To the Editor:
A new study appearing at Princeton’s website may test assumptions for some of us readers. For others, it will be a grim vindication of what we already suspected – the United States of America is no longer a democracy, but rather an oligarchy.
A key indicator is when we see repeated disregard for the majority of American opinions in many, if not most of the cries for needs including food for the hungry, equal pay for women, background checks for gun purchases (90 percent in favor), unemployment insurance payments, infrastructure expenditures, and sustainable energy expansion.
Government policy has shifted from serving the people to serving corporations.
You and I, the average voting citizen, are found to no longer have independent influence on public policy.
The authors of this scientific study at Princeton, Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, “make the statement that the average American has ‘near-zero,’ statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
Does this mean the McCutcheon decision and the Supreme Court’s new definition of corruption where money is not a corrupting influence has sealed the deal? Is this statistically scientific study now pulling the shades off the carcass of democracy and we are doomed to reside in a political oligarchic structure?
Every bone in my body wants to say no, but every million-dollar donation made for political wins increases my feeling that the study is accurate and our government has profoundly lost its human form.
