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Original Content at https://www.opednews.com/articles/New-Gallup-Poll-Shows-Only-by-Rob-Kall-Billionaires_Citizens-United_Congress_Congress-Contempt-Of-140621-571.html (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). |
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June 21, 2014
New Gallup Poll Shows Only 7% of Americans Trust Congress-- My Take-- video and transcript
By Rob Kall
Press.TV asked me to comment on the latest Gallup poll, which found the lowest score in decades for American's level of trust of congress-- down to seven percent. It was over 40% forty years ago. This article includes the video, then the transcript of my interview.
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Press.TV asked me to comment on the latest Gallup poll, which found the lowest score in decades for American's level of trust of congress-- down to seven percent. It was over 40% forty years ago.
Based on my interview, they titled the piece:
US two-party system dysfunctional: Analyst
What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV: First of all what do you see as the underlying reasons for this?
Kall: Well first I have to laugh because I guess these seven percent are pretty dumb. It is hard for me to imagine anybody really having much trust in today's Congress.
I think one of the reasons is the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court and the following ruling that came out-- they basically have allowed billionaires and big corporations and really even money from outside of the United States to totally flood the political arena, so that Congress is now basically built with the group of people who have bought their way in.
This current election is going to be the worse one ever, where billionaires are putting in hundreds of millions of their own money to buy Congress. How can anybody respect that? How can anybody trust that?
When I talk to anybody who cares about what is happening in America I say we cannot trust politics, you need to vote but don't depend on it because voting alone is not going to do the job. It is going to take more than that in America for people to make changes happen.
And as long as every billionaire and multimillionaire can influence the elections disproportionately, we are going to have these kinds of problems. It has been forty years since forty percent of the Americans trusted Congress and it is only going to get worse, and frankly it should.
Press TV: Well what is interesting about this poll that has come out and the results is that a lot of people are saying they are concerned because Congress is struggling to even pass routine measures.
Now do you find the fault in the fact that we have a partisan system in Congress as some people may believe or do you see the problem in the structure of Congress or as you mentioned earlier is this the result of outside influence on Congress?
Kall: Well the trust in Congress, I think, is lost because people are saying that nothing is getting done and nothing is getting done because there is a very partisan situation there and it is so broken.
For example, more than a million more Democrats voted for members of Congress than Republicans, yet the Republicans have the majority. Now that is because of what is called gerrymandering where people make these bizarre shapes for districts that people vote in and that is another reason that we see such a broken political system.
I don't see much hope for the future in the near-term either, unless something really major happens and it really means that the US is going to become more and more dysfunctional for the people.
Now there are people who it is working just fine for it. If you are very wealthy then the US is serving you well. It is the 99.9 percent of the people who are not doing well, that are being dis-served by Congress functioning like it is or not functioning like it is.
Press TV: Do you think then if the current bipartisan situation in Congress is changed, more independent, for instance, lawmakers do enter Congress then things would change for the better?
Kall: Well my favorite member of Congress is Bernie Sanders and he is an independent and a socialist actually and I am a lefty. I think that we need a lot more of that. I think the two-party system is a very dysfunctional one, but it has also protected itself so that it makes it almost impossible for a third party candidate to enter the arena, let alone win.
But that is probably what we need. It has been about forty years since new nations or nations adopting new constitutions copied the US constitution. That used to be the case but not anymore. The US constitution is out of date and it is not working in some really serious ways particularly the way the two-party system exists.
Authors Bio:
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.
Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel
Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel
Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.
Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.
To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.
For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.
Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table
Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..
To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.
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His quotes are here
Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.
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