Showing posts with label two party system. Show all posts
Showing posts with label two party system. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Independence Day

As we celebrate another 4th of July in the United States, I cannot help but think back to the first 4th of July I was a part of, in 1990. I was in this country for exactly 5 months, 11 years of age, and understood English only to the degree the network cartoons and 2 months of public school could teach me. I had very little knowledge of American history, and honestly was mainly drawn in by the fireworks.

As time passed, I learned a lot more about Independence Day, my English improved, and this country that welcomed my family and I with open arms became my own. I was proud to become a citizen of this great country and understood that its system of government was far better than the country where I was born.

This country was born out of the desire to break through oppression from an overseas ruling party and an idea to govern better, with the majority of the country's population playing a factor in how it is run. It is this spirit of defiance, perseverance, and self-improvement that we celebrate on this day.

Our system of electing public servants may not exactly be categorized as a Democracy. In fact, with the electorate college, two party split, and the electoral college system that comes with it; we would be more correct to call it a Polyarchy. By Polyarchy we mean the elite few, who represent the many, making decisions within our government regarding how our country is ran. Nevertheless, it has held a standard for some time since its establishment on how modern Democratic style governments function.

Within the past few decades the system, which I have proudly been a part of since that first 4th of July back in 1990, has become more immobile, ineffective, and inadequate; for the American people to even consider it a representation of the United States population. In effect, the only thing this system of government performs well is create career politicians that are within the fiscal fishing nets of the American corporations for the duration of those careers.

As a result, the elected officials have no desire to serve the people, but just appear to do so enough to get elected and re-elected. We need a better way. In honor of the country I love and care about, I suggest the following basic points to reform our government to return it to its stated form: "...of the people, for the people, and by the people".

1. Abolish political parties - a politician must represent the people whom elect him or her, not the party money or corporate money that determine an ideology that does not resonate with majority of the American people. Multiple points of view will also force politicians to work with each other to reach a consensus, rather than the current stalemate in American politics.
2. Abolish corporate and private contributions to elected officials (or any proxies that exist for those officials). They are supposed to be officials elected by the people, not bought by the corporations.
3. Equality in elections - pass a law that gives each candidate with a certain amount (deemed significant for their home population) of signatures to be given equal amount of television, print, and radio exposure. Obligate network news corporations to provide objective equal airtime to candidates, without any commentaries, opinions, or editorials. Publicly provide the candidate's career records in the same fashion.
4. Civic Duty Holidays - introduce 4 new holidays a year (Civic Duty Days) that obligate the American population to familiarize themselves with local and national candidates and their record.  We, as the American people, should be seeking out the candidates that represent us best, and not allow the best looking image full of hollow promises to push their campaigns onto us. Each one of us must take a certain degree of responsibility for the politicians that represent us.
5. Abolish careers in politics - term limits in politics that force politicians to come back into the workforce after serving their term(s), which the laws they passed have impacted. Currently, the career politicians are detached from the general workforce, which in many ways leaves them isolated from reality.
6. Performance Reviews for Elected Officials - on the aforementioned Civic Duty Days, the voters that elected the officials into office will hold them accountable by conducting a public review of the politician's performance with respect to campaign promises made and any unforeseen decisions made. This will keep elected officials honest to the people. If the politician suffers two unsatisfactory performance reviews in a row, their seat will be vacated during the next election cycle and a new set of candidates will compete to fill it.

There are more nuances to each of these points, which I am more than happy to discuss. So leave me a comment to suggest what you think or any ideas you may have. We need to do better, and all of us must be responsible in doing so.



Sunday, February 19, 2017

Breaking Up Parties

Now is the time and a chance to become a more civilized functioning country with a government that more closely represents each and every one of you - American citizens.

As long we have the two-party stranglehold over the USA government, the average American citizen will never be truly represented by the politicians we elect. Let me explain this in several simple points.

1) When only two parties control the political landscape, you have polarizing black and white views on each side. This makes it nearly impossible to make a nuanced choice of whom to support and for whom to cast a vote, as neither side will ever represent the vast majority of the American population. As a result, most American citizens do not participate in the election process. The majority that do wind up voting are left with a terribly choice - which candidate do I dislike less? When the candidates for any office are not even close to representing your views and values, there is no meaningful choice even when you have the right to choose.

2) When either party has the majority of Senate and House of Representatives, while also having the Presidential seat, the opposing sides don't have to negotiate. The controlling party can simply pass legislation and push through its policy without any regard for the other side. In the majority of other democracies in the civilized world, there are multiple parties that more closely represent the differing views of their population. In these cases, a party may win an election with a 25% percent of the vote, sometimes as high as 35%. But it almost never results in a flat out majority. This means that the winning party needs to negotiate with other parties, form a coalition, discuss and amend their proposals to fit the desires of the majority of their population. It is a much more true to form representative democracy than what we currently have to endure.

3) It is incredibly easy for big money interest groups to control the political landscape. There are big money lobbyists that play a heavy hand in influencing our government's policies via monetary contributions to the two major political parties and their candidates. Pharmacy, Insurance, Banking, Tobacco, Gun and various other lobbies have our American government in their back pockets. It is really easy to do - just donate money to both parties. Whoever wins the controlling seats in our government, the big money contributors are guaranteed that their interests are protected no matter what. If there are multiple parties that have to negotiate with each other and be held accountable to the actual views of the people who elect them, the lobbyists will not have as much sway over the legislation.

