The USA is no longer a democracy?!

[thewayne]

Interesting, and I think I can agree with the conclusion.

"Researchers from Princeton University and Northwestern University have concluded, after extensive analysis of 1,779 policy issues, that the U.S. is in fact an oligarchy and not a democracy. What this means is that, although 'Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance,' 'majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.' Their study (PDF), to be published in Perspectives on Politics, found that 'When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.'"

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/14

http://classic.slashdot.org/story/14/04/16/0221210

Comments

[silveradept]

The United States wasn't intended to be a democracy from the beginning. The best that we're going to get is that our influence organizations have power in relation to how many people believe the same way. Right now, though, when one Koch brother could outbuy the entire budgets of government entities and nonprofits combined, we're all basically screwed.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

We were founded as a republic and are a nation of laws. We're also described as a representative democracy, since it's not practical for every citizen to directly provide input on every facet of running the government, and with the amount of money in politics that's long gone. And with that latest SCOTUS rule, there's nothing to prevent the Kochs and Adelsons and others of their ilk from giving $5200 directly to every Republican candidate, much less what they can give to the PACs.

There was an interesting bit on All In With Chris Hays Thursday night when he talked about the Conservative having something called the Grievance Industry: the Kochs and Adelson have doubled their worth under Obama, but that isn't enough.