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Democracy Derailed

Daize

Daize

Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2012
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Location
Marseille, France
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Progressive
In the thread http://www.debatepolitics.com/general-political-discussion/134825-shadow-government.html , I make several assumptions which I ask people not to debate because it is not the main subject of the post. In general people have been very polite about not doing so while at the same time indicating that they do not agree with them. This has led me to start this post in order to open debate on the following,

I propose that:

1a)Current democratic governments in the free world (essentially North-America and Europe) have to a lesser or greater extent gone of their rails and no longer fully represent the people's will. In other words, they have gone off course from democratic ideals and are no longer democracies in several important ways, though most retain freedom of expression for now. I believe there is general consensus around this assumption. If you wish to debate it, do so elsewhere. I will not go through a long list of supporting citations but simply reference Mr. Charles H. Ferguson's academy award winning movie “Inside Job” as well as his recent follow-up book “Predator Nation”.

1b) Power is where the money is in our current systems, and money is in the hands of an increasingly smaller number of people whose interests do not coincide with the general population.

I would like to suggest people at least viewing "Inside Job" if not reading "Predator Nation" since I cite them as support for my argument. Inside job is an entertaing and easy to watch movie, hell it won an academy award. 'Course I can't force you too :)
 
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I just realized there is an error in the above text due to copy-pasting. I can no longer edit it, so please simply ignore the phrase "If you wish to debate it, do so elsewhere." Obviously in the context, it makes no sense.
 
Withdrawal of subsidiarity proceeds apace. Allied with a famously sessile electorate, every corrupt gesture takes on thr appearance of something permitted.

In practical terms however, it shouldn't make any significant difference, where the ballot prevails.
 
NoC_T said:
Withdrawal of subsidiarity proceeds apace. Allied with a famously sessile electorate, every corrupt gesture takes on thr appearance of something permitted.

In practical terms however, it shouldn't make any significant difference, where the ballot prevails.
Click to expand...

Does the ballot make any difference though? Many claim that for issues that concern "big money", it does not.
 
Daize said:
Does the ballot make any difference though? Many claim that for issues that concern "big money", it does not.
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Up to and including their choice of sponsor, nothing else makes any difference. No two benefactors are created equal.

That being the case, only the vote can make a difference.
 
Daize said:
My proposition is that it no longer does.
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Start with banning any and all forms of lobbying. And then after that... shrink the size of govt as much as possible. A small govt cannot provide ver much to the people, so there is no prize in attempting to get "sway" one way or the other...
 
NoC_T said:
Are you suggesting democracy's been suspended?
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Democracy has been suspended, you said it yourself, but it has been done so behind closed doors. They have closed the minds of the public and kept people ignorant, so they can control us. and one of the major ways they did it is by having Romney run against Obama. Both of the agendas are similar and both hurt the country. Ron Paul could have won the election and been a real president for the people, but they changed the rules right before our eyes. The GOP is throwing a clown at 500 million dollar Obama and both parties want Obama to win and sell the country down the river to the UN and take away our civil rights. Not to mention both sides are letting the income gap get larger and larger, so the people lose even more control. both parties are targeting liberty and Democracy by leaving us thinking we have no choice and they are being funded by the ever richer private sector of America. politicians are lying figureheads and obama is the president of the liars, he has distracted the public from the truth at every turn. thats why neither party could allow a Ron Paul nomination to happen.
 
armor99 said:
A small govt cannot provide ver much to the people, so there is no prize in attempting to get "sway" one way or the other...
Click to expand...
You have been sold a bill of goods, precisely by the same groups buying off government.
 
Daize said:
In the thread http://www.debatepolitics.com/general-political-discussion/134825-shadow-government.html , I make several assumptions which I ask people not to debate because it is not the main subject of the post. In general people have been very polite about not doing so while at the same time indicating that they do not agree with them. This has led me to start this post in order to open debate on the following,

I propose that:

1a)Current democratic governments in the free world (essentially North-America and Europe) have to a lesser or greater extent gone of their rails and no longer fully represent the people's will. In other words, they have gone off course from democratic ideals and are no longer democracies in several important ways, though most retain freedom of expression for now. I believe there is general consensus around this assumption. If you wish to debate it, do so elsewhere. I will not go through a long list of supporting citations but simply reference Mr. Charles H. Ferguson's academy award winning movie “Inside Job” as well as his recent follow-up book “Predator Nation”.

1b) Power is where the money is in our current systems, and money is in the hands of an increasingly smaller number of people whose interests do not coincide with the general population.

I would like to suggest people at least viewing "Inside Job" if not reading "Predator Nation" since I cite them as support for my argument. Inside job is an entertaing and easy to watch movie, hell it won an academy award. 'Course I can't force you too :)
Click to expand...

