Democracy in the modern era

In case you just want to laugh, start the video at 1:54.



This is how democracy really works in our modern era. The video is from the Democratic National Convention, where an extraordinary thing happened. A vote was taken to "suspend the rules" "to permit an amendment" to the platform adopted last night.

The vote was to, in other words, break the rules.

The vote following that one was even more interesting.

There was an extraordinary reason for breaking the rules.

From 1:09, start watching and watch intently, please.

This was a vote on god - that is, a vote if god is "central to the American story" (shrug, whatever that means, a non issue "fringe" issue) and "informs the values that we expressed in our party's platform" (Wut? Is that even in English? Even if grammatically incorrect, it does not even make sense as a statement).

But no matter.

This was put beforehand, to mask the more important matter.

Israel (in America, god is much less important than Israel, of course).

"In addition, president Obama recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel".

This is the main thing.

The fun begins at 1:54.

Watch the confused, flabbergasted and then angry reaction of the wax marionette, the filthy political apparatchik looking like a mix between a male version of Snooky and Madame Tussaud's wax model.

But the naysayers can come back with the "it's just a political convention, man, it doesn't really matter there - it's all theater, anyway".

Correct.

So lets move to another example of how democracy works in our modern era.


Once upon a time in 2008, there was a vote in Euroland concerning something called the "Lisbon Treaty". Perusing the official Treaty of Lisbon page, I have no idea what the treaty was all about - I did note the very cute picture of babies spread about in a circle, apparently being made ready for sacrifice to the mammon devil. And the obligatory black baby is present also - this is, after all, what European Union is also all about - unrestricted immigration policy for its members.

Several google attempts later and after studying the much better wiki informational page, I gathered that the main point of this treaty was to further centralize the European Union - more power to the internationalist bureaucrats in Brussels, much less power to the local, national governments.

The treaty, after bickering and backhand deals, was supposed to be duly ratified but then

Ireland happened.

BBC article, from 2008:

Voters in the Irish Republic have rejected the European Union's Lisbon treaty in a vote by 53.4% to 46.6%.

The poll is a major blow to leaders in the 27-nation EU, which requires all its members to ratify the treaty. Only Ireland has held a public vote.

The European Commission says nations should continue to ratify the treaty, designed to streamline decision-making.

The treaty was designed to "streamline" decision making - because all that arguing about policies, that whole democracy nonsense... It is much better for the decisions to flow from the top of the pyramid to the scum at the bottom.

An earlier, more wide-ranging EU draft constitution failed after French and Dutch voters rejected it in 2005.

For some reason those pesky Europeans did not want to give up too much sovereignty to the bureaucrat caste.

Imagine that, huh?

But no worries.

In our democracy, just like in the above embedded video, if you don't succeed - try, try again, until the voters vote correctly.

Or the people who count the votes, "count correctly".

Spiegel, from 2009:

It's official, the Irish will head to the polls again in October for a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, the deal that would see the European Union's biggest reform in years

Prime Minister Brian Cowen said that he was confident that voters would approve the treaty this time around. Last year, Irish voters' rejection of the treaty plunged the EU into a deep state of crisis.

A survey conducted at the beginning of June indicated that 54 percent of Irish voters would now vote in favor of the Lisbon Treaty and 28 percent would vote against it. Last June, 53 percent of Irish voters rejected the original draft of the treaty.

In mid-June 2009, however, Ireland successfully won legal guarantees at an EU summit in Brussels that Dublin's sovereignty on defense policy and taxation as well as the right to preserve its strict abortion ban will be left intact.

Got that?

Fuck the abortion policy (although I am a big fan of individual states in America and each nation in Europe setting its own policy on these "fringe" non-important issues).

Ireland won concessions on its own national defense policy and taxation rules.

Which means that all the other countries who approved it do not have their own national defense nor taxation policies - these are now controlled centrally.

"Streamlining" the decision process was, after all, what the Lisbon Treaty was all about.

Fortunately, Ireland has learned its lesson, and is now taking it up the ass (sorry - arse) just like the rest of the child like, pathetic Europeans:

Ireland votes for discipline despite pain as it approves EU financial plan, this time dated 2012:

Ireland has ratified the EU fiscal pact, providing some cheer for European leaders amid the eurozone crisis.

