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By Jared Bernstein By Jared Bernstein July 28 at 10:44 AM

Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist to Vice President Biden, is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and author of the new book 'The Reconnection Agenda: Reuniting Growth and Prosperity.'

Im at a conference (where I just moderated a session with the great economist Paul Krugman Ill post the podcast at some point), so I dont have time to write much on what happened last night in health care. But if I dont write something, Ill burst, so here are some quick reflections.

It aint over, but what a great win, thanks to numerous people and forces:

the three Republican senators who voted down the latest, and for now, probably last repeal effort;

Senate Democrats, who held fast against a terrible assault on both health-care policy and the political process (more on that point next);

the research and analysis community, with a loud shout-out to my colleagues at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who quickly, deftly and with consistent accuracy, explained the human costs of the Republican plans for the record, to do what they did is much harder than it looks;

the progressive advocacy community, which came together and relentlessly pressed the issue;

the health insurance lobby (yep ), whose members clearly pointed out the extent to which the latest Republican plan would destabilize markets;

the doctors, via the American Medical Association, who were a consistent and authoritative voice against the damage the various GOP plans would do to people;

Im sure Im leaving out some important groups, people. Please add in comments.

Im a pretty hard-boiled old-timer whos seen more than his share of D.C. cray-cray, but the process by which Senate Republicans were trying to change the way we deal with 18 percent of our economy, and a part thats existentially important to people, was unlike anything ANYTHING Ive ever seen. At one point, they basically wrote a health-care overhaul bill over lunch.

So, yeah, its a great day, and for now, the system worked. But just barely by one vote. Its crucial not to lose sight of how unrepresentative the process has been, how a major party is working against the will of the majority, and how its doing so in a way that is utterly irrational, with no deliberation, no factual input (Quick, lets get this to the floor before the CBO can score it!), false claims (Obamacares imploding!) and no transparency.

Yes, most 10 year olds run their lemonade stands better than that, but the larger point is that this isnt democracy. Im breathing a lot easier for now, and just maybe this in tandem with what partisans from all sides agree is peak chaos at the White House is a sign of the fever breaking a bit. But weve a lot more work to do to get back to where we need to be.

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This moment in health care and democracy - Washington Post

CARACAS, Venezuela Government opponents are begging Venezuelans to sit out a vote on Sunday forwhat they see as a puppet congress and the last step toward dictatorship in this South American country. But Jos, a Caracas bus driver, said he and other public transit employees were given an ultimatum by their bosses.

Turn out and vote for the new congress, in an election in which nearly every candidate is a supporter of President Nicols Maduro.

Or else.

Theyre obliging us to vote, said the young father of two, who declined to give his last name, fearing repercussions.If not, theyll fire us, and what are we going to do without a job?

Venezuela is not yet the kind of dictatorship that once proliferated in Latin America with rulers who disappeared opponents, banned books and movies, and ran mass torture centers.Government pressure and violence against journalists have drastically curbed the press, but digital media outlets thrive. Hundreds of political prisoners are in jail, according to human rights groups, but opposition leaders continue to forcefully speak out. This month, the government allowed one major critic Leopoldo Lpez, the former mayor of Caracas to exchange his jail cell for house arrest.

Yet on Sunday, critics say, an authoritarian system long in the making will be formalized, reviving memories of an era that the region had hoped was over. In defiance of international warnings, the socialist government is pushing forward with a vote to elect a constituent assembly that will have the authority to change the 1999 constitution, supplant the opposition-controlled legislature and potentially keep Maduro in power indefinitely.

The opposition on Thursday called for three days of massive, nationwide protests as the government showed no willingness to back down and following the slaying of seven more demonstrators in two days. Responding to the spiraling tensions, the U.S. State Department ordered the departure of family members of American staff at its embassy in Caracas. It also authorized voluntary departures for American staff, and issued a broad travel warning for U.S. citizens.

