An American Spring?

How it works

Democracy in America?

As the civil war rages in Syria, some of us are asking ourselves what the Internet means for the world. Just as the Internet is the democratization of information, is it also the democratization of government? When brokering information is no longer possible, does this mean that traditional political systems must give way to real democracy?

Here in the USA, we have a 2-party system. Our system is not parliamentary so we exclude any splinter movements from political competition. Stable yes, but how undemocratic, really!

Our system allows a tiny minority to control the direction of the country. The incumbent politicians control the system through of the privileges of the Congress: the mailing privileges, through gerrymandering, through PAC and Super-PAC funding, through the power of the press conference, and control over the party apparatus. Since there is no alternative party, there is no way to vent frustration and no way to reject corruption.

One of the ways that political parties self-perpetuate is through the power of appointments. Those in office can appoint their friends, partners, supporters, and others who owe them favors. It is one more way in which a political party keeps power to itself.

The game really is about power: who has it, who wants, how much it’s worth, and how to get it. For example, the fundamentalist Christian leadership made a deal with the Libertarians Republicans that they will get to pick Supreme Court justices as long as they deliver votes to the Republican candidates. That power is convertible to money, and it’s an end in itself.

Now the campaigns have become a competition to see who can amass the largest war chest. With the Citizens’ United decision, no holds are barred and Super-PACs have made us citizens even less relevant than we already were. Imagine if we put the bank bailout to a popular vote, including the bonuses it paid for on Wall Street.

Insider Trading

Apparently Congress has been feathering its nest all along. The CBS Sixty Minutes spot on legalized Insider Trading showed that it was common all the way up to the top of both parties. Interesting that the law was changed immediately following the spot, but we never got an investigation into who all in the Congress had taken advantage of it.

Still protected is information brokering. In addition, retiring representatives have discretion over how to use their unused campaign funds. While ostensibly not for personal use, there is a great leeway in practice. http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/entry/no-strings-attached-former-members-of-congress-leftover-campaign-funds

All this is to say nothing of practices that are illegal. An Illinois governor in jail is getting to be a tradition. Corruption has gone to extremes these days.

Gerrymandering is nothing new, but it works lockstep with incumbency to guarantee the return of the incumbent. The incumbent in almost every case wins the primary, and gerrymandering guarantees that the primary is the only vote that matters. This is absolutely anti-democratic.

There is the Electoral College that prevented Al Gore from being President even though he won the popular vote. Is there any question that we would not have resorted to the foolish and wasteful War In Iraq if Gore had been elected instead of Bush? Blame the Supreme Court or voter fraud in Florida, but the Electoral College is the core problem.

In the first US Constitution, the only citizens allowed to vote were white, landowning men, 25 years or older. Not one of those four criteria has survived reform. Why should the Electoral College?

The US Senate itself violates the one person – one vote rule of democracy. Why do the states of Wyoming and Montana with populations fewer than one million have the same voting power of states like Illinois and Ohio with 10-20 times the populations? Of course with the filibuster rule in the Senate, a minority can stop the majority for any reason, which is not at all democratic.

Where has hate speech in America come from? One of Ronald Reagan’s acts was to appoint a Federal Communications Commission that threw out the Fairness Doctrine, the rule that required equal time for opposing viewpoints. Without that requirement, we have had Rush Limbaugh and Hate Radio, and Fox News and Hate Television flooding the airwaves with disinformation and effectively making a large proportion of the electorate ignorant.

The Incredible Shrinking Middle Class

With the WTO and NAFTA, the unions and domestic manufacturing were dealt a huge blow, weakening the middle class. This also started under Reagan who immediately upon taking office fired the air traffic controllers who were striking at the time over working conditions and not wages, sending a message to the unions. The supposed labor and environmental side agreements in WTO that were supposed to protect American workers from unfair foreign competition were never enforced.

All this has led to rising economic inequality as vast amounts of extra cash from the application of automation technology in the office has led to unprecedented wealth in the hands of a small portion of the population. And with the Citizens United ruling that money is speech, those with the most money get the most speech. It’s Animal Farm all over again – “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”

Then we have the “Too big to fail“ concept. Socialism for the 1%, and capitalism for the 99%. It must be nice!

So will the internet generation reject the opaqueness of the current system? Will we have our American Spring? Time will tell.