AFTA NAFTA - More of the Bill Clinton Legacy - Hoodwinking the Public - Protecting the Rich - The First Family of Goldman Sachs

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Recently President Obama put intense pressure on Congress to pass a major new trade treaty and the news media failed to give it even cursory attention.  It was twenty-three years ago the last Democrat President jammed a trade agreement down the throats of American workers and politicians and the negative consequences are still felt today.

Twenty-three years ago Bill Clinton slammed the NAFTA trade bill through congress in 1993, then implemented it in 1994, and we are just beginning to see the House of Cards it was built on and understand the Shroud of Secrecy he constructed to protect the rich.

Do you remember when Bill Clinton and his Vice President Al Gore undertook one of the most savage attempts at character assassination ever staged from the White House during the furious debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)?

The target of this attack was the very person who helped Clinton become president in 1992, Ross Perot.  In that election, Clinton won with just 43% of the vote.  Bush got 37.4% and Perot got 18.9%.  Perot's vote total kept Bush from being re-elected.

Only twice in the entire history of American politics did a third party candidate get more votes than Perot in 1992.  In 1856, Millard Fillmore got 21.5% of the vote, and in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt got 27.3% of the vote, neither won.  In fact, only three times in our history did a president a lower percent of votes than Clinton received and they were John Quincy Adams, Woodrow Wilson, and Abraham Lincoln.

I worked as a media advisor to Ross Perot during the NAFTA debates and witnessed firsthand the incredible attempts to discredit Perot.  The Clinton administration used a national debate between Al Gore and Perot on the Larry King show as the showcase using lighting, the chair placement, the camera angles, and every other trick in the book to diminish Perot and undermine his concerns.

Eventually, everything Perot warned could happen did happen and the Clinton-Gore victory in time would be among the most devastating of the Clinton years.  Democrats, the unions, all the minorities, and American manufacturing got sold out by the Clinton promise and to this day have continued to ignore the consequences.

In the end only Clinton and Gore were laughing, all the way to the bank, as both became the richest ex-president and ex-vice president in history, each raking in well over $200 million in personal wealth after gutting the nation's long term economy.

You need not take it from me, look at the analysis by NPR, a Progressive stalwart of the Democratic party, and even the AFL-CIO, whose blind faith in the Democrats has nearly destroyed all the good unions have accomplished.  Listen to their words when it comes to the economic security of America thanks to the Clinton trade initiative.

Once upon a time during the debate over NAFTA Clinton and Gore made many promises, and Perot warned the opposite would happen.  Vilified by the news media and the Clinton administration, Perot told the truth, Clinton and Gore did not, and the American public, are still paying for it.

   

Here are what others had to say about NAFTA.

AFL-CIO America's Unions

What have workers learned from 20 years of NAFTA?

·         It’s a flawed model that promotes the economic interests of a very few and at the expense of workers, consumers, farmers, communities, the environment and even democracy itself.

• While the overall volume of trade within North America due to NAFTA has increased and corporate profits have skyrocketed, wages have remained stagnant in all three countries.
• Productivity has increased, but workers’ share of these gains has decreased steadily, along with unionization rates.
• NAFTA pushed small Mexican farmers off their lands, increasing the flow of desperate undocumented migrants.
• It exacerbated inequality in all three countries.
• And the NAFTA labor side agreement has failed to accomplish its most basic mandate: to ensure compliance with fundamental labor rights and enforcement of national labor laws.

How It Is Destroying The Economy

By Michael Snyder

Global Research, 17 August 2014

The Economic Collapse 14 August 2014

NAFTA Is 20 Years Old – Here Are 20 Facts That Show

Back in the early 1990s, the North American Free Trade Agreement was one of the hottest political issues in the country.  When he was running for president in 1992, Bill Clinton promised that NAFTA would result in an increase in the number of high quality jobs for Americans that it would reduce illegal immigration.  Ross Perot warned that just the opposite would happen.  He warned that if NAFTA was implemented there would be a “giant sucking sound” as thousands of businesses and millions of jobs left this country.  Most Americans chose to believe Bill Clinton.  Well, it is 20 years later and it turns out that Perot was right and Clinton was dead wrong.  But now history is repeating itself, and most Americans don’t even realize that it is happening.  As you will read about at the end of this article, Barack Obama has been negotiating a secret trade treaty that is being called “NAFTA on steroids”, and if Congress adopts it we could lose millions more good paying jobs.

