The Great Democracy of the U.S.A.

Here is a short piece from the NYTimes that pretty much sums up why I don't even bother with the crooked democracy that rules the US. The piece by Paul Krugman talks about the past two presidential elections beginning with a new book put out by a reporter for the British newspaper, the Independent. The book, titled "Steal this Vote," concludes and documents that "Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election." This is largely based on evidence that election work in Florida swayed the vote away from Gore and handed the state to Bush. In 2004, a similar situation arose in Ohio where the "secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell - supervised the election while serving as co-chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio." If that is not a conflict in interests, I don't know what is. Whatever went on there, the situation was certainly ripe for manipulation. Besides throwing the whole Bush presidency into question concerning its legitimacy, the piece wants to make clear that the American democracy is not flawless and in fact is riddled with corruption. Krugman sums up the piece with this thought: "Our current political leaders would suffer greatly if either house of Congress changed hands in 2006, or if the presidency changed hands in 2008. The lids would come off all the simmering scandals, from the selling of the Iraq war to profiteering by politically connected companies. The Republicans will be strongly tempted to make sure that they win those elections by any means necessary. And everything we've seen suggests that they will give in to that temptation."