Last night (12/15/11), MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes were impressed by a new Pew poll–flagged by Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent–showing that a vast majority of the public believes that corporations and the wealthy have too much power.
The picture one gets from the poll is pretty dramatic:
The question that seemed most important to Maddow and Hayes was why Republican politicians aren’t shifting their policies in response to this apparent surge in anti-corporate populism:
MADDOW: The national sentiment right now being expressed to pollsters is that the people at the top are getting way too much of the spoils of both our economy and our political system and I resent it, and I think that even if I’m a Republican.
HAYES: Majority of Republicans say that wealthy people–corporations and people with money–have too much power in this country, a majority of Republicans in the poll.
MADDOW: Are you seeing politicians behave in a way that reflects a desire to meet that concern?
HAYES: What’s amazing to me is how unresponsive Republican state level officials are and how much they’re responsive to all of their ideological priors, all of the interests that they promised fealty to before they got into office, and how little trimming of the sails they’ve done.
I mean, Rick Scott just seems to be perfectly happy to plow along at 25 percent, doing all these things that are wildly unpopular. And I think there’s a different set of incentive structures on the right, partly because of the way the money works over there, partly because of the ideological cohesiveness of the base.
But what we have not seen largely are course corrections.
MADDOW: Yes.
Of course, MSNBC is likely to focus more on what Republicans are doing wrong, or not doing at all; that’s their bread and butter. But setting up a political discussion along these lines presents some problems.
If you’re wondering why Republican politicians haven’t become more anti-corporate, what about the Democratic Party? Democrats in the poll are far more critical of corporate power than Republicans. Does their party seem politically responsive to this?
(Of course, the first question to ask is whether you really believe politicians are actually sensitive to public opinion at all–read about Thomas Ferguson’s investment theory of politics for another take.)
The most important thing to know is that this new populism isn’t new. ABC‘s been polling on this for a while (results are posted on PollingReport.com):
And FAIR took note of this in 1998 (press release, 6/1/98) when we compared public opinion to a survey of elite media:
The general public is more critical of the concentration of corporate power in the United States than are journalists. When asked whether they felt “too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few large companies,” 57 percent of the journalists agreed, while 43 percent felt they did not have too much power. The numbers were quite different, though, when the Times Mirror Center asked the same question of the general public in October 1995. A full 77 percent of the public felt that corporations had too much power, with only 18 percent feeling that they did not.
The contradictions in our own lives make it impossible for the corporate media to keep most of us blind and deaf to the reality of oligarchy and the servility of the political class to their interests.
Its function is to keep us dumb and dumbfounded as to just what to do about it.
Anger is one thing.
Productive action is quite another.
Populists need to find their…”pop!”
Perhaps if we demand that a requirement be made into law that news broadcasts and public political meet a minimum threshold of honesty we might see things change. They manage to do this in Canada and yet here Fox News was able to win a lawsuit by claiming they had no legal requirement to tell the truth. Demand Honesty.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Demand-Honesty-In-News-and-Politics/138001192977860?sk=wall&filter=1
How do they “manage to do this in Canada”? Partly because they don’t value freedom of speech and press there. There are always people who’d be happy to decide what is “too much” freedom of speech; I don’t trust them. Do you really want the government we have deciding officially what is “honesty” and “truth”? I don’t. Nor can I think of any government I would trust with such a mission.
What really bothers me about ideas like this is that there are plenty of alternative media in the US. Nobody is required to listen to the corporate media; just about everybody complains about them; but they refuse to look at the alternatives. When I ask people about this, I’m told things like “Gee, I know I should, but I just don’t have time…. Someday I’m really going to inform myself better.” Yet they do have time to watch reality TV shows and hour upon hours of professional or college sports; I think that reveals their real priorities.
Myself, I don’t have time to watch the corporate media; most of my free time is taken up with alternatives: FAIR, Democracy NOW!, my community radio station, and a lot of places on the web, which I read critically. And I’ve noticed that once you begin to inform yourself, you can read behind what the corporate media say, so that even if you must watch CNN or read the NY Times you can spot their distortions. And that is your responsibility as a citizen: to think for yourself. If you want the media and the government to decide for you what is true, you might as well just listen to Rush Limbaugh; he at least openly claims to think (or something) for his audience. No free citizen should abdicate the responsibility of thinking to anyone, government, corporation, or individual — but that is what you’re advocating here: let the government determine a “minimum threshold of honesty” — and come to think of it, we already have that, a minimum — so that we can just sit back and let ourselves be filled with government-approved truth. Yummy!
But thanks — you just gave me an idea and most of the content for a blog post.
Actually what I had in mind was a jury trial. Present the available information and let a jury decide. Not the government since they are some of the biggest liars out there.
