We Americans take it for granted that we are a democracy. Some of us think we have a right and responsibility to spread out democracy to other countries.
Yet a couple of social scientists have determined that the United States is governed as if it were an oligarchy.
Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern looked at 1,779 issues on which Americans were polled from 1981 through 2002, and then how Congress acted on these issues.
They found that Congress followed the wishes of the top 10 percent of income earners most of the time, and the bottom 90 percent hardly ever.
That is the classic profile of government by oligarchy—government by a small group, usually of rich people.
The survey found that Americans who band together in interest groups, such as the American Association of Retired People or National Rifle Association, have more influence than numerous, but separate, individuals, but business groups have more influence than other groups.
How can this be? A rich person’s vote does not count any more than anybody else’s vote.
But rich people, especially corporate executives, have means of influencing policy that the rest of us lack. They are:
▪ Campaign contributions to influence elections.
▪ Second-career jobs for politicians and government employees
▪ Propaganda to influence opinion, both among the public and the elite.
In American politics today, there are three main factions and only two parties to represent them. One faction has to lose and, if Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are nominated, it will be the Bernie Sanders progressives.
Donald Trump speaks to the concerns of working people—especially pro-corporate trade deals and deindustrialization—but he has no real solution.
His economic nationalism, while not a complete answer to U.S. economic problems, is preferable to the corporate trade deals of the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.
But by pitting white working men against Hispanics, blacks, immigrants and feminists, he prevents the working class as a whole from ever having enough clout to defend their interests.
Thomas Frank wrote an excellent book about how the Republicans may be the party of the wealthy elite, representing the upper 1 percent of American income earners, but the Democrats are the party of the educated professional elite, representing the rest of the upper 10 percent.
This year’s political realignment may change this, as he himself implicitly acknowledged in a new article in Vanity Fair. Under Hillary Clinton, Democrats are becoming the party of the upper 1 percent as well. Here is the meat of what Frank wrote.
Rich Americans still have it pretty good. I don’t mean everything’s perfect: business regulations can be burdensome; Manhattan zoning can prevent the addition of a town-house floor; estate taxes kick in at over $5 million. But life is acceptable. Barack Obama has not imposed much hardship, and neither will Hillary Clinton.
And what about Donald Trump? Will rich people suffer if he is elected president? Well, yes. Yes, they will. Because we all will. But that’s a pat answer, because Trump and Trumpism are different things. Trump is an erratic candidate who brings chaos to everything. Trumpism, on the other hand, is the doctrine of a different Republican Party, one that would cater not to the donor class, but rather to the white working class. Rich people do not like that idea.
Unauthorized immigration into the US and offshoring of American jobs out of the US are two different ways to do the same thing—drive down wages and escape U.S. labor law.
So I’m not surprised that Bernie Sanders said the following in an interview.
Ezra Klein:You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing …
Bernie Sanders:Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal.
Ezra Klein:Really?
Bernie Sanders:Of course. That’s a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ..
Ezra Klein:But it would make …
Bernie Sanders:Excuse me …
Ezra Klein:It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn’t it?
Bernie Sanders:It would make everybody in America poorer —you’re doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don’t think there’s any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don’t believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.
Senator Ted Cruz, the junior Republican Senator from Texas, appeals to the type of person who thinks that every problem has a military solution, a Biblical solution or a free-market solution. His foreign policy is to double down on everything the United States is now doing wrong.
He rejects any attempt to make peace with Russia or Iran. He advocates quick, decisive and short military interventions—in other words, make messes and walk away from them. He believes in standing with Israel and standing with the world’s embattled Christians (which I do, too, to the extent that it is feasible), but overlooks the fact that the interests and policies of Israel don’t necessarily coincide with the interests and views of Arab Christians.
No nation, no matter how powerful, can afford to anger and frighten the rest of the world, because, sooner or later, the rest of the world will unite against it. This is the problem of American foreign policy. If Ted Cruz were in charge, and did what he said, the process would accelerate.
The late Saul Alinsky, like Ted Cruz, was called a demagogue, but he was the exact opposite.
Alinsky is the father of community organizing. Right wingers demonize him, while they admire and imitate his tactics. What they despise is his goal, which was to empower the powerless.
Hillary Clinton once met Alinsky, and Barack Obama was a community organizer himself, but neither followed in his footsteps. I wish they had.
Charles and David Koch, each with a fortune of more than $40 billion, pour their money into campaigns of Republican politicians who oppose government regulation. They get their money from Koch Industries, one of the nation’s most notorious polluters, with a record of air pollution, toxic waste dumping and oil spills caused by lack of preventive maintenance. The Kochs’ business interests and political philosophy are one.
The billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch, are the fourth and fifth richest Americans, according to Forbes magazine. They own Koch Industries, a conglomerate corporation founded by their father, Fred Koch, which Forbes says is the second largest privately-held American company.
Little known to the general public, they have spent decades funding right-wing, conservative and libertarian organizations, such as the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society, Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council.
They reportedly are interested in acquiring the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and other newspapers owned by the Tribune Company.
My friend Anne Tanner e-mailed me a copy of this letter from David Simon, former Baltimore Sun reporter and creator of The Wire television series, about his concerns regarding the possible Koch takeover.
Dear Friend,
Strange that I acquired a certain notoriety and success writing television drama, yet for some dumb luck, I’d be in a newsroom somewhere watching what is happening to American journalism and wondering when anyone is going to speak up and act. Yes, I make television now; but The Wire and Treme are narratives rooted in what I came to value in print journalism, and the world that the Baltimore Sun opened up for me when I arrived in that city, fresh out of college.
