Tweet
Paul Krugman posts a very interesting piece on his blog today by Kim Lane Scheppele about the current state of politics in Hungary. Scheppele notes that after winning the last election the Fidesz party is radically re-writing the constitution in very anti-democratic ways, attempting to make Fidesz policy and political power permanent.
While I would never compare our government to all the changes tragically moving Hungary toward authoritarianism, I think a few of the changes wanted by those trying to undermine democracy are familiar and should be a warning sign for Americans. From Scheppele:
The new election law specifies the precise boundaries of the new electoral districts that will send representatives to the parliament.
[...]
The new constitution makes huge swaths of public policy changeable only by a two-thirds vote of any subsequent parliament. From here on, all tax and fiscal policy must be decided by a two-thirds supermajority. Even the precise boundaries of electoral districts cannot be changed by simple majority vote, but only by a two-third supermajority. If a new government gets a mere majority, policies instituted during the Fidesz government cannot be changed.
Effectively unchangeable legislative borders that will produce unrepresentative elections are familiar. It’s not just gerrymandering; this is how the United States Senate is constructed, and over the past two hundred years the horribly unrepresentative nature of the Senate has gotten dramatically worse.
A supermajority requirement to approve basic laws is also familiar. This is basically what the filibuster has become in the Senate, although technically a simple majority of the Senate could exercise procedural hardball and change the rules to eliminate the filibuster.
In America the 600,000 people of Washington DC are denied the right to vote for Congress, something so transparently anti-democratic even the would-be authoritarians in Hungary have not dared to adopt it yet.
If another democracy tried to impose on itself some of the features that currently are part of our Federal government, the effort would be correctly seen as attempting to subvert democracy. Other countries and international groups would rightly decry the moves.
Americans for the most part weakly accept the design of the Senate, the use/abuse of the filibuster, and DC’s lack of voting rights, because these anti-democratic features have been around for a long time. Many in Congress and the media even talk about the greatness of some of these anti-democratic elements because they are traditions. But just because something unjust has been around a long time doesn’t make it right.
These elements are clearly antithetical to the small “d” democratic principle of one person one vote. That becomes easier to see when we take a step back or observe others as an outsider.
37 Comments
In 1790 a senator from the largest state, Virginia, represented about 7 people for each person represented by the senator of the smallest state.
Today that ratio is more like 33 to 1.
There have been a number of proposals in the last year or two for 2/3 majorities to approve various kinds of legislation, notably fiscal/tax legislation.
This, in my opinion, is where the downfall of California began with Prop whatever number it was.
A bunch of state governments are trying the same thing.
I wonder if Hungary is using ALEC “model legislation” as their templates, too?
Solid comparisons Mr. Walker n thanks for all you do.
I’ll point to CA, and the Prop 13 which mandated a 2/3 state legislature for lawmaking, It’s killed CA ever since, despite the huge windfall my parents got from their home ownership in the 70′s thru early 2000′s.
It ain’t gettin any better here, or across the nation . . . since.
LeSigh, may dawg help us all . . . happy holidays to you and yours Mr. Walker.
What the fuck, Jon.
What Paul Krugman is describing is a parliament, in a parliamentary system. That’s the equivalent to the House of Representatives in the first place, since it’s the lower house if that parliamentary system is bicameral, not the upper house, which is what our senate is. That’s for starters. In a parliamentary system, that parliament also creates the effective executive because it selects the prime minister. So he is talking about the whole government in effect, in most such systems, since the upper house frequently has other duties. It isn’t comparable to our senate at all.
Furthermore, our senate is so constructed so that there will be a check and balance system between population based governance and geographical based governance. That has its advantages, and India is a good example of a place which has frequent geographical and ethnic tensions due to not having such a balance because the Lok Sabha, which is their lower house, is totally population based, leading to a dominance by very populous provinces like Uttar Pradesh at the expense of less populous and smaller provinces which may be geographically distant and have different needs.
Our supermajority isn’t written into law, it’s manufactured. In part by a party that wants to see the current president fail at everything and is willing to do anything including destroy the place to see it happen, and in part by the other party that is willing to help the other party destroy the place so it can use the said destruction as a fundraising device for its party coffers. Nothing is built into the construction of the senate or the filibuster that causes the supermajority to be set in stone.
