Why Only 4% of Americans Trust Congress

Why Only 4% of Americans Trust Congress

By Daily Bell

Ap-Norc Poll Finds Bare Confidence In Government, Elections … Few Americans have much confidence in the U.S. political system, the government in general, or in either political party. Most say they’re interested in the 2016 presidential election, but they also feel frustrated, helpless and even angry with the way the election is going, a poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows.

The US system, which is nothing like the Republic it used to be, continues to degrade in the eyes of Americans.

That’s what this poll tells us.

·        Only 4 percent of Americans have “a great deal of confidence” in the US Congress.

·        Only 15 percent have a lot of confidence in the executive branch.

·        Only 24 percent have a great deal of confidence in the Supreme Court

The only part of the US government that citizens seem optimistic about is the US military. Some 56 percent have “a great deal of confidence” in the military.

This is probably because Americans have little idea of what their military does. Unlike the federal government, the Pentagon doesn’t seek out publicity for the most part. Like the CIA and other intelligence agencies, Pentagon activities are cloaked in shadows.

Tanks, jeeps and other kinds of military equipment seem to be on the move. A good deal of paranoia is expressed about the US military in these videos.

This makes the 56 percent figure regarding the US military somewhat unbelievable.

Additionally, Homeland Security in concert with the Pentagon has declared that those holding beliefs in the US as a constitutional republic are to be treated with suspicion.

Those who believe in constitutional precepts may be harboring terrorist points of view.

President Barack Obama consistently receives approval ratings between 40 and 50 percent. Yet only 15 percent of those surveyed have a good deal of faith in the executive branch.

As with the figure regarding the Pentagon, Obama’s numbers seem high.

We’ve predicted for many years that the Internet itself would reveal the ongoing and expanding difficulties with the authoritarian system that has taken over the US.

This is just what’s happening.

The dysfunction of the system can no longer be blamed on outside forces, or on Americans themselves. The dysfunction is integral to the system, and this is the perception that citizens hold increasingly. It is represented in this poll.

It is not just US citizens. There is a great deal of discontent in Europe as well. Citizens in at least 50 percent of European countries have expressed a preference to hold a Brexit-style referendum on remaining in the EU or leaving.

In the US and Europe, discontent is high with current sociopolitical and economic systems. These are not seen as adequate or competent. One can make the argument that such discontent is cyclical. But, no, it is not.

Inevitably, the discontent now in evidence is going to get worse for two reasons.

First, people will continue to educate themselves about the current system via the Internet. And second the Western banking elites that have put the system into place did so with the knowledge that it was destructive. The idea is to tear down Western culture and nationality – and then rebuild on a global scale.

Thus, what people become aware of via the Internet and subsequent discussions is supported by history and present-day events.

And unlike times in the past when discontent surged, it is difficult to see how current sentiments are going to be defused. Twice, cyclical discontent was defused by world war. But it is hard to see a world war taking place in the current environment. The war on terror, so far anyway, is too diffuse. It is international but regional.

And the Internet itself continues to clarify the system’s fundamental difficulty, which is monopoly central banking.

In the past, banking interests have been able to blame intermediaries such as Wall Street for economic failure.

But this is more difficult today.

Gradually, as knowledge about the true cause of economic dysfunction builds, central banks themselves will come under sustained attack. Increasingly, little confidence remains in Western institutions – whether they are political, scientific or economic.

The survey itself tells us that “neither political party inspires much confidence, either,” in the US. Only eight percent have a great deal of confidence in the Republican Party and only 15 percent in the Democratic Party.

This lack of institutional confidence is the most pernicious modern trend. As it is rooted in reality, it is liable to grow worse.

Conclusion: This is no doubt the reason that governments in Europe and the US are preparing for violent confrontations with their citizens. This time the lack of confidence in the system is not cyclical. It is traveling only in one direction.