Just saw Inside Job.

So not only are the foxes guarding the henhouse, they're charging the farmer for each chicken they eat.

If nothing else, this film provides the most accessible explanation of how the whole mess worked.

And apparently nothing has been done to prevent the same thing from happening again.

Interesting too that the EU has passed some legislation to curb the culture of bonuses in executive compensation but I haven't heard anything about ot in the national discourse on the subject.

Just another of those Things We're Not Supposed To Think About.
 
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Daize said:
In the thread http://www.debatepolitics.com/general-political-discussion/134825-shadow-government.html , I make several assumptions which I ask people not to debate because it is not the main subject of the post. In general people have been very polite about not doing so while at the same time indicating that they do not agree with them. This has led me to start this post in order to open debate on the following,

I propose that:

1a)Current democratic governments in the free world (essentially North-America and Europe) have to a lesser or greater extent gone of their rails and no longer fully represent the people's will. In other words, they have gone off course from democratic ideals and are no longer democracies in several important ways, though most retain freedom of expression for now. I believe there is general consensus around this assumption. If you wish to debate it, do so elsewhere. I will not go through a long list of supporting citations but simply reference Mr. Charles H. Ferguson's academy award winning movie “Inside Job” as well as his recent follow-up book “Predator Nation”.

1b) Power is where the money is in our current systems, and money is in the hands of an increasingly smaller number of people whose interests do not coincide with the general population.

I would like to suggest people at least viewing "Inside Job" if not reading "Predator Nation" since I cite them as support for my argument. Inside job is an entertaing and easy to watch movie, hell it won an academy award. 'Course I can't force you too :)
Click to expand...

Well, we live in a Republic, so can't really comment.
 
What if...? said:
Just saw Inside Job.

So not only are the foxes guarding the henhouse, they're charging the farmer for each chicken they eat.
Click to expand...

Lol, that is a perfect description!

What really pisses me off though is that despite the enormous crimes (even by current laws) committed upon not only the American people but the international community as a whole, and the fact that a huge amount of wealth was essentially transferred at gun-point from the people to an extremely small minority that already was hugely rich; no one is in jail, no one has had their illegally gained wealth confiscated, and nothing has been done to avoid an inevitable similar future situation. There is something very very seriously wrong.
 
In order to put people in jail, you have to charge them with actual violation of an actual law and then convince a jury that they in fact did that. Most of the wealth that disappeared during the Great Bush Recession did not move rrom one person to another -- it simply disappeared. One day, your house for example was worth $400K, and the next it was worth $240K. Nobody "made off" with the other $160K.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
In order to put people in jail, you have to charge them with actual violation of an actual law and then convince a jury that they in fact did that. Most of the wealth that disappeared during the Great Bush Recession did not move rrom one person to another -- it simply disappeared. One day, your house for example was worth $400K, and the next it was worth $240K. Nobody "made off" with the other $160K.
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Here is to my view of how some people "made off". Various actors constructed securities which were bound to fail for the commissions they received. They created false values which would inevitably be corrected in return for a % of those values in payment. This was willful destructive behavior that went unpunished in the sense that they have kept their commissions and have not been persecuted for the destruction they caused. In addition, not enough has been done to avoid a similar situation in the future.

Was there illegal activity involved according to current laws? The answer is yes. At the very minimum, the requirement to inform investors of all relevant information in regards to their purchase (I forgot the name of the law here) was constantly breached, and there is enough information available to bring the various perpetrators to court and attempt to convict.
 
Daize said:
Here is to my view of how some people "made off". Various actors constructed securities which were bound to fail for the commissions they received. They created false values which would inevitably be corrected in return for a % of those values in payment. This was willful destructive behavior that went unpunished in the sense that they have kept their commissions and have not been persecuted for the destruction they caused. In addition, not enough has been done to avoid a similar situation in the future. Was there illegal activity involved according to current laws? The answer is yes. At the very minimum, the requirement to inform investors of all relevant information in regards to their purchase (I forgot the name of the law here) was constantly breached, and there is enough information available to bring the various perpetrators to court and attempt to convict.
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Yes, this was all a conspiracy to maximize profits for a relative few, all the while not caring what the downstream effects might be, for a few, or for many, or for everybody. That part of it just didn't enter into the equation. I'll be gone, you'll be gone. It'll all be somebody else's problem.

And as is often the case, it is difficult to prosecute the big fish in the pond. Even though they would have known full well what was going on, there isn't much but circumstantial evidence to connect the big boys at Countrywide, Ameriquest, or New Century (to name just a few) to the small-time individual loan brokers and underwriters or to the small-time individual phony apprasiers who were the ones making all these inherently bad mortgage loans possible. Even though they would have known full well what was going on also, the profit and bonus-enjoying captains of Wall Street's securitizing shops could all claim ignorance on the basis of how well these products had performed in the past. And the stupid bond-rating agencies who stamped so much of this junk AAA have always been off the hook for any liability in depending on their ratings to begin with.

