Online petitions crack through board rooms, capitals

Published February 25, 2012

The online petition movement has come a long way from chain mails that threaten eternal bad luck for failing to forward a message to at least five friends.

By Judson Berger

Published February 25, 2012

The online petition movement has come a long way from chain mails that threaten eternal bad luck for failing to forward a message to at least five friends.

Last year, a 22-year-old part-time nanny complained in a petition about Bank of America’s $5-a-month debit card fee. After hundreds of thousands of people signed on, the image-bruised bank dropped the fee.

Online petitions last year also helped spur state proposals for a so-called "Caylee’s Law" to toughen requirements on parents to report missing children, in the wake of the Casey Anthony case. The Obama White House even responded to its own petition site after enough people clamored for the administration to weigh in on a controversial online piracy law.

The digital petition world has notched a string of successes over the past 12 months, and just now seems to be taking off. As Facebook and Twitter revolutionize the way people connect with one another, the merger of social media and political activism is creating a wave of its own.

"It’s really been this explosive growth over this past year in particular," Ben Rattray, founder and CEO of Change.org, told FoxNews.com.

The San Francisco-based company launched five years ago, but only started focusing on petitions in the past year or so. Rattray said the site went from gaining 1,000 members a month to 1 million a month now. He said more than 10,000 petitions a month are currently being started on the site, and he’s projecting 25 million Change.org members by the end of the year — up from 8 million now.

What’s the appeal? Rattray reasoned that the petitions are allowing everyday people to coalesce into their own lobbying force — on very particular issues, quickly and publicly, at the local and national levels.

He cited the case of Molly Katchpole, who launched the Bank of America debit-card fee petition. Five years ago, he said, Katchpole would have been "miffed" about the fee and complained to friends — maybe even closed her bank account.

Instead, she launched a petition that fed into heavy media coverage and additional social media campaigns.

"(Bank of America) just recognized the potential damage they’re exposed to," he said. "They’re facing a rapid-response lobbying group that is now their customer base."

Rattray, who started the site with a former classmate at Stanford University, said he wasn’t originally going to get into the social networking business.

The 31 year old, who grew up in a conservative household, said he went to school to be an investment banker. He studied political science and economics. But Rattray said he started getting more into social advocacy after one of his brothers came out as gay. He watched the rapid rise of Facebook — which is now preparing to go public on an epic scale — and figured he could use similar technology to connect people not just around personal interests but issues.

Several other petition-oriented websites have sprouted up around the same concept.

One of them, Care2, predates Change.org. The company started in 1998 and has since focused mainly on environmental and human rights causes. The social network site is a forum for an army of bloggers but also uses petitions to advance its goals.

"It’s about empowering individuals to have a voice and take part in … collective actions," founder Randy Paynter said.

Paynter said he got the idea for the site from chain emails. By themselves, those emails tended to vanish into the digital ether — so he started to aggregate petitions.

Like on Change.org, the petitions range from the serious to the slightly bizarre. As of Saturday, a petition to outlaw "vanity tattoos" for cats in Russia had more than 18,000 signatures. Another calling on Kardashian-family companies to stop selling furs had attracted more than 100,000 signatures.

Care2 also claims to see more than 10,000 petitions started every month. Paynter said the site has 18 million members.

Washington has hardly been deaf to this trend. Last fall, the White House launched its own petition site, We the People, promising to offer an official response to any petition that attracts at least 25,000 signatures in 30 days.

Among the petitions the administration has responded to were those concerning controversial anti-online piracy bills in Congress. The administration, in response to the petitions, said last month that it had concerns about whether the proposals could undermine Internet freedom.

Within days, congressional leaders put the proposals on hold.

Not all petitions lead to definitive legislative action. In the case of the "Caylee’s Law" proposals, many states have struggled to actually get those reporting requirements passed despite the public pressure following the trial last year. Thousands of other petitions gather a modest number of signatures, and then fade away.

Paynter said progress from petitions is often incremental. "But the reality is, that’s the way that all change works," he said.

While the petition sites allow people to band together and take their grievances directly to lawmakers, another site has also just launched meant to give candidates themselves a more direct platform for reaching voters.

The site, PolitiView, launched last month, allows candidates in races across the country to post campaign videos and web addresses on a personalized page.

The site is subscription-based for politicians, though free for everyone else. The idea, eventually, is that a voter could type in his or her address, then see a listing of the candidates running in the area for different offices — and be able to click to their pages. Ballot-initiative campaigns could also subscribe.

Creator Susan Nightingale compared the site to airline-price aggregators — only for political campaigns.

"It’s a campaign dashboard," she said. "This is direct democracy. It couldn’t be any more direct."

At Change.org, Rattray has ambitious plans for the future. He plans to grow his 100-person staff to 200 by the end of the year. The company currently has offices in three U.S. cities and a few other countries but plans to expand to 20 countries over the next 12 months.

He said the desire for mass mobilization is not a uniquely American one. But in the U.S., he predicted the site could have a strong impact on the 2012 presidential race.

With so much concern about the influence of money in politics — particularly through so-called super PACs — he anticipates a campaign to compel candidates to crack down on super PAC influence.

But the site is user-driven, and he conceded his staff’s role is just to mediate.

"We wake up every day and have no idea what’s going to be started on the site," he said.

