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By Brian Klaas By Brian Klaas February 10 at 4:13 PM

Brian Klaas is a Fellow in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and author of The Despots Accomplice: How the West is Aiding & Abetting the Decline of Democracy.

There is an enormous paradox at the heart of American democracy. Congress is deeply and stubbornly unpopular. On average, between 10 and 15 percent of Americans approve of Congress on a par with public support for traffic jams and cockroaches. And yet, in the 2016 election, only eight incumbents eight out of a body of 435 representatives were defeated at the polls.

If there is one silver bullet that could fix American democracy, its getting rid of gerrymandering the now commonplace practice of drawing electoral districts in a distorted way for partisan gain. Its also one of a dwindling number of issues that principled citizens Democrat and Republican should be able to agree on. Indeed, polls confirm that an overwhelming majority of Americans of all stripes oppose gerrymandering.

In the 2016 elections for the House of Representatives, the average electoral margin of victory was 37.1 percent. Thats a figure youd expect from North Korea, Russia or Zimbabwe not the United States. But the shocking reality is that the typical race ended with a Democrat or a Republican winning nearly 70 percent of the vote, while their challenger won just 30 percent.

Last year, only 17 seats out of 435 races were decided by a margin of 5 percent or less. Just 33 seats in total were decided by a margin of 10 percent or less. In other words, more than 9 out of 10 House races were landslides where the campaign was a foregone conclusion before ballots were even cast. In 2016, there were no truly competitive Congressional races in 42 of the 50 states. That is not healthy for a system of government that, at its core, is defined by political competition.

Gerrymandering, in a word, is why American democracy is broken.

The word gerrymander comes from an 1812 political cartoon drawn to parody Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerrys re-drawn senate districts. The cartoon depicts one of the bizarrely shaped districts in the contorted form of a fork-tongued salamander. Since 1812, gerrymandering has been increasingly used as a tool to divide and distort the electorate. More often than not, state legislatures are tasked with drawing district maps, allowing the electoral foxes to draw and defend their henhouse districts.

While no party is innocent when it comes to gerrymandering, a Washington Post analysis in 2014 found that eight of the ten most gerrymandered districts in the United States were drawn by Republicans.

As a result, districts from the Illinois 4th to the North Carolina 12th often look like spilled inkblots rather than coherent voting blocs. They are anything but accidental. The Illinois 4th, for example, is nicknamed the Latin Earmuffs, because it connects two predominantly Latino areas by a thin line that is effectively just one road. In so doing, it packs Democrats into a contorted district, ensuring that those voters cast ballots in a safely Democratic preserve. The net result is a weakening of the power of Latino votes and more Republican districts than the electoral math should reasonably yield. Because Democrats are packed together as tightly as possible in one district, Republicans have a chance to win surrounding districts even though they are vastly outnumbered geographically.

These uncompetitive districts have a seriously corrosive effect on the integrity of democracy. If youre elected to represent a district that is 80 percent Republican or 80 percent Democratic, there is absolutely no incentive to compromise. Ever. In fact, there is a strong disincentive to collaboration, because working across the aisle almost certainly means the risk of a primary challenge from the far right or far left of the party. For the overwhelming majority of Congressional representatives, there is no real risk to losing a general election but there is a very real threat of losing a fiercely contested primary election. Over time, this causes sane people to pursue insane pandering and extreme positions. It is a key, but often overlooked, source of contemporary gridlock and endless bickering.

Moreover, gerrymandering also disempowers and distorts citizen votes which leads to decreased turnout and a sense of powerlessness. In 2010, droves of tea party activists eager to have their voices heard quickly realized that their own representative was either a solidly liberal Democrat in an overwhelmingly blue district or a solidly conservative Republican in an overwhelmingly red district. Those representatives would not listen because the electoral map meant that they didnt need to.

Those who now oppose President Trump are quickly learning the same lesson about the electoral calculations made by their representatives as they make calls or write letters to congressional representatives who seem about as likely to be swayed as granite. This helps to explain why 2014 turnout sagged to just 36.4 percent, the lowest turnout rate since World War II. Why bother showing up when the result already seems preordained?

