. The nation has been ruled from Washington D.C. ever since. Which most Americans believe is a good thing, most of the time. I have my doubts.
Suppose we allow that the more centralized a government is, the more autocratic it becomes. Then we (those of us who prefer democracy) would want to keep decision making not only democratic in form, but decentralized. We would want local governments - counties, cities, and states - to have more authority.
You might even want the Federal government limited to doing its task list in Article I, Section 8, and tasks scattered about in a few other places in the Constitution. The states, the counties, or the people themselves would take care of everything else.
You also might want the national aspect of the Federal government to be kept under control by the states (too late for that!).
In which case, you might want to repeal the 17th Amendment. If it would allow the federal Senate to be controlled by the people of individual states.
Only it would not do that. The strengthening of federal authority over the states and people took place over a long period of time, with a variety of driving forces. The single most important factor: the Constitution itself. If you want to get the states back in the saddle, you would want to go back to the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution was created by a powerful minority of rich white Americans specifically for the purpose of taking power away from the ordinary residents of the states and centralizing it in the Congress, President, Supreme Court, and military. The writers of the Constitution did not get everything they wanted. They just got as much as they could at the time.
Here is a project for the Tea Party, Mad Hatter and all: let take our Way Back machine way back. Forget amending the Constitution, let's write something along the lines of the Articles of Confederation to be our governing document.
I mentioned in America: Republic or Democracy? that "The main Amendment that tipped the scales from the national government of the United States being a mere republic to being a true representative democracy was the often-overlooked Seventeenth Amendment, which took effect in 1913. Since 1913 the U.S. Senate has been elected directly by the voters, rather than being appointed by the state legislatures. That makes the national government democratic in form, as well as being a republic."
Just last year the idea of repealing the 17th Amendment, to help return America, formally, to a minority-ruled republic, was considered quaint fringe material. But recently repealing the 17th made news because a few Republican Party candidates for major offices included this idea in their speeches. Response from the public was negative, so they have backed off the idea, for now. [See, for instance, Repeal the 17th Amendment by Gene Healy or Should We Repeal the 17th Amendment by John A. Tures.]
While I follow mainstream wisdom here, that electing U.S. Senators is better than having them selected by state legislatures, the Tea Party people have at least one interesting point mixed in with other arguments. The Federal Government was intended to be federal, that is, only a limited degree of sovereignty was given up by the states to the national aspect of the system. The idea that the states had any real sovereignty was decided not by a vote or by the Supreme Court's interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, but by the Civil War. Post civil war, states had little or no real power. The nation has been ruled from Washington D.C. ever since. Which most Americans believe is a good thing, most of the time. I have my doubts.
Suppose we allow that the more centralized a government is, the more autocratic it becomes. Then we (those of us who prefer democracy) would want to keep decision making not only democratic in form, but decentralized. We would want local governments - counties, cities, and states - to have more authority.
You might even want the Federal government limited to doing its task list in Article I, Section 8, and tasks scattered about in a few other places in the Constitution. The states, the counties, or the people themselves would take care of everything else.
You also might want the national aspect of the Federal government to be kept under control by the states (too late for that!).
In which case, you might want to repeal the 17th Amendment. If it would allow the federal Senate to be controlled by the people of individual states.
Only it would not do that. The strengthening of federal authority over the states and people took place over a long period of time, with a variety of driving forces. The single most important factor: the Constitution itself. If you want to get the states back in the saddle, you would want to go back to the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution was created by a powerful minority of rich white Americans specifically for the purpose of taking power away from the ordinary residents of the states and centralizing it in the Congress, President, Supreme Court, and military. The writers of the Constitution did not get everything they wanted. They just got as much as they could at the time.
Here is a project for the Tea Party, Mad Hatter and all: let take our Way Back machine way back. Forget amending the Constitution, let's write something along the lines of the Articles of Confederation to be our governing document.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Who Will Pay the War Tab?
Who will pick up the tab? On the micro scale, everyone has experienced this question, typically at restaurants. In society, when services are given to the poor, the unfortunate, or even those who competently avoid taking responsibility for themselves, either donors pay or taxpayers pay the tab.
