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Democracy is Chaotic - when it is done right.

Kirkhill

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Media Contempt for Political Deliberation
But passage of a $1.7 trillion spending bill no one has read is seen as wondrous for democracy.


The House of Representatives’ struggle to elect a speaker has been repeatedly defined as “chaotic” by mainstream media outlets. Apparently, deliberation and debate are signs of disorder and are not to be desired in our society. While the phrase “threat to our democracy” has become increasingly trite due to its ubiquity in the news, media members who frequently employ it are often blind to their own hypocrisy, which is best illustrated by their apparent contempt for political deliberation. Although deliberation and debate are key components of our nation’s form of government, many journalists seem to want our government to take action quickly and often but are less concerned with that action’s quality or the process that gives rise to it.

Journalists often assess the “productivity” of Congress by tallying how many laws our legislative body passes. In early December, David Boaz of the Cato Institute argued that this is an extremely poor way to evaluate Congress. He’s right

While legitimate debate about who should be the Speaker of the House has been negatively labeled as “chaotic,” there was very little concern raised in the media over the frenetic process that led to the omnibus spending package at the end of 2022. The $1.7 trillion package, which totaled over 4,000 pages of text, was released in the middle of the night just days before it was to be voted on.

There has also been relative silence about the lack of debate allowed in the House of Representatives over the past six years. As former Michigan Representative Justin Amash occasionally points out on Twitter, there have been a grand total of 0 votes allowed on floor-offered amendments in the House of Representatives since the end of 2016. When our nation’s law-making body is micromanged from the top down and precluded from considering amendments to proposed bills, our elected leaders are not engaging in a deliberative process. More bills may be passed with greater haste, but too much power resides in a small number of political leaders.

The article is American but the sentiments apply to Canada as well. Parliament, in Canada, is not a deliberative chamber. The PMO strives for efficiency in the delivery of deliverables. It gives classes in deliverability.

PMO - Project Manager's Office?

The bureaucrats, technocrats and apparatchiks of the world, in the Civil Services and in the apparatchik's paradise known as the EU, aspire to efficiency. The chaos of parliament is anathema to them and should be avoided at all cost. That ultimately is why they variously sneer at, laugh at and detest Britain's system.

The tale of Brexit, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Covid, Northern Ireland, Ukraine and JEF is entirely too complex and chaotic for their liking. The unpredictability is chaotic. They see the feature as a bug.

So does the Trudeau faction, in my opinion.

The worst of all solutions except the alternatives.
 
If it happens on the legislature floor, it's "chaotic" and the nation is "ungovernable". If approximately the same thing happens beforehand in the backrooms, the vapid nitwits who write news copy don't know and don't care.

The only foolish thing about the recent example is that by taking it to the legislature floor, the party with only a narrow majority risked allowing the minority party to make the choice.
 
I kind of like the idea of "parliament" modelling a "barney", people passionately fighting their corners, then finding a solution and heading to the bars only to do it all again tomorrow.

Fight clean and fair. And know that it doesn't have to be personal.
 
Another article conforming to my biases.

Notably, what has unnerved so many in Washington is that this speakership debate was not just largely public but also unscripted. It was an actual deliberation, conducted in front of the American people. While repellent to many, it just might be something that voters could get accustomed to.

 

I've always liked this one. Seems fitting right now.


Democracy​

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.

From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.

It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.

From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.

It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!

It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on ...

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.

But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
https://lyricstranslate.com
 
Based on this information I'd suggest that we are in a crisis of the good ol', historic, 'Good vs. Evil' type:

state-of-democracy-around-the-world-2023.jpg

I struggle with the good and the evil designations these days

an establishment coup,

..the world’s omnipotent reserve managers have not lost confidence in this country.

Nor has the Truss mini-Budget done lasting damage to British economic credibility as many feared. What it told the world is that the institutional system can act with speed and ruthless efficiency in dealing with a wayward government.

The Bank of England won plaudits from global peers for putting out a dangerous brush-fire, while at the same time refusing to accommodate fiscal adventurism. The Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility emerged stronger.

This cathartic episode may have been an establishment coup...

Sez Ambrose Evans-Pritchard


I am thrilled to no end that Ambrose is optimistic. I fear he might be in the minority in cheering the ability of the money men to topple duly elected governments that get out of line and do the popular things.

If you want to know why truck horns were blaring in Bytown, there you have your answer.

For additional proof you might want to look at

There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

This is the clearest statement of Corporatism in Action since the Corporatist agenda was defined in 1891.




And if you want to know where we go from here you might want to consider this statement of how the authoritarian agenda manages occasional defeats like having their guardians run away and leave them exposed to the popular masses. Italy surrendered to the Allies in September 1943. Rome was occupied by liberal democrats on June 6 1944. The Vatican had been relying on Mussolini to maintain it position as advisor to authoritarians and corporatists since 1929. Along with Franco, Salazar and others like Peron.

