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Greenfield is contemplating a charter amendment that will hinder initiative access. Such a decision would be tragic. Why? There has been no confusing flurry of initiatives that I have seen. Placing increased hurdles in front of the peoples voice is clearly wrongheaded.

Humanity stands at the brink of extinction. Survival requires more input from more people. We need to hear and discuss as many good ideas as possible. Creating obstacles that block wisdom gained from ordinary peoples wide ranging experience is a dangerous impediment to survival of life as we know it.

Examine briefly how weve come to be in this insecure national condition. Start with democracy as a concept. What is it? This subject needs to be discussed.

Representative democracy is different from plain democracy. Democracy itself needs no descriptive adjective and grows with human advances. Representative democracy is a form of government that tends to concentrate wealthy people at the top since a major function of representative democracy is to represent capital. Election campaigns compete with plans to grow the economy and jobs, from this capitalists earn a profit. It all seems straight-forward but theres a major hitch: Capitalism is designed to grow faster and faster forever and Earth does not grow.

Believe it or not; Earth has already reached its limit of pollution recycling capacity. The result is human life is facing extinction. Representative democracy alone cannot solve the problem it makes by supporting a compounded capitalist growth rate.

A new form of democracy is needed to be standing in the wings and ready to begin work on survival. The peoples referendum is one part of the model from which future government forms may develop. Representative democracy is not something to discard, it is a functional companion in a dynamic nuanced relationship with popular referenda decided upon by we the people acting on our own initiative.

Americas founding fathers had no models to follow other than royalty, a hint of democracy for rich English businessmen, and the ancient slave-powered democracy of Rome. Women were considered second class citizens, at best; personal property at worst.

The yoke of slavery was removed from white males and placed on women and people with brown skin. Economic wage slavery was a different story; it continues to this day for everyone but the rich. Benefits to wealth from wage slavery remain the underlying reason to limit democracy.

The continuing struggle by wealthy people to limit democracy is not taught in school. If we continue formal education, one required course is economics. There we are indoctrinated into believing unregulated free markets tend toward equilibrium by balancing supply and demand.

Economics is not based on facts or science; It posits people as consuming units possessing all the facts about every product and choosing what to buy rationally based on a price tending toward equilibrium set by supply and demand. This entire economic picture taught to millions of students is management propaganda.

In reality, privatized resources are extracted from our planet, a small bubble of life zooming through space nestled inside our galaxy. Commercial and public waste is dumped into oceans and air and onto lands of spaceship Earth.

We are taught that somehow an unregulated free market will magically settle into equilibrium that grants maximum health and happiness to our species. Really? All we need to do is think of Hans Christian Andersons naked king seen through the untrained eyes of a child to see equilibrium is not even possible. Imagine driving on an unregulated freeway and one is fairly close to understanding global unregulated free market economics.

We approach the abyss of extinction and need to honestly examine representative democracy as what has governed to this point. None of us but the truly weird want to continue on the path of war with a long list of fictional enemies. Eternal war, chemical pollution, plastic molecules mixed in with our protein molecules and global climate collapse are happening now during governance by representative democracies that mostly represent capital.

In closing, so you may know me, I was one of those who tried to save the people of Greenfield from todays curse of plastic molecules in our bodies, by using an initiative. Response was fun and heartening. But rules were changed by town hall midstream. That kept your health off the ballot and you now have plastic molecules floating around inside you with your protein molecules.

Explore constituentassembly.org to learn and think about modern ideas of democracy. The peoples initiative is one option for avoiding disaster but it cannot govern without representative deliberations. We need both. Reject unnecessary schemes to make popular initiatives more difficult.

Garrett Connelly is a resident of Greenfield.

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My Turn: Start with democracy as a concept - The Recorder

The Daily Show has released the second installment in its new profile series, The Daily Showography, this time examining the life and times of Ted Cruz, not-so-endearingly referred to as The Booger on the Lip of Democracy. (That sub-title is a nod to a nod to a 2016 Republican presidential debate, during which a small object ostensibly a booger dangled from Cruzs lip as he spoke. And then he swallowed it, on national television, for all to see.)

The clip traces Cruz rise from a Texas teen obsessed with boobs and world domination to an irritating Princeton student to a new husband whose first act after returning from his honeymoon was to buy 100 cans of Campbells Chunky Soup. After all that, he became a high-powered attorney, arguing in front of the Supreme Court for the right to execute mentally ill prisoners and to ban the sale of sex toys.

Thats right, the segments narrator quips, in a show of selfless devotion to the law, Ted Cruz defended a ban on sex toys, even though he himself is a complete dildo.