Then there is the War. Mostly in Afghanistan these days, but it could flare up any minute in Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Korea, etc. There are direct costs to the occupation of Afghanistan, and then there is the ongoing, bone-crushing cost of maintaining the U.S. military establishment as a whole. There is no doubt that U.S. taxpayers are picking up this tab. But taxpayers are a varied lot, and pay or evade a wide variety of taxes.
Yesterday's vote in the U.S. Senate on special funding for the occupation of Afghanistan illustrates some interesting shifts in the tab-picking-up dynamic. Some Senators in the Democratic Party and some Senators in the Republican Party voted against the funding. The Democratic Party naysayers want a timetable for withdrawal set. The Republican Party Nays had voted against the amendment to attach a withdrawal timetable for the bill. They voted against the bill itself because no provision was made to raise the money for it; it would add to the deficit. So they want the meal, They are worried about who will pay the tab.
American taxpayers have run up an enormous tab. It is called the National Debt. There is interest on the national debt, which itself makes up a big part of the Federal budget each year.
Back when the Dems were the outs and wanted to be voted in, they opposed the war as pointless. Now the leadership of the Dems, including the President, sound exactly like the leadership of the Republicans did just a few years ago. Only the Republicans, given their self-inflating, gun-toting constituency, can't oppose the war openly. There are no votes there. What they can do is point to the way the Democratic Majority is taking out a mortgage on America, at variable interest rates, with no ability to pay if either interest rates go up or the economy cycles back into recessionary mode.
Who will pay the tab? With the Democrats in power, the Republicans are worried that taxes on the "rich" will be raised. After all, you can't squeeze tax dollars out of income-less people living in Obama-villes. The rich already pay a lot of the tax burden, but they also get some pretty good breaks, like not paying taxes on capital gains until the capital is sold, which is typically only when they die. I would rather be rich and pay at higher tax rates, but once you are rich you get used to spending your money like anyone else. Higher taxes for the rich could mean waiting a year before buying a new Bentley, or taking a few days less vacation on the French Riviera, or having to fire one of the maids. That is the kind of irritant that makes rich people put pressure on their politicians.
You know how it goes. "Sure Bob, last year I raised $100,000 for your campaign, but then you raised taxes and now Sally Sue's vacation budget is $250,000 short."
In case you have not noticed, in Democratic majority districts the rich have to pick up two tabs. One is for the presumed winners, the Democrats, and the other is for the Republican Party candidates, to keep their hopes alive and the pressure on the Democrats.
Talk about a quagmire. The Democrats can't get out of Afghanistan without a "victory" because that would make them vulnerable to the Republicans. The Republicans are really, really worried about the future tax burden (and everyone should be), and the smarter ones are beginning to realize that the military part of the military-industrial complex has gotten to big compared to the industrial part. Too much industry has left the U.S.A., leaving a service-based economy that can't pay for the industrial goods we import.
Once I was working as a waiter in a pizza joint and a table of customers ran out on me. The restaurant owner, chewed me out thoroughly, but did not carry out his threat to take the tab out of my miniscule wages. He had to pick up the tab.
When taxes get high, evasion becomes commonplace. Some blame the Greek crisis on that phenomena.
Before dining out, which I seldom due since my wife and I both prefer cooking ourselves, I like to negotiate who is going to pay the tab. I don't like surprise. I especially don't like heavy drinkers who suggest that the tab be split "evenly." The federal deficit and national debt are one big surprise waiting to happen. There is absolutely nothing in our legal codes about who exactly is going to pay that tab.
Then there is the War. Mostly in Afghanistan these days, but it could flare up any minute in Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Korea, etc. There are direct costs to the occupation of Afghanistan, and then there is the ongoing, bone-crushing cost of maintaining the U.S. military establishment as a whole. There is no doubt that U.S. taxpayers are picking up this tab. But taxpayers are a varied lot, and pay or evade a wide variety of taxes.