It amazes me how the American people can fall for the same lies over and over again.  The lies that serial liar Barack Obama is telling about “free trade” and the globalization of the economy are the same lies that Bill Clinton was telling back in the early 1990s.  The following is an excerpt from a recent interview with Paul Craig Roberts…

I remember in the 90′s when former Presidential candidate Ross Perot emphatically stated that NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) would create a giant “sucking sound” of jobs being extracted away from the U.S.  He did not win the election, and NAFTA was instituted on Jan. 1, 1994. Now, 20 years later, we see the result of all the jobs that have been “sucked away” to other countries.

According to an article by the Economic Policy Institute on 1/3/14:

“Clinton and his collaborators promised that the deal would bring “good-paying American jobs,” a rising trade surplus with Mexico, and a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration. Considering that thousands of kids are pouring over the border as we speak, well, how’d that work out for us?

Many Americans like to remember Bill Clinton as a “great president” for some reason.  Well, it turns out that he was completely and totally wrong about NAFTA.  The following are 20 facts that show how NAFTA is destroying the economy…

#1 More than 845,000 American workers have been officially certified for Trade Adjustment Assistance because they lost their jobs due to imports from Mexico or Canada or because their factories were relocated to those nations.

#2 Overall, it is estimated that NAFTA has cost us well over a million jobs.

#3 U.S. manufacturers pay Mexican workers just a little over a dollar an hour to do jobs that American workers used to do.

#4 The number of illegal immigrants living in the United States has more than doubled since the implementation of NAFTA.

#5 In the year before NAFTA, the U.S. had a trade surplus with Mexico and the trade deficit with Canada was only 29.6 billion dollars.  Last year, the U.S. had a combined trade deficit with Mexico and Canada of 177 billion dollars.

#6 It has been estimated that the U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported from overseas.

#7 One professor has estimated that cutting the total U.S. trade deficit in half would create 5 million more jobs in the United States.

#8 Since the auto industry bailout, approximately 70 percent of all GM vehicles have been built outside the United States.  In fact, many of them are now being built in Mexico.

#9 NAFTA hasn’t worked out very well for Mexico either.  Since 1994, the average yearly rate of economic growth in Mexico has been less than one percent.

#10 The exporting of massive amounts of government-subsidized U.S. corn down into Mexico has destroyed more than a million Mexican jobs and has helped fuel the continual rise in the number of illegal immigrants coming north.

#11 Someone making minimum wage in Mexico today can buy 38 percent fewer consumer goods than the day before NAFTA went into effect.

#12 Overall, the United States has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

#13 Back in the 1980s, more than 20 percent of the jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs.  Today, only about 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

#14 We have fewer Americans working in manufacturing today than we did in 1950 even though our population has more than doubled since then.

#15 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, only 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#16 As I wrote about recently, one out of every six men in their prime working years (25 to 54) do not have a job at this point.

#17 Because we have shipped millions of jobs overseas, the competition for the jobs that remain has become extremely intense and this has put downward pressure on wages.  Right now, half the country makes $27,520 a year or less from their jobs.

#18 When adults cannot get decent jobs, it is often children that suffer the most.  It is hard to believe, but more than one out of every five children in the United States is living in poverty in 2014.

#19 In 1994, only 27 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, more than 46 million Americans are on food stamps.

#20 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.

NPR Public Citizen February 10, 2014

NAFTA’s Broken Promises 1994-2013:

Outcomes of the North American Free Trade Agreement

Excerpts - see full post at http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTA-at-20.pdf

In 1993, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was sold to the American public with grand promises. NAFTA would create tens of thousands of good jobs here. U.S. farmers would export their way to wealth. NAFTA would bring Mexico’s standard of living up, providing new economic opportunities there that would reduce immigration to the United States.

NAFTA was an experiment, establishing a radically new “trade” agreement model. It exploded the boundaries of past trade pacts, which had focused narrowly on cutting tariffs and quotas. In contrast, NAFTA contained chapters that created new privileges and protections for foreign investors; required the three countries to waive domestic procurement preferences, such as Buy American; limited regulation of services, such as trucking and banking; extended medicine patent monopolies and limited food and product safety standards and border inspection.

After nineteen years of NAFTA, we can measure its actual outcomes. The grand promises made by proponents remain unfulfilled. Many outcomes are exactly the opposite of what was promised. Many U.S. firms used the new investor protections to relocate production to Mexico to take advantage of its low wages and weak environmental standards and to attack NAFTA countries’ environmental and health laws in foreign tribunals. Over $340 million in compensation to investors has been extracted from NAFTA governments via these “investor-state” challenges.