In December 1944, the Vatican issued this


Major sub-head.

The Problem of Democracy

As D&B's democracy map at the head of the page shows, the Vatican assured its followers that there were many types of "Democracy" including Democracy for The Real People of Real Nations led by proper Elites. The popular masses weren't Real People and they can be ignored (if they can't be shepherded).

The solution was for the newly forming institutions, like the United Nations and new national parliaments to be seized by the proper Elites. And for new supra-national organizations to be created. The Authoritarian version of the "Long March Through The Institutions"

And thus, the modern map of "Democracies".

And the masses increasingly ignoring the ballot box and blowing truck horns in frustration.




And it doesn't matter a tuppeny toss about which church you go to, or whether your God is Allah or the IPCC, it is all about Elites and Masses.
 
The "Democracy Index" isn't a very good measure. US voters are asked to chime in regularly and frequently on long lists of elected positions and issues - more than any other country I can think of, subject to correction - but apparently the US is a "flawed democracy". (Reveals a flawed methodology/situated estimate - GIGO.) An obvious consequence is that democracy in the US is likely to be chaotic.
 
Education - educating all women, giving them equal rights, opportunities and realising them as proper 100% citizens of a society, those are the reasons for a society to have less children.



1950"Education? Not too much! Our ancestors bequeathed us a heritage of poverty and ignorance and it would be tantamount to betrayal to educate our people" (translation).
1950These words were spoken by Antoine Rivard, lawyer, Union nationale MLA and Solicitor General of Quebec from 1950 to 1960
1950His leader, Maurice Duplessis, also had a strange concept of "education."
1950He "likened it to alcohol", and "some people can't hold their liquor" (translation).
1950For years, these two men and other Union nationale MLAs declared that Quebec had the best education system in the world.




The Best Education System in the World circa 1962

196254% of Quebec adults aged 25 had no education beyond the sixth grade
1962Teaching staff – comprised primarily of religious community members
1961Black Americans aged 25 to 29 averaged an additional year of schooling compared to French Canadians of the same age group.
1960Half of youths aged 15 to 19 no longer attended school.
1960This generation mirrored earlier generations
19399 Public Libraries in Quebec for French Quebecers
193917 Public Libraries in Quebec for English Quebecers


The Alternative

1939460 Public Libraries in Ontario
1883Carnegie opens his first library at Dunfermline - the first of 2509
1883Carnegie Libraries - Opened by Carnegie in Dunfermline - 29 August
1850UK Public Library Act

1796The Andersonian Library founded concurrently with the Institution - 2000 volumes from Anderson's personal collection
1756Wanlockhead Miner's Library established as a subscription library - Scotland's second - established in the Lead Hills
1741Leadhills working class subscription library opens
1731Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia Library
1725Author Allan Ramsay opens a circulating library in Edinburgh


The Mechanics Institutes - a key element in democratizing education - it created technical colleges instead of seminaries


1775Boulton and Watt go into partnership selling steam engines
1796The Birmingham Brotherly Society was founded in 1796 by local mechanics to additional mechanics - civil and mechanical engineers
1796The demand for mechanics was driven by the success of the Boulton-Watt steam engines of Birmingham - designed by James Watt, late of the University of Glasgow.
1796Anderson’s Institute of Glasgow was the first technical college to provide scientific instruction with particular reference to the practical application of scientific ideas.
1796It was the first in the world to provide systematic evening classes in science and its application
1796It was the first to admit women unreservedly on the same terms as men
1799The parish schools of Saltcoats, Ayrshire offered arithmetic for 5/- per quarter, bookkeeping at 10/6 and navigation at one guinea.
1799Ardrossan had been offering geometry, trigonometry and navigation since the 1740s and Ayr geography and navigation since 1728
1806The London Institution was an educational institution making scientific education widely available in the capital to people such as the Dissenters who adhered to non-orthodox religious beliefs and were consequently barred from attending Oxford University or Cambridge University
1821The Edinburgh School of Arts formed as the first of the Mechanics Institutes
1821By the 1850s there were some 700 Mechanics Instiutes across the UK and overseas and by 1900 there were 9000 all around the world.
1821Its purpose was to "address societal needs by incorporating fundamental scientific thinking and research into engineering solutions"
1821Its first lecture was on chemistry, and within a month it was subscribed to by 452 men who each paid a quarterly subscription fee.
1821These new institutions gave classes, and included libraries, and apparatus to be used for experiments and technical education.


