weakening american democracy is putting the us economy at risk

evince

evince

Truthmatters
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/we...s-economy-at-risk-2017-01-12?siteid=rss&rss=1







Chris*Edelson*is an assistant professor of government in American University’s School of Public Affairs. His latest book,* Power Without Constraint: The Post 9/11 Presidency and National Security , was published in May 2016 by the University of Wisconsin Press.









4 reforms we must make to our democracy to protect the American economy

Published: Jan 12, 2017 3:45 p.m. ET







These steps would help preserve constitutional democracy, the rule of law and a fair marketplace:



By
Chris
Edelson

Economies cannot thrive without the rule of law.
Without the rule of law, deals are harder to make and enforce as people and businesses lose faith in the judicial system.*Consumers don’t know if they will be protected from dangerous products.* Corporations worry about currying favor with elected officials when a*well-aimed tweet can send their stock price plummeting.*Critics of those in power*can lose their assets, or even their freedom— as has occurred in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.*Government corruption can*run rampant.
In the U.S. now, our constitutional democracy — which has enforced the rule of law that allows our economy to operate freely — is at risk.
Concerned Americans need to take action. There are specific steps to preserve constitutional democracy and the rule of law.* None of these proposals is likely to be implemented soon, but that shouldn’t stop the call for them. It is *essential to set goals and create an agenda even when success may not be possible in the short term.

Here are four steps we can and should take to preserve constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and a fair marketplace:
 
the right wants to level the US worker to the third world level


they want to people to hate government


so they are destroying the government
 
1. Abolish the Electoral College:* The Electoral College was designed to ensure that a select elite could check the will of the people when they made a bad choice for president.* Even if you think this was a good idea, the electoral college no longer serves this purpose — the vast majority of electors exercise no independent judgment. Under the current system, presidential candidates focus only on a few key swing states.*Large states like California, New York, and Texas are forgotten, and individual voters in those large states have*less proportional power*than voters in far-less populated states like Wyoming.
There is a straightforward way to fix this: replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote.*This would vindicate the principle of “one person, one vote” and would give candidates an incentive to campaign across the country rather than in a select group of “battleground states.”
The Constitution does not have to be amended to make this change.*States have authority to determine how their electoral votes are assigned, and are free to decide that their electoral votes will go to the winner of the national popular vote. If states with enough electoral votes to total 270 agree to do this, the presidential election would be decided by the national popular vote.
The*National Popular Vote project*has succeeded in getting 11 states with 165 electoral votes to sign on.* If states with a total of 105 more electoral votes agree, the national popular vote will determine the next presidential election.
This is not a partisan goal — it is*a measure needed to advance democracy.* There is no way to know whether one party would benefit from this change.* As Donald Trump has noted, if the election were decided based on the popular vote, candidates would campaign differently.* Both major parties should support this reform in the name of democracy and a better election process.
 
2. End the gerrymandering of congressional and state legislative districts: Republican redistricting efforts *in 2010 and 2011secured a majority for the party.*Fewer than 10% of* House races*were considered competitive in the 2016 election; Republicans were*virtually guaranteed to control the House of Representatives, regardless of national results or even state preferences.*These efforts had similar results in*state legislatures
Gerrymandering—the practice of intentionally drawing district lines in such a way as to ensure that one party will gain an electoral advantage — is a naked, anti-democratic power play.* In 2012,Democrats won statewide elections (president, senate) in Michigan by double-digits, but gerrymandering allowed Republicans to win nine of 14 House seats.* In the same year, Democrats prevailed at the state level in*Ohio and Pennsylvania, but gerrymandering allowed Republicans to take 12 of 16 House seats in Ohio and 13 of 18 in Pennsylvania.*
This partisan process must end. States should use*independent nonpartisan commissions*to draw district lines — or, perhaps, use*computer generated models*to ensure neutrality.**
 
3. Get money out of politics: Members of Congress spend so much time raising money that critics have referred to them as “telemarketers” and the legislative schedule is “arranged around fundraising”. This creates obvious problems when it comes to*conflicts of interest and outright corruption.*
Radical change is needed.*Overturning the Supreme Court’s*Citizens United*decision in order*to rein in “independent” spending Super PACs*is just the tip of the iceberg; it’s also necessary to sharply limit donations made directly to candidates.* This would require either a Supreme Court decision or a constitutional amendment allowing for new limits on the ways in which campaigns are financed, but would be well worth it.* One solution is to*reduce the length of our never-ending presidential campaigns*by only allowing campaign fundraising and spending during a limited time before elections; again, a Court decision or constitutional amendment would be needed.
 
