Is democracy fading away,,,, should it ?

[can't sit still]

Democracy is creeping socialism. Socialism has never worked. Democracy with universal suffrage has never worked. Our founding fathers knew this and founded a republic.
Over time, we have gradually morphed into a representative democracy. Though lately we don't get much representation. Where would we be if we had remained a republic? Dunno.
China is an authoritarian regime. How different is that from a republic?
As a VERY general observation, I would say that the poor remain poor in a republic,,, and the poor get along quite well in a democracy.... until it busts.
I got an interesting mail from Bob Taft. He has some great observations on the American republic.

What you are asking for Dick is a return to Exodus 18:21 government, such as existed for century after century until shoved aside by the Normans in the 11th century. What you want is a republic, rather than a democracy.

The 1787 ConJob left but two republican remnants within the democracy which it established. One was the electoral college which appointed the president, the other was the Senate, which represented the states, the senators being appointed by the state legislatures.

At the same time that the 17th amendment eliminated state representation, 1913, in favor of democratic mobocracy, the political party structures were changed. Previously, in local city precincts, the neighborhood party members got together and elected a Precinct Committeeman, someone they all knew and could trust. The Precinct Committeemen then got together and elected a Ward Committeeman. The Ward committee then ran the party, picking the candidates to be voted for in the general elections. This was control from the people up.

After 1913, the local neighborhood party members were obliged to vote for their Ward Committeeman, someone they usually did not know. The Ward Committeeman then APPOINTED all the Precinct Committeemen below him, paying them with government jobs, and their duty was to keep the Ward Committeeman in office. This was control from the top down.

So you see, people control has not been allowed in the political parties for nearly a century. Of the three major subversions allowed in 1913, the income tax, the Federal Reserve scam, and the 17th amendment, perhaps the last was worst, as the people have had no control over anything in government since that time. The system gives us two slates of "opposing" candidates from which to choose, differing in name only. Any within the party structures who meaningfully position themselves in opposition to the dictates of their masters, quickly find themselves in real trouble, like Hansen, or Trafficant, or Kennedy, or Nixon. And remember Paul Findlay, and Bill Fullbright. And right now look at Kucinich from Ohio. Party makes no difference, it's all one big happy conspiracy to keep the people in their place.

In "our glorious democracy," as FDR loved to call it, the politicians always win and the people always lose. Only from the ashes of a dead society, may freedom attempt a rebirth. So everyone get ready. "Back to Exodus" should be our motto.
--
Best regards,.
Bob Taft
The Taft Ranch
Upton, Wyoming
(307) 465-2447
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint
the great ones to public office." Aesop
http://www.freedomclubusa.com/the_tun
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/ar ... read=74897

[can't sit still]

Interesting article;
http://www.financialsense.com/financial ... lification

[Ugly Dougly]

Over time, we have gradually morphed into a representative democracy.

Horseshit. The constitution from the very beginning outlined a system of representative democracy.

China is a republic, so was the USSR - that's what the R stands for!!! Are you hoping for a system like that?

[can't sit still]

Our constitution had more appointing and less voting, originally. Women and slaves couldn't vote. Dunno about indentured people.

[Ugly Dougly]

Article I: The legislative branch:
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Article1

Are you a landowner? In the old system, mere tenants would also be denied representation.

[Trishntek]

And that was written before the existence of income tax; Therefore, if you did not own property, you did not pay taxes. The intention was that only those invested could vote.

Now, with a vast number of citizens receiving more from gubmint than they have invested, are simply voting more money for themselves.

[can't sit still]

Somewhere in this thread, I posted,,, " I don't believe that universal suffrage is a good idea".The poor want to live as well as the working people. Why should they? They can just vote money for themselves. Eventually, their demands are too much for the economy. Even if everything was produced by machines, why should society support the indolent?
If people spend their whole lives wearing a track from the fridge to the telly, how is that good for anything? We have finite resources. Why should we burn them up on people who actively resist making any contribution to society?