The small U.S. trade surplus with Mexico pre-NAFTA turned into a massive new trade deficit. The pre-NAFTA U.S. trade deficit with Canada expanded greatly. Overall, the inflation-adjusted U.S. trade deficit with Canada of $29.1 billion and the $2.5 billion surplus with Mexico in 1993 (the year before NAFTA took effect) turned into a combined NAFTA trade deficit of $181 billion by 2012.1 The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimated that the NAFTA deficit had eliminated about one million net American jobs by 2004.2 Meanwhile, U.S. food processors moved to Mexico to take advantage of low wages and food imports soared. U.S beef imports from Mexico and Canada, for example, have risen 130 percent since NAFTA took effect, and today U.S. consumption of “NAFTA” beef tops $1.3 billion annually.3 The export of subsidized U.S. corn did increase, displacing over one million Mexican campesino farmers. Their desperate migration pushed down wages in Mexico’s border maquiladora factory zone and contributed to a doubling of Mexican immigration to the United States.

The U.S. public’s view of NAFTA has intensified from broad opposition to overwhelming opposition to NAFTA-style trade deals. According to a 2012 Angus Reid Public Opinion poll, 53 percent of Americans believe the United States should “do whatever is necessary” to “renegotiate” or “leave” NAFTA, while only 15 percent believe the United States should “continue to be a member of NAFTA.” Rejection of the trade deal is the predominant stance of Democrats, Republicans and independents alike.4 NAFTA has drawn the ire of Americans across stunningly diverse demographics. A 2011 National Journal poll showed strong rejection of the status quo trade model from both lower-educated and higher-educated respondents,5 and a 2010 NBC News – Wall Street Journal survey revealed that a majority of upper-income respondents have now joined lower-income respondents in opposing NAFTA-style pacts.6 In addition, a 2008 Zogby poll found majority NAFTA opposition across nearly every surveyed demographic group, including independents, Hispanics, women, Catholics and Southerners.7

U.S. Job Loss, Not Gain

Projections on trade balance, jobs prove wrong. In 1993, Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) projected that NAFTA would lead to a rising U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, which would create 170,000 net new jobs in the United States.8 This figure was trumpeted by the Clinton administration and other NAFTA proponents. Hufbauer and Schott based their projection on the observation that when export growth outpaces the growth of imports, more jobs are created by trade than are destroyed by trade.9 Instead of an improved trade balance with Canada and Mexico, however, NAFTA resulted in an explosion of imports from Mexico and Canada that led to huge U.S. trade deficits. According to Hufbauer and Schott’s own methodology, these deficits meant major job loss. Less than two years after NAFTA’s implementation, even before the depth of the NAFTA deficit became evident, Hufbauer recognized that his jobs prediction was incongruent with the facts, telling the Wall Street Journal, “The best figure for the jobs effect of NAFTA is approximately zero…the lesson for me is to stay away from job forecasting.”10

Huge new NAFTA trade deficit emerges. The U.S. trade deficit with Canada of $29.1 billion and the $2.5 billion surplus with Mexico in 1993 (the year before NAFTA took effect) turned into a combined NAFTA trade deficit of $181 billion by 2012.11 This represents an increase in the “NAFTA deficit” of 580 percent. These are inflation-adjusted numbers, meaning the difference is not due to inflation, but an increase in the deficit in real terms. The U.S. deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada has worsened considerably more than the U.S. deficit with countries with which we have not signed NAFTA-style deals. Since NAFTA, the average annual growth of the U.S. trade deficit has been 45 percent higher with Mexico and Canada than with countries that are not party to a NAFTA-style trade pact.12 Defenders of NAFTA argue that the NAFTA deficit is really only oil imports. Although oil accounts for a substantial portion of the trade deficit with Canada and Mexico, the oil share of the trade deficit with Canada and Mexico actually declined from 77 percent in 1993 to 55 percent in 2012.13