I believe that we are living in an extraordinary time of unprecedented opportunity, on which we owe it to ourselves and future generations to capitalize. The 2016 election has exposed and opened up the fault lines in both the Democrat and Republican parties. The Democrats screwed up big league by internal collusion in favoring one candidate in the primaries over another, while the Republicans were fighting among themselves and rolling down the hill into disarray, until they miraculously emerged on top of the orange mountain.

As a result, the Democrats have internal battles that are pulling the party into Progressives, Traditional Democrats, and those who now identify as Independents. The Republicans have an even more fierce battle among them between Traditional Republicans, Tea Party, Evangelicals, Reformers and Hardcore Conservatives.

We, as American citizens, must force these political fault-lines to crack these parties apart into smaller more specific ones. How do we do this? Through putting pressure on our elected officials with our votes. We need to make each and every politician recognize that we will, from this point on, hold them accountable for their action (or inaction) as our representatives. After enough politicians realize that the status quo no longer suits their office, the polarizing methodologies of the two-party stranglehold will be left in the rear-view mirror of history.  Make your vote count in every single election, no matter how small, from this point on.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Apathy, Polyarchy, and Squeezing the Middle

Isn't it great living in the United States of America? I certainly think so, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to write my column here every week. But make no mistake about it - we are losing the very foundation of what makes America great with each passing day. The worst part about this phenomenon is that we, as citizens, should be held accountable.

We may very well soon lose the freedom of expression, given the way that mayor Michael Bloomberg acted against the protesters and the media covering them. We have lost all our rights to privacy, given the way the Legislative Branch of our country has taken away our ability to sound off without that conversation being screened for keywords the government deems inappropriate. And now we are losing the foundation of unjust imprisonment without cause, the Habeas Corpus, which our wonderful government believes should be suspended. If this proposition goes through, anyone may be imprisoned and held without just cause. Yes, we are one step away from becoming a police state - the United Socialist Republics of America. Given all of rights that are taken away from us, we are headed towards a society that ultimately will be transformed into a dictatorship.

So how did the government obtain the ability to rule with an iron fist? The answer is voter apathy. More specifically, the answer is a gradual degradation of personal freedom, elected official limitations and the significance of your vote - facilitated by voter apathy. All of this happened, while the voting public at large remained blissfully ignorant. Ever since the forefathers of our country drew up the Constitution, every elected official has been trying to "game the system" and circumvent the underlying principles by claiming they were bringing forth an "improvement". As a result, we now have elected incompetent career politicians, who can take a "secret vote" in Congress so that their constituents can't even hold them accountable for the miscarriage of justice!

The majority of Americans simply believe that their vote counts for nothing. This fact has become a very destructive factor in the process of electing public officials. Let's look at the reasons why - electoral colleges and the two party system.

Electoral colleges disregard the popular vote, where my one vote in New Jersey is equal to someone's vote in Wyoming. Instead, Electoral colleges weigh the complete popular vote of a state with an assigned nominal value that is given to that state's winning party. This "homogenized" nominal value is why majority of individuals don't even bother showing up to vote. For example - I live in a very Democrat-dominated state and chances are most national elections will have New Jersey's nominal votes go to a Democratic candidate. As a result, many non-Democrats never bother showing up voting due to the belief that their vote will not be enough to overtake the Democratic majority. On the other side, many Democrats also don't show up to vote, because they believe there are enough Democrats to make the majority a winner every time without their vote.

The two party system stigmatizes and squeezes the middle class, making the largest segment of the United States' population feel ambivalent towards voting. If it were up to me, there would be no political parties whatsoever. A political party is a drug for the ignorant - a way to vote for a broad ideology that provides no real solutions, just feel-good monikers and slogans which get their party candidates elected instead. Let's take a look at the facts - we currently have a two-party system, where the vast majority of elected officials are either Democrats (who appeal to the lower class, the have-nots) and the Republicans (who appeal to the wealthy and the corporate). Both parties are raping the United States of America through entitlements. The Democrats are trying to take tax dollars and spend it on education, unemployment, tax breaks and free healthcare for the lower classes. The Republicans are trying to provide tax preferential treatment to corporations and upper class, spending wildly on defense, repeal anti-trust laws, and sell out American jobs overseas. Both Democrats and Republicans demolish the national budget. But who pays for these entitlements (corporate and individual)? Why it's the middle class, of course! The wealthy and Corporate hardly ever pay the taxes they actually must according to the tax code, while the lower class can't pay what it doesn't have. That leaves the middle class to foot the bill for politicians' irresponsible, and mostly irrelevant, promises. This results in the weakening of the middle class and, ultimately, the economy which depends upon it.

Had the voting America actually gotten together and lobbied the government for the abolition of the Electoral colleges and political parties, we may actually have candidates worth voting for, instead of some talking figure that must abide by the party ideology.

The United States of America is a Polyarchy state. Since we are very young, we are taught that America is the land of Democracy. That is simply false, because in a true Democracy every vote is counted equally, regardless of which part of the country it comes from. Furthermore, in a true Democracy there are no elected officials, as the people decide by a popular vote on every issue. In a Polyarchy, you have the elite few making decisions for the public. Therefore, United States of America is a Polyarchy state, where the power is being withdrawn from the people with each passing day.  



Benjamin Franklin was once asked: "...shall we have a Monarchy or a Republic?"
To which he replied: "A Republic, if you can keep it."

...and we haven't been very good about keeping it.