A clear 60-40 vote by the only electorate in Europe allowed to have its say on the treaty backed the EU reform programme aimed at imposing budget discipline on all 27 states of the union.

Budget discipline.

Ireland no longer decides on its own budget.

The bureaucrats in Brussels (and Washington, and New York, and Tel Aviv) do that for them.

It is much easier when the decision making process is "streamlined", you see.

Isn't democracy grand?


Bonus Goy musings

Just a quick thought - the way the whole European Union was pushed through and then used for certain parties' benefits was a study in modern democracy also.

In the beginning, nations begged to join the EU and the Euro, as each new nation that joined soon experienced tremendous economic growth and prosperity.

Lets take Ireland, as an example - as the European Union started to flex its muscle, and throw monies wither and thither at European nations, Ireland received 10 billion Euros for its infrastructure in the 1990's.

Money makes money, and this infusion helped.

Also, Irish policies were changed to be more business friendly (low corporate tax rate of 12.5%, for example).

Apart from that, when a country becomes "hot" (similar concept to a stock becoming "hot" and idiots sitting in front of a computer quickly buying their market share), investors flock to invest their money.

Again, money makes money.

And in our modern era, money making money creates economic bubbles, as laws do not keep pace with "financial instruments", er, innovation, shall we say.

And so, Ireland went from this:

CNN: Ireland's economic tiger is the envy of Europe

Other countries look enviously at an Ireland that has transformed itself in one generation from a threadbare country on Europe's periphery to the second-richest (on a GDP-per-capita basis) in the European Union. Scarcely a week goes by without a national delegation visiting Dublin to learn how the Celtic Tiger was conceived and, more important, whether it can be cloned.

There is no consensus about the ingredients of Ireland's success.

"There are many components to Ireland's success story," says John Fitzgerald, a professor at Ireland's Economic and Social Research Institute. The usual suspects, he and others point out, include development funds from the EU; low corporate taxes; the success of the Irish Development Authority in persuading multinationals to take advantage of those low rates; and the ability of the Irish education system to provide the skilled workforce needed for a modern, knowledge-based economy. It didn't hurt, either, that Ireland's catch-up came at a time of strong global expansion.

(Pssst! Basically it was a time of global economic boom - the 90's - and Ireland had perhaps the lowest corporate taxes in Europe)

to this:

Telegraph, UK, Ireland's Celtic Tiger economy is dead, and its cubs are thinking of emigrating.

Thirty years after his uncle escaped poverty by leaving Ireland for ever for New Zealand, 25-year-old Jason Kenny is preparing to follow in his footsteps and head Down Under in search of a new life.

Until Mr Kenny was laid off from his job as an electrician on an upmarket residential development, part of Dublin's extraordinary property boom, he had never expected to have to emigrate. His generation had only ever known prosperity in the Celtic Tiger years of economic growth.

But earlier this year the property bubble burst, forcing thousands of construction workers out of jobs and putting the brakes on consumer spending - so sharply that last month Ireland became the first eurozone nation officially to declare that it had slipped into recession.

The development he worked on in the suburb of Tallagh is a symbol of the New Ireland - smart apartment blocks with shopping centres, trendy bars, a Starbucks and gyms, all handily connected to the city centre by a fast new tram.

Unfortunately, the bars, restaurants and coffee shops were empty and the apartment block had a giant To Let sign hanging on the outside. In the circumstances of today's Irish economy it may have been put up more in hope than expectation.

Construction has ground to a halt, but consumer spending is also sharply down and the high-skilled bio-tech, IT and electronics sectors which powered the Celtic Tiger have also been hit by demoralising closures.

What happened?

Well, the boom years were over (it's cyclical, and people in the know take advantage of these wild swings in our global economy).

But, more importantly, the European Union made a decision to introduce the "Euro", the new European money, to replace the old monies that each nation was using.

That happened in 1999, January 1st to be exact.