On top of which, Krugman is basically worried about what happens when Europe is poor. For good reason, cf. the rise of fascism and World War II.
Learn some geography and history.
Yep, you nailed CA.
Jarvis/Gann, bought and paid for by the 1% to benefit the 1%, under the guise of helping my parents gen with their home ownership property taxes . . . which depleted the coffers of taxes that supported the best education K-University the world had at the time.
Good to see ya out and about Tejan . . . happy holi daze . . . ;-)
Bingo, nice stat.
A couple of points. You can add to the list the attempts to restrict voting rights in any number of states. A more important point is that if the legislature seizes up, as it has for all intents and purposes in the United States, the executive will fill the vacuum. This is where fascism comes in. Emergency executive orders to keep the state in operation. It might not be a Democratic president who does it, but you can bet your bell bottom trousers that any plausible Republican would.
I think you misrepresent the GOP and DIMS as being dissimilar.
SuperMajority is a function of our erected offals, who are all bought and paid for by the 1% corporate fascists.
Obviously, most of us proggies are on that same page. It’s been created and legislated . . . and as Tejan points out, ALEC is the present smoke screen to further the process and centralize all control of we the people, further and further, out of our own hands.
But as to your putdown regarding the comparison between Hungary, methinks you are just looking for a reason to disavow the comparison, which I find adequate for the purpose at hand, despite parlimentary structural differences in the government set up.
Do you deny that both countries are obviously headed for consolidation of centralized power to benefit the few?
In that regard your tone to Mr. Walker is completely unnecessary and harsh . . . he’s an FDL workhorse . . . you malign him to what end?
Shit, what about Obama and executive signings and perpetuation and growth of Bush/Cheney Executive do you not get?
Is Obama not DIM enough for you for the party, so as to fall into the fascist catagory?
LMAO . . . . hope u r 2.
Which of course is also easily viewed as less populous and smaller provinces standing in the way of what the very populous and larger provinces need.
We can get into a discussion of utility functions, but you’re not going to like where it goes.
Agree, and I think you can throw in term limits as well for downfall of CA.
I think you misunderstand my point. I am not talking here of civil liberties, but the raising and spending of revenue, and its allocation to different government offices without legislative approval.
I was talking to my 10 year old daughter yesterday about what she learned in school. They’re working on the Revolution and yesterday they specifically discussed the Boston Tea Party.
This lead to a conversation about taxation without representation, and I clued my little one in on the D.C. situation.
Her response was priceless –
Did that include slave owners who got to vote their slaves at 60% of a person?
Sounds a lot like what happened in Wisconsin. I don’t think the US is too far behind.
Out of the mouth of babes. My 7 yr. saw the picture of the 80 yr. old lady that got pepper sprayed and said that’s not right is it dad.
I’m asking the same question one asks when one uses the expression WTF? and in the same tone. I will criticize anyone who offers such a comparison, FDL workhorse or not. If that’s supposed to confer an immunity from criticism then let’s talk about oligarchy, shall we?
The comparison between a lower house in a parliamentary system and our senate, especially when the comparison is to one where the parliament is flirting dangerously with 1930′s style fascism, lacks history and a knowledge of the two governmental systems, and is a piece of hyperbole.
Our government being constructed that way is actually a good form of check and balance. It would be useful in quite a few big geographic and ethnically diverse countries which don’t have it and have been saddled with parliamentary systems — a system which works best in countries which are geographically compact and ethnically uniform. The fact that it is currently being distorted is not written into the system, it’s a function of the current players. The Hungarians are writing their problems into their laws and destroying their government.
They are doing so in response to economic pressures. It’s debatable whether some countries can withstand economic pressures and maintain human rights. It’s debatable whether some pressures are capable of outright destroying human rights, if they continue too long. But this country has a ways to go, and the senate is not a good example. Five countries contribute over half of the world’s displaced population. The U.S. isn’t one of them. It’s the world’s biggest non-adjacent recipient of refugees. It just isn’t the world’s most fucked up place on anybody’s scale at all. Pretending it’s a contender is just strange.