Everyone should be involved in process

We are now entering another season of elections for 2012. Nevertheless, the hostility of relations between the two political parties is even greater than it was in the last election.

This comes at the expense of the great citizens of this fine country, who want and need to be more involved with the decision making of our nation, above and beyond merely voting for those who will make all of the decisions, which is very little power indeed.

We are now entering another season of elections for 2012. Nevertheless, the hostility of relations between the two political parties is even greater than it was in the last election.

We must remember that a functional democracy, at least in the U.S., must invite everyone to join in the process of domestic governmental decision making, and at least initially, will require a transition from a representative democracy to a direct democracy.

This kind of governmental evolution would end, or at least substantially impede, the bureaucratic paralysis and voter anger/apathy that has been present in our society for the past few decades.

High level politicians must remember that an elected and divided government whose members are constantly bickering amongst themselves, while ignoring the will of the people, cannot forever last.

Ray Gattavara

Auburn, Wash.

From Dictatorship to Democracy 2.0

Today we examine Gene Sharp’s legendary handbook of non-violent resistance "From Dictatorship to Democracy" in the context of the new information revolution we have been discussing this week.

Prepared by: ISN staff

“But liberty, when men act in bodies, is power.” – Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Today we examine Gene Sharp’s legendary handbook of non-violent resistance "From Dictatorship to Democracy" in the context of the new information revolution we have been discussing this week.

Prepared by: ISN staff

“But liberty, when men act in bodies, is power.” – Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Yesterday we highlighted what have already become classic statements about the role of social media in political change. Indeed, well before the Arab Spring and the current direct democracy movement, Clay Shirky not only argued that social media represented the “greatest increase in human expressive capability in history,” but that it would radically empower individuals at the expense of their own governments. In response, a more skeptical Evgeny Morozov cautioned that there was a flip side to this ‘good news’ story – i.e., both the internet and social media can just as readily enhance the legitimacy of authoritarian regimes (and stifle political change) than not. Well, given the dual nature that social media has, and given our incorrigible optimism here at ISN, today we would like to burnish further the pro-empowerment case. In particular, we would like to look at Gene Sharp’s legendary handbook of non-violent resistance, From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation, but from a social media perspective. In doing so, we hope to reiterate – yet again – the dominant theme of our Editorial Plan over the last fourteen weeks – the structural changes changing our world today are in fact empowering individuals as never before.

Since its publication in 1993, Gene Sharp’s 93-page handbook of non-violent resistance (which lists 198 specific tactics one can use, including the use of symbolic colors and appeals to international audiences) has arguably become THE how-to guide to topple autocrats. To date, some of its biggest ‘victims’ include Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, Victor Yanukovic in Ukraine, Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia, and Askar Akaev in Kyrgyzstan. In all cases, these regimes had a common denominator – they were all largely undone by popular movements employing Sharp-like methods. Most recently, such methods have been influential in the toppling of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and have also been used (in part) in Libya and Syria. Indeed, their use has prompted some commentators to speak of Gene Sharp as the Arab Spring’s “intellectual mastermind.” Although such an accolade may not be deserved, the trajectory of the Arab Spring and the methods that Sharp recommends did coincide. Whether the demonstrators realized it or not, the uprisings were right out of his playbook.

Sharp’s suggested tools for social change are inspired by an incisive theoretical understanding of how authoritarian regimes maintain power. His principles of non-violence, as he is always keen to stress, are not altruistic or derived from moral or religious imperatives. Instead, the methods he advocates are a form of armed political struggle – with psychological and social ‘weapons’ being used rather than military-industrial ones. Not only is non-violence a viable alternative to violence, Sharp argues, but in most cases it is also less costly and far more effective. The empirical hypothesis, in other words, that violence is the most effective way of pursuing political objectives, although still believed by many, is false. And, as regime after regime collapses, the weight of evidence supporting Sharp’s arguments is becoming overwhelming.

The key insight behind Sharp’s prescriptions is that power is not “monolithic.” It does not derive from any single source, or from those who are at any given time “in power.” The key tool of contemporary authoritarian regimes, Sharp implies, is the idea that power ought to be measured exclusively or primarily in terms of the capacity for violence. This idea leads to the popular belief that a regime’s power is irresistible because of its exclusive possession of military-industrial weaponry. In other words, the power of authoritarian regimes derives not from their actual military might but from the fear of their might and the popular belief that obedience is the only realistic option. Indeed, when rebel groups resort to violence they buy in to this authoritarian propaganda (whether they ultimately win or lose) by agreeing to fight the regime on its own terms (which means they usually lose).

Violent resistance, according to Sharp, not only perpetuates an idea that is at the heart of the regime’s power, it also targets the regime where it usually is strongest, rather than where it is weakest. The true centers of gravity lie elsewhere – i.e., in the popular legitimacy required by all regimes and the degree of cooperation and acquiescence they must elicit from the people. If a regime can be credibly denied this legitimacy (especially in the eyes of the police and army, for example), it will lose control of its means of repression and eventually crumble.

Because authoritarian regimes understand all too well that they have this vulnerability, one of their most important self-survival tactics is what Sharp and others have called the “atomization” of society, as Hannah Arendt famously describes in The Origins of Totalitarianism:

"In Nazi Germany there were no acquittals. To be arrested was to be convicted — more, it was to be dropped off the face of the earth, to be erased from memory. For if anyone dared to ask why, if any loved one inquired as to what charge was made, that person was next. By terror — culminating in the concentration and extermination camps — the people are made incommunicado — atomized — afraid to bare their thoughts to their closest friends."

