When Will Trump Leave Office?

Donald Trump and the rest of his administration are doing worse than bungle their responsibilities. Each misstep by a Trump appointee emphasizes just how incompetent the president and his appointees are. You can't unring these bells. Once a stupid mistake is made, it sits around on the internet forever, springing into consciousness again and again.

Take Trump's pre-election description of how easy it was for him to sexually assault women because he was a tv star. The statement he made was undoubtedly true but still something you don't want to say when your job depends on the good will of women. Recently, Trump attacked Mika Brzezinski for her personal appearance. This comment immediately brought to mind his previous comments about women and their personal appearance. You can't take back what you said once it has been recorded for posterity.

My point is this: No matter how badly the public views Trump right now, it is bound to get worse, because these issues are additive. One stupid remark is added to another and another and so on. So Trump's reputation for stupidity (or sexism, if you prefer) just keeps on growing. Add to that the other lapses, faux pas, and revelations of ignorance that Trump continues to make and you soon have a snowball that will push Trump from office because he will no longer be able to fulfill the duties of the Presidency, which demand the confidence of the majority of Americans.

Trump clearly doesn't believe in democracy. He has staffed his departments with the wealthy, apparently on the assumption that wealthy people are better at their jobs than ordinary people. The form of government favored by Trump and his supporters is therefore plutocracy, or government by the wealthy, rather than democracy, government by the people. This accounts for some of the odd choices he has made as well as his disdain of scientists. Scientists are not wealthy, so their opinions are less important than those of business executives, he thinks.

So Trump's popularity ratings are still falling and his esteem among the educated classes is non-existent. What does this mean for how long his presidency will last? What will be the tipping point where Republicans recognize that Trump is poisonous to their political careers?

I believe that point is near. Some Republicans have stopped holding meetings with their constituents altogether, while others are holding closed meetings for Republican voters only. No doubt, these politicians believe that Trump will weather the storm and they will come out better in the end if they stick by him. When they begin to understand that Trump is toxic, there will be a mad rush toward the exits.

Look forward to this event sooner rather than later.

Masri Zone welcomes comments from all viewpoints. We will never release the names of our commenters. Please feel free to vent.

What Democracy?

Although Republicans assure us we live in a republic, not a democracy, since the people elect our representatives, we are still a democracy. If that is the case, why can't our representatives pass the laws we want?

A recent PPP poll asked wide-ranging questions about controversial issues and came up with the following results:

• 71% of Americans polled favor raising the minimum wage to $10 per hour or higher.
• 63% favor proposed EPA regulations that limit carbon pollution from power plants.
• 85% favor getting a criminal background check for every gun purchaser.

Other public opinion polls have shown similar results. The American people support these three policies by overwhelming margins.

Why doesn't Congress or the states change the laws in accord with the wishes of the American people?

There is only one possible answer to this question and it's a very simple one: Our democracy is broken.

Results like these suggest we need to abandon our wars on drugs, abortion, and crime and replace that effort with a single movement, the movement to bring back democracy.

When will the wealthy get their wake-up call?

In an NY Times Op-Ed, Paul Krugman describes the political struggles in Hong Kong and discovers--surprise!--the wealthy of Hong Kong are trying to suppress the votes of the bottom 50%. Sounds a lot like what's going on in America, right? Krugman's conclusion: "The truth is that a lot of what’s going on in American politics is, at root, a fight between democracy and plutocracy. And it’s by no means clear which side will win."

You don't have to be a genius to see the vast wealth of CEOs and Hedge Fund Managers. Wherever you live, you can find enclaves of beautiful homes for the wealthy and vast stretches of mediocre homes for everyone else. The best property in any town is captured by the wealthy: The wealthy have the property next to the parks, the homes with views, the huge lots. The wealthy live in the nice neighborhoods with trees and garbage collectors and little boutique shops full of stuff that only they can afford to buy.

