US Elections: Theater with Deadly Consequences

A great interview with Lawrence Wilkerson, which essentially, supports what I have been saying, in my blogs here, for a while, now, that real democracy does not exist in the world. Everyone likes to talk about it but the general public does not know what real democracy is or how or what should it be? Should it be like what happens in the Western countries; America, Canada, UK, Australia etc.?

Problem is that the general public falsely thinks that as long as the elections are free & fair (that's an assumption in itself), & as long as the general public is getting out to vote & elect the person that they think is the right person to lead them and their country on the international stage, then it must be democracy. That's NOT Democracy.

Democracy is when makes every decision, or at least, major decisions, with the approval of the general public. After all, the general public is the real guardian of the country. It is akin to shareholders being the real owners of public corporation, & the directors of the company calling emergency meetings or the shareholders to vote on the major issues that company is facing. For instance, a country like, America, would've chosen to ask the citizens about invading their privacy before actually doing it, but as we all know, that's not how that issue played out in real life.

As Larry Wilkerson & Paul Jay discussed in the interview, that the democracy has become a charade in North America & other countries as well. The people in politics are all one & the same. Their political issues do not differ too much from each other. Only the faces change every few years but the major issues of the country never change or get resolved. This in turn has turned off the general public from taking part in electing their leaders, & only less than half of the general population actually votes.

Media, of course, has dumbed down the general public even further. It has played its hand in destroying the democracy very beautifully & to its full advantage. However, I will blame the public, here. Media is a business & will always provide what is in demand, & stupidity is in high demand. Public does not want to see or hear anything which would make them think critically. Of course, that just makes the corrupt politicians of the world do whatever they want to do. Hence, the drama of democracy keeps playing out where the victims don't know that they are the victims, the powerful keeps becoming powerful, & everyone thinks they they are living in a democratic country.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uh2vmEM4uc

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: ... I think American electoral politics and much electoral politics in many countries is much like that. It's mostly theater. There's a war of rhetoric, a war of election campaign ads, and the media treats the theater as if it's real. And it's not just the campaigning. It's while Congress and others are governing. The reality of power, the real interest beneath the politics, is rarely revealed in the media, and the media loves the partisan theater. Why? Because they make money out of it. 80% of campaign donations apparently are going to buy television ads, so it's not in television's interest to pierce the veil of this theater.

... it's very much the same thing in politics. It's got nothing to do [with] whether you know anything or not about the issues. Can you make the crowd pop? Can you make people vote for you?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FMR. CHIEF OF STAFF TO COLIN POWELL: I think your metaphor, Paul, is absolutely spot on. It is theater. The real manipulation of power, the real abuse of power, the real use of power takes place behind this charade that is the--you might call it the charade of democracy. That's essentially what we've made it. Elections, of course, are the least important aspect of democracy. The institutions, the culture, the society, the people, they're the important aspects of democracy. But elections are something that we hype all the time, whether it's in this country or other countries. We send observers and so forth. But I agree with that overall metaphor, that it's mostly theater. And in this country, we do Shakespearean theater, if you will, because it's true theater in this country.

JAY: So, while what's being said in the campaigns are mostly just messaging and trying to come up with little catchy phrases and pick some wedge issue that will get people excited, I mean, very little to do with public policy and what real solutions are, that being said, it's not that it's theater without consequences. It does have some consequence who happens to win. So let's get a bit into that. I mean, assuming the Republicans do take the Senate--and as we do the interview, it looks like they're going to--does it matter?

WILKERSON: It's a part of our system. ...

JAY: If you go back to when President Obama was elected and the real disgrace of the Bush-Cheney administration in every level, from foreign policy to economics, I mean, foreign policy leaving a complete disaster of the Iraq War, and on economics, certainly playing a big part in the crash of '07 and '08--of course, Bill Clinton helped contribute to that, but it was a total runaway train in terms of what elites in banking and so on could get away with with Bush-Cheney. Does it somewhat shock you, if you put your mind back then, that we're in a place where the Republicans could actually control both houses?

