EU-DIGEST

A new Eurobarometer study measured discrimination in Europe.

Read more at: Discrimination falls, but wide differences remain across EU — study | Euronews

No Es Mi Culpa- it is not my fault

You might initially think while reading this  - Oh boy this is a typical report from some left-wing European, who is not only jealous about the US, but also hates it, and want's to make sure local politicians in Europe finally will get the drift.

Perhaps, but two professors who have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion explain it this way:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.

The two professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain income levels and organised interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted.

"A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favour) is adopted only about 18% of the time," they write, "while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favour) is adopted about 45% of the time."

On the other hand:

When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.

They concluded:

Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.

Eric Zuess, writing in Counterpunch, isn't surprised by the survey's results.

"American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's "news" media)," he writes. "The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious 'electoral' 'democratic' countries. We weren't formerly, but we clearly are now."

This is the "Duh Report", says Death and Taxes magazine's Robyn Pennacchia. Maybe, she writes, Americans should just accept their fate.

"Perhaps we ought to suck it up, admit we have a "classist society" and do like England where we have a House of Lords and a House of Commoners," she writes, "instead of pretending as though we all have some kind of equal opportunity here."

All the recent wars, where we Europeans so faithfully followed the US in, either independently, or through the NATO which has outlived its time and purpose; Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria. They have a;; been a complete failure.

And now: The election of Donald Trump raises squarely the question of values, soft power, what do we in Europe stand for and how will we behave - moral and ethics? So far Europe and the U.S. have seen eye to eye, but will that continue to be the case? What kind of America will we see? Will Europe have to bend its values to maintain the U.S military umbrella, and if it does what kind of Europe will emerge?

How can the U.S. and Europe do things together if they differ fundamentally on what they stand for?

And why should we?

Yes indeed, Europe needs to smell the roses and act far more independently when it comes to dealing with it's US partner.

EU-Digest