Can The Us Political System Be Fixed For The Better?

In another thread I asked this question and I thought I’d give it is own thread.

Government is just what governs – absolute dictatorship and total democracy are both forms of government, it could be even argued that Anarchy or lack of a governing body is in itself a form of governance.

People usually don’t like their form of government because it is not doing the things they feel it should be doing.

The problem is that different people what ‘government’ to be doing different things for different reasons. They wish it to serve the interests of themselves, their group, religion or tribe.

In that context ‘good governance’ is about balancing the interests of differing groups and a unbalanced system is likely to result in ‘bad’ governance where the interests of one group becomes dominant.

In the US the original form of government was set up to serve the interests of the established propertied classes (or at least to protect them from what they thought of as ‘the mob’).

The system then unfortunately became dominated by two basically right wing political parties (one of the centre right and one further to the right), which have often colluded in trying to stop other parties or influences from emerging especially from the left.

Add to that wealth owned media with no obligation to be objective or unbiased and it’s not surprising that the US political system has become unbalanced and seemingly dysfunctional.

The question is can it be fixed, given that many of the things that might be done would mean going against the political system and constitution set up to serve the interests of the established propertied classes?

In other words would the American people be willing to radically change the US constitution or drop it completely in favour of another to bring about the changes?

 

Not likely.
Once a government becomes thoroughly corrupt, it will not change until it is overthrown. Not saying the US govt. can be overthorwn...it can't.

 

No the US political system is a lost cause.

Corruption is at every level of government and big business has the senate, the white house, and congress in their back pocket.

Hercules was able to slay the 9 headed hydra but even his skills couldn’t defeat this 3-headed monstrosity

Hotwater

 

Bernie Sanders says the campaign contributions he has received average $31.20 per person. On the 24/7 news channels, the amount of coverage he gets is proportional to his popularity, not his finances. And all the activities related to his campaign online, especially on social media, have nothing to do with money.

Is this not a big step in the right direction?

Money can more or less force people to hear your message on TV, but it can't make them like it. There's no amount of money on earth that could be spent that would make me more likely to vote for Donald Trump. In fact, there is a general saturation point for exposure that has been studied before, and it's preventing the GOP from totally taking over everything 100%. Publicity beyond a certain point has been shown to piss people off.

I'm all for campaign finance reform, even if it requires a Constitutional amendment, but we aren't doomed without it. America went through periods in the past where the rich controlled everything, and ways were found to overcome it.

 

it is a helluva lot better than a monarchy...

 

"In the US the original form of government was set up to serve the interests of the established propertied classes (or at least to protect them from what they thought of as ‘the mob’)"

There is no system of governance in existence that does a better job of achieving the above. "Control the money and I care not who makes the laws." By definition then and by design what we call modern government is a way to manage a proprietary system not related to the support of human excellence. No reason to expect results that are not in fact intended no matter how we think things should be.

To achieve the should be let all of your interpersonal relations be voluntary. It is the coercion of the one or the many by government that makes government oppressive. It is our greed that makes it appear tolerable as well as necessary.

 

The political system CAN be changed, but the VOTERS must do it. The VOTERS must vote in representatives that will fix the things that need to be changed, instead of letting STUPID VOTERS elect the morons that CAUSE the mess.

The real problem is STUPID VOTERS, and apathetic NON VOTERS. As long as this country has 50% of the people just whining about the moron representatives without voting them out, then the STUPID VOTERS will continue to elect the idiots that have added $18 trillion to the national debt since 1980.

Those that cause the problems will NEVER be the solution.

The real question should be.....WHAT IS THE CURE FOR STUPID?

 

The us voting systems fundamentally flawed and only ever has room for the two major parties to butt heads. There won't be any change until the voting system is changed. We should all move to preferential voting like Australia has.

 

No it can't. I'm partially in favor in tearing everything down and starting over with the original framework of the constitution.

 

Black citizens are 3/5 of a person? Voters give "suggestions" to members of the Electoral College, who can vote any way they want? Voting limited to male owners of real estate?

 

my generation and the next generation actually gives me a bit of hope. This generation is much more socially liberal as a whole. Will this change corruption in politics? Nah, but it will lead to organic, grassroots change like we have recently seen with marijuana legalization and gay marriage. I do think positive change can occur without violent upheaval but it takes longer, requires more patience, and usually has longer lasting results as well.

 

To clarify, by starting over means to obliterate all the corrupt institutions and governmental bodies that have accumulated since the nation's independence like the UN and the Federal Reserve among thousands of others. Nevertheless we can start over with the original constitution and institute laws we can all agree on like prohibiting slavery and child labor, and allow women to own land and vote. They would just have to be written in I suppose.

 

:rofl:

 

Thought this was in the humor section....

 

Look no further than Uruguay (The Oriental Republic of Uruguay) which was founded using a copy of the US constitution. Uruguay never had a massive population growth and nowhere near the immigration, so it's interesting to see how their version of the document has evolved. They recently legalized cannabis and they didn't develop term limits in the same manner. This next year will be interesting because their long-term leader is finally retiring, he's like in his 90s.

I only went there for a few days while I was working in Argentina, but I would highly suggest a visit. It's interesting to see the constitution in a petri dish.