The wealthy really can't hide what's going on. They tell their supporters that all this can be theirs, too, if they just work hard enough and long enough and vote Republican. But even the dullest resident of the poorer districts can see those houses on the hill and those penthouse apartments and understand that he or she will never be living there. 

No amount of money spent on fancy propaganda is going to keep the 99% from the realization that they don't live in a mansion and don't own several houses and don't earn enough to buy those things. The 1% will never be able to convince the immigrants who do many of the menial jobs in this country that their lives will be better if they don't get the right to vote.

So I don't think there is a question about which side will win in the end. Eventually the non-wealthy among us will realize that immigrants are likely to vote with us and against the wealthy. That is precisely why the wealthy don't want to give citizenship to immigrants, even though it is the wealthy who benefit most from the maids, cooks, janitors, dishwashers, waiters, gardeners, security guards, night watchmen, and nannies who have come to this country to work. The 1% enjoy the unjust and unfair economic system just the way it is and they are fighting like Hell to keep it that way. The wealthy call this selfish attitude, "Conservatism," when it is really just "Greed."

The wealthy will lose because the non-wealthy are not nearly as stupid as they think we are.

Why shouldn't the Chinese people fight for Democracy? A question on Quora.

Over a thousand people on quora voted for an answer to this question that concludes: "If you think democracy is good, that is okay. Revolutionizing the entire system requires real urgency, when the society is ready to pay the cost. But now, the Chinese system works just fine."

An engineer has written the answer to this question. Hundreds of people have upvoted the answer. In the answer, the engineer compares the government of China to an internet protocol. This is a very bad analogy.

The consequences of continuing an operable though inferior protocol are negligible in terms of human rights or quality of life. The consequences of continuing a Communist system of government are huge. 

Communism is a form of oligarchy. As with all oligarchies, the ruling class gets many privileges while everyone else looks the other way. When it comes time to vote, as with the answer upvoted here, everyone says, yes, this is a fine system. The oligarchy does not look kindly on anyone who tries to oppose its power in any way, no matter how insignificant. So your vote doesn't count, except that if you vote against the oligarchy, you could suffer serious consequences. This is why, when elections are held in an oligarchy, everyone says the government is just fine.

The Chinese government gives great advantages to the people who run the industrial organizations, the entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs acquire great wealth and privilege. So you have a country where the rural population makes 1/3 as much per capita as the urban population and the top 1 per cent own 1/3 of the wealth. See Income inequality in China for details.

Surprise! The result of the economic system in China is almost exactly the same as the result in the US: A small number of people own most of the wealth. Both these countries are oligarchies, so the outcomes are inevitably the same. 

There are many reasons why the people living in an oligarchy do not rise up to throw off their masters. In China, the government watches the people very closely for any signs of rebellion. The oligarchy there pays special attention to any groups trying to organize for any reason. The oligarchy knows that any group that tries to challenge its power must first organize.

As a result, the Chinese government imposes strict press censorship. The penalties for printing anything against the government are severe. The government imposes the death penalty for 55 crimes, including white-collar crimes like embezzlement. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Chinese government executed more people than the rest of the world combined. See Human rights in China.

Human rights organizations have accused the Chinese oligarchy of denying basic human rights to its people. The Chinese oligarchy responds that, since there are differences between people, there should be differences in human rights that are given to the people. This practice is an example of Chinese claiming the existence of Chinese exceptionalism, just as Americans claim American exceptionalism excuses many of their violations of international human rights treaties, such as when they invaded Iraq without provocation, or when they tortured prisoners of war.

Given the absolute control by the Chinese oligarchy over its people, and its denial of basic rights like the right of free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom from torture (guaranteed by the fifth amendment in the US constitution), the likelihood of any uprising against the Chinese government is very small. So the answer to the question, Why shouldn't Chinese people fight for democracy, is that the oligarchic system of government in China prevents any organized resistance and punishes any perceived resistance severely.

Whether the Chinese are really happy with their present government is a completely different question. Let me answer it with another question: Assuming that you are not a member of the ruling oligarchy, would you be happy in a country where the oligarchy routinely commits human rights abuses and your chances of escaping poverty are almost nil?

