what has happened to the American experiment in Democracy?

Democracy in name;fascism in execution
What happened to government by the people?!
The hijacking of America
The purchase of influence in politics (through campaign contributions)
"Pay-to-play" politics.
Government for sale
The best government(leadership) money can buy!
see "the role of money in elections"
If you have enuf money you can buy a political office.
If you have 200 to 300 million dollars you can even bid for the most powerful office of all--the office of the president!
How did American democracy turn into corporate fascism?
(see article below titled "Corporatism")

Politicians are reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them.

Politicians no longer serve the people.Rather they work for entrenched money interests,special interest groups, and multinational corporations who fund their campaigns. Corporate lobbyists have hijacked the political system. The economic interests of these corporations take precedence over the interests of the people.Large corporations are milking the government at taxpayers expense.
(In Canada oil companies despite earning record profits are susidized by the taxpayer to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars annually!In the time that oil prices have increased 400%,royalties have decreased from 3 to 2 dollars /barrel.The sellout/giveaway of this public resource to America is a national folly.)


The greatest threat to American democracy is from within.
It is corruption and the betrayal and collapse of moral values.
(see "the moral bankruptcy of America")
(see "the betrayal of the American Dream")
(see "Third World America" by-Arianna-Huffington)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/35976438/Third-World-America-by-Arianna-Huffington-Excerpt

We often hear politicians touting America as the best example of democracy in the world.But democracy is government by the people and for the people.'
but in America gov't. serves the interests of corporations above the public interest. This is the opposite of democracy.This is the definition of Fascism!
Real power in America rests not with the people but with "Big Business" wch spends billions (4 billion spent by corporations lobbying gov't. last year)to influence the vote and to shape policy decisions.
When the government no longer acts on behalf of the people it is undemocratic.
The political process has been hijacked by corporate interests ,and America has become a fascist state.The vision of democracy is a shattered dream!
It is hypocritical to pretend to be fighting for Democracy abroad, when the principle of Democracy has been betrayed at home.

If you are a wealthy individual or corporation and want to influence the outcome of an election,there is no limit on the money you can spend to market your candidate and buy them an "elected public office.
This reflects a crucial flaw in the American so-called democratic political process!!
We expect the judiciary (the law court system) to function impartially and independently.Why are legislators (the lawmakers)and candidates for elected office (the ones who make the laws in the first place)not required to separate themselves from corporate interests?
When private corporate and public interests come into conflict we must ensure that the public interest takes precedence.
We must not buy into the Big Business lie that their interest is identical with the public interest.
If the state does not regulate the behavior of corporations ,
and if politicians are unwilling to alienate corporations wch provide them with campaign contributions...then the state and it's lawmakers are essentially ruled by corporations!


The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?
~ Ian Bremmer

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Might this be a better model of Democracy?!

Governments independent of party politics could be answer for partisanship

Published: April 06, 2011

To the editor:

We have a real opportunity in Canada to become a true democracy. We can have a government where our MPs and MLAs represent the wishes of the majority of their constituents.

Currently we live in an elective autocracy. We can elect a dictatorship of the right, centre or left. If we elect the Conservative coalition nationally we choose those who were either members of the Progressive Conservatives or the Alliance. The policies of this right wing coalition are determined by the international business community that provides the funds for their multiple election campaigns.

If we elect the Liberals, the policies are determined by the Canadian, particularly the Ontario business community, that provides the funding for their election campaigns.

If we elect the New Democratic Party the policies are set by organized labour that provides the funding for their election campaign.

If the citizens of Quebec elect the Parti Quebequois the policies are determined by those who want Quebec to separate from Canada and who provide funding for this party’s election campaign.

I don’t know about you, but none of these groups represent me nor do they deal with the issues I am concerned about when they are elected.

I believe most Canadians want their government to represent their values. In my experience most Canadians want their fellow Canadians to have jobs that pay them a living wage, affordable education for our children and grand children, and accessible and affordable health care and medication for all citizens.

Most Canadians want the needs of those who are unable to support themselves to be met. We do not want the mentally ill, physically challenged and mentally challenged to be living on the streets.

Frankly, I don’t see our elected representatives dealing effectively with these issues. Rather, they are busy serving business or organized labour. Our representatives don’t seem to represent us.

We can solve this problem by eliminating the party system. All we have to do is select an individual to run as an independent in every riding in Canada. This individual should be the most trustworthy and self giving person that we can find in our riding. This person should be someone who is interested in giving service, not attaining power and control.

We then have to convince our fellow constituents to vote for this individual. Considering the dissatisfaction that most of us have with our elected representatives who seem more interested in gaining power, control and a good pension than serving us, this should not be difficult.

Once we have a parliament or a legislature full of independent candidates, they can elect from amongst themselves a Prime Minister and a Cabinet.

In the future, legislation would have to be passed to provide equal funds to all candidates who wish to run for office. This legislation would also eliminate donations for election campaigns to political parties or individuals and they would not be allowed to use funds other than the government provided funds. Our representatives could use social media to gain our opinions in order to help determine how they would vote on each issue that comes before the parliament or the legislature. Each individual  MP or MLA would have a free vote on each issue.

If we really want a democracy we must select the best independent candidates that we can find, nominate them and elect them.

Robert C. Anderson,

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Corporate greed, corruption, and the coming collapse of America as we know it
by Mike Adams

The U.S. government, once crafted as a system that would serve the interests of the people, has devolved into a system of plutocracy where corporations control both the government and the people. Virtually every government regulatory department, for example, is now run by the corporations it is supposed to be regulating. Just look at the FDA, USDA, FTC, FCC, NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) and most other government regulatory bodies and you'll find a room full of politicians and bureaucrats who utterly disregard the People while prioritizing the financial needs of influential corporations.