Take your Official 2016 Election Year Survey

Take your Official 2016 Election Year Survey

Take the survey, record your answers and then decide which group you most closely align with: Progressive, Middle or Conservative?

Top of Form

The Power of Government

Do you think the federal government is too big and too powerful?

Yes         No          Undecided

Do you think agencies such as the NSA, the IRS, and the EPA abuse their powers?

Yes         No          Undecided

As President Obama and the bureaucracies expand the reach and power of government, are you concerned about your individual liberties?

Yes         No          Undecided

What remedies do you support for out-of-control rule by the agencies? (check all that apply).

·        Congress needs to take control of the bureaucracies' actions by continual oversight.

·        Congress should have to vote on regulations before they take effect.

·        Government employees who violate the law in dealing with citizens should be prosecuted.

·        Congress should drastically reduce the size of government to manageable proportions.

Terrorism and National Defense

Which of these pose a serious threat to the United States? (Check all that apply).

ISIS         Iran        China     Russia    North Korea

How well do you think the Obama administration is handling Islamic terrorism at home and abroad?

Very well                            Adequately                         Terribly

What is your opinion of the state of our national defense? (Check all that apply.)

• ·        The world has become much more dangerous during the Obama administration.
• ·        We need a strong military to assert American power and preserve our security.
• ·        Our defenses have fallen to dangerous levels and need to be rebuilt.
• ·        Our fighting forces are hampered by political decisions in Washington that keep them from winning.
• ·        Both terrorism and cyber terrorism have exposed seriousness weaknesses in our national security.

Immigration

What should we do about illegal immigrants and illegal immigration? (Check as many as you wish.)

• ·        Deport those who commit a felony.
• ·        Make it difficult for employers to hire them.
• ·        Create a national identity card so everyone who enters the U.S. can be tracked.
• ·        Give them a path to citizenship.
• ·        Build fences along our borders.
• ·        Enforce existing laws.
• ·        Do nothing to current illegal immigrants but control future illegal immigration.
• ·        We don't need to control illegal immigration.

Government Spending and Taxes

During the Obama administration Congress has racked up the largest deficits in history by far and increased the national debt to more than $19 trillion. What do you think about this level of spending? (Check as many as you wish).

• ·        It is destroying current and future generations' chances for prosperity and opportunity.
• ·        It is creating a more fair and just society.
• ·        It is making us too dependent on foreign countries.

What is your opinion of the IRS? (Check as many as you wish).

• ·        It has criminally targeted conservative individuals and groups.
• ·        It is defying its legal mandate and concealing its activities.
• ·        Those responsible for its illegal activities must be fired and prosecuted.
• ·        It should be eliminated and replaced.

Health Care

Do you think the current health care law (Obamacare) takes away your own control of your health care and hands it over to Washington bureaucrats?

Yes         No          Undecided

Has your health care under Obamacare changed for the better or for the worse?

Better    Worse   No change

Do you believe Obamacare should be repealed?

Yes, entirely        Yes, partially       No,        Undecided

Job Creation

If you served in Congress, what would you do to create jobs?

·        Reduce income tax rates.

• ·        Repeal Obamacare.
• ·        Reduce existing federal regulations.
• ·        Establish an automatic expiration date for new federal regulations.
• ·        Allow increased production of gas and oil.
• ·        Reduce taxes on gasoline and other forms of energy.
• ·        Reduce the corporate tax rate, which is one of the highest in the world.

The Constitution

Do you believe the Obama administration has taken powers that constitutionally belong to Congress, the states, local governments, and the people?

Yes         No          Undecided

Who should make the major decisions about the laws and rules that govern us?

• ·        The American people, through our constitutional system.
• ·        The courts.
• ·        The President and his officials.
• ·        International institutions such as the Un and the World Court.

Values and the Family

Do you think parents should have the right to raise their children with minimal interference from government?

Yes         No          Undecided

Do you think it is the right of citizens to defend them self using firearms?

