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Has the unthinkable, the Swedish political scientist Bo Rothstein mused earlier this month, now entered the realm of real possibility? Could democracy in the United States be disappearing?

Millions of Americans are worrying about that same question and we have plenty of cause for worry, everything from gun-toting militias and the continuing dysfunction of an archaic constitutional order to brazen attacks on the impartiality of our election administrators.

Our overflowing list of dangers to American democracy now has another dagger: the private equity industry. New research out of the NYU Stern School of Business and CalTech vividly details how private equity greed grabs in the newspaper sector are eviscerating local news coverage, dumbing down our politics, and undermining our democratic future.

Private equity firms have emerged over recent years as a major player on Americas economic landscape. Private equity-owned companies currently employ nearly 12 million Americans. Overall, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project noted last October, private equity firms held less than $1 trillion in assets in 2004. In 2021, their assets totaled $7.5 trillion.

What exactly do private equity firms do? They typically take on debt to buy up companies and then shift responsibility for that debt to the companies theyve acquired. That, of course, puts pressure on the acquired companies to operate more efficiently, private equitys standard jargon for squeezing workers and shortchanging consumers.

That combination has helped turn private equity, observes the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, into a billionaire factory thats creating eye-popping wealth for the executives perched at its summit.

Between their yachts, mansions and private jets, the Project adds, these private equity executives live some of the lushest lives of anyone on the planet.

Progressive lawmakers in Congress last fall introduced legislation that targets the most glaring outrages in the private equity playbook. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a sponsor of that reform legislation, gave those outrages an apt rundown.

Private equity firms, she related, get rich off of stripping assets from companies, loading them up with a bunch of debt, and then leaving workers, consumers, and whole communities in the dust.

The Warren-backed bill, the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, would put private investment fund execs on the hook for the companies they control and empower both workers and the pensions funds that have billions invested in private equity deals. But this legislation has next to no chance of passage in the current Congress.

And that mean more rough times ahead for the industries where private equity has already established a major presence, industries like health care where private equitys rush to cash in has triggered fraudulent activity that includes pushing medically unnecessary services and filing claims for services not provided.

In a just-released new report, Private Equitys Dirty Dozen, the Public Accountability Initiative and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project expose how private equity kingpins like the Blackstone Groups Stephen Schwarzman are investing massively in oil pipelines, coal plants, and offshore drilling. These environmentally hazardous investments, the report points out, only add to the destruction and chaos private equity has created in the retail, restaurant, and prison industries.

But private equitys impact on democracy writ large, suggests the new research from CalTech and the NYU business school, may be even more insidious than the profiteering on display in all these individual economic spheres.

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From the Kingpins of Private Equity, A New Dagger to Democracy - Inequality.org

"Local and regional self-government with elected democratic institutions and a strong civil society are the basis of a pluralistic society, based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The Council of Europe and the European Union share these values and cooperate at different levels", Othmas Karas, First Vice-President of the European Parliament, and Andreas Kiefer, Secretary General of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe confirmed when meeting in Strasbourg on 17 February 2022.

Listening carefully to the citizens and giving them real ownership is always the best possible way of doing politics. The roots of European democracy are in our regions and municipalities. We stand ready to support democratic initiatives on regional and local level. They can provide very valuable input for our work in the European Parliament which is the directly elected Chamber of the people in the European Union. I am committed to position the European Parliament as the voice of the needs and concerns of the European citizens and I am happily looking forward to a fruitful cooperation, said Karas.

Andreas Kiefer welcomed the adoption of the European Parliaments Resolution on the annual report 2021 on human rights and democracy in the world and the European Unions policy on the matter, which "calls on the Commission to increase re-granting mechanisms within the EUs democracy support programmes in order to bolster bottom-up approaches to democracy support and ensure that smaller initiatives at a regional or local level can also benefit from EU support". This showed the profound understanding of the European Parliament for the support of grassroots democracy, to which the Congress contributes with EU-co-funded cooperation activities on the ground, currently in the South-Med IV programme and previously also in Council of Europe member States. The Secretary General of the Congress expressed hope that this EP-resolution would contribute to a stronger EU support for local and regional democracy initiatives in future programme cycles.

The cooperation between the EU and the Council of Europe takes place at different levels. The Congress mainly works with the Committee of the Regions. Like other Council of Europe monitoring bodies, the Congress provides input from its monitoring and election observation reports to the progress review reports of the Commission on candidate countries. Operationally the Congress implements projects with local and regional authorities and their elected leaders in the framework of Council of Europe Action Plans.

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Joint commitment to strengthen grassroots democracy and civil society: meeting of Othmar Karas and Andreas Kiefer in Strasbourg - Council of Europe

Empty ballots are missed opportunities, and a race of any kind is meaningless without contestants in it. Thats why we want to applaud all the candidates whove entered the ring for election in 2022 so far. If you really want change in your community, local government is probably the best place to start. Government bodies and local officials craft policies that ripple throughout the community for generations, and many of the people vying to represent us today will make decisions that have a lasting impact on us later.