Bottom line is that the big-time guys you want to get are out of reach, and the small-time guys you can reach are not the guys you want to get. Life in the fast lane.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
Bottom line is that the big-time guys you want to get are out of reach, and the small-time guys you can reach are not the guys you want to get. Life in the fast lane.
Click to expand...

Sounds like Obama apologia to me. From my readings, there is a rather extensive set of evidence of Sarbane-Oxley violations (yes I remembered the law, and probably misspelled it), ...enough to convict at least a few higher ups.

If we cannot guillotine a few, what do they have to fear from doing the same later... or sooner :
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/b...d-turning-even-riskier.html?ref=business&_r=0
 
Daize said:
Sounds like Obama apologia to me. From my readings, there is a rather extensive set of evidence of Sarbane-Oxley violations (yes I remembered the law, and probably misspelled it), ...enough to convict at least a few higher ups.
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Close...the act is named for Paul Sarbanes (D-Maryland) and Mike Oxley (R-Ohio). It's usually called SOX or SarbOx.

The act has to do with assuring the completeness and quality of corporate accounting. That was the issue with Enron and various other frauds of that era, but the credit crisis was not an accounting problem at all. It was what people were doing that was the problem there, not how accountants were recording it. In any case, here's a reasonable report on Sarbanes-Oxley as it is today...

Is Sarbanes-Oxley working?
 
Cardinal Fang said:
Close...the act is named for Paul Sarbanes (D-Maryland) and Mike Oxley (R-Ohio). It's usually called SOX or SarbOx.

The act has to do with assuring the completeness and quality of corporate accounting. That was the issue with Enron and various other frauds of that era, but the credit crisis was not an accounting problem at all. It was what people were doing that was the problem there, not how accountants were recording it. In any case, here's a reasonable report on Sarbanes-Oxley as it is today...

Is Sarbanes-Oxley working?
Click to expand...

Yes you have a point, but it seems to me that several articles apply in regards to full disclosure to investors and in regards to financial transactions. These articles were repeatedly and knowingly breached by officers in AIG, GS, etc :

"Enhanced Financial Disclosures
Title IV consists of nine sections. It describes enhanced reporting requirements for financial transactions, including off-balance-sheet transactions, pro-forma figures and stock transactions of corporate officers. It requires internal controls for assuring the accuracy of financial reports and disclosures, and mandates both audits and reports on those controls. It also requires timely reporting of material changes in financial condition and specific enhanced reviews by the SEC or its agents of corporate reports.

Analyst Conflicts of Interest
Title V consists of only one section, which includes measures designed to help restore investor confidence in the reporting of securities analysts. It defines the codes of conduct for securities analysts and requires disclosure of knowable conflicts of interest."

as per:
Sarbanes
 
Daize said:
Yes you have a point, but it seems to me that several articles apply in regards to full disclosure to investors and in regards to financial transactions. These articles were repeatedly and knowingly breached by officers in AIG, GS, etc :
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That's an easy charge to make and a much tougher one to back up. You can't put individuals in jail on the basis of assumptions and generalities concerning corporate behavior as a whole. You have to have specific evidence for specific violations of specific provisions of the law. The higher up the ladder you go, the tougher that becomes, as senior executives are often shielded from knowledge of the details and specifics. That's what junior level executives are for. At the top, the focus is on results. How those get achieved is not such an all-consuming thing. It's a little like Reagan not knowing that Iran/Contra was going on in the White House basement -- a dumb, but in the end effective excuse. In the end here, it all comes back to the top level guys you actually want to get being difficult to go after, and the guys it would be easier to go after being mid-level flunkies that you don't necessarilty want to get.
 
Daize said:
Just like to add the following in general support of my claims in the OP. You will notice in the below link we are talking about definite proof of accounting fraud leading up to the crisis that the DOJ is refusing to prosecute.
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I didn't see any definite proof and it seems like the DOJ is in fact prosecuting this case. It will still come down to finding persuasive evidence of specific acts that violated specific provisions of actual law. It is NOT for instance illegal merely to ignore or reject the advice of internal analysts. That happens every day and should. Some actually criminal aspect will have to be found in these particular rejections, and no hindsight at all will be admissible as evidence for such a criminal aspect.

It is also common practice to shield the identity and protect the confidentiality of whistle-blowers. These often have quite legitimate fears of retaliation against themselves or family members. Confessed "serial whistle-blowers" might indeed be in it for the publicity, but not everyone at all wants to be fêted and paraded around under such circumstances.
 
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