Maduro the anointed successor of firebrand leader Hugo Chvez, who died in 2013 strongly defends the new assembly, saying it will fortify what he hails as the communal state. While its unclear exactly what he is seeking in a new constitution, it would likely give more power to communal councils in poor neighborhoods. Leaders of those councils, critics say, are government loyalists who in practice would sideline elected politicians and win direct pipelines to government funds.

On the surface, the assembly vote, along with the governments pseudo-Soviet speak, hark back to old-school Marxist regimes. But many here see something perhaps more sinister emerging a 21st-century thugocracy that rules by coercion, extortion and violence.

About 100 people have died in three months of anti-government street protests. Arrests of political activists have accelerated. Bands of pro-government toughs known as colectivos roam poor neighborhoods, waving guns, intimidating protesters and journalists, beating opposition politicians, and warning locals to toe the government line.

[How a new kind of protest movement has arisen in Venezuela]

More than 7 million people voted against the establishment of the new assembly in an informal referendum July 16. Opposition parties are boycotting the election.

In a country where the government is the largest employer, state workers say they are being ordered to vote Sunday, at the risk of losing their jobs. HIV patients say officials have threatened to cut off their supplies of antiretroviral drugs if they do not turn out for the election. Families risk being scratched off government food distribution rosters for not showing up a dire outcome in a country where a socialist experiment and economic mismanagement have sparked hyperinflation and food shortages.

Such threats are not idle, either. Yanelis Banco, 36 years old and nearly nine months pregnant, said her boss at thegovernment postal service called her in along with other department heads for a talk last week. He ordered them, she said, to sign a form pledging to vote Sunday.

She and five other senior staffers refused. All of them lost their jobs, she said.

Im a pregnant woman who has been working in the company for 10 years and four months, so I didnt think theyd fire me, she said. Why do I have to sign if I dont agree? I thought the law protected me!

She added: All the other employees are terrified. Now theyre sure that if they dont vote, theyll be fired. None of them can afford that.

[Stuck in a death spiral, Venezuela is borrowing money at any cost]

Maduro has acknowledged that the government is pressuring public employees to vote. At a rally with public energy workers this month, he said: Take the lists of workers from all the state institutions and businesses to create a constituent committee. For each business, call all the workers and organize how theyll vote on July 30th. At the end of the day, check the list. If there are 15,000 workers, there have to be 15,000 votes, with no excuses.

Venezuelas political protests have been fueled by the disastrous state of the economy, growing authoritarian rule and the governments resistance to early elections. The countrys electoral council ruled against the opposition when it soughta referendum in 2016 that could have cut short Maduros six-year term. The council also pushed back elections for governors, scheduled for 2016, to December of this year. Critics fear that the new assembly will cancel those, as well as the presidential election in 2018.

The U.S. Treasury Department in February froze Vice President Tareck El Aissamis American assets over his alleged involvement in narcotics trafficking and took similar action against eight justices of the pro-government supreme court after it tried to strip power from the opposition-led legislature. On Wednesday, the Trump administration targeted 13 more Venezuelan officials, alleging violations of human rights and corruption.

[Trump administration hits 13 Venezuelans with sanctions in advance of vote]

Once the richest country per capita in South America due toits vast oil reserves, Venezuela was also cursed with vast disparities that kept an elite in luxury while the poor languished in slums. The result was Chvez, who used the petroleum wealth to launch massive social programs, even as he concentrated power. He remains much beloved by millions of Venezuelans, although many others especially in the middle and upper classes loathe him.

Maduros approval rating, on the other hand, is hovering around 20 percent, with opponents calling this weekends vote the only way for him to remain in the presidentialpalace.

He has promised Venezuelans that the assembly will herald a new era of security and stability.

July 30th will be the birth of a historic trigger of the homeland for a new phase of peace and advancement, Maduro told a campaign rally this week.

Yet many Venezuelans fear just the opposite a deepening of official repression. It is already starting, they say.

Take, for instance, 51-year-old Lisbeth Aez, or Mama Lis. For years, shewas known for aiding anti-government protesters, bringing them blankets and cooking them fresh arepas, or cornmeal cakes.

