Tag: democracy

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ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

Democracy — Oh, My!

Rockettes, democracy, inauguration, Trump, media, entertainment, illustration, association, voluntary

The President-​elect has had some difficulty booking celebrity acts for his inauguration. And instead of taking this as a cue to trim down on celebratory excess, his team has extended the guest performer list to include New York’s world-​famous chorus line dancers, the Rockettes.

The leggy, sequined showgirls might seem a perfect fit for the President-elect’s celebration — more, say, than a ballet troupe, or a string quartet — but one among the Rockettes protested.  Being a part of a performing team might seem a dream job, but not for Phoebe Pearl. She was, she wrote on Instagram, “overwhelmed with emotion,” and not in a good way. She felt “embarrassed and disappointed” that the gig “has been decided” for her.

She feels … coerced.

Dan Avery, writing before Christmas, characterizes the contract as a matter of “force.”

Welcome, Ms. Pearl, to the world that most American workers already know.

But the silliness reached high pitch with actor George Takei, who tweeted: “The members of the Rockettes and the Mormon Tabernacle are like all of us: Forced to go along with something horrible they didn’t choose.”

Democracy — oh, my!

Most people have had to put up with democratic results they did not like. Are Democrats only now understanding this?

To a degree, I sympathize. Which is why I want limits placed on government. Perhaps Democrats should have thought of this every time they cheered as their elected candidates increased presidential power. Did they not realize that someday they might lose?

And if you want a right of refusal, make sure it is in your contract.

The Rockette does not have a leg to stand on.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability First Amendment rights government transparency media and media people national politics & policies

Prestige, Trump & the Media

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“Donald Trump’s election has really undermined America’s democratic prestige in China,” offered Claremont McKenna College Professor Minxin Pei on a recent hour of The Diane Rehm Show, public radio from our nation’s capital. When Pei added that it has “set back the prospect of democracy in China for years,” Mrs. Rehm let out an audible moan.

Then Diane asked her guests, “as members of the press” what they “make” of President-​Elect Trump’s “rejection of his meeting with The New York Times.”

“It seems,” bemoaned James Fallows, the Atlantic’s national correspondent, “a continuation of his not having any normal press conferences, dealing entirely outside normal press channels and seeming not to recognize the legitimacy of this part of the democratic fabric.”

“I don’t know anything about the specific details about the New York Times meeting,” admitted the Financial Times’ Geoff Dyer. Still, that didn’t stop Dyer from announcing that, “But it’s part of a pattern … to a much more conflict-​ual, antagonistic, almost bullying relationship with the media.”

Elizabeth Economy, with the Council on Foreign Relations, found it “disturbing” that Donald Trump thinks “he can be his own media, he can simply tweet out whatever he wants, he can make his homegrown videos and sort of impart his information directly to the American public, without the mediating influence of the media.”

Let’s welcome Elizabeth to America.

“We are all recognizing we’re on new terrain now and need to find some way to keep telling the truth, or our best approximation of it, in very different circumstances,” concluded Fallows ominously.

Trump, as you’ll recall, did wind up attending that meeting at The Times.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall nannyism political challengers Regulating Protest

Irony in Spain

Spain, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, initiative, democracy

When I arrived at the Donostia-​San Sebastián City Hall, in the beautiful Basque Country of Spain, I wondered what all the ruckus was about. There were hundreds of noisy protesters waving long, colorful banners.

My goodness, how interesting to witness acts of political agitation on the public square in another country, I thought. Then, atop the crowd some 20 feet opposite the protest, I spied Daniel Schily, a key activist, funder and cheerleading motivator of the direct democracy movement in Germany.

After greeting, he drily brought me up to date: “They’re protesting us.”

“No, really,” I asked, “what are they protesting?”

“Really,” he said, seemingly sincere. “They’re protesting the Global Forum.”

I stood there dumbstruck, for a moment, before I noticed one sign written in English: “Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy,” with a very large, black, bold question mark beside it.

Schily wasn’t kidding.

In almost no time, I met up with friends from Bulgaria, South Korea, Uruguay, Chile — fellow activists, all. We had gathered in this “cultural capital of Europe” precisely because of our belief that all people have a right to not only speak out, but effect change, through ballot initiatives and referendums.

It turned out that the protestors hailed from the Satorralaia neighborhood movement. Their beef? Even after gathering nearly 9,000 signatures on petitions requesting a public referendum on a proposed through-​station for the mass-​transit metro system project, the city government shrugs.

The same city council that helped organize our forum, ignoring citizens while claiming the city is “The World Capital of Democracy.”

Government. What more proof do we need that it could use more checks and balances from the people themselves?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

N.B. This is a Common Sense digest version of Paul’s weekend column. For more information, see Saturday’s and Sunday’s posts. Paul was in transit home when this entry was being prepared for the Web; he may offer further reports from his trip in the near future.

