I am only going to have one thought today. This is it:
There has been a lot of discussion here about the nature of power – why do people with money affect government policy, while people who vote don’t?
The answer is organization. Corporations and wealthy people, with the exception of “Hollywood,” do not simply throw money at candidates and hope for the best. They assemble it in large quantities, and use it as a lever. They have many other tools at their disposal, but I’ll stick to that.
Organization is effective. That’s why the notion of labor unions is so distasteful to powerful people. They don’t want working people to have real power. They want workers to vote for either party, as their whims dictate, and otherwise not meddle.
Piece of Mindful 
To emphasize the power of organization, roughly 14.7 million union members, of the roughly 110 million working (13%), out of 310 million (<5%) Americans, scare the crap out of a handful of oligarchs and plutocrats. When poor people organize, game over. No wonder neither party wants to utter a sound about America's white, black, brown, red, or yellow poor.
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No wonder why in the corporate news media all political disputes are limited to those that occur between the two sanctioned parties. Since neither supports unions, the matter will rarely be discussed. And EFCA, even with Democrats controlling two branches of government – did not even get introduced.
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You discount the power of voting too much. Our government is pretty close to what the people want: lots of entitlement spending, moderate and increasing regulation. You complain about the lack of unions, but maybe that is something that has come and gone. No one really likes unions. The most anti-union people I know are former/current union members. Union people went out and quickly bought cheap Chinese goods at WalMart and hired illegals to re-roof their house. The union label was something to avoid, signaling over priced, poorly made stuff.
You ascribe too much power to elites behind the scenes. If they were as powerful as you imply, they would keep the economy humming along at a 4% growth rate, thus more to skim.
Organizing is now much easier with modern social media. Already diverse, vibrant youth are organizing social events where they gain material goods at a low price, and vigorously let other racial groups know who is boss. So the future is bright now that the oppressed can more easily organize and get what is rightfully theirs.
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I don’t discount the power of voting. I’m just saying that in the US voters are confused, uneducated and unorganized. Ergo, their votes produce Obama, or W2. Yes, voting can be important, but as it stands right now, it is not.
Polling data indicates that most American workers would liketo join a union, but are not afforded that opportunity. Union people did shop WalMart and buy Chinese, but what choice is there?
I imply that elites have power, but not as much as you think I imply. They are not capable of running our economy, and screw up on a very high and harmful level. They are elite because they have power and know how to use it for their own advantage, but cannot see the big picture.
I wish your last paragraph comes to fruition.
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Careful, Fred. Your Onion-like parody of a moron might be taken seriously by an unsuspecting reader.
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Bob, I can tell by your name that you are a genius. You win every contest you enter.
Stay thirsty, my friend.
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