The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: September 20, 2006

293 comments on DrumBeat: September 20, 2006

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brutus on September 20, 2006 - 9:53am

No, the initiative process is now as bad as the legislature, not the cause. How about the fact that there's 80 state reps for close to forty million people and 40 state senators, that's not representation.

Los Angeles County has 5 supervisors for over 10 million people -- that's local government! At the nation's founding the constitution had 35,000 people for each Congressmen. The fact is the architecture of our government is broken, the old infrastructure of our politics has been destroyed, a completely vial and corrupt process of money, polls, and television rules.

We have a broken political and government system, it desperately needs reform.

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Prodigal Son on September 20, 2006 - 3:53pm

Dead.

On.

Correct.

Our entire system of government is broken. We are seeing the results we are seeing because the system has become clogged with vested interests.

Where's the political Drain-O?

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toilforoil on September 20, 2006 - 5:12pm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15041.htm

Hugo Chavez makes some caustic comments about the smell of sulpher that hovers around the White House and proposes to Americans that they read one of their own as a first step in clearing the odour.

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Agric on September 20, 2006 - 9:22pm

Uncle Hugo is more a verbal bludgeon than great orator, and it begins to look like he will rival Fidel in the interminable length of his speeches as he approaches his dotage (yep, he'll be in power, legitimately, for a long while yet unless the US illegally topples him).

But his sense of humour and irony, his subtlety (LOL), even the accuracy of his content, puts the great white chief to shame. I'd pull out this one paragraph as being a poignant and perceptive observation:

"Yesterday, the secretary general practically gave us his speech of farewell. And he recognized that over the last 10 years, things have just gotten more complicated; hunger, poverty, violence, human rights violations have just worsened. That is the tremendous consequence of the collapse of the United Nations system and American hegemonistic pretensions."

Hugo is entertaining in an over the top kind of way, but at least he spouts some ideas and very occasional interesting observation. GW makes me shiver with his simplistic (much more so than Hugo's) mechanistic attempts - apparently mostly successful - at selected voter button pressing.

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roy on September 20, 2006 - 10:03pm

"Poignant and perceptive" Agreed. Maybe fewer of his words would seem over the top to you if you were head of state of a country the administration doesn't like and literally feared a U.S. invasion. There's certainly precedence for that fear. And then there is the question of his intended audience - not we U.S. citizens I would think.

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Prodigal Son on September 20, 2006 - 10:39pm

Problem with Hugo is that he's a left-wing George Bush. His presidency in Venezuela is just a much a sign of the failure of the Venezuelan political system as George Bush's tenure is of ours.

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Samsara on September 21, 2006 - 8:35am

I would have to say that Hugo has done more for the people that were not born with a silver spoon in their mouth in his country than Bush has in his.

Bush's tax cuts for the rich, and Hugo's education programs for the poor for example.

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Prodigal Son on September 21, 2006 - 11:25am

Doesn't matter who ultimately benefits. If the Venezuelan political system had worked they wouldn't have had to elect a left-wing populist that has alienated the middle classes, was nearly toppled by a coup, and who was corrupted the Venezuelan political process.

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Samsara on September 21, 2006 - 1:27pm

"If the Venezuelan political system had worked they wouldn't have had to elect a left-wing populist.. "

I guess that answers it.

The only thing they need it would seem is Diebold Voting machines to to ensure No "Left-Wings" would get elected.

BTW, the "Coup" that nearly toppled them was staged by the CIA, not Unlike the successful one that changed Iran from a democractically elected president to a dictator in 1953, or the other hundred other examples.