Consistency will destroy the country

In response to a remark by Margaret Leber on Google plus, who said:

"	There's very good reasons indeed why we have a republic rather than a democracy."

If we have a representative democracy, give me a good reason why 80 percent of the people believe we need immigration reform but our “representatives” refuse to act on it. In fact, our “representatives” refuse to act on anything at all because they dislike the government they are a part of. For a government to be a republic, it has to be working, else it’s not a republic or anything else. 

As for my opinions being inconsistent, I freely admit it. The real world is inconsistent. Some things unions do are good; some things are not so good. But you propose to destroy everything unions do, good and bad, with nothing to replace them. Your opinions are consistent, but harmful to our citizens and also to those who live and work here but to whom we grant no citizenship rights.

Only when the basis for all your ideas is an artificial construct that doesn’t reflect the real world do all your ideas become “consistent”. The real world is irregular. For example, some snakes are beneficial, others are poisonous. We should not adopt a policy to kill all snakes, only those that are harmful. Similarly, we should not adopt a policy to destroy all unions because we don’t like their politics.

So you believe all unions are bad, all taxes are bad, in fact, all government is bad, yet you just said you are glad we have a “republican” form of government. You are not consistent there. If we are to continue to have a republic, we must supply it with enough revenue to accomplish the tasks we set for it. Starving government to make it smaller is like killing all the snakes because some of them are poisonous. That doesn’t make sense, either.

Our Decrepit Constitution: The People Hardly Matter

On April 17, the U.S. Senate voted to block any vote on a gun control regulation supported by 90% of the people. The Senate would have passed the bill had a vote been taken, since they had 54 votes to allow debate to continue. Opponents of the bill included lobbyists for gun manufacturers and the radical fringe that opposes any attempt to limit the quantity or quality of armaments that any American can buy.

The Constitution is to blame for this. The Framers planned for the Senate to be the last bastion for minorities against the majority of public opinion. Once again, the Senate has fulfilled its role. The Senate also proved that this country is not democratic, since the vast majority of the people support gun control but can't even get the Congress to vote on a bill that grants their wishes.

Gun control is not the only issue that can't be discussed in the Senate. Global warming, affirmed by over 90% of the world's climate scientists, also fails to get a hearing due to spending by its wealthy opponents. Too many rich people depend on oil for the majority to have their way. Yet global warming threatens to destroy the wealth of the whole world. The slogan of the oil companies seems to be, “I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone.” By which they mean to say that when the economy collapses under the weight of natural disasters, they will have made their fortunes and gone away to a haven for the wealthy.

There are only two solutions to this problem. One relies on less democracy, the other on more.

The first option was chosen by the Romans in the First Century A.U.C. The Roman world was racked by revolutions. The ruling class, holders of political power, were unable to stem the violence. But the violence continued until finally a leader, Julius Caesar, emerged who destroyed the power of the elite and declared himself sole ruler of Rome. The people acquiesced to his rule because they were exhausted by warfare and uncertainty. Democracy came to an end and with it the possibility of long-term survival, since an absolute ruler is only concerned about his own power, not the welfare of the people.

There is a possibility that such a person may emerge in the United States. There is nothing in our Constitution to prevent such an action if the situation is desperate enough. In the past, American presidents have increased their power with the consent of the Congress. John Kennedy brought the nation to the brink of nuclear war because he believed missile sites in Cuba threatened the U.S. mainland, but never explained how the Cubans could be a threat when the Russian military possessed missiles that could reach the mainland from Russia. Lyndon Johnson persuaded the Senate that the navy of North Vietnam represented a danger to the United States that justified years of war and thousands of American deaths. Ronald Reagan convinced the Congress that Marines should invade the island of Grenada because a few American medical students might possibly be in danger. George Bush convinced the whole country that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the U.S. that justified 10 years of war and a trillion dollars of military spending. Americans have a history of letting presidents do anything they want.

