Tag: democracy

Categories
political challengers

The Unkindest Cut

Over three thousand years ago, in ancient Egypt, two wives of the Pharaoh Ramesses III, Tiye and Iset Ta-Hemdjert, fought over which of their sons would inherit the throne. Queen Tiye organized a harem conspiracy to favor hers. Dead, in the end, was Ramesses III, along with Tiye’s Penteweret, according to court documents.

There’s been considerable mystery surrounding Ramesses’ demise, but recent CT scans show that he almost certainly died of a slit throat. The wound had not previously been noticed because of the extensive wrappings around the pharaohnic mummy’s neck. A Horus eye amulet was found in the wound, undoubtedly placed there by the embalmers, probably for healing and protection in the afterlife.

Another mummy from that time has been determined, by genetic analysis, to be a son of Ramesses. There are strange marks around his neck. Since Penteweret had been found guilty at trial, and was said to have killed himself, and this particular mummy was dishonorably embalmed, the mummy is thought to be his. Perhaps he had hanged himself.

Such was ancient politics. Succession of rulers was often violent — and, even when not violent, there was no assurance that the claimant to the throne would be anything like a good ruler.

Which brings us to one of democracy’s great achievements, perhaps its greatest. Democratic elections do not express the popular will in any sure way. They do not conjure onto this plane of existence a Mandate of Heaven (Chinese), or any instantiation of Horus (ancient Egyptian). What they do is remove rulers from power, peacefully.

And that’s not nothing. Ask the grimace on the face of the remains of Ramesses III.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

Democracy Sans Factions?

It’s worth remembering, as Democrats proceed with programs that have failed in the past and as Republican insiders strive to rig their own nomination process, that the political parties are private organizations. They are not governments.

They are groups of people working to gain control over government — and that control can only ever be temporary. Let us hope.

Over many years of activism in politics I’ve supported openness in elections and ballot access, working for a variety of reforms, including the securing of the rights to initiative, referendum and recall. I’ve also contemplated a few less simple ideas, like Instant Runoff Voting and proportional representation, both designed to break (or at least ease up on) the stranglehold that the two-party system has over American democracy.

But additional reforms are worth thinking about. One, for instance, would prohibit any mention of a party name on a ballot.

Since the parties are private groups, they ought not have special access to the public ballot. All the more because the two parties are a problem in and of themselves — their perennial clamor for power perverts political discourse, unnecessarily restricting and channeling the direction of debate.

Such rules already hold sway in many county and municipal governments throughout the country. It could be instructive to study the differences in politicking and policy.

For todays’ growing ranks of independent and unaffiliated voters, perhaps the motivations in favor wouldn’t wholly be rational, but partly vengeful.

And perhaps partisans might wish to consider the reasons for that kind of anti-partisan sentiment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture too much government

Moving to China?

Venture capitalist Eric X. Li, in an op-ed for the New York Times, “Why China’s Political Model Is Superior,” credits the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre with producing the “stability” that “ushered in a generation of growth and prosperity.”

As for America, Li explains that our problem is an “expanded” political franchise, “resulting in a greater number of people participating in more and more decisions.”

“Elected representatives have no minds of their own and respond only to the whims of public opinion as they seek re-election,” Li informs, and “special interests manipulate the people into voting for ever-lower taxes and higher government spending, sometimes even supporting self-destructive wars.”

Mr. Li points to California and predicts an American “future” of “endless referendums, paralysis and insolvency.”

But wait a second . . . Americans have no initiative or referendum powers at the national level. The people didn’t vote for this level of taxes, spending, war or massive debt – our elite political leaders did that. Too much control by the people? Hardly. Too little.

Note that the national government most affected by initiatives and referendums is Switzerland, which also has the world’s highest per capita income.

But, as Li tells us, “China is on a different path. Its leaders are prepared to allow greater popular participation in political decisions if and when it is conducive to economic development and favorable to the country’s national interests . . .” After all, “political rights . . . should be seen as privileges to be negotiated based on the needs and conditions of the nation.”