Yes         No          Undecided

Do you support Common Core, the centralized K-12 curriculum with national standards and tests set in Washington, D.C.?

Yes         No          Undecided           I don't know what it is

Why the left and liberals are desperate!

Internet Reformation: The Awakening Progresses Undeterred by Current Elections

By The Daily Bell

The Awakening Will Continue Regardless of This Year’s Election … Every four years the public gets all riled up over the outcome of the presidential election, projecting all their expectations and visions for a better tomorrow on to a candidate in the hopes that they will swoop in and save the day. However, the reality is that the outcome of the presidential election has little to no effect on the direction of the country anymore. – Last American Vagabond

This article posted at the Last American Vagabond makes points that build on some basic themes going back a decade or longer.

The main point in this article is the current presidential elections will not put a halt to what we call the Internet Reformation.

Interestingly, the original Reformation was a controlled, elite process designed to split the Roman Catholic Church asunder. But like so many elite manipulations, the Reformation soon took on a life of its own and moved in unanticipated directions.

The Declaration of Independence was unanticipated, for instance. The elites of the day were horrified by the concept of a country founded on the idea of natural rights.

There is considerable evidence that the French Revolution was fought to bring back the idea human leaders, not God, created and bestowed rights.

But in the US that idea has never superseded Jefferson’s initial vision.

This is one reason the US has stood at the crossroads of world power. It is animated by a specific vision of freedom that is subversive to authoritarianism and globalism.

This is also why we believed the Internet would have a convulsive impact on many who lived in the US.

In the US, more than almost anywhere else, the Internet is allowing people to discover the philosophical traditions of freedom that the country was constructed on.

This is spawning a kind of mass awakening.

For a long time we received a good deal of push-back regarding this point. People didn’t see that technology was a fundamental trigger for evolution of human perspectives and psychology.

But we were confident. History seemed to show us that when people are given truthful information they will act on it.

In the modern era, truth has been scarce. People have been instructed from childhood that gigantic authoritarian societies are natural.

As a result, many in the West have a great deal of trouble understanding that in a normal culture, people have a good amount of control over their own lives. They have the power to influence their own circumstances.

The combination of monopoly money printing, wars, public (state) justice and corporatism creates a noxious stew of top-down control that gradually strips away the possibility of normal life.

One is not in charge of one’s employment, relationships and cannot plan a professional and personal future.

Ordinarily, people wouldn’t put up with this state of affairs. But until recently, it seemed that this was the only way to live. People could not conceive of other options.

The lies were so pervasive. The mind control was nearly complete. The net of untruths was almost impenetrable. But not quite and now it is breaking down.

This is what happened after the discovery of the Gutenberg Press. The Press did for books and paper communication what the Internet has done for electronic information.

When people come into possession of forms of truthfulness that contradict their current reality, they often begin to discard their illusions.

Not everyone, of course. Some cling resolutely to their previous beliefs, but many change over time.

Here’s how the Last American Vagabond puts it:

The world is undergoing a paradigm shift in consciousness that in many ways can be compared to a new Renaissance 2.0. It is the development of a totally new way of understanding all of the past, present, and future of the current reality.

There should be little doubt that this conscious awakening has its roots in the dawn of the Internet, which has opened Pandora’s box when it comes to the vast human reservoir of knowledge and information.

The access to data that the public now has all over the world at their fingertips is light-years ahead of what was available just 50 years ago. Information that was once incomplete, scattered all over the world, and disconnected from the whole, is now all piling into one platform for all to see and piece together. It really is the age of information for those who care to seek it out.      

  

The article makes the point that the current, disastrous presidential elections won’t have an impact on the larger awakening. It also seems to intimate that the current elections may actually expand this awakening and speed it up.

What many fail to realize is that while a different outcome may be desired in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, this conscious awakening that is growing stronger everyday is not going to stop once it’s over.