There are two pieces of good news. First, several court rulings in state and federal courts have dealt a blow to gerrymandered districts. Several court rulings objected to districts that clearly were drawn along racial lines. Perhaps the most important is a Wisconsin case (Whitford v. Gill) that ruled that districts could not be drawn for deliberate partisan gain. The Supreme Court will rule on partisan gerrymandering in 2017, and its a case that could transform and reinvigorate American democracy at a time when a positive shock is sorely needed. (This may hold true even if Neil Gorsuch is confirmed to the Supreme Court, as Justices Kennedy and Roberts could side with the liberal minority).

Second, fixing gerrymandering is getting easier. Given the right parameters, computer models can fairly apportion citizens into districts that are diverse, competitive and geographically sensible ensuring that minorities are not used as pawns in a national political game. These efforts can be bolstered by stripping district drawing powers from partisan legislators and putting them into the hands of citizen-led commissions that are comprised by an equal number of Democrat- and Republican-leaning voters. Partisan politics is to be exercised within the districts, not during their formation. But gerrymandering intensifies every decade regardless, because its not a politically sexy issue. Whens the last time you saw a march against skewed districting?

Even if the marches do come someday, the last stubborn barrier to getting reform right is human nature. Many people prefer to be surrounded by like-minded citizens, rather than feeling like a lonely red oasis in a sea of blue or vice versa. Rooting out gerrymandering wont make San Francisco or rural Texas districts more competitive no matter the computer model used. And, as the urban/rural divide in American politics intensifies, competitive districts will be harder and harder to draw. The more we cluster, the less we find common ground and compromise.

Ultimately, though, we must remember that what truly differentiates democracy from despotism is political competition. The longer we allow our districts to be hijacked by partisans, blue or red, the further we gravitate away from the founding ideals of our republic and the closer we inch toward the death of American democracy.

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Gerrymandering is the biggest obstacle to genuine democracy in the ... - Washington Post

Martin Luther King Jr. famously stated, Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Nearly 50 years after Dr. Kings assassination, his words continue to ring true. A quintessential example is the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, which is comprised of approximately 7,000 warheads, each weapon many more times powerful than the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The existence of a bloated nuclear arsenal is problematic. But even more worrisome is the current policy in place for authorizing a nuclear strike.

Legally, the president of the United States has the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons, even if another country has not fired them at us first. This means that President Trump, or any of his successors, could simply wake up tomorrow and order a nuclear attack. Congress couldnt stop him.

The Supreme Court wouldnt be able to block the order either. In theory, the military officers in charge of implementing the order could reject it, but such a refusal is highly unlikely and would amount to mutiny.

As Americans, we pride ourselves on democratic institutions. We fought a war of independence against a king to ultimately establish a system resting on checks and balances. Our Constitution meticulously separates power to avoid any one person or entity having complete control.

But when it comes to launching the most powerful tools of destruction in the history of mankind, the United States is an absolute monarchy.

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution specifically grants the United States Congress the power to declare war. By any measure, initiating a nuclear strike, with the ability of just one weapon to annihilate an entire population center, amounts to an act of warfare.

It is time for Congress to formally retain its war-making prerogative. Senator Ed MarkeyEd MarkeyWarren, Dems accuse Trump of ethics violations Bring Democracy to America's nuclear weapons Overnight Tech: Dems vow to fight for net neutrality | FCC chief defends changes to internet program | Uber sues Seattle MORE (D-Mass.) and Representative Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) recently introduced a bill that would bring democracy to nuclear weapons policy.

If passed, Congress would have to issue a declaration of war before the president can initiate a nuclear first-strike. This sensible bill respects the delegated powers of Congress and vastly reduces the risk of serious nuclear miscalculation or accident. It deserves broad support and should become law as soon as possible.

Importantly, the concern is not partisan. The bill was first introduced in September 2016, at a time when a Democrat controlled the Oval Office and the Democratic candidate was widely considered to be the clear frontrunner for the presidency.

