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Princeton Concludes What Kind of Government America Really Has, and It's Not a Democracy
April 16, 2014
A new scientific study from Princeton researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page has finally put some science behind the recently popular argument that the United States isn't a democracy any more. And they've found that in fact, America is basically an oligarchy.
This is a familiar topic to those of us who oppose the Common Core Standards Initiative. I've been scratching my head, literally for years, trying to understand how Common Core took hold, quietly and quickly, in America's representative republic. In my state of Missouri, it became clear to me that the "initiative" capitalized fully on the top-down governance structure in our education policies and their implementation. I believe that Missouri state statutes were violated in the adoption process, but unfortunately, there was no oversight mechanism in place to stop Common Core from the onset.
After researching the opposition to the Common Core Standards Initiative throughout the country for a number of years, there is no doubt in my mind that our American oligarchs were well aware that state legislatures were not equipped to investigate and address adoption of Common Core Standards in 2009-2010.
(posted by concerned)
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6 comments:
I don't think I'll be violating a confidence if I say that Katie (Beals) pretty frequently raises this exact issue regarding just about everything going on in public ed: how does this happen in a democracy?
I don't think I'll be violating a confidence if I say that Katie (Beals) pretty frequently raises this exact issue regarding just about everything going on in public ed: how does this happen in a democracy?
I've taken to bemoaning the 'democracy deficit' here in my district. Over and over and over again the board protests the super's 'initiatives' and then goes along.
Every year we vote, but we don't get the schools we vote for.
I've seen that study! Larry Bartels has an interesting survey of 1-percenters trying to find out what their values & views are: Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans.
(The very affluent are quite a bit more concerned about education than the general public.)
As I recall from the Princeton study, though, the power to influence policy seems to be held by .... large corporations, I think. Not by individuals -- or by organized interests.
I need to take a look at that study.
On the national level, Angelo Codevilla nailed it in his The Ruling Class.
He points out the disconnect between surveys of the general public and politicians of both political parties--and especially of politicians after they've spent a few years in D.C.
Old news to those of us who've read John Taylor Gatto. Or Carroll Quigley years before that.
BL
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