In the last 5 years alone, the 200 most politically active companies in the U.S. spent $5.8 billion influencing our government with lobbying and campaign contributions. Those same companies got $4.4 trillion in taxpayer support — earning a return of 750 times their investment.

An no one bats an eye... you should be rioting in the streets

Isn't there something we as a people are meant to do when the government fails to serve us? 🤔 Asking for a friend.

If we replaced first past the post voting with a more representative electoral system, we could inject competition into the electoral process.

Then maybe they would have to care.

Yeah, no shit.

Yeah, it's not like the public pays particularly well unlike bribery, I mean lobbying groups.

There was s study about this year's ago. They compared popularity of bills and how they were passed and there was no difference; Congress just did what they want. I suspect if your redid the study to compare bills passed to corporate interests you'd get much more revealing results.

They don't like it if you tell them that you hope their family dies in a bloody revolution because they are were too cowardly to vote to convict Trump, though.

so i've heard

thank you citizens united

for those unaware: https://campaignlegal.org/update/how-does-citizens-united-decision-still-affect-us-2024

No one with power will ever pass laws to reduce their power, but a direct democracy would be very posible with modern technology.

I understand that this is a doomer sub but man. When you manage to get away from all this social media bullshit for a while then try to poke your head in you realize how relentlessly negative it is at all times, because nobody wants to actually do anything about anything, including go the fuck outside and forget about it for a bit, and everyone with any ambitions of sanity leaves.

Could we start discussing credible strategies to reverse this situation, or at least improve that number somehow? Absolutely the fuck not, never, ever ever. The shit is very literally crazy, I don't know what I was trying to expect.

But this post is so much like the other posts on the rest of the site it took me a minute to notice where I was. Might as well stop acting like this is just one community, it's everything.

Keep voting blue and hope things change.

The sudden spike coincides with the Citizens United and SpeechNow SCOTUS decisions.

That's because y'all won't fucking VOTE

They don't fear us.

Duh? We know already know this. Their main concern is staying in office for as long as possible and see how badly they can fuck up the country.

Abolish the electoral college

Shit, y’all could’ve saved a ton of time and effort if you’d have just asked me; I’ve been saying this for years. And it’s only worse when you’re the one speck of blue in a red sea.

Each congressperson represents too many people.

We need to add seats to the House of Representatives.

MJ's "They Don't Care About Us", still relevant to the times.

I remember watching this nearly 6 years after release and how relevant it still was. It still is relevant. End Citizens United if you want to even begin to take our country back.

Is this the 20 year old study being pulled out for 2024 election cycle?

PS 10 years

And a lot of this comes from not fucking voting. I seriously wonder how things would be if voting was mandatory and everyone was given appropriate time off to do it.

Y'all should check out Doug Ford and the Ontario Science center shit show if you like this type of story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

Go to 5:40

yeah no fucking shit, can we stop pretending this system is effective or worth defending?

A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!

- Henry Adams, 1906

I want to understand what Skippy says, but when 'literally' is the best adverb available I just don't want to hear any more.

And this is why Ronald Reagan was right: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" - Not.

~stop voting for politicians who don’t align with your values and politics~

This study is bunk.

Researchers critiquing the paper found that middle-income Americans and rich Americans actually agree on an overwhelming majority of topics. Out of the 1,779 bills in the Gilens/Page data set, majorities of the rich and middle class agree on 1,594; there are 616 bills both groups oppose and 978 bills both groups favor. That means the groups agree on 89.6 percent of bills.

That leaves only 185 bills on which the rich and the middle class disagree, and even there the disagreements are small. On average, the groups' opinion gaps on the 185 bills is 10.9 percentage points; so, say, 45 percent of the middle class might support a bill while 55.9 percent of the rich support it.

Bashir and Branham/Soroka/Wlezien find that on these 185 bills, the rich got their preferred outcome 53 percent of the time and the middle class got what they wanted 47 percent of the time.

https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-study

^{Inb4 10 downvotes and 0 replies.}

Man that picture is old AF! John Boehner has not been in office since 2015…