Friday, March 2,
2018
For All Practical Purposes, the American
System of Government Is Failing. How and Why?
By Dr. Rodrigue
Tremblay
(Author of the
books “The
Code for Global Ethics”, and “The
New American Empire”)
“Unhappy events abroad
have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people.
The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people
tolerate the growth of a private power to a point where it becomes stronger
than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership
of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private
power." Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), 32nd American President (1933-1945), (in ‘Message
to Congress on Curbing Monopolies’, April 29, 1938)
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a
group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the
course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that
glorifies it.” Frédéric
Bastiat (1801-1850),
French economist, statesman, and author.
“Power tends to
corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always
bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when
you super add the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.” Lord Acton (John E. Dalberg)
(1834-1902), English historian, politician, and writer.
“The truth is there are very few members [of
the U.S. Congress] who I could even
name or could think of who didn't at some level participate in that
system [of bribery and corruption
in Washington D.C.].” Jack Abramoff, professional lobbyist and onetime
power broker for the elite of Washington, D.C. (during a CBS's 60 Minutes
interview, Sunday November 6, 2011)
“Now [the
United States] is just an oligarchy, with
unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for
president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors
and U.S. senators and Congress members. ... So now we've just seen a complete
subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors. …The
incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a
great benefit to themselves.” Jimmy
Carter (1924- ), 39th U.S. President (1977-1981), (in a radio interview,
Tues. July 28, 2015)
On
January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th President of the United States, (1953-1961), and a five-star general, gave a Farewell
address that has echoed through the years. He not only warned his
fellow citizens about the danger of a “military-industrial
complex”, which could “endanger our
liberties or democratic processes”, but he also issued a wish in saying
that “we want democracy to survive for
all generations to come.”
Observers have
noticed, however, that since the 1980’s, something big has occurred in the
United States: the political system and its processes have fallen into the
hands of an unscrupulous money establishment in a way that has left a majority
of Americans deprived of the basic services they are entitled to receive from
their government.
This can be
explained by the workings of a political cycle of corruption, through which big
money increasingly corrupts basic political institutions and practices.
Before the 1980s,
the U.S. system of government had functioned reasonably well along the lines
dictated by the U.S. Constitution and following the democratic principle
eloquently summarized by President
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) when he said that the U.S. government is the “government of the people, by the people, for the people” as dictated by the vote of citizens who
elect officials and who favor the adoption of common good policies.
The U.S. Constitution is one
of the oldest
The United States
is an old democracy. Its Constitution
is the oldest
written constitution in operation in the world. It was approved on September 17, 1787, after three
months of debate, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and it became effective on March 4, 1789.
It is a federal constitution, which created a strong
federal government, but according to the principle of separation of powers. At
the federal level, it establishes an intricate system of checks and balances
between an executive branch headed by a President, a legislative branch with
two houses forming the U.S. Congress and a judicial branch consisting of a U.S.
Supreme Court and other courts. The purpose was to prevent tyranny. The fifty
American states delegated certain powers to the federal government, but
undelegated powers are reserved to the states.
This founding document guarantees constitutional
protection of basic political rights, such as freedom of speech, freedom of
religion, and freedom of the press, as spelled out in twenty-seven amendments.
The first
ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights and they were
ratified and adopted in 1791, while the other seventeen amendments have been
adopted over time, between 1795 and 1992.
Basically, the
U.S. Constitution was a compromise
between the political
ideas of Alexander Hamilton (New York) and Thomas Jefferson (Virginia). Hamilton
and the Federalists favored a centralized federalism, and were supported by
merchants and manufacturers. Jefferson and the anti-federalists rather favored
the principle of a decentralized federal system; they supported states’ rights
and agriculture. Over time, economic and technological developments and various
court decisions tipped the balance in favor of Hamilton’s espousal of a strong,
even aristocratic, central U.S. government.
The electoral reforms enacted by Republican President
Theodore Roosevelt
Since the 1980s,
there has been a fundamental change in the way political institutions function
in the United States. And this is not only a matter of change in the governance
approach to providing public services, as
some
have pointed out. It is a profound change in the way ordinary
citizens choose their elected representatives and in the way they convey to
public officials their demands, wishes and needs. Their influence has greatly
diminished over the years.
For most of the
twentieth century, a century during which the American standard of living rose
substantially, there existed in the United States a system of laws and
practices that protected the sanctity of the voting system as an expression of
the choices of the citizenry. Legal entities, such as corporations, banks or
other organizations were prevented from using their huge access to money to
subjugate the voice of the electorate and debase democracy.
In 1905, for
example, President
Teddy Roosevelt (1858-1919), a Republican, in his annual address to
Congress spelled out the democratic principle that “all contributions by corporations
to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by
law.” In 1906,
Roosevelt was even more explicit, saying: “I again recommend a law prohibiting all corporations from contributing
to the campaign expenses of any party… Let individuals contribute as they
desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making
contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly. ” On January 26, 1907, President Roosevelt signed the Tillman Act
of 1907, which was the
first legislation in the United States prohibiting monetary contribution to
national political campaigns by corporations.
How the U.S. Supreme Court has
subverted the American electoral system
However, on January 21,
2010, the U.S. Supreme Court chose to roll back laws that have limited the role
of corporate money in federal elections since Teddy Roosevelt was president.
The more than century-old Roosevelt principle which had prevailed until then
according to which “no corporation shall be
considered to be a person who is permitted to raise or spend money on federal,
state, or local elections of any kind”
was crudely abolished and thrown into the trash.
was crudely abolished and thrown into the trash.
Indeed with their
judgment in the case of Citizens United v.