Yesterday's vote in the U.S. Senate on special funding for the occupation of Afghanistan illustrates some interesting shifts in the tab-picking-up dynamic. Some Senators in the Democratic Party and some Senators in the Republican Party voted against the funding. The Democratic Party naysayers want a timetable for withdrawal set. The Republican Party Nays had voted against the amendment to attach a withdrawal timetable for the bill. They voted against the bill itself because no provision was made to raise the money for it; it would add to the deficit. So they want the meal, They are worried about who will pay the tab.
American taxpayers have run up an enormous tab. It is called the National Debt. There is interest on the national debt, which itself makes up a big part of the Federal budget each year.
Back when the Dems were the outs and wanted to be voted in, they opposed the war as pointless. Now the leadership of the Dems, including the President, sound exactly like the leadership of the Republicans did just a few years ago. Only the Republicans, given their self-inflating, gun-toting constituency, can't oppose the war openly. There are no votes there. What they can do is point to the way the Democratic Majority is taking out a mortgage on America, at variable interest rates, with no ability to pay if either interest rates go up or the economy cycles back into recessionary mode.
Who will pay the tab? With the Democrats in power, the Republicans are worried that taxes on the "rich" will be raised. After all, you can't squeeze tax dollars out of income-less people living in Obama-villes. The rich already pay a lot of the tax burden, but they also get some pretty good breaks, like not paying taxes on capital gains until the capital is sold, which is typically only when they die. I would rather be rich and pay at higher tax rates, but once you are rich you get used to spending your money like anyone else. Higher taxes for the rich could mean waiting a year before buying a new Bentley, or taking a few days less vacation on the French Riviera, or having to fire one of the maids. That is the kind of irritant that makes rich people put pressure on their politicians.
You know how it goes. "Sure Bob, last year I raised $100,000 for your campaign, but then you raised taxes and now Sally Sue's vacation budget is $250,000 short."
In case you have not noticed, in Democratic majority districts the rich have to pick up two tabs. One is for the presumed winners, the Democrats, and the other is for the Republican Party candidates, to keep their hopes alive and the pressure on the Democrats.
Talk about a quagmire. The Democrats can't get out of Afghanistan without a "victory" because that would make them vulnerable to the Republicans. The Republicans are really, really worried about the future tax burden (and everyone should be), and the smarter ones are beginning to realize that the military part of the military-industrial complex has gotten to big compared to the industrial part. Too much industry has left the U.S.A., leaving a service-based economy that can't pay for the industrial goods we import.
Once I was working as a waiter in a pizza joint and a table of customers ran out on me. The restaurant owner, chewed me out thoroughly, but did not carry out his threat to take the tab out of my miniscule wages. He had to pick up the tab.
When taxes get high, evasion becomes commonplace. Some blame the Greek crisis on that phenomena.
Before dining out, which I seldom due since my wife and I both prefer cooking ourselves, I like to negotiate who is going to pay the tab. I don't like surprise. I especially don't like heavy drinkers who suggest that the tab be split "evenly." The federal deficit and national debt are one big surprise waiting to happen. There is absolutely nothing in our legal codes about who exactly is going to pay that tab.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Is America A Democracy?
Is America a democracy? Is it a republic? As I explained in America: Republic or Democracy?, a nation can be both. In broad terms I think it is fair to say the the United States of America is a republic that is also a democracy. Call it a democratic-republic (but also recall that some 20th century nations that styled themselves "The Democratic Republic of ..." looked suspiciously like dictatorships).
Here I want to go a bit deeper into the idea of whether the United States of America is a democracy. The long-term historical trend has been to give more groups of people the right to vote in elections. In the 20th century women and people not of European descent gained the right to vote. The voting age was also lowered to 18. This would strengthen the democratic element of our republic. However, this broadening of the right to vote does not insure that the majority view on a particular issue becomes law.
It might be fair to call America a careful, conservative democracy. Suppose a minority position becomes a majority position, as determined by polls. It may take a long time for the majority's view to become policy or law. It is possible that elected officials may realize public sentiment has changed and make appropriate changes quickly, but that seldom happens. Representatives tend to remain loyal to the groups of people that got them elected. So those who oppose the change, or at least some of them, must be voted out of office.