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ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers

Double Bubble America

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The “unexpected” Donald Trump presidential victory has put the folks at The Gray Lady a bit out of sorts.

Heather Wilhelm at the National Review pokes and prods at the absurdities of the New York Times’s cultural cluelessness. And ably enough. So I’ll stick to The Times’s recent “six views” of America’s ideological divide:

Julie Turkewitz recognizes two well-​insulated informational bubbles at play. Nothing too controversial — or very deep.

Campbell Robertson muses upon the dominance of the “elites” against which Trump’s insurgents rebel, noting that “the elites are the still the ones who get to decide who gets to be elite.”

Laurie Goodstein takes on religious culture, making much of divergent spiritual outlooks, left and right.

Julia Preston peers at immigration and the prospect of sending a message by building a “wall.”

In the manner of the other five, Sheryl Gay Stolberg digs up real-​world people — as does our speechifier-​in-​chief, Barack Obama — to lightly probe questions of assimilation versus multiculturalism.

Manny Fernandez concludes with a (yawn) discussion of giving and taking offense.

They all miss the underlying structural basis for the divide.

On one side: folks working in the private sector — or local governments and charities, or at home — who have seen the world pass them by in terms of income and security.

On the other: government workers and consultants (and other college grads) who make more, on average, than their “real world” counterparts.

The latter has advanced as a class; the former remain in stasis … at best.

A mystery?

No — it’s the predictable result of what Thomas Jefferson called “the parasite institutions now consuming us.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Original (cc) photo by diana MĂRGĂRIT at Flickr

 

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Accountability ballot access general freedom incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies political challengers responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Votes Without Poison

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Strange election. So … round up the usual suspects!

Immediately after Hillary dried her tears and conceded, out came the Tweets, then the analyses: the “third parties” are to blame!

Over the weekend, I focused* on one such election post-​mortem. The basic idea is not altogether wrong: minor party efforts together may have cost the Democrat her Electoral College advantage this time around, just as Nader’s Green Party run spoiled Al Gore’s bid in 2000 and several past congressional races have been spoiled for the GOP by Libertarians.

Is there a problem here? Yes. But do not blame the minor party voters. It’s the way we count their votes that is “problematic.” The current ballot-​and-​count system turn voters most loyal to particular policy ideas into enemies of those very same ideas.

When we minor party voters turn away from a major party — usually because said party tends to corrupt or betray our ideas, or make only small steps toward our goals — our votes aren’t so much wasted as made poisonous.

Because the candidate least preferred may prevail.

But there’s a way out: On election day, voters in Maine showed how to cut through the Gordian Knot. Voting in approval for Question 5, Maine now establishes “ranked choice voting.”

Under this system, you don’t “waste” your vote when expressing a preference for a minor party candidate. You rank your choices and, if your first choice proves unpopular, your second choice (or maybe your third) gets counted. So you don’t “poison” your cause.

Republicans and Democrats have more than enough reason, now, to adopt ranked choice voting across the country.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* See yesterday’s links page to my weekend Townhall column for the basic references. But there were many, many articles on the Minor Party Effect, including a skeptical one by Sasha Volokh’s.

 

Ask the next question.

Questions Answered:

What is the effect of minor parties on major party outcomes?

What causes those effects, voter intent or something else?

Is there a way to prevent this, short of further sewing up the ballot access system to minor parties?

The Next Question:

What might our elections look like if people spent more time discussing issues and ideas … and less about class, culture wars, and sex crimes?

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Categories
Accountability general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Wisdom of the Founders

Constitution, voting, democracy, Ed Crane, fear

“At a certain point, you have to let go for the democracy to work,” President Barack Obama told HBO’s Bill Maher last week, praising “the wisdom of the founders.”

“There has to be fresh legs,” he continued. “There have to be new people. And you have to have the humility to recognize that you’re a citizen and you go back to being a citizen after this office is over.”

Maher failed to ask Mr. Obama how this “fresh” viewpoint squared with his support for Mrs. Clinton. Nevertheless, let’s applaud the president’s endorsement of term limits.

Speaking of the founders, and limits on power, and this being Election Day, I’m reminded of a commentary in Forbes, back on Election Day four years ago, written by Ed Crane, the man who built the Cato Institute into one of the nation’s preeminent think tanks. Bemoaning the “interminable presidential race,” Crane wished for “a nation in which it really didn’t matter who was elected President, senator or congressman.”

“Don’t get me wrong, because I’m not saying it doesn’t,” explained Crane, “only that it shouldn’t.” He added, “I believe the Founders had a similar view.”

His point is simple: Getting to vote for your next president and senator and congressman is swell, but it’s important to have a Constitution that restrains those elected, so they “don’t have a heck of a lot of power over you or your neighbors.”

“We are a republic of limited governmental ­powers,” or should be, argued Crane. “Such a nation allows for sleep on election night.”

Instead of gnashing of teeth.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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