There is another way, though, one that results in more democracy, not less. The country could pass the National Initiative Amendment, which would create a way for the majority to exert its will. The initiative process has already been tried in 28 states. Recently California has ended the deadlock in its legislature, very similar to the deadlock in the U.S. Congress, with an initiative.

A national initiative has the advantage over the current Congress that individual Representatives would not need to vote on an issue. They could pass an initiative and let the people decide. If such a process were available today, the gun manufacturers could not spend enough money on propaganda to sway 90 per cent of the electorate to their position. Reasonable gun laws could be passed nationally.

The deaths of thousands of innocent men, women, and children through gun violence is an important stimulus to legislative action. The wealth of our country's wealth and power by global warming is even more critical, since it affects every American, and every person in the world. A national initiative would permit the people to vote on whether to permit oil companies to pollute the world. A national initiative could overrule a Supreme Court stuffed with oil company backers, because the Court cannot rule that an amendment is unconstitutional. The amendment passed by the Constitution would become part of the constitution.

Our Decrepit Constitution: Fighting the Corporations

Our Decrepit Constitution: Fighting the Corporations

Recent incidents of gun violence are still fresh is the minds of residents of the states of Colorado and Connecticut. Those states have passed strict gun control regulations. Ninety per cent of the population agree that more gun control regulations are necessary, yet the congress is incapable of action. It seems incredible, but it happens because our laws are not democratic.

Senators and Representatives are elected by constituents. Their constituents exercise only indirect influence over their elected representatives. Constituents only vote every 2 years for Congressmen, or 6 years for Senators. The Constitution permits lobbyists to give money to our lawmakers every day. These sums of money are sometimes very large, but politicians need large sums of money to run for office. Just as important, they must avoid ever offending those groups who might give them large sums of money. If politicians offend those groups, their opponents in the next election may receive support from those same groups.

The only politician directly elected by the people (discounting for a moment the anachronous electoral college) is the President. The Constitution surrounds the president with restraints, however. He cannot make laws. He cannot raise taxes. He cannot dissolve Congress and rule by himself, as monarchs used to do. He cannot schedule new elections when Congress refuses to pass his proposals.

All the president can do is talk, and try to persuade the congress to support his proposals. Since political decisions are influenced by money, not ethics, he cannot exercise moral suasion. The presidency, in some respects, is the worst job in the world. Although the president has very little power to influence anything, he is blamed for everything that goes wrong. The president typically begins his term as a popular advocate for change, and ends it as a despised failure. The fault is not his. The fault is inherent in the Constitutional system.

The Framers created a federal system out of necessity. They did not trust a strong government that could become a tyranny, so they created a system that had three checks on the federal government: the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Courts. This system worked so long as there were no entities strong enough to defy the president.

Stronger entities soon emerged. The first was the faction of slave-holding states. These states eventually attacked the United States directly by forming the Confederacy. The Civil War nearly destroyed the Union and made it impossible for successive entities seeking power to use violence to succeed. The costs of civil war were recognized as unsupportable.

Other entities seeking power did evolve. These entities used money to buy influence in the Congress and the Courts. Giant corporations formed whose influence dwarfed the influence of the president. The government struck back, first by passing anti-trust laws to keep the corporations small enough to control.

Progressives at the state level passed laws to control corporate power within their borders. Progressives passed initiative and referendum laws because the only power strong enough to combat the corporations resides in the people themselves. These new laws controlled the corporations to some degree. California was able to control the Southern Pacific Corporation (SP), which had flourished through government subsidies. SP was a local entity that could be controlled through local (state) laws. Other states set up Utility Commissions under various names to control corporations and protect the people from monopolistic utitlity rates.

