{"id":17779,"date":"2014-07-10T21:26:38","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T01:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=17779"},"modified":"2014-07-10T21:26:38","modified_gmt":"2014-07-11T01:26:38","slug":"without-fair-elections-and-a-viable-legislative-process-at-federal-and-state-levels-the-republic-no-longer-exists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/07\/10\/without-fair-elections-and-a-viable-legislative-process-at-federal-and-state-levels-the-republic-no-longer-exists\/","title":{"rendered":"Without fair elections and a viable legislative process at federal and state levels, the republic no longer exists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Institute For New Economic Thinking<\/em> has published the interesting rant <a title=\"INET rant\" href=\"http:\/\/ineteconomics.org\/blog\/institute\/letters-3am-oligarchy-blues\" target=\"_blank\">Without fair elections and a viable legislative process at federal and state levels, the republic no longer exists<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Congress: Oligarchy has defeated the very idea of a legislative process. The Republican Party is the blunt tool of Oligarchy in the United States, Oligarchy&#8217;s hammer, but not for the purpose of achieving Republican goals. Oligarchy&#8217;s goal is to deadlock federal lawmaking bodies into permanent dysfunction and create a power vacuum that only Oligarchy can fill. Its method has proved foolproof: Bankroll the GOP&#8217;s extremists and ignoramuses; count on them to freeze the political process. Also, count on Democrats and the media to obsess about the so-called issues and ignore the fundamental shift in the power structure that Oligarchy has, in large part, achieved. Absent a surge of public participation (not likely, but not impossible), the collapse of our national legislative process has probably reached the point of no return: the point at which our national problems can no longer be redressed through traditional politics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The real reason why I note this item is for the Thomas Pynchon\u00a0 quote near the end.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don&#8217;t have to worry about the answers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Just about every news story in the Lame Stream media is a case of getting you to ask the wrong questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Institute For New Economic Thinking has published the interesting rant Without fair elections and a viable legislative process at federal and state levels, the republic no longer exists. Congress: Oligarchy has defeated the very idea of a legislative process. The Republican Party is the blunt tool of Oligarchy in the United States, Oligarchy&#8217;s hammer, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17779","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17780,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17779\/revisions\/17780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}