Donald Trump certainly has good things to say. However, his determination to pursue the War on Terror and his apparent lack of ambition to do anything about central banking means he probably will not create substantive change.

Certainly Hillary won’t either. Seeing this, people will continue to turn away from mainstream solutions when it comes to initiating fundamental change.

We regularly suggest that change starts with individual human action. You need to take control of your own life before you can make a difference elsewhere.

We will use a paragraph from the Vagabond article to end this analysis.

Conclusion:

“It’s more imperative than ever that we continue the process full steam ahead despite the show they are putting on to distract us. … At this point, we just have to make sure we don’t stop digging right before we are about to strike gold because that would be the ultimate shame. We are on the brink, so let’s not stop now.”

The Left Will Make You Care!

The Left Will Make You Care!

The left is artful at taking an issue that no one thinks about and thrusting into the limelight forcing people to care. The recent executive order by President Obama is the perfect example.

Until Obama’s executive order, people were not thinking about or even caring about where transgender individuals used the restroom in public. If a transgender walked into a restroom and looked like the sex designation of the restroom, no one likely gave it a thought. It appeared that all parties were at least content with the status quo.

However, for left wing activist, that is not enough. They want to make you care. Obama decided to act on that. He took the standing of a very small number of people in the U.S. and pitted it against the rest of society. Why? To make you care; that simple.

Suspect motive

By making you care about things you otherwise would not be thinking about or talking in public, the left will agitate the mainstream to speak out and act out. This enables them to make disinters the enemy of a group. The left needs enemies, especially the Christian conservative middle class. No one likes a bully and no one likes hypocrites. You are instantly put on the defensive.

The “Everything is Okay Crowed”

Without out a moral compass, the left is able to use this position to attack mainstream values and morals. You become the enemy. Create an issue, go public and cause the mainstream to react. Bam! You have been had. The trap slams shut behind you and there is seemingly no way out. It instantly becomes and emotional issue (fear and loathing) where no amount of logic can break through. Add to that that “social cronyism” enables the Progressives (Socialist) to make it punitive (costly) for anyone to disagree. We see this with the withholding of funds from public schools in this particular case.

What to Do?

Mainstream conservatives must anticipate the social cronyism acts of the left. Conservatives must become as clever as their advisories on the left. Know that when something like the bathroom issue comes up, that the left is setting you up for a fall. Use their actions against them. Don’t be sucked in by the “target” of the cronyism. Example “Gun Violence” is a set up for those defending the Second Amendment. You are made out to be uncaring about those killed by guns. Not true? Then speak to that in logical terms and do not react emotionally to having your rights taken away or suspended. How to make the move vacant? Agree with senseless gun violence. Leave the second amendment off the table. Let the left make you the victim of having your constitutional rights infringed.

There are many examples that can be given. However, knee jerk emotional responses to the left’s Social Cronyism is playing into their hands. Stop, think and then act.

Dry Rot in Academia

Dry Rot in Academia

By Thomas Sowell

Jason Riley has now joined the long and distinguished list of people invited -- and then disinvited -- to give a talk on a college campus, in this case Virginia Tech.    

Mr. Riley is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and, perhaps most relevantly, author of a very insightful book titled "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed."   

In short, Jason Riley's views on race are different from the views that prevail on most college campuses. At one time, 50 years ago or earlier, exposing students to a different viewpoint was considered to be a valuable part of their education. But that was before academia -- and the education system in general -- became virtually a monopoly of the political left.   

  

Today one can literally go from kindergarten to becoming a graduate student seeking a Ph.D., without ever hearing a vision of the world that conflicts with the vision of the left.   

Conservative critics who object on grounds that the views of the left are wrong miss the point. Regardless of whose views become a monopoly, education suffers. John Stuart Mill understood this back in the middle of the 19th century.   

As a young Marxist in college during the 1950s heyday of the anti-Communist crusade led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, I had more freedom to express my views in class, without fear of retaliation, than conservative students have on many campuses today.   