<SNIP>
"In 1953, Iran had a democratic government. This is a very jarring thing for us to realize now because we are not used to seeing the word "Iran" and the word "democracy" in the same sentence. The fact is, however, that Iran was developing a long, rocky but democratic path in the early 1950s. For reasons which my book explains in great detail, the United States decided, in the summer of 1953, to go in and overthrow that democratic government. The result of that coup was that the Shah was placed back on his throne. He ruled for 25 years in an increasingly brutal and repressive fashion. His tyranny resulted in an explosion of revolution in 1979 the event that we call the Islamic revolution. That brought to power a group of fanatically anti-Western clerics who turned Iran into a center for anti-Americanism and, in particular, anti-American terrorism. "

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/07/29_kinzer.html

"There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know."
- Harry Truman

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Prodigal Son on September 21, 2006 - 3:23pm

A coup, even with outside support, relies on internal proxies to do the bidding of the outside power else they would not be successful. An intelligence agency cannot whip up a coup out of nothing. Clearly, Venezuela is polarized to the point where the two sides view each other as illegitimate contenders for political power. Neitehr trusts each other enough to play the rules of liberal democracy. If that was the case, Chavez wouldn't have corrupted the political system and a coup wouldn't have been attempted because there would have been no internal support for it.

Same thing with Iran.

Chavez, like Bush, is a symptom of dysfunction and polarization.

"There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know."

(Yawn) Spare me your cliches.

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hithere123 on September 21, 2006 - 11:22pm

http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/

read about the people in venezuela from their point of view...more poor people are dying and suffering since his rule than before he came into power. chavez cares more about his own agenda than the people of his country and wins hearts of poor people in other countries by throwing oil around when he should be doing more for the poor in his own country. its sad because we need that oil and allow ourselves to be insulted and disgraced because we are so dependent on the resource. chavez needs to recheck himself and there should be more news on how venezuelans are being treated. chavez is a charade and we're allowing ourselves to give into his nonsense.

"...there exists nonetheless sufficient factual evidence to prove that Chavez' regime is by far the most corrupt that Venezuela has ever seen. For instance the irresponsible manner in which the country has been indebted. In 1998 the internal outstanding debt was close to $2.000 billion, in contrast to $16.000 billion at present. Venezuela's banking system holds 64% of the internal debt at times when PDVSA's output capacity has decreased significantly. This translates into larger chunks of the budget having to be destined to service the debt, both internal and external, placing an extraordinary burden in the country's finances. The $2.500 billion deposited in the Inversion and Macro Stabilization Fund (FIEM), were pilfered by Chavez.... "
http://www.hacer.org/current/Vene52.php

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Wolfric on September 20, 2006 - 6:21pm

At this point, I think that the base rules of the democracy, whether in US, in Canada or elsewhere were good when the number of citizen were low enough.

In my own county we have 1 house elected representative for 45 000 people, but that's not usual, 100 000 is more usual.

Anyway, as the total number of citizen increase, the number of people represented by one representative increase even more. That's because you cannot increase effectively the number of representative too much. At one point even more representative does not increase actual democracy.

I can see that even in small local groups. It is often more efficient to work with a small number of people (3 to 7) than working with larger groups (8 or more). As the number of people increase, the increment of added value does not increase alike.

I did not make any actual research on this, it is based on observation of a number of groups (more than 30) I have worked with in the last 8 years.

The increment of added value in a group is somewhat following the same curve than the oil "creaming curve" that you saw in some Mathew Simmons presentation.

Also in any group of more than 10 people the following apply :

1 leader, no matter what
3 or 4 people involved more than the others
3 somewhat present but with less valuable participation
2 or 3 that we see only once in a while and giving only marginal effort.

I don't want to imply that elected representative are subject to the same distribution, but I don't think that I'm very far from the reality.

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Dan Ur on September 20, 2006 - 7:35pm

I don't think there is anything we can do about the 35,000 to 1 ratio we had long ago in a land far away. We can hope that things improve, but even a bit of an improvement like 500,000 to 1 would be great, oh wait don't we nationally have something like that? Ok say 300,000 to 1, that gives us about 1,000 reps and 100 senators. GEE I really don't see any improvement there either.

We have passed the point where a Revolution could do any good. We have gotten a National Government that will not allow a Revolution in the first place.

I have Fixed it so that people may comment on my short story about "A future as I saw it" What is still scary is I think it will be sooner rather than later.

dan-ur.blogspot.com

Have fun, just remember we have the technology to do it today.

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Seadragon on September 21, 2006 - 9:11am

Diminishing marginal returns in politics?

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MicroHydro on September 20, 2006 - 7:42pm

New Zealand currently has one MP per about 35,000 population. Probably one of the reasons (along with paper ballot voting) that democracy hasn't entirely died here.

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