As we watched these last mid-term elections, nearly $4 Billion dollars was spent by special interest groups, most outside the area where the local elections were held. A majority of republicans were elected and it is now certain that this term of Congress will be even more ineffective than the current congress which broke all the records for being a “do nothing” congress. This was by design of course, along with ten years of relentless gerrymandering.
Now this is not a political argument we are about to make. No, it far more serious than politics. What we are witnessing are the final acts of war against the people of America. No, that is not a conspiracy theory, it is fact. It is official and substantiated by none other than the honorable academic institution, Princeton University.
First, we need some background and some history of how the war was fought. The acts of this war took place and continue to take place in our controlled media, by insuring ignorance through the expanding blocking of access to higher education, in our local communities with re-districting, and through our higher courts. It is being conducted by people unaccountable to us and they are using our legislative process and the alphabet agencies, along with our now militarized police as their “boots on the ground”.
American media is fond of speaking about “Russian Oligarchs” as if Russia were the only nation that allowed accumulation of such unprecedented wealth. The Yeltsin days of disorder and collapse indeed saw the rapid rise of many fortunes and oligarchs — persons of very much wealth. Some of them have proven patriotic citizens, some like Khodokorvsky or the late unlamented Boris Berezhovsky proved to be loveless gangsters.
A new study, however by a Princeton University Professor, of the influence of very wealthy or economically powerful persons on American political policies makes clear for the first time that a genuine American Oligarchy has staged a slow coup d’état of our US foreign and domestic policy over the past three decades since the era of Ronald Reagan. This American oligarchy today is the major force for war and disorder across the planet.
One of America’s most elite universities, Princeton, concluded this fact. It is ironic since during the early 1960’s, like other prestigious universities, Princeton was accessible to anyone and still classmates came from elite preparatory private schools like Andover or Exeter. Classmates with names like Firestone or Prince Faisal were attending. Then tuition cost $650 a year, the price of a used 1956 Chevy at the time.
Today tuition for one year at Princeton costs $41,820. Princeton speaks of money and elite families. So it is significant that a new study would be published by two Princeton professors on wealth in America since 1981. Martin Gilens is Professor of Politics at Princeton University together with Benjamin I. Page, Professor at Northwestern University, have published results of a unique analysis “using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues.”
The study concludes that, “Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic–Elite Domination…”
Their study further concluded,
“When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for the elite class, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
Finally they conclude,
“…Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.”
In a subsequent media interview, Gilens noted what they concluded in their analysis of volumes of data from 1981-2002 for government policy decisions and the role of elites versus ordinary citizens in some 1,800 different policy initiatives:
“One central factor is the role of money in our political system, and the overwhelming role that affluent individuals and organized interests play, in campaign finance and in lobbying.
And the second thing is the lack of mass organizations that represent and facilitate the voice of ordinary citizens. Part of that would be the decline of unions in the country which has been quite dramatic over the last 30 or 40 years. And part of it is the lack of a socialist or a worker’s party.”
The study verifies with ample empirical data what we all know from living life as an American over the past four decades. There has been a silent coup d’etat of the monied class, an American oligarchy. It is also significant that their study’s analysis of data ENDED before the last two election cycles and BEFORE the absolutely corrupt Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court. It has only gotten worse since that ruling. In fact, one could argue that corrupting the Supreme Court was the FINAL and decisive action that killed any notion that democracy still exists in America.
Names such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, David Rockefeller, Sheldon Adelson (main financier of Mitt Romney for President), the Koch Brothers (main financiers of the Tea Party political movement), George H.W. Bush and family have dominated the last two election cycles. The top 1% has reshaped the fundamentals of American life, culture and above all politics. A decision to wage war today against Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria depends not on the will of average Americans, but on the profits gained by the banking industry and the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about during his famous farewell speech.
Obama was elected on a pledge to close the US Army torture center at Guantanamo and six years on has yet to do. He won a Nobel Peace Prize in his first month and proceeded to wage more war in Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya and most recently Syria and Ukraine.
It is important to have this in mind when judging “America.” The United States of America today bears little resemblance to that ideal we think we know. The oligarchy has taken policy control behind a thin façade of “democracy” and has ultimately ruined the industrial and social fabric of the United States.
We need to wake up to this reality and not allow their continuing propaganda to keep us polarized over issues that really don’t matter in the larger picture. This is truly about the future of our families, our children, and grandchildren. What are we going to tell our grandchildren when they have no dreams, no hope, only labor and poverty to look forward to in their lives? We didn’t act? We didn’t vote? We didn’t resist? We didn’t care?
These are not political opinions expressed in this article, these are facts, and now facts verified by reputable academics that have conducted a several years study. What more do we need to understand? How much longer are we going to continue to be the sheep sent to slaughter on the altar of profits for the few? The term slaughter is used here both literally and figuratively. Literally, slaughter of our young men and women in contrived wars financed on both sides by the bankers and orchestrated by military contractors’ orders to paid cronies , and figuratively by the continuing impoverishment of workers and the denial of access to health and educational benefits for our children.
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