Services and manufacturing export growth slows under NAFTA. A key claim of supporters of NAFTA-style trade pacts is that they create jobs by promoting faster U.S. export growth. By contrast, growth of U.S. exports to countries that are not Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners has exceeded U.S. export growth to countries that are FTA partners by 38 percent over the last decade.14 Manufacturing and services exports in particular grew slower after NAFTA took effect. Since NAFTA’s enactment, U.S. manufacturing exports to Canada and Mexico have grown at less than half the rate seen in the years before NAFTA.15 Even growth in services exports, which were supposed to do especially well under the trade pact given a presumed U.S. comparative advantage in services, dropped precipitously after NAFTA’s implementation. During NAFTA’s first decade, the average growth rate in U.S. services exports fell by 58 percent compared to the decade before NAFTA, and has remained well below the pre-NAFTA rate through the present.16

One million American jobs lost to NAFTA. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the rising trade deficit with Mexico and Canada since NAFTA went into effect eliminated about one million net jobs in the United States by 2004.17 EPI further calculates that the ballooning trade deficit with Mexico alone destroyed about seven hundred thousand net U.S. jobs between NAFTA’s implementation and 2010.18 Moreover, official government data reveals that nearly five million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost overall since NAFTA took effect.19 Obviously, not all of these lost U.S. manufacturing jobs – one out of every four of our manufacturing jobs – is due to NAFTA. The United States entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, China joined WTO in 2000 and the U.S. trade deficit with China soared thereafter. However, at the same time, given the methodology employed, it is also likely that the EPI estimates do not capture the full U.S. job loss associated with NAFTA. Service sector jobs have also been negatively impacted by NAFTA, as closed factories no longer demand services. EPI estimates that one third of the jobs lost due to the rising trade deficit under NAFTA were in non-manufacturing sectors of the economy.20
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Villanova Wildcats win NCAA Basketball National Championship in Epic Game 77-74

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Villanova, the small Catholic college with about 10,000 students from Philadelphia took on the mighty North Carolina Tar Heels with about 30,000 and gave us one of the greatest national championship games in history.

Playing before 70,000 fans in Houston with millions watching on television, both teams put on an exceptional display of why college sports are so popular.  March Madness is the NCAA national championship tourney with 68 teams battling it out to see who is number one.

This season was full of upsets with numerous teams reaching number one during the season only to be beaten and it was one of few college seasons where none of the top teams finished the season unbeaten.

North Carolina is one of the legendary basketball programs in America with five national titles while Villanova has just one national title, 31 years ago, to its credit.  Of course the Tar Heels are also home to Michael Jordan whose last second shot brought them a national title.

There were no Michael Jordans in this game.  The star for the Tar Heels was a guard from Iowa but even with no marquee players, heroes were plentiful.  The Iowa guard sank a three point shot with just 4.7 seconds left in the game to tie it after Villanova had surge to a ten point led with about seven minutes to play.

In the first half North Carolina pulled ahead by seven point, but by the middle of the second half Villanova had reversed the game and were ten points ahead.  A furious run by Carolina the last five minutes resulted in the three point shot with 4.7 left to tie the game.

The Wildcats threw the ball in, their star dribbled across the half court line, then handed it back to a teammate who let fly a long three point bomb just as time ran out and the buzzer rang ending the game.  What seemed like an eternity but in fact was just fractions of a minute went by before the ball swooshed through the hoop.

As the 70,000 exploded when they realized the shot was good and the players and coaches stood momentarily in shock, confetti rained from the ceiling and the Wildcats realized they had pulled off one of the great upsets in an amazing game.

The top scorer for Villanova came off the bench to score 20 points, he only scored 25 total in the previous four games.  The hero scoring the winning bucket had a brother playing for North Carolina.  Another Villanova star was home schooled in high school by his Christian family and taught basketball by his mother.

I mention no names because this game had so many of the most unlikely heroes they all deserve credit.

Both teams should be proud and thanks Villanova for showing us giant killers still have a chance in America.

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Break Time - Reality Can Wait!

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American Elections 7 - Tips for International Followers - Why the media and political parties have it all wrong - they forgot about Independents

Sometimes the most obvious is the most difficult to see and when it comes to the American media the most obvious and most logical is most often overlooked.  Ever since Obama first ran for office there has been a peculiar Main Street media fascination with the Tea Party movement and when it comes to the liberal media, it became an obsession.

For some odd reason the Lame Street media has been afraid, fearful, and terrorized by the thought that the Tea Party and its seemingly radical right wing supporters represents a grave threat to the American political process.

If the media wants to condemn a conservative commentator they label them "Tea Party" whether they have any affiliation with the Tea Party or not.  It is the liberal way to stigmatize the on air personalities that cause so much havoc in their lives.