In May, she was arrested and charged with treason.

Her case is in the hands of amilitary tribunal. In recent months, scores of civilians who have taken part in demonstrations or other perceived anti-government acts have been sent into the military court system, where they can face lengthy prison sentences.

I cant sleep, I cant eat, even if we had enough food, said her son, Luis Gonzlez Aez, 23, who said he was refused entry to her trial. I have nightmares, thinking about her in jail ... I didnt think things could get worse, but they have.

Gabriela Ramrez, Venezuelas former public ombudsman and a longtime Chvez supporter, said she feared the government would become worse than a dictatorship.We will have a narco-authoritarian regime, she said.

Ramrez, who carries around a pocket version of Chvezs 1999 constitution in her purse, is among the ranks of former Chavistas or Chvez backers who have turned against Maduro. She has paid for it with harassment, she said, including a recent hackin which intimate photos of her and her husband were leaked on social media.

There will no longer be any check on their power, she said. They will control everything.

Following an opposition-called 48-hour strike, the government on Thursday issued a ban on public gatherings and protests lasting from Friday through Tuesday. The opposition responded by calling for nationwide mobilization, asking citizens to take to the streets from the Caribbean Sea to the Andes Mountains.

In an interview, Freddy Guevara, an opposition leader and vice president of the National Assembly, played down the chances of any deal to suspend or cancel the vote. Former Spanish prime minister Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero is in Caracas, and has served as an intermediary between the government and opposition. Guevara denied reports that a deal had been offered to suspend the vote.

It is wishful thinking, he said. I am sure they are going forward with this scam, and that we are going to respond with pressure.

But even leading members of the opposition appear to be losing hope that Maduro will back down.

Scenarios for what happens next range widely. Some observers suggest that social unrest and international sanctions will worsen, prompting, perhaps, a military coup or fueling an anti-government guerrilla movement. Others say the government, likely with the aid of Russia and China, will somehow manage to hold on as the country becomes an international pariah.

Still others see a worst-case scenario of social implosion and anarchy.

Somalia, said Henrique Capriles, an opposition leader and governor of the state of Miranda.

We could become a failed state.

Mariana Zuiga contributed to this report.

Read more

Things are so bad in Venezuela that people are rationing toothpaste

Venezuelas paradox: people are hungry, but farmers cant feed them

Maduro wants to rewrite the constitution. Thats rocket fuel on the fire.

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Venezuela's vote for a constitutional assembly could destroy democracy, critics warn - Washington Post

Barron's

Venezuela Vote: Pain For Democracy, Citgo, Refiners & Summer Vacation? Barron's If the Venezuelan government proceeds with a referendum Sunday that is likely to squelch any hope of democracy, the United States says it will impose harsh economic sanctions. Venezuela's vote on a new constituent assembly is designed to create a new ... and more »

Originally posted here:
Venezuela Vote: Pain For Democracy, Citgo, Refiners & Summer Vacation? - Barron's

Elections are not a bad thing. But for the sake of our own commitment to honesty, let us not deceive ourselves into believing that Jordan is democratizing.

United States President Donald J. Trump, right, and King Abdullah II of Jordan, left, shake hands after conducting a joint press conference. April 5, 2017. Sachs Ron/CNP/ABACA/ABACA/PA Images. All rights reserved.A heightened sense of entitlement and an overarching belief in ones own view of the right path, are certainly indispensable prerequisites when attempting to implement policies that have resulted in nothing other than failure.

For the last year, the United States, undeniably not immune to this pronounced sense of self, has worked alongside the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to move the desert kingdom toward democracy.

Democracy is certainly a laudable goal, and one that people everywhere should strive for. In its singularity, democracy epitomizes freedom of expression, the agency to choose who and how one will be represented, and above all an unyielding respect for human rights.

Democracy in Jordan, or at least the path toward it, has not been the recipient of those byproducts, but rather has been characterized by illusions masquerading as genuine forms of structural changeillusions enough to satisfy the United States and certainly enough to qualify the monarchy for millions in defense contracts.