Canada - The Rebellions, Strachan, McGill and Ryerson


1807Upper Canada's Grammar School Act of 1807 provided the first public funds for schools in what would become Ontario. 8 schools were opened.
1807The Lower Canada District Public Schools Act of 1807, showed the government's willingness to support the costs of education and even the salary of a schoolmaster. This was an important first step in the creation of nondenominational schools.
1816The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning (RIAL) was authorized to operate two new Royal Grammar Schools, in Quebec City and in Montreal. This was a turning point for public education in Lower Canada as the schools were created by legislation, the District Public Schools Act of 1807, which showed the government's willingness to support the costs of education and even the salary of a schoolmaster. This was an important first step in the creation of nondenominational schools. When James McGill died in 1813 his bequest was administered by the RIAL. Of the original two Royal Grammar Schools, in 1846 one closed and the other merged with the High School of Montreal. By the mid-19th century the RIAL had lost control of the other eighty-two grammar schools it had administered.[44] However, in 1853 it took over the High School of Montreal from the school's board of directors and continued to operate it until 1870.[45][46] Thereafter, its sole remaining purpose was to administer the McGill bequest on behalf of the private college. The RIAL continues to exist today; it is the corporate identity that runs the university and its various constituent bodies, including the former Macdonald College (now Macdonald Campus), the Montreal Neurological Institute, and the Royal Victoria College (the former women's college turned residence). Since the revised Royal Charter of 1852, The Trustees of the RIAL are the Board of Governors of McGill University.
1821McGill College received a royal charter from King George IV. The Charter provided the College should be deemed and taken as a University, with the power of conferring degrees
1823Law Officers of the Crown determined that both the Church of Scotland and the Church of England were entitled to a share of the Upper Canada Clergy Reserves
1826Sermons from John Strachan, Anglican Archdeacon of York, Upper Canada, were published asserting that the Anglican church was, by law, the established church of Upper Canada. Methodists were singled out as American and therefore disloyal. Money was requested of the crown to allow the Anglican church to maintain ties to Great Britain. As Ryerson was the son of a Loyalist, this was an abomination.[3] He emerged as Episcopal Methodism's most articulate defender in the public sphere by publishing articles (at first anonymously) and later books that argued against the views of Methodism's chief rival John Strachan and other members of the powerful Family Compact.
1826Methodist Ryerson, Loyalist, opposes Strachan over Clergy Reserves - claims dissenters have as much right to them as Anglicans
1826Strachan claims Methodists are Yankee radicals and have no claim on the Clergy Reserves or to be in Canada
1829Ryerson was also elected (by one vote) to serve as the founding editor of Canadian Methodism's weekly denominational newspaper, the Christian Guardian, established in York, Upper Canada, in 1829 and which was also Canada's first religious newspaper.[4] Ryerson used the paper to argue for the rights of Methodists in the province and, later, to help convince rank-and-file Methodists that a merger with British Wesleyans (effected in 1833[5]) was in their best interest. Ryerson was castigated by the reformist press at that time for apparently abandoning the cause of reform and becoming, at least as far as they were concerned, a Tory.
1832The Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada passed legislation in 1832 providing for all income arising from the estates to be segregated from other Crown property and dedicated for educational purposes.
1836Bishop’s University can trace its roots back to 1836 when Bishop's College School, a “Grammar School in connection with the College,” was founded as the Lennoxville Classical School. The University section, Bishop's College was established by Bishop George Jehoshaphat Mountain on December 9, 1843, in Lennoxville, Quebec, for the education of members of the Church of England and erected into a university in 1853.[6] The school was founded by Bishop Mountain, the third Anglican bishop of Quebec, as a liberal arts college
1837Canadian Rebellions
1838Canadian Rebellions
1838Acadia began as an extension of Horton Academy (1828), which was founded in Horton, Nova Scotia, by Baptists from Nova Scotia and Queen's College (1838).[10] The college was later named Acadia College.[11] Acadia University, established at Wolfville, Nova Scotia in 1838 has a strong Baptist religious affiliation. It was designed to prepare men for the ministry and to supply education for lay members
1838Ryerson assumes the editorship in 1835 of Canadian Methodism's weekly denominational newspaper, the Christian Guardian, established in York, Upper Canada, in 1829 and which was also Canada's first religious newspaper. again at his brother John's urging from 1838 to 1840
1840Clergy Reserves in Canada Act 1840
1841Queen's University Kingston opens as a Presbyterian College
1843Strachan creates his Anglican university at King's College - chartered in 1827
1843Mount Allison University is a secular (but United Church-affiliated) primarily undergraduate liberal arts university, established at Sackville, New Brunswick on January 19, 1843. The university was named after Charles Frederick Allison, in honour of his gift of land and money.[8] Its origins were steeped in the Methodist faith and it was designed to prepare men for the ministry and to supply education for lay members.[9] The university was chartered on April 14, 1849.
1844Egerton Ryerson took over as Chief Superintendent 2500 Common (elementary) Schools in Upper Canada
1846Ryerson lobbies for Free Education in Upper Canada for all, including Aboriginals - Origin of the Residential System

Universal Education

1870Gladstone passes the Elementary Education Act funding Free Education
1872Scotland makes education compulsory and centrally funds local schools
1875Government of Quebec abolishes the Ministry of Education


Edit: I mentioned I had been taking some time digging into my history studies.