The segment goes on to discuss Cruzs 2012 Senate run and his rise during the Tea Party era, while it also pays tribute to his rather unfortunate penchant for doing bad impressions of everyone from Yoda to Ned Flanders. And then, of course, it revisits Cruzs failed 2016 presidential bid, where Donald Trump brushed him aside by calling him a liar and his wife ugly while implying that his father had a role in the John F. Kennedy assassination. After briefly standing up for himself at that years Republican National Convention, Cruz was soon phone-banking for Trump.

The segment ended with a parade of voices from across the political spectrum noting how unlikable Cruz is. It also showed Cruz uneven attempts to rehabilitate his image, helping to stoke the January 6th insurrection and then taking an ill-advised trip to Cancun while his home state, Texas, was facing a historic winter storm. But these are just small bumps on the road to his ultimate goal: world domination, the narrator says. To Ted Cruz, the Earth is a mere booger dancing on his lips, tantalizing, mesmerizing, repulsive, waiting until the day when he can swallow us whole and hope that no one saw it.

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The Daily Show Tells the Story of Ted Cruz, The Booger on the Lip of Democracy - Rolling Stone

EU Commissioner for Values and Transparency Vra Jourov addresses the EU Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, on March 25, 2021. Photo by Yves Herman/Pool via Reuters.

The challenges of economic upheaval and threats posed by China and Russia, common to both the European Union (EU) and the United States, are increasing the urgency on both sides of the Atlantic of proving to citizens that democracy is the ticket to a better lifea notion that is no longer a given, according to Vra Jourov, vice-president for values and transparency at the European Commission, and US Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT). Doing so will require a more robust social-safety net, Murphy argued, along with an aggressive defense against misinformation, Jourov said.

Jourov and Murphy were speaking at the Atlantic Councils EU-US Future Forum during a session moderated by Fran Burwell, a distinguished fellow at the Councils Europe Center, on how to defend democracy in turbulent times.

Below are some of the key takeaways from the conversation.

Daniel Malloy is the deputy managing editor at the Atlantic Council.

Tue, May 4, 2021

The forum, which runs from May 5 through May 7, intends to provide a new platform to discuss trade, tech, energy, space, defense and security, and the recovery from COVID-19.

New AtlanticistbyBenjamin Haddad

Mon, May 3, 2021

Russian and Chinese threats all seek to exploit gaps in Western cyber defenses and digital and information governance. To close these gaps as a part of its defense strategy, the United States should develop a strong collaborative relationship with the European Union in the digital and information sphere.

Seizing the advantagebyHarry I. Hannah

Fri, Feb 5, 2021

For French President Emmanuel Macron, the number-one priority in relations with the new US administration is clear: to boost results-oriented multilateralism.

New AtlanticistbyKatherine Walla

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The urgent task before the US and EU: To craft democracy that 'delivers' - Atlantic Council

Those of us who see these as dark times for Indian democracy can take heart from the recent elections, not only because of the way regional parties stood up to the Centres ruling party machine but also because of the highly unusual nature of their win in the key battleground state.

In surviving the BJP onslaught in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee also beat overwhelming odds. She became only the 10th CM to win a third term in more than 200 major state elections held since the mid-1970s when India became a true multi-party democracy. BJP had many advantages from voter hostility towards a long-serving incumbent to the brute power of its heavily financed machinery but still fell short.

Indias problem right now is not a broken democracy, it is a broken state. In the late phases of the balloting in West Bengal, BJP lost more momentum as the pandemic started spinning out of control. This turn is likely explained at least in part by growing popular anger at the central governments handling of the rising caseload.

In recent weeks India has suffered one of the biggest surges of any country so far. Cases rose roughly twelvefold, according to official figures, and the real toll may be considerably higher. A crisis of this magnitude would stress even the worlds best healthcare system. In India, it has exposed pre-existing frailty a broken state.

A few developed countries, such as France and Italy, also suffered rapid second waves but managed to lower death rates from the first wave. Their health systems had readied for the shock. In India, the second wave has brought with it scenes of devastation reminiscent of the dark ages.

When I watch overwhelmed hospitals turning away patients at the gates, leaving them to die at home or suffer in the streets, I am haunted by thoughts of my grandfather. He died of a heart attack under similar circumstances, turned away from a public hospital in Uttar Pradesh, where there was no doctor on night duty and an orderly tried but failed to install a pacemaker. That was 1993. Indias underlying tragedy is how little progress has been made since.

Among the worlds 25 biggest emerging markets, India ranks last for the number of hospital beds per 1,000 citizens, fifth from last for doctors, fourth from last for nurses and midwives. Even if you drop richer emerging markets and compare India to other large countries with per capita incomes between $1,000 and $5,000 which includes Pakistan and Bangladesh India still looks mediocre on these basic healthcare measures.

Government spending generally rises as a share of the economy as countries grow richer. Indias government spends the equivalent of about 30% of GDP, which is roughly in line with other nations in its income class. So the problem is not the size of Indias state, but how it spends.

