109 Comments

I continue to read critiques of US institutions which correctly point to the rot of (pick your choice) US institutions. Each critique warns that the US is on the precipice of losing our democracy. Senator Durbin made the point yesterday that the US came within a half step of a Constitutional crisis in the waning days of the Trump administration. No...we are no longer a democracy. Other than lower courts and the military leadership, every institution has been gutted, corrupted, or infiltrated. One party is fully authoritarian, and we are on the brink of financial default. We can't pass police reform, voting rights, violence against women, a healthcare public option, aid to children and seniors, environmental protections, etc. Garland is refusing to hold anyone in the Trjmp administration responsible for the nearly successful (and continuing) attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and our democracy. Craven corruption continues unabated. We have a myth of a democracy but not the reality. No accountability, no equal justice under the law, minority rule, corporate oligarchs, oceans of dark money corrupting SCOTUS, the GOP, and likely more than a few Democrats. At best, we're a barely functioning oligarchy sliding quickly into authoritarianism, but we're not a democracy. The failure of Democratic leadership to inform the public of the dangers is just emboldening and accelerating full authoritarianism.

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I think the hyperbolic curves Al Gore presented to us a while back are now evident, manifesting in increased general fear and confusion. Lost people will naturally gravitate toward the simple illusion of certainty which is the very essence of conservative politics, religion (7 Catholics on the Supreme Court), and high tech. "What a fool believes, no wise man has the power to reason away."

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We cannot have accountability without factual news to the entire population. SCOTUS is part of the rt wing alternate world. Without the return to freedom of the press, access to the truth, research journalists who ask questions, we will just keep spinning our wheels. It has to start with this. But the next step should be expanding the Supreme Court while it can happen!

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I continue to believe that cable and internet (like broadcast TV and radio) must be thrust under the auspices of the FCC, which needs to bring back, in some form, and enforce the Fairness Doctrine to stop the lies. Whatever Facebook's algorithms do to coarsen public discourse is the same business model already employed daily by Fox News: weaponize and monetize bigotry and hate. Neither Facebook nor Fox has a solution. They simply enjoy watching the subsequent fireworks and listening to their cash registers ring.

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I hate to say it, but regulation of the tech industry is required. It's going to make software development less fun, but society will benefit from regulation.

The reality is that programmers rule the world. Programmers are writing the rules we abide by every day. Programmers have been writing code that can kill you for a very long time, and the impact of that truth is expanding.

Here's a great view into this reality from a respected member of the collective of software developers.

https://youtu.be/ecIWPzGEbFc?t=4463

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Ever since the former president became the president I have done everything I can to reduce and eliminate their (scotus, fed, big tech) influence and control over me. I’ve long been out of debt, live well within my means and stay away from 99% of social media. I have and always will vote in-person. My current challenge is how to purchase internet and phone services. IMHO, they should be a made a matter of national security, become a “utility” and the current monopolies be broken-up. Next to school/property taxes my cable bill is my second highest expense. But, Congress will do nothing to protect or benefit us because it is bought and paid for by the very people who are screwing us.

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What you say is absolutely correct and of great concern. I still feel powerless and at the whim of a very slow process and system which is uncertain about using its power to do what needs to be done. I'm sick and tired of standing on the edge of the cliff and waiting for our Democratic leaders to made the hard decisions and take the action that is necessary to set our tanker back on course. We have been hijacked by pirates.

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The most frightening, and arguably the biggest power center, is Congress itself. It doesn’t matter how much the general public supports any particular policy, be it raising the minimum wage, increasing gun safety, reducing inequality, protecting woman’s right to control their own bodies, and protecting voting rights, nothing gets through Congress unless its members have consulted with their own paymasters and special interests.

We don’t have much of a democracy left anyway, as far as I can see.

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Of these 3, the one that bothers me the most is the Supreme Court. NO ONE should be appointed for life!! NO ONE!! So, we must pass term limits for them. (And, while we're at it, pass term limits for Congress!)