As I was doing this my mind was going back 50 years to Mr Ken Armstrong of the History Department at Thomas A Stewart Secondary School in Peterborough. He made more of an impression than either one of us thought at the time.
 
The "Democracy Index" isn't a very good measure. US voters are asked to chime in regularly and frequently on long lists of elected positions and issues - more than any other country I can think of, subject to correction - but apparently the US is a "flawed democracy". (Reveals a flawed methodology/situated estimate - GIGO.) An obvious consequence is that democracy in the US is likely to be chaotic.

Then there's the whole 'insurrection' thing....

January 6 Impeachment GIF by GIPHY News
 
Then there's the whole 'insurrection' thing....

January 6 Impeachment GIF by GIPHY News
Unruly citizens aren't a mark against democratic institutions. Somehow the system manages to resolve close elections using the rules set in advance, and it passes unnoticed by the "democracy in peril" hand-wringers. The usual processes went on in spite of protestors, not because of them.
 
Until this happens

fire.jpg


And then this

2017-02-13-1486996313-8450919-ReichstagFiredecreeNYT.jpg


And then all bets are off.

Yup. I went there.

Stop apologizing for morons who are easily swayed by unscrupulous megalomaniacs.

There's a very thin line between a strong democracy and one that just dodged a bullet and frankly it's a line held by only a handful of people. A few dozen in the wrong place at that time could easily have made a disastrous difference. Where would that democracy have been on the 6th if Pence had sided with Trump and walked out of the Capitol and not finished the process?

🍻
 
The US has managed to hold onto its democratic institutions a lot better than many other countries over the same period. If it actually fails, critics will have a point. Until then, "anti-democracy/fascism is always descending on America but landing elsewhere" remains the rule, and safety concerns about imminent Hitlerization are mere hysteria. Other countries with meek citizens are not to be admired; all it suggests to me is that they never outgrew whatever kind of ruling system they used to have.
 
Until this happens

fire.jpg


And then this

2017-02-13-1486996313-8450919-ReichstagFiredecreeNYT.jpg


And then all bets are off.

Yup. I went there.

Stop apologizing for morons who are easily swayed by unscrupulous megalomaniacs.

There's a very thin line between a strong democracy and one that just dodged a bullet and frankly it's a line held by only a handful of people. A few dozen in the wrong place at that time could easily have made a disastrous difference. Where would that democracy have been on the 6th if Pence had sided with Trump and walked out of the Capitol and not finished the process?

🍻

Stop fearing the worst of people just because you had a bad experience.

Not every crack in the sidewalk hides a sinkhole.

Edit: Some authoritarians proclaim themselves fascists. Others are Communists, Progressives, Presbyterians or Anglicans. A pox on all authoritarian houses.

If the choice is between Authoritarian Rigidity or anarchy and worn-out jeans - I'm reaching for the needle and thread.
 
Until this happens

fire.jpg


And then this

2017-02-13-1486996313-8450919-ReichstagFiredecreeNYT.jpg


And then all bets are off.

Yup. I went there.

Stop apologizing for morons who are easily swayed by unscrupulous megalomaniacs.

There's a very thin line between a strong democracy and one that just dodged a bullet and frankly it's a line held by only a handful of people. A few dozen in the wrong place at that time could easily have made a disastrous difference. Where would that democracy have been on the 6th if Pence had sided with Trump and walked out of the Capitol and not finished the process?

🍻

Well said.

Hopefully, that never happens in Canada.
 
It's Sunday - Kirkhill's Shorter History of Authority and Gods in the Western World

Have you ever bought a car and been told by the saleman: "I have to talk to the boss?"​
A second opinion and someone to blame

Individuals​

Talk to gods​

Shamans and Oracles​

Temples and Priests​
Meeting place, time keepers​
Markets, judges​

Who watches the clock and judges when the time is right to open the market?
Who follows the clock so they can get to the market on time?

