Majority Rules…. Except When it Doesn’t

There is a growing trend in both Canada and the United States for political parties to completely ignore, or even insult, large portions of the electorate because they will never vote for their party anyway. This trend is dangerous and undermines democracy.

The other day I read this article, published at People Politico, about how Republican Presidential candidates are insulting a large portion of the American public – the same public that they need to get them elected. I didn’t think too much about it at the time, but it stuck with me. When I got to thinking about it, what really struck me is that we have the same thing going on in Canada. Here, the Conservative Party (basically, our version of the Republican Party) knows that about 60-70% of the population would never vote for them, so they completely ignore us, and only govern the country for those who may vote for them. This is extremely dangerous, because now you have a government working not for the best of the entire country, but only for the best for their own supporters.

The article, entitled "Presidential Candidates: We Are ALL Americans," speaks about how Republican candidates have said continually made comments that are either offensive to a large group of American voters or made promises against the will of a majority of voters. These comments range from saying that liberals are trying to destroy the country (Herman Cain) to claiming that Obama and those he associates with are anti-American (Michelle Bachman). If it isn’t enough to insult a large group of voters, does it make sense to take a stance that most Americans are against, such as being against same-sex marriage (when 53% of Americans think same sex marriage should be legal)?

In Canada, we have been dealing with this issue for some time now in our Government. The current governing party, the Conservative Party, routinely insults or ignores the will of the majority of the country. Since the Conservatives know that 60-70% of the population would never vote for them, they simply ignore them. In the Canadian multi-party electoral system, (we have 5 parties with representation in the government) a single party only needs about 40% of popular support to win a majority government (roughly the equivalent to an American party having control of Presidency, Senate and House of Representatives).  In the most recent election, in 2011, the Conservative Party got just under 40% of the popular vote, which was enough to give them a majority in Parliament. However, since less than 62% of the population voted, only about 25% of the population voted for them.

The Conservatives know that I will never vote for them, so I am ignored. They know that those who are a part of the Occupy protests will never vote for them, so they are ignored. They know that those who are homeless, destitute or downtrodden will never vote for them, so they ignore them. Their actions speak to the fact that they are ignoring the will of most Canadians. They are pushing for harsher prison sentences for minor crimes (building new prisons along the way) even though most Canadians know that this will not prevent crime. They are spending more on the military and clearly taking Canada away from a peacekeeping country to being an aggressive supporter of American military policy, even those most Canadians oppose this. They are delaying action on climate change, even when most Canadians insist upon action. They continue to export poisonous asbestos, even while Canadians oppose it. But it doesn’t matter to them. They don’t need the votes of most Canadians. They only need the votes of 25%, and so pleases those 25% is all they care about.

It seems the same thought pattern is taking hold of the Republican Party in the States. This cannot be allowed to happen. Governments must be accountable to all the people, not only the select few who vote for them and provide them with money.  Any politician who willfully ignore or insults a portion of the electorate is pandering to a select group within the population. When a minority is controlling the agenda for the entire population, democracy does not exist.

Interesting Related Articles:

• The Common Progressive has an article about how Newt Gingrich told a gay voter that he should vote for Obama - yet another example of a Presidential candidate refusing support from one portion of the population to pander to a different portion.

Barrack Obama: The Betrayer of Belief in Democracy

The Legacy of the Obama Administration is fast becoming one of Lies, Broken Campaign Promises and False Hope for Change

When Barrack Obama was declared President on November 4^th, 2008, there was an unparalleled sense of hope and of belief in democracy. Under Obama, everything would be different. He promised ‘Change that we can believe in’. He told us that ‘Yes, we can’. He promised to shut down Guantanamo Bay, end the war in Iraq within 16 months, make real progress in fighting climate change, end the culture of lobbying in Washington and extend health care to all. His fundraising campaign - targeting individuals, rather big business – told us that he would be a President for the people, not for corporations. Alas, we didn’t listen to our Mothers when they told us that anything that seems too good to be true probably is.

There was no change. Guantanamo Bay is still open, still holding foreign citizens without charges or any illusion of due process, still trying individuals in military tribunals with no judicial oversight. The war in Iraq is officially over, but only because Iraq refused to give American soldiers criminal immunity (thanks to Bradley Manning, now in a military jail awaiting trial for ‘adding the enemy’). Also, there are still 16,000 individuals employed by the American government being left in Iraq, half of whom are military contractors – doesn’t sound like the end of a war to me. Fighting climate change? As the recent conference in Durban shows, nothing is being done. Under Obama, the White House is still in the hands of large corporations – a recent report shows that lobbying is just as effective under Obama, as it was under George W. Bush. Finally, his fundraising campaign is no longer about the individual who believes in him (hmmm, I wonder why). Obama is getting a massive amount of money from Wall St, and is expected to raise $1 billion for the campaign – that kind of money buys a lot of favours.

