Of course there is bickering and sniping among, "The Rest of Us".
Such friction is to the advantage of the, "Have's". We are certainly
easier to manage when we spend much of our time at each others
throats.
Do those differences we look at, which often keep us apart, do they
really make any difference when the bottom line is that we are all
serving the American Empire, the Republic that was never a Republic,
but was established as an Oligarchy. And that Oligarchy has continued
to own us since it was set into place by the original "Founding
*Fathers", the White Male, over 21 years of age, Land Holders or very
wealthy.
Below is an article that may be somewhat lengthy, but is worth reading.
Carl Jarvis
****
Is America an Oligarchy?
By
John Cassidy
April 18, 2014
From the Dept. of Academics Confirming Something You Already Suspected comes
a new study
concluding that rich people and organizations representing business
interests have a powerful grip on U.S. government policy. After
examining differences
in public opinion across income groups on a wide variety of issues,
the political scientists Martin Gilens, of Princeton, and Benjamin
Page, of Northwestern,
found that the preferences of rich people had a much bigger impact on
subsequent policy decisions than the views of middle-income and poor
Americans. Indeed,
the opinions of lower-income groups, and the interest groups that
represent them, appear to have little or no independent impact on
policy.
“Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually
have little influence over the policies our government adopts,” Gilens
and Page write:
block quote
Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance,
such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a
widespread (if still
contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated
by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent
Americans, then
America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.
block quote end
That’s a big claim. In their conclusion, Gilens and Page go even
further, asserting that “In the United States, our findings indicate,
the majority does
not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining
policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic
elites and/or with
organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover … even when fairly
large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do
not get it.”
It is hardly surprising that the new study is generating alarmist
headlines, such as “
study: us is an oligarchy, not a democracy
,” from, of all places, the BBC. Gilens and Page do not use the term
“oligarchy” in describing their conclusions, which would imply that a
small ruling
class dominates the political system to the exclusion of all others.
They prefer the phrase “economic élite domination,” which is a bit
less pejorative.
The evidence that Gilens and Page present needs careful intepretation.
For example, the opinion surveys they rely on suggest that, on many
issues, people
of different incomes share similar opinions. To quote the paper:
“Rather often, average citizens and affluent citizens (our proxy for
economic elites)
want the same things from government.” This does get reflected in
policy outcomes. Proposals that are supported up and down the income
spectrum have a
better chance of being enacted than policies that do not have such
support. To that extent, democracy is working.
The issue is what happens when some income groups, particularly the
rich, support or oppose certain things, and other groups in society
don’t share their
views. To tackle this issue, Gilens and Page constructed a
multivariate statistical model, which includes three causal variables:
the views of Americans
in the ninetieth percentile of the income distribution (the rich), the
views of Americans in the fiftieth percentile (the middle class), and
the opinions
of various interest groups, such as business lobbies and trade unions.
In setting up their analysis this way, the two political scientists
were able to
measure the impact that the groups have independent of each other.
This is what the data shows: when the economic élites support a given
policy change, it has about a one-in-two chance of being enacted. (The
exact estimated
probability is forty-five per cent.) When the élites oppose a given
measure, its chances of becoming law are less than one in five. (The
exact estimate
is eighteen per cent.) The fact that both figures are both below fifty
per cent reflects a status-quo bias: in the divided American system of
government,
getting anything at all passed is tricky.