After being invited by conservative students to give talks at various colleges, Jason Riley has then been surprised at how little those conservative students have said during the question and answer periods after these talks. But a Wellesley student explained: "You get to leave when you're done. We have to live with these people until we graduate."   

Even liberal professors can be adversely affected by the narrow groupthink that prevails. Without an opposition to keep them on their toes, they can develop sloppy habits of dismissing or even demonizing differing viewpoints, instead of practicing and teaching their students how to come to grips with opposing beliefs.   

A well-known Harvard professor, for example, recently referred to Justice Clarence Thomas by remarking: "He'll say he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. I say I was in the right place at the right time."   

It so happens that I first met Clarence Thomas back in 1978, when he was a young lawyer in Missouri. In all these years, I have never heard him say anything even resembling what has been blithely attributed to him by this Harvard professor.    

On the contrary, Justice Thomas has attributed his good fortune to his grandfather who raised him, especially in his autobiography, "My Grandfather's Son."  

  

When he was sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court, he brought the nuns who had taught him in school, down in Georgia, to the ceremony in Washington, at his own expense, to let them know that what they had done for him was appreciated, and had not been in vain.  

There is no reason why our Harvard professor has to agree with Justice Thomas' judicial philosophy or his social views. But, as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once put it: "You're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts."   

It was much the same story when a faculty member at the University of California at Santa Barbara referred to economist Walter Williams as someone "committed to the welfare of the top few."    

It so happens that I have known Walter Williams since 1969. In all those years, I have never once known him to express the slightest concern for the welfare of rich people. But what I have seen repeatedly has been his expressing his concern for people who are poor, both in words and in deeds.   

As an economist, Professor Williams knows that high tax rates on investors chase investments -- and American jobs -- overseas, where American working people cannot get those jobs. But, whether the academic in Santa Barbara agrees or disagrees with that analysis, it is no good for him, or for his students, to dismiss opposing views by misrepresenting them.  

These are just a few samples of the intellectual and moral dry rot on the many campuses across the country where the groupthink of the left substitutes for education.   

Hardline Leftist are Suffering from a Mental Disorder?

Hardline Leftist are Suffering from a Mental Disorder?

With Barack Obama regarded by many as dangerously narcissistic, here comes a veteran psychiatrist making the case that the mental-emotional world of leftists is actually tantamount to a mental disorder.

For more than 40 years, Rossiter has diagnosed and treated over 1,500 patients as a board-certified clinical psychiatrist and examined more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases, both state and federal, as a forensic psychiatrist retained by numerous public offices, courts and private attorneys. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago.

Rossiter explains with great clarity why the kind of liberalism displayed by Barack Obama during his presidency can only be understood as a psychological disorder.

"Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Rossiter. "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."

"A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity - as liberals do," he says. "A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population - as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and overtaxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state - as liberals do."

Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:

• creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
• satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
• augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
• Rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.

"The roots of liberalism - and its associated madness - can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."

WHAT POLITICAL PARTIES ARE NOT

WHAT PARTIES AREN’T
We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Political parties are not ideological vessels, but rather competitive organizations.

The Democratic Party does not exist to be liberal or even to see liberal policies enacted. It exists to help its members win elections. And neither does the Republican Party exist for the sake of conservatism, but rather for beating Democrats.

Think of it this way: McDonald’s doesn’t exist to make hamburgers; it exits to make money for its shareholders. If the company could make more money selling its surprisingly not-terrible pizza or damnably delicious rib-shaped patties of ground meat or even, saints preserve us, lobster, it would focus on those things. But it can’t, so it doesn’t.

What makes parties different, of course, is that they are rather like employee-owned enterprises. And most of the employees are volunteers.

You can’t win the election without first attracting your core group, and since the field at hand is government, the point of attraction tends to be ideological. That’s become truer with the substantial breakdown of regional and white ethnic party loyalty and the rise of the independents.

