There's a sobering though in the FT this morning:
In the next eight weeks Mr Obama must persuade Republicans to avoid triggering a sovereign default.
The Republicans seem bent on taking their revenge for this week's tax increase.
Unfortunately, Mr Obama has no way of compelling them to act sanely.
That't the peril of a democracy corrupted by corporate lobbying.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
‘That’s the peril of a democracy corrupted by corporate lobbying.’
Indeed, and we’re a lot further down that road in the UK than most people grasp. Witness as an example the various refusals of public bodies to (e.g. NAO, HMRC, etc) to hand over information to parliamenatry committees.
The old adage that the UK is simply five years behing whatever happens in the US still holds. Again, witness the transition of the Tories into the UK equivalent of the Republicans, with all that comes with that.
It’s also the peril of a “democracy” which isn’t really a democracy at all – as far as elections to the House of Representatives goes. The overall total of votes cast in the House was about 51% Democrat to 49% Republican but the Republicans got a majority of seats due to blatant gerrymandering. Unless the US moves to a less partisan method of allocating Congressional district boundaries (or even more preferably, to a Proportional Representation electoral system) I fear such travesties of “democracy” will recur all too often.
We are a republic not a democracy.
A further point to consider is the differing pluses and minuses of the American and British constitutions. The Founding Fathers, in fear of an all-powerful monarchical system, produced an ‘imperial’ presidency, in which the President is actually an elected constitutional monarch, with less powers than those possessed by George lll, who could declare war and peace, sign Treaties, and appoint his Prime Minister – all things in the power of Congress, and so beyond the powers of an American President.
The contrast with our dire Con-Dem Coalition, which, with no effective majority, has been able to rail-road through such poisonous legislation as its Health and Social Care Act, and is never likely to be in any danger of failing to see its Finance Bills pass into law (Even this contemptible shower would have to resign AND call a General Election if that happened; the stitching up of our “constitution, so that a dissolution requires a 66% majority vote in the Commons means that anything short of such a calamity for the Government – a mere successful passage of a vote of No Confidence, for example – would only require the Government to resign, and let them stitch together a new ordure-rich “coalition” from whatever elements in our faecal Parliamentary could be persuaded to come together in such a malodorous venture).
How President Obama must wish that he had such control over the legislature! However, our much more formal Party system, and more effective Party whipping – often criticized as an affront to democracy – does at least have these following virtues
a) a manifesto can be clearly proclaimed, and can, on achieving a majority, plausibly argue that it commands majority support among the electorate (Republicans are blithely ignoring this fact, given that President Obama’s budget proposals closely match the ticket and proposals on which he ran)
b) with such a strong Party system, it is necessary to capture a whole Party, and not just a few rogue Senators or Congressmen, with whose influence and votes you can gum up the whole machinery of legislation and government.
Alas, we are in a worse – the worst? – situation on both sides of the Pond: in the US, the Republicans have not only exploited the above flaw (i.e.. the need to capture only a few votes in each House), but have gone ahead and finessed it by blatant gerrymandering (as noted by Howard Reed above), while here, in the UK, the Tory Party was completely captured by neo-liberal head-bangers, under the leadership of Margaret “wicked witch of the West” Thatcher, whose poisonous drivel spread out to infect both wings – Left AND Right – on both sides of the Atlantic.
People like Richard, and Tax Justice Network, and Krugman and Stiglitz and Anne Pettifor and – add in your own names to the list – have been working hard to break this spell, and to tell the electorate on both sides of the Atlantic that “the Emperor has no clothes”, but I fear that the electorate is still too far doped up on the unrealistic dreams of the Thatcher-Reagan assault on honest, caring effective government to be able to wake from their sleep, and really take in, really comprehend, the wasteland reacted by those policies, which have brought wealth to those in their gated enclosures, and something approaching a “Blade Runner” society for the other 99%.
Thanks Andrew
Your support is appreciated
Oops! Typo – not “reacted”, but “created”, so that the last sentence above should read:
really comprehend, the wasteland created by those policies, which have brought wealth to those in their gated enclosures, and something approaching a “Blade Runner” society for the other 99%.
Equally interesting to see how the fiscal cliff bill was stuffed with corporate pork:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/tim-carney-how-corporate-tax-credits-got-in-the-cliff-deal/article/2517397#.UOTPwUbDVSJ
(spolier alert: it was not the Republicans)
The big question is to whom are we dispensing justice when we take from someone else to give to someone else? Who determines what is worth that deprivation of income? And at what level do we determine is enough, or is the limit? The majority of people legally “hiding” money pay more taxes than any of us could pay in three lifetimes. Yet we see them as greedy. Really? Maybe they don’t like paying for all the great ideas that governments come up with for which they have no say so. Seems to me that people who bitch about tax payers who already bear over 90 percent of the federal tax burden in the U.S. are akin to a person who bitches that the person picking up the tab for dinner didn’t tip enough.
No the real question is why we allow so many to take so much income in the first place at cost to the rest
That’s the real issue
You’re ignoring it