Our nation's policies on health, finances, agricultural, national defense and even education are increasingly slanted towards enriching the corporations, usually at the expense of the People. Even worse, the People have come to fear their government here in the United States, and any time a government gains so much power that the people begin to fear it, the scenario is set for police state atrocities against the citizens. In a healthy society, you see, the government fears the people, and it's this fear of being replaced or kicked out of office that keeps government bureaucrats in line. But in America, that's been lost, replaced by a tyrannical system of government that treats the people like common criminals. Don't believe me? Just try to board an airplane without being detained and searched against your will. Try to bring a bottle of water on an airplane and see how much "freedom" you still have left in America today.

How did the corporations gain so much power over government and the people? It's simple: Campaign finances. The corporations hire hoards of lobbyists who dart in and out of lawmakers' offices in Washington, leaving behind trails of cash and corruption. Most lawmakers hardly ever meet with the actual people they claim to represent. Instead, they spend their time cavorting with corporate rabblerousers who operate based on the simple principle of greed. Think Enron, but times a thousand. That's who controls Congress today.

To keep the People in line, public protests have been limited and outlawed in many areas, where new fenced-in "free speech zones" have been set up to force protestors to protest out of the way somewhere. (Note to all: If free speech is limited to a "zone" then it isn't free speech at all!) At every turn, the U.S. government seeks to marginalize the power of the People and expand its own reach and power, usually at the behest of the wealthy corporations pulling the strings backstage.


The natural cycle of collapse and rebirth
So where is it all heading? To a desperate place, unfortunately. It's a natural cycle of nation states. Following abundance comes greed, then corruption, then police state tyranny, then collapse. After the collapse there's rebirth, reconstruction and a new cycle of abundance until the whole thing repeats itself over and over again, one century after the next. Read your world history to hear this same story repeated over at least fifty empires that once existed on Earth. The American empire will be no different: It will drown in its own greed and corruption, collapsing into a state of moral and financial bankruptcy, and then will likely be reborn as a series of smaller nation-states like the Washington / Oregon / Idaho / Northern California region that has very different values and interests than, say, the Texas region.

During all this, there will be lots of social unrest, poverty, personal bankruptcy, police state arrests and perhaps even the widespread use of detection camps to indefinitely hold troublemakers who dare to protest or speak out against government corruption. This is what's coming for America, and the interesting part is that almost nobody in America seems to be able to anticipate this. Yet the writing is on the wall, and it's as obvious as the dot-com crash was before 2000.

I publicly predicted the dot-com crash starting in 1998, and urged everyone to get out of the market through 1999, 2000 and right up until the bursting of the dot-com bubble in early 2001. All this time, nobody listened. Virtually everyone was caught up in the insane illusion that we would all get rich by selling each other pieces of paper with increasingly large numbers written on them (those are the stock prices, you see). Almost everybody was swept up by Groupthink, believing that the laws of economics had changed forever. CNBC became the of unbridled greed, and brainwashed idiots at the American Enterprise Institute were publishing books predicting a Dow of 36,000 that would create infinite wealth requiring no effort or productive work.

Meanwhile, I was urging everyone to sell their stocks, which of course made me look utterly insane given that everybody else in the world was telling people to keep buying -- including all the stock brokers and investment fund managers, who it turns out know almost nothing useful about finances or investments and are just as easily swept up by Groupthink as anything else. When the bubble finally burst, I was completely out of the market and lost nothing. But many people I knew lost big portions of their life savings.

Now, I told you that story to tell you this: What's coming in America's future is going to be far, far worse than the dot-com fiasco. Imagine the financial market breaking down, the U.S. government defaulting on its debt, the dollar going through massive hyperinflation, wiping out the value of the life savings of virtually all Americans. Think it can't happen here? That's what the Groupthink thinks. But it will happen here, and the massive corruption in our government is making sure of it. Whatever dollars you have in the bank will, in a few years, become virtually worthless. Hyperinflation is inevitable. Study the history of Germany following World War I to gain additional insight on this topic.


Sacrificing the future for today's profit
When the corporations run a nation, that nation has no real future, because corporations only think in terms of the next quarter, not the next generation. Corporations will naturally do whatever they can to maximize their profits right now, including poisoning the children with vaccines, poisoning the population with toxic food products, sacrificing the financial future of the nation for short-term gain, destroying the environment, ignoring the health care needs of the People, inciting war so they can sell more profitable weapons to war-torn countries around the world, and so on. Essentially, corporations will sell out the future for higher profits today, and that's exactly what they've done in America.

America has no real future. Not a good one, anyway. I give the nation anywhere from 5 to 25 years before it will self destruct under a mountain of debt, disease and corruption. You can thank the corporations and corrupt politicians for that. They've thrown away the dream of a nation that was once great and could actually be great again, if not for the greed.

My message to all U.S. citizens is to prepare yourself now for what's coming. Get out of debt. Get healthy. Invest in your education and learn some practical skills like gardening, bicycle repair or natural medicine. Own some productive land and learn how to use it. Be near a source of fresh water. When the oil runs out, and the fresh water tables are drained, and the financial system collapses, and the real estate bubble bursts, life is going to be a whole lot harder than it is today. Forget about shopping malls, must-see TV and the latest fashions. Most families are going to be struggling just to put food on the table.

This is all several years away, of course. And until then, most people are going to continue the pursuit of even more debt and disease, oblivious to the future that awaits them. A great book to read on how that future might play out is The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler. Or The Party's Over: Oil, War and The Fate of Industrial Societies.

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http://www.stansberryresearch.com/pro/1103PSIEOAVD/OPSIM526/PR

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