Though fully totalitarian regimes are extreme cases, the deliberate atomization of society through fear is a tactic common to all dictatorships. Because legitimacy is a mass phenomenon, credibly denying it to a hostile regime requires a ‘critical mass’ of people – and it generally requires them to appear together in public to make their case. This is exactly what atomization strives to make impossible. Its goal (through a variety of means) is to turn every individual in a society into an informant, and thereby preclude in advance any ‘dangerous’ exercise of popular power.

And this, Shirky claimed yesterday, is where technology can change things. If social media and other related technologies have the capacity to be politically transformative, it is because they make atomization infinitely more costly for authoritarian regimes. Indeed, one of the most striking things about Gene Sharp’s account of power (seemingly inspired by Hannah Arendt) is that it explains why social media is so politically significant. Atomization works not only by cutting individuals off from potentially like-minded others, but by preventing them from even believing that they are out there. Social media’s “many-to-many” communications model is therefore revolutionary from a strategic perspective because it makes the possibility of de-atomization real and obvious. Today, as never before, almost everyone knows that it is technologically possible to reach and communicate with almost everyone else.

As we write, From Dictatorship to Democracy is probably available on the internet in Syria. We also know from a recent documentary of a local Facebook group that studies it and possibly deploys some of Sharp’s tactics. Perhaps more importantly, however, Syrians know what social media is. They know – as all but a handful of the world’s people now know – that they should be able to reach and communicate their ideas with each other even if the Assad regime (or Mark Zuckerberg, one day) considers it too dangerous for them to do so. Because of social media power may become decentralized in the future – and that would represent true structural change in today’s international system.

Direct Democracy as a Safeguard to Limit Public Spending

Patricia Funk Christina Gathmann
10 February 2012

As debt crises hit on both sides of the Atlantic, a safe haven for many investors has been Switzerland. This column looks at Swiss public spending over the last century and argues that one reason for its low debt may be its greater use of direct democracy, where people vote on individual policies, as opposed to representative democracy, where people elect others to make decisions on their behalf.

The current debt crisis in Europe and North America raises the question of how to impose spending discipline on governments and politicians. A country with historically low government spending is Switzerland, which many argue is related to the high use of direct democracy. Direct democracy is also prevalent in other countries such as the United States, where more than two thirds of the population lives in a state or city with a popular initiative. Comparing data on postwar spending in states with more or less direct democracy, the empirical evidence points to a strong negative correlation between a region’s spending level and the existence of direct democracy in both the United States and Switzerland (Feld and Matsusaka 2003, Matsusaka 2004).

What is the mechanism behind this negative correlation? Do citizens, if equipped with direct democratic participation rights, cause government spending to decline? Or, are citizens in areas with strong direct democracy just fiscally more conservative than voters in other areas – and therefore have lower public spending?

Evidence from spending in the Swiss cantons, 1890–2000

To answer this question, we put together a comprehensive new data set with detailed information on direct democratic institutions in all Swiss regions over more than a century. Switzerland has a strong federalism where ‘cantons’ (comparable to the US states) play an important role. In fact, all political responsibilities remain with the canton unless they are granted to the federal government in a national referendum. In 2007, 45% of all government spending was undertaken by the cantons, 31% by the federal and 26% by local governments. Cantons have a lot of autonomy in the provision of public goods, and the authority to tax labour and capital income. As a result, there is a lot of heterogeneity in taxes, public spending, and – most importantly for this study – political institutions, across cantons. The study focuses on the direct democratic institutions most relevant for fiscal policy: the mandatory budget referendum and the voter initiative.

The mandatory budget referendum (currently in place in about 60% of the cantons) gives citizens the power to approve or reject government projects when its (one-time or recurring) expenditures exceed a certain monetary threshold (the exact threshold is set in the canton constitution). The voter initiative in turn allows citizens to propose entirely new laws – for example, limits on spending growth. While all cantons have the voter initiative, there is substantial variation in the number of signatures required to get an initiative on the ballot. Therefore, a lower signature requirement (measured in terms of eligible voters) facilitates the use of direct democracy.

The long horizon of our analysis – more than 100 years – has the advantage that almost all cantons changed their direct democratic institutions (often multiple times). Our study then estimates what happens to public spending if a canton adopts – or abolishes – the mandatory budget referendum, or facilitates voter initiatives by reducing its signature requirement. It does this by comparing cantons to other similar cantons without such reforms. We control for permanent differences between cantons that affect spending with the inclusion of canton fixed effects. We also control for other observable canton characteristics such as population composition, or the economic structure. Most importantly, we explicitly construct measures of voter preferences in a canton from several hundred voting decisions in federal referendums (see Funk and Gathmann 2011a for details).

To address the concern of reverse causality, ie the possibility that public spending results in institutional reforms rather than the reverse, we use an instrumental variable approach. Since all direct democratic participation rights are set down in the constitution, institutional reform necessarily requires a change of the canton’s constitution. Our first instrument is then the barriers to amending the canton’s constitution. As a second instrument, we use changes in direct democracy in the neighbouring cantons. Both instruments affect the provision of direct democracy in a canton, but are plausibly unrelated to a cantons’ public spending. Empirical identification of the causal effect of direct democracy on public spending is then achieved by instrumental variables combined with canton fixed effects.

