America's inequitable Constitution

One of our Oregon Senators, Jeff Merkley, has been trying to put a stop to Senate filibusters that block up or down votes on key legislation.

I signed his on-line petition, but we have a much bigger problem with the Senate. It's well outlined in Robert A. Dahl's book "How Democratic is the American Constitution?"

The short answer is— not very.

And the U.S. Senate is about as undemocratic as can be. The book uses the 2000 census, but nothing has changed since then in terms of the inequity in how the Senate is composed and operates.

Civic's 101 tells us that each of the 50 states, regardless of population, gets two senators.

How inequitable is that and how hard would it be to change the Constitution to rectify matters?

I'll let Dahl, who teaches at Yale, explain using the extremes of Wyoming, the least populous state, and California, the most populous. Their populations differ by a factor of 70. Each has two senators, which means that if you live in Wyoming your vote has the power of 70 California votes in a senatorial elections and deliberations.

Among all federal systems found in 12 countries, only Brazil and Argentina have greater unequal representation, Dahl reports.

Because it would take Senate approval to amend the Constitution, reform can't happen, writes Dahl. The system is inherently rigged against reforming itself. It's a closed system.

Thirty-four Senators from the 17 smallest states — with a mere 7.28 percent of the population — could block an amendment to reform the Constitution.

So Senator Merkley is fighting a tough skirmish in a larger, hopeless battle.

Dahl's book is as fascinating as it is depressing. For more about it go HERE.

One small ray of hope is that he believes moderate changes to make our government at least somewhat more democratic can start at the local and state levels.

An example are two states, Maine and Nebraska, which have voted to apportion their electoral college delegations by the same proportions as the voting results, not winner-take-all. If all states did that, we'd be a lot closer to avoiding debacles like the 2000 election in which the majority of voters elected Al Gore but the electoral college gave the White House to George W. Bush.

If we did that, candidates would campaign in all the states, and so democratize the campaigns.More voters might choose to participate.

The results of these constitutional failings is shameful. Among the world's 22 well-established democracies, the US is in the bottom third in women's parliamentary representation, in the ratio of rich to poor inequity, in energy efficiency, in welfare, in social expenditures, in voter turnout (we are next to the bottom), in incarceration rate (ours is the highest) and in foreign aid (in which we are dead last).

And just think, this is the Constitution we are asked to pledge our support to. It's enough to give one pause — and then some.

Vote in 2012 against The Fool's Game

In his essay “There are Realistic Alternatives,” Gene Sharp, the renowned scholar/thinker on the use of nonviolence, outlines the “elements of strategic planning” necessary for effective nonviolent struggle.

The elements are worth reviewing in the context of the “Occupy” movement. Unless those in the movement are purposely hiding their planning, I’m seeing very little evidence of it.

What we get are shards, fragments and chucks of vital issues, but there is no evidence of systematic strategic planning.

Rather than go into the requirements as Sharp lays them out, I urge you to download the pamphlet from the Albert Einstein Institute web site. The essay and several others by Sharp are available free on-line.

Here is just one example of a fundamental missing element in the “Occupy” movement: “Develop a grand strategy for the overall conflict. Identify the objective of the struggle in clear, specific terms.”

Unless I’m missing something, we are still waiting to learn the “objective of the struggle in clear, specific terms.”

So here’s one attempt to define an objective and describe a strategy to achieve it:

We, fellow citizens, are playing a fool’s game called “Democracy American Style.” It is literally rigged for and by the rich and has produced a plutocracy/kleptocracy.

Here’s just one way it works: our system can’t represent or understand the will of the people because the major means of communication is paid for and controlled by wealthy vested corporate interests. The U.S. Constitution legalizes media domination and distortion by a wealthy elite.

Democracy requires an informed, thoughtful public making rational — not emotional — decisions. Our capitalist, controlled system of communication is not providing that information or that opportunity for full discussion and reflection.

I also believe that the size of our government makes it so diffuse, impenetrable and powerful that it cannot be responsive to the people it governs. We should be a nation of small regional or local governments. At most the “national” government should be an alliance of these small, responsive, local governments. The United States cannot be both “a major power” and a major force for good. The two have been proven to be incompatible.

The over-arching objective of the nonviolent movement should be to put an end to this Fool’s Game and to create a truly representative, fair, responsive and compassionate system of governance based on local representation and involvement.

At the end of his essay, Sharp lists 198 methods of nonviolent action. The sheer number boggles the mind. The diversity is likewise staggering, everything from strikes (he lists 21 varieties) to various kinds of boycotts, to rent refusal, to mock funerals, to marches and pilgrimages, to prayer and worship. The list goes on and on.

But one, number 124, intrigued me in light of the above objective. It reads, “Boycott Elections.”