WILKERSON: It does, because, as Gore Vidal said very eloquently at one point in his life, we're the United States of amnesia. We don't have any memory. We don't have any retrospective look. Very few of us do, anyway. Most people do what they do, whether it's vote or go to work or whatever, based on a very immediate, local set of circumstances. And going back to--.

JAY: But a lot of that has to do with the media. The media has to have a lot to do with that.

WILKERSON: Well, a lot of it does have to do with the media. It does have to do with the media. And when you have a media that is captured, basically, by the corporate interests in this country, then that media is not going to tell you much except that which keeps you in your somnolent state. And that's really what our media does. It keeps us in an apathetic, somnolent state. The media has no interest in sparking real issues, in debating those issues, in discussing those issues, in parsing those issues so that you can see the meat and the blood and the bones of those issues. They don't want to do that. My god, that might excite someone to actually become smart.

JAY: Yeah. It's also like you take, like, the NBA or any of the professional sports leagues, where they do what they can to kind of even out the teams, because if the teams aren't competitive, who wants to go pay money to go see basketball or football? I mean, the media has the same interest. If they don't keep the Republicans and Democrats competitive, then who needs to spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on television advertising? So it's in their interest to rehabilitate a party and not let it collapse completely.

WILKERSON: Absolutely. You just put your finger on the heart of things, too. One of my students asked me the other day: do you really think there's that much difference in foreign-policy formulation between the Republicans and the Democrats? And, of course, my answer was no, there's not. There's hardly any distance between them. Oh, you can pick an issue here and an issue there ... but you're not going to find that big a divergence between either party. And I would even submit you're not going to find that big a divergence with regard to what corporate interests dictate those politicians do between either party either. You're going to find that there's just as much responsibility, as you just pointed out, for the current economic problems in this country belonging to the Democrats ... who engineered the disassembling of FDR's protections during the Great Depression and afterwards, as there is amongst the Republicans, who were so explicit, if you will, in the way they fought war at the same time they didn't raise any taxes and things like that. But they're both complicit in the same kind of maneuvers, in the same kind of abuse of power for their own interest, for their very parochial, narrow individual interest, and for the larger and grander interests of the corporate interests whom they represent--big pharmacy, big food, big energy, and so forth.
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US states score poorly on cronyism & corruption test

It's quite surprising to me that the whole world thinks that corruption & cronyism don't exist in the Western world. Somehow, white skin means fairness, equality, merit, compassion etc. International organizations, like Transparency International, deride governments of Brazil, India, South Africa, Nigeria, Russia etc. for their unaccountability, corruption, & no ethics, but governments of UK, Canada, US, Australia, Japan etc. get a free pass. Why?

The latest election of Donald Trump, & then his appointments of his own son-in-law & daughter, in the White House posts are great examples of nepotism & cronyism (yes, his daughter doesn't have an official post, but she is sitting in on all presidential meetings.) Government lawmakers keep threatening that Trump could be in serious legal trouble if he doesn't divest of his personal business while he is the President of US, but they all seem to be empty threats. Some might say here that that's because he is a Republican, & Republicans / Conservatives are corrupt. But, as the article states, that even Democratic states have the same level of corruption as Republican states. So, the corruption is bipartisan. Ironically, corruption is one thing which unites every stateperson, all over the world, regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, etc.

As I always say that the colour of the human blood is red. Every human is same. Corruption in the government exists everywhere; be it in Pakistan, or UK, or US, or Canada or Madagascar. Politics has become the playground of the rich & corrupt. Ethically conscientious people are never given a chance to prove their mettle in the highest office in the land. Corrupt people in the government don't want an ethically conscientious person in charge of their affairs because then they will need to straighten themselves up. As Mr. Stern says in the last paragraph of the article that, "it’s very, very difficult for legislatures to focus on these things and improve them because they don’t want these laws, they don’t want to enforce them, and they don’t want to fund the people enforcing them."

