We don't even have a true democracy in most public schools and they have democratically elected school boards, but teachers seldom if ever have a voice in major decisions that impacts the children we teach.

I don't think a true democracy can work in most business. Maybe a small business. For instance, the few companies that are actually owned by the employees. I found a list of the largest employee-owned companies in the US. If it hadn't been for your post I would have never looked.

Number one is Publix Super Markets with 160,000 employees. The rest are much smaller. In fact, most have less than 10,000 employees.

I think democracy works best when kept small. Big becomes messy. I just checked and found this site that says there are three basic types of Democracy:

1. Direct Democracy (Switzerland)
2. Preisdential Democracy (USA and France)
3. Parliamentary Democracy (UK, Germany, Spain, Italy)

Except the definition for Presidential Democracy says the President is elected by the people and the people do not elect the U.S. President. The Electoral College with about 500 people does that. What does that say about the U.S.?

Is the U.S. really a democracy after the Supreme Court ruled in Citizen's United that corporations are equal to individual voters, and what about a democracy with a crony capitalist economic system that allows corporations and/or billionaires the ability to actually buy and control elected state and federal representatives all the way to the White House?

I think REM was attempting to capture the Renaissance and the Reformation in one visual feast. But, although I enjoyed the lyrics, the visual failed to convince me.

Not so with Lacuna Coil's visual that leaped into a Gothic, sexy, Mad Max world and, music being equal, I think, this visual version was more captivating, more dramatic offering promises of a dystopian future where losing religion makes more sense.

If American's stopped buying products made in China, Americans at home would lose jobs. Since Wal-Mart has more than ninety percent of their products manufactured in China, Wal-Mart might go out of business or shrink (which might be a good thing). But many low wage people that work for Wal-Mart in the United States would be unemployed like so American autoworkers.

Most Chinese products are manufactured for American companies. Some of Apple's products are manufactured outside the country like iPods in China. Try to buy a car, any car, that's 100% manufactured in the United States. Does it matter where the jobs go? They are still gone. People in India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc. are manufacturing goods that are sold in the United States. China isn't the only country that does this. Yet China seems to get all the blame.

Lloyd Lofthouse writes iLook China.
http://ilookchina.net/