Elections are held every year, but most terms of office have a two year minimum. Let's focus on the national level. The House of Representatives is re-elected every even-numbered year. To get a new majority, in tune with changed public opinion, could take up to two years, depending on where in the election cycle the change of opinion took place.
But only one-third of the members of the U.S. Senate are elected every two years. Each Senator is elected for six years. So it could conceivable take six years for the new majority to emerge in the Senate. And the President can veto the work of a mere majority, so a sympathetic President would be needed, which could take four years.
Even then, as we have seen in U.S. history, the Supreme Court could find reasons to block change. Since the Supreme Court is not elected, but members are given life time appointments by the President, it can easily take a decade for a change to take place if the Supreme Court opposes it. On the other hand, on some occasions the Supreme Court, in deciding a law case brought before it, has made sweeping changes in the laws by a single ruling. These rulings may or may not reflect the sentiments of the majority of citizens.
Even the above scenario assumes an issue is important enough to be the deciding factor in elections. But issues are bundled together so that the voters cannot always get what they want. You can vote for only one person in the House of Representatives. Generally, the set up is that the choice is between a Republican Party candidate and a Democratic Party candidate. Perhaps neither candidate is willing to work for the majority opinion on a particular issue. Or voters, and those seeking their votes, prioritize a different issue (taxes, abortion rights, immigration, etc.) over the one where opinion has changed.
In fact, because of the necessity of bundling issues when voting for candidates, even when there is a clear majority on a particular issue, there may never be appropriate legislation passed on that issue.
Does that mean that the process is not democratic? I think that would be too harsh of a criticism. To a large extent it is an unintended consequence of the republican (that is, representative) structure of our government. Some states get around this problem by allowing for referenda (votes on a particular issue by all of the voters). But there is no mechanism for a national popular vote on a single issue.
Knowing that bundling is part of the mechanics of government in the United States, special interests have every reason to thwart the will of the majority by affecting how issues are bundled. Take "wasteful government spending." One person's wasteful spending is another person's job or profits. If you ask Americans if they want to "eliminate wasteful spending at the Pentagon," they will almost all say yes. But no defense contractor thinks his profit centers are wasting the taxpayers' money. You can't run for Congress with eliminating Pentagon waste as your main issue. The other candidate will just say she's against waste too. There is no election advantage in it. So it never rises to the top of the agenda of elected officials. The same is true, most of the time, of waste at other agencies. It is true that public interest groups are sometimes successful at exposing waste. Before he became President, Harry Truman is reputed to have done a good job with his Senate committee to investigate and eliminate wasteful military spending. But generally speaking, waste is part of the package.
The U.S. Supreme Court is the least democratic, most conservative of our institutions. Of course the Supreme Court couches its decisions based on its interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, which is quite difficult to amend. In reality the Supreme Court has a long record of interpreting the Constitution to suit itself. That is why the appointment of a new Supreme Court judge or two can have greater affects on American law than almost any other event. But it is important to remember that the U.S. Constitution can be amended. In the past, amending it has often had a greater affect on government than electing whole new Congresses, Presidents, or even Supreme Courts. It is surprising that so little effort is put into amending the Constitution. There are many reasons for this, but mainly it is not a priority for the major political parties. It requires a lot of hard work to get a Constitutional amendment passed, and most attempts to amend the Constitution fail.
After the Supreme Court, the national institution that most resembles an undemocratic Republic rather than a Democracy is the U.S. Senate. There are two major problems with the U.S. Senate, if the goal is democracy. One is that there are so few Senators and so many Americans. At the time I am writing the population of the United States is about 305 million, so on average each Senator could be said to represent 3 million people. In California two Senators represent 36.5 million people. When you represent that many people, who do you listen to? At the other end of the spectrum is the state of Wyoming, with a population of just over one-half million people. That means that the Senators from Wyoming can be in closer contact with their constituencies. It also means that special interests operating at the national level can put unduly significant amounts of money into the election of Senators from states with small populations. Even without interference by special interests, small-population states tend to be rural. In the U.S. Senate rural populations have far better representation per voter than urban populations. This violates the basic rule of democracy: each citizen's vote should count the same.
