This post will probably win some kind of award for being the most naive post in the history of Blue Mass Group. At least I will bring home some gold (fool’s gold, no doubt).
Back in the Cold War 50’s and 60’s there was an NY outfit named Freedom House –not sure if they were liberals or conservatives, but back during the Big Freeze, what was the diff?–and their shtick was giving ratings to countries depending on whether they were advancing to or retreating from democracy.
I was wondering what rating they would give to American democracy today. I’d say we slipping and slipping badly. Basically, the “demos” are getting tossed out of the “-racy.” I mean, we don’t even get to sit in the cheap seats anymore.
Let’s all strip naked and have the doctor take a good look. Hmm. Here is what Doc sees, and it is, well…”concerning”. There are shadows on the MRI:
• Republican re-districting makes it a big “so-what” that most more Americans vote Democratic
• The epidemic use of filibuster makes majority rule a joke
• Voter suppression laws…I assume you have heard
• Mass Dept of Education and Boston School Committee: unelected
• State secretary of education appointed
• The advent of charter schools and the fact that their leaders now controlling the public school system
• The privatization in education and prisons
• The decline of unions and the continuing attack thereupon
• Citizens United…enough said!
• Gates “Policy-targeted Philanthropy” etc
• Think Tank subversion…drip, drib, drip
• Media concentration
• No doubt developments I have missed…probably because they are too obvious to gather my attention
What moved me to write this piece was the my own personal need to list all these anti-democratic “advances” in one place so I could feel the full heft. And it is hefty.
But the most immediate cause was the hot-hot bromance between the Boston Globe and the Pioneer Institute. I already knew the Globe was dating the Boston Foundation, the Business Roundtable, the Municipal Research Bureau, and the Hi Tech Council. I mean, I knew the Globe got around. It’s a classy paper, and very desirable to its fellow members of the (secret) Vault. Who can blame them? But Pioneer? Every time I pick up the paper the deep thinkers at Pioneer are cited. (The “Pioneers” practically own the opinion page of the former Globe subsidiary, the Worcester Telegram). The Globe actually did, at least once, describe the Pioneer Institute as “right-leaning.” When is the last time you saw anything “left-leaning” get even a speed date with the Globe?
After a recent article about the T, the reporter noted that not everyone felt the same way about the report.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/04/06/panel-blames-mbta-weak-management-for-excessive-worker-absences/vyrAPESTX3ZJ87UJsncx5L/story.html
First, they went to a Pioneer for a comment. And only then to former transportation secretary Fred Salvucci, who was more critical. After all, we know Fred doesn’t know a whole lot about transportation. I guess it helps that Pioneer has its former executive director in the governor’s chair.
What is oozing out of every Boston Globe pore–even more than usual–is a most regrettable tendency of the Progressive Movement of the early 20th century: the belief that only experts and commissions of experts are needed to solve our problems, that only their views are required.
Democracy? Hey, whats that? Not so very important really, not on Morrissey Blvd. After all, they are Serious People who prefer to talk only with other Serious People. “I pledge allegiance to the….” Oh yuck.
…doesn’t appear to have an ideology beyond supporting the kind of freedoms we should all be able to agree on, along with elective government. Here is their “about” page. You’ll be happy to know the United States is still listed as a free country.
“Several scholars have criticized the Freedom House democracy ratings as being politically biased; do countries indeed incorrectly receive better ratings that have stronger political ties with the United States.”
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1919870
Anyway, I am glad they still list us “free.” Reassuring! (So why don’t I fee re-assured?)
We have legitimately contested elections at least in a procedural sense. There is not one party rule. Yes, things like gerrymandering and money put the thumb on the scales, but there are still ways open to all to get parties and candidates on ballots which voters are free to vote for in the privacy of the voting booth without reprecussions.
They put a high priority it seems on press freedoms, which we have. Yes group think can be frustrating and we wish that this or that story got more play, but sometimes I think we have to remind liberals as much as we do Fox News that if this were really a dictatorship certain sites would go dark per government order.
