The World from Berlin: Today's American Politics a 'Tiresome Farce'

[sysop]

Barack Obama's announcement that a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff" has been reached was hailed as a victory for the Democratic president. German editorialists, however, are less certain. They warn that the bitter political wrangling in Washingon is likely to damage the country in the longterm.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-875405.html

[esperonto]

Westerners hate peace. The Canadians and Texans will unite to make a hateful world where people in New England have to suffer. New England is a peaceful place that Canadians and Texans want to destroy with their colonial gun-loving aggression. Germany will join with New York City to make a united uber-snob nation across the Atlantic. After Canada joins Alabama to make another colonial cross-border nation, New England will rejoin Great Britain and set up a peaceful green working class society with the British working class.

[vinzclortho]

The budget farce in the US is very much like the euro farce in the EU. It does seem that all government is becoming farce these days.

The particular mechanism for the farce in the US is the Senate. As has happened for the last three years, the Senate simply refuses to put the House budget up for a vote. Further, it refuses to pass its own suggested budget. Then the ministers and experts tell us about the particular parameters of the up coming planned emergency. After an appropriate amount of rhetoric and finger pointing, and at the last minute, the "leaders" go behind closed doors and produce as corrupt a bill as the circumstances permit, which is duly passed.

The Senate should be abolished.

The last significant amendments to the US Constitution were 100 years ago in 1913. Since then the US form of government has degenerated into something very much like English system before 1832. Now every senate and house district functions much like a rotten borough. The American twist is that while the English rotten boroughs depended on vanishingly small constituencies the American rotten boroughs thrive on truly enormous constituencies.

Interestingly, the result is the same, a greater than 90% certainty about the composition of any given Congress.

The problem is when democracy starts failing like it is in the US and EU, people start looking for other solutions.