9500 BC
Gobekli Tepe​
8820 BC
Stonehenge Marker Posts​
3400 BC
Kushim, the Sumerian accountant signs off on 18 accounting records​
3100 BC
Orkneys​
3100 BC
Newgrange​
3100 BC
Bryn Celli Ddu​
3100 BC
Stonehenge​
3100 BC
Pharaohs - Narmer-Menes​
3100 BC
First Slaves - En-pap X and Sukkalgir held by Gal-Sal of Sumeria - the first named slavemaster​
1400 BC
Moses and Aaron​
753 BC
Romulus self appointed King​
716 BC
Rex Romanorum elected by the clan leaders in the Curiate Assembly​
510 BC
College of Pontiffs - Priests advising the Senate​
Pontifex Maximus - the speaker for the 3 man council, elected by the council​
300 BC
College of Pontiffs packed and committee raised from 3 to 9​
Pontifex Maximus - the speaker for the 9 man council, elected by the council​
82 BC
College of Pontiffs packed and committee raised from 9 to 15 by Sulla​
Pontifex Maximus - the chairman for the 15 man council, elected by a separate committee of 17 from the 25 tribes of Rome, approved by the College​
63 BC
College of Pontiffs of 15​
Pontifex Maximus - the chairman for the 15 man council - Caesar elected​
27 BC
College of Pontiffs packed and committee raised from 15 to 25 by Augustus​
Pontifex Maximus - the chairman for the 25 man council - role assumed by the Emperor​
27 BC
Emperor-Pontifex Maximus​
The Emperor is Priest​
81
Domitian​
The Emperor is God​
286
Diocletian Division​
Gratian-Emperor​
379
Damasus-Pontifex Maximus​
Theodossius-Emperor​
756
Stephen-Pontifex Maximus​
Pippin-King​
800
Charlemagne-HRE​
Leo-Pontifex Maximus​
1075
Investiture Controversies​
God's authority debated by men​
1122
Concordat of Worms​
God's authority now decided by rules created by men​
1305
Avignon Pontifex Maximus​
God's authority kidnapped by France​
1347
Black Death​
God exerts her authority independent of men​
Pontifex Maximus 1 - Bartolomeo Prignano as Pope Urban VI​
1409
Pontifex Maximus 2 - Robert of Geneva as Pope Clement VII​
Pontifex Maximus 3 - Peter of Candia as Pope Alexander V​
God's authority now vested in one of three men - the magic is gone​
1414
Council of Constance​
Men decided who would have God's authority​
1438
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges Gallicans​
Local men have a say in who would have God's authority​
1517
Luther's Episcopalians​
Local Prince decides who has God's Authority​
1534
Tudor's Anglican Episcopalians​
Local Prince decides who has God's Authority​
1536
Calvin's Presbyterians​
The community at large decides who has God's Authority​
1555
Peace of Augsburg - Cuius regio, euius religio​
Local Prince decides who has God's Authority​
1560
Knox's Scots Confession Prebyterians​
The community at large decides who has God's Authority​
1581
Brown's Congregationalists​
The club decides who has God's Authority​
1591
Arminius's Non-Subscribers​
We don't know who has God's Authority​
1624
Herbert of Cherbury's Deists​
We don't care which God has Authority​
1670
Cambridge's Latitudinarian Platonists​
God and his Authority make for an interesting debate​
1689
Locke's Toleration​
God's Authority is not critical​
1754
Hume's Atheists​
God has no Authority​
1791
Madison's Bill of Rights​
God has no role in the State​
1869
Huxley's Agnostics​
It doesn't matter who has God's Authority​
1882
Nietzsche's Atheists​
God is Dead​
1899
Individualists​
I am my own Authority​
1960
Jimmy Hamilton's Personal Responsibility​
We're all going to Hell our own gait​
2023
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Wells​
Who Cares?​

Jimmy Hamilton is the wisest man I ever knew.

Interesting to see the Romans perfected the art of changing the rules and stuffing institutions to get the desired outcome.
 
....there is a deeper problem with the way our politics are done and our state is run. Our constitution says the Crown in Parliament is sovereign. A government is formed when a party or coalition can command a majority in the House of Commons, and its ministers act in the name of the King. The Commons, elected by the public, is the ultimate source of political power and democratic legitimacy, and as such it enjoys primacy over the Lords. No parliament can bind its successors, and any parliament may change the law as it deems necessary.
This model has served us well for generations. It brings clarity, accountability, and – excluding the grotesque failure of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act during the Brexit wars – a clear mechanism when a government loses its majority in the Commons. Then an election must be called, and the public must decide.

Politicians should not believe that they – or the civil service – can micromanage the state, let alone wider society. But they should understand that it is their job, in the end, to make sure things work. If the law needs to change, they should change it. If the state is not working, they should reform it.

It is not up to the courts to decide the rules.

Politicians have lost faith in politics. This explains the state we are in​

Our MPs have voluntarily handed their powers and responsibilities to quangos, bureaucrats and judges
NICK TIMOTHY23 July 2023 • 7:42pm
Nick Timothy


Prime Minister's Questions at the House of Commons in London, Britain, July 13, 2023.