Yet most conservative commentators have never joined the Tea Party and view it as an element of the Republican party, not a separate institution.  So the Democrats have tried to diminish any threat from the Tea Party by talking about the splintering effect the Tea Party has on the Republicans.

I suspect they just don't get it.

The only threat to the two party system in America is their arrogance in thinking there really is just two parties in the country and their failure to see we are rapidly approaching the point of no return when more American are alienated by both political parties and their partisan nonsense when in truth there is little difference between them.

Every election we get closer to the point when there are going to be more Independents than BOTH Democrats and Republicans.  When over 50% of the public believes neither party serves the public but both parties have become their own Special Interests.

With the continuing decline in public confidence in our political parties, politicians and media and with the continued ignorance or deliberate effort by the media to disregard the growing number of Americans rejecting both political parties that day we cross the 50% threshold is rapidly approaching and will most certainly be here by 2016 or 2020.

The following is a Gallup Poll which most media failed to report on the continuing surge in the number of Independents in America.  They are the real danger to the two party system and the real hope for healing our Nation.

January 8, 2014 (first published)

Record-High 42% of Americans Identify as Independents

Republican identification lowest in at least 25 years

by Jeffrey M. Jones

PRINCETON, NJ -- Forty-two percent of Americans, on average, identified as political independents in 2013, the highest Gallup has measured since it began conducting interviews by telephone 25 years ago. Meanwhile, Republican identification fell to 25%, the lowest over that time span. At 31%, Democratic identification is unchanged from the last four years but down from 36% in 2008.

The results are based on more than 18,000 interviews with Americans from 13 separate Gallup multiple-day polls conducted in 2013.

In each of the last three years, at least 40% of Americans have identified as independents. These are also the only years in Gallup's records that the percentage of independents has reached that level.

Americans' increasing shift to independent status has come more at the expense of the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. Republican identification peaked at 34% in 2004, the year George W. Bush won a second term in office. Since then, it has fallen nine percentage points, with most of that decline coming during Bush's troubled second term. When he left office, Republican identification was down to 28%. It has declined or stagnated since then, improving only slightly to 29% in 2010, the year Republicans "shellacked" Democrats in the midterm elections.

Not since 1983, when Gallup was still conducting interviews face to face, has a lower percentage of Americans, 24%, identified as Republicans than is the case now. That year, President Ronald Reagan remained unpopular as the economy struggled to emerge from recession. By the following year, amid an improving economy and re-election for the increasingly popular incumbent president, Republican identification jumped to 30%, a level generally maintained until 2007.

Democratic identification has also declined in recent years, falling five points from its recent high of 36% in 2008, the year President Barack Obama was elected. The current 31% of Americans identifying as Democrats matches the lowest annual average in the last 25 years.

Fourth Quarter Surge in Independence

The percentage of Americans identifying as independents grew over the course of 2013, surging to 46% in the fourth quarter. That coincided with the partial government shutdown in October and the problematic rollout of major provisions of the healthcare law, commonly known as "Obamacare."

The 46% independent identification in the fourth quarter is a full three percentage points higher than Gallup has measured in any quarter during its telephone polling era.

Democrats Maintain Edge in Party Identification

Democrats maintain their six-point edge in party identification when independents' "partisan leanings" are taken into account. In addition to the 31% of Americans who identify as Democrats, another 16% initially say they are independents but when probed say they lean to the Democratic Party. An equivalent percentage, 16%, say they are independent but lean to the Republican Party, on top of the 25% of Americans identifying as Republicans. All told, then, 47% of Americans identify as Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, and 41% identify as Republicans or lean to the Republican Party.

Democrats have held at least a nominal advantage on this measure of party affiliation in all but three years since Gallup began asking the "partisan lean" follow-up in 1991. During this time, Democrats' advantage has been as high as 12 points, in 2008. However, that lead virtually disappeared by 2010, although Democrats have re-established an edge in the last two years.

Implications

Americans are increasingly declaring independence from the political parties. It is not uncommon for the percentage of independents to rise in a non-election year, as 2013 was. Still, the general trend in recent years, including the 2012 election year, has been toward greater percentages of Americans identifying with neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party, although most still admit to leaning toward one of the parties.

The rise in political independence is likely an outgrowth of Americans' record or near-record negative views of the two major U.S. parties, of Congress, and their low level of trust in government more generally.

