Archive for the 'Law' Category

Decidership and Democracy

Monday, October 13th, 2008

(Reprised from Current Invective)

In the neo-democratic institutions of the 21st Century, the inalienable right of the people to opt out of debate and decision-making has created a new social order: decidership. Americans live in a decidership, and it has rather suddenly replaced the republic we have been relinquishing over the past 20 years or so.

The ruling class in a decidership names a decider and holds a sham election to confirm him. George W. Bush will be seen as the first in a line of deciders. We entrust our decider to select from the myriad policy options available to comfort the worried masses in a failing nation.

A decidership is entirely multiple-choice. Unlike dictators, who superimpose personal vision on the nations they rule, deciders have no vision but depend on others to supply it. Deciders resemble dictators only in the sense that they wield absolute power.

Decidership requires no public discussion, and it countenances none. Visionaries representing privileged political patrons present their ideas in private to subordinates of the decider, who edit out the chaff and present what’s left to the decider. The decider then presents his selections to the legislative branch for approval; approval is optional, since the decider is empowered by the sleepy populace to execute his selections with or without it.

There are courts in a decidership, but the decider decides when and in what manner court orders will be honored or enforced. Court orders adversely affecting the decider or his subordinates or patrons are routinely ignored. Standards, rules, and laws are altogether arbitrary in a decidership and can never be allowed to impede the decider or his patrons in any way. “The Constitution is a piece of paper,” said the first decider not long ago.

In a decidership, the people must have enemies, and the decider chooses them for us. They are almost always ruled by cronies of the decider or his patrons, people like Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega. Deciders are licensed to kill the chosen enemies, but they usually do it through surrogates, typically decent young men who put on a military uniform every day out of a sense of duty and honor. When the decider’s soldiers kill, they get a pat on the back. When they die, they must be buried in secret. The injured ones are discarded like refuse in a decidership, but who cares?

The who-cares ethic is really at the heart of a decidership. All power flows from the vacuum that informs public morality. In a decidership, the bombing of foreign cities and kindness to animals coexist comfortably. There are warriors for Jesus and vegans with pit bulls. Cognitive dissonance is treated with drugs, mostly by prescription, or with massage or meditation.

Nobody knows how long a decidership can endure. We know that it can overcome a hardy old constitution, 50 state governments and international organizations of every kind, including the one known, anachronistically, as the United Nations. We suspect decidership will survive another election and corrupt the winner irredeemably. The people will be asleep again within a month of the inauguration, if history’s any guide. The big question is whether decidership can withstand the strains of an economy in catastrophic failure and an army in revolt, common hazards for nations that reject the duties of citizenship.

Posted in democracy, Law | 1 Comment »

Two Facts

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

Two facts: 

US government ownership of private business is un-American. People don’t have enough money to pay their debts.

When Rupert Murdoch wants to take over a business, for profit, he puts a pot of money together and makes an offer to its owners. When government wants to take over a business, in the public interest, it applies to a court to appoint receivers, trustees, conservators, administrators, or fiduciaries, depending on what the law directs, and these officers administer the affairs of the business. They don’t have to pay for this authority, and they don’t have to buy anything. A judge puts them in charge. As agents of the judiciary, they can’t share in profits. It’s entirely fitting for law enforcement agencies, like our government, to initiate proceedings to take big enterprises out of the hands of their owners and managers, all in accordance with our laws.

What we don’t allow is the merger of government and for-profit business. We consider such arrangments to be dangerous and un-American, and the eldest of us remember that government-business arrangements were fundamental to the establishment and maintenance of Fascist regimes in 20th-Century Spain, Germany, and Italy. Such arrangements are invariably corrupt, as freedom-loving people around the world well know.

To the credit of our founders, ours is a government of enumerated powers, and the power to operate for-profit business isn’t in there. There is a clause that gives Congress the authority to do what is “necessary and proper” to carry out its constitutional duties, but there are limits, and this has to be one of them. The idea that Congress could open the treasury to executive officials for speculation in private markets is preposterous. The reason no group of leaders before this one has ever proposed such a thing is that it’s un-American and almost certainly unconstitutional. It’s far more radical than Roosevelt’s New Deal, most of which was struck down by the Supreme Court. This means Congress can’t do it, and it’s time to consider something reasonable and legal.

That’s where the second fact comes in. Suppose people had sufficient income to pay their debts. Then the debts wouldn’t be bad, and the banks wouldn’t be insolvent. If we’re going to print a trillion bucks, let’s use them to employ workers to build a fast train across the USA or install photovoltaics wherever the sun shines or repair rotting bridges and decrepit schools, allowing more people to pay their debts and improving the general quality of life at the same time. Don’t say we can’t afford it, because Congress is ready to put that sum together for a gamble. This is a sure thing.

Posted in Law, Economy | No Comments »