The House of Commons is not what it once was
Why is it, so many people ask, that things do not seem to get done anymore? From new housing to high-speed rail, from policing the streets to deporting illegal immigrants, we are promised action, but so often little changes.
In a complex and interconnected world, politicians cannot always guarantee the outcomes they want: inflation, for example, started as the world economy reopened after the pandemic and Russia attacked Ukraine.
Sometimes policies designed with the best of intentions simply do not work in practice: consider the Coalition-era NHS reforms or the pension rules that divert our savings from UK equities.
Sometimes the problem is a lack of strategic clarity, causing policies to run counter to one another. Here the best example is the stated desire of successive home secretaries to cut immigration, prevented by the reality of our further and higher education systems and poor workforce planning in the NHS. Sometimes the problem is that politicians will the ends – more house building, for example – but not the means: in this case planning reform.
But there is a deeper problem with the way our politics are done and our state is run. Our constitution says the Crown in Parliament is sovereign. A government is formed when a party or coalition can command a majority in the House of Commons, and its ministers act in the name of the King. The Commons, elected by the public, is the ultimate source of political power and democratic legitimacy, and as such it enjoys primacy over the Lords. No parliament can bind its successors, and any parliament may change the law as it deems necessary.
This model has served us well for generations. It brings clarity, accountability, and – excluding the grotesque failure of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act during the Brexit wars – a clear mechanism when a government loses its majority in the Commons. Then an election must be called, and the public must decide.
And yet things are not really working as they should. Parliament has, for example, voted to make the scheme to remove illegal immigrants to Rwanda operational. Yet, 15 months after the deal was struck, the policy is stuck – the Court of Appeal having ruled it incompatible, on novel and narrow grounds, with Article Three of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Parliament has tightened the law to make it clearer to the police that they must prevent the disruptive protests that bring road traffic to a standstill, hold up public transport and interrupt high-profile events. The changes were unnecessary really – obstructing roads has long been an offence – but College of Policing guidance instructed the police to reason with protestors, not arrest them. Even now, officers stand by as criminal protestors film propaganda messages.
So often what Parliament decides is overturned by courts and watered down by public bodies through their own internal policies and published guidance. The Crown Prosecution Service, for example, elects not to prosecute any number of criminal offences, from drug crimes to illegal immigration. The drive to extend London’s Ulez and create equivalent schemes elsewhere derives in part from court rulings in which judges ordered ministers to go further in reducing nitrogen dioxide emissions.
Elsewhere, one part of the state is stopping another from doing what it is supposed to do. Natural England has blocked the construction of 160,000 new homes, citing nutrient neutrality rules and the protection of sites and species that could, with just a little imagination, be protected even if building went ahead. One part of government wants to get tough with the water companies, improve performance and increase infrastructure investment, while others are sanguine about the systemic over-reward of investors and the failures of the regulator.
Lawfare – made worse by Blair/Brown-era legislation like the Human Rights and Equality Acts – looms large. The Home Office funds many of the asylum charities that launch legal proceedings against it in their war against immigration controls. The UK signed the Aarhus Convention, which means the barriers to entry for litigants seeking to stop important infrastructure projects are absurdly low: in environmental cases complainants’ costs are capped at £10,000. Ministers are afraid to issue guidance to schools grappling with pupils “socially transitioning” between genders because they are advised they will be in breach of equality laws.
The state itself is badly misaligned. The devolution of power has occurred in a haphazard fashion over the last quarter of a century, and we need a clearer common understanding of who, ultimately, is accountable for what.
More prosaically, the geography of the state is a mess. If we want more place-based work across different agencies and organisations, it makes little sense for there to be no consistency in the boundaries between, for example, integrated care systems, police forces, fire brigades, probation services, prosecutors and the courts. The list goes on.
None of this has come about in a fit of spontaneous disorder and chaos. The root causes are political decision-making with little regard for operational reality; legislation that sets lofty goals without realistic plans to achieve them, making ministers vulnerable to judicial second-guessing; macro legal frameworks that politicians understand cause real problems yet lack the intellectual courage to change; international treaties that are treated as de facto constitutional laws; and the surrender of executive power to an administrative class that takes political decisions – police chiefs, quangos, regulators, and supposedly expert committees among others.
Politicians should not believe that they – or the civil service – can micromanage the state, let alone wider society. But they should understand that it is their job, in the end, to make sure things work. If the law needs to change, they should change it. If the state is not working, they should reform it. The root cause of all these problems is a passive tolerance of decline and failure, and a political class that has lost confidence in the power of politics. That, in the end, is why these days nothing seems to get done.
 
"Politicians have lost faith in politics."