Those negotiations have left Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo in a Chinese prison.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Voters Ruin Everything

William Endicott, former deputy managing editor of The Sacramento Bee, thinks the problem with California legislators is their “Let the people decide” attitude. In a recent op-ed, Mr. Endicott argued that the initiative process allows politicians to shirk their responsibilities, to let decisions be made by voters at the ballot box.

It’s an awfully convoluted notion: to make legislators actually do their jobs, citizens must back away and give those known to shirk their responsibilities a monopoly on legislative power.

Funny, in Congress and in the 26 states where voters lack the initiative, politicians happen to be shirking their responsibilities like it’s going out of style. There’s just not as much voters can do about it.

But Endicott’s argument doesn’t really concern legislators at all. It is about the voters of California, who have (to paraphrase him) ruined everything.

He writes: “Outcomes too often have been decided not by reasoned debate but by emotional appeals, mind-numbing and misleading television commercials and direct mail, all of which do more to confuse than to enlighten.”

So Endicott looks for legislators to “crack down on signature gatherers” and “make it more difficult to qualify a measure.”

In other words, democracy was swell, but that new-fangled TV is too much for gullible voters. Let’s hit the kill switch on direct democracy and put all our hope in our brainy, courageous legislators.

In other words, Californians: Shut up and pay your taxes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

An App for That

We’ve had debit cards for most of my adult life. Regularly, people sign their names on electronic pads to obtain medication, credit, what-have-you. You can order books and music and nearly anything online, from your computer, your smartphone, or your new iPad.

It’s high time to take democracy into this new era.

At least, Michael Ni thinks so. And I agree.

Last year, Mr. Ni brought a signed ballot initiative to the clerk’s office in San Mateo County. He did not use anything so archaic as ink. Or a pencil. He signed the document using the screen of his iPhone, and he delivered it to the designated agent via flash drive.

It was rejected.

And so began a lawsuit, Ni v. Slocum, to upgrade the State of California’s initiative process. Mr. Ni runs Verafirma, a company that has produced technology that, you might say, puts another “i” (or is that the “e”?) in “initiative.” The technology works on the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and the Verizon Droid, and is slated for other smartphones and similar post-PC devices.

Mr. Warren Slocum, named defendant/respondent, admits that the technology “is transformative.”

Recently, Twitter and Facebook have helped foment and organize revolutions. But the statewide citizens initiative, a bulwark of democracy in half the states, is lagging behind, technologically.

It’s time for government to accommodate the habits and desires and sheer convenience of the masses.

It’s time to say, “Democracy: There’s an app for that.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

The Tree of Liberty

For years, Egyptians have called for greater democracy and constitutional limits — like term limits. Now newly appointed Egyptian Vice President Omar Suhleiman dangles the concession of term limits for the president, freedom for the press and an end to the three decades of emergency powers, the better to retain the keys to the nation’s executive washroom and the army. Or so he hopes.

Wisely, both pro-democratic and not-so-democratic opponents aren’t buying it. Opponents fear that such concessions will (if Mubarak or his chosen cronies remain in power) be pulled back later.

At a time more opportune for thuggery.

Still, how to get from a brutally repressive state to a free, constitutional democratic republic? Revolution is a clumsy, dangerous mode of political change.

Jefferson may have written something about “refreshing” the tree of liberty every generation with the blood of patriots, but most of us prefer more peaceful methods.

Lo and behold, they exist: Free elections. Here in America, voters have had the power to change party control of the U.S. Congress several times this decade. Hasn’t gotten us the reforms we want yet, but it’s better than in Egypt.

Plus, in half the states and most cities, citizens can check government and inject reform into the political system through the initiative, referendum and recall.

Egyptians are struggling to get democracy; Americans should use what we’ve got.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Dank der Direct Democracy

For the last week, I’ve had the arduous duty of traveling across beautiful Switzerland, studying their very robust system of voter initiative and referendum. An important issue came up: is so-called “direct democracy” good or bad for business, for economic growth?

Years ago, a Swiss professor suggested that allowing voters a direct say “will ruin the Swiss economy.” (Sound familiar?) But a 2002 analysis by a Swiss business group, Economiesuisse, found that the facts showed otherwise.

