Question: How did this country end up without checks and balances?

[Sarah Ibarruri]

When I was younger, my teachers and the adults around me assured me this country had checks and balances. Later on, I believed the same. In fact, my ex-husband (an attorney) assured me that this country had the most efficient set of checks and balances in the world, that the founders had made sure of that and that the founders were geniuses at having designed such an excellent system of government.

My question is, where are those checks and balances now? Did someone steal them while we weren't looking and replaced them with a different mode of govt., or were we just bamboozled by the (right wing) civics and history teachers, preachers, and patriotic flag wavers into believing that checks and balances *really* did exist?

[Olney Blue]

1. Destroyed by BushCo,

[mmonk]

2. We need to get them back

so we won't have to say, "remember back when".

[spanone]

3. 2 stolen elections......

[MannyGoldstein]

4. Because Congress Let Them

And We The People voted for the Congressional enablers.

[MasonJar]

5. The debacle started with an administration which has no ethics at all.

We all know that most politicians are not 100% on the up and up, but these "morans" are certifiable. The Pugs owned the Congress and the presidency which enabled them to load the courts. That is the only way that checks and balance could have been thwarted and it has happened. More's the pity!

[Solly Mack]

6. checks and balances are only as good as the keepers

Those who are entrusted with checks and balances

if Congress becomes so infested with corrupt people who prefer power to actual governing, then there goes that set of checks and balance....

if the SCOTUS is also infested and the people on the bench more tied to party and ideology than to actually protecting and defending the Constitution, then there goes that checks and balances

if an executive is likewise driven by an agenda that has nothing to do with governing, then there goes that checks and balances

if political parties seek power and control instead of seeking to govern by protecting and defending the Constitution, and one party or another seats the majority, then checks and balances become what they say it is or isn't...instead of what it should be...a system where integrity and honor and ethics matter... and not only matter but are needed and necessary for a free people to remain free


If voters indentify more with power and control and victory instead of the good of the country, they too have become corrupted


there is no checks and balances where corruption reigns supreme

[GeorgeGist]

7. I believe it started with ...

debit cards.

[Lint Head]

8. American's died in the Revolutionary War to make those checks and balances

possible. It prevents a monarch from taking power. Looks like we're fucked. :dem:

[stillcool]

9. Ah...history....

Here's a link to an on-line library that provides free copies of out of print books, such as the following:
http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303critic/0303socialcriticism.html

(* The footnotes for this chapter will open in a "new window" so the user can conveniently flip back and forth between notes and text)

THE RICH AND THE SUPER-RICH
A Study in the Power of Money Today
Copyright 1968 by Ferdinand Lundberg
Seventeen

OLIGARCHY BY DEFAULT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lest such an observation be thought by provincials to give this exposition an unholy Marxist aura, let us in reverential solemnity quote such an austere Establishmentarian as Woodrow Wilson, who said (Franklin D. Roosevelt later concurring) in words as valid today as when first uttered:

"The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States. It is written over every intimate page of the record of Congress, it is written all through the history of conferences at the White House, that the suggestions of economic policy in this country have come from one source, not from many sources. The benevolent guardians, the kind hearted trustees who have taken the troubles of government off our hands have become so conspicuous that almost anybody can write out a list of them. . . .

"Suppose you go to Washington and try to get at your government. You will always find that while you are politely listened to, the men really consulted are the men who have the biggest stake--the big bankers, the big manufacturers, the big masters of commerce, the heads of railroad corporations and of steamship corporations. . . . The government of the United States at present is a foster child of the special interests." 1

For the alleged violation of some of its peculiar, even minor, mandates any government whatever will execute any high-minded offender whether he be Jesus, Socrates, John Hus, Servetus, Thomas More, Joan of Arc or John Brown. Socrates was executed by a far more democratic system than any now even claims to be and in a more refined system of civilization than that of any modern country. Under threat of durance vile all governments require the payment of taxes, even unfairly apportioned taxes as in the United States with its packed poor-boy legislatures.

Again, any government even in a trivial or doubtful cause such as Vietnam may place the lives of its younger male citizens in extreme jeopardy by coercing them into the armed forces under the claims of routinely invoked patriotic duty and sending them into kill-or-be-killed situations. Most Americans have been astonished in recent years to see what was always known to the informed: that the president alone can send existing armed forces anywhere without consulting anyone, least of all the public or Congress. He could order an overnight assault against any country, thereby precipitating general war. He could, in full constitutionality, order all of the armed forces into the depths of the Congo and nobody could legally halt the operation. Congress, it is true, could refuse the money to continue the operation and thus be in the position of refusing to support helpless men who had only obeyed legal orders. And this is only a very little of what a fully constitutional American president can do--without consulting anyone.

Most of what a president does not ordinarily do--such as send secret police to citizens' doors late in the night--he does not do because he does not want to. He can do this sort of thing quite legally; there is no law saying at what hour police may call. And such a personally likeable man as President John F. Kennedy did indeed send out nocturnal police visitors in the squabble over steel prices.

Government power, wielded by officials, individual human beings, is evidently great power over others, not necessarily for others, and anyone who wields it, smiling or not, or has ready access to the wielders obviously has great power far beyond that of any man in the street. Moreover, this power with modern techniques is far greater than it ever was. By means of modern methods of communication, government can put its agents into action anywhere in a matter of minutes. It has been credibly reported that President Johnson, with far more power at his fingertips than all presidents combined up to Harry Truman, and more than either Truman, Eisenhower or Kennedy, personally designated overnight targets in North Vietnam for powerful air squadrons waiting to take off from remote, dawn-shrouded airfields. We possess today, in brief, pinpoint government. It can even listen in on conversations anywhere, and freely does so despite denials. It freely uses internal spies, especially in the matter of taxes on obscure citizens.

http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/hogisle.shtml

[in_cog_ni_to]

10. The repukes took over the EXECUTIVE, JUDICIAL and LEGISLATIVE branches of our Government. They have

stacked all the courts. They have the DOJ working FOR THEM, not the people. They control the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, the MSM and the Supreme Court of the United States.

The repukes in Congress didn't hold ONE oversight hearing when they were in power. They were all COMPLICIT in the downfall of our Democratic Republic.

On edit: THIS IS WHY "Democracy is NOT a spectator sport." You MUST participate and PROTECT IT! The repukes didn't do that and now look at where we are.

[Rageneau]

11. The root cause is the right-wing control over public discourse.

Had we a legitimately free press in this country, the BFEE could not do what it is doing to us. Every dictator needs his Goebbalses. The repukes have two dozen of them, all of whom regularly print, broadcast and opine on all subjects. Meanwhile, people with a truly leftward point of view are deliberately overlooked or marginalized, especially in the broadcast arena.

[mmonk]

12. Yes, that's been a huge problem.

No fourth estate.