We could, but we are in a discussion about checks and balances. And the fact that people who don’t understand the history of our system of government are the most likely to think they can do better. Even more so when they haven’t looked at or lived in other countries to see actual comparisons which have implemented the changes they’re asking for. I gave India as an example of a geographically large country with a diverse population which has no check on its rule of the most populous province. Give a counterexample — geographically large populous ethnically diverse democracy with no problems resulting from population only provincial rule — or consider your utility argument unproven.
So slaveholders back then were actually counted more then just 1 person more like they were 1.6% people. A reward I take it for being a successful slave holder. See America rewarded success even back in those days. Isn’t that comforting. The 1% would like us to return to those heady days when THEY treated the rest of us like Slaves or indentured servants under their thumb.
Cut to it, the red states live off the blue state revenues all the while decrying blue state values and policies.
End of story.
Time to break up the union and let the red states survive on their own.
The reds in the north and west can flood down to the south, blues in the south can come north and west to the lands of decency.
;-)
Jon, I’d give you a Pulitzer, or Nobel prize, if, of course, it were up to me. In the meantime, how ’bout a sincere thanks and wishes for a happy and healthy end of the fourth fiscal quarter.
Ok, let’s talk about loss of revenues thru de regulation and lowering of taxes on corporations? N where DOES all that money go?
It goes more and more to the MIC independent contractor armed ones, defense industry weapons development and such.
With or without legislative efforts . . . ;-) cuz the game’s rigged.
I think we’re on the same page, just quibbling over niceties. ;-)
WOW!!!! Now, I’m not saying that’s a bad idea. BUT, that’s gonna make one helluva map. And, what about the damn flag????? And, most importantly, what do we do about the Olympics???? The Olympics, that’s pretty dang important to a lot of us.
Zinn’s version of checks & balances, though he doesn’t phrase it this way, is to check the power of the real people in favor of the RHM.
As our erected offals are. and the nation along with it.
End of story.
NEXT!
;-)
Jon wrote: “Effectively unchangeable legislative borders that will produce unrepresentative elections are familiar. It’s not just gerrymandering; this is how the United States Senate is constructed, and over the past two hundred years the horribly unrepresentative nature of the Senate has gotten dramatically worse.”
—————–
Well, DUH. We were talking about that the other day at the urinal. The urinal at our office is kinda like the “:Algonquin” of urinals don’t ya know.
Good marketing can take care of the map, the flag and the Olympics.
Obviously the blues will take care of it, the reds are on their own.
What the hayall, they get to keep NASCAR! N GUNS!
;-)
Everytime I see “Algonquin” I read “Algernon”.
Funny that, how the mind and eye distort . . . . ;-)
FAN-tastic! I’m on board. WHOA!!!!. I’m in Texas. Am I gonna have to move????? I just bought a new house.
Oy, make that RWM, for Rich White Male.
Thank you. I had come up with “Rich Hispanic Male” for that and couldn’t quite wrap my brain around that.
I can’t type & eat dinner at the same time. :-(
No problem. Manana
Don’t forget Coors Light, Hooters, and stocking up on porn at the Lion’s Den.
That wouldn’t be a relevant counter-example, so I don’t know why I would provide it. The relevant counter-example would be as I previously constructed it. Minority entrenchment standing in the way of majority necessity.
No, the relevant counterexample would be a functioning geographically diverse democracy that has ethnically or populationally diverse interests that don’t coincide with its geographic diversity. That’s the purpose of our bicameral structure. You’re supposed to be proving that it isn’t an efficient check and balance system for that. Obviously, you’re not acquainted with how to prove things.
Minority entrenchment can happen any number of ways. You don’t really have an argument except that what you yourself want right now is not happening. In parliamentary systems it happens by bargaining to form governments. You don’t really understand why this system was set up. That was the point I originally brought up, and it’s the point I reiterate. There is no permanent entrenchment built into this system. Only a system of checks and balances. One could say that there was entrenchment built into the three branches of government too because of checks and balances. But you would be wrong. Nevertheless, the Republicans have managed to tie the government up during periods of majority Democratic rule. But is it a function of the system and is it inherently permanent? No. There isn’t a proof that such is the case. It’s a function of who is inhabiting the offices currently.
Sorry bout that, Chief . . . ;-)
Less yer in Austin, we get to keep Austin.
;-)