I doubt it. The prize (power) keeps getting bigger, so it increasingly attracts people mostly interested in self-satisfaction who are unburdened by ethics and not necessarily particularly competent. Ambition and shamelessness enable them to elbow aside the hard-working well-intentioned public-spirited people, that legend has it, exist. It is obvious by inspection that the best and brightest people in politics are not the ones calling the shots. The power in the hands of voters - infrequent one-shot elections - is not up to the task of policing politicians, which must be done on an approximately monthly or even weekly basis. That must come from politicians, who must be willing to jettison their own. But that means risking acquisition and retention of power.

Every time a conversation about dealing with unsatisfactory political conduct swerves into the "well, we must be practical and not hasty" lane, ends-justify-means has won the day.
 
What do you make of this one Brad?


The elite’s war on wealth​

Ownership, the bedrock of prosperity, is under attack
July 20, 2023 | 10:45 am
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Written By:
Carol Roth


Wealth comes from ownership. Being involved in the financial industry for nearly thirty years, and spending the past dozen-plus years in the media helping people create economic freedom and wealth for themselves and their families, I know that wealth being derived from ownership is an indisputable truth. More concretely, wealth comes from the ownership of assets that increase in value over time.
Ownership is a subject people tend to greatly misunderstand. We misconstrue where wealth comes from, and we misinterpret the benefits of hard work and taking risks. You can meet a poor construction worker putting in eighty hours a week for someone else. You can find professional athletes declaring bankruptcy as soon as their multimillion-dollar contracts end. And you can find guys sailing their boats who haven’t been to an office in years. That’s because it’s not just how much money you make, but how you manage it and put it to work for you.
Asset ownership provides the ability for people to increase their wealth exponentially — by several multiples of the original investment. This is something that working and earning alone cannot do.
For many Americans, creating generational wealth has come from owning homes that have appreciated in value. Some individuals hold stock and other financial instruments via brokerage accounts and 401(k) plans that have largely increased in value over time. Millions of Americans have built businesses that meet the wants and needs of customers and have created wealth through that process. Others have invested in alternative scarce assets, whether they be precious metals, art or even trading cards.

So, if there was an institutional, governmental desire for more people to become wealthy and grow that wealth, making it easier to invest and gain ownership would be a priority.
Today’s reality is just the opposite. Ownership — and the opportunities for individual wealth creation and economic freedom that come with it — is under attack.
I am known as someone with a commonsense approach to just about everything, so when I first heard that the World Economic Forum (WEF), an international organization run by Klaus Schwab and connected to a cadre of elites that includes business, financial and political leaders, put out a set of predictions for this decade that included the disappearance of ownership, I figured it was a conspiracy theory.
The WEF has courted, developed and associated with business magnates and political heavyweights like Bill Gates, Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and former chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel. The WEF hosts a fancy networking forum in Davos, Switzerland, yearly. They put out “thought leadership” around social, political, business and economic concepts. Surely there must have been some mistake that this organization littered with the global elite would be predicting the end of private property?
It didn’t take much research to find that it was right out in the open. The WEF’s 2030 predictions included the stark warning, under the guise of sunshine and rainbows, “You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.” And that’s just the beginning.

Yes, property rights and the ownership they convey, the cornerstone of freedom and wealth-creation opportunities, have come under fire. And I am quite certain that owning nothing and being devoid of the opportunities that come with ownership makes you poor and unfree, not… happy.
What is being said by the elites aloud worldwide is playing out in real time in the US. But why?
Everyone, including your own government, wants what you have. More accurately, they are in desperate need of what you have — your wealth, both today and in the future.
These allied forces are on a quest to take your wealth and, by extension, your freedoms for their benefit, their prosperity and, ultimately, their survival. Without it, their very existence is threatened.
Over the year following the March 2020 Covid lockdowns and mandates, we saw the most historic wealth transfer of all time, enabled by the US government and the Federal Reserve, alongside connected financial institutions. That multitrillion-dollar transfer went from Main Street to Wall Street. The already wealthy and well-connected saw their wealth inflated at the expense of average Americans, including savers and retirees, as well as the backbone of the US economy, small business. The coordination of the big players in the financial sector along with the government has benefited the wealthiest at your expense.
On the tail end of this giveaway, quite predictably, the highest inflation in forty years took hold. Once again, those who had the least bore the brunt of this burden. Then, two years later, the same central planning powers extracted trillions of dollars from the stock market, including from 401(k)s and other individual retirement accounts.