We find that:

Having a mandatory budget referendum in place reduces public spending by 12%.
Voter initiatives that allow citizens to propose new laws also lower public spending. For every 1% reduction in the signature requirement, public spending declines by 0.6%.
The constraints imposed by direct democracy at the state level do not result in more local spending. This result suggests that state politicians cannot avoid the disciplining effect of direct democracy by simply shifting responsibilities to lower levels of government.

In sum, this study shows that direct democracy indeed causes a decline in public spending, though the relationship is weaker than is suggested by a naive comparison of spending across states with and without direct democracy. Apparently, voters are fiscally more conservative than elected politicians, and the tools of direct democracy help them to get their preferences better represented.

References

Feld, LP and JG Matsusaka (2003), “Budget Referendums and Government Spending: Evidence from Swiss Cantons”, Journal of Public Economics, 87:2703–2724.

Funk, P and C Gathmann (2011a), “Preferences Matter! Voter Preferences, Direct Democracy and Government Spending”, Unpublished Manuscript.

Funk, P and C Gathmann (2011b), “Does Direct Democracy Reduce the Size of Government? New Evidence from Historical Data, 1890-2000”, Economic Journal, 121(557):1252-1280.

Matsusaka, JG (2004), For the Many or the Few: The Initiative, Public Policy, and American Democracy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

This article may be reproduced with appropriate attribution. See Copyright (below).

The Deliberative Initiative: Returning Direct Democracy to the People

We have just completed 100 years of experimentation with the initiative in California. It was intended to empower the people to initiate the agenda for elections in which all the voters cast ballots. But the signature gathering process has itself become a barrier to the people’s agenda. Successful proposals are usually sponsored by special interests, often quite narrow ones, that seek their own advantage in winning a public vote or in placing a competing measure on the ballot to confuse the public. A threshold of 8% of the votes for valid signatures requires a massive and expensive effort—perhaps three million dollars this year. While the people get to vote on the resulting proposals, what they vote on may have little connection to their real concerns for how best to fix the state. Voter discussion and voter review of propositions already determined will not fix this question of how to get the public’s thoughtful input on setting the agenda in the first place.

What’s Next California charts a new path. The first statewide Deliberative Poll® in California demonstrates how the people can take control of the agenda for direct democracy (see http://www.nextca.org ). If it succeeds in this pilot project in charting a path to a successful initiative, it should be institutionalized. The basic idea is simple. A scientific random sample of registered voters is surveyed about an extensive agenda of possible reforms. The sample is then recruited to travel to a single place for a long weekend of intensive deliberations, evaluating competing proposals for a ballot measure based on carefully balanced and vetted information materials about the competing proposals. The sample should be representative in demographics and attitudes of the entire electorate. Their deliberations consist in small group discussions and then questions from the small groups directed to competing experts in plenary sessions. The entire process is supervised by a non-partisan advisory group who certify the balance and accuracy of the materials detailing the proposals and the balance of the expert panels who respond to the public’s questions. This process was conducted early this summer by a coalition of eight organizations with broadcast around the state of a PBS Newshour documentary about the process and its results. An excellent scientific sample of more than 400 registered voters attended the weekend. The whole state was, in effect, placed in one room to deliberate about priorities for fixing the state. The participants, who began as a representative microcosm, became more knowledgeable and changed their views. Some of the 30 proposals they considered went up significantly with deliberation, some went down (see http://cdd.stanford.edu/polls/california/ ). Most importantly, six of the proposals that started high and went even higher with deliberation have been crafted into a ballot measure, the California Governance and Accountability Act, which is going on the ballot now (see http://www.cafwd-action.org/pages/proposed-ballot-measure ). This initiative brings transparency and accountability to the state government’s budget process and helps bring local control of some services provided at the local level.

The six proposals all started with majority support and went significantly higher with a minimum of 72% support after deliberation. The Deliberative Poll revealed how and why these proposals speak to the people’s priorities. The deliberations of the microcosm enable the people to take ownership of an agenda setting process for the votes of everyone else.

In Ancient Athens there was an institution chosen by lottery or random sampling, the Council of 500, that deliberated and set the agenda for what everyone would vote on in the Assembly. In a similar way, the Deliberative Poll has set an agenda for what everyone will vote on in a ballot proposition in 2012. In Athenian democracy, this was a regular institutionalized occurrence. If this were institutionalized in California, it would not only speak to very ancient democratic values, it would also live up to the aspiration of the Progressives, a century ago, to empower the people to determine what they vote on. Is this a practical possibility in a mega state like California?

What’s Next California and the resulting ballot proposition is a pilot of this idea. Institutionalizing it would face a series of challenges that all seem eminently practical but that all need careful thought. Where do the proposals come from that the people choose between? How, if at all, are they vetted before the people deliberate? How are factual materials to explain background on the issues developed? How are experts chosen who can respond to questions from the sample? How are the results of the Deliberative Poll-like process connected to the wording or revision of the ballot proposition? What threshold of support would qualify a measure to go on the ballot? Would measures go directly on the ballot or could they go on the ballot with a lower signature threshold after this process? All of these issues merit public debate and careful institutional design. Some of them might be made the subject of another Deliberative Poll. But all of them were faced informally by the pilot phase. And many issues, such as information materials have to be faced anyway by ballot propositions.