[can't sit still]

Here is an excellent article on democracy; http://www.caseyresearch.com/displayCdd.php?id=554

[can't sit still]

Here's a quite long article on the history that lead to some of our current problems.
http://neithercorp.us/npress/?p=832

[can't sit still]

Just in case you had any doubts about electronic voting;
http://www.wimp.com/votesoftware/

[can't sit still]

Walter Lippmann

Walter Lippmann, an American intellectual, writer and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner brought forth one of the first works concerning the usage of mass media in America. In Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann compared the masses to a “great beastâ€

[can't sit still]

This is an interesting paper on the varieties of social contracts,,, often referred to as GOV;
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/ar ... read/45836

[can't sit still]

It seems that the Coast Guard is getting a new mandate;
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=21648

[can't sit still]

Something to think about;
"Slavoj Zizek observes that "One should bear in mind the basic rule of Stalinist hermeneutics: since the official media do not openly report trouble, the most reliable way to detect it is to look out for compensatory excesses in state propaganda: the more 'harmony' is celebrated, the more chaos and antagonism there is in reality."
http://www.rense.com/general92/joe.htm

"In Bernanke’s final sentence (In response…), he claims the Fed saved the mortgage market and restored the American dream"
http://dailyreckoning.com/the-fed-under ... explosion/
There's no shortage of desperate cheerleaders.

[can't sit still]

Here's a short vid on preserving democracy;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBrDzZCOQtI

[cowboyangel]

Democracy is indeed dead on the federal level. I may be deluded but I still believe it functions on the state level to a higher degree and I see it at work on the local level where it's alive and well. The federal government is a whore to the corporate-military-intelligence agencies- beast. It is a sickening organization that is begging for reform or overthrow.

[can't sit still]

Cowboy, if you take the ideas of Keynes and Hegel, you end up with an all-controlling state. The statists and socialists seem to think that this is the BEST outcome. They are blind to the negative effects of a collectivist state on individual motivation.
We see the effects all around us. Collectivism is killing motivation and productivity.

I mentioned to a friend that half of Americans rely on a check from GOV. This IS the intended outcome of Hegelianism. He had trouble accepting the number of 50 %. He proceeded to investigate for himself. Here's his reply. His numbers do not take into account the 1 % of Americans who are in the prison system.

2010 Population: 310 million

Receiving unemployment money: 8.7 million
The numbers below indicate 14.6 million contractors, 11.8 million direct employees. (info is below)(2006-2007)
School teachers come in at 3.2 million
All social security and ssi and other beneficiearies: 59.1 million
2007 welfare recipients was 3.8 million, lets double that for today to: 7.6 million

According to these figures I get 105 million people relying directly on a check from GOV. The welfare stats include children, but the unemployment and employed figures do not, so I can easily see adding 1-2 people to every employed person (dependents) who are supported by that worker or unemployed person. If I add 1.5 dependents per employed GOV employee or unemployed person, I get 57.5 million more for the dependents. So we have 105 million plus 57.5 million, or 162.45 million Americans relying directly or indirectly on a check from the Government....Stunning.

162.45 Million or roughly 52.4%

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, government accounts for about 8% of jobs in the United States. Here's the breakdown using numbers easily accessible on the BLS website (all numbers from 2006 or 2007):

1,774,000 Federal government civilian employees, excluding Post Office
615,000 Post Office
1,172,913 Military enlisted
230,577 Military Officers
2,424,000 State government (excluding education and hospitals)
5,594,000 Local government (excluding education and hospitals)
That's a total of 11,810,490 government jobs.
The total number of jobs in the U.S. in 2006 was 150,600,000, so government employment makes up 7.84% of all jobs.
In 2007, the U.S. population (according to the Census Bureau) was 301,621,157, so about 4% of Americans are employed by the government.

According to a study by Paul C. Light, a government professor at New York University, the Federal Government also employed 14.6 million contractors in 2006. This was an increase of 2.5 million since 2002, and the study attributes the increase directly to contractors hired as part of the war on terror. (reported in the Washington Post)

I make no claim that any system is best Dan

[can't sit still]

it seems that the EU wants to take over civil service in the member states. They're screwed now !!
http://pjcjournal.wordpress.com/2010/12 ... l-service/

[jkisha]

Democracy is indeed dead on the federal level. I may be deluded but I still believe it functions on the state level to a higher degree and I see it at work on the local level where it's alive and well. The federal government is a whore to the corporate-military-intelligence agencies- beast. It is a sickening organization that is begging for reform or overthrow.

Well, reform for sure.

JK

[cowboyangel]

Dan there's news all over the regular news outlet's about how corporate profits are up and jobs have increased....but that increase is in US company hires over seas. The articles cite Caterpillar as an example. NAFTA needs to be trashed. The corporate Uncle Tom in the White House needs to be replaced by a real Roosevelt reformer who knows how to create "real" jobs in the US-not phony jobs filtered through the corporate maze. Whatever happened to the "green jobs" program? Poof. Gone baby gone.

