Represent Us - Have you ever felt like the government doesn’t really care what you think?
Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University) looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a simple question: Does the government represent the people?
Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all.
Gilens & Page found that the number of Americans for or against any idea has no impact on the likelihood that Congress will make it law.
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
One thing that does have an influence? Money. While the opinions of the bottom 90% of income earners in America have a “statistically non-significant impact,” Economic elites, business interests, and people who can afford lobbyists still carry major influence.
3 comments:
No Taxation without Representation.
Real representation that is. Not just a rigged election every two years where the only candidate is funded by out-of-state special interests and which the candidate goes on to win with 70% of the vote in a manner that would make the old candidates of the Soviet Union proud.
The only reasl response to this is" Well yeah, DUH. And yet I devote much of my life to changing these policies.
More and more people are realizing this.
While the Republicrats and Demicans are absolutely giddy about the coming primaries, more and more Americans realize that this is, in essence, an occupied country - no different from Iraq, Afghanistan or Ukraine.
It's laws are not legitimate, it possess no moral authority and the duty of a true patriot is to resist in any way one can.
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