Finally, there is the question of money. Citizens may know very little about the citizens who are seeking public office beyond what the campaigns choose to tell them. Usually, but not always, in the United States the candidate with the most money wins. Therefore campaign donors may influence policy more than voters. Both nationally and in some states there have been attempts, broadly called campaign finance reform, to lessen this distortion of democracy. Some have been relatively successful, for instance limiting how much money any one person can give to a campaign for Congress. Others have failed, in particular the idea of publicly financing campaigns. Special interest groups try to kill or maim these laws, and if they are passed set to work to do end-runs around them. The ability of some candidates to raise more money than the other candidates could get from public financing also tend to make these laws irrelevant.
Democracy in itself accomplishes nothing. In a democracy we may have eliminated political violence, but in the struggle for control of government there can be the equivalent of an ongoing, but very civil, war. Those who work the hardest, or have the money to hire the hardest election workers and lobbyists, have an advantage over those who merely have an opinion.
There are specific structural reforms that might make America even more democratic, such as electing the Supreme Court, or recasting the Senate so that each Senator represents the same number of voters. However, already democracy is a big playing field. Individuals and groups of people have many opportunities to push for what they want. If you feel you are in a majority and yet not getting your way, the thing to do is to push harder. If you are in a minority, but feel you are in the right, you need to work harder to bring your views to others.
If you find that a wealthy minority is bribing (perhaps legally, with campaign donations or perks from lobbyists) your representatives, you should probably get yourself another representative. If a wealthy minority is bribing both major parties, help elect independent third party candidates that share your views of the problem.
Democracy is a big notion. No one institution or marker determines whether a nation has a democratic form of government, or the reality of democratic self-rule. Even in a democracy there may be widespread injustice, environmental destruction, bad cultural values, violence, economic disarray, and just plain bad decision making by fully democratic institutions. But compared to dictatorships and other forms of minority rule, democracy puts people in the best position to reform their society and governance in a peaceful way.
Here I want to go a bit deeper into the idea of whether the United States of America is a democracy. The long-term historical trend has been to give more groups of people the right to vote in elections. In the 20th century women and people not of European descent gained the right to vote. The voting age was also lowered to 18. This would strengthen the democratic element of our republic. However, this broadening of the right to vote does not insure that the majority view on a particular issue becomes law.
It might be fair to call America a careful, conservative democracy. Suppose a minority position becomes a majority position, as determined by polls. It may take a long time for the majority's view to become policy or law. It is possible that elected officials may realize public sentiment has changed and make appropriate changes quickly, but that seldom happens. Representatives tend to remain loyal to the groups of people that got them elected. So those who oppose the change, or at least some of them, must be voted out of office.
Elections are held every year, but most terms of office have a two year minimum. Let's focus on the national level. The House of Representatives is re-elected every even-numbered year. To get a new majority, in tune with changed public opinion, could take up to two years, depending on where in the election cycle the change of opinion took place.
But only one-third of the members of the U.S. Senate are elected every two years. Each Senator is elected for six years. So it could conceivable take six years for the new majority to emerge in the Senate. And the President can veto the work of a mere majority, so a sympathetic President would be needed, which could take four years.
Even then, as we have seen in U.S. history, the Supreme Court could find reasons to block change. Since the Supreme Court is not elected, but members are given life time appointments by the President, it can easily take a decade for a change to take place if the Supreme Court opposes it. On the other hand, on some occasions the Supreme Court, in deciding a law case brought before it, has made sweeping changes in the laws by a single ruling. These rulings may or may not reflect the sentiments of the majority of citizens.
Even the above scenario assumes an issue is important enough to be the deciding factor in elections. But issues are bundled together so that the voters cannot always get what they want. You can vote for only one person in the House of Representatives. Generally, the set up is that the choice is between a Republican Party candidate and a Democratic Party candidate. Perhaps neither candidate is willing to work for the majority opinion on a particular issue. Or voters, and those seeking their votes, prioritize a different issue (taxes, abortion rights, immigration, etc.) over the one where opinion has changed.