4. Build election integrity: For years, Republicans have complained about voter fraud, which is*extremely rare.*There is*no evidence voter fraud plays a significant role*in elections, but we saw this year that other problems exist: the CIA concluded that Russia intervened with the specific goal of helping Trump win.*Former acting CIA director Michael Morell*called this “the political equivalent of 9/11” and “an existential threat to our way of life”.*
It is vital that members of Congress recognize this as a nonpartisan issue.* No one, Republican or Democrat, should condone foreign countries interfering with U.S. elections.*If we don’t investigate and take appropriate action, it risks another attack on our democracy.
There are other issues that need addressing too — for instance, judicial reform (including the way in which Supreme Court vacancies are filled), but taking on these four ethical issues would be an important first step toward strengthening our constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the U.S. economy.
 
Democrats have had plenty of chances to do all that over the last 60 years during times when they controlled the senate and house.

Wat up wit dat?
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...public-or-a-democracy/?utm_term=.1a615f5ab3bf



Is the United States of America a republic or a democracy?




By Eugene Volokh May 13, 2015

(Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)
I often hear people argue that the United States is a republic, not a democracy. But that’s a false dichotomy. A common definition of “republic” is, to quote the American Heritage Dictionary, “A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them” — we are that. A common definition of “democracy” is, “Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives” — we are that, too.
The United States*is not a direct democracy, in the sense of a country in which laws (and other government decisions) are made predominantly by majority vote. Some lawmaking is done this way, on the state and local levels, but it’s only a tiny fraction of all lawmaking. But we are a representative democracy, which is a form of democracy.
And indeed the American form of government has been called a “democracy” by leading American statesmen and legal commentators from the Framing on. It’s true that some Framing-era commentators made arguments that distinguished “democracy” and “republic”; see, for instance, The Federalist (No. 10), though even that first draws the distinction between “pure democracy” and a “republic,” only later just saying “democracy.” But even in that era, “representative democracy” was understood as a form of democracy, alongside “pure democracy”: John Adams used the term “representative democracy” in 1794; so did Noah Webster in 1785; so did St. George Tucker in his 1803 edition of Blackstone; so did Thomas Jefferson in 1815. Tucker’s Blackstone likewise uses “democracy” to describe a representative democracy, even when the qualifier “representative” is omitted.
Likewise, James Wilson, one of the main drafters of the Constitution and one of the first Supreme Court Justices, defended the Constitution in 1787 by speaking of the three forms of government being the “monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical,” and said that in a democracy the sovereign power is “inherent in the people, and is either exercised by themselves or by their representatives.” And Chief Justice John Marshall — who helped lead the fight in the 1788 Virginia Convention for ratifying the U.S. Constitution — likewise defended the Constitution in that convention by describing it as implementing “democracy” (as opposed to “despotism”), and without the need to even add the qualifier “representative.”
To be sure, in addition to being a representative democracy, the United States*is also a constitutional democracy, in which courts restrain in some measure the democratic will. And the United States*is therefore also a constitutional republic. Indeed, the United States*might be labeled a constitutional federal representative democracy. But where one word is used, with all the oversimplification that this necessary entails, “democracy” and “republic” both work. Indeed, since direct democracy — again, a government in which all or most laws are made by direct popular vote — would be impractical given the number and complexity of laws that pretty much any state or national government is expected to enact, it’s unsurprising that the qualifier “representative” would often be omitted. Practically speaking, representative democracy is the only democracy that’s around at any state or national level.

Now one can certainly argue that some aspects of U.S. government should become less direct, and filtered through more layers of representation. One can argue, for instance, that the 17th*Amendment should be repealed, and that U.S. senators should no longer be elected directly by the people, but should return to being elected by state legislators who are elected by the people. Or one can argue for repealing state- and local-level initiative and referendum schemes. Or one can argue for making the Electoral College into a deliberative body, in which the electors are supposed to discuss the candidates and make various political deals, rather than being elected solely to vote for particular candidates. And of course one can equally argue for making some aspects of U.S. government more direct, for instance by shifting to truly direct election of the president, or by institute a federal-level initiative and referendum.
But there is no basis for saying that the United States*is somehow “not a democracy, but a republic.” “Democracy” and “republic” aren’t just words that a speaker can arbitrarily define to mean something (e.g., defining democracy as “a form of government in which all laws are made directly by the people”). They are terms that have been given meaning by English speakers more broadly. And both today and in the Framing era, “democracy” has been generally understood to include representative democracy as well as direct democracy.



Eugene Volokh teaches free speech law, religious freedom law, church-state relations law, a First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic, and tort law, at UCLA School of Law, where he has also often taught copyright law, criminal law, and a seminar on firearms regulation policy. Follow @volokhc
 
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