Empire-Scale Representative Democracy: The American Presidency

On the very day in which a health-care company’s executive collapsed in the Oval Office, with U.S. President Trump being the only person in the group standing and looking away in what looks like callous disregard instead of compassion or empathy, that president directed his Administration to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that the U.S. Government had to immediately fund food-assistance, or SNAP (formerly “food stamps”) completely for the month then more than a week in, in spite of the "government shutdown." On the next day, the Trump Administration demanded that the member-states that had just paid out full November benefits to recipients “undo"  the difference between the partial and full amounts that had just been "paid out under judges’ orders” because the U.S. Supreme Court “stayed those rulings.”[1] The photo of Trump literally looking the other way while everyone else in the Oval Office is bending over the collapsed man out of concern perfectly aligns with his lack of concern for Americans going without food due to the sudden stoppage of money for food without notice. That many employees of the U.S. Government who had been laid off without pay since earlier that November would be especially reliant on food-assistance money precisely because they were no longer obtaining income (or else they were receiving unemployment compensation at less than full pay) could be understood to be a matter of callousness rather than moral sentiments from Trump simply by looking at the photo.

President Trump's emotional indifference is palpable. (source: Andrew Harnik via Getty Images)

Looking at that photo, not even psychologists should conclude that a majority of the electoral (and popular) votes went to elect a psychopath. However, callousness in the face of a medical emergency can reasonably be inferred from the president’s non-verbal stance and emotionless facial expression. Had that photo been available to voters in the days before the 2024 presidential election, Trump may have lost that election. Such a hypothetical is useful ex post facto because it raises the question of whether so many voters as vote in a U.S. presidential election have enough actual information on the candidates. If the photo shocked many such voters just over a year after the 2024 election, the implication is that relying on “brand” marketing by presidential campaigns because so few voters even know people who know even just one of the candidates is deficient.

The Electoral College was established in the U.S. Constitution not only because the member-states, like those of the E.U., would retain some governmental sovereignty, but also because with even just 7 million people voting for president, so few of them could be expected to know the characters of the candidates beyond what reaches news print that a check by electors who could meet the candidates was deemed to be necessary. That the political parties captured the Electoral College such that such a check did not in fact operate means that American representative democracy as regards the federal president of the Union has been allowed to operate at a deficiency, which is to say that the elections have been vulnerable to the electorates (of the states) being misled by presidential campaigns.

In short, my point is that if even some of the millions of Americans who had voted for Donald Trump in November, 2024 were subsequently shocked a year later when they scrutinized the photo of Donald Trump being so visually inert emotionally, and perhaps even annoyed at the unwanted delay in his office, while antipodally the other people there could be seen as so obviously concerned about a guest who had just collapsed. Trump stood out so much from the others that even the president’s supporters could have been surprised, even marveling in the privacy of their own minds that they had known so little about Trump the man when they had voted for him. I am assuming that only a small minority of the electorate would favor voting for a person who at the very leeast appears to be so callous in person, for judgment, which involves not just reasoning, but also emotion, is salient in governing. The photo of Turmp in the Oval Office paradoxically demonstrates the importance of humane emotion in governance by so clearly dipicting the utter absence of emotion in a very human situation in which we would naturally expect to find spontaneous emotion. In this surreal way, Trump's repeated efforts to stop food-assistance from reaching the poor judicially and in policy can be grasped in terms of Trump as a person.

Perhaps as in the E.U., the chief executives of the U.S. member-states should nominate a candidate for federal president, with the U.S. House of Representatives, whose counterpart in the E.U. is the European Parliament, confirming or rejecting the candidate. The idea of the states' chief executives, who are themselves elected closer to the people, choosing the federal president outright was considered in the Constitutional Convention, but the proposal was unfortunately voted down in favor of the ill-fated Electoral College. The U.S. federal system can indeed be improved by borrowing some ideas from the E.U., and vice versa; this just takes some humility on both ends. 

---

1. Scott Bauer and Nicholas Riccardi, “Trump Administration Demands States ‘Undo’ Full SNAP Payouts as States Warn of ‘Catastrophic Impact,’” The Associated Press, November 9, 2025.

