Sad but true.
No kidding kilroy.
And a unversity had to have a study to figure that out.?
Well, that’s one of the reasons I’m AFRAIDFORTHEREPUBLIC!
A priori conclusions? Confirmation bias? Anyone?
Princeton produced Michelle Obama and her equally vapid crony from CGI.
Northwestern 'student-athletes' are currently attending amidst the ruins of the Rust Belt and still pushing for union membership.
Forgive me if I dismiss their so-called research.
DUH !
So how much did it cost the American taxpayer to conduct this study whose findings everyone already knew?
The Obama wrecking crew and coming martial law are nothing but a plot to lower the world’s population of idle workers.
This is what happens when you increase socialism. By wiping out the middle class what remains are the rulers and the ruled.
"The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.
This is a stunning conclusion that abortion lobby, environmentalist and Unions "little or no influence". I would like to read the rest of the study.
However, I find it interesting that progressives always make the claim the mass based groups do not have influence except when the group leans right such as the NRA, Tea Party and pro-life groups.
The fact that we appear to be setting up to resume the Bush-Clinton-Bush cycle seems to confirm it.
If by 0ligarchy they mean the Republicrats, I quite agree.
Disagree, our problems are caused by an out of control corrupt, greedy and incompetent U. S. government. And Congress is on the top of the list.
Bad place to post this.
Defenders of lopsided wealth distribution will be in soon accusing you of being a closet Commie.
So shut up and be a good little Dalit and worship the gang bangers at the top of the crooked game.
Just gotta love those 1%ers and their Occutard children!
The US hasn’t been a republic since the end of the Civil War.
This country is run by the Universities.
The most dangerous of oligarchy.
I think this comes from their failure to understand the structure of a republican-democracy.
From the beginning, the founding fathers realized that the public needs *a* voice in government, and it should be heard frequently; but that the public should not directly control the government, or the end result might be chaotic. A belief that was confirmed just a short time later during the French revolution.
So for this reason, the people only had one direct route to the federal government, the house of representatives. And the people could completely change it if they wanted to, every two years.
The second body of the government, the senate, was not supposed to be popularly elected, but was to reflect the interests of the individual states. This didn’t just protect the government from the people, but also protected the people from direct actions against them as people by the federal government. The states acted as a “buffer” against an intrusive federal government.
The third body of the government is the president, who was *not* supposed to be popularly elected, but appointed by the electoral college. Again, this was designed to short circuit efforts to elect a purely populist president who was either a puppet or otherwise short on ability.
The electoral college again acting as a buffer between the people and the office.
The fourth body of the government, the judiciary, was not supposed to be popular at all, but appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate (as such, by the approval of the individual states.)
What could not be considered by the founding fathers was how the public would evolve the means to interpose itself into these systems. Not as individuals, but as groups.
Only at this point does the fear of an oligopoly begin.
A major problem began during the Lincoln administration, when indirectly the Supreme Court embraced the idea of corporate civil rights, which now dominate business law.
Civil rights are “endowed by the creator”, but corporate civil rights are entirely bestowed by the government, so it is an exceptionally bad idea to confuse the two. However, corporations do need something akin to rights to protect themselves from government.
Even in the 19th Century, power politics led by business cartels were becoming dangerous, in that giant banking and later industrial corporations. The influence of such people on government finally made it possible for them to manipulate government, by defeating its constitutional balances.
In any event, it is past time for an Article V convention to correct some of the problems that have evolved over time.
It bewilders me how so many nitwits in this country can rail against greedy, fat-cat corporate big-wigs and their shady shenanigans, yet they continue to put the same damn crooks in office - people who have a much greater effect on the country - year after year (see "Reid, Harry").
This is about Marxists attacking free enterprise from another direction.
Clearly people who are wealthy have more influence than people who are penniless. In most cases it's because the wealthier have been more effective in running their lives in a productive manner. As a general rule, effective people are preferable to ineffective people as leaders. Of course there are exceptions.
But the real concern is that our political rulers are insulating themselves from the citizenry by using government largess to buy large numbers of votes.
They are bankrupting the country, addicting needy voters, and crippling initiative.