A newspaper — an honest one — was a marvelous place to learn about the world and to convey what is learned to the community it serves. But this is only true, of course, if the newspaper is of and for the community and if it values its daily report more than any pre-determined point of view. So it is alarming to me that the Koch brothers, the billionaire duo so actively engaged in supporting a particular political ideology, are interested in buying the Baltimore Sun and a dozen other newspapers including the Los Angeles Times , the Chicago Tribune and the Hartford Courant .
Join me in signing a petition asking the Tribune Company not to sell to the Koch brothers, and to instead support the local ownership of American news organizations.
My concern does not stem from my distaste for the Koch brothers’ right-wing ideology. I would be appalled if, say, Arianna Huffington or Ralph Nader or any other politically engaged voice was attempting to buy my local newspaper. Good journalism needs to be unaligned and indifferent to ideological cant and partisan politics; it needs to be about the acquisition of unaligned fact.
There are many who claim the internet has rendered professional reporting obsolete; that the careful, impartial coverage of an increasingly complex world can be left in the hands of citizen bloggers, that no one needs to be paid to cover institutions consistently and with unbiased and ethical rigor.
I don’t agree. Reporting is a delicate and professional endeavor. And maintaining that endeavor is the only way to maintain an open and honest society. This will remain true whether a news report is delivered digitally or in print, and supporting professional journalism with a revenue stream that is rooted in a committed hometown readership that trusts its local newspaper.
The original sin of American journalism is having listened to Wall Street four decades ago, when it was first suggested that out-of-town ownership by publicly-traded chains were the optimum means of assuring profit and viability. The seeds of this disaster predate not only the Koch brothers, or the internet, or even the Tribune ownership of my hometown paper. It goes back nearly three decades to the moment when local ownership of that paper passed from Baltimoreans to those who did not live, or work, or live and die with this city.
Wall Street is very good at manufacturing short-term profit and little else. And political ideologues are very good at manufacturing a stunted political argument. But for a newspaper to serve its community with care and precision and dedication, the newspaper must be of the city and a part of the city — and beholden only to that city.
To that end, there are Baltimore-based consortiums who have made clear to the Tribune Company that they are ready and willing to purchase the Baltimore Sun and operate the newspaper as a locally-owned enterprise. There are people in my city who understand that a first-rate metropolis requires a daily paper that is not merely a vessel for profit or ideology, but rather for unbiased, unaligned and properly supported journalism. And the Tribune company, in divesting itself of its newspaper assets with an eye to local ownership, could undo the great damage that news-chain journalism has done to our civic life.
A sale to the Koch brothers would indeed be a journey from bad to worse. The only way to restore print journalism for the civic good is to have it practiced and owned by those who live in and are dedicated to the community itself.
Join me in asking the Tribune papers not to sell to the Koch brothers.
[Update 8/5/13]Another threat. Washington Post to be sold to Jeff Bezos. It is always a problem when a newspaper or news broadcaster is a component of a corporation in some other line of business, which has interests that will be affected by the way news is covered. In this case, Jeff Bezos is buying the business as an individual rather than as CEO of Amazon, but the principle is the same.
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For an idea of the Koch brothers’ power and influence, click on the following links.
Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch have a more powerful influence on American politics and policy than many governors and senators. By my standards, President Barack Obama is a conservative, who has protected and bailed out Wall Street bankers while seeking to undermine Social Security and Medicare. By theirs, he is a socialist, and they intend to drive the country into an even more extreme pro-corporate direction. The above video and the following text provide a good report on them.
Charles and David Koch are each worth about $25 billion, which makes them the fourth richest Americans. When you combine their fortunes, they are the third wealthiest people in the world. Radical libertarians who use their money to oppose government and virtually all regulation as interference with the free market, the Kochs are in a class of their own as players on the American political stage. Their web of influence in the U.S. stretches from state capitals to the halls of congress in Washington, D.C.
The Koch brothers fueled the conservative Tea Party movement that vigorously opposes Barack Obama, the U.S. president. They fund efforts to derail action on global warming, and support politicians who object to raising taxes on corporations or the wealthy to help fix America’s fiscal problems. According to New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, who wrote a groundbreaking exposé of the Kochs in 2010, they have built a top to bottom operation to shape public policy that has been “incredibly effective. They are so rich that their pockets are almost bottomless, and they can keep pouring money into this whole process.”
Koch industries, the second largest privately-held company in the US, is an oil refining, chemical, paper products and financial services company with revenues of a $100 billion a year. Virtually every American household has some Koch product—from paper towels and lumber, to Stainmaster carpet and Lycra in sports clothes, to gasoline for cars. The Kochs’ political philosophy of rolling back environmental and financial regulations is also beneficial to their business interests.
The Kochs rarely talk to the press, and conduct their affairs behind closed doors. But at a secret meeting of conservative activists and funders the Kochs held in Vail, Colorado this past summer, someone made undercover recordings. One caught Charles Koch urging participants to dig deep into their pockets to defeat Obama. “This is the mother of all wars we’ve got in the next 18 months,” he says, “for the life or death of this country.” He called out the names of 31 people at the Vail meeting who each contributed more than $1 million over the past 12 months.
In the 2010 congressional elections, the Kochs and their partners spent at least $40 million, helping to swing the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives towards right-wing Tea Party Republicans. It has been reported that the Kochs are planning to raise and spend more than $200 million to defeat Obama in 2012. But the brothers could easily kick in more without anyone knowing due to loopholes in U.S. law.
Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern looked at 1,779 issues on which Americans were polled from 1981 through 2002, and then how Congress acted on these issues.
Hillary Clinton represents the Washington and Wall Street elite, committed to perpetual war and crony capitalism. 
Phil Ebersole's Blog 