Federal Election Commission,
Chief Justice John Roberts and four other justices
created a major revolution in the American electoral system. They rejected
historic precedents and judicial restraint in order to put a radical
pro-corporate spin on the First Amendment. They declared that “corporations”
and other legal organizations are indeed “persons”, entitled to the same human
rights as living, breathing persons.
Consequently, since the 2010 decision of the U.S. Court, the Preambule of
the U.S. Constitution that says “We the People of the United States,
in order to form a more perfect Union...” should more appropriately be
changed now for “We, the business corporations of America…etc.”, in order to fully reflect the new
political philosophy of the five- member majority of the Roberts Court. Indeed,
with the decision of Jan. 21, 2010, the type of government the majority of the
Roberts Supreme Court wished to establish is essentially ‘a government of
the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations’.
Nowadays, the U.S. Government is more centralized and
more corrupt than ever
Indeed, over the
last quarter century, there has been a quiet political coup d'état in the United
States, with far right money interests taking over the American system of
government, and this not only includes the U.S. Congress; it includes also the
White House and the U.S. Supreme Court. Billionaire oligarchs have taken
control in the United States and they pretty much do what they want with the
government, irrespective of what the people think or want. This is a throwback
to the later part of the 19th Century when Robber
Barons could buy out politicians, pile up the public debt and plunder
the public purse at will, while unscrupulously rigging markets and
abusing consumers.
People want
peace, but the oligarchs—and that includes Donald
Trump—want war,
permanent war, and they want to be free to line their pockets with the war
industry profits all over the world.
People want social
services and want to reduce poverty, but the oligarchs want to reduce
the influence of government, cut taxes and keep politicians corrupted.
People
want their children to
be secure, safe
and not the target of guns
when they go to school, but the oligarchs, manufacturers and extremist
organizations want to be able to sell military-style assault weapons to
everybody who can afford to buy them. Indeed, cowardly American politicians refuse to ban
military-style assault
weapons, as they are
controlled in most countries.
People want to
live in a clean
environment, but the oligarchs want to be free to pollute and pursue
their own private interests.
Most people stand
for the rule of law and for democracy,
but the oligarchs prefer a system closer to plutocracy,
in which their money can call the shots, etc.
The potentially corrupting
influence of money has become more and more dominant in U.S. politics, and it
has been openly encouraged by numerous decisions of
the U.S. Supreme Court, especially, as we have seen, by the Roberts
U.S. Supreme Court, in favor of the wealthy, the powerful and private interest groups.
As a consequence, popular trust in the U.S. government has declined
steadily over the last half century. According to the
Pew
Research Center, while 73% of Americans were
said to have trust in the federal government in Washington D.C., in
1958, that percentage had fallen to a mere 18%, in 2017. This represents a huge
erosion of public trust in government in a bit less than sixty years. This is a
generational shift of great magnitude.
What are the consequences of that shift toward less democracy?
• Americans are the least
likely to exercise their right to vote: in the 2016 election, only 55.7% of
eligible voters bothered to vote, as compared to an average of 75% in other
OECD countries.
• In the U.S., politics has become a rich man’s game: In practice and in most
cases, no American citizen who is not rich can expect to be elected in the
current American political system, unless he or she is willing to become a
political prostitute to big money interests. Moreover, ordinary citizens cannot
entertain any hope, on their own, of being able to redress the situation.
• More importantly perhaps, it has become harder and harder to encourage
government to pass legislation to enhance the common
good and to promote
the general welfare of ordinary citizens. Wealthy lobbies, corporations and
mega banks, supported by a very concentrated and partisan media, hold the upper
hand in anything the government does. These powerful lobbies push the United States to spend
more on its military sector than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United
Kingdom, India, France, and Japan combined.
• Not surprisingly, income and wealth disparities in the United States
are indecent and growing.
The Stanford
Center on Poverty and
Inequality has ranked the United States dead last among the 10 richest
countries on that score. Half of the U.S. population lives presently in poverty
or is low-income, according to U.S. Census data, while the American middle
class is losing ground, according to surveys by the Pew
Research Center. To compare income and wealth inequality that prevails in the U.S. today, it is
necessary to go back 100 years, just before the Great Depression. Presently, there is less
social mobility in the United States and the social fabric is increasingly
disorganized.
Social cohesion
is threatened in a country when income
and wealth inequalities become exceptionally wide. This has been a big
problem in South America for many years. Now it has become a growing social and
economic problem in the United States.
• The United States has the
highest
incarceration rate in the world, ahead of Cuba, El Salvador,
Turkmenistan, the Russian Federation and Thailand. Its rate is almost 5 times
higher than the OECD average.
• An ominous sign: Life
expectancy at birth in the United
States fell for the second consecutive year in 2016, due to a dizzying 21%
increase in the death rate from drug overdoses, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, this is the first time since 1962 and
1963, two years in which the flu caused an unprecedented number of deaths, that
the United States experienced two consecutive years of declining life
expectancy.
Conclusion
Since the 1980s,
a vicious cycle of political corruption in the United States has become more
and more powerful and has had negative social consequences. It is a cycle of
corruption that has allowed the money establishment to tighten its grip on the
major American institutions of the Presidency, the U.S. Congress and the U.S.
Supreme Court. Such a cycle of political corruption is self-reinforcing, and as
it becomes more and more comprehensive and entrenched, it also becomes very
difficult to break up and reverse.
To read COMMENTS on this article, please go to top
right, under “Pages”,
and click on COMMENTS.
_____________________________________________
International
economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist
Principles”, and
of “The
New American Empire”.
Posted, Friday,
March 2, 2018, at 8:30 am
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__________________________________________________________
© 2018 by
Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay