Showing posts with label Democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democracy. Show all posts

Monday, June 8, 2015

No, More Like A Creeping Totalitarianism

June 08, 2015 Democracy , New York Mayor Bill de Blasio 0 Comments
NYC Mayor: U.S. Has A Democracy Problem 

By Sean Higgins, Jun. 7, 2015, Washington Examiner

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that there was a "democracy problem" in the U.S. caused by the fact that the states are allowed to pass the laws that govern voting. Federal reform of the process is needed, he said.

"Our elections are governed by state law and for a long time I've believed we need to make a fundamental series of reforms," de Blasio told CBS's "Face the Nation." "Let's face it, a lot of the people in the political class have tried to discourage voter involvement and a lot of incumbents prefer a very small electorate."

The mayor referred to several Republican governors who have signed laws requiring photo identification by voters, arguing the provision is a modest step to prevent fraud. Democrats like de Blasio counter that Republicans' interests are more partisan: They want to discourage some people from voting altogether.

Read the full story: www.washingtonexaminer.com

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Saturday, November 8, 2014

Headed toward SCOTUS

November 08, 2014 Democracy , Equality 0 Comments
Appeals Court Upholds Bans On Same-Sex Marriage For The First Time

Robert Barnes, Nov. 6, 2014, Washingtonpost.com

A federal appeals court panel upheld bans on same-sex marriage in four states Thursday, a break with other federal courts that makes it almost certain the Supreme Court must take up the issue of whether gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati ruled 2 to 1 that although same-sex marriage across the nation is practically inevitable, in the words of U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, it should be settled through the democratic process and not the judicial one.

Read more: www.washingtonpost.com



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Monday, April 21, 2014

Examiner: The 'Soft Despotism' Of Regulation Imposes High Costs --Rarely discussed by media, costs rarely quantified

April 21, 2014 Competitive Enterprise Institute , Democracy 0 Comments
By Washington Examiner, Opinion, Apr. 18, 2014

Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Alexis de Tocqueville, author of the classic Democracy in America, were born in different times and places. But the French aristocrat and American think tanker have the measure of the federal behemoth in the age of Obama. Writing in 1835, Tocqueville eloquently predicted how it would function, while Crews today supplies in his annual compilation of federal rules and regulations, “10,000 Commandments,” the hard numbers that describe the behemoth's contemporary reach and costs.

It is always worthwhile to revisit de Tocqueville’s description of what he called the “soft despotism” of an America ruled by a bureaucratic master:

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.

The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is shepherd.

Crews’ new edition will appear later this month, but some of the new data is available now. Federal departments and agencies, for example, issued 3,659 “final” rules in 2013 and an additional 2,594 “proposed” rules. As a result, there were 26,417 pages of new regulations published in the Federal Register in 2013, a new record. The total of all pages published by the Federal Register in 2013 came to 79,311, the fourth highest ever recorded.

Read the full story:  www.washingtonexaminer.com
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