The study suggests that, on many issues, the rich exercise an
effective veto. If they are against something, it is unlikely to
happen. This is obviously
inconsistent with the
median-voter theorem
—which holds that policy outcomes reflect the preferences of voters
who represent the ideological center—but I don’t think that it is a
particularly controversial
claim. A recent example is the failure to eliminate the “carried
interest” deduction, which allows hedge-fund managers and
leveraged-buyout tycoons to
pay an artificially low tax rate on much of their income. In 2012,
there was widespread outrage at the revelation that Mitt Romney, who
made his fortune
at the leveraged-buyout firm Bain Capital, paid less than fifteen per
cent in federal income taxes. But the deduction hasn’t been
eliminated.tudy’s other interesting findings is that, beyond a certain
level, the opinions of the public at large have little impact on the
chances a
proposal has of being enacted. As I said, policy proposals that have
the support of the majority fare better than proposals which are
favored only by a
minority. But, in the words of Gilens and Page, “The probability of
policy change is nearly the same (around 0.3) whether a tiny minority
or a large majority
of average citizens favor a proposed policy change.”
The paper is a provocative one, and there’s sure to be a lot of debate
among political scientists about whether it wholly supports the
authors’ claims.
One issue is that their survey data is pretty old: it covers the
period from 1982 to 2002. (On the other hand, it hardly seems likely
that the influence
of the affluent has declined in the past decade.) Another issue is
that, in a statistical sense, the explanatory power of some of the
equations that Gilens
and Page use is weak. For example, the three-variable probability
model that I referred to above explains less than ten per cent of the
variation in the
data. (For you statistical wonks, R-squared = 0.074.)
Even in this sort of study, that’s a pretty low figure. Gilens and
Page, to their credit, draw attention to it in their discussion, and
suggest various
reasons for why it’s not a big issue. They also acknowledge another
possible objection to their conclusions:
block quote
Average citizens are inattentive to politics and ignorant about public
policy; why should we worry if their poorly informed preferences do
not influence
policy making? Perhaps economic elites and interest group leaders
enjoy greater policy expertise than the average citizen does. Perhaps
they know better
which policies will benefit everyone, and perhaps they seek the common
good, rather than selfish ends, when deciding which policies to
support… But we
tend to doubt it.
block quote end
Me, too. There can be no doubt that economic élites have a
disproportionate influence in Washington, or that their views and
interests distort policy in
ways that don’t necessarily benefit the majority: the politicians all
know this, and we know it, too. The only debate is about how far this
process has
gone, and whether we should refer to it as oligarchy or as something else.
Photograph: Ryan Heffernan
w_130\,c_limit/cassidy-john-2
list of 1 items
John Cassidy has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. He
also writes a
column about politics, economics, and more
for newyorker.com.
On 3/2/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
In case you haven't noticed, the "working class", as you choose to call
everyone who isn't a member of the power elites, is divided by strongly held
beliefs and prejudices, by education, experience, income level, ethnic,
racial, and cultural backgrounds. If you were a young leftist, active on
twitter, or listened to some of the leftwing podcasts on which the people
talk about issues and what's going on, you'd discover how truly divided and
paranoid the Left is, how so much of the discussion about issues becomes
personal and sort of gossipy. There isn't any "us". It kind of reminds me of
the politics of the blindness organizations, only even more so.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2018 8:35 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: my blog carl jarvis <carjar82.carls@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Liberals hail FBI witch hunt against Trump,
White House
If we remember only one thing from this article, it is: "...But there is no
“us. The spy agencies he applauds serve the propertied rulers against the
working class."
We, the working class People do not have an FBI or our own CIA. We have no
state militia, no National Guard, no Police or company Bully Boys. All we
have are Numbers. And Guts. And Determination. And when we are pushed
against the wall, as our Greed driven Corporate Bosses must do to us, we
will start pushing back, shouting "Enough is enough!"
Carl Jarvis
On 3/1/18, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2018/8209/820903.htmlIf we remember only one thing from this article, it is: But there is no
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 82/No. 9 March 5, 2018
(front page)
Liberals hail FBI witch hunt against Trump
White House
BY TERRY EVANS
Liberals are singing the praises of the U.S. political police after
former FBI boss Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and
three Russian organizations for conspiracy to “defraud the United
States” by interfering in politics here.