These efforts proved successful for awhile. Corporations continued to grow larger, however. The common people were severely weakened by the Great Depression, while the corporations and the people who ran them prospered. World War II brought the beginnings of great prosperity to the corporate elite. The Korean War ushered in an era of massive spending on military weapons. The development of atomic weapons caused unprecedented amounts of money to be spent on technology. This level of spending continued until the end of the Cold War, in 1989. Corporations receiving government subsidies for research and contracts for technology could not ship jobs oversease because weapons series were considered too dangerous to trust to foreigners.

This situation changed abruptly with the advent of consumer electronics products like radios, televisions, and audio equipment. These products used the same technological advances that were funded by the U.S. Government for rockets, guidance systems, and the space program. Corporations began saving money by shipping jobs overseas. Silicon chip manufacturing, a thriving business in Silicon Valley in 1969, was moved to Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, and eventually China. Instead of creating employment opportunities in the U.S., corporations fed money into the economies of other countries.

President Reagan led the assault on American unions when he fired striking air traffic control workers. Workers at Atari in San Jose threatened to unionize. In response, the corporate management closed down the San Jose plant and moved their jobs overseas.

Gradually, job opportunities for U.S. workers dwindled. The gap between the common people and the well-off widened. The Supreme Court thwarted attempts to damp the influence of money in electoral politics. The Republicans began suppressing the votes of African-Americans, Latinos, students, and the elderly. Republican governors rolled back hard-won abortion rights.

The U.S. looks more like a third-world country all the time. In those countries, the wealthy few rule the numerous poor. The common people have no chance to redress grievances because they have no power. In other words, there is no democracy.

The U.S. Constitution is badly in need of repair. It needs amendments to establish a right of privacy between a woman and her doctor; to curb the ability of wealthy corporations to buy elections; to prevent politicians from cashing in with legal bribery, otherwise called campaign contributions; to stop publishers from exploiting the work of authors and musicians; to stop corporations from buying up disused patents and using them to blackmail legitimate innovators; to stop gun dealers from supplying criminals with death-dealing weapons; to stop energy companies from destroying the environment.

The list goes on and on. There are far too many potential amendments ever to reach the end, especially when every one of them will be fought with skill backed by money. There is only one solution to this problem. The people must adopt a national initiative which would give them what they never had, a true democracy.

The National Initiative amendment would do just that. All groups advocating a constitutional amendment should join together and support this one. Once this amendment passes, all further amendments will have a much lower bar to pass: They will be passed by a majority of the American people.

Our Decrepit Constituion: Protecting Vested Interests

Our Decrepit Constituion: Protecting Vested Interests

Our present constitution is an experiment. Our previous governing document, the Articles of Confederation was seen as a failure because it had severe and incurable problems. The Articles created a loosely allied group of states. There was no central authority, no president, and no way to resolve disputes between the states. The Articles led to trade and taxation disputes between the states and outbreaks of violence.

A group of citizens led by Daniel Shays took up arms against the government of Massachusetts. The federal government lacked the military power to put down the insurrection, so the state's wealthier citizens formed a private militia to do the job. The state government easily suppressed the rebellion, which had been inspired by taxation and austerity policies. Washington considered the rebellion an awful presage of things to come, but was happy that the state had been able to control it so quickly.

Shays's Rebellion had at its root the difference between the well-off and the poor. At that time, the currency was worthless and the small farmers in rural Massachusetts had nothing with which to pay taxes. They had to watch as banks foreclosed on their property. They also resented the money from taxes being transferred to wealthy financiers. Massachusetts resolved the problem by discounting its debt.

Jefferson, with his typical laissez-faire philosophy, considered Shays's Rebellion a good thing, a means to water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. George Washington and James Madison considered the uprising a sign that a stronger central government was needed, one that had the ability to raise revenues and support a professional army. They took steps in the new Constitution to strengthen the federal government and to increase its ability to levy taxes and maintain a standing army.

The adoption of a new Constitution did not prevent armed uprisings, however. The Whiskey Rebellion was a revolt against excise taxes proposed by Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary under President Washington. Once again poor farmers revolted against paying taxes when they had no paper money, only produce. Washington led a sizable militia force into western Pennsylvania to put down the revolt. The revolt evaporated before any military engagements occurred.

