The former SEIU president had this to say in his co-authored op-ed in today’s HuffPo:
American democracy has layers of power and responsibility, which James Madison rationalized in Federalist no. 51 is a check against possible tyrannical rule. Our Founding Fathers saw fit to divide power between two strata — state and federal. Then, within the federal structure, they codified a trifurcation of power to ensure that no single branch came to dominate government; and while power has ebbed and flowed between branches, the system of checks and balances has provided stability, and kept tyrannical rule at bay.
Now, however, in the midst of the transformative change of globalization and this third economic revolution, those layers have become an impediment to making the changes necessary to keep America competitive in the world economy. Today, America crawls along at a snail’s pace.
This is the same old centralized power fetish that we’ve come to know and not love every Wednesday and Sunday in the NYT. “If only we didn’t have this annoying democracy and separation of powers stuff, then we could actually do things!!!”