Johnson’s “Reinvention” of JC Penney: Too Much and Too Little

In April 2013, JC Penney’s board wished the CEO, Ron Johnson, “the best in his future endeavors.” His effort to “reinvent” the company had been “very close to a disaster,” according to the largest shareholder, William Ackman. During Johnson’s time at the company as its CEO, shares fell more than fifty percent. In February 2013, Johnson admitted to having made “big mistakes” in the turnaround. For one thing, he did not test-market the changes in product-line and pricing-points. The latter in particular drove away enough customers for the company’s sales to decline by 25 percent. Why did Johnson fail so miserably?

Ron Johnson's short tenure as CEO of JC Penney was disastrous, according to Altman.   Source: Reuters

Some commentators on CNBC claimed that JC Penney’s board directors should have known better than hire someone from Apple to have so much responsibility right off the bat in a department store. However, Johnson had been V.P. for merchandising at Target before going over to Apple. Therefore, Penney’s board cannot be accused of ignoring the substantive differences between sectors. Even so, Target and Walmart are oriented to one market-segment, whereas JC Penney, Kohls and Macys are oriented to another. Perhaps had he taken the time to have market tests done at JC Penney, any error in applying what he had learned at Target could have been made transparent.
Although as the former CEO Ullman who would be replacing Johnson pointed out, customer tastes are always changing so you can’t go back to worked in the past, to “reinvent” a company goes too far in the other direction. For one thing, it is risky for a retail company to shift from one market-segment to another, given the company's image. Additionally, to “reinvent” something is to start from scratch to come up with something totally new. Even if that were possible for a retail chain, the “new front” would likely seem fake to existing customers. “They are trying to be something they are not,” such customers might say. Put another way, Ron Johnson might have gotten carried away.
In an interview just after Johnson’s hiring at JC Penney had been announced in June 2011, he said, “In the U.S., the department store has a chance to regain its status as the leader in style, the leader in excitement. It will be a period of true innovation for this company.” A department store is exciting? Was he serious? Perhaps his excitement got the better of him in his zeal for change. Were the changes really of “true innovation?” Adding Martha Stewart kitchen product-lines was hardly innovative—nor was getting rid of clearance sales and renovating store designs and the company logo.
Renovation generally-speaking is rather superficial, designed perhaps to give customers an impression of more change than s actually the case. Is a given renovation an offshoot of marketing or strategy? Ron Johnson may have been prone to exaggeration, as evinced by his appropriation of faddish jargon, while coming up short in terms of substantive change. In an old company trying to be something it's not (i.e., going from a promotional to a specialty pricing strategy), too much superficial change can easily outweigh too little real change. Sometimes even upper-level managers can get carried away with their own jargon in trying to make their respective companies something they are not. It is like a person trying to be someone he or she is not. In "reinventing" JC Penney, Ron Johnson was trying to make an old woman come off as young by applying make-up and new clothes.

Sources:

Stephanie Clifford, “J.C. Penney Ousts Chief of 17 Months,” The New York Times, April 9, 2013.

Joann Lublin and Dana Mattioli, “Penney CEO Out, Old Boss Back In,” The Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2013.

On the Impact of Political Rhetoric: From “Global Warming” to “Climate Change”

Words matter in politics. The side that can frame a question by definitively naming it in the public mind enjoys a subtle though often decisive advantage in the debate and thus in any resulting public policy as well. For example, “pro-choice”privileges the pregnant woman, while “pro-life” defines the abortion debate around the fetus. Similarly, “global warming” implies a human impact, whereas“climate change” defines the issue around nature. Even though the shift from“global warming” to “climate change” is more in keeping with the evolving science and won’t be bumped off by a cold winter, political players have been the driving force—language hardly being immune to ideological pressure.

Regarding the weather shifting popular perception on the issue, research published in Public Opinion Quarterly in 2011 claimed that a bad winter can indeed discredit the “global warming” label.[1] The Washington Policy Center claimed two years later that the heavy snowfall during the latest winter had led to “climate change” replacing “global warming.”[2] The cold refusing to relent in March of 2013 and hitting North America hard in January of 2019 seemed to undercut or repudiate the scientific “global warming” hypothesis even though meteorology, a empirical science,  always demands long-term data.

