Democracy: Who really controls America?

Personally, I've always been a bit skeptical of democracy. Not the system itself, I believe it's the best system in the world. However, I don't believe that a man elected by the 'people' can represent true or unconditional power. I don't believe presidents are in control of the country. After all, this is the US; debatably the biggest super power in the world - regardless of however long before this will cease to be the case. There must be a source of power beyond that, right? It's only logical. Presidents come and go, they are out as quick as they are in.

Is that to say that the people represent control over America, as they elect in presidents? Personally, I don't believe this is the case. There has actually been reason to suggest that Bush, for instance, wasn't about a matter of votes. It's fair to say that many aspects of democracy controls the people too. After all, we are all taxed at gunpoint(As Richard put it), even here in the UK; you might feel as free as you like, but only 'til you step out of line. For example, if you owe anything to the government, tax evasion or any form of fees. Fail to pay this, and bailiffs can break into your home, and take your things. Only the government has this power, debt collectors cannot do this.

The big corporations in the US have a great deal of power, even so to lobby the government into tending to their concerns. Especially the oil companies, they have a tonne of lobbying power, even here in the UK. After all, it's these corporations that drive the economy- that make the US what it is. There are numerous examples of incidents whereby the government has been lobbied into not persecuting 'war criminals' in Libya for example, to improve the prospects of oil contracts for Shell/BP. Is this considered proof that even the corporations go some way to having power over the one system that binds everything together; justice?

Another notable 'power' is the Federal Reserve. They effectively control the dollar, and so the economy to an extent. In some aspects, they have power over the government, however the government has the power to dispel the Federal Reserve, obviously.

Asides from that, there is only one other to my knowledge. That would be the 'theory' of the Illuminati. Quite simply it's supposedly a secret organization that controls the States. The group itself is not fictional, however it was considered by many to have died out centuries ago.

I would appreciate it if anyone responses were logical and people kept on topic. This is a debate not an argument, challenge anything posted with logic and facts, and taking anything to a personal level is pathetic and childish, that's not what this forum is about.

 

Your completely right. There has to be people controlling everything like where puppets.

Take are current president for example: He has an old school African name, grew up extremely poor, he was home schooled, Then some how got a job in government, attended Harvard (a very prestigious school), And then got a presidential nominee when he was a unheard of in politics. He has also wrote a book later on stating that he was consistently experimenting with drugs throughout his teenage years. Which to my extent means that he got hammered pretty often to only wake up @ 4 a.m to learn from his mother.

When you put all that together it doesn't add up to be honest. Not to mention he has paid over $900,000 (that he doesn't have after all the schooling he has to pay, living expenses, etc. the leftovers aren't there for that to be logical)to keep the whole birth certificate thing under wraps. so someone stepped up to keep him safe.

My point being is that somewhere in that story, there are is a lie.

And on top of that, the Oil companies to control a lot, but the company that controls the most is GE. They didn't even pay 1 cent in taxes this year and they made more money then any other company in America. How the hell does that happen? Not to mention if you read the 800 page bills they pass in the house they give out millions to company's that have nothing to do with the bill.

 

Well that's the sad truth. Big banks and corporations pull the government's strings behind the scenes while the masses are kept smiling with television and iPods.

 

I feel you, recently some companies over here got some huge tax cuts(Namely telecoms)... during a contractionary fiscal policy. Really? It just represents a shift of wealth from the tax payers to the corporations. It's not as if we aren't already in over our heads, decades of debt to clear.

 

Here you start to make 1 an assumption that is racist, and 2 an assumption that is based on political mudslinging that has no bases in truth.

African name? Doesn't make a difference. Grew up poor is irrelevant. Home school is irrelevant. All the points you bring up are obscure points that have no connection or no logical basis for your argument. Abraham Lincoln was born extremely poor as most well read people will know in the woods of Illinois and he eventually became president - must be a conspiracy because a poor kid can't grow up to be one of the most beloved presidents. The birther conspiracy theorists are crazy right wing nut jobs that have all been proven wrong, he didn't pay someone 900K to cover it up. Unless you can prove legitimate proof otherwise.


Now Jam, I agree with you on the corporations part. Corporate entities have an inordinate amount of power, too much power in my opinion. The dollar is more of a vote than an actual vote is anymore.


Presidents come and go because if you go back to the original ideas that the US was founded on they didn't want to be under a king/tyrant. The people have influence over the election but do you know how the actual system of electoral colleges work?

Here is an overview:
Americans casts a popular vote > Each state gets a number of electoral votes based on population > The electoral college meets and all cast ballots. This is where it becomes tricky because the delegates are supposed to vote with the popular vote of the population but in the past it hasn't always worked that way. Like the Gore/Bush election. Gore won the popular vote, but Bush won the electoral vote. How does this happen? Well if you campaign the states with the larger electoral votes then you are going to get more electoral votes and by focusing majorly on large swing states then you can easily lose the popular vote but win the electoral vote. Is this a good system? I don't think so, because stupid stuff like what happened in the 2000 election can happen. There are a lot of proposed reforms to the college.

You should really check into the way the US government works, because just because someone is president doesn't mean they have ultimate power. He is checked by the Congress and Congress' powers are checked through the Supreme Court with a power the court has called Judicial Review set up in the Maubury v. Madison case. It allows the court to review laws and declare the constitutionality of each and was recently used on the Healthcare Reform Bill. The way it works pretty much is each of our branches of government has powers that checks the powers of each of the other branches and it helps balance the power of the government so no one part of the governing body has complete power over the rest. I mean this is a very very brief overview of how it works.

 

What does this even mean?

A bit of an overstatement.

No he wasn't.

You have the order reversed.

He was a U.S. Senator after being a State Senator. Although his qualifications were minimal, he wasn't "unheard of."

He wrote about his experiences before his election.

Good to know?

What, exactly, doesn't add up?

Obama is a multi-millionaire, and there was never anything to the birther conspiracy theories.

..where?

 

Large corporations with lots of money run this country. It's a fact. Also, I actually found it very interesting that you brought up the federal reserves because me and my friend were talking about that the other day. They aren't connected or owned by the government in any way, meaning they have MASSIVE control and power. They can pretty much do whatever they want because of it, and to me that's just sketchy as fuck.

 

None of these things are exactly inconspicuous. Anyone with access to the internet can find these things out for themselves. I don't think that's really the point though.
Where does change begin? What can we do to take the power from the hands of the power-hungry? Are we powerless to do anything about it?

 

As US citizens we do have the right to take up arms against our government if it ever turns tyrannical. haha.

 

Bankers /Rothschilds ...richest of the world

 

American Democracy being the best system in the world is a bunch of 1960's propaganda. The fact of the matter is that balance of power checks are all now completely negated from it, and the President (should he chose to) can become your dictator. America is controlled by the rich completely and almost every bill passed has interests of the rich in mind.

 

We need a system that benefits every single one of us and one that we can all agree on, which is pretty hard to come up with.

 

Woodcut ox, I'm sorry but your points are completely irrelevant, inaccurate, and absurd, as people have already pointed out in this thread.

Some of you guys are being way too extreme and bashing capitalism. In the basics of a capitalist economy we have to examine the trade-off between efficiency and equality. Yes, equality is something we should strive for. But the more equality the government pursues, the more efficiency it sacrifices.

With a capitalist economy America will always have the poor, and the rich will have a noteworthy amount of power in the government processes.

Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve, is appointed by the President of the United States. He was appointed by Bush and reappointed by Obama during his term.
While the wealthy do have an important part in influencing government, they by no means "run the country". They can significantly influence elections through extensive funding (by the way, such funding is LIMITED). But they cannot make their vote count for more or anything like that. If the rich really did have that much power, Mitt Romney would have no problem beating Obama.

There are problems with American democracy, but it's definitely not as bad as you guys are saying it is.

 

The rich control this country. That is why its going to shit. They call the shots and the only shots they call are ones to make them richer. Their moving jobs to other countries so they can pay workers less for making the same materials. Less pay for workers = more profit for product.

Do you not know that our government is corrupt? That they lie to you and make you believe what they want you to? I bet 90% of all american votes are rigged and no matter if the votes showed that one person got 0 votes and the other person got them all, if they rich people wanted that person with 0 votes to be in office, that person would be in office. Research can be your best friend. Look at what bush did. and the lies he told. War for 9/11? no war for oil. Theyll tell you what you wanna hear. Y did he go to war for oil? cuz major oil corporations demanded it.

 

Your post is incredibly naive and immature. The American government is by no means close to perfect but to define it as "corrupt" is absurd. "I bet 90% of all American votes are rigged"? On what basis are you making this statement? I don't want to sound rude but you seriously need to do your "research" on basic economics and government before you act like you know what's going on in this world. I'm not even an American citizen but I know better than to make an assumption like yours.

 

Actually that could happen at anytime technically. I mean it is a built in provision in the constitution. If the US entered into a period of militaristic rule as it did in the Civil War then the president has ultimate power, but congress has to approve it and with politics being so highly partisan that would be impossible unless a single party controlled the entire congress.

Also Finecon there are a lot of loopholes in campaign funding laws so that donations are pretty much unlimited. Also lobbyists have much too much influence over the laws that are passed. If you, as a corporation, have enough money you can get nearly any law passed through special interest lobbying and bill piggy-backing.

 

My research says Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction, my research says bush sold them those weapons and my research says bush had LESS THAN HALF the popularity vote, but the electoral vote he won? Thats obviously bull shit. And who would put sum1 in for a second term after they set up 9/11, put us in so much debt, shipped our jobs away and went to war for oil, then blamed it ALL on mexicans?

My research also says that you can believe what you want, as I believe what I do, and for you to disrespect that? simply put: Fuck you.

BTW I do infact mean to sound rude.

 

Your research is mostly wrong and is a bunch of conspiracy theories that have no factual basis. There were no WMDs found in Iraq and if they did have them they would have got them from an ex-soviet country or Russia themselves because it is well known that Russia sold of a lot of it's armament in the 90s. Winning an election with less popular votes isn't a common thing but it has happened before 3 or 4 times. Where do you get that Bush blamed 9/11 and the Iraqi conflict on Mexicans? You seriously have all your facts messed up. If anything it was NAFTA signed during the Clinton administration that made it easier for jobs to be exported to Mexico. You have made some seriously ridiculous conclusions here. The Bush administration really messed up everything in the government and I never agreed with anything he did, but you're linking things together that do not even make sense.

 

I was actually watching this earlier today, just because of my interest in Ron Paul. It talks about the Fed and its influence on the government, its AFFLIIATION with the government, not a government operation, and how it controls the economy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAztH_mkGwo

 

I don't care if you mean to sound rude, but you should really stop posting, as it's not helping you at all and is making you look quite unintelligent.

Like Nero said, your so called "research" is quite frankly, bullshit. Bush set us up for 9/11? While I'm not a fan of President Bush myself, such a statement is backed up by extremely limited factual evidence and is, at most, just a conspiracy theory. None of your arguments are worth arguing against, since they're pretty much just one-dimensional opinions that are wrong.

Yeah you can believe what you want, but your "beliefs" are backed up by uneducated statements with no factual foundations.