Fries's Uprising in 1799 was caused once again by taxation issues. The poor farmers of western Pennsylvania objected to the imposition of a property tax. Farmers in slave states could apply this tax to their slaves. Slaves could be sold to get cash, but property could not. While the newly strengthened federal government was able to suppress the insurrection, President John Adams drew criticism for his handling of the crisis, while Albert Gallatin, by acting as a calming force, gained prominence among the anti-federalists.

All three of these rebellions were popular uprisings against the wealthy financiers who held war-debt from the revolutionary war. Hamilton's excise taxes transferred money from the poor farmers in the west to the wealthy bankers in the east. Madison referred to these uprisings as excesses of democracy. He and his allies designed the Constitution to assure that the faction of the majority (I.e., the poor) could not dominate the faction of the minority (I.e., the wealthy).

The Constitution protects the wealthy minority from the poor majority by a system of checks and balances. The Framers explained these features as intended to prevent tyranny or anarchy. John Adams gives the Long Parliament as an example of a single-house legislature that led to tyranny. While John Adams was a well-read, well-traveled man, his conclusions do not take into account changing times and circumstances. The Long Parliament may have led to tyranny, but it started out as a reaction to tyranny of the British king. It failed to hold regular elections, which Thomas Paine suggests as a counterweight to tyranny. Adams discounts this argument entirely. Yet we know today that there are many single-house legislatures that have not devolved into tyranny or anarchy, the British House of Commons foremost among them. Whatever arguments may have been accepted at the time of the framing have now been refuted by subsequent events.

The British Parliament found a way to neutralize its obstructive House of Lords because it has no written constitution and hence has more freedom to change its customs to respond to changing circumstances. The American Constitution has no such ability. In evolutionary terms, the American Constitution has proven itself unable to evolve and has set itself on the path to extinction.

Our Decrepit Constitution: Electoral College and The Civil War

Electoral College

Americans credit the men who wrote the Constitution—the framers--with great wisdom and foresight. Supreme Court Justices have started a cult that worships the Constitution as a perfect document. They pore over its text and the opinions of its creators as though they were religious texts and revelations of the true word. Some also claim that the framers were inspired by God, usually by a Christian fundamentalist God.

None of these beliefs is true. The framers were neither godlike nor exceptionally wise. The document is not based on religious ideas. The Constitution is deeply flawed and becomes more so with each passing year. The framers made it hard to change. Amendments require passage by both houses of congress with a two thirds majority, then ratification by three fourths of the state legislatures. Most amendments also specify that they must be ratified within seven years.

The framers have recently been considered by some the infallible source for American law. This assumption implies that they were always right, at least about law and government. This assumption was very far from the truth.

The framers invented the electoral college, ostensibly to prevent the voters from making a mistake when electing a president. Instead, it was the electoral college that made the mistake, in 1800, when it gave the same number of electoral votes to both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The House of Representatives elected the president that year. The Constitution created a crisis where none existed.

The framers decided that each state should have only two senators. This compromise gave more power to the less populous states at the expense of the states with larger populations. In 1787 the most populous state, Virginia, had 20 times the population of the smallest, Delaware. In 2010, the most populous state, California, had 65 times the population of the smallest, Wyoming.

History tells us that states vote in regional blocs, with relative size having little to do with their decisions. Neighboring states New York (a large state) and Rhode Island (a small state), for example, voted for the same presidential candidate in the last seven elections. Neighboring states Louisiana(small) and Texas(large) voted for the same presidential candidate in the last seven elections as well. Louisiana and Rhode Island, both small states, voted for different candidates in all seven elections.

Since small states no longer vote in a bloc, if they ever did, the election of two senators from each state, regardless of population, does not serve the purpose intended by the framers. Instead of balancing the interests of different sized states, California's two senators represent a disenfranchisement of 36 million voters in relationship with Wyoming. The framers may have been right in 1787, but their judgment on this matter, at least reflected by presidential choices, is wrong today.