I suggest that we most certainly DO have one-party rule — the “One Percent Party”. As we have learned from the presidency of Barack Obama, electing a President whose formal affiliation is “Democratic” in no way means that the resulting policies will reflect the values and priorities of the Democratic Party. We have a similar effect in the legislature here in Massachusetts.
The dichotomy is NOT between a Stalinesque “dictatorship” and “freedom”.
Feeling free to vote in the privacy of a voting booth means very little when either the outcome is pre-ordained by gerry-mandering or when the candidate, after election, advances the same agenda as the opposing party. Never mind that an ever-increasing number of minority voters are prevented from even entering the voting booth by “voterID” laws that resurrect the spirit, if not actual substance, of the Jim Crow era.
There was ZERO actual choice in the last Massachusetts gubernatorial election. At the national level, the difference between the campaign promises of candidate Barack Obama and the policy realities of President Barack Obama is stark. Unless the voting booth was in one of the handful of carefully managed (and therefore much more easily manipulated) “swing states”, the votes cast in that booth were meaningless. In Massachusetts, no voter who chose a presidential candidate other than Barack Obama had ANY realistic hope of his or her vote making even the slightest difference in the resulting government. And then we disparage younger voters because they don’t bother.
We certainly do have “freedom of the press”, in the sense that the government does not directly choose what stories are broadcast or published and what stories are suppressed. That is very nearly meaningless when the same handful of wealthy individuals own the newspapers, own the mainstream media, and own the government.
The “media services”, “government services”, and “political services” divisions of “One Percent Inc” very effectively work together to ensure that the public stays ignorant and entertained. No cold war style censorship is needed — old-fashioned “free market” capitalism unfettered by regulation is more than sufficient to accomplish the same end.
…your contention that there was zero choice in the MA gubernatorial election. Just because the parties aren’t doing what you want does not mean there is not the legal framework to challenge them. At least in MA, the SoC’s website I think explains very well what steps you have to take to get yourself on the ballot. I ran for Town Moderator a few years ago, procedurally a relatively easy task. I didn’t raise money and was up against a better known former Moderator. I didn’t win, and my opponent had a few inherent advantages, but I’m not complaining the election was not a completely free one.
I agree that there is a “legal framework” to challenge the “One Percent Party”. My contention is that it is essentially meaningless. I see little comparison between your experience running for Town Moderator and the gubernatorial race — never mind a race for the presidency.
The point is that the “legal framework” governing our electoral process is owned and manipulated by the One Percent Party. The results speak for themselves — for those willing to actually listen.
Neither Mr. Baker nor Ms. Coakley offered any substantive differences in the most important (at least to me) issues — income concentration, wealth concentration, taxes on the wealthy, and the absolutely deplorable state of our public transportation infrastructure. That’s what I mean when I say “zero choice”. I said that during the campaign, and I suggest that events since then have demonstrated the assertion.
The collapse of the MBTA and commuter rail this winter, the continuing claims of “no new taxes” Republicans and “Democrats” alike, and the post-election power grab by Mr. DeLeo all demonstrate that Massachusetts voters — especially those of us enrolled in the Massachusetts Democratic Party — were offered NO way, on last November’s ballot, to have any effective voice whatsoever in the issues that matter most.
Let’s acknowledge ballot boxes are not stuffed. I’d go so far far as to say there are still differences between candidates, perhaps not fundamental but significant. Moreover we are also free to organize demos. I just think democratic participation and control has become more and more constricted (and in new ways). It doesn’t help that the local media is so unvaried, and that institutions like the Globe are so overtly connected to think tanks, foundations and business groups. The Globe hates grassroots movements. Inions make most of the staff break out in hives. When was the last time you read an anti-Charter or anti-testing op ed? There is tremendous control exercised over the regional and national conversation by powerful media and interest groups. I guess I am not saying anything knew. I just fear we are approaching a tipping point. Democracy will not be abolished here in a coup. There will be no tanks around the Moncada. It’s just a continuous erosion, like the washing away of sand castles on a beach. No one will actually remember the exact year, the month, the date, the minute, when the substance of our democracy is completely lost. It’s so gradual, but I feel the pace picking up.