The Morning Retch: in democracies the people rule edition*

How's this for democracy in action from today's New York Times?

• City Groups Get Bloomberg Gift of $20 Million. Nice way to promote your run for office if you can do it. Mayor Bloomberg faces the voters this fall. Of course the Carnegie Foundation that doles out the money says the donor doesn't influence who gets it; why Foundation president Vartan Gregorian hasn't spoken to the Mayor in four years. Yeah, and Gregorian got to be foundaton president without knowing how to massag big donors.

• Then there's an editorial: Africa in the Balance Aren't you relieved to know that "eight men are about to decide the future of hundreds of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa."

A couple of days ago weren't we celebrating the once radical notion that governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed"? Oh for a little of that old fashioned radicalism.

*According, for example, to the Wikipedia. I don't just make this stuff up.