These represent just a few battles in a much larger, coordinated and dangerous endeavor. It is all part of a multi-pronged shift toward a new financial world order where they own everything and you own nothing.
These shifts in the world economy are driven by two underlying trends. The first is the modern drivers of wealth. The elite know where the valuable resources are in the world and where new value can be created, extracted, or conquered. They know who holds wealth today and where they can get it from in the future. And they know how they plan to take every penny of it that they can.
When the Constitution and Bill of Rights were framed in the eighteenth century, America was primarily an agrarian society. Property rights and the wealth that you could create were heavily tied to land ownership.
Then, as industry advanced and the monetary system evolved, individuals were able to build businesses and create wealth via investment.
Americans prospered through hard work, ingenuity, thriftiness and risk-taking, all enhanced and protected by the founding concepts of individual rights, including property rights.
As Americans leveraged their work ethic and the structure that protected their fruitfulness, they became increasingly prosperous — at levels not seen anywhere around the globe at any time in history. Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Report 2022 estimated global wealth at around $463.6 trillion, with 31 percent of that, or around $145.8 trillion, in the hands of Americans.
However, those in charge of safeguarding individual rights — the government — were derelict in their duties. They realized that to take and hold power, they had to make promises and offer “services.” Services that, by the way, they weren’t paying for — you were.

This led to massive increases in spending. As the government spent, given that government doesn’t produce anything of intrinsic value, there were only so many ways to pay for that spending.
Of course, one source of financing government spending is taxation — the taking of a portion of your productivity and wealth.
Another financing route is debt. This leads us to a second, deeper issue: the shifting of the financial world order because of the natural opposition between power and too much debt. Debt isn’t always bad. It can be a powerful investment tool if used to build something worth far more than the debt in the future. But, increasingly, people owe money on things that have little monetary value, and companies and governments owe money to companies and governments that owe even more money.
The US government can’t afford all its spending and has turned time and again to debt as its source of financing (running upwards of $31 trillion, outpacing the GDP and rapidly growing at the time of writing). Debt isn’t a magic payment source because it eventually still needs to be paid. This is ultimately paid from — you guessed it — your productivity. It starts with more taxes to pay for the interest on the debt, making you pay additional money toward “services” you effectively have already purchased by government proxy.
When the government runs out of people who are interested in buying their debt, then they pull an accounting trick and buy (AKA monetize) their own debt. By doing so, it again robs your productivity via debasing the dollars that are a proxy for that productivity.
Government could, of course, cut services, but that would threaten its power. Moreover, as everything is done on your dime, why would they choose this route?
They could also take the wealth and riches of other countries and people via invasions, something that isn’t popular, for obvious reasons. It’s more stealthy and genteel to rob and plunder “legally.”
This works for a while, as people go along with the scheme or perhaps don’t notice what is going on.

But at some point, the financial scheme starts to show cracks. Debt levels get too high. Neither investors nor other countries want to buy new debt. It becomes incredibly costly to service the substantial amount of existing debt. The monetization scheme produces notice- able damage via inflation. Everything starts to unravel — including the financial empire itself.
I will say it again: power and massive debt loads are at odds with each other.
It becomes mathematically impossible for the current trajectory to be sustained. That’s where the desperation kicks in. And new and robust schemes are hatched as a way to continue this spending cycle and protect their power.
The government is desperate and in debt, and you and your fellow citizens represent a massive amount of wealth to be “legally” conquered. As the US’s financial empire is in its twilight, with the government’s behaviors threatening the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency, you are at even more risk of owning nothing. The Federal Reserve’s policies are greatly impacting the soundness of your money and its global financial standing. This ultimately impacts your wealth creation opportunities as well. You may hold dollars, but they are buying you less and less.
That leads us to where we are today. Many people see where we are in the broader financial cycle and where this is going. The elite and well-connected know that the economic reality isn’t sustainable and that it will lead to a new financial world order, as has been the case numerous times throughout history. They have studied it and they want to capitalize upon it.
So, with this knowledge, and the power, wealth and connections to make it happen, the elite are posturing and positioning. They want to influence, create, dictate and, most importantly, come out on top in this new financial world order.
That’s why they are working, often in alliance, together against you. To ensure that you own nothing, because that means they own as much as possible of everything as a global financial reset happens.
With that, in a post-industrial digital age, between fiat currency, technology and elite central planning, it is becoming harder than ever to secure and maintain ownership of anything.
You work hard. You save. You invest. You do all the right things, but you still find that you aren’t able to get ahead. You know that there’s something wrong, but you aren’t exactly sure how it all comes together and how you can fight back.
As I argue in my new book, You Will Own Nothing, the time is now to create a counter-revolution to these forces. It is more clear than ever that as a new financial world order takes shape, the American Dream is under fire and may soon be unattainable. The intention is to hollow out the middle and working class and leave them with nothing. It’s being done via the encroachment of government, Big Tech, big finance and other ruling elite into all aspects of your life. Your rights, your privacy and ultimately your wealth hang in the balance.
This is an excerpt from the book You Will Own Nothing: Your War with a New Financial World Order and How to Fight Back by Carol Roth. Copyright © 2023 by Carol Roth. Reprinted by permission of Broadside Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
 
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