The increased independence adds a greater level of unpredictability to this year's presidential election. Because U.S. voters are less anchored to the parties than ever before, it's not clear what kind of appeals may be most effective to winning votes. But with Americans increasingly eschewing party labels for themselves, candidates who are less closely aligned to their party or its prevailing doctrine may benefit.

Now that we are halfway through the 2016 election cycle it is clear that the Independent will dominate in the general election, and the "outsider" candidates have demonstrated tremendous strength in the primary elections.  Both political parties are actively trying to stop the outsiders and protect the political establishment and status quo, but Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump may be more resilient than expected by the media.  

Survey Methods

Results are based on aggregated telephone interviews from 13 separate Gallup polls conducted in 2013, with a random sample of 18,871 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 50% cellphone respondents and 50% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by region. Landline and cell telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.

Samples are weighted to correct for unequal selection probability, nonresponse, and double coverage of landline and cell users in the two sampling frames. They are also weighted to match the national demographics of gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, population density, and phone status (cellphone only/landline only/both, and cellphone mostly). Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2012 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older U.S. population. Phone status targets are based on the July-December 2011 National Health Interview Survey. Population density targets are based on the 2010 census. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

For more details on Gallup's polling methodology, visit www.gallup.com.

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American Elections 6 - Tips for International Followers - Who votes in America?

What the news media and political parties are not telling us about our $5 billion election this year?

Our media and politicians tend to portray the United States of America as the ultimate democracy in the world and have consistently presented us as the defenders of freedom and democracy.

Well I must be confused because nowhere is the word "democracy" mentioned in the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution. How could that be?  Come to think of it, no where are the words capitalism or political party mentioned either.

Our government is supposed to be a democracy!

What exactly is the definition of a democracy?

The Cambridge Dictionary - Definition of "democracy"

The belief in freedom and equality between people, or a system of government based on this belief, in which power is held by elected representatives or directly by the people themselves.

A country in which power is held by elected representatives.

The Cambridge Dictionary - Definition of "republic"

A country that is governed by elected representatives and an elected leader.

So in a pure democracy power is held by the people directly, while a republic elects representatives to look out for the public interest.  Well let us look at that in light of the current state of American participation in the election of our representatives and leader.

Pythagorean Analysis of Voter reality in America

Total USA Population Today           325,332,205

Total Population under 18                 78,000,000

Total Population 18 and over          247,322,000

Total Eligible Voters 18+                 247,322,000

Total Registered Voters                  142,200,000

Percent                                                            57%

Total Voter Turnout 2012                121,757,000

Percent of Registered Voters                       85.6%

Percent of Eligible Voters                             49.2%

Total Obama Votes 2012                   62,615,406

Percent of Registered Voters                       44%

Percent of Eligible Voters                             25.3%                                                                        

Total Romney Voters 2012               59,100,000

Percent of Registered Voters                      41.5%

Percent of Eligible Voters                            23.9%                                    

Total Eligible Voters not Voting      125,565,000

Percent of Eligible Voters                            50.8%
                                               

Total Leaning Independent                          43%

Total Leaning Democrat                              30%

Total Leaning Republican                            26%                           

Nothing can be more dramatic than the realization that not only do we not have a democracy we do not even have a functioning republic in this the citadel of world democracy.  For perhaps the first time in our history, more Americans refused to participate in the voting process by refusing to register to vote, a consequence of freedom or common sense I suspect.

Our political system has failed to support our constitutional requirements for a republic.  Yet I do not hear a single candidate for either party raise the issue of the disconnect between our political parties and our constitutional rights.

Wake up America!  Better yet, wake up news media and politicians who are ignorant of history and fail to understand the meaning of a republic.  As a last, gasp effort to steer them in the right direction, here is an explanation of the American system of government as envisioned by our founding fathers back before the concentration of power in our news media and political parties.

Is the United States a democracy?  Here is an explanation by ThisNation.com

The Pledge of Alliance includes the phrase: "and to the republic for which it stands." Is the United States of America a republic? I always thought it was a democracy? What's the difference between the two?

The United States is, indeed, a republic, not a democracy. Accurately defined, a democracy is a form of government in which the people decide policy matters directly--through town hall meetings or by voting on ballot initiatives and referendums. A republic, on the other hand, is a system in which the people choose representatives who, in turn, make policy decisions on their behalf. 

The Framers of the Constitution were altogether fearful of pure democracy. Everything they read and studied taught them that pure democracies "have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths" (Federalist No. 10).

