The United States is a De Facto Parliamentary political system.

 I've been wanting to write this for a long time, but haven't. Current events are pushing me to point out the reality of the US political system.

Despite the founders intent of three separate branches and checks and balances: The real power is in the legislature

De facto describes practices that exist in reality, even though they are not officially recognized by laws. De jure is according to the law. 

Law does not always reflect the reality. 

The reasons I say that the US is a de facto parliamentary system should be obvious, but most people are distracted by the president that they miss the body with any real power is the legislature. The legislature holds the power of the purse, among many others that make it the strongest and most powerful branch.. 

The failure to pass a budget in any true parliamentary democracy would lead to automatic dissolution of the government. This is due to the concept of "loss of supply":

A defeat on a budgetary vote is one way by which supply can be denied. Loss of supply is typically interpreted as indicating a loss of confidence in the government. Not all "money bills" are necessarily supply bills. For instance, in Australia, supply bills are defined as "bills which are required by the Government to carry on its day-to-day business".

When a loss of supply occurs, a prime minister is generally required either by constitutional convention or by explicit constitutional instruction to either resign immediately or seek a parliamentary dissolution.

Some constitutions, however, do not allow the option of parliamentary dissolution but rather require the government to be dissolved or to resign. 

The US system has specified term limits, which is one way that dissolution of government resulting in new elections can be prevented. On the other hand, the US government could conceivably go into a prolonged budget crisis and government shutdown. That's one reason that US Budget crises tend to be short.

On the other hand, if one party really didn't like the other one. The budget crisis could last until the end of the legislative session.

Next reason why the US is actually parliamentary is that the legislature can remove the executive. While the criterion for doing this is "high crimes and misdemeanours": the reality is that it can be for frivolous reasons  if one political party dislikes the executive of the other party. While the criterion is "high crimes and misdemeanours", the reality is that the process is blatantly political. That is because other executives have engages in "high crimes and misdemeanours" by violation of international law (e.g., illegal war) with little or no consequences.

On the other hand, don't lie about blowjobs.

Not sure where this comes into the strength of the argument, but the legislature offers the best place for representing the people. The legislature is directly elected and proportional to the population (at least in the house of representatives). On the other hand, it is one place where alternative parties can have a voice.

The president is not a directly elected, which is another place the legislature has control over that office. In a way, the current situation is like the English Civil War where the question was which body had the power: the monarch or the legislature? 

The legislature (parliament) won the battle.

Those of us who feel the current system is not representative should put our efforts into getting alternative parties into congress: not being hopeful that either party will change. Tip O'Neill said "all politics are local". 

Realising that the real power in the US is in the legislature is the beginning of the battle to bring about a change in US politics.

Think about it:

The Russians did not tell Hillary Clinton to send surrogates to Arizona shortly before the election, when they would have been far more helpful in Michigan or Wisconsin. They didn’t tell her to give a speech at Goldman Sachs for $225,000 in the wake of a huge bank bailout or call half Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables”. Facebook hadn’t been invented when she was for the Iraq war before she was against it, or when she was against gay marriage before she was for it.
Social media platforms, nefarious bots and dodgy data companies can amplify views that are already out there and distort perspectives that already exist – but they cannot invent them. In short they can manipulate the supply of ideas, but they cannot create the demand for those ideas from thin air. (source)

The problem is that people are too busy blaming the Russians for problems which existed without them.

While Hillary Clinton may have played a part in my voting Green: her being the Democratic candidate was not the main factor. I've gone through the series of events which made me not want to vote for "the lesser of two evils", but vote for someone who represents my political leanings in quite a few posts (especially this one).

Seriously, if the Russians were indeed responsible, then they have infiltrated the US political system to a level where only a serious purge could remove them.

John Anderson Tribute

John Anderson, the independent candidate for President In 1980, died  last week at the age of 95. I wanted to note his passing since I supported him early on, but ended up voting my fear and going with Jimmy Carter.