Still, critics may argue that granting Congress nuclear authority creates serious uncertainty. If the United States is under nuclear attack, what if Congress is not in session? Even so, could the legislative body vote quickly enough before Washington is lost? T

hese are valid points and the Markey-Lieu bill answers them in full. If the legislation passes, the President will still have the power to unilaterally order an attack, but only if an enemy has certifiably launched a nuclear strike against the United States. In all other scenarios, Congress must voice its approval.

Numerous national security leaders from former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenBring Democracy to America's nuclear weapons Conway's ethics foul would get you fired in an Obama White House DNC chair hopeful runs in face of faction fight MORE to former Secretary of Defense William Perry to former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff James Cartwright have noted that there are few, if any, conceivable scenarios where the United States would be forced to launch a nuclear weapon first.

But even if such a decision was necessary, it should be done with the support of our democratic institutions. One person, no matter who it is, should never have the singular authority to end civilization on a whim.

Former Congressman John Tierney represented Massachusetts sixth congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives for 18 years. He currently serves as Executive Director of Council for a Livable World, a Washington, D.C. based non-profit organization that promotes policies to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons and to minimize the risk of war.

The views of contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

Read more here:
Bring Democracy to America's nuclear weapons | TheHill - The Hill (blog)

BBC (my emphasis added):

The Hamburg court said that it stands by its order, issued last May, which prohibited republication of parts of a poem by German comic Jan Boehmermann. The satirist, who is barred for repeating the majority of the verses, says he will appeal the verdict. The poem, first broadcast in 2016, led to a free speech debate in Germany, and diplomatic tension with Turkey.

Mr Boehmermanns lawyer, Christian Schertz, said Fridays verdict does not take into account freedom of artistic expression.

But in a statement, the court said: Satire that is secured under artistic freedom could be forbidden when it touches on the core area of personal freedom. However, the court also said that a head of state must expect heavier criticism than a regular citizen. The poem played on President Erdogans reputation for cracking down on free speech at home, and included vulgar sexual references. The Turkish president filed a criminal complaint against the satirist after it was broadcast on German television last March.

The criminal charges were later dropped, but the poem remains banned in Germany.

The case hinges on a rarely used 19th-century section of Germans criminal code that prohibits defamation of foreign heads of state

The court objected to 18 of the poems 24 lines, deeming them abusive and defamatory.

Well, they were certainly abusive (text here: trigger warnings, good taste warnings, naughty word warnings, rubber mask warnings, etc.), but they were also clearly satirical. To suggest that they were defamatory would be to suggest, I reckon, that they could be taken seriously. Andwho could possibly think that? I mean, goats.

The attempt by Turkeys thuggish leader (and, yes, Im old enough to remember when The Economist used to describe him as mildly Islamist) to arrange for Boehmermann to be prosecuted ought to have been seen off by any German chancellor worthy of that role. Unfortunately, Angela Merkel is not that person.

Heres Stefan Kuzmany, writing in Spiegel Online earlier thisyear:

Merkel apparently sought to take the wind out of Erdogans sails by hastily having her spokesperson announce that the Bhmermann poem was consciously injurious. She could have thrown her support unmistakably behind Bhmermann, as one might expect from a chancellor charged with defending the German constitution. His poem was very clearly meant as satire; none of the uncomely imputations therein should be taken nor were they meant seriously. The chancellor, of course, knows as much. Yet by adopting Erdogans viewpoint, she has essentially allowed him to determine what should be viewed as satire in Germany and what not. Now, the chancellor must decide if German prosecutors should be allowed to open a case over the insulting of a foreign head of state but because she already described the poem as injurious via her spokesman, she has very little room for maneuver.

She panicked, in other words, notthe first timeshe has done so as chancellor.

And yes, she gave the prosecutors the go-ahead.

Back to the BBC:

After the case became a national talking point, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the authorities would move to repeal article 103 concerning insults against foreign heads of state by 2018.

