[Peace-discuss] America a democracy? Really?

[David Green]

Create countries roughly along the lines of the major college sports conferences. Then get rid of college sports. Who needs a "national championship" when you've now got your own whole country? Two problems solved.



>________________________________
> From: E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigsqq.org>
>To: C. G. Estabrook <cge at shout.net> 
>Cc: peace-discuss at anti-war.net 
>Sent: Sunday, August 5, 2012 1:18 AM
>Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] America a democracy? Really?
>  
>
>  
>The American people seem to have neither the desire nor the ability to
change their system, but
>rather prefer to pretend and believe in a very great, very beautiful,
and very ingenious lie.
>
>The best that I can tell, neither the Saudis nor the "Red Chinese" are
trying to police and incarcerate the world.
>
>In my opinion the best solution is to divide and redistrict the United
States into several smaller pieces
>more or less along cultural guidelines.  Some parts could be annexed to
Canada such as oregon and washington.
>other parts back to Mexico such as Arizona , New Mexico, & part of
Texas.  
>California to Colorado one large State.  Texas to Dakotas another.
>The north could take Minnesota to New York, with Iowa and Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio all split into North/South
>with St Louis to Virginia and south forming another Autonomous State.
>
>Then you could have enough general consent within a State to allow for
Democracy.  Other wise what you
>will get is coercion, not really anything better, maybe not as good as
the present system.
>
>The division produced by the dividing at home should help to cripple
the Empire quite effectively.
>
>
>
>On 8/5/2012 11:26 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote: 
>[We can certainly appreciate the sophisticated sham
of a democracy that produces two candidates for president, neither of
whom represents what people want, but only what the 1% want. --CGE]
>>
>> 
>> 
>>America a democracy? Really? 
>>By Dave Lindorff 
>>Fri Aug 3, 2012 9:55AM GMT  
>>We Americans are taught it in school. The propaganda put out by
Voice of America repeats the idea ad nauseum around the globe.
Politicians refer to it in every campaign speech with the same fervor
that they claim to be running for office in response to God’s call:
America is a model of democracy for the whole world. 
>>
>>But what kind of democracy is it really that we have here? 
>>
>>Forget that only half of eligible voters typically vote in quadrennial
presidential elections (less than 30% in so-called “off-year” elections
for members of the House and a third of the Senate, and less than 25%
in municipal and state elections). Forget that the government is
increasingly trampling on the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, with
a burgeoning surveillance program and a growing militarization of the
police. 
>>
>>The US government doesn’t even do what the majority of the citizens
want. In fact, these days it flat out ignores what we the people want. 
>>
>>Consider the polls, and what they show public sentiment to be on key
issues, and then look at what the government, composed of supposedly
elected representatives and an elected president, actually does: 
>>
>>1. Military spending 
>>
>>
>>Most polls show that Americans, tired of the endless wars
that have been raging almost without pause since the end of World War
II, and the huge amount of taxes devoted to the military (currently
over $1 trillion per year!), favor cutting the military. Just recently,
the Center for Public Integrity conducted a poll and found that when
asked whether they wanted to cut funding for education, veterans’
benefits, homeland security and other areas, or military spending, 65%
of people said they wanted military spending to get the axe. 
>>Overall, people favored an 18% cut in the military budget. Democrats
wanted a 22% cut, while even Republicans, usually perceived as
pro-military, wanted a 12% cut. Of those wanting military spending cut,
the largest group, 27%, favored cutting nuclear weapons funding,
followed by 23% who wanted ground forces spending cut. Yet both
President Barack Obama and his likely opponent in November’s election,
Republican Mitt Romney, are both calling for increased military
spending next year, and Congress can’t even bring itself to cut
spending on a new fighter program that is both way over budget at half
a billion dollars per plane, and a failure (the F-22 cannot fly
safely). 
>>
>>2. Healthcare 
>>
>>Even with the passage of a sort of healthcare reform, the ludicrously
and optimistically named Affordable Care Act, most Americans still tell
pollsters that they would prefer a Canadian-style plan in which the
government provides health insurance coverage for all, paid for by
taxation. For decades this has been true. In 1988, a Harvard
University/Harris poll found 61% favoring a Canadian-style so-called
“single-payer” healthcare system. By 1990, the LA Times found support
for such a system had risen to 66%, while in 1991, the Wall Street
Journal found public support had reached an astonishing 69%. In 2003,
the Washington Post and ABC-TV found 62% in favor of extending
Medicare, the government health program for those over 65, to cover
everyone. In 2007, despite decades of anti-government ideological
rhetoric, CNN found that 64% favored government health insurance for
all. In 2009, as the Obama administration was flat-out refusing to even
discuss the idea of Medicare-for-all, or a Canadian-style health
program, the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is associated with a
private health insurance organization, found 58% of Americans
nonetheless were in favor of a Canadian-style health program. So far,
however, neither the President nor Congress or either of the country’s
two political parties will even consider a national health program. 
>>
>>3. Social security and Medicare programs for the elderly 
>>
>>Last year, President Obama, who campaigned for election in 2008 vowing