The framers made no provision for political parties in their Constitution. This oversight has become a serious problem in recent years. The British Parliamentary System recognizes that there will always be more than one party. The leader of the majorityThis arrangement gives the leader of parliament, the prime minister, the ability to govern if he can unite his own party behind his platform, a relatively easy proposition, given that all members of his party stood for election on the same platform.

The American system divides government between political parties. This division makes legislation more difficult to pass and slows down the process of government. James Madison argued that representative democracy rather than direct democracy because he claimed that direct democracy gave rise to factions. Madison defined a faction as a group of citizens united in some passion or common interest against the interest of others. He singled out the factions that arise from inequality of wealth and argued that a representative democracy would protect the minority from the majority.

Madison believed the best way to guard against factions was to create a representative democracy. Direct democracies, he claimed, always failed within a short time. The difficulty that arises here, which is a major difficulty with all opinions expressed by the framers, is that these conclusions are drawn on examples with almost no data. The number of direct democracies documented by history in Madison's day was precisely one, the direct democracy of Athens during the fifth century BCE. Any argument based on such limited data must be questioned.

It is pointless to argue whether Madison's theories on factions or democracy were correct. Like the philosophers he admired, Madison argued using only pure examples to illustrate his ideas. Madison argued that representative democracy had advantages over direct democracy but failed to recognize that no pure direct democracy has ever existed nor ever could exist. The representative democracy created by the Constitution has over the years become more democratic, through the direct election of Senators in the federal government and the addition of democratic ideas such as initiative and referendum in the individual states.

The Civil War

Madison considered that factions of the majority were dangerous to a nation, not those of the minority. He had in mind the faction of the poor, which is always greater than the faction of the rich. Madison's Constitution intended to guard against majority factions and guard minorities. This presumption, that only majority factions are dangerous, has been disproved by history. Several crises in American history have arisen because of minority factions, primarily because the wealthy have been successful in seizing and holding the reins of power in precisely the manner which the framers sought to prevent. The rise of a tyrant, which Justice Scalia claims that the Constitution has prevented, has never been a problem in America. What has been a great problem, and remains a problem today, is the accumulation of vast riches by a small class of people, who use their wealth to seize and retain power.

Scholars often speak of a Constitutional crisis as being a political problem that cannot be resolved easily by the Constitution. Examples of such crises were the election of 1800, when Jefferson was elected president by the House of Representatives; the election of 1876, when Benjamin Harrison became president with fewer popular votes; and the Watergate scandal that ended the presidency of Richard Nixon.

The most serious crises in American history did not arise from a failure of the framers to foresee an event. Instead, they were caused by the framers' express intent. Despite Madison's concerns, there have been no factions of the majority. Instead, three crises in American history have been caused by factions of the minority, who were not poor but wealthy. The Civil War, the Great Depression, and the Great Recession were caused by flaws in the Constitution.

The framers needed to gain the support of slave holders. They inserted several pro-slavery features into the Constitution. Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution defined a slave as worth three fifths of a person. This article strips African Americans of their rights as humans. African Americans not only submit to the lash, they must also give their votes to their masters, who were free to vote, again and again, to keep them in perpetual servitude. This article continued in force for seventy-six years. It contributed to the widespread belief that African Americans were racially inferior and reinforced the conviction in the Southern states that their actions were legal and just.

Article II, Section 1 establishes the electoral college for the election of the president. The slave-holders were concerned that their slaves, once freed, would take control of state government from them. They saw the electoral college as a means to permit a small group of voters to thwart the will of the majority. This worked in actuality. Only 1.3% of the population cast their votes in the first presidential election. Virginia had the most electors, thanks to its large number of slaves. The first president was George Washington, a prominent Virginian and a slave-holder. The second president was John Adams, from Massachusetts. Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were all Virginians and slave holders. Andrew Jackson, from Tennessee, was also a slave-holder from a slave state.