In fact, because of the necessity of bundling issues when voting for candidates, even when there is a clear majority on a particular issue, there may never be appropriate legislation passed on that issue.
Does that mean that the process is not democratic? I think that would be too harsh of a criticism. To a large extent it is an unintended consequence of the republican (that is, representative) structure of our government. Some states get around this problem by allowing for referenda (votes on a particular issue by all of the voters). But there is no mechanism for a national popular vote on a single issue.
Knowing that bundling is part of the mechanics of government in the United States, special interests have every reason to thwart the will of the majority by affecting how issues are bundled. Take "wasteful government spending." One person's wasteful spending is another person's job or profits. If you ask Americans if they want to "eliminate wasteful spending at the Pentagon," they will almost all say yes. But no defense contractor thinks his profit centers are wasting the taxpayers' money. You can't run for Congress with eliminating Pentagon waste as your main issue. The other candidate will just say she's against waste too. There is no election advantage in it. So it never rises to the top of the agenda of elected officials. The same is true, most of the time, of waste at other agencies. It is true that public interest groups are sometimes successful at exposing waste. Before he became President, Harry Truman is reputed to have done a good job with his Senate committee to investigate and eliminate wasteful military spending. But generally speaking, waste is part of the package.
The U.S. Supreme Court is the least democratic, most conservative of our institutions. Of course the Supreme Court couches its decisions based on its interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, which is quite difficult to amend. In reality the Supreme Court has a long record of interpreting the Constitution to suit itself. That is why the appointment of a new Supreme Court judge or two can have greater affects on American law than almost any other event. But it is important to remember that the U.S. Constitution can be amended. In the past, amending it has often had a greater affect on government than electing whole new Congresses, Presidents, or even Supreme Courts. It is surprising that so little effort is put into amending the Constitution. There are many reasons for this, but mainly it is not a priority for the major political parties. It requires a lot of hard work to get a Constitutional amendment passed, and most attempts to amend the Constitution fail.
After the Supreme Court, the national institution that most resembles an undemocratic Republic rather than a Democracy is the U.S. Senate. There are two major problems with the U.S. Senate, if the goal is democracy. One is that there are so few Senators and so many Americans. At the time I am writing the population of the United States is about 305 million, so on average each Senator could be said to represent 3 million people. In California two Senators represent 36.5 million people. When you represent that many people, who do you listen to? At the other end of the spectrum is the state of Wyoming, with a population of just over one-half million people. That means that the Senators from Wyoming can be in closer contact with their constituencies. It also means that special interests operating at the national level can put unduly significant amounts of money into the election of Senators from states with small populations. Even without interference by special interests, small-population states tend to be rural. In the U.S. Senate rural populations have far better representation per voter than urban populations. This violates the basic rule of democracy: each citizen's vote should count the same.
Finally, there is the question of money. Citizens may know very little about the citizens who are seeking public office beyond what the campaigns choose to tell them. Usually, but not always, in the United States the candidate with the most money wins. Therefore campaign donors may influence policy more than voters. Both nationally and in some states there have been attempts, broadly called campaign finance reform, to lessen this distortion of democracy. Some have been relatively successful, for instance limiting how much money any one person can give to a campaign for Congress. Others have failed, in particular the idea of publicly financing campaigns. Special interest groups try to kill or maim these laws, and if they are passed set to work to do end-runs around them. The ability of some candidates to raise more money than the other candidates could get from public financing also tend to make these laws irrelevant.
Democracy in itself accomplishes nothing. In a democracy we may have eliminated political violence, but in the struggle for control of government there can be the equivalent of an ongoing, but very civil, war. Those who work the hardest, or have the money to hire the hardest election workers and lobbyists, have an advantage over those who merely have an opinion.
There are specific structural reforms that might make America even more democratic, such as electing the Supreme Court, or recasting the Senate so that each Senator represents the same number of voters. However, already democracy is a big playing field. Individuals and groups of people have many opportunities to push for what they want. If you feel you are in a majority and yet not getting your way, the thing to do is to push harder. If you are in a minority, but feel you are in the right, you need to work harder to bring your views to others.