By popular usage, however, the word "democracy" come to mean a form of government in which the government derives its power from the people and is accountable to them for the use of that power. In this sense the United States might accurately be called a democracy. However, there are examples of "pure democracy" at work in the United States today that would probably trouble the Framers of the Constitution if they were still alive to see them. Many states allow for policy questions to be decided directly by the people by voting on ballot initiatives or referendums.

(Initiatives originate with, or are initiated by, the people while referendums originate with, or are referred to the people by, a state's legislative body.) That the Constitution does not provide for national ballot initiatives or referendums is indicative of the Framers' opposition to such mechanisms. They were not confident that the people had the time, wisdom or level-headedness to make complex decisions, such as those that are often presented on ballots on election day.

Writing of the merits of a republican or representative form of government, James Madison observed that one of the most important differences between a democracy and a republic is "the delegation of the government [in a republic] to a small number of citizens elected by the rest."

The primary effect of such a scheme, Madison continued, was to:

. . . refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the same purpose (Federalist No. 10).

Later, Madison elaborated on the importance of "refining and enlarging the public views" through a scheme of representation:

There are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice and truth can regain their authority over the public mind (Federalist No. 63).

In the strictest sense of the word, the system of government established by the Constitution was never intended to be a "democracy." This is evident not only in the wording of the Pledge of Alliance but in the Constitution itself which declares that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government" (Article IV, Section 4).  Moreover, the scheme of representation and the various mechanisms for selecting representatives established by the Constitution were clearly intended to produce a republic, not a democracy.

To the extent that the United States of America has moved away from its republican roots and become more "democratic," it has strayed from the intentions of the Constitution's authors. Whether or not the trend toward more direct democracy would be smiled upon by the Framers depends on the answer to another question. Are the American people today sufficiently better informed and otherwise equipped to be wise and prudent democratic citizens than were American citizens in the late 1700s? By all accounts, the answer to this second question is an emphatic "no."

Note Data Source for statistics: U.S. Bureau of the Census. "Projected Population by Single Year of Age (0-99, 100+), Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin for the United States: July 1, 2014 to July 1, 2060." Released December 2014. Web-based data files available at:

http://www.census.gov/population/projections/data/national/2014/downloadablefiles.html

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American Elections 5 - Tips for International followers - Why Americans struggle to understand radical Islamic terrorism

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According to The New American Encyclopedic Dictionary, "An Exhaustive Dictionary of The English Language Practical and Comprehensive published by J. A. Hill & Company of New York in 1906, "bias" of things not material is defined as: "The state of mentally or morally inclining to one side; inclination of the mind, heart or will; that which causes such an inclination, leaning or tendency."

In Crabb: English Synonyms, Crabb thus distinguishes between bias, prepossession, and prejudice: "Bias marks the state of the mind; prepossession applies either to the general or particular state of the feelings, prejudice is employed only for opinions. Children may receive an early bias that influences their future character and destiny. Prepossessions spring from casualties; they do not exist in young minds. Prejudices are the fruits of a contracted education. A bias may be overpowered, a prepossession overcome, and a prejudice corrected or removed. We may be biased for or against; we are always prepossessed in favor, and mostly prejudiced against.

Is there is a bias in America based on suspicion of the intent of the Muslim people's of the world and is it based on the history and modern actions of the Muslim world, in particular the actions of the mainstream Muslim factions. The majority of Muslims belong to one of two denominations, the Sunni and the Shi'a.

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, in Muslim tradition, Muhammad is viewed as the last and the greatest in a series of prophets—as the man closest to perfection, the possessor of all virtues. For the last 22 years of his life, in 610 AD, beginning at age 40, Muhammad started receiving revelations from God. The content of these revelations, known as the Qur'an, was memorized and recorded by his companions. It has been 1400 years since Muhammad started receiving revelations from God.

Sunni Muslims are the largest denomination of Islam, comprising up to 90% or nine-tenths of the total Muslim population in the world. They are often referred to as Ahl as-Sunnah wa’l-Jamā‘h or Ahl as-Sunnah.

The word Sunni comes from the word sunnah, which means the teachings and actions or examples of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. Therefore, the term "Sunni" refers to those who follow or maintain the sunnah of the prophet Muhammad.