What if we boycotted the elections of 2012? What if we “voted” by submitting blank ballots. The tally of unmarked ballots submitted would wildly exceed the number of votes cast for candidates. The tally of blank ballots would constitute the vote against “The Fool’s Game.”

What would the consequences be? Exactly what we’d get if we did cast ballots for candidates — more of the same. A continuation of the Fool’s Game.

But by voting against the system, we would have proclaimed that we, the majority, are no longer party to it — that, in fact, the resulting government does not represent the people or their “will.” These “minority unelected” representatives are hence illegitimate.

The only way to restore legitimacy is to establish a new constitution creating a truly representative government (or governments) that can address this society’s needs. A true “government of, for and by the People.”

Herbert nails it: America's sham democracy

I don't know whether the New York Times' Bob Herbert is channeling me or I'm channeling him. Maybe a few thousand of us are channeling each other. It's about time.

Will events in Cairo trigger our own "Hundredth Monkey"?

Herbert begins today's column, "As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only."

Actually, it's worse that that, as he points out. We ARE a democracy in name only.

He concludes, as I have, that we need our very own bottom-up leadership from the streets.

We need a Tahrir square. Where will it be? And when?

WikiLeaks: Does exposed truth set us free?

At the extremes, the question raised by the WikiLeaks phenomenon is whether we are better off in a secretive world or an open one?

To me the question resonates with the founding principle that we have a government “of, by and for the people.”

The more secretive the government, the less it is true to the democratic principle.

Count me among the skeptics who argue that the principle has been violated so many times that it no longer guides us. Ours is a democracy in name alone. The WikiLeaks debate is part of the same crisis in democracy.

We don't need WikiLeaks to tell us that ours is a government by, of and for the wealthy. In short, it is a plutocracy. Look no farther than today’s headlines in which tax cuts for the super rich are on the verge of being — extended against all reason.

Add to that the now-legal, secret corporate donations to political campaigns. The money pays for the creation and dissemination of emotive visual images that defy reasoning and civil and civic discourse.

Yet I still hear in the WikiLeak's debate the distant cry from the Sixties: Power to the People! I see WikiLeaks as nurturing that power and being of that spirit.

Is that good?

Or is openness, versus secretiveness, simply the lesser of two evils.

How often in the course of casual conversation or in conducting business do we wrap information in the shroud of “just between the two of us....”? That’s a secret about to be shared. But why? Is it to weigh perceptions? To warn? To win favor? To create a bond of obligation?

Why can’t we be open and share speculatively? What if? What would your response be if....?

And what, exactly, is a secret? If you have an private thought that you feel isn’t worth sharing, or isn’t ready to share, or appropriate to share, or harmful to share, is it a secret or simply a thought? Must we divulge everything we are thinking? Are shared thoughts confined to a small group secrets?

Do we have different standards for personal “secrets” and societal, political, diplomatic, military and governmental ones?

How do we live with this practical paradox: for a society to remain open it must rely on secrets. Sounds like the ends justifying a contradictory means.

And that question leads to others: Will a truth that is widely known really set us free? Could it, in fact, enslave or destroy us? Must the truth be widely known for it to free us?

So we are left with a quandary.

Still I’d rather have the quandary of awareness than to be lost a thicket of secrets and ignorance.

Winning full support for the next stimulus package

I’m not a big fan of majority rule when it comes to crafting legislation. By definition, it produces winners and losers and is bitterly divisive. You might even say it works against effective governance.

In the case of the recently passed stimulus package, the losers were the Republicans, who now will sit back and hurl darts at what happens. In short, with their eyes firmly fixed on the November 2010 elections, they will work to ensure a disaster we can’t afford.

The system should give them better things to do.

This may be what President Obama had in mind as he struggled to win bi-partisan, or even better, non-partisan support for the stimulus package.

He just didn’t craft the legislation in the right way.

So here’s a modest suggestion for the next time the president takes a run at Congress for stimulus money. And, believe me, he will.

For purposes of discussion we’ll use the familiar number from the current stimulus package.

Here is a politically, ideologically and geographically equitable formula for distributing the $787 billion. Divvy the billions up by congressional district, using population and need as determinants of exact amounts.

The House of Representatives has 435 members whose districts are determined by population, hence the House is the “people’s” branch of the legislature.

We’ll get to senators in a second.

For simplicity’s sake, and leaving out the question of the districts' varying needs (unemployment, lack of health insurance, foreclosures etc), let's just divide the $787 billion pie into 435 pieces.

That works out to $1.81 billion for each congressional district.

There you are, Representative, do with the district's $1.81 billion what you will.

If Republicans want it all applied to tax cuts in their districts, as most say they do, I say, go for it.

If Democrats want to apply it to schools, health insurance, bridges, pot holes and housing, have at it.