never to cut Social Security benefits or Medicare programs, appointed
an advisory commission heavily weighted towards people who favored such
cuts, and told them to come up with recommendations for “reforming”
both programs. He pointedly added that “nothing” was “off the table” in
terms of ideas, including benefit cuts. Right wing politicians and
business lobbies have long been calling for cuts in both programs,
claiming that they will “run out of money,” in a decade in the case of
Medicare and in 45-50 years in the case of Social Security. What they
fail to mention is that if people were taxed on income of over $106,000
a year with the Social Security tax, and if the Medicare tax, currently
less than 2% of income, were raised, there would be no shortfall at
all. 
>>
>>
>>The public, despite all the propaganda thrown at them,
and all the calls in Congress for cuts in the programs to reduce the
nation’s ballooning budget deficit, are clear though. They don’t want
either program cut. The most recent poll, released last week by the
respected Pew Research Center, found that 60% want Social Security and
Medicare benefits left alone. Only 32% said they wanted the budget
deficit cut, and would be willing to see Social Security and Medicare
take a hit to do it. 
>>Never mind the public though. Nearly all Republicans, and even many
Democrats, in Congress, all recipients of large amounts of corporate
campaign cash, continue to call for cuts in Social Security and
Medicare benefits. 
>>
>>4. Higher taxes on the wealthy 
>>
>>Back in the early 1960s, the marginal tax rate on very wealthy people
was 95%, meaning that if they earned over a certain amount, the extra
income was taxed at a rate of 95%. It was a period of high, sustained
economic growth in the US, and also an era when the gap in wealth
between the poor and the rich, and between the rich and the so-called
middle-class, shrank dramatically. Since then, the tax on upper incomes
has fallen steadily, and is now down at 33%, scarcely double the 15%
paid by the lowest income taxpayers on their meager incomes. Meanwhile
the gap between rich and poor has become a chasm. 
>>
>>
>>With the US budget deficit soaring, with infrastructure
crumbling, and with pressures mounting to cut important social programs
like health care, education and welfare for the poor, there are
increasing calls from the public for higher taxes on the wealthy again.
President Obama has responded by calling for a slight increase in taxes
on those earning more than $250,000 a year, back to a 35% rate that was
in effect in 2000, but nobody in government is talking about seriously
taxing the rich. As for the public? Poll after poll shows strong
support for socking it to the wealthy. A Pew Research poll in July
found that 44% favored higher taxes for those above $250,000 a year in
income. Only 22% said they though such higher taxes were a bad idea.
44% also said higher taxes on the rich would be “more fair,” while 21%
disagreed. 
>>5. Action to combat climate change 
>>
>>Since taking office in 2008, President Obama, who had campaigned
calling for action on climate change, has done almost nothing to reduce
or even slow the pace of US carbon emissions. Neither has Congress done
anything. The US, internationally, has actually worked openly and
behind-the-scenes to prevent any global treaty on climate issues. Yet
the American people want action. 
>>
>>
>>A Gallup Poll last April, for example, found that 65% of
Americans support having the government impose mandatory controls on
CO2 emissions, even if that meant higher prices for energy and other
things. Despite massive propaganda against government involvement in
industry, 66% say they favor government spending on alternative energy,
including for cars. At a time when Democratic and Republican elected
officials are all talking about cutting regulation of the environment,
64% also say they favor stricter enforcement of environmental
regulations. 
>>6. The war in Afghanistan 
>>
>>President Obama and his advisors say that even after 2014, the US will
continue to have troops fighting in Afghanistan. Candidate Mitt Romney
isn’t talking about pulling out of Afghanistan at all. And there is no
move in Congress to stop this war that began 11 years ago, and that has
become a costly quagmire for US forces. Yet only 27% of Americans in a
recent poll by AP-GfK said they support that war. A whopping 66% said
they oppose it and want it ended. 
>>
>>7. Invading Iran 
>>
>>The propaganda from the US government about Iran’s alleged goal of
building a nuclear bomb has been relentless, with most US news
organizations helping it along by publishing uncontested “leaks” by
officials sources, often of outright lies. Despite all this
warmongering, though, most Americans still say they oppose any military
“solution” to this trumped-up problem (Iran insists it is not seeking
to build a nuclear weapon). According to a poll in March by the
University of Maryland, published in the Christian Science Monitor, 70%
of Americans said they wanted a diplomatic solution to dealing with
Iran’s nuclear program. If the question was phrased to assume Iran was
shown to be constructing a bomb, the result was different, with 56%
supporting a US attack on Iran, but given that even US intelligence
officials say there is no bomb program underway, this is not the issue. 
>>
>>And yet the US continues to send ever more offensive weapons to the
borders of Iran, and to support covert terrorist actions inside the
country, in the name of combating the country’s alleged nuclear
program. 
>>
>>
>>Looking at this huge disconnect between what the public
wants on issue after issue and what the government actually does, one
has to wonder how much different the US system is from one like China’s
or Saudi Arabia’s, where there is no pretense of democracy. 
>>Certainly Americans have the right and the ability to vote for
candidates, but that alone appears not to produce what President
Abraham Lincoln, back in 1865, called a government “of the people, by
the people and for the people.”  
>>
>>________________________________
>>
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