Deliberative Polls in various contexts around the world show that the people are, collectively very smart, and fully capable of dealing with complex public issues when they think their voice matters. The challenge for reviving California’s direct democracy is to design institutions where the collective intelligence of the public can be harnessed to initiate the people’s agenda.

James Fishkin

Ten Steps for Radical Revolution in USA

by Bill Quigley / January 23rd, 2012

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.

— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967

1. Human rights must be taken absolutely seriously. Every single person is entitled to dignity and human rights. No application needed. No exclusions at all. This is our highest priority.

Ten Steps for Radical Revolution in USA

by Bill Quigley / January 23rd, 2012

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.

— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967

1. Human rights must be taken absolutely seriously. Every single person is entitled to dignity and human rights. No application needed. No exclusions at all. This is our highest priority.

2. We must radically reinvent contemporary democracy. Current systems are deeply corrupt and not responsive to the needs of people. Representatives chosen by money and influence govern by money and influence. This is unacceptable. Direct democracy by the people is now technologically possible and should be the rule. Communities must be protected whenever they advocate for self-determination, self-development and human rights. Dissent is essential to democracy; we pledge to help it flourish.

3. Corporations are not people and are not entitled to human rights. Amend the US Constitution so it is clear corporations do not have constitutional or human rights. We the people must cut them down to size and so democracy can regulate their size, scope and actions.

4. Leave the rest of the world alone. Cut US military spending by 75 percent and bring all troops outside the US home now. Defense of the US is a human right. Global offense and global police force by US military are not. Eliminate all nuclear and chemical and biological weapons. Stop allowing scare tactics to build up the national security forces at home. Stop the myth that the US is somehow special or exceptional and is entitled to act differently than all other nations. The US must re-join the global family of nations as a respectful partner. USA is one of many nations in the world. We must start acting like it.

5. Property rights, privilege, and money-making are not as important as human rights. When current property and privilege arrangements are not just they must yield to the demands of human rights. Money-making can only be allowed when human rights are respected. Exploitation is unacceptable. There are national and global poverty lines. We must establish national and global excess lines so that people and businesses with extra houses, cars, luxuries, and incomes share much more to help everyone else be able to exercise their basic human rights to shelter, food, education and health care. If that disrupts current property, privilege and money-making, so be it.

6. Defend our earth. Stop pollution, stop pipelines, stop new interstates, and stop destroying the land, sea, and air by extracting resources from them. Rebuild what we have destroyed. If corporations will not stop voluntarily, people must stop them. The very existence of life is at stake.

7. Dramatically expand public spaces and reverse the privatization of public services. Quality public education, health and safety for all must be provided by transparent accountable public systems. Starving the state is a recipe for destroying social and economic human rights for everyone but the rich.

8. Pull the criminal legal prison system up and out by its roots and start over. Cease the criminalization of drugs, immigrants, poor people and people of color. We are all entitled to be safe but the current system makes us less so and ruins millions of lives. Start over.

9. The US was created based on two original crimes that must be confessed and made right. Reparations are owed to Native Americans because their land was stolen and they were uprooted and slaughtered. Reparations are owed to African Americans because they were kidnapped, enslaved and abused. The US has profited widely from these injustices and must make amends.

10. Everyone who wants to work should have the right to work and earn a living wage. Any workers who want to organize and advocate for change in solidarity with others must be absolutely protected from recriminations from their employer and from their government.

Finally, if those in government and those in power do not help the people do what is right, people seeking change must together exercise our human rights and bring about these changes directly. Dr. King and millions of others lived and worked for a radical revolution of values. We will as well. We respect the human rights and human dignity of others and work for a world where love and wisdom and solidarity and respect prevail. We expect those for whom the current unjust system works just fine will object and oppose and accuse people seeking dramatic change of being divisive and worse. That is to be expected because that is what happens to all groups which work for serious social change. Despite that, people will continue to go forward with determination and purpose to bring about a radical revolution of values in the USA.

Bill Quigley is a professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans and Associate Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. He can be reached at: quigley77@gmail.com. Read other articles by Bill.

Congress, you’re Fired

January 21, 2012 at 6:45 pm by Zack Kilmer

You have proven to be noneffective, and your time has come. Courtesy of Getty Images

Anyone who lives in America knows that something is wrong with our government. Congressional approval is at an all time low, mainly because the fact that petty party politics has lead to constant stalemates that do now allow for important legislation to pass. In a time when Americans need action, a bunch of crusty old men in suits are bickering and playing power games.

This might sound like a lead in for me promoting a candidate. It’s not. Our legislative branch of government is so rotten from the core that even if we did elect an honest politician that wanted to do some good for this country, he wouldn’t be able to make a dent in the gargantuan mess that makes Washington. This is what I believe happened to Barack Obama.

I do not claim to have all the answers to the country’s problems. However, there is a radical idea I that I believe could. First, however, let’s address the specifics of the problem before we get to a potential solution.

The first issue that I mentioned is the two party system. Everyone beats this one to death, and it is not my main concern. However, it is a serious problem. The ass and the elephant are in a perpetual power struggle to get out on top, and if it means sacrificing the betterment of the people, they are obviously more than willing to do so.

