[doonesbury]

The post you reply to states that PRC sits on top law and that the law is designed to prop up its political power. When the two conflict the law is changed accordingly to the benefit of the PRC, although I'm sure they are nuanced enough to keep sea-changes to a minimum. Nevertheless it's there.

In the US that is not the case. Even in today's climate the Federal system does not have infinite reach into States ex. certification of 2020 vote. And there's yet broad independence and some institutional credibility e.g. Supreme court left.

However, it is applied inconsistently. The only recent decision out of SCOTUS that I think was seriously flawed was ACA: the imposition of a fee to have no health insurance was a tax. The court should have referred it back to the legislative branch for correction at its control. But even here, due process is broadly a real thing. I've also seen questionable court decisions in my personal life. I'm not enthused by the Citizen's United ruling either. However, the Congress has allowed and preferred less oversight on political speech.

In the large US corporations and the top 1% are not held accountable to the extent they should. (I am American). This broad trend started in the 2000s combined with Congress' lack of institutional credibility over the last 30 years to make a power vacuum. At the 1 million foot level, a person once argued power comes from tradition, or institutions, or personal. That vacuum that was filled by Trump's personal brand of power. Correct: his brand is no Steve Jobs, Buffet's, MLKs, or anything good. But it is power. Trump further eroded Washington's institutional power bringing it to a new low.

Wells Fargo opened up credit cards in client's names. After years of festering, the old CEO left because of this. But no criminal charges were filed. If you or I did that, I don't think we could run and hide or use shareholder cash for corporate lawyers to blunt the AG. Ditto the 2008 financial crisis: corporations got bailouts and did not face jail time under criminal convictions. These are examples of a widely complex systemic failure that probably shares blame in Congressional lobbying, corporation power, SEC failure to exact anything much more than lukewarm fines, and DOJ and State's failure to get the goods and bust the wrong doers. On top of this Congress has been no help. Another facet to this problem is the Stiglitz's observation that by defining corporation's mission as maximizing shareholder value, they have perversely come up with rhetoric that really serves to enrich themselves going a good way to explain the stupid difference between the bottom and top income rates. Further much their income is not W2 taxable, where it's hard to hide from the tax man.

Human law is not exact. Even in the most controlled, most precise, most repeatable processes e.g. statistically controlled manufacturing processes mainly in the realm of the electro-magnetic force ala condensed matter physics, there is standard deviation. And it's random. So we cannot bust the entire American system as fatally flawed because of a few bad outcomes at the personal, corporate, or country level.

Nevertheless the number of unjust outcomes where the law is more equitable to some, is a trend that's been notable, sustained, long, and extensively commented on. We know it stinks. And it's made worse socially and civilly with outsourcing to the far east and the two major political parties siding more and more with corporations. Rising healthcare costs, university costs hasn't helped either. Rising home costs associated with better K-12 schools is another big problem. Here we Americans need and deserve friendly fire: it would not kill us to rein in the excesses of money and lack of action against those with money to bring the pendulum back in the middle. And here we are stuck, flailing. It's pathetic.

Getting this back in the middle is not socialism, a repudiation of capitalism and the other variations on the same which are buttressed by vapid emotional outrage, and crap talking.

We know better: unlike the PRC there's plenty of outcry although true enough it's not translating into action. Unlike mathematics where the law of the excluded middle makes sense, we need the middle in human affairs. Perhaps the largest damage Trump has done and has further inflamed is removing the reasonable middle leaving two dumb options left over:

- go way left

- go way right

Both suck. It takes more brains, more backbone, a smarter mind, and better communication skills to keep things in balance than the bomb throwing, crap talking, lying that Trump is an expert in but which both political parties here are increasingly succumbing to. The middle in the vapid environment now looks like a cop-out to both sides. It's most definitely not.

In today's world of no pragmatic American common sense the only going currency is outrage, and talking about what we'll do in the next election e.g. in the perpetual future broad admission our institutions are lost. Do we really need to argue about who controls the paperwork for health insurance? Maybe one day. But what in the hell is the government doing today to get first and second derivative negative on health care costs? Does Congress need a balanced budget? No. We don't need a balanced budget amendment either. Running a 20-35% of GDP debt is OK. We're way north of 20% BTW ... But you can't get the morons in DC to see that closing the gap requires both MORE tax income and LESS expenditures. That requires competent management to set better priorities and a 15yr plan to right the ship. And for all the MBA's around here, we don't have it today.