When Modi brought BJP to office in 2014, he mocked the welfare populism of his predecessors. Yet soon he was vying with them in his promises of generous freebies, from gas to food and pucca homes. Today, welfare spending accounts for 9% of GDP far higher than the miracle economies India would like to emulate, like South Korea and Taiwan, when they were at similar levels of development.

The government has meanwhile done little to modernise the basic structure of Indias state, which harks back to British rule. Many of Indias laws, and the structure of its federal ministries, including home and finance, dating back to the late 1800s. The corruption in public works that author Munshi Premchand was vividly described in his novels a century ago has yet to abate.

Our healthcare system was supposed to be revamped along lines described by the Bhore commission of the 1940s, but its comprehensive blueprint for hospitals and clinics throughout the country has yet to be realised. Instead, we have the sad reality of underfunded clinics, featuring operating rooms without surgeons, x-ray machines without radiologists. Some have beds without nurses, others have nurses without beds to attend. Economists who say India needs to spend more often have little to say about how badly our resources are currently deployed.

It is no surprise this unfinished and uncoordinated health system would falter in the face of a global pandemic. What was promised was minimum government, maximum governance, but rather than reforming Indias outdated state, power has been centralised to a greater degree than in a long time.

The PM set himself up as the nations saviour, who would solve its every problem. But it was a tall order, even a Formula 1 driver would not have made much progress in an Ambassador. The reality is that BJP can no longer claim to offer a superior model of governance, and that reality is starting to catch up to it at the polls.

The good news is that private groups, as they have before, are rushing in to provide what the government does not. Expats are sending money and medical resources from abroad. Residential associations are providing whatever assistance they can muster to ailing neighbours. So far, the Indian stock market has barely flinched over the rising death toll, perhaps reflecting a collective intuition that India will survive this crisis too despite its broken state.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

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Sickly state, healthy democracy: Elections held during deadly pandemic surge expose Indias real flaws and s - The Times of India Blog

Theres a quote often attributed to Winston Churchill, the former British premier: Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.

Churchills tongue-in-cheek defense of democracy came just two years after the end of World War II. Totalitarian forces had vied for their chance to lead the world, but democratic powers in Europe and the United States ushered in decades of peace and prosperity instead.

The British leaders quote came to mind as I listened to President Joe Biden address Congress on Wednesday night on his first 100 days in office, because it was the same kind of full-throated defense of democracy that Churchill made. At a time when democracy around the world is under siege and authoritarian powers like China are on the rise, Biden made it clear that he wants to use his time in the Oval Office to prove democracy right.

We have to prove democracy still works. That our government still works and can deliver for the people, he said during his address on Capitol Hill. In our first 100 days together, we have acted to restore the peoples faith in our democracy to deliver.

Those who believe American democracy wont prevail are wrong, and we have to prove them wrong.

Its a theme Biden has returned to often. During his first press conference in March, the president said It is clear, absolutely clear ... that this is a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies.

And just hours before his Wednesday evening address, Biden told CNNs Jake Tapper and other television presenters that historians would write about whether or not democracy can function in the 21st century. ... The question is: In a democracy thats such a genius as ours, can you get consensus in the timeframe that can compete with autocracy?

Its this idea that seems to animate everything Biden does. Whether its pushing trillion-dollar economic and infrastructure plans at home or especially working to outcompete Beijing abroad, the presidents main theme is that democracy is the best form of government, despite all the others.

For some experts, its the right note to strike.

China is arguing that their brand of authoritarian capitalism is predictable and produces prosperity, whereas the American model is socially divisive, politically unpredictable, and economically reckless, Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, told me. Hes right to keep bringing the issue up, she added.

Indeed, it makes sense for Biden to rally around this idea. Former President Trump attacked American democracy and often sided with foreign dictators, so championing democracy conveniently allows for a political separation between the two. Instead of appealing to rationality in an irrational and polarized time, the notion of boosting Americas democracy might calm partisan passions. And at a fundamental level, a functioning US is good for its international standing.

The American government and American society have to work if the US wants to retain its preeminent international position, said Justin Logan, a US foreign policy expert at the Cato Institute think tank in Washington, DC. It may not be able to keep that position, but in the short term, it shouldnt set its reputation for basic competence on fire, either.

But beyond being politically expedient, it appears Biden truly believes in his mission. The president, after all, was 3 years old when World War II ended. Biden grew up in a world where democracy was on the rise and bettered millions of lives (some more than others, of course). To lose the world that shaped him on his watch, no less is unthinkable, unacceptable, and unwelcome.

Yes, his first congressional address was a boilerplate political speech. It was full of the usual platitudes and wont change many minds.

But it may be remembered as Bidens earliest major plea to the nation to join him in proving democracy isnt as bad as all the other options. Its the core of the presidents domestic and foreign policy message and, increasingly, the driving force of his presidency.

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Bidens speech to Congress was about proving democracy right over autocracy - Vox.com