However, in looking back at the name-change, we must consider the influence of political actors, who are prone to manipulate the public's perception in part by using words to frame the debate. In 2002, for example, Frank Luntz wrote a confidential memo to the Republican Party suggesting that because the Bush administration was vulnerable on the climate issue. The White House should abandon the phrase “global warming,” he wrote, in favor of “climate change.”[3] As if by magic, although “global warming” appeared frequently in President Bush’s speeches in 2001, “climate change” populated the president’s speeches on the topic by 2002.[4] In other words, the president’s political vulnerability on the issue was answered by changing the label to reframe the debate. Not missing a beat, critics charged that the motive was political in downplaying the possibility that carbon emissions were a contributing factor.[5] Both Bush and Cheney had ties to the oil and gas industry. In fact, Cheney's through Halliburton may have played a role in the administration's advocacy in favor of invading Iraq under the subterfuge that it had been involved in the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in 2001. 

The Obama administration likely went with “climate change” rather than "global warming" because the former was less controversial. The corporate Democrat tended to hold to the center politically; after all, Goldman Sachs had contributed a million dollars to his first presidential campaign in 2008. In September 2011, the White House decided to replace the term “global warming” with “global climate disruption.”[6] The administration subsequently annulled its own decision. 
So much attention on the matter of a mere label indicates that just how important what you call something is to its outcome. Labels are not always neutral. For instance, the term "African American," was making inroads whereas "Black American" was hardly ever heard. "African" slips in ethnicity whereas "Black," or negroid, refers to race. Changing the axis on which the controversy had hinged was in favor of the race-now-ethnicity. Meanwhile, the American public didn't notice the artful conflation of ethnicity (i.e., culture) and race. Obama used the ethnic term and applied it to himself even though his mother was Caucasian. He also claimed Illinois as his home state even though he moved to Chicago after college. He could benefit politically from the support of Black Americans and Illinoisans. 
Similarly, Obama could benefit politically from adopting "climage change." As the academic journal Public Opinion Quarterly reported in 2011, “Republicans are far more skeptical of ‘global warming’ than of ‘climate change.’” Whereas the vast majority of Democrats were indifferent to the label being used.[7] With “global warming” carrying “a stronger connotation of human causation, which has long been questioned by conservatives,” Obama stood to gain some republican support simply by changing how he refers to the issue.[8] That support was part of the president's ability to straddle the center in American politics. 
Given the effort that has gone into labels, it is amazing that more time in the Congress has not gone into debating labels. I am also curious why the American people did not realize that they were being manipulated by the choice of label. If "climate change" allows for the contention that human-sourced carbon emissions into that atmosphere have not been a cause of the warming of the oceans and air, then it is possible that the very survival of the species could be in jeopardy because of  the choice of a label for short-term economic and political reasons.

1. Tom Jacobs, “Wording Change Softens Global Warming Skeptics,” Pacific Standard, March 2, 2011. 

2. Washington Policy Center, “Climate Change: Where the Rhetoric Defines the Science,” March 8, 2011.

3. Oliver Burkeman, “Memo Exposes Bush’s New Green Strategy,” The Guardian, March 3, 2003.

4. Ibid.

5. Washington Policy Center, “Climate Change: Where the Rhetoric Defines the Science,” March 8, 2011.

6. Erik Hayden, “Republicans Believe in ‘Climate Change,’ Not ‘Global Warming’,” The Atlantic Wire, March 3, 2011.

7. Tom Jacobs, “Wording Change Softens Global Warming Skeptics,” Pacific Standard, March 2, 2011.

8. Ibid.

The Ministerial Exception: A Religious Right to Discriminate

In early 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized, for the first time ever, a “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination laws, saying that churches and other religious groups must be free to choose and dismiss their leaders without government interference. In his written opinion, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “The Establishment Clause [of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] prevents the government from appointing ministers, and the Free Exercise Clause prevents it from interfering with the freedom of religious groups to select their own.” The wrench in the works here concerns the matter of delimiting the exception, given the inflation in what constitutes “ministerial” in terms of tasks.

The full essay is at "The Ministerial Exception."