If you find that a wealthy minority is bribing (perhaps legally, with campaign donations or perks from lobbyists) your representatives, you should probably get yourself another representative. If a wealthy minority is bribing both major parties, help elect independent third party candidates that share your views of the problem.
Democracy is a big notion. No one institution or marker determines whether a nation has a democratic form of government, or the reality of democratic self-rule. Even in a democracy there may be widespread injustice, environmental destruction, bad cultural values, violence, economic disarray, and just plain bad decision making by fully democratic institutions. But compared to dictatorships and other forms of minority rule, democracy puts people in the best position to reform their society and governance in a peaceful way.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
John McCain and Barack Obama Already Failing
The Friday, June 6, 2008, vote to kill the progress of the Climate Change bill in the Senate of the United States of America should be like a cold shower on Monday morning after a long weekend of partying. John McCain may offer experience and Barack Obama may offer hope, but whichever one gets elected will be the President of a quagmire of special interests, giant egos, and partisan back stabbing. The two-party system has failed, or at least the two current parties are both failing to deliver what America needs. Both McCain and Obama promise to bring the two parties together, to end partisan feuding. But they intend to do this by compromise, by standing in the middle of the quagmire and inviting everyone to drown.
The bill is Senate Bill 3036, Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008, meant to address the issue of global warming. In the Senate, having passed out of committee, the bill needed 60 votes to end debate and proceed to a vote. It gathered only 48 votes. The Democratic Party leadership refused to allow a full debate, and the offering of amendments, on the bill. Four Democrats [Brown, Dorgan, Johnson, Landrieu] voted against the bill and six [Biden, Byrd, Clinton, Conrad, Kennedy, Obama] could not be bothered to vote. McCain was also too busy trying to lead us around the quagmire to vote. Republicans voting Yes included Collins, Dole, Martinez, Smith, Snowe, Sununu, and Warner.
While the bill itself could be criticized from any perspective, mostly not strong enough for environmentalists and too strong for those who don't take global warming seriously, at least it would have gotten the ball rolling. Policy could be tweaked in future bills. Now there will be no action until at least 2009. Given that Al Gore was Vice-President to Bill Clinton and nothing was done about climate change, nothing at all, for those 8 years, you might think environmentalists in the Democratic Party would be wondering about the quality of their party leadership.
There are things, sociopathies if you will, that are wrong with the American people, and those sociopathies are reflected and amplified in the two alternately ruling parties. We have become a lazy, greedy, immoral, and spineless people. We whine about conditions, but won't even vote for independents or third party candidates on the one day a year (or every two years), the five minutes every two years we are given the opportunity to vote.
Don't forget that the Senate is an undemocratic institution by design. States with just a few people in them get as many Senate votes as states like California, Florida, Texas and New York.
Send both the ruling class and your fellow Americans a message this November. Yell it from the roof tops. Vote for Cynthia McKinney for President and for the best candidates in each race regardless of political party. Vote for Cindy Sheehan and Carol Wolman for Congress. I can't vouch for each and every Green Party candidate, but here is a list of California Green candidates [See also my Green Party pages].
And plan on a social system based on anarchism. America is falling apart so quickly, that might be your only real choice anyway when the government collapses. At least when the government collapses the national debt will disappear. Setting up a new national government, which would have to re-assume the national debt, would be economic folly of the first order.
Yes, it is true. If the Democratic Party succeeds in crushing the Green Party, my fallback position is not to become a war crimes supporter by becoming a Democrat. For voting purpose I would become independent, but for organizing purposes I would promote an anarchist social organization.
The bill is Senate Bill 3036, Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008, meant to address the issue of global warming. In the Senate, having passed out of committee, the bill needed 60 votes to end debate and proceed to a vote. It gathered only 48 votes. The Democratic Party leadership refused to allow a full debate, and the offering of amendments, on the bill. Four Democrats [Brown, Dorgan, Johnson, Landrieu] voted against the bill and six [Biden, Byrd, Clinton, Conrad, Kennedy, Obama] could not be bothered to vote. McCain was also too busy trying to lead us around the quagmire to vote. Republicans voting Yes included Collins, Dole, Martinez, Smith, Snowe, Sununu, and Warner.