These early slave-holders held the presidency until 1836. At that time, slave-holders from southern states had held the presidency for 40 of the previous 48 years. They used their tenure to promote slavery at home and abroad. They appointed southerners to the Supreme Court with lifetime tenure. These supreme court justices tried to perpetuate slavery and spread it to the northern states.

The US Supreme Court ruled, in Dred Scott decision(1857), that a slave who lived in a free state was still a slave. All six southern justices voted with the majority. Northern opponents of slavery feared that this decision meant southern slave-holding states could export slaves to the north. The decision heightened tensions that led to the Civil War breaking out in 1861. Although the Supreme Court did not cause the Civil War, Dred Scott showed how much influence the southern states had gained through the electoral college and the pro-slavery compromise within it.

Our Decrepit Constitution: 2. The Framework

Americans credit the men who wrote the Constitution—the framers--with great wisdom and foresight. Supreme Court Justices have started a cult that worships the Constitution as a perfect document. They pore over its text and the opinions of its creators as though they were religious texts and revelations of the true word. Some also claim that the framers were inspired by God, usually by a Christian fundamentalist God.

None of these beliefs is true. The framers were neither godlike nor exceptionally wise. The document is not based on religious ideas. The Constitution is deeply flawed and becomes more so with each passing year. The framers made it hard to change. Amendments require passage by both houses of congress with a two thirds majority, then ratification by three fourths of the state legislatures. Most amendments also specify that they must be ratified within seven years.

The framers have recently been considered by some the infallible source for American law. This assumption implies that they were always right, at least about law and government. This assumption was very far from the truth.

The framers invented the electoral college, ostensibly to prevent the voters from making a mistake when electing a president. Instead, it was the electoral college that made the mistake, in 1800, when it gave the same number of electoral votes to both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The House of Representatives elected the president that year. The Constitution created a crisis where none existed.

The framers decided that each state should have only two senators. This compromise gave more power to the less populous states at the expense of the states with larger populations. In 1787 the most populous state, Virginia, had 20 times the population of the smallest, Delaware. In 2010, the most populous state, California, had 65 times the population of the smallest, Wyoming.

History tells us that states vote in regional blocs, with relative size having little to do with their decisions. Neighboring states New York (a large state) and Rhode Island (a small state), for example, voted for the same presidential candidate in the last seven elections. Neighboring states Louisiana(small) and Texas(large) voted for the same presidential candidate in the last seven elections as well. Louisiana and Rhode Island, both small states, voted for different candidates in all seven elections.

Since small states no longer vote in a bloc--if they ever did--the election of two senators from each state, regardless of population, does not serve the purpose intended by the framers. Instead of balancing the interests of different sized states, California's two senators represent a disenfranchisement of 36 million voters in relationship with Wyoming. The framers may have been right in 1787, but their judgment on this matter, at least reflected by presidential choices, is wrong today.

The framers made no provision for political parties in their Constitution. This oversight has become a serious problem in recent years. The British Parliamentary System recognizes that there will always be more than one party. The leader of the majorityThis arrangement gives the leader of parliament, the prime minister, the ability to govern if he can unite his own party behind his platform, a relatively easy proposition, given that all members of his party stood for election on the same platform.

The American system divides government between political parties. This division makes legislation more difficult to pass and slows down the process of government. James Madison argued that representative democracy rather than direct democracy because he claimed that direct democracy gave rise to factions. Madison defined a faction as a group of citizens united in some passion or common interest against the interest of others. He singled out the factions that arise from inequality of wealth and argued that a representative democracy would protect the minority from the majority.

Madison believed the best way to guard against factions was to create a representative democracy. Direct democracies, he claimed, always failed within a short time. The difficulty that arises here, which is a major difficulty with all opinions expressed by the framers, is that these conclusions are drawn on examples with almost no data. The number of direct democracies documented by history in Madison's day was precisely one, the direct democracy of Athens during the fifth century BCE. Any argument based on such limited data must be questioned.