2018! Merkel is notoriously no friend of free speech, but she might at least pretend

Read this article:
Bhmermann, Erdogan and Merkel's Illiberal Democracy - National Review

DEMOCRACY is in decline around the world, according to Freedom House, a think-tank. Only 45% of countries are considered free today, and their number is slipping. Liberty is in retreat in the world of business, too. The idea that firms should be controlled by diverse shareholders who exercise one vote per share is increasingly viewed as redundant or even dangerous.

Consider the initial public offering (IPO) of Silicon Valleys latest social-media star, Snap. It plans to raise $3-4bn and secure a valuation of $20bn-25bn. The securities being sold have no voting rights, so all the power will stay with Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, its co-founders. Snaps IPO has echoes of that of Alibaba, a Chinese internet giant. It listed itself in New York in 2014, in the worlds largest-ever IPO, raising $25bn. It is worth $252bn today and is controlled by an opaque partnership using legal vehicles in the Cayman Islands. Its ordinary shareholders are supine.

Optimists may dismiss the two IPOs as isolated events, but there is a deeper trend towards autocracy. Eight of the worlds 20 most valuable firms are not controlled by outside shareholders. They include Samsung, Berkshire Hathaway, ICBC (a Chinese bank) and Google. Available figures show that about 30% of the aggregate value of the worlds stockmarkets is governed undemocratically, because voting rights are curtailed, because core shareholders have de facto control, or because the shares belong to passively managed funds that have little incentive to vote.

Cheerleaders for corporate governance, particularly in America, often paint a rosy picture. They point out that fewer bosses are keeping control through legal skulduggery, such as poison pills that prevent takeovers. Unfortunately, these gains have been overwhelmed by three bigger trends. The first is that technology firms can dictate terms to infatuated investors. Young and with a limited need for outside capital, many have come of age when growth is scarce. Google floated in 2004 with a dual voting structure expressly designed to ensure that outside investors would have little ability to influence its strategic decisions. Facebook listed in 2012 with a similar structure and in 2016 said that it would issue new non-voting shares. Alibaba listed in New York after Hong Kongs stock exchange refused to countenance its peculiar arrangements. Undaunted, American investors piled in.

At the same time there has been a drift away from the model of dispersed ownership in emerging economies, with 60% of the typical bourse being closely held by families or governments, up from 50% before the global financial crisis, according to the IMF. One reason has been lots of IPOs of state-backed firms in which the relevant government retains a controlling stake. Hank Paulson, a former boss of Goldman Sachs, helped design many of Chinas privatisations in the early 2000s. The Chinese could not surrender control, his memoirs recall. Mr Paulson hoped that the government would eventually take a back seat, but that has not happened. Other emerging economies, including Brazil and Russia, copied the Chinese strategy of partial privatisation. And across the emerging world, tightly held family firms, such as Tata in India and Samsung in South Korea, are bigger than ever.

Voter apathy is the third trend, owing to the rise of low-cost index funds that track the market. Passive funds offer a good deal for savers, but their lean overheads mean that they dont have the skills or resources to involve themselves in lots of firms affairs. Such funds now own 13% of Americas stockmarket, up from 9% in 2013, and are growing fast. A slug of the shareholder register of most listed firms is now comprised of professional snoozers.

For many in business the decay of shareholder democracy is irrelevant. After all, they argue, investors own lots of other securitiesbonds, options, swaps and warrantsthat dont have any voting rights and it doesnt seem to matter. At well-run firms such as Berkshire, shares with different voting rights trade at similar prices, suggesting those rights are not worth much. Some managers go further and argue that less shareholder democracy is good, because voters are myopic. Last year Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks boss, pointed out that with a normal structure the firm would have been forced to sell out to Yahoo in 2006.

It doesnt take a billionaire to poke holes in this logic. For economies, toothless shareholders are damaging. In China and Japan firms allocate capital badly because they are not answerable to outside owners, and earn returns on equity of 8-9%. A study in 2016 by Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm, got Wall Streets attention by calling passive investing the silent road to serfdom. Without active ownership, it said, capitalism would break down.

