{"id":137541,"date":"2014-08-19T14:35:15","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T14:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=137541"},"modified":"2014-08-19T14:35:15","modified_gmt":"2014-08-19T14:35:15","slug":"disease-american-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/disease-american-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Disease of American Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"color: #383838;\"><em>Robert Reich<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #383838;\">Americans are sick of politics. Only 13 percent approve of the job Congress is doing, a near record low. The President\u2019s approval ratings are also in the basement.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #383838;\">A large portion of the public doesn\u2019t even bother voting. Only 57.5 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in the 2012 presidential election.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #383838;\">Put simply, most Americans feel powerless, and assume the political game is fixed. So why bother?<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #383838;\">A new\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; color: #4182c4;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.princeton.edu\/~mgilens\/Gilens%20homepage%20materials\/Gilens%20and%20Page\/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf\">study<\/a>\u00a0scheduled to be published in this fall by Princeton\u2019s Martin Gilens and Northwestern University\u2019s Benjamin Page confirms our worst suspicions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #383838;\">Gilens and Page analyzed 1,799 policy issues in detail, determining the relative influence on them of economic elites, business groups, mass-based interest groups, and average citizens.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #383838;\">Their conclusion: \u201cThe preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #383838;\">Instead, lawmakers respond to the policy demands of wealthy individuals and monied business interests \u2014 those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #383838;\">Before you\u2019re tempted to say \u201cduh,\u201d wait a moment. Gilens\u2019 and Page\u2019s data come from the period 1981 to 2002. This was before the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to big money in \u201cCitizens United,\u201d prior to SuperPACs, and before the Wall Street bailout.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #383838;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/robertreich.org\/post\/95109113190\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robert Reich Americans are sick of politics. Only 13 percent approve of the job Congress is doing, a near record low. The President\u2019s approval ratings are also in the basement. A large portion of the public doesn\u2019t even bother voting. Only 57.5 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in the 2012 presidential election. Put [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":110938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-137541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}