Since 2003, Jordans secret security force hasreceivedover 3 billion US dollars in the form of defense aid & military bases

Since 2003, Jordans secret security force the General Intelligence Department has received over three billion US dollars in the form of defense aid and military bases in partnership with the Department of Defense have emerged in cities all across the country.

With the Trump administrations recent decision to remove human rights conditions in exchange for arms sales to Bahrain, and the administrations recent unprecedented realignment with Saudi Arabia and UAE, governments in the Sunni Muslim world seem more comfortable today than they did in the eight years of the Obama administration, leading many to believe that democracy building has merely become empty rhetoric.

The most recent maneuver to democratize Jordan has arrived in the form of decentralization and municipal elections. Like the Washington Consensus in the late twentieth century and by extension, the seemingly permanent institutionalization of the neoliberal model, decentralization and democracy under the guise of local empowerment have become the new rallying cry of western democracy enthusiasts.

But is decentralization a necessary precursor to a strong Jordanian democracy and are elections necessarily a strong indicator of the democratic vitality of a nation-state?

Not necessarily, but they certainly can be. Legitimacy of the democratic processinstitution building, elections, and the proliferation of political partiesare good things, but it is the context in which they exist which makes them either good ornot so good.

Jordans only organized political opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, has been consistently demonized by the monarchy. In 2013, King Abdullahreferredto the group as a Masonic cult . . . run by wolves in sheeps clothing.

Following verbal attacks, the groups offices were closed by authorities in Mafraq, Karak, and Madaba home to one of the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, an important point given that Palestinian - Jordanians are more likely to support the group.

In 2016, the government shut down the groups headquarters under thepremisethat the group had failed to obtain legal authorisation for its activities.

Corruption in the kingdom is still widespread, and many Jordanians agree that decentralization will not make headway in reducing what many perceive as a widespread epidemic.

On a cursory level, if corruption has been a longstanding status quo, creating more positions in the form of local elections does not eradicate systemic issues, but rather both perpetuates them and deceptively attempts to cover those issues under the guise of progress. This empty progress, for many Jordanians, is insulting to both their intelligence and their dignity.

How can democracy exist in any substantive capacity and that too when the United States attempts to impose it? After all, the United States record of democracy building has proven disastrous.

Jordans embracementof democratic values have been more rhetoric than genuine commitment

Since the last ten years, the military hasyieldedsignificant power, often at the expense of the parliament and local decision makers. On a local level, Jordans push toward a constitutional monarchy, and the eventualembracementof democratic values, have been more rhetoric than genuine commitment.

In January of 2017just seven months agothe GIDarrestedseveral former government officials and members of the teachers union for social media posts critical of the systemic and widespread issues of corruption in the Kingdom.

Certainly no one can, or rather should, contend that this pattern of repression is one indicative of an eventual embrace of true democracy.

Elections are not a bad thing. They should happen, and whether Jordanians take part in them is their decision entirely we cannot rob them of that agency. But for the sake of our own commitment to honesty if not for Jordanians let us not deceive ourselves into believing that Jordan is democratizing.

Jordanians at least some will go to the polls in August. They will cast their votes for local representatives and they will hope that at least this time their vote might mean something.

"This content has been made possible by thePulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, for which Aman is a student fellow.

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Elections do not mean democracy - Open Democracy

Never meet your enemies you might like them, and that ruins stuff. I had dinner with the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, about a year ago. During his time in office, Rowan came out with what I considered to be some of the most cringing, effete, left-liberal, self-abnegating rot I have ever heard. But then, at this dinner, I met the most kindly, charming, humble and witty human being. If a man could be said to actually radiate goodness, that was Rowan. I left the dinner utterly dismayed. Never meet your enemies.