Carter lost and we had Reagan.

I found it interesting that Reuters quoted his daughter, Diane Anderson as saying her father "really believed the two-party system was broken in 1980. Everything he wanted to prevent unfortunately came to pass."
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/05/568489924/john-anderson-independent-for-president-in-1980-dies-at-95

Marsha Sutton, in a San Diego Tribune Commentary pointed out the similarities to Bernie Sanders:

We understood we were working for a noble cause that exceeded our individual interests. We believed in the magical possibility of breaking from the traditional two-party system in favor of a moderate who spoke the truth with integrity and conviction.

My favorite button features a caricature of Anderson showing only his white hair and the outline of his glasses. The similarity to buttons sported by Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016 is obvious.

Perhaps there is more than a caricature that makes the two similar. It’s not their politics certainly, but the comparison lies in each man’s honest desire to change the established political culture.

A lot of people who denigrated the Sanders campaign neglected that there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the two party system. So, when a candidate who is seen as having integrity comes around he tends to get a lot of attention.

Unfortunately, Anderson was coming from the Republican Party which went on to become fringier and fringier.  Some people like to think that Trump signifies the death of that party while neglecting that there is a website called democraticautopsy.org.

While I like Bernie, his politics, and his attempt to revive the Democratic Party (or expose it for the fraud it is): I don't see myself voting for him or a democratic party line.

I just hope other people wake up to the fact that the US political system has been ill for an incredibly long time.

MISOGYNISTS FOR JILL STEIN

That sounds pretty dumb doesn't it, but that is sort of what happened if you listen to the Clinton supporters.  They liked playing the woman card in both 2008 and 2016.

Remember "Obama Bros"?  And there is talk that the Barack Obama was a Kenyan Muslim began with somebody from Clinton's campaign back in 2008.

Given that the ad hominem attack is the sign somebody is losing the debate, we could indeed say Clinton lost before she even started running.

BUT

People need to ponder the significance of this picture since it pretty much sums up what is wrong with politics in the US.

While Hillary's running wasn't the main reason I voted Green, it was one small factor in that decision.

And it reflected that the current state of US politics is broken.  Hillary was the symptom, not the disease.

ANYONE who isn't aware of this and discussing what the real problem is can't really make an accurate statement about what went wrong.  So, they are going to say silly things like "misogyny caused Clinton the election", "Jill Stein and the Greens caused Hillary the election", or "Russians stole the election".

Even if all those reasons are total BULLSHIT.

The Fact is Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with 65,853,516 (48.5% votes) to Trump's 62,984,825 (46.4% votes), but lost in the electoral college by receiving 232 (43.1%) of the electoral votes to Trump's 306 (56.8%) votes.

That means the only thing which made Donald Trump president was the electoral college, an institution created by the US Constitution (Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2-4). 


I'm not sure who or where this was posted in a newsgroup, but it sums up the thinking of the Jill Stein voters:

So let play something out, if we vote for Jill Stein (which we will) and she gets enough electoral votes that it keeps either Hillary or Donald from receiving enough electoral votes to grab the nomination, then Congress will vote from the top three to be the next president. We all know how much both parties hate Donald and that they are to corrupt to vote for Jill. So who does that leave? So in all actuality a vote for Jill isn't a vote for trump. And if we get enough people to vote for her we will get a third party. If everyone voting fear because they are scared of Trump voted for Jill she would win hands down. Here is the true argument we should be telling the fear voters. And if no one gets enough electoral votes, we will then see in full view that it is rigged by the fact both parties will vote for her. So in the least a vote for Jill is a vote for Hillary, at most a vote for Jill is a vote for Jill. Either way we would at the least have a third party nationally recognized from now on. Lets push this talking point. I think it might sway the scared people into voting their conscience knowing Donald won't get the presidency.

I know that my reasons for voting for the Green Party relate to a broken system: and not anything else.

See also:
Why Electoral College wins are bigger than popular vote ones | Pew Research Center