The American Media Went “Nuclear” on the U.S. Senate's Filibuster: A Case of Hyperactive Marketing?

Is ending the filibuster on appointments to executive-branch offices as well as judicial appointments below the U.S. Supreme Court really “the nuclear option”? Is this expression simply rhetoric gone horribly over the top? Journalists would undoubtedly demur, at least publically, yet without feeling an ounce of shame.
On November 22, 2013, a leading story on the front page of USA Today immediately snagged my fleeting attention with the headline, “’Nuclear’ volleys across aisle signal a Cold War in Congress.”[1] The 52-48 vote in the U.S. Senate on the previous day was neither a “nuclear volley” nor the beginning of a “cold war.” Rather, the reform was yet another legislative device having to do with reducing the gridlock within the chamber and perhaps for a party to gain more control therein. The political tussles between the two major parties had already been going on, so the latest reform could not have been the start of a war, cold or hot.
To be sure, editors look for headlines to be attention-grabbers, and thus sensationalistic—yet even if the claim is false or even misleading? Signaling a cold war flies in the face of the prior existence of such a “war,” as during the U.S. Government’s partial shutdown when raising the government’s debt-ceiling was in jeopardy. Moreover, the reporter continues the sensationalism within the article.
For example, the reporter invokes “the superpower theory of Mutually Assured Destruction—that is, if you use the most powerful weapon against your enemy, your enemy will use it against you—neither side had ever deployed it.”[2] Does not this “theory” apply more to shutting down the government or refusing to raise the debt-limit? The fact that Americans waked up on November 22^nd with a functional federal government belies the journalist’s application of the theory to whether the U.S. Senate would confirm more appellate and district judges. Nevertheless, the reporter “reports” that “Democrats voted for detonation.”[3]  I didn’t hear any sort of blast, or for that matter, see any damage the next day.
As for any realistic (i.e., still incremental rather than radical) consequences, the reporter provides merely a quote at the end of the article. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said, “The silver lining is that there will come a day when the roles are reversed. When that happens, our side will likely nominate and confirm lower court and Supreme Court nominees with 51 votes.”[4] As if as an afterthought, the reporter tacked on this quote, which says basically that the Senate would continue to delimit the filibuster’s domain. Crucially, incrementalism is not radicalism. Hence, the war rhetoric is misleading at best, and it displaces reportage on the real significance of the vote.

---

1. Susan Page, ““’Nuclear’ volleys across aisle signal a Cold War in Congress,” USA Today, November 22, 2013.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., emphasis added.

How a Chairman of the Federal Reserve Made Strategic Use of the Media

Just as the US Senate was to take up the matter of Ben Bernanke’s re-appointment as Chair of the Federal Reserve in 2010, Time magazine came out with its announcement that he is to be its person of the year.  According to the magazine, “when turbulence in U.S. housing markets metastasized into the worst global financial crisis in more than 75 years, he conjured up trillions of new dollars and blasted them into the economy; engineered massive public rescues of failing private companies; ratcheted down interest rates to zero; lent to mutual funds, hedge funds, foreign banks, investment banks, manufacturers, insurers and other borrowers who had never dreamed of receiving Fed cash; jump-started stalled credit markets in everything from car loans to corporate paper; revolutionized housing finance with a breathtaking shopping spree for mortgage bonds; blew up the Fed’s balance sheet to three times its previous size; and generally transformed the staid arena of central banking into a stage for desperate improvisation. He didn’t just reshape U.S. monetary policy; he led an effort to save the world economy.”  Not to be outdone in service to the Chairman, CNN furnished its own reporters, who gave credit to Bernanke for these measures.  Interestingly, however, even though one reporter admitted that Bernanke had said in 2007 that the subprime market and its derivatives would not threaten the financial market and the banks, she attributed the fault there to the imperfections in the market rather than to Bernanke himself in being wrong.   So, he gets credit for cleaning up the mess (ignoring the foreclosed homeowners) but not the blame for being wrong about the contagion (and not urging regulation of the derivatives).  He could have urged the regulation of derivatives (he is a smart person), and once the crisis occurred, he could have tailored his response to the homeowners facing foreclosures that could have been stopped. For example, the Fed could have created dollars to subsidize the inordinate rates on the variable rate subprime mortgages (i.e. those bank assets would not have been toxic and the banks’ balance sheets would have been fine…two birds with one stone…rather than doing the bidding of one of the parties).  To be sure, if the Fed is inordinately friendly to banks because of the power they have in selecting their regulators (the NY Fed Chair’s appointing committee consists of bankers), then Bernanke might have simply been playing the good politics for staying in office.   “Our ships must all sail in the same direction; otherwise who can tell how long you will…last…with us.” (The Godfather, part III)  Bernanke is a player from the perspective of the real power behind the throne: America’s financial elite.  That elite literally owns the media companies. So what I want to point out here is that the timing of Time’s announcement and the asymetry in CNN’s laudatory coverage of the Chairman just as the Senate was about to consider his re-appointment led me almost instinctually to  be convinced that coincidence was not the driver here.  The Chairman undoubtedly had some powerful friends in the media who were giving him a publicity offensive, or campaign, just in time for the Senate debate on whether to appoint him.