Republicans mostly found their winning brand for the past two generations was conservatism as defined by the concepts of limited government, “traditional” values and a muscular foreign policy. The party would attract core support on these arguments and then try to repurpose the ideas for a more ideologically diverse general electorate.

The primaries were all red meat and then in the general, campaigns suddenly tried to turn it into McLobster. Results, let’s just say, varied.

After the defeats there were, invariably, two solutions proffered, and both were ideological. Conservatives called for a rightward turn toward purity while moderates said it was time to curb conservatism and steer toward the center.

These ideas always misunderstood two things. First, a party’s ideology is not a function of central planning. It bubbles up from local and state elections and officeholders. There is no dial on the wall at the RNC. Second, ideology matters much less in general elections than people believe.

Americans will elect very liberal people, they will elect very conservative people, but they always elect people.

President Obama didn’t beat Mitt Romney because Romney was too conservative or not conservative enough. Obama beat Romney because voters liked and trusted Obama more. The same was true in 2004 with George W. Bush and John Kerry. Voters have wisely learned to ignore most of what politicians say and instead focus on them as individuals.

Watching Ted Cruz’s candidacy melt like a Slush Puppie on a hot radiator is perhaps the best proof of all. No candidate in the GOP race had a platform more carefully crafted to appeal to the broadest spectrum of the party’s conservative base. And yet, the voters he was counting on went for the guy who defends Planned Parenthood.

Back before social media turned political discourse into the rhetorical equivalent of standing next to a speaker tower at a Fugazi concert, RINO (Republican in Name Only) was a preferred epithet from conservatives for moderate Republicans. But it’s not accurate.

Republicanism doesn’t equal conservatism. It wasn’t like Gov. John Kasich, the moderate ideological Slush Puppie of 2016, is less of a Republican than Cruz or the rest of the field. He is just less conservative.

The big question now is what happens when someone who is neither a conservative – at least in the traditional sense of the past 60 years – nor a Republican loyalist takes over the party.

So far, Trump is not shy about bucking conservatives on subjects like trade, increasing the minimum wage, foreign policy and tax rates. But he’s also doing what his nominee predecessors have done before: invoking the process and party loyalty.

“Well, I understand Jeb Bush. I was rough with Jeb Bush. And I think if I was Jeb Bush, I wouldn’t vote for me either, if you want to know the truth…” Trump said Sunday on ABC News. “But, you know, they should do that. They’re Republicans.”

In that last sentence, Trump shows a better grasp of the process than most. Bush and others didn’t sign on to the Conservative Party or the Polite Party or the Qualifications Party. “They’re Republicans,” as Trump said. And Trump just ate their party, like the last morsel of a McRib.

Paul Ryan and others can fight all they want, but they’re not selling hamburgers anymore.

The question now for Trump is whether he can succeed with his personality and the party’s new populist product. Whether conservatives ever get their party back, and maybe even whether the GOP can stay in business, will depend on the answer.

Trump will win presidency in a landslide

Trump will win presidency in a landslide

Over 50 years ago, at the knee of his successful Brooklyn-born real estate father Fred, Donald J. Trump was learning about the real estate business.

After high school, military academy, then Wharton School of Business, graduating with a degree in economics, he moved to Manhattan. There he began a career, building an empire, and a brand, that led him to be one of the wealthiest and well-known businessmen in America, if not the world.

The fact that establishment politicians, journalists, talking heads, lobbyists, bankers, Chamber of Commerce members and other assorted status quo interest groups do not understand the man, or his broad and deep appeal, is testimony to his viability and attractiveness to millions of voters.

Now that he has vanquished 14 (yes, 14) career politicians, a physician and a former businesswoman to become the Republican Party nominee, the aforementioned (largely) continue to claim Trump can never win a general election.

Wrong. Trump in a landslide.

H. Lee Lapole, Loveland. Ohio