Furthermore, what does it say about the democracy in the West. Democracy is supposed to mean that the general public not only freely chooses its own leaders but also keeps a tab on its leaders, & if & when, they seem to be not working for the general public, then the the public has the full control to remove that leadership. Well, in the absence of accountability of opaque state records, wouldn't you say that it would be a little hard to keep an eye on what the government is actually doing, & hence, harder still to remove them if they don't follow what the general public wants them to do. So, if the general public doesn't have any control on the government, then is this democracy? May I kindly remind you here that merely voting is not democracy. Voting takes place in many places. That doesn't mean that there's democracy.

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https://www.rt.com/usa/321359-state-governments-ethics-integrity/

The majority of state governments are hotbeds of cronyism, with the public shut out from true accountability by loophole-ridden open-records laws, according to a new report on the integrity of statehouses throughout the US.

Eleven of the 50 US states received failing grades for transparency and accountability, while only three earned a score about 70%. Alaska, with a score of 76, a "C" grade, was rated highest by the Center for Public Integrity, which just released its 2015 State Integrity Investigation, "a data-driven assessment of state government." Michigan came in dead last, with a score of 51.

"The State Integrity Investigation assesses the existence, effectiveness, & accessibility (i.e. citizen access) of key governance & anti-corruption mechanisms through a qualitative & indicator-based research process," the Center for Public Integrity and its partner, Global Integrity, explained their comprehensive probe of state laws & political cultures from coast to coast.

The investigation's findings are a cavalcade of embarrassing revelations about the overall climate of government transparency in the United States. From states that exempt entire branches of their government from open-records laws to states that absolutely refuse to seriously investigate ethics violations, the report's findings are “disappointing but not surprising,” said Paula A. Franzese, a state government ethics expert at the Seton Hall University School of Law.

In New Mexico, for instance, legislators passed a resolution – without needing the governor's approval – to exempt their emails from public records inquiries. "I think it’s up to me to decide if you can have my record,” one New Mexico representative said of the 2013 effort.

Delaware's Public Integrity Commission, the state's lobbying & ethics watchdog, has just two full-time staff members, the probe revealed. In 2013, a special state prosecutor found that the agency was so shorthanded, it was not able “to undertake any serious inquiry or investigation into potential wrongdoing.”

In 70% of states, part-time state lawmakers can vote on bills that present a clear conflict of interest with their private dealings. Such was the case in Missouri this year, when a legislator introduced a bill barring municipalities from banning plastic bags at grocery stores. The lawmaker – the director for the Missouri Grocers Association – claimed he was standing up for shopper rights. The bill eventually passed, overriding the governor's veto.

The investigation included assessments of 13 categories within all 50 state governments. Those categories included: public access to information, political finance, electoral oversight, executive accountability, legislative accountability, judicial accountability, state budget processes, state civil service management, procurement, internal auditing, lobbying disclosure, ethics enforcement agencies, & state pension fund management.

For each state, the Center for Public Integrity & Global Integrity contacted numerous state-level organizations & experts involved in government transparency & accountability to weigh-in on a host of questions pertaining to state government operations. The report, then, is a result of a "blend of social science and journalism" with an "aim to assessing the most salient corruption risks in each state."
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Many lowest-ranked states are bastions of American conservatism, where politicians champion limited government. Yet those states, such as Nevada & Wyoming, were joined at the bottom by the likes of Pennsylvania & Delaware, East Coast states that are considered politically liberal compared to the rest of the US.

“It’s very, very difficult for legislatures to focus on these things and improve them because they don’t want these laws, they don’t want to enforce them, and they don’t want to fund the people enforcing them," said Robert Stern, former president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a now-defunct organization dedicated to ethics & lobbying laws in local & state governments.

Ivy League Study: The General Public Has Virtually No Influence on Policy

This news bite isn't so surprising or at least should not be surprising, if you don't live under a rock & actually think a little bit how the world actually works in real life.

As I have blogged several times in the past & as this news bite confirms it that democracy doesn't exist anywhere in the world, except, maybe, in very small countries with quite a bit of homogenous population in terms of race, ethnicity, & religious beliefs.

