Government

Corruption, Crony Capitalism and Trampling on the Bill of Rights Lead to Widespread Distrust

by WashingtonsBlog

Trust in government has plummeted … due to institutional corruption. And see this.

More and more Americans realize that the government has bailed out the super-elite of the big banks,  and enabled their fraud … while  hosing the little guy again and again (and again).

People see that we have socialism for the rich, but cut-throat, sink-or-swim capitalism for everyone else.   They see that we have a malignant synergism between D.C. politicians and giant companies. Look here, here, here.

At the same time, the government spies on virtually all Americans, and has threatened to assassinate or indefinitely detain American citizens on U.S. soil.

Folks are starting to wake up to the fact that Obama is a lot like Bush. Indeed, he’s continued many of the horrible Bush programs he promised to stop, covered up for Cheney and company, and allowed even worse inequality and trampling of the Constitution.

So people are starting to see that the mainstream Republican and Democratic parties are virtually identical regarding core issues including:

And that any apparent difference is just a scripted show.

No wonder a new poll by Pew shows that only 3 in 10 Americans trust our government:

For the past seven years, a period covering the final two years of the Bush administration and President Obama’s first term, no more than about three-in-ten Americans have said they trust the federal government to do the right thing always or most of the time.

Our Jan. 2013 survey found only 26% saying they can trust government always or most of the time, while 73% say they can trust the government only some of the time or never. Majorities across all partisan and demographic groups express little or no trust in government

As CBS news notes:

The Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. has found that fewer Americans than ever trust the decisions made by the government.

Indeed, we noted in February that more and more Americans see the government as a threat, rather than a protector:

For years, “conservative” pollsters have said that Americans are furious at the government:

Liberals may be tempted to think that this is a slanted perspective.   But non-partisan and liberal pollsters are saying the same thing:

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Jan. 9-13 among 1,502 adults, finds that 53% think that the federal government threatens their own personal rights and freedoms while 43% disagree.

In March 2010, opinions were divided over whether the government represented a threat to personal freedom; 47% said it did while 50% disagreed. In surveys between 1995 and 2003, majorities rejected the idea that the government threatened people’s rights and freedoms.

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The survey finds continued widespread distrust in government. About a quarter of Americans (26%) trust the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time; 73% say they can trust the government only some of the time or volunteer that they can never trust the government.

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Majorities across all partisan and demographic groups express little or no trust in government.

Obviously, Democrats are currently more trusting in government than Republicans.  For example:

The Pew Research Center’s 2010 study of attitudes toward government found that, since the 1950s, the party in control of the White House has expressed more trust in government than the so-called “out party.”

But given that even a growing percentage of Dems believe that government is a threat to their freedom, things are indeed getting interesting …