Just look around Routt County today, and youll see some of the decisions made years or decades ago at play. We talk about housing a lot, but it is only one of the issues that needs to be addressed. Public safety, land-use planning, development, recreation, transit and the local business environment theres no shortage of work ahead, and we hope there wont be a shortage of people who step up to do it.

Looking at the cost-to-benefit ratio, it can be hard to imagine why someone would want to get into public service. The private sector usually provides higher pay, shorter hours and easier interactions with the public. In fact, many of our elected officials do it for little to no pay at all. Hard choices and public ridicule are around almost every corner, and putting yourself out there in the public sphere takes courage.

But its that courage that gives voters have options to pick from, and there is no substitute for a robust lineup of candidates who are deeply invested in our success.

To make a good candidate, someone doesnt need to have lived here their entire life, but they should to be committed to our future. Institutional knowledge, government know-how and a historical reference are all strong qualities in leadership, but fresh ideas and new energy can be amazing catalysts in the community, too. We think a healthy democracy thrives on all these qualities, and that is more likely to happen with good competition in the election.

Most importantly, we want to see public officials who are engaged in the community and prepared to do the hard work that comes with it. The best public servants are those who do their research and commit themselves to finding solutions. Theyre not someone who just shows up and votes. The most productive elected officials can lose a vote, come back to the discussion and contribute to the mission, even if they disagree with the direction thats been chosen by the group.

To their core, a good candidate needs to embrace what it means to be a public servant and exemplify the fortitude necessary for this kind of work. While they might not see financial rewards, being a part of the decision-making process, having a hand in trying to better your community, is a reward in itself and one of the best and most admirable ways to get involved. Its tricky because we want candidates who try to represent the whole, but we also want people who are true to themselves and their beliefs.

Without endorsing any candidates, we want to tip our hats to everyone whos entered a race so far. Its nice to see candidates whove previously served in other roles and are looking to take new leadership positions. Its also great to see new faces who are making their first run at public office. Whether a candidate is an incumbent or newcomer, a longtime local or new to the scene, their presence in the public discourse only serves to strengthen our democracy.

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Our View: Democracy doesn't exist without the people who are willing to run - Steamboat Pilot & Today

Think of it like farming. Planting the seeds is like establishing a democracy. But for democracy to function you have to till and fertilize the soil, erect fences, pull up weeds, prune the early growth. The founders knew that democracy is not natural. It takes a lot of cultivation to make democracy work.

American foreign policy had a second founding after World War II. For much of our history Americans were content to prosper behind the safety of the oceans. But after having been dragged into two world wars, a generation of Americans realized the old attitude wasnt working any more and America, following the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, would have to help build a liberal world order if it was to remain secure.

The postwar generation was a bit like the founding generation. Its leaders from Truman to George F. Kennan to Reinhold Niebuhr championed democracy, but they had no illusions about the depravity of human beings. Theyd read their history and understood that stretching back thousands of years, war, authoritarianism, exploitation, great powers crushing little ones these were just the natural state of human societies.

If America was to be secure, Americans would have to plant the seeds of democracy, but also do all the work of cultivation so those seeds could flourish. Americans oversaw the creation of peaceful democracies from the ruins of military dictatorships in Germany and Japan. They funded the Marshall Plan. They helped build multinational institutions like NATO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund. American military might stood ready to push back against the wolves who threatened the world order sometimes effectively, as in Europe, oftentimes, as in Vietnam and Iraq, recklessly and self-destructively. America championed democracy and human rights, at least when the Communists were violating them (not so much when our dictator allies across, say, Latin America were).

Just as Americas founders understood that democracy is not natural, the postwar generation understood that peace is not natural it has to be tended and cultivated from the frailties of human passion and greed.

Over the past few generations that hopeful but sober view of human nature has faded. Whats been called the Culture of Narcissism took hold, with the view that human beings should be unshackled from restraint. You can trust yourself to be unselfish! Democracy and world peace were taken for granted. As Robert Kagan put it in his book The Jungle Grows Back: We have lived so long inside the bubble of the liberal order that we can imagine no other kind of world. We think it is natural and normal, even inevitable.

If people are naturally good we no longer have to do the hard agricultural work of cultivating virtuous citizens or fighting against human frailty. The Western advisers I covered in Russia in the early 1990s thought a lot about privatization and market reforms and very little about how to prevent greedy monsters from stealing the whole country. They had a nave view of human nature.

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Opinion | The Dark Century: Why Is Liberalism in Decline? - The New York Times

Imagine my surprise when on Jan. 6, 2017, I found out that I had received one electoral vote to be vice president of the United States an office for which I was not a candidate from a faithless elector from the state of Washington.