The Sunni believe that Muhammad did not specifically appoint a successor to lead the Muslim ummah (community) before his death, and after an initial period of confusion, a group of his most prominent companions gathered and elected Abu Bakr Siddique—Muhammad's close friend and a father-in-law—as the first caliph of Islam. Sunni Muslims regard the first four caliphs—Abu Bakr, `Umar ibn al-Khattāb, Uthman Ibn Affan and Ali ibn Abu Talib—as "al-Khulafā’ur-Rāshidūn" or "The Rightly Guided Caliphs." Sunnis also believe that the position of caliph may be democratically chosen, but after the Rashidun, the position turned into a hereditary dynastic rule. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, there has never been another caliph as widely recognized in the Muslim world.

Shia Islam (sometimes Shi'a or Shi'ite), is the second-largest denomination of Islam, comprising anywhere between 10% or one-tenth to 13% of the total Muslim population in the world. Shi'a Muslims—though a minority in the Muslim world—constitute the majority of the populations in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Iran, and Iraq, as well as a plurality in Lebanon and Yemen.

In addition to believing in the authority of the Qur'an and teachings of the Muhammad, Shi'a believe that his family—the Ahl al-Bayt (the People of the House), including his descendants known as Imams—have special spiritual and political rule over the community and believe that Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, was the first of these Imams and was the rightful successor to Muhammad, and thus reject the legitimacy of the first three Rashidun caliphs.

The Shi'a Islamic faith is vast and inclusive of many different groups. There are various Shi'a theological beliefs, schools of jurisprudence, philosophical beliefs, and spiritual movements. The Shi'a identity emerged soon after the death of 'Umar Ibnil-Khattab—the second caliph—and Shi'a theology was formulated in the second century and the first Shi'a governments and societies were established by the end of the ninth century.

Kharijite (lit. "those who seceded") is a general term embracing a variety of Muslim sects which, while originally supporting the Caliphate of Ali, eventually seceded after his son Imam Hasan negotiated with Mu'awiya during the 7th Century Islamic civil war (First Fitna). Their complaint was that the Imam must be spiritually pure, and that Hasan's compromise with Mu'awiya was a compromise of his spiritual purity, and therefore of his legitimacy as Imam or Caliph. While there are few remaining Kharijite or Kharijite-related groups, the term is sometimes used to denote Muslims who refuse to compromise with those with whom they disagree.

Sufism is a mystical-ascetic form of Islam. By focusing on the more spiritual aspects of religion, Sufis strive to obtain direct experience of God by making use of "intuitive and emotional faculties" that one must be trained to use. Sufis usually considered Sufism to be complementary to orthodox Islam.

Once Muhammad lived and provided the Qur'an by 632 AD the various factions fought a 7th century civil war before undertaking 500 years of war against the Christians for control of the Western World. The initial Muslim conquest of Syria in the 7th century under the Rashidun Caliphs began the battle between the Christians and Muslims. After the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims the wars ended with Muslims in control of most Middle East nations and Christianity split between the Latin and Greek sects.

By the time Christianity reached about 1400 years of age the factions within Christianity forced the Protestant Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries and the break up of Christianity into many independent denominations.

Ironically, the Muslim factions have now existed for 1400 years and in country after country they have turned on each other in brutal wars, suppression of competing sects, and acts of genocide that have left a sense of fear, distrust and anxiety in the Christian and Jewish worlds. Is it not surprising? If the Muslim sects can justify Holy Wars against each other in this modern age what is to stop wars with us? Just look at the tens of thousands of civilian Muslim deaths at the hands of radical Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is in the news every day.

History is a brutal lesson in fact over fiction. The origins of terrorism within the Muslim factions is no surprise as radical extremists with a religious foundation have been around for centuries. There is no single voice for the Muslim world and no central control of order to that world. Until those elements of the Muslim world can overcome their own hatred for each other and then their hatred for the Christian and Jewish so called infidels, bias will exist and caution is warranted.

Just as the Christians had to overcome the violence and bloodshed of the ill advised Crusades and the Protestant Reformation in order for Christianity to evolve, so to must the Muslim world overcome the bitter wars and rivalry of secular and non-secular violence and the offshoots of terrorism that attempt to destroy any perceived effort to threaten the single domination of one religious sect over any government in a multi-cultural and religiously diverse world.

Any bias of unease or misunderstanding on the part of Americans toward the Muslim world can be changed, if the Muslim world evolves as other religions have evolved. When radicalism and terrorism are set aside, and they exist in all cultures and religions, there are far more similarities between Christians and Muslims than differences and both share the same God or Allah.

Finally, within every culture or religion are good people.
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