“Demand Honesty.” Perhaps we could start with “person” means “natural person” in the U.S. Constitution. We could have our elected representatives sign a “pledge” to that effect and toss the devil out of the mix.
“When I ask people about this, I’m told things like “Gee, I know I should, but I just don’t have timeâ┚¬Ã‚¦. Someday I’m really going to inform myself better.” Yet they do have time to watch reality TV shows and hour upon hours of professional or college sports; I think that reveals their real priorities.” Well put, Duncan. Reminds me of Harriett Tubman, the famous Underground Railroad engineer; “I freed a thousand slaves, I could have freed a thousand more had they known they were slaves.”
My monthly zine Musea began in 1991 to oppose the consolidation of the arts and media into too few corporate conglomerates. But my two decade fight, was built on the work of Ben Bagdikian’s influential book The Media Monopoly from 1983.
This has truly been a many decade fight for some of us.
Thomas Moore — so you think that jury trials aren’t instigated and run by the government? Even if some small publication were acquitted by a jury for, say, exposing the lies of the Obama administration, they’d still have to bankrupt themselves — or at least waste huge amounts of time and energy — in the process of their defense. Laws are made and enforced by the government, which you say “are some of the biggest liars out there”, so why are you advocating more laws for the liars to play with?
John: Ooooh, a pledge! That will work! And what if they don’t keep it, what will happen? Who will enforce the pledge and hold them accountable?
William: Thanks, but we *aren’t* slaves. There is nothing to stop you from turning off CNN or CBS or MSNBC and watching Democracy Now instead. There were plenty of mechanisms to keep slaves in slavery. Choose your similes/metaphors a bit more carefully, please.
But thanks, guys — if this stuff doesn’t turn into a new blog post, it’ll at least make a nice postscript.
so much for “center right” country
I love this argument.It reminds me of Polls by white arian nationalists.Do Jews have too much power in wall street?Or are blacks more violent than whites?Can you guess where those numbers skew upward?In any area that has no blacks or jews.The point is if you say to people do the super rich and big corporations have too much(of everything) you get a simple damn straight from the people polled.Of course few even know anyone in that super rich category ,or the heads of big corporations.What an easy call.Yeah it is the OTHER guy causing the problem.Now should a political party treat blacks, or jews ,or the rich,or those who have incorporated their businesses- differently because of a skewed perception?Especially a perception invested in by one political party as the entire bedrock of their ideology?What dopes would do that?
“The New Anti-Corporate Populism Isn’t So New” Of course it is not new. The power struggle has existed since human society has been on Earth. Yes, we are allow ourselves to be slaves if we value football and other silly distractions to “own” us so we don’t participate as citizens in our own Democracy. Americans are relatively naive and self-deceived believing that our business and government leaders are not in it for the power and money grab but for the good of the people; the rest of the world is not.
I may not want the government to decide what the truth is but I certainly don’t want a news outlet that is able to lie without recourse.
To say that we only have the two choices is merely to say that the only choice we have for news media is propaganda of one sort or another. Surely there must be a way to uphold a standard of truth and punish those who outright lie rather than saying that lying is a good thing.
Sorry Mr Hart, but I’m getting cynical about the political meaning of public polls. I’ve heard for decades how supposedly liberal/benevolent US citizens’ polling results are, but yet, by and large they keep electing the same-old-same-old — some really horrible politicians and politics. The best explanation I’ve read for this is that people will respond to pollsters with the answer they think they ethically/morally SHOULD be responding with, not the one they actually ‘believe’ (where the definition of ‘believe’ is ‘thought PLUS action’, not mere words.) In the old Freudian terminology, poll respondents are responding with their super-ego but voting with their id (their reptilian brain). Yes, a lot of the voting IS due to the MSM daily hammering away daily with their commercial/status-quo viewpoint, and I’m not dismissing that as a significant factor in their voting results, but I think they KNOW what should be done (ie; what the polling results display) but they’re too politically lazy/complacent/frustrated to even bother to vote ethically/morally. Sure they may think that there’s too much power in the hands of rich & corporations, but is it a priority of any significance to them? No – – – come election time they’ll let it easily get overridden by anti-tax, anti-abortion, gun-nut or militaristic crap and here we are back at square one. These poll results are similar to polls asking people if they believe they should exercise more or eat better – – – a large majority will undoubtedly respond in the affirmative, but appropriate actions will seldom be taken and we’ll remain the world’s most obese country…
Just in wall street today.The top 1% have LOST 30% in the last 3 years.That goes for those making over 350k as well.There goes the myth that as everyone gets poorer -they are getting richer.Average people(middle class) have lost 2-3%.Another liberal myth goes boom