By creating state banks, the states can save the entire union. The feds are finished. I doubt anything less will work at this point. On Tribe, some of our out of work people have started to ask for help....money whatever. What is the gifting sharing example of Burning Man doing about this? Not much. Is it just a party in the desert for one week a year or is it a model on how Americans can help each other? I had always hoped for the higher expression but Larry and crew have developed arterial sclerosis of the consciousness it seems.

Things can change..... yes they can.

[jkisha]

Dan there's news all over the regular news outlet's about how corporate profits are up and jobs have increased....but that increase is in US company hires over seas. The articles cite Caterpillar as an example. NAFTA needs to be trashed. The corporate Uncle Tom in the White House needs to be replaced by a real Roosevelt reformer who knows how to create "real" jobs in the US-not phony jobs filtered through the corporate maze. Whatever happened to the "green jobs" program? Poof. Gone baby gone.

By creating state banks, the states can save the entire union. The feds are finished. I doubt anything less will work at this point. On Tribe, some of our out of work people have started to ask for help....money whatever. What is the gifting sharing example of Burning Man doing about this? Not much. Is it just a party in the desert for one week a year or is it a model on how Americans can help each other? I had always hoped for the higher expression but Larry and crew have developed arterial sclerosis of the consciousness it seems.

Things can change..... yes they can.

Yup, pretty much.

JK

[can't sit still]

Cowboy, this is a long, deep, hard subject. What you're talking about is NICHE.
In the biological sense, niches evolve. A beaver may create a dam or a bird may build a nest but, most niches evolve.
A job results from some kind of demand [simplified] The demand must be natural or it isn't permanent. Japan was pouring more concrete than the rest of the world combined at one time. This was artificial.
Banks create the principle but, not the interest. An economy MUST grow to service the debt. When demand shifts OUT of a given economy, natural demand is reduced. GOV can introduce artificial demand but, this is parasitic, not productive.
Much of what GOV does is parasitic. As the economy becomes increasingly parasitic, it becomes decreasingly competitive.
Like a ship plastered with barnacles, the U.S. is losing momentum. Some of these barnacles represent the wealthy who are compensated FAR beyond their worth. Some of these barnacles represent the poor who can not or will not fill a niche.
BRIC has demand that is organic, not artificial. The West has shifted from organic to artificial.

A state bank would remove some of th rich, over-compensated barnacles. What about the perennially unemployed barnacles? What about those who are unemployed by choice? Is it realistic to believe that a niche can be found for every person who breathes? Can they be forced to take a niche that they feel is beneath them?
I don't presume to have the answers.

[cowboyangel]

taking "power" away from the big banks is a great start...

[ygmir]

taking "power" away from the big banks is a great start...

if only...........good luck with that.


they'll cut our throats, and bleed us dry, before they go down, alone.

[can't sit still]

A staff writer for the Washington Post says that the "constitution has no binding power on anything"
http://www.breitbart.tv/liberal-star-bl ... years-old/
Evidently, the UCC has the last word on everything.

[jkisha]

A staff writer for the Washington Post says that the "constitution has no binding power on anything"
http://www.breitbart.tv/liberal-star-bl ... years-old/
Evidently, the UCC has the last word on everything.

If you actually took the time to listen to what he said, you would have known that he did not say that the constitution has no binding power over anything, but that the republican's READING of the constitution, for the first time in history at the opening session of congress, had no binding power over anything and was just a stupid gimmick. (stupid being my word, not Ezra's.)

JK

[can't sit still]

I listened to it again [3rd time] and yes, you're correct. When he uses the word "it", I seem to have connected "it" to the constitution rather than connecting "it" to the reading.
Keep me honest.

[FIGJAM]

Maybe they should read it outloud more often so they can remember what thier job realy is!

[TomServo]

when re interpreting the constitution becomes our only defense, perhaps its time this country split. A two party system only alienates one another. Im not going to bitch about all the idiotic things Republicans have done, because the Dems are catching up. It seems pretty clear, that neither side is about to give in...and the atomosphere is becoming downright violent. Just my opinion.

[can't sit still]

Your opinion is worth just as much as anyone else's. By split,,,, UMMMmmm, how do you mean? The U.S. is millions of fragments and the glue is weakening.