Through all the admiration of this person of 2009, it should be remembered that he did not urge the regulation of sub-prime derivatives issued or held by the banks regulated by the Fed.  He was wrong about the subprime housing bubble being contained.  And he failed to protect homeowners sufficiently.  If the media was being used by the Fed Chair in his re-appointment campaign, it could be that what we are fed by CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the main network newscasts is not really as neutral or beyond their control as we think.   News as a campaign.  News because it is in some powerful actor’s vested interests.  While there is certainly coincidence in life, an alignment such as I have outlined here is far too transparent—or at least it ought to be.

The subtext here is that we, the American people, have become too much the pawns even as we think we are not.  The illusion of popular sovereignty is that we are in control.   I don’t think we have any idea of the extent to which we are manipulated by the powers that transcend our elected representatives and their appointees.  It is no wonder that real change does not get beyond the interests of the real power in America, whose interest is in the status quo or at best in an incremental change.   Essentially, we have allowed the anti-democratic power to concentrate to a degree that is dangerous to a functioning republic (i.e., a representative democracy).  We should not be surprised to find that powerful actors are operating at a subterranean level where transparency is intentionally lacking.    How do we get it back, you ask?  Hah!   We would have to see it first—realize its extent and depth—and I’m not holding my breath that enough people will wake up to see the light.

Too many of us are ensconced in Plato’s cave, taking what the puppets say for reality.  As Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men, “You want answers? YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”    Even if we could stomach the emetic manipulation behind the scenes that is directed to us (and even our representatives—when they aren’t doing it themselves), we would have to be able to see it—and it is so well hidden.  We can only grasp at straws…confluences that seem like more than coincidences.  As a member of the black caucus of the US House (surprisingly) said to a reporter of Frontline on the TARP program passing the House just days after it had been voted down by that same body, “You have no idea how powerful the anti-democratic forces are here.”    You and I get only glimpses.  The puppets seem more real so we believe in them.   Please don’t take my thesis to be that there is one huge orchastrated conspiracy; rather, I’m simply suggesting that our system of representative democracy does not seem to be able to sufficiently constrain the invisible powers that are pulling strings without being accountable to the public power.  It is my ardent hope that the people will look beyond the status quo in voting for candidates—perhaps getting back to citizen representatives who do their duty then return to their preferred occupations—that we would elect people sufficiently principled and not desirous of a life in power to be willing to take on the financial power.   Do I think it will happen?  Sadly, no.  I’m sorry, but I just don’t think we have it in us…or we don’t have enough of what it would take to confront that which is in us that favors comfort and sleep.   In the story of the rise and fall of empires, the United States is not exempt.  The culprit, as with most things, lies within.   It is ultimately about what kind of people too many of us are.  Such a thing is very, very difficult to change, let alone see.  Decadence tends to be invisible to itself.

Note: A day after CNN covered the announcement, the Senate finance committee debated and voted on Bernanke’s re-appointment. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34463144/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

 Source: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_1947251,00.html#ixzz0Zs8WgpV1

Big Soda Campaigning against a Proposed Tax in San Francisco: A Vested Interest Thwarting Democracy?