So, as this study concludes that public policy is heavily, or rather, completely, influenced by wealthy elites & the special interest / lobbying groups. The common man, or a woman, doesn't have any power in influencing public policies, even the ones directly & adversely affecting him / her.

Now, I know that correlation doesn't imply causation but you do have to wonder how come most, if not all, policies coming out of the government end up favouring the wealthy much more than the poor public. Be it the taxation debate or jobs discussion, or the minimum wage or homelessness, or any number of social & public problems, the rich & wealthy always win out, while the poor left holding the empty bag.

Democracy in the world, especially in the West, only exists superficially. The mass public thinks that since they are voting, their voice matters. Nope it doesn't. Take Canada, for instance. Majority of public is against Syrian refugees making Canada their new home or Canada supplying $15 billions of armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. But did the government listen to the public to actually not welcome Syrian refugees, especially when government is cutting funding to help reduce urban homelessness or rising unemployment through financial injections in the economy. Please keep in mind here that we are not discussing the morality of these issues. That's a whole different discussion in itself.

We can also take US public opinion when George Bush's approval ratings before winning his second term was the lowest of any American president before him but he still won a second term. Or how a majority of German public is against Merkel's insistence on keep welcoming more & more refugees & migrants? Once again, not discussing morality of such issues as refugee crisis. Or Japan where a majority of public was against Abe's decision to turn the country towards more militarism than pacifism. Or is it really democratic of all those dozens of nations involved in TTP (TransPacific Trade Partnership) without any input, whatsoever, from the general public, who will be taking the brunt of all the adverse effects of this trade partnership, while the rich elites make a fine buck out of this trade partnership?

Remember, democracy is not about voting in general elections, but actually about having an actual influence in how the country is run.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5So9ZFO5DeY

ANTON WORONCZUK, TRNN PRODUCER: A new study titled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, & Average Citizens (PDF) says what we've all long felt to be true: the rich & powerful have much greater influence than the rest of us. Political scientist Martin Gilens of Princeton University & Benjamin Page of Northwestern looked at about 1,800 survey questions of public opinion between 1981 & 2002, & they concluded "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

So, Benjamin, tell us how you came to this conclusion. Tell us about the data that you looked at. And give us some concrete statistics to show that democracy gap between the public & the economic elites.

BENJAMIN PAGE, FULCHER PROF. OF DECISION MAKING, NORTHWESTERN UNIV.: Well, Marty Gilens & his people worked for about 10 years to do this. It's a very difficult study. ... . It involved gathering a lot of information about public opinion, about what affluent people think, & about what interest groups stand for. And we then looked at how public policy came out on these 1,800 cases. And it turns out, if you wanted to predict it, the average citizen simply appeared to have no influence whatsoever, no measurable influence, but organized groups had quite a bit, & affluent citizens even more.

WORONCZUK: So you looked at about two decades' worth of surveys of public opinion. Do you see a change in influence of economic elites over that time? Or is it relatively constant? And also, do you see a change in the kinds of elites that have influence over policy?

PAGE: Well, there appears to be some change over time. As economic inequality has increased & there's more money among the most wealthy people, they seem to use more of it for politics & have more influence. And, of course, the study data ended some time ago. This was before the Supreme Court decisions that increased the power of money still far further.

WORONCZUK: And so what kind of issues do we see the wealthy having a greater influence over? What kind of policy choices do they seek that differs from that of the desires of the public?

PAGE: Well, there are certain kinds of issues on which wealthy Americans tend to disagree quite a bit with the average. One of the biggest is Social Security, where the average American really likes the program, wants to increase it, & wealthy Americans tend to want to cut it to reduce budget deficits. Then there are a lot of policies that have to do with jobs & incomes where you get the same kind of situation--the wealthy people, of course, don't particularly get anything from those, & I think they may underappreciate their importance to average people. There are also disagreements about economic regulation. The average American's much more keen on regulating big corporations, for example. And there are difference about tax policy. The average American would like to close loopholes & have high-income people pay a substantially larger share, whereas upper income people are less enthusiastic about that.