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I won't stop saying this: Money in Govt is the only political issue. We will never do anything to really change these situations until we get Money from controlling our politicians. Remember

the Voting Rights Act? What happened to it? Remember the Civil Rights Act? What happened to it? Remember Roe v Wade? What happened to it? The same thing happened to all of them. We thought our work was done by defeating the bad guys, but we did not disarm them. We did not change the laws they now use to fund their counter-attack: the campaign finance and the lobbyist laws. They came back better armed (money in hand, laws passed, legislatures and courts imballanced) and blindsided us. We now debate what we should have done 20 years ago, but still don't address: Money rules our democracy. We have to change that.

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These three areas are symptoms of the larger systemic cause of corporations having inalienable constitutional rights and the fact that money is considered their free speech. The second applies to the rich as well. The Fed. legislature and most state's are also controlled by that money. (I live in TX, where and oil and gas rule our state govt.) Until that changes, the focus of those in power will remain on pleasing their moneyed constituents and not the common people. Move to Amend seeks to do this with the passage of HJR48, the We the People Amendment.

It also makes the disclosure of all political contributions public.

Those changes will result in the ending of the rich and corporation's power to control our government, forcing our representatives to listen to the voices of the people to get elected and stay in office. The more of use who back and fight for the passage of it, the sooner we will have a govt. that is far more receptive to changing all the ills pointed out in this article and so many others.

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I so admire your insight and common sense. However, as an old retiree who is easily upset by DC, I am content to read your words and watch senseless, predictable movies to survive. Time is short and it needs calm moments, less medication. At any rate, thank you for your solid explanations. They are appreciated.

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The Fed doesn't need to keep interest rates low to fuel the economy - it needs to do so or interest on our national debt is going to destroy us well before global warming. Even 5% rates on govt debt would result in a trillion per year in interest payments.

IMO, protracted low rates have caused institutional investors to buy large swaths of single family homes, driving up prices and rents and making housing unaffordable for many. There is no free lunch.

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The country needs massive public demand for a law to restore the limit to TV and radio licenses that can be held by a single owner with provisions assuring there are no secret owners .

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I think the Biden administration should start ignoring the Supreme Court. Unelected judges are making policy according to their own personal preferences, and those of their Big Money funders, that should be left to the political branches. The Constitution tasks the president with taking care that the laws be faithfully executed. There is no asterisk saying, "subject to unelected judges' approval." Likewise, the Constitution clearly gives legislative authority to Congress. It does not allow courts to judicially repeal Acts of Congress by [often arbitrarily] declaring them "unconstitutional." Otherwise, Congress can go to all the work of enacting a voting rights law, for example, and unelected judges follow right behind to judicially repeal it. The decision in the case Marbury v. Madison, which effectively unconstitutionally amended the Constitution by judicial fiat, needs to go. I think the Citizens United, Shelby County, and Buckley v. Valeo opinions, along with many others, constitute unconstitutional judicial meddling in the work of the elected political branches. We are being ruled by a de facto oligarchy.

I think the Supreme Court got it right in the case Chevron USA. v. Natural Res. Def. Council, 467 U.S. 837, 865-866 (1984):

"Judges are not experts in the field, and are not part of either political branch of the Government. Courts must, in some cases, reconcile competing political interests, but not on the basis of the judges' personal policy preferences."

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No one gives up power gladly.

We have each of the most conservative on SCOTUS claiming not to be political in efforts to defend their political acts.

We've been hearing big tech spin factory on how well they do in addressing their problems for more than 30 hearings; noteworthy that we did not have a whistleblower for big tobacco or fossil fuel industry misinformation campaigns and thus have a chance to act on tech sooner.

We are a republic using democratic practices in some areas, yet never all especially on the economy. The only accountability the Fed seems to have is to financial institutions; seems a redesign may be needed there for balancing power and not have those those who benefit from secrecy and megamoney flow be sole accountability. Why has not rattling Wall Street now an economic motivator? Another unaccountable area of power and influence...

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