Wikipedia on Celtic Tiger (1990s-2007):

By 2000 the Republic had become one of the world's wealthiest nations, unemployment was at 4% and income tax was almost half 1980s levels. During this time, the Irish economy grew by five to six percent annually, dramatically raising Irish monetary incomes to equal and eventually surpass those of many states in the rest of Western Europe.

Spiffy.

The big problem is that there is a reason why each nation sets its own monetary policy.

With the "Euro", the policy was set continentwide - the decisions streamed from the top, from Brussels, to its member states.

Ireland’s decision to join the euro brought ruin to the nation, yes, from Daily Mail:

During the 1990s Ireland made tremendous economic progress based on low corporate tax rates attracting international investment. Competition was brought in crucial industries such as airlines.

But then in 1999 the disastrous decision was made to join the euro with its ‘one size fits all’ interest rate policy.

The trouble is that one size does not fit all. Halving interest rates in Ireland meant that prosperity that had been built on sound foundations became a bubble. The public sector became bloated with the pretence that it could be afforded with the phony boom.

Andrew Lilico, now an economist with the Policy Exchange thinktank, could see the trouble coming. He wrote a warning in the European Journal back in 2001. He put: ‘In January 1999 Ireland joined the euro, and Irish interest rates halved to 3 per cent, despite strong growth in Ireland, because interest rates were from then on set for the Eurozone as a whole and inflation was not a concern for France and Germany.

‘Irish inflation promptly, and unsurprisingly, took off. Consumer price inflation was actually 4.0 per cent (twice what was expected) between Jan 1999 and Jan 2000, and averaged 5.6 per cent during 2000, reaching 6.8 per cent in October.’

He added that ‘the fundamental divergence will re-assert itself in time.’

Allister Heath, editor of City AM, takes up the story: ‘After that, the die was set: encouraged by ultra-low European interest rates, the banks lent (recycling vast foreign capital inflows), house prices boomed, the construction industry surged and foreign workers moved in (reversing Ireland’s history of net emigration).

‘Nervousness eventually crept in, prior to the US sub-prime crisis. House prices slowed at a time when oil prices were still rising and the Irish recession commenced. The European Central Bank – preoccupied with the rest of the Eurozone – hiked rates, Irish house prices crashed, credit inflows reversed and banks started to go sour. Eventually, the rest of the world entered recession.’

You see, this housing bubble was not just an American thing - it was global (yes, inevitable plug for my How the financial crisis came about article from 2009 - still relevant, by the way).

Each nation - and there are ONLY two types of nations: a country is either a manufacturing, producing nation or a buying, getting into debt one - has before set its own monetary policy, based on, well, whether a state was a manufacturing/selling or a buying one, as well as the state of global and its national economy at the moment.

It's not rocket science - duh!

This of course includes setting interest rate, the money creation, rules for financial regulations etc etc.

Imagine if the FED, the most famous private corporation in America, was given its marching orders from Brussels, Belgium.

Even we Americans are not THAT stupid.

When the European nations foolishly surrendered all this to "streamline decision making" (effectively ceasing being nations - "Give me control of a nations money supply, and I care not who makes it’s laws", infamous quote from Mr. Amschel Rothchilds), they lost all sovereignty.

And Ireland went into this with open eyes (well, they did resist once) for the price of a "fringe" issue, incredibly unimportant in our world, of abortion. They voted yes.

And guess who sets the policy - the strong (the manufacturing nations) or the weak (the buying nations)?

But fuck this whole "nations" shit.

The process is even more streamlined now, with the gloves off, with no more hiding in the shadows for the puppets to play their roles.

Then in 2008 the mistake of joining the euro years earlier was compounded by another event of similarly disastrous magnitude. There was an unaffordable bank bail out. There was a blanket guarantee - not to the depositors but for all the banks creditors. Vast liabilities became underwritten by the Irish state. This has meant that Ireland is now effectively insolvent - it is dependent on the European Central Bank.

Game.

Set.

Match.

And now, my stupid European friends, now you will take it up the ass (or arse, if you prefer), from the elite ruling caste who rule over the whole continent - and THEY will decide your fiscal policy, your financial, health and tax laws, your interest rates, your money supply, and, of course, your austerity measures - which, in layman's terms, is exactly how far will the fist travel up yours.