A Democracy in Deep Disrepair

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



A Democracy in Deep Disrepair
In contemporary American political life, only the rich can afford to be politically impatient. The big question: How long will the rest of us tolerate such a unrepresentative political status quo?

By Sam Pizzigati


Four score years ago, amid the tumult of the Great Depression, Americans rethought their democracy. Out of that rethinking came the New Deal — and a generation of steadily growing equality and prosperity.

Might our current Great Recession trigger another new epoch of rethinking? Annie Lowrey, an editor with America’s most influential foreign policy journal, hopes so — and she’s doing her part. If we Americans believe in representative government, a Lowrey column suggested earlier this month, why do we tolerate an institution as anti-democratic as the U.S. Senate?

Our Senate allocates votes strictly by state. America’s 21 smallest states currently hold just a tenth of the nation’s total population. Yet these states have enough Senate votes, between them, to prevent the passage of any legislation.

What would happen, Lowrey wonders, if we allocated senators by some other yardstick? Imagine, she asks, if our 100 senators represented income brackets and not states, “with two senators representing the poorest 2 percent of the electorate, two senators representing the richest 2 percent, and so on.”

If we allocated Senate votes that way, then 94 of our 100 senators would owe their election to Americans making under $100,000 a year. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/a-democracy-in-deep-disrepair/

[Tesha]

1. With 9 recs, this definitely deserves a kick! (NT)

[tom_paine]

2. "Deep disrepair" seems mildly euphemistic

Try, "dead as a doornail and the corpse is starting to put off a rotten stink".

I know we weren't perfect, and we did a lot of terrible shit, but I still believe in the words of the Founding Fathers, for all their human faults, and it is a great tragedy to all humankind to see the old United States have ended like it did, not with a bang but a whimper.

:-(

When Obama's gone, and there is still an outside chance the "The Corporation" will let him have 4 more years if he is sufficiently penitent and grovelling (the "fierce advocate" was a fine piece of grovelling for a start), but when he is gone, our Middle and maybe part of or all the Final Transition into What We Are Becoming will start.

[upi402]

6. agreed

i need to wait a bit to get outa here, however. it will be ugly. but don't look for too much support for stating that here.

[defendandprotect]

3. kick & Rec

[donheld]

4. Yes it is.

[lib2DaBone]

5. We no longer have a Representative government in Washington...

Wall Street has taken over complete control of all branches of government and life in America.

The same Bankster/Gangsters are now reaching out to destroy other countries and economies (Greece, Ireland, Spain)

No one can stop them.. and no one will try... the corruption runs so deep and so wide...