So it is with Matthew Parris. I bump into Matthew every so often and am always reminded what a delightful chap he is: drily humorous, ineffably good-natured and a pleasure to talk to. Luckily, most of his fellow travellers are not similarly equipped his friend David Aaaaaaronovitch, for example, is in person a smug dirigible inflated by gusts of self-delusion and self-righteousness. But theres something even worse with Parris he writes beautifully, too. It is an awful thing to see your opponents case put forward with elegance and erudition. Luckily again, most of his fellow travellers are not similarly equipped. Read a sentence by Polly Toynbee and fairly quickly a thin wisp of smoke will exit your temples, wraith-like that is the will to live escaping your cranium. And yet it is still the case that I disagree with almost everything Matthew writes, on almost every issue. Sometimes, when I finish reading one of his articles, I am so irked at its sumptuous, chiming wrongness that, irrationally, I take a visceral dislike to his bloody llamas as well as his viewpoint. I dont think I hope your llamas all die or anything like that. I just think if one hove into view, spitting like a transgressed Remainer, I might kick it, spitefully, on the fetlocks.

Last week Parris regurgitated, entertainingly, a familiar bellyful of bile in the direction of those of us, the more than 17million of us, who voted in favour of leaving the European Union. And won the referendum by more than a million votes, remember, Matthew. It was predicated on a comment made by the aforementioned friend Aaaaaaronovitch, who told him, with some glee, that Brexit was dying. A thinnish source, Matthew. This is a man who insisted that the Iraq War was a noble enterprise, that Saddam definitely had weapons of mass destruction and that the Tories would win the last general election with a landslide. I have tried to remember anything Davids ever been right about, but Ill have to get back to you on that. But if Brexit really is dying, then isnt that a worry for anyone who believes in democracy?

No, not at all. Not if you subscribe to the view that the Brexiteers are all thick as mince, pig-ignorant or deranged, and not deserving of the vote, as Matthew still does. These morons cleave to a spiritual vision of what it would mean for the UK to be liberated from the European Union, he asserts, and are unbothered by the promise made exclusively by Remainers and so far decisively unproven, if something can be decisively unproven that we will be much worse off as a consequence. I dont know any Leave voters who fit this convenient stereotype; maybe I should get out more. Almost all of the Leave voters I know voted thus on the issue of sovereignty and the suspicion that we might do OK in a world beyond Jean-Claude Juncker. Nobody I know voted Leave because of that promise to repatriate an enormous sum to the NHS. It was a dismal campaign on both sides, hyperbolic figures bandied about, grave threats sprayed over the populace. I, as a fairly reluctant Leaver, was almost almost swayed by Project Fear. No investment, high unemployment, British industry wrecked, house prices collapsing. None of that has happened; quite the reverse. Investment is up, employment is higher than it has ever been, inflation has just come down. Oh, there are still plenty of people, like Matthew, saying this economic shit will soon hit the fan. Always soon. Much as George Osborne said it would hit by October last year. I prefer to put my trust in what is happening, rather than what some embittered people tell me will happen, one day, not far down the road, mark my words.

And now, according to Parris, we Leavers are corralled into supporting a soft Brexit because it may be the only one left available to us. Ah, yes here he has a point. But not because the will for Brexit is weakening, but because his own reliably stupid party made a decision, based upon hubris and arrogance, to hold an election that nobody wanted. And an election in which the Brexit dog simply did not bark, despite the electorate being told that it was a Brexit election. Far from it. In the end it was a return to two-party politics: both the Conservatives and Labour, of course, supported the will of the people and were pledged to honour Brexit. The pro-Remain parties the SNP and the Liberal Democrats performed abysmally.

If we are being shepherded towards an ineffectual and unsatisfactory soft Brexit, it is not because the realities of the Brexit debate have changed; they palpably have not. It is because Matthews party is riven with loathing and dispute and clinging on to power by its fingertips, desperate to clutch at any straw that wafts its way.

There is not the slightest evidence that the mood of the country has changed regarding our leaving the EU. Only that internecine squabbling and the lack of a majority in parliament has meant that the clear mandate of last summer might be assuaged, watered down, ameliorated by a political opportunism that has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue itself. I think even llamas would be able to grasp that point.

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If Brexit is dying, what about democracy? - Spectator.co.uk