We could do this online, and we could do it on our own laws. Courtesy of Getty Images

The main issue I have are lobbyists and corporations. To put it bluntly, anyone who thinks that the common man has a say anymore is kidding themselves. The monolithic corporations have cemented themselves into the infrastructure of our political system, and are using politicians as marionettes to pass laws that will make them even more money, even if it’s at the peoples’ expense.

This is why I believe the occupy movement started. We see such economic disparity and problems in America, and every time we use our democratic powers to vote for representatives or a president, it doesn’t do much of anything to fix them. People have taken to the streets because it is the only choice they have to get something accomplished. They cannot throw wads of cash at senators in order to get things passed.

I have adopted a political ideology that I feel could solve the issue of inability to get anything done. How do you stop corporate greed In our legislative branch of government? Get rid of it.

I believe in system of direct democracy. We should abolish the legislative branch as it is, and draft a system in which the American people create, vote on, and pass their own laws.

Obviously, it would take years to work out the kinks of such a system. However, here is a rough draft of how I Imagine it to be.

Some dude has a great idea for a law. He tells a bunch of people and they agree that this law is just peachy. They get together and write out a rough draft of the law and how it would work. They then use government appointed legal professionals to draft it into a document full of the proper legal jargon that could make it practical and realistic.

They control you, because they control the people who hold the power. Put the power in the hands of the people, directly. Courtesy of Getty Images

Once this law is ready to go, it is set for a specific polling date and advertised through government paid means. All proposed laws would have to be equally advertised under law. Once that date arrives, the American people would use an Internet based system to vote on whether they want it passed or not. Simple majority rules, and if it passes it becomes law!

You can’t bribe representatives if there are none, and you can’t bribe the entirety of America. If we are fed up with Congress, lets get rid of them! We don’t need them to govern our country anymore: we can do it ourselves.

I realize why representative democracy was needed in the past. Not every farmer in the 1700’s could get on their horse and go and vote every time there was a law on the table. Also, not everyone was educated back then; thus not making informed voters.

In a world where we have the Internet and a (mostly) educated society, I believe that representative democracy has been rendered obviously ineffective and obsolete.

The judicial and executive branches would still be there, and checks and balances will still be in place. Even if some stupid law like, lets say that everyone must wear newspaper hats all the time, passes (which it wouldn’t because the people who vote wouldn’t let it,) it would be shot down by the judicial branch as a violation of freedom of speech.

Again, I realize this is just an idea and there are so many things to work out before it can be reality. But I believe with 100% of my heart and soul that a system just like this would solve so many of our problems and give us more liberty than any before us have known.

Capitalism in crisis

Capitalism is not dead. But it is severely ill and its chronic contagion is spreading through the economic and social fibres of the world. However, it can be saved and resurrected, but only at the cost of a massive transfusion of blood, sweat, suffering and destruction. Such is the nature of a system based on competition and where material profit is the over-riding priority.

Once before, when this illness struck severely in 1929, the system was able to revive only via the massive expansion of the production of arms and ammunition and the subsequent use of these in the destruction of large parts of the infrastructure of Europe and Asia. The rebuilding of much that had been destroyed saw crippled sections of the planet exhibit renewed economic vigour.

Capitalism was revived, both in the form of regulated free enterprise and centralised, state control. An era of phenomenal technical innovation dawned and, fuelled by increasingly tough competition, a globalised city, with a number of unevenly developed suburbs, of which South Africa is one, began to emerge.

At the same time, much more aware and confident populations in various parts of the world, horrified by war and inequality, demanded a better life and their rights as human beings. From Europe and the Americas to the colonial regimes in Africa and parts of Asia, the call was “never again” and for greater personal freedom and democratic control.

Faced with this reality, often accompanied by militant action, the financial elites and the governments that largely serve their interests, made concessions. Social welfare systems were introduced, colonies gained political independence and the world embarked on an unprecedented economic boom. Even as growth figures soared, with new markets opening up and new products appearing, there were voices warning of a future – and probably inevitable – collapse.

These voices were on the margins of the mainstream, and were largely ignored when they pointed out the competitive demands of the system, coupled with technical innovation, meant fewer people were being employed as greater surpluses were generated; that this contradiction spelled future crisis. But the global economy, the heart and soul of capitalism, continued to expand. It did so on the basis of a massive extension of credit that few – even among the doomsayers – had foreseen.

Now that credit bubble has burst and the tangled web of futures and derivatives that also helped, artificially, to keep capitalism on its feet, have become toxic, poisoning the system that gave them life. Even that leading praise singer of the system, the International Monetary Fund appears, perhaps belatedly, to acknowledge that tougher times lie ahead. This means, of course, more dislocation of social systems and the ongoing degradation of the biosphere as 2012 gets under way.

The response of the elites – the 1 per cent according to protesters in the US – has been to demand either more economic regulation or less, to focus on issues such as crime and, together with many politicians, to call for a return to mythical “traditional values” or for “moral regeneration”. The victims of the systemic disorder – the 99 percent in US protest terms – are therefore to blame because of a claimed loss of moral fibre. Or governments are accused of damaging an inherently sound system by applying policies that were either too free or not free enough.

