The Oligarchic States of America

It is ironic that at a time when Russia and its oligarchic politics is more at the forefront of American political consciousness than at any time previously, the U.S. is sliding, slowly but surely, into a place where its democracy is up for sale.



Bill Moyers warned about it in a prescient article last week, in the shadow of Republican 2016 hopefuls such as Chris Christie scraping and fawning in front of gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson in Las Vegas.



The Koch Brothers and the Danger of American Plutocracy | Blog, Money & Politics | BillMoyers.com



 It is a theme that today has been taken up by Senator Bernie Sanders, social democrat Senator from Vermont.

Democracy vs. Oligarchy http://t.co/mMqL1wPDDD pic.twitter.com/b0gIULarwN
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 1, 2014

And today, in a widely anticipated decision, following on from the truly awful Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court removed the aggregate donation cap in McCutcheon v FCC.



It is a sad indictment of American democracy when one of its two major parties, after having lost 5 out of 6 presidential elections on the trot, has decided that its strategy for winning is through restricting opportunities to vote and unlimited spending by plutocrats and billionaires.

The Washington Post has included some great infographics on what this all means in money terms (click through graphic for full story).


Dahlia Lithwick has a great take on things on Slate, in which she analyses Chief Justice John Roberts' majority opinion (plurality, technically, Clarence Thomas wants to get rid of all donation limits completely, in comparison to Stephen Breyers who wrote the dissent.

Lithwick writes:

And why does this collective speech matter? Why are we talking about corruption?  Because, writes Breyer: “Where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard. Insofar as corruption cuts the link between political thought and political action, a free marketplace of political ideas loses its point.” And yes, there is a silent “duh” in there.

She gets to the punch, however, in her analysis of where the real long term impact of this awful decision lies,  which is to make Breyers' highly cynical view of money and corruption in politics a reality.  The dangers of this are real, particularly in circumstances where across the developed world voting and political participation rates have declined as political ideologies have converged on a centre ground and voters' sense of impotence increases:

In which case McCutcheon is a self-fulfilling prophecy in exactly the way Breyer predicts: Money doesn’t just talk. It also eventually forces the public to understand that we don’t much matter. It silences. It already has. 

What a chilling prospect.

When crossing the street became criminal

Way back in the day when for a few months I first gave writing a blog a bash, I wrote a post about an elderly British gentleman and his experience of being arrested (using what would not pass for reasonable force in a British court) and his subsequent experience of the American criminal justice system.

His experience came to mind last month, in the much reported case of an elderly Chinese man who was again subjected to what would appear to be an unreasonable use of force by the NYPD during his arrest.

In both cases the men were arrested for the uniquely American crime of jaywalking.  I asked on Facebook at the time why was jaywalking an issue for American police.  A friend (hi Carm!) came back with the not unreasonable suggestion that:

Costco v Sam's Club/Walmart

Costco pays its workers 40% more, on average, than Sam's Club, and offers a very generous health insurance plan.

Despite the prevailing weakness in the U.S. retail sector, Costco has recorded impressive sales growth in the last few quarters. The firm's comparable-store sales grew at an average pace of more than 5% for the last three quarters. The biggest drivers fueling this new growth include the company's rapidly swelling membership base and the robust growth of the warehouse industry in the country. Costco's core value proposition, strong private labels, and ancillary businesses have also been at the helm of this progress.

Costco: One of the Leading Retailers Defying the Big Box Apocalypse

 Sam's Club is laying off over 2,000 workers; Costco is expanding.

Rick Ungar addressed precisely this point last summer in Forbes: 'Walmart Pays Workers Poorly And Sinks While Costco Pays Workers Well And Sails-Proof That You Get What You Pay For', along with a bunch of other commentators, all concluding that Costco is going to eat Walmart's lunch.

This is why Obama is following up his call to "Give America a Raise" in last night's State of the Union address with a speech at at Costco in Maryland today.

His message is pretty clear: paying a decent wage is good for business as well as good for employees and the economy.

Mitt

I was intrigued to see this tweet appear in my Twitter feed yesterday morning.

Thank you @MittRomney for slow jamming the news with us last night. Ohhhh yeah.… http://t.co/NJK90niIKM
— jimmy fallon (@jimmyfallon) January 25, 2014

I couldn't help but wonder what on earth would prompt Mitt Romney to emerge, over a year after his defeat in the 2012 Presidential election, to slowjam the news on Fallon, a few days before Obama's State of the Union address.

Oh East is East, and West is West

I listened the other day to an interview of Jamie Bryson, leading flegger shit-stirrer flag protester and putative European election candidate (that'll be a laugh).  Now wee Jamie is not exactly famous for his joined-up thinking (in fact there are probably those who would be pleasantly surprised if he has managed joined-up writing), but there was a section of the interview that got me thinking.

Jamie was asked to imagine a world where he was First Minister of Northern Ireland, and asked whether he would share government with Sinn Féin.  Unsurprisingly he immediately ruled it out; the interviewer (David McCann) pressed him if he would share government with parties linked to loyalist paramilitaries.  Here is Jamie's response:

Personally I believe that the IRA were terrorists who set out to destroy this country. Now if the British government had allowed the UDR, RUC and the British army to take on the IRA as they wanted to…there would never have been a need for the likes of the UVF. Unfortunately the British government did not let the good men of the UDR, RUC and the British army take on the IRA, so that is why Loyalist paramilitaries came into being.

David McCann then pointed out to Jamie that the UVF was formed in 1966 (partly in response to rising tensions surrounding the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising), three years before the Provisional IRA came into existence in response to the Official IRA's failure to protect Catholic families and homes from loyalist mobs during rioting in Belfast in the summer of 1969 (1500 Catholics were forced from their homes), and from the predations of the RUC and the 'B' Specials (Ulster Special Constabulary) - the quasi-military, and almost exclusively Protestant, reserve police force of the RUC.  (I'm not trying to engage in what John Hume used to call 'whataboutery' here, just providing context for those who may not be familiar).  The depressing chronicle below provides ample context.