Four years later, on Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob overran the Capitol, I realized that my unearned vote in the Electoral College was not amusing. This seemingly innocuous vote was an indication that our system of counting and certifying votes for president and vice president had deep and serious structural problems.

These unfortunate flaws are codified in the Electoral Count Act, which guides the implementation of part of the presidential election process included in the Constitution. This 1887 law, vaguely written in the inaccessible language of a different era, was intended to restrain Congress, but in practice it has had the unintended effect of creating ambiguities that could potentially be used to expand the role of Congress and the vice president in ways that are contrary to the Constitution.

Despite its defects, the law was not an issue for more than a century because of the restraint of the people who exercised the serious, but limited, constitutional responsibility of counting the votes. Vice presidents and Congresses sustained the will of the people even when they did not like the result.

For example, we saw this in 1961 and again in 2001, when Vice Presidents Richard Nixon and Al Gore presided in a fair and dignified manner over the counting of the electoral votes despite having lost close elections for president. Vice President Gore even refused to hear Democratic objectors who were trying to make him president.

Then came the election of 2020. President Donald Trump and his allies both exploited the weaknesses of the law and ignored the language of the Constitution. Mr. Trump argued that the vice president could overturn the election results. A violent mob temporarily halted the electoral count that would confirm President Bidens victory.

Vice President Mike Pences courage and integrity on that day cannot be overstated. He stood up to a determined president who relentlessly pressured him to swing the election his way. And he refused to be intimidated by rioters who assaulted police officers, swarmed the Capitol and chanted Hang Mike Pence! As the dangerous mob neared the Senate chambers, the vice president and senators had to be whisked away.

The House, too, was forced to evacuate, bringing the electoral count to a halt. How well I remember a sparse group of Capitol Police officers urging us to Run! Run! as we made our way to a secure location, while other members of the overwhelmed Capitol Police battled the mob. For hours, we watched on television as rioters broke into the Senate chamber and rummaged through our desks.

Finally, senators were told it was safe enough for us to proceed back to the chamber, which all of us were determined to do so that we could resume the counting of the votes. The walk back that evening was very different. In contrast to the small number of police officers guiding our evacuation, F.B.I. tactical teams with riot gear, National Guard members and police officers lined our route. Vice President Pence and the Congress returned to the Capitol that night and completed the final, constitutionally mandated step before the inauguration of a new president we counted the votes.

That day reminded us that there is nothing more essential to the survival of a democracy than the orderly transfer of power, and there is nothing more essential to the orderly transfer of power than clear rules for effecting it. We should not depend on the fidelity and resolve of vice presidents to follow the intent of these rules; the law should be crystal clear on the parameters of the vice presidents powers and consistent with the very limited role set forth in the Constitution. Vice President Pences actions on Jan. 6 were heroic. But the peaceful transfer of power shouldnt require heroes.

Much debate has focused recently on the casting of ballots. Much more attention must be paid to the counting and certifying of votes. Our democracy depends on it. To prevent the subversion of the electoral process, Congress must reform the Electoral Count Act. A bipartisan group of 16 senators is working to do that.

The ambiguously phrased Electoral Count Act must be amended to make absolutely clear that a vice president cannot manipulate or ignore electoral votes as he or she presides over this joint session of Congress. But other flaws in the law must also be remedied. For instance, the laws threshold for triggering a challenge to the results of a state is far too low: Only one representative and one senator are required to object to a states electors. In the past, members on both sides of the aisle have challenged the vote without any real evidence of wrongdoing.

Our group of senators shares a vision of drafting legislation to ensure the integrity of our elections and public confidence in the results. We want a bill that will be considered by committees, debated on the Senate floor, garner the support of the Senates two leaders and pass the Senate with 60 or more votes.

The broader we cast our net, however, the more difficult it will be to achieve consensus. We have to be careful about expanding a reform bill to include provisions that go well beyond correcting the current law, strengthening election security and protecting poll workers from threats of violence. Relitigating bills that have already been rejected wont get us to the finish line. Our primary focus must be on avoiding another Jan. 6 by reforming the Electoral Count Act. That is the vital goal in itself, our duty to perform and a worthy mission that should not be derailed by good-faith but ultimately partisan provisions.

We do not know if we will succeed, but we are trying to fix a serious problem. The senators working on this legislation have philosophical, regional and political differences. When we disagree, we attempt to persuade one another we cajole, haggle and even argue but we do so with an eye on a common goal. That is the way it is supposed to work in a democracy. Maybe we could refer to the process as legitimate political discourse.

Susan Collins is a Republican senator from Maine. She is leading a bipartisan group of senators who are committed to reforming the Electoral Count Act.

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Opinion | Susan Collins: Reform the Electoral Count Act to Avoid Another January 6 - The New York Times