Swiss cantons (states) with greater initiative and referendum rights had on average 15 percent greater GDP than those with lesser processes. Municipalities that required budgets to be approved by voter referendum spent 10 percent less per head. Also, public services cost noticeably less in cities and towns with voter initiative rights.

St. Gallen economist Gebhard Kirchgässer put it plainly, “In economic terms, everything is in favor of direct democracy — nothing against.”

But what about in America, where we hear so much about ballot initiatives “ruining” California?

Well, the recent American Legislative Exchange Council report “Rich States, Poor States” found a similar pattern. ALEC ranked all 50 states on a combined measure of their last ten years of economic performance and various factors of “economic outlook.” The top seven spots (and 12 of the top 15) were all held by states that enjoy voter initiative rights.

Ranked 46th, California was the only initiative state in the bottom five states. But even the Golden State’s low rank belongs to the legislature, not voters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency

The Transparent Parthenon

Historians know how much it cost to build the Parthenon, but we still don’t know what’s been spent on this past year’s economic recovery packages and bailouts.

Yes, we still have the clay tablets upon which the accounts for building the Parthenon were tallied. What we call “transparency” today was simple common sense in ancient Athens.

Athens was a democracy, and as every small-d democrat knows, it is absolutely essential to make government records public if the people are to make important decisions.

Same goes for a democratic republic, like ours.

Now, I’m not saying that building the Parthenon made sense for Athens. I’m glad we have it now, but it was part of Periclean grandiosity, and the great statesman’s next step was to invade Sparta — and that was one war without a good ending for Athens.

By the way, there is a theory of business cycles based on how tall corporate buildings become. You know the boom is ending just when all the businesses are building huge skyscrapers.

Something similar happened in Athens. The Parthenon was finished; next, it was sacked by the Spartans.

As fascinating as it is, we can’t live in the past. But we can learn from it. If transparency was required for Pericles, it should be required for Barack Obama.

Oh, and maybe we should be extra cautious about going to war.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
U.S. Constitution

Politics or the Constitution?

Americans living in the District of Columbia are taxed by the federal government, but not really represented. To address this, a bill now in Congress would grant DC’s single delegate the right to cast a vote. The Senate has approved the bill, but attached a provision on gun regulation to which many in the House object. So House leadership is still mulling over what to do.

Both chambers miss the bigger problem: DC is a territory and our Constitution clearly states that only states shall have full represention in Congress.

There are a number of ways around this. The residential areas of the District could become part of Maryland or Virginia, for instance. Or the Constitution could be amended.

But our current leaders prefer ignoring the Constitution entirely.

For example, Attorney General Eric Holder recently ignored and even refused to release a report from his own Office of Legal Counsel that found the legislation to be unconstitutional.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC’s non-voting delegate, also pooh-poohs the constitutional issue. “I don’t think members [of Congress] are in the least bit affected in their votes on the question of its constitutionality,” she says. “People vote their politics in the House and in the Senate.”

Sad but true. Our representatives take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, but their real allegiance is to their own petty politics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability initiative, referendum, and recall

Why the People

Some people wonder at my support for initiative and referendum. They don’t place much trust in their neighbors to run their lives. They fear what de Tocqueville called “the tyranny of the majority.”

And hey: I don’t trust fellow voters to run my life, either. But I trust voters to let me be free to run my own life more a lot more than I trust politicians.

Voters will choose less government more often than their representatives will.

And less government, in today’s context, means better government.

This was most notably demonstrated in late September. The U.S. House of Representatives voted on the Bush administration’s proposed bailout of the mortgage industry, the biggest takeover of private property in world history.

To politicians, it made a whole heckuva a lot of sense. To Americans who wrote and phoned Congress, the bailout appeared just as it was: a quickie, panic “fix” that merely lined the pockets of a sector of the investor population.

It was a subsidy, socializing risk while letting profit remain private.

Enough Americans notified enough of their reps to convince them to take a stand, defeating the bailout. The letters came in, ten to one against the bill.

Of course, the next week Congress voted in the bailout, adding injury, in the form of a bigger price tag, to the insult of ignoring constituents.

Once again, politicians ignored the people. That’s never good government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.