 

Gas

The thing is that if you look at the quality of life and freedom indexes you often find that many of the counties at the top of the list are constitutional monarchies
Places like Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands.

As I pointed out there are lot of differing forms of government, it a matter of how they govern that is under discussion have you any comment on that?

 

Mat

Here are examples from America's past on how the power of the two could be lessened to the point where they could be broken.

Proportional Representation could change the political landscape, it did before when it was used in the US.

Here are extracts from - A Brief History of Proportional Representation in the United States.

“The most extensive research to date has been produced by Kathleen Barber and several colleagues. Their study, Proportional Representation and Electoral Reform in Ohio, systematically analyzed the political effects of PR in five Ohio cities. In many cases their findings were also confirmed by results in other PR cities. For example, Barber found that choice voting produced fairer and more proportional representation of political parties. In particular, it eliminated the tendency of winner-take-all systems to exaggerate the seats given to the largest party and to underrepresent the smaller parties. In the election before the adoption of PR in Cincinnati, the Republicans won only 55% of the vote, but received 97% of the seats on the council. In the first PR election, the results were much more proportional, with the Republicans winning 33.3% of the seats based on 27.8% of the vote, and the rival Charter party winning 66.7% of the seats on 63.8% of the vote.

Similarly, in the last pre-PR election in New York City, the Democrats won 95.3% of the seats on the Board of Alderman with only 66.5% of the vote. During the use of PR, the Democrats still had a majority of the seats, but it was a much smaller one that reflected more accurately their strength in the electorate. In 1941, proportional representation gave the Democrats 65.5% of the seats on 64% of the vote. Moreover, it also produced representation for the Republicans and three smaller parties in proportion to their voting strength. Similar results occurred in the other PR cities, demonstrating that this system greatly improved the accuracy of partisan representation.

Proportional representation also encouraged fairer racial and ethnic representation. It produced the first Irish Catholics elected in Ashtabula, and the first Polish-Americans elected in Toledo. In Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Toledo, African-Americans had never been able to win city office until the coming of PR. Significantly, after these cities abandoned PR, African-Americans again found it almost impossible to get elected.”

What scuppered PR movement was money and fear - doesn’t that sound familiar in todays America.

“In Cleveland, well-financed opponents sponsored five repeal referendums in the first ten years of PR, with the final one succeeding. Similarly, PR opponents in Hamilton finally won their repeal effort after four failed referendums in 12 years.

Many Americans in the early twentieth century were hostile to political and racial minorities--the very groups aided by PR... They warned whites that PR was helping to increase black power in the city and asked them whether they wanted a "Negro mayor." Their appeal to white anxieties succeeded, with whites supporting repeal by a two to one margin..

In New York City, fear of communism proved the undoing of proportional representation. Although one or two Communists had served on the PR-elected city council since 1941, it was not until the coming of the Cold War that Democratic party leaders were able to effectively exploit this issue. As historian Robert Kolesar discovered, the Democrats made every effort in their repeal campaign to link PR with Soviet Communism, describing the single transferable vote as "the political importation from the Kremlin," "the first beachhead of Communist infiltration in this country," and "an un-American practice which has helped the cause of communism and does not belong in the American way of life."(3) This "red scare" campaign resulted in the repeal of PR by an overwhelming margin.”

As the piece concludes -

“While the repeal of proportional representation in these American cities is taken by opponents as evidence that this voting system failed, proponents argue that it is more accurate to conclude that this system was rejected because it worked too well. They note that PR worked well in throwing party bosses out of government--bosses who never relented in their attempts to regain power--and it worked well in promoting the representation of racial, ethnic, and ideological minorities that were previously shut out by the winner-take-all system”

 

6-eyes

‘laws we can all agree on’

Have you ever been in one of the gun issue threads on this forum?

I’m on record here as thinking that the US needs a whole new constitution in a similar way to Thomas Jefferson who thought a new constitution should be written every generation (for him that was every 20 years or so - to me it would be every 50).

"Jefferson's dedication to "consent of the governed" was so thorough that he believed that individuals could not be morally bound by the actions of preceding generations. This included debts as well as law. He said that "no society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation." He even calculated what he believed to be the proper cycle of legal revolution: "Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it is to be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson

 

[SIZE=11pt]mel[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Wealth on the whole doesn’t care what you smoke or who you marry – but they will fight tooth and nail for their tax cuts. [/SIZE]

 

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Some seem to recognise that money in politics is the problem and of course the emphasis is on campaign contributions around election times but I’d say its influence is more insidious and pervasive, background music that people forget is there but whose melody they end up whistling along to without realising it.

There are many wealth back institutions promoting even preaching ideas that promote wealth’s interests while claiming they are independent, objective and/or unbiased.

Who pays the piper calls the tune – reports are produced by wealth backed think tanks that unsurprisingly push a certain line and these are used my wealth back media as if they were fact headlining things like “A report out today says that…” “A report concludes…” etc when actually looked at such reports are often based on supposition, opinion and the reading of data that is contentious and contended, but that doesn’t matter the headline has already become part of the song.

And the thing is that once something has become part of the background tune and what is seen as just ‘common sense’ it becomes very hard to counter even when the person holding such views can’t defend the ideas from criticism.