In some cases, neighboring congressional districts with interdependent economies might cooperatively pool their money. Count on governors and mayors to have a few suggestions too.

Oregon has five congressional districts so the state would get $9.05 billion — without dealing with any adjustments for “need.” (With those factored in, we might get $10 billion, but let’s not go there.)

The over-arching theory: Who knows (or should know) the needs of local people better than an elected House member does?

Senators present a problem because they aren’t elected by proportion of the population, yet they have to approve any stimulus package. One way to deal with them would be to reserve a senatorial pot of money for them to use in their state as they see fit. How about a half billion per senator? I know, I know, it's not fair that Montana and California (each with two senators) get the same amount, but we have to do the best with what we have.

That’s $50 billion for the entire 100-member senate. Of course the number is, as always, up for negotiation. Senators being senators, they will probably push for at least half of the entire package. That’s a grossly inequitable idea on its face but let’s leave that to the politicians.

Once you get into dividing the whole amount among all federally elected officials, you will probably have to set aside a few billion for the elected president and his administration to put into federal programs.

Finally we get to the most important part.

The program would track the success (or failure) of each representative’s use of the money.

Pre-stimulus baseline statistics measuring the economy, health care, education, jobs, economic growth, environmental factors etc. would be established. Then, three months before the next election, in August 2010, figures would be released to show what changed (or didn’t change) as a result of how the money was used.

Because of the pre-election timing, the results would be politically, as well as economically, telling. Using the before-and-after comparisons, voters would decide whose approach is best and who is worthy of re-election.

Beyond that, we might find out what actually works — and adjust accordingly.

An Orwellian Writer's Almanac tribute

I have buried in my stack of well-worn t-shirts, one I rarely wear. I displays a large caricature of a gaunt George Orwell. A cigarette droops from his lips, and a giant depiction of Big Brother looms behind him.

For some reason my hand went to it today, and I put it on even though it made me look slightly cartoonish. I’m wearing it now and will for the rest of the day, for reasons that follow....

Greeting the day with Orwell's image on my chest, I did my pre-Cheerios-and-coffee e-mail check largely to read the daily “Writer’s Almanac” from Garrison Keillor. Yes, you can have the written script of the NPR “Writer’s Almanac” e-mailed to you. I recommend it, though, as you will see, it needs to be read skeptically.

After offering the customary poem, the almanac launched into it’s main item:

“It's the birthday of the man who wrote Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949), George Orwell, born Eric Blair ….”

How serendipitous.

I’m noting in my PDA that June 25th is Orwell/Blair’s birthday. The note will include a reminder to wear the Orwell t-shirt to mark the occasion.

Keillor’s short sketch couldn’t possibly have done justice to Orwell’s sprawling, heroic life, although the item included a unfamiliar (to me at least) anecdote or two.

Sadly, Keillor also did Orwell an Orwellian injustice when he distorted a quote from Orwell’s famous essay, “Why I write.”

Here’s the quote as presented:

"Every line of serious work that I have written [since the Spanish Civil War] has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism."

And that’s where Keillor ended it, with a period. At the very least he should have inserted ellipses because here is the rest of the sentence:

“…against totalitarianism, and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.” (the emphasis is Orwell’s)

Yes, Orwell was a democratic socialist, and yes, my fellow patriotic Americans, democracy and socialism can be compatible. The question is, in light of our current predicament: Are democracy and capitalism compatible, if capitalism is indeed what our economy is? Or does capitalism simply buy off democracy?

If you read Orwell’s works and learn more about his life, you’ll understand why he was a democratic socialist.

Keillor would do well to do so.

Meanwhile, Happy Birthday, George.

Memo to state lawmakers from a voter

Back on Dec. 6, I e-mailed three state legislators about concerns I want addressed.

Two, Sen. Ginny Burdick and Rep. Mary Nolan, represent me and probably you if you live in southwest Portland.

The third is Rep. Larry Galizio, D-Tigard, who happens to be a teaching colleague at PCC. Larry and I share many concerns about media's influence on us and our children.

In the past these three, all Democrats, had limited power to accomplish much, but now all are in the majority. In this session of the Legislature, they have real power.

That's one of the reasons I wrote them. I'd like some action, please.

I want the Legislature to set up a commission to implement media literacy education in our schools. Instituting a volunteer Media Literacy Commission would cost nothing.

I also wanted to know why the state isn't enforcing highway beautification on I-5 between Portland and Salem. Thumbing its nose at the public, Jobdango is using the public right of way as a free-fire zone for illegal billboards.

The result of my letter-writing? After a month, nothing. Not a word.

I'm sure that Salem legislators get a lot of mail, indeed they have set up a computer-generated system to invite it. Now they need a human system to deal with it, or at the very least acknowledge it.

It's time for these three, and no doubt others, to get back to basics: namely communicating with those who put them in office in the first place.