<\/p>\n
Barack Obama has provided a lesson in American reality to <\/p>\n A free society exists when its citizens <\/span>can obtain access to a variety of While examples do not quite constitute proof, they These are not accidents. <\/span>They are connected to corporate control of the media and to A major part of the problem rests with a fairly easily For many years even though our electoral rules only made it Today our parties are centralized in much of their funding, Because our elections are won by plurality (whoever has the The rules that prevent viable alternatives to these two There are only two real strategies for improvement open to It is a last ditch effort, but current scholarship to the contrary, one mosl of our Founders would endorse.<\/p>\n Much more easy to accomplish would be ENDING plurality With majority elections you do not throw your vote away when Majority vote elections can be implemented through state Red vs Expert divisions did not make Russia free. <\/span>As the old elite diversified Russia was A movement for majority vote elections is a movement it <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Barack Obama has provided a lesson in American reality to many people who once thought the Democrats were still in some sense like the Democrats who passed Civil Rights legislation and earlier, the New Deal. That party died. It was murdered and its murderers kept their crime a secret in order to benefit from their…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-social-and-political-theory"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nmany people who once thought the Democrats were still in some sense like the
\nDemocrats who passed Civil Rights legislation and earlier, the New Deal. <\/span>That party died. It was murdered and its murderers kept
\ntheir crime a secret in order to benefit from their victim’s reputation.
\nWith its destruction democracy in America as a means of preserving our freedom came to a (hopefully temporary) end. <\/span>We need to get a handle on
\nwhat happened of we are to have a chance to regain our political freedom.<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\nopinions and positions on election day, in a process that is fair. <\/span>This does not require that every
\nposition be available at every election.
\n<\/span>That would be overwhelmingly complex. <\/span>But it requires that every position, so long as it grows in
\npublic support, will find a chance to win voter support. <\/span>By that standard democracy has now
\ndeparted the United States. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nillustrate the point. <\/span>A majority
\nof Americans favored a tax cut for everyone but the ultra rich, and that
\nposition had no chance to be heard.
\n<\/span>A majority of Americans favored the public option in health care reform,
\nand that option had no significant voice at the table. <\/span>A majority of Americans were hurt by
\nmoney given to banksters that would have been far better spent simply by
\napportioning it evenly among all tax payers. <\/span>A majority of Americans favor the Democrat’s stated agenda
\non most social issues, and the Democrats do nothing about them while somehow
\nmanaging to serve bankers and corporations. We have entered into wars without popular approval, or with carefully manipulated news to create fake approval. These wars have been and continue to be obscenely profitable to the corporate and financial ghouls who fatten off of human blood and treasure. <\/span>Every time our financial elite and corporate giants
\ninterests are tested against the American people, the people lose whether the
\nparty in power is Republican or Democratic.<\/p>\n
\nour electoral rules. <\/span>This post
\ndeals with the electoral rules because they are most basic and ironically, the
\nmost easily changed.<\/p>\n
\ncorrected weakness in our electoral system.<\/p>\n
\npossible for only two main parties to exist except during times of national
\nbreakdown (There were 4 main candidates in 1860) or during exceptional internal
\nsplits (as when Teddy Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” party split from the
\nRepublicans) outside the South Americans still had a reasonably free
\nsociety. <\/span>This was because the
\nparties were mostly organized at the state level, and so were close to their
\nconstituents. <\/span>Their funding was
\nmostly at the local and state level as well.<\/p>\n
\nand the same interests fund both.
\n<\/span>The financial elite is not monolithic, and there are differences between
\nthem, differences that remind me of the old Soviet Union. <\/span>The old Communist administration split
\nbetween “reds” and “experts” depending on which they argued
\nwas most important. <\/span>It was more
\nthan roughly analogous to that currently existing between Republicans and
\nDemocrats. <\/span>Some put ideology first
\n(the Reds) and others put managerial competence first (the “Experts”). <\/span>But both put the well-being of the
\ncorporate and banking elite ahead of ideology and expertise.<\/p>\n
\nMOST votes wins) rather than majority vote (whoever has a majority) we have a
\nsystem that allows only two viable parties. <\/span>There are some purely ego driven parties like the Greens and
\nLibertarians who are no threat and under current electoral rules never will
\nbe. <\/span>Mostly they benefit the major
\nparty farthest from them – which is why Republicans help fund Greens and I
\nwould not be surprised that in some states the Democrats do the same for
\nlibertarians, though I do not know.
\n<\/span>In this way the third parties actually HELP the two main parties by
\ngiving elections a patina of legitimacy while penalizing voters who actually
\nvote for them by assisting the main party farthest from their beliefs. Under
\ncurrent rules they are a part of the problem.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nservants of our oligopoly are the most fundamental cause of our problem, and
\nare why today parliamentary regimes in Europe are so much more democratic than
\nthe US. <\/span>But we can not have a
\nparliament without a new constitution, and under current conditions a new
\nconvention would be a disaster because it could be imposed on us. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nus. <\/span>One is secession, which would
\nmake the centralizers’ job much more difficult by making the scale of politics
\nmore accessible to plain citizens and diversifying existing laws. <\/span>It is no accident that big business has
\nbeen the most effective proponent of centralization because they can control national
\ngovernment more easily and cheaply than they can control state government. <\/span>(Someday libertarians will figure this
\nout, but not yet.) <\/span>Further, as
\nEurope demonstrates daily, small democratic countries can be as prosperous as
\nbig ones and freer as well. <\/span>But
\nsecession is messy and likely to kill people even if done right.<\/p>\n
\nelections and replacing them with majority elections with instant runoff. <\/span>Under majority election a third party
\ncould pose a genuine alternative to two major corrupt parties. <\/span>It could win. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nvoting third party, then they might actually get competent leaders and offer
\nviable alternatives. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nballot initiatives in many states – and that third parties have not sponsored
\nsuch initiatives is proof positive in my book that they are ego parties. I’d
\ndevote a year or even much more of my life to such an effort if it had
\nsignificant support.<\/p>\n
\nstill a despotic state, although less brutal than under Stalin. <\/span>The US today is in many but not yet all
\nways an authoritarian oligarchy.
\n<\/span>That its elites so easily endorse torture and universal surveillance of
\nAmericans while increasing secrecy and calling people who expose their doings
\n“terrorists” is a hint of what they are capable of doing to all of us to
\npreserve their power. <\/span>What our
\noligarchy needs to cement its domination is a crisis allowing it to crush any
\npotential competition. <\/span>But until
\nthis arises it can make do with the sham political process we have today. <\/span><\/p>\n
\ncould not control, and once established would offer Americans the opportunity
\nto regain their political freedom peacefully. <\/span><\/p>\n