Compare that with your contender, the US; almost the opposite. Policies don’t come from the public. They come from above. The public isn’t supposed to know about them, and usually doesn’t. So campaigns are run so they keep away from issues and talk about personalities, body language, and rhetoric, and that sort of thing. The front page of the New York Times has pictures of Michelle Obama wearing a designer dress in the morning, and a different one in the afternoon. That’s what you’re supposed to be interested in, not what’s happening with healthcare, education or whatever else that effects everybodys lives.

James Madison’s position at the Constitutional Convention was that state power should be used “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” That is why the Senate has only a hundred members who are mostly rich and were given a great deal of power. The House of Representatives, with several hundred members, is more democratic and was given much less power. Even liberals like Walter Lippmann, one of the leading intellectuals of the 20th century, was of the opinion that in a properly functioning democracy, the intelligent minority, who should rule, have to be protected from “the trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd.”

The big questions is are Republicans and Democrats representing just slight variations of the same political platform ? Of course there are differences, but they are not fundamental. Nobody should have any illusions. The United States has essentially a one-party system and the ruling party is the business party.

Hope you find these videos interesting:

http://vimeo.com/23086688

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnE8D3tgZ5c

All, are a ‘must watch’, including one more for luck

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOwZwkhFemQ

1. Create an exhaustive database of the best & brightest of Trinidadians from Trinidad and around the world.

2. Ensure skill sets, experience, education & achievements are reflected in the database.

3. Write an alogoritm to query the database to award political positions based on a set of rules in the database.

There are 10′s of not 100′s of thousands of Trinidadians around the world that could be contenders for Minister of Education, Prime Minister or any other Government position.

This method of selection would help minimise the corruption we often see in politics.

Private donations to political parties should be banned (except for donations that help support a powerful Ministry of (detecting & preventing) Corruption.(The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations).

T & T ‘fight’ for a true democracy , which means that the central institutions your society have to be under popular control rather than control from the top.

I hear you guys have a new political party. I hope the guy at the top is REAL.