But individuals and groups who possess great wealth and have an interest in preserving the status quo are also shoring up their financial positions against troubled times. This is evident in the huge remuneration packages executives are paying themselves, as well as in one of the shrewdest business sell-offs of last year – the retreat of the Oppenheimer family from the De Beers diamond cartel. In the present circumstances there seems little chance that the cartel will be able to restrict the flow of diamonds to the market as states, companies and individuals with access to the gems try to cash in on their own behalf and prices collapse.

Given this reality, the elites and the politicians provide no answers and instead apply often frantic ad hoc measures to shore up collapsing banks or national economies. However, the plethora of protest movements, ranging from the Arab Spring and the street battles in Athens to the Occupy Wall Street protests, have also not provided any clear way forward. They continue to concentrate on fragmented policy palliatives, such as demands for housing and service delivery to free elections in Egypt, halting carbon emissions the pillage of marine resources. But this does indicate that these often community-based mass movements want a greater say in decisions that affect them.

However, by concentrating on often single economic, environmental and social policies, appealing to and through the very structures that have overseen or acquiesced in the development of the present crisis, they stand little chance of achieving much. An holistic approach is needed, yet only a minority of the protest movements are demanding anything approximating comprehensive reform. Almost invariably, protest groups see the staffing of existing political structures with new faces and parties as the way forward.

We, in South Africa, saw a good example of this at Polokwane in 2007. And the thousands of “unrest incidents” reported by the police over recent years also provide good examples of the fragmented nature of the demands and the reliance on what is still widely thought of as a democratic political dispensation. It is not. Placing a cross on a ballot paper every five years in order to hand over political control to a party bureaucracy is democratic only in that voters willingly forgo the potential power they, collectively, have. A constituency system is marginally better, but unless the authority is vested, on an ongoing basis, with the majority of citizens, what we have, at best, is a partial democracy.

The interests of politicians, many of who move seamlessly from political office to the boardrooms of big business, lie not with the voters, but with party bureaucracies. And these bureaucracies rely for much of their funding on the financial elites whose fundamental interests are diametrically opposed to those of the majority of the population. They who pay the piper tend always to call the tune.

So, in order to have the best chance of achieving egalitarian goals such as those set out in the South African Bill of Rights, democracy should be realised to its fullest extent; rule by the people, the definition of the term given to the world by Athenian Greece, should be implemented.

The questions are: is this possible and, if so, how can it be achieved? Since systems of direct democracy have existed in the past, usually on a village level, in Africa and elsewhere, the possibility exists. Co-operative governance, without chiefs or hereditary rulers, has been practised in areas as diverse as the Eastern Cape and Iceland. Regular assemblies, in many cases admittedly only of men, would be called to discuss and decide on policies and actions to be taken by the community and for the community. Where necessary, representatives, wholly accountable to, and recallable by, the community would be elected to carry out specific functions.

Communication is the essence here and it is readily pointed out that millions can hardly be gathered together on a regular basis to discuss and make decisions; that the partial democracy we have, is the only answer. It is not. Courtesy of modern technology, it is feasible for every citizen to be kept informed, to discuss all issues and to decide on appropriate action. All this requires is organisation within an agreed framework of principles and goals, along with a programme of action aimed at achieving such goals. Such a framework and the broad goals are adequately provided for by the Bill of Rights.

Trade unions, religious, community and civic organisations already meet regularly to discuss, debate and decide on matters of parochial concern. A properly networked communications systems utilising internet and cellphone technology could mean they could be directly involved in – and make decisions about – all matters of concern to themselves as citizens. The principle that every individual should have the right to freedom of thought, deed and action provided that, in the exercise of such freedom, they do not impinge on the rights of anyone else, is already established in principle. Egalitarian goals regarding everything from food, shelter, water and health care to education are also outlined in the Bill of Rights.

We also have the material and human resources available to achieve these, but only if we are prepared to upend the existing system of minority control and if we are prepared to prioritise the rights of people rather than the pursuit of profit. It is possible. And it can be done through the existing system.

At the very least, at this time of global crisis, it is an idea that deserves the serious consideration of all who care about the future of humanity and of the planet.

l Terry Bell is a writer, editor and broadcaster specialising in political, economic and labour analysis.

Laying Waste to the Usual Objections About Democracy: Demagogues

Nine out of ten times the first objection that people make to direct democracy is the possibility of ending up with demagogues whipping their fellow citizens up to all kinds of ridiculous things. "Look at Hitler," they say, which is interesting, because while Hitler never came in remote contact with direct democracy, he’d be something of a poster boy for how electoral systems can work in favour of demagogues. After all, before the Nazis sent all opposing intellectuals (and there were a lot of them) either to concentration camps or pouring out of Germany, they never managed to gain so much as 50% of the popular vote. Only after they managed to gain control of mass media did things get really crazy.

And that is one of the main differences between ancient Athenian society and society today — mass media.

We have it, they didn’t.

Back then, if you wanted to find something out, you had to either figure it out yourself or ask another Athenian. No TV, no radio, no newspapers, nada. It was impossible to ever tell anything to anyone without simultaneously giving them the chance to object or talk back to you. And as many an Athenian who took an active interest in politics could tell you — it’s bloody hard to keep up a narrative that way. Not that it kept them from trying, not that it kept them from at times succeeding, but the crucial words here are: at times. Nothing is perfect.

But a system of mass one-way communication which doesn’t give its listeners a chance to object or set the agenda is pretty nearly perfect for a demagogue.

