"Not a Democracy: Americans have little influence on policy"

"Not a Democracy: Americans have little influence on policy"

A new study finds that US policymaking is controlled by the wealthy and interest groups, not the majority.

http://freefolkpress.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/not-a-democracy/

 

True that

 

That's because America is a republic, not a democracy.

The US would be the scariest place in the world if your average American had more influence over policy... it's already scary enough.

 

Well, I think the study was trying to show America is an oligarchy, not a republic.

 

That was a comment by the person who wrote the blog, not the people conducting the study.

I suppose that it probably is an oligarchy, though.

 

While that's true, we only have the general public who is uneducated about history, debate, and political science to blame because they LET themselves be fooled by campaign ads which are shaped by lobbyists influencing the people who make ads for reelection campaign videos that air on TV.


Look at Obamacare, all that time and money wasted making ads and countless hate efforts on it campaign season after campaign season. Few other national policy issues addressed, including barely passing budgets to keep the government open; and we even failed to do that for a time in 2013.


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Most of the public doesn't vote, and if they do the next question is do they vote smart? Do they know who and how much certain groups are backing their candidate and why?

 

Well, isn't it hard NOT to be fooled if campaign ads are produced only by & for lobbyists & influence peddlers?

Even independents, so-called, need the backing of the moneyed, & who's that but lobbyists? Some months back, I saw I video clip of Jimmy Carter saying his campaign raised no money, altho I don't recall for which campaign, '76 or '80.

If that's true, then it's the last time it was true. I'm always astounded when I read & hear comments about Pres. Obama being socialist, anti-American, or whatever: his campaigns raised obscene amounts of money, & I can only believe it was donated by the same sorts of folks that contributed to Reagan et al. All they wanted was another Pres. that would keep the gears of the war machine well-greased & occasionally pay lip service to our deteriorating infrastructure. I think he's done both very well.

 

It is hard, it takes work to find where the $ comes from FOR EACH individual election per each candidate, and to cross-analyze what they are saying VS who is funding them with the context of who their audience is at the time and where that candidate is touring to raise more $.

But if people cared enough, and had the critical thinking skills to channel social discontent in policy, then they should be able to figure it out, but what's happening is that instead of doing that, they're turning to conspiracy theories as an emotional outlet, rather than logic and research.


The concept that a democracy, or even a voting Republic, should be as easy as looking at a ballot, is NOT a given with the founding of the USA.

I personally use sources like this

http://votesmart.org/


to help me during elections. But it is a full time job, in fact I wish there would be a huge youtube community channel that is also a
501c4-tax-except-status organization devoted to the truth for every election, and representative district across the country, because the TV Media isn't doing an adequate job giving high quality information on political subjects and here's why.

Politics as a topic, is so boring or cynical that the American public doesn't watch it, so Media (a for profit business) ends up just reporting Pop-culture news more and ignores politics or keeps political news vague and brief if they do report it, they nutshell it.


It's the public that is at least 50% at fault for the poor quality of media, and the other 50% is the rich 1% and .01% that control the media.

You want the truth, ya gotta go looking for it, and the small guy who is probably like votesmart.org.

In some cases cable news shows do a good job, for instance I trust Rachel Maddow from MSNBC, because she cites her sources, often uses small local town newspapers for her stories and corrects her mistakes if she discovers she's made one in a previous broadcast. She's also very intelligent too and explains concepts well. She's got a liberal bias, but that doesn't make her reporting or stories trashy.

 

a new study finds that many studies are done on subjects that are already universally known before wasting the time and money on said studies.

 

I don't think that's true to say a majority of studies do this. Even if colloquially are known or theorized, it's nice for an official study to confirm them and analyze why it's true at a detailed level.

 

i didn't say anything about a majority. tons of studies are done all the time; if 5% of them are only out to prove the already obvious, that's still a good number of studies.

 

Saw this article the other day. It's been true for a long time and I'm just glad that it's being acknowledged now. No one cares if a kook on the street says we live in a corrupted system, but now there are studies that show just that.

 

At present the U.S. is NOT being governed as a Constitutional Republic as originally founded, nor as a true democracy, but is becoming more governed as a Socialist styled Welfare State. The only part democracy plays in American politics today is in allowing politicians to purchase a coalition of voters, who strongly support single issues, many if not most of which increase the cost of government for those who pay taxes for the benefit of those who do not. As a consequence, government debt continually increases, and our fiat currency is devalued, and the cost of living grows. Federal government solutions have become the greatest source of the problems that need to be solved.