With a proposed 1-cent per ounce tax on sweetened beverages such as soda-pop on the 2016 ballot in Oakland and San Francisco, the effected industry reserved about $9.5 million in television-ad time.[1] As of August 10^th, the American Beverage Association had already spent $747,267 on campaign consultants and advertisements against the proposed tax in Oakland, whereas supporters of the proposal had spent only $23,297.[2] The imbalance itself could mean that business was subverting democracy by overwhelming voters. If big-soda’s ads were unethical as the pro-tax camp contended, the subversion would be especially harmful.

We’re “up against a campaign that’s willing to lie,” Campbell Washington, an Oakland Councilmember said.[3] As if the industry’s massive ad blitz were not enough of a problem for people like her, the industry was claiming that the tax would increase the prices of eggs, bread, and milk. “It’s an incredibly painful and unethical lie,” said Oakland Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan. “People worry about having to pay for their groceries. To threaten that their groceries are going to be taxed when it’s not true is a totally despicable tactic from the soda industry.”[4] Hoe Arellano, a spokesman for groups opposing taxes, retorted that grocers “have shown repeatedly that they will pass on those costs to their consumers.”[5] He was assuming that the grocers would not up the price of sugary drinks, but would do so on other foodstuffs.

With the proposed tax being only 1-cent per ounce, Arellano’s assumption that consumers would see a significant increase in the prices of other foods and drinks seems a stretch. The industry’s strategy does seem to include scare tactics, which are unethical. The question of whether grocers would up the prices of soda to fully capture the tax increase is more difficult to answer. The evidence from Berkeley’s tax from 2014 shows that consumption of soda, energy drinks, and other taxed items fell by 21 percent in some neighborhoods after the tax took effect.[6] So People would likely cut down on their purchases of soda. It is possible, therefore, that grocers would not try to capture all of the tax with price increases on the drinks. Even so, the grocers’ profits could take a hit instead of prices of other foods and drinks being affected. I must conclude, therefore, that the industry’s advertising campaign contained untruthful fear-mongering and hence was unethical.

The broader question is whether the huge imbalance in advertising spending was getting in the way of the will of the people being found by democratic means. That is, aside from the fear-mongering, does a large imbalance of campaign spending cause voters to lean too far in one direction when they would otherwise weigh both sides as each having a point. Put another way, such an imbalance can keep a side from getting its message out. To be sure, the pro-tax camp was relying on a grass-roots approach, but that has its limitations in reaching the mass-electorate which has been saturated with ads from the opposing side.

It may be that business has a social responsibility, being within a democratic system, not to overwhelm it with spending on political ads. When an industry has a vested interest in the vote, it may be best for the industry to limit itself to providing facts to the public discourse. To be sure, election results do not always favor the party that spent most; money isn’t everything. Even so, it seems unethical for business to dominate society simply because the bottom line is affected. Free speech is of course a right, but the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that spending is speech can be regarded as problematic. If so, the use of public policy to reinforce good social responsibility would be possible and perhaps even advised in the interest of protecting the democratic process from being overwhelmed.

---

[1] Michael McLaughlin, “Big Soda Spends Millions on ‘Unethical’ San Francisco Area Ads Fighting Drink Taxes,” The Huffington Post, August 24, 2016.

[2] Darwin Graham, “Big Soda Is Spending Big Money Against Oakland Surary Beverage Tax Proposal,” East Bay Express, August 10, 2016.

[3] Ibid.

[4] McLaughlin, “Big Soda.”

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid. See the following: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303362

Standard & Poors: Internal Controls Enabling a Conflict of Interest

After the financial crisis of 2008, rating agencies reassured the public that additional “internal safeguards” would prevent the sort of over-stated ratings that had contributed to the crisis. Congress did not deconstruct the structural conflict of interest wherein a rating agency is tempted to overstate the rating on financial security such as a corporate bond because the agency’s revenue would be higher if more of the bonds are sold. I contend that reliance on a company’s internal “fire walls” is naïve, given the strong, sustained temptation that exists as long as an institutional or structural conflict of interest is in place. To obviate the problem, the conflict itself must be deconstructed.

The full essay is at "Standard & Poors."