While the bill itself could be criticized from any perspective, mostly not strong enough for environmentalists and too strong for those who don't take global warming seriously, at least it would have gotten the ball rolling. Policy could be tweaked in future bills. Now there will be no action until at least 2009. Given that Al Gore was Vice-President to Bill Clinton and nothing was done about climate change, nothing at all, for those 8 years, you might think environmentalists in the Democratic Party would be wondering about the quality of their party leadership.
There are things, sociopathies if you will, that are wrong with the American people, and those sociopathies are reflected and amplified in the two alternately ruling parties. We have become a lazy, greedy, immoral, and spineless people. We whine about conditions, but won't even vote for independents or third party candidates on the one day a year (or every two years), the five minutes every two years we are given the opportunity to vote.
Don't forget that the Senate is an undemocratic institution by design. States with just a few people in them get as many Senate votes as states like California, Florida, Texas and New York.
Send both the ruling class and your fellow Americans a message this November. Yell it from the roof tops. Vote for Cynthia McKinney for President and for the best candidates in each race regardless of political party. Vote for Cindy Sheehan and Carol Wolman for Congress. I can't vouch for each and every Green Party candidate, but here is a list of California Green candidates [See also my Green Party pages].
And plan on a social system based on anarchism. America is falling apart so quickly, that might be your only real choice anyway when the government collapses. At least when the government collapses the national debt will disappear. Setting up a new national government, which would have to re-assume the national debt, would be economic folly of the first order.
Yes, it is true. If the Democratic Party succeeds in crushing the Green Party, my fallback position is not to become a war crimes supporter by becoming a Democrat. For voting purpose I would become independent, but for organizing purposes I would promote an anarchist social organization.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Vietnam, Iraq, and the U.S. Senate
"...Congress lagged even farther. The legislature's main instrument was its constitutional authority to appropriate money for the war, but senators and representatives ... consistently balked at using that prerogative, lest they be charged with shunning their patriotic obligation to furnish funds to the fighting men in the fields."
We can say this about the Democratic Party majority in the United States House and Senate post the 2006 elections. But the Democratic Party had an even larger majority in 1967, which is the year intended by this quote from Stanley Karnow's Vietnam, A History.
And who were the leaders of the Senate from 2007 until today? Presumably the three Senators who are still possible presidential candidates, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.
At the end of 1967 Senator Eugene McCarthy declared himself an anti-war candidate for president against the incumbent, Lyndon Johnson. Because he had served almost two full terms, Johnson announced he would not be a candidate on March 31, 1968. Then Vice-President Hubert Humphrey and Senator Robert (Bobby) Kennedy jumped into the race. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles on June 6, 1968. Kennedy, like his big brother and former President John, had been an eager communism fighter earlier, but had turned against pursuing the war in Vietnam. Humphrey became the Democratic nominee, but narrowly lost the election to Republican candidate Richard Nixon, who said he had a peace plan.
Unfortunately Nixon's peace plan consisted of threatening to drop atomic weapons on North Vietnam. When the Vietnamese government called his bluff he just amped up the conventional war. When that did not work he made a deal to withdraw U.S. troops. Not long after troops were withdrawn Vietnam was reunited under the North Vietnamese government.
At this point the U.S. is in Iraq because the U.S. is in Iraq and no one has had the courage to pull the plug on the idiocy. Nothing particularly bad is going to happen if U.S. troops are withdrawn. Maybe democracy will work, maybe a new un-democratic leadership will emerge, maybe the nation will break into pieces.
It just is not any of the U.S.'s business. We can't even fix problems here. We have wasted an astonishing amount of money that we will never get back.
Things might change after the 2008 elections. But don't be surprised if the Iraq War goes on in some form or another. Because George W. Bush is not particularly stupid or cowardly as U.S. politicians go. What we have is a stupid system. Stupid in, stupid out.
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