Democratic deficit

At the firm level, voting rights are critical during takeovers, or if performance slips. At Viacom, a media firm with dual-class shares, which ran MTV in its heyday but which has stagnated for the past decade, outside investors are helpless. Control sits with the patriarch, Sumner Redstone, aged 93, who has 80% of its votes but only 10% of its shares. Yahoo (once as sexy as Snap) has lost its way, too. But because it has only one class of shares, outsider investors have been able to step in and, using their voting power, force the firm to break itself up and return cash to its owners.

The system may be partially self-correcting. Some passive managers, such as BlackRock, are stepping up their engagement with companies. If index funds get too big, shares will be mispriced, creating opportunities for active managers. If shares without votes are sold for inflated prices, their owners will eventually be burned, and wont buy them again. And if fashionable young firms miss targets, they will need more cash and will get it on worse terms. But in the end shareholder democracy depends on investors asserting their right to vote in return for providing capital to risky firms. If they dont bother, shareholder democracy will continue to decline. That is something to think about as fund managers queue up for Snaps IPO.

The rest is here:
Shareholder democracy is ailing | The Economist - The Economist

The first few days Donald Trumps presidency have seen what may be the beginning of the end of the Affordable Care Act, an average annual hike of $500 for middle-class homeowners mortgage insurance premiums, a hint at a re-invasion of Iraq and a shift in the Department of Justices effort to protect voting rights.

Yet, the overwhelming cloud that hangs over the Trump administration is the suggestion of Russian interference in the election. Investigators from six different U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been examining possible links between Russian officials and Trumps presidential campaign.

This cloud hangs not only over Trumps presidency, but over American democracy itself. Preservation of the integrity of our democratic process depends upon the aggressive pursuit of the truth and the full cooperation of Trump and his advisers in that pursuit.

Media reports indicate that investigations into Trumps Russian ties began as far back as last spring before the FBI received the notorious dossier alleging that Russian operatives held compromising information about Trump, and that there was a continuing exchange of information between the Russian government and Trump associates.

Any concrete evidence in support of these allegations would be damaging to Trumps presidency. And failure to investigate them would be even more damaging to the nation itself.

Democracy, while a founding principle of the United States, has been a work in progress from the days when only white, male and in some states, Protestant Christian property owners were permitted to vote. Gradually, over two centuries, the franchise was extended to non-landowners, Native Americans, women, and people of color.

We still are engaged in the business of expanding and protecting our democracy, fighting back racially-motivated voter suppression laws and contending with the anti-democratic effects of the Electoral College. Our goal must be a full and true democracy, where every citizen has an equal opportunity to be heard, without the corrupting influence of foreign agents working against American interests.

If a foreign government interfered to boost one candidate chances, its not merely an affront to the losing candidate; its an affront to every single honest, voting citizen. Its an affront to American democracy.

Because Trump was elevated to office by the anachronistic Electoral College counter to the choice of a majority of voters he owes the American people an exceptional level of deference. He should go to every length to demonstrate that his own conduct, at least, was above-board and beyond reproach. Any attempt to stonewall an investigation should be viewed with the utmost skepticism.

His public statements on Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, have been contradictory at the very least. In 2013, 2014 and 2015, he said he had a relationship with Putin, had spoken with him and had gotten to know him. In the third presidential debate, he said he had never met him. In the second debate, he said he had no dealings with Russia and no businesses there.

But his son, Donald Trump Jr., said in 2008 that Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. This confusion should raise serious questions.

President Trump appears to be engaged in a campaign of disinformation about his election claiming without evidence that he was denied a popular victory by millions of illegal votes. His apparent obsession extends to making repeated false statements about attendance at his inauguration. His preoccupation could complicate our intelligence agencies attempts to ferret out the truth. Its our hope that he will see that any failure to cooperate or to encourage a full investigation would be crippling to the nation.

During the Inauguration Ceremony on Jan. 20, much was made about the peaceful transfer of power that is and should be an example for the world. But that peaceful transition depends upon the strict balance of powers as outlined in the Constitution. Its up to our legislative and judicial branches to serve as a check on the executive, beginning with the investigation into foreign influence.

Marc H. Morial is the CEO of the National Urban League.

Original post:
A gray cloud hangs over American democracy - The Philadelphia Tribune