Democracy falters when there is no trust left. We become disenfranchised, we lose the will to vote, we feel powerless. We opt out of the democratic system, and when that happens, all we get is what we’ve got – a system that doesn’t listen to us or care about us. Barrack Obama isn’t the worse President the US has ever had, not by a long shot. He is a definite improvement over George W. Bush, both internationally and for the US. His real crime is the betrayal of trust among those of us who dare to believe in something better. Obama was that something better – and he turned out to be no different than the rest of them.

As a Canadian, I don’t have a huge vested interest in Obama, but I still feel betrayed by his promises that he would bring change. I can’t imagine how someone who voted for him must feel.

Bradley Manning: A True American Hero (Allegedly)

Bradley Manning helped end the war in Iraq by exposing war crimes and the efforts to cover them up. Rather than being praised as a hero, he is being treated as a scapegoat for those who allowed the crimes to be committed in the first place.

Bradley Manning is the truest American Hero of our generation, and yet, for some reason, he is being treated worse than a common criminal. He’s being treated, in fact, like a terrorist. He (allegedly) stood up for the values that American claims it represents - truth, justice and equality for all. He did what a good soldier does; he did not blindly follow orders, but fought against the true enemy – in this case, members of his own government and the military he served.

The documents he (allegedly) unveiled showed evidence of war crimes. Most famously, there was the video of American soldiers murdering a number of unarmed and unthreatening civilians (including a reported and his driver), from the safety of a helicopter. There was the incident where American soldiers brutally executed a group of eleven civilians (including five children and four women) in a house; the house was then bombed to destroy the evidence (allegedly). This evidence led directly to Iraq’s refusal to extend immunity from the law for American soldiers, which is the reason that America is withdrawing. Barrack Obama didn’t end the war in Iraq; Bradley Manning (allegedly) did. Maybe he should have been the one who got the Nobel Peace Prize.

Included in the documents released were the seeds that germinated into the Arab Spring. Unveiled was the gross opulence and corruption that existed in the Tunisian government, which was tolerated and accepted by American officials, who supported the Tunisian dictatorship. When knowledge of the corruption within the government became clear was when the revolt started.

He did not ‘aid the enemy,’ the charge that he is being accused of. Even the American military has admitted that the information he (allegedly) leaked had no effect on national security. All he did was bring out evidence of war crimes, and evidence of corruption and arrogance of American diplomats. The information was embarrassing to officials, not dangerous. Since when was it a crime to unveil a crime? If the system were working properly, the information that was leaked should have been known and acted upon. Perpetrators of war crimes should have been exposed and tried. And yet, Bradley Manning’s punishment is much worse than the culprits he exposed. He has been kept in solitary confinement for 17 months, in conditions being investigated as potentially torturous, and faces the likelihood of life in military prison. And those that he exposed? Nothing.

Bradley Manning (allegedly) stood up to the corrupt parts of his government and said, “No, you cannot get away with this. You cannot get away with murder, you cannot get away with corruption, you cannot just cover it up.” Maybe the American military should look to themselves, rather than Bradley Manning in this case. After all, if no war crimes had been committed in Iraq (or if the evidence simply hadn’t been destroyed or ignored), then no evidence of war crimes would have needed to be leaked.

This isn’t about leaking documents that he should never have had access to in the first place. This is about scapegoating. If the government and military were to admit that what Bradley Manning (allegedly) did was the right thing, as they surely know it was, then they would have to answer tough questions about what they were doing about fixing the problems that he exposed. They would have to answer questions about why those who murdered innocents during the occupation of Iraq were never brought to justice. They would have to answer why war crimes were ignored and covered up for years. They don’t want to talk about that. It’s much easier to take the actual (alleged) hero of this narrative, 22 years old when he was arrested, call him a traitor and lock him up for the rest of his life. Yes, that’s much easier than actually dealing with the systemic problems that exist in the government and military of American. Much easier by far.

The Durban Climate Conference was a Monumental Success

COP17, held in Durban, South African from  November 28^th to December 9^th was a unparalleled success, as this official statement from the UN declares. There was no expectation that any kind of a deal would get done, and the consensus was that negotiators would leave the conference in shame, unable to work through a deadlock. In this context, the deal to start negotiating a new deal in 2015 was an unprecedented success … if you look at it from the point of view of the politicians who had tasked their negotiators to come up with some sort of an agreement that made it look like they were doing something, while actually just putting off any real decision to someone else, some other time.  If you look at it from the point of view of the rest of us? Oh yeah, we got sold out.

We were sold out by politicians who are more concerned with their image than their actions. Politicians more concerned with getting re-elected than building a better world for us all to live in. Politicians who tasked their negotiators with getting some kind of a deal done, so they could claim to be doing something and thus look good to the progressives among their electorate, while actually ensuring the status quo until well after their own elected terms end. So, they try to look good to us, while actually doing everything that the corporations that fund them want. Everyone wins, right? We get some vague promise to do something (maybe) sometime in the future, and the corporations get solid promises of doing nothing for the foreseeable future. Oh yeah, everyone gets exactly what they want.