The Feb. 16 indictments accuse the 13 Russians of participating in a
so-called troll operation on the internet beginning in 2014, inventing
U.S. identities, promoting a variety of political views to roil
viewers and staging rallies related to the 2016 campaign. They make no
allegation that Donald Trump’s campaign was involved in any way, and
they say there is no evidence this operation affected the election
outcome. Those charged worked for a company with close ties to the
Kremlin, Mueller claims. The evidence marshaled is similar to previous
press reports, including a 2015 New York Times magazine piece called
“The Agency.”
“Our FBI, CIA, NSA [National Security Agency], working with the
special counsel [Mueller], have done us amazingly proud,” columnist
Thomas Friedman gushes in the Times Feb. 18. But there is no “us.”
The spy agencies he applauds serve the propertied rulers against the
working class. The FBI is tasked by the bosses to spy on, disrupt and
frame up working-class militants, Black rights and Puerto Rican
independence fighters, and opponents of Washington’s wars. Examples
include framing up leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and the
Teamsters union in Minneapolis for speaking out against the rulers’
drive to enter the second imperialist world war to decades of
Cointelpro attacks on the party and other political groups.
Like all the rulers’ frame-up grand juries and special prosecutors,
Mueller’s probe against the Trump presidency starts with a target and
then roots around for evidence. The charge that those indicted
conspired to “defraud the U.S.” is so broad it could be used to target
almost anyone for anything. Such laws are written that way to make it
easy for the cops and spy agencies to use them to go after working-class
fighters.
The liberals and middle-class left are determined to criminalize their
political differences with Trump to drive him out of office. Democrats
lined up in a frenzy to claim Mueller had found the “smoking gun”
against him. It went so far that Democrat Rep. Jerry Nadler from New
York told MSNBC he thought Moscow’s interference in the election was
the equivalent of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — the pretext
used by Washington that it had been preparing for years to enter World War
II.
Underlying the liberals’ refusal to reconcile themselves to Trump’s
election is their scorn for the workers who elected him. In a Feb. 20
op-ed entitled “The Madness of American Crowds,” New York Times
columnist Roger Cohen claimed that working people are “dumb” and “can
be led by the nose into the gutter,” and were “easily manipulated” to
elect Trump.
In reality millions of workers, including many who had voted for
Barack Obama in previous elections, were angry over the blows
inflicted on them from capitalism’s political and moral crisis and looking
for a change.
They voted for Trump hoping he would do something and “drain the swamp”
in Washington. But Trump, like his predecessors from both parties,
governs to defend the interests of the propertied owners.
SWP members campaigning in working-class neighborhoods find widespread
interest in discussing how the rulers foist the costs of today’s wars
and social crises onto the backs of working people and what this says
about the values of their system. Many workers want to discuss how
past struggles — like the Cuban Revolution and the mighty movement
that overthrew Jim Crow segregation — show we can organize
independently of the bosses, and through revolutionary struggle
develop the capacities to replace capitalist rule with workers power.
Such capabilities are completely discounted by those like Cohen who
think that workers need to be “learned” on what to do by meritocrats
like himself.
The alleged activities of the Internet Research Agency and its
manager, Yevgeny Prigozhin, itemized in the indictment, are a litany
of internet misinformation on a wide variety of political issues.
But the scale of the meddling in the 2016 elections by Moscow pales in
comparison to that engineered over decades by the U.S. rulers. They
have utilized their spy agencies — that liberals are falling over
themselves to shower with plaudits — to not only “affect” elections,
but to brutally overturn governments.
This includes the CIA-organized coup that overthrew the Iranian
government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and replaced him with
the shah in 1953, establishing a key prop in U.S. domination across
the Middle East that lasted for 25 years. The U.S. rulers tried to
prevent the election of Salvador Allende as president of Chile, and,
when they failed, backed the 1973 coup by Gen. Augusto Pinochet that
overthrew his government. The list goes on and on.
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home
“us.”
The spy agencies he applauds serve the propertied rulers against the working
class.