Ha Ha ! STUPID AMERICANS !!!

[macdoc]

but governments are not "wholly bought out by corporations and the rich".

They are in the US....one paper from a very influential author concluded just this year that the US has ceased to be a democracy and is in fact a oligarchy. This is a mjor peer reviewed study....

Major Study Finds The US Is An Oligarchy
The Telegraph ZACHARY DAVIES BOREN, THE TELEGRAPH
APR. 16, 2014, 8:16 AM 172,393 151

AP
The U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern universities has concluded.
The report, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" (PDF), used extensive policy data collected between 1981 and 2002 to empirically determine the state of the U.S. political system.

After sifting through nearly 1,800 U.S. policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile), and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the U.S. is dominated by its economic elite.

The peer-reviewed study, which will be taught at these universities in September, says: "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

Researchers concluded that U.S. government policies rarely align with the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying organizations: "When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it."

The positions of powerful interest groups are "not substantially correlated with the preferences of average citizens," but the politics of average Americans and affluent Americans sometimes does overlap. This is merely a coincidence, the report says, with the interests of the average American being served almost exclusively when it also serves those of the richest 10%.

The theory of "biased pluralism" that the Princeton and Northwestern researchers believe the U.S. system fits holds that policy outcomes "tend to tilt towards the wishes of corporations and business and professional associations."

The study comes after McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a controversial piece of legislation passed in the Supreme Court that abolished campaign-contribution limits, and record low approval ratings for the U.S. Congress.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/major-st ... z30UB5iP7g

Here is the paper
http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilen ... 3-7-14.pdf

[pErvinalia]

I posted a link about that earlier. No one probably read it.

[mistermack]

I posted a link about that earlier. No one probably read it.

I've pointed that out, with regard to Israel, several times before.
It's exactly the same procedure. The Israel lobby is the strongest of all US lobbies. The link with Israel has never been in America's interest, it's caused virtually all the harm to America's international standing in the last forty years, as well as involving it in the ''war on terror''.
And yet the policy never changes. Because it's bought and paid for behind the scenes, every time that there's an election.
What they do, is bribe both parties, so whoever wins, the Israel lobby get what they want. And if one party were to refuse the offer, they probably wouldn't win, without the big money contributions, and jewish votes being directed against them.

Basically, the US policy is bought and sold on nearly all the major issues in the same way.

On Israel, the Presidents job, once elected, is to do nothing as all, while pretending to be doing their ''best''. That's what they're paid to do.

[Warren Dew]

I notice that study says it collected data on the bottom 10%, but didn't mention the results at all. Sounds to me like the data may have supported what seems most likely based on observation: the makers in the middle are losing to the takers at both ends of the spectrum.

[Gallstones]

The definition of the word Conundrum is: something that is puzzling or confusing. Here are six Conundrums of socialism in the United States of America:
1. America is capitalist and greedy – yet half of the population is subsidized.
2. Half of the population is subsidized – yet they think they are victims.
3. They think they are victims – yet their representatives run the government.
4. Their representatives run the government – yet the poor keep getting poorer.
5. The poor keep getting poorer – yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
6. They have things that people in other countries only dream about – yet they want America to be more like those other countries. ~Michael Z. Williamson 08.25.14

If England became the 51st state

[Seth]

Government's only legitimate role in managing society is, again, policing behavior to prevent the initiation of [my expansive definitions of] force or fraud, and nothing else.

Fixed.
To the point, the US government was chartered to "...Establish Justice,

Libertarian translation: "Punish the initiation of force or fraud and deter such acts by creating an organized system by which malefactors can be tried and punished if found guilty."

ensure domestic Tranquility

"Prevent and police the initiation of force or fraud upon the community, which is disruptive to domestic tranqility"

...Promote the General Welfare,

Encourage and support the altruistic and rationally self-interested actions of members of the community that "promote" (not "regulate," "command," "manage," "direct," "mandate," "determine," "quantify," "apportion," or any other action other than "Promote," which means:

promote
[pruh-moht]

verb (used with object), promoted, promoting.
1. to help or encourage to exist or flourish; further: to promote world peace.
2. to advance in rank, dignity, position, etc. (opposed to demote ).
3. Education. to put ahead to the next higher stage or grade of a course or series of classes.
4. to aid in organizing (business undertakings).
5. to encourage the sales, acceptance, etc., of (a product), especially through advertising or other publicity.
6. Informal. to obtain (something) by cunning or trickery; wangle.

This is "promoting" the general welfare: "Dear Citizens, this is your President. I would like to take this opportunity to encourage all of us to care for the poor and hungry by donating generously to your local non-profit aid agencies because it is in our rational and altruistic best interests to care for those who cannot, for whatever reason, care for themselves. Your generosity, altruism and charity will make our nation a better place for all of us because respecting the dignity of those who have nothing and helping them to flourish helps us all to flourish and it cuts the costs associated with government by replacing wasteful government welfare spending that mostly supports legions of professional bureaucrats who are undeserving of your charity, and puts the money where it belongs and is needed; in your own communities, to help solve the problems that occur when the poor are not cared for properly as they work to recover their economic status."

This is not: "You will pay forty percent of your income to the government so that we can spend it as we see fit in order to pander to the voting poor for their votes that will support the bureaucratic and political status quo that makes Washington D.C. the "Richest Little City in the East." If you don't, we will send out SWAT teams of militarized IRS agents with enormous armored military vehicles and military armament to either threaten you into paying or kill you and take everything you have."

\ and ensure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity,..."

There is no liberty when we are slaves to the welfare state as we are now.

...Not as a small claims court.

Actually, it's interesting that you say that because that's exactly what it is and was supposed to be; a system that adjudicates disputes among the several states, and ONLY the states themselves. It is the individual sovereign states that do all the rest of the governing that is required. Congress is nothing more than a big group meeting of representatives of the states that was and is intended to make the Union run harmoniously by mediating and adjudicating issues that the states bring to it...and almost nothing else. That is in fact the actual historical meaning of the Commerce Clause, which sorely needs to be restored to its proper place and function by amending it to make it absolutely clear that the federal government has NO authority whatsoever to rule or regulate individuals other than soldiers in the federal military.