WORONCZUK: Do you see any policy desires of the public or the economic elite that tend to converge?

PAGE: Yes. There are many of them, and particularly in this study. ... in many cases, the average person agrees & they get what they want, but apparently it's only because the affluent want it.

What we suspect but don't really have evidence for is that much wealthier people may be exerting most of that political influence. And they tend to have much more different policy preferences from the average person.

WORONCZUK: Okay. So judging this democracy gap that exists between the public & the economic elite, let's say that Obama called you tomorrow & put you on economic reform task force. What recommendations would you make to him?

PAGE: ... what I would suggest is that we really work hard to reduce the role of money in politics. The Supreme Court's made it a little harder, but there's still things you can do--full disclosure of all kinds of political donations, for example; limiting lobbying; & probably public financing of campaigns. Most people don't want to give a bunch of tax money to politicians, but the alternative is to have them rely on private money, & public funding would probably help quite a bit reduce that reliance.

The debate about democracy (whatever that means)

A good opinion piece highlighting how the word "democracy" can mean something &, at the same time, can be meaningless. Although, the piece is few months' old, but the heart of the opinion is "democracy" is a fairly debatable concept.

The primary reason it is debatable or "essentially contested concept" is because most of the public don't understand what the heck is "democracy". Most of the public thinks that merely voting in an election by the general public is "democracy", but it isn't. In many developing countries, elections take place quite frequently, but as soon as the election results are called, the losing party calls foul.

Democracy in the modern world has become similar to a soccer / football match. If a referee awards a penalty or free kick & then that penalty or free kick results in a winning goal for one of the teams, the other team (coach, players, fans etc.) call foul & blame the referee for the decision that helped the other team win the match, regardless of that decision being correct or wrong.

People like & want "democracy" as long as it benefits them economically, financially, socially, politically etc. As soon the "democratically-elected" government makes a decision which goes against the wishes of the public, that same public turns against the government & start claiming that "democracy doesn't exist in this country."

As I stated above that people don't know what democracy is about. Elections & voting are not "democracy," because after all, these activities also happen in Zimbabwe & Congo. Perhaps, those are rigged elections but then most elections are, around the world. In some place, rigging happens at the polling station & in some place, rigging or, in other words, public relations, happen long before the polling day; throughout the election campaign.

Democracy is essentially about the leader (elected or otherwise) listening, learning, & then doing what the majority of its public wants; all the while keeping a close eye on the human rights of minorities, so they are not trampled afoot, while the decisions to benefit the public majority are being implemented. It's not so easy to do. It requires a leader who is not afraid to do something, which may even harm its political party in the short term. It requires a leader who puts the needs of its countrypeople well ahead of his/her & its political party's needs. These kinds of leaders are non-existent in this modern world, where it seems that every other country is either "democratic", or "undemocratic", depending on the public's benefits gained from that given government.
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http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/the-debate-about-democracy-whatever-that-means/

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Is anyone actually against democracy, after all? Surely not. But democracy is a tricky word. It can mean all sorts of things, or something close to nothing at all.
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But there I go, using one of the most loaded words in any language, “democracy,” to score cheap debating points. It’s hard to resist the temptation. We do it all the time in Canadian politics. When a cabal of opposition politicians wanted to supplant the Conservative government at the end of 2008, they said they were serving parliamentary democracy. When Harper fought back, he made similar claims. In 2009 & 2010 & 2011, every time Michael Ignatieff thought he might defeat the minority government of the day, it was easy to find observers who’d ask what could be wrong with a little democracy. As if only an election is democracy. As if Parliament isn’t an expression of democracy.
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“Democracy” is what the Scottish philosopher W.B. Gallie called an “essentially contested concept,” a notion everyone can praise in the abstract while disagreeing, honestly & in good faith, about almost every detail of any given case. (Gallie listed “art” & “duty” as other essentially contested concepts. Art is wonderful & everyone should do his duty, but is that mess on the wall art, & what’s my duty today?) Debate is at the heart of democracy, or should be. But appeals to democracy are usually designed to shut debate down, not to deepen it.