The Durban climate change talks were doomed to fail. The negotiators appointed were not at all concerned with the science of climate change, or with the consequences of climate change, as stated by the chair of the IPCC, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri in this interview. They were there to represent the selfish national interests of the most polluting nations on earth. They were there to make sure that we stayed the wealthiest countries and that nobody would have much of a chance to catch up – at whatever the cost, even certain climatic disaster.

Make no mistake about the deal that was done – it is absolutely meaningless. Worse than meaningless, because it will be used as an excuse that we can carry on as we have been, for at least the next eight years. The deal says that countries will begin – yes, just begin – negotiating a treaty for binding cuts to emission in 2015 (what have the last 17 COP meetings been about again?), to take effect in 2020. Forget for a minute that scientists say emissions must peak by 2015 to have a reasonable chance of avoiding cataclysmic climate change – after all, we already established the negotiators weren’t at Durban because they were interested in the science of climate change. Think about this: the conference ran 35 hours overschedule to work out the specific wording of the ‘binding cuts’ portion of the agreement – with India refusing the phrase “legal agreement”, because they  thought that this wording was to strong legally. They ended up settling on “an agreed outcome with legal force.” But let me ask you this: do you really think India agreed to “an agreed outcome with legal force” understanding that it would be legally binding, if they refused other wording for that same reason? And when they claim that they can’t be legally bound because of the wording, do you think China or the US will agree to binding limits? Not a chance.

Furthermore, what is to stop countries from doing what Canada just did on the Kyoto Accord and walk out on it the year before the targets are supposed to be met? What will the reaction be if the US or China simply says they will not make their targets, and they are withdrawing? Same thing that is happening to Canada for its refusal to meet its international obligations: nothing at all. Besides, even if there is good faith to start negotiating a true deal in 2015 (and you can be sure that there isn’t) what happens if one of the major players changes its mind? What happens if a climate change denier wins the US Presidential election between now and then (or even at any point after that) and refuses binding emissions cuts? The entire deal falls apart.

COP17 in Durban was an absolute farce. It was a show trial for the climate. Everyone knew that no deal would actually get done, but to save face negotiators made some sort of obscure promise to start negotiating at a future date. Negotiators paid more attention to wording like an “agreed outcome with legal force” than they did to the science of climate change. But it doesn’t really matter. Because finding a deal that would reduce carbon emissions isn’t what negotiators were in Durban for. They saved face and did what they were there to do: they managed to propagate the illusion that our political leaders truly want to act, that something is being done on climate change, while actually maintaining the status quo for another few years. Let’s see if the negotiators in 2015 can repeat the great success of 2011, and put off real action for another decade or so.

The Debt Crisis is a Hoax

I would like to declare, once and for all, that I am a debt crisis denier. There is no such thing as a human caused debt crisis, it is a fabrication by socialists and communists who want to use the ‘crisis’ to force the downfall of our way of life and impose some kind of alternate economic system on us. Below are three key factors that these so-called economists have clearly forgotten in their analysis of the debt ‘crisis’:

There is no proof that ongoing deficits will cause national bankruptcies or the fall of national economies

I want to see final, empirical proof that debt will lead to the fall of a national economy. For example, they say that in Greece, the debt crisis will cause an increase in borrowing rates, which will start an uncontrollable spiral (some are calling them ‘feedback’ effects) that means it will never be able to pay off its debts and suffer an economic collapse as a result. They say this, but they are basis this on assumptions and hunches, rather than cold, hard facts. Maybe it has happened in other countries in the past, but that doesn’t mean it will happen today to Greece. The truth is that there is no absolute proof that Greece’s continued borrowing would directly lead to its default or economic collapse.

Economies go in natural cycles

We are currently in a ‘cooling’ phase, but next year we could just as likely be in a ‘warming’ phase - human caused debts have nothing to do with it. Economic downturns have been around as long as there has been an economy. Was the great depression a result of debt? No. Was the economic expansion in the 90’s and early 2000’s due to a lack of debt? No. Although there may seem to be some correlation between debt and economic strength today, history has not always followed this same pattern, therefore it is just a coincidence.

There is no consensus among economists

There are some out there who would have you believe that there is consensus among economists that a debt crisis that could lead to the fall of national economies. There is no consensus; there is ongoing debate about the effect of debts on the economy (see this respected article, which refers to David Hendry’s findings that debt may not be related to economic health measures). We have come up with a list of 500 businesspeople who do not believe that debts and the health of the economy are linked (some of them are even real economists who haven’t requested their names to be removed from the list).

I could go on, but I’m sure you can see that what you have been told about the debt ‘crisis’ is simply a fabrication, a socialist plot to replace our way of life. Unless more proof can be provided that debt indeed harms national economies, there is no reason to drastically change the way we are living our lives and running our countries.

It is true, however, that we should work towards a long-term solution to debts. I propose that by the year 2020, all countries in the world start working on a treaty to reduce national deficits. Of course, the standards would be entirely voluntary, and I would only support such a move if developing nations like China and India (sources of much of the increase in world deficits) also agreed to reductions. Anything else would put us at an economic disadvantage, and we can’t possibly give up our privileged place in the world and allow others to join us.