It doesn’t much matter whether said demagogue is elected, the non-elected head of a media conglomerate, or Mr. Charismatic operating in a direct democracy. No matter how cynical and sophisticated you are, mass media still has an enormous influence on each and every one of our incredibly malleable brains. Don’t believe me? Check any or all of the numerous studies on this point (1) and then start observing some basic things about yourself, such as what you talk about over dinner — the items you saw on the news today or a topic that wasn’t on the news and which you’ve never heard of? That’s a silly question, isn’t it? But then again, it isn’t. Because someone somewhere in the world decided what was going to be on the news tonight and now you are talking about that topic and not about whatever it was they decided was not important enough to put on the news. It’s not a conspiracy — it’s just arbitrary and influences not only what you think about, but how important you rate it to be. And this assumes you are the sort of person who watches the news and then actually discusses it. Most people aren’t so reflective, choosing instead to swallow their infotainment whole. In such an environment, he who controls the soundbite reigns.

Thus, having a "representative democracy" unfortunately isn’t sparing us the demagogue problem. In fact, many media conglomerates thrive on feeding their viewers a constant diet of lies, bread and games, a diet which nevertheless has decisive consequences for national decision-making. Successful demagoguery gave us the Iraq War and killed off Obama’s healthcare and inheritance tax reforms. It’s now hard at work in Europe justifying why financial reforms are "impossible" and why everyone but the elite will have to rivet their work ethic up and their life expectations down.

By comparison a direct democracy has one important advantage: when people are told that what they decide right now is what they are actually going to live by in the future, it has a sobering effect on most of them. Bread, games and conflicting demands tend to get ratcheted down as serious debate goes up. In other words, by not giving people responsibility, but instead relegating them to a passive role in politics, we’re actually fuelling demagoguery. When your choice is between supporting leader A or leader B, both of whom have pretty similar "policies", why wouldn’t you go for the one who’s the best entertainment value for money? Or at least the one who tells you what you want to hear, no matter how unrealistic it is?

Would having a direct democracy get rid of the danger of demagoguery? No, it wouldn’t. Not in a mass media society. It would mitigate it, but, in my view, not enough. On the other hand, the current unholy alliance between super-elite "opinionformers" and the distracted proletariat is as unsustainable today as it was in the Roman Republic. Less sustainable, in fact.

Thus the fear of demagoguery is a valid point, but actually has little bearing on whether or not the political system chosen is a direct democracy. The real issue is mass one-way media communication, and as long as that problem isn’t dealt with, we won’t ever be getting real people power.

(1) see, eg. Shanto Iyengar/Donald R. Kinder, News That Matters: Television and American Opinion, University of Chicago Press, 1989

Roslyn Fuller

Econ professor to run for president

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) –

Maybe the best person to take on issue number one — the economy — should be an economist?

At least, that’s the thought of Laurence Kotlikoff, an economics professor at Boston University. He’s planning on throwing his hat in the ring next week, announcing he’s running for president as a third-party candidate.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) –

Maybe the best person to take on issue number one — the economy — should be an economist?

"I think I may be the first economist to run for president," Kotlikoff said. "We see economists now running Greece and Italy. It’s not everyday that an economist decides to work this way for his country — but I’m one of those cases."

Kotlikoff has never before run for public office. His goal is to secure a place on the 2012 ballot as an independent through a new online nomination site, AmericansElect.org.

The nonpartisan group, which has raised $22 million so far, aims to put an alternative candidate on the ballot, chosen by online voters through a three-stage primary.

In addition to his role as an economics professor, Kotlikoff is the author of 15 books and a regular columnist for Bloomberg.com. He has also served as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, foreign governments, central banks and international agencies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Kotlikoff’s platform centers on what he calls the "Purple Plan." Purple, because he hopes it will appeal to both blue Democrats and red Republicans, and all Americans in between.

Political observers question whether a nonpartisan candidate could have a serious shot at winning, and it’s not as if Kotlikoff is the only alternative candidate out there. Currently 165 people, not in the Republican or Democratic parties, are on file with the Federal Election Commission as presidential candidates.

Still, he hopes his campaign will have an impact.

"I’m hopeful that my candidacy will be taken very seriously," he said. "And that young people in particular will realize this is someone who is really focused on their interests."

If he does win, Kotlikoff pledges to eliminate income taxes on both individuals and businesses, as well as estate and gift taxes. Instead, he would institute a progressive sales tax and inheritance tax, and make the payroll tax highly progressive.

Kotlikoff would also replace the current health care system with one under which all Americans receive a voucher each year to purchase a standard health plan from the private-plan provider of their choice. In true economist speak, he says he would reallocate the roughly 10% of GDP that the federal and state government currently spend on Medicare, Medicaid and health exchanges, to pay for this program.

"I’m not suggesting that only an economist is qualified to be President, but I am suggesting that, other things equal, economic problems are likely to be better understood and fixed by an economist than a career politician or someone who has, for example, spent his life running a pizza chain," Kotlikoff wrote on his campaign website Kotlikoff2012.org.

Kotlikoff says he does not have a party affiliation and he plans to file an official statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission next week.

He previously worked as a senior economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, but voted for President Carter. He has also served as an economic adviser to former Senator Mike Gravel, who switched from the Democratic Party to the Libertarian Party amid his 2008 bid for president.

Author: Annalyn Censky