{"id":4499,"date":"2015-01-14T06:36:11","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T11:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=4499"},"modified":"2015-01-14T06:36:11","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T11:36:11","slug":"for-sale-to-the-highest-bidder-how-middle-eastern-governments-are-buying-off-the-u-s-political-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=4499","title":{"rendered":"For Sale to the Highest Bidder \u2013 How Middle Eastern Governments Are Buying Off the U.S. Political Process"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"post-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/libertyblitzkrieg.com\/2015\/01\/13\/for-sale-to-the-highest-bidder-how-middle-eastern-governments-are-buying-off-the-u-s-political-process\/\" target=\"_blank\">For Sale to the Highest Bidder \u2013 How Middle Eastern Governments Are Buying Off the U.S. Political Process<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>The quaint notion\u00a0that the U.S. political system remotely resembles either a Republic or a Democracy should have been abandoned long ago. Any lingering illusions were surely extinguished last year, when an academic study\u00a0empirically proved that the USA is nothing more than a corrupt oligarchy. I highlighted this groundbreaking piece of research in the post:\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/libertyblitzkrieg.com\/2014\/04\/16\/new-report-from-princeton-and-northwestern-proves-it-the-u-s-is-an-oligarchy\/\">New Report from Princeton and Northwestern Proves It: The U.S. is an Oligarchy<\/a><\/strong>. Here\u2019s an excerpt from the study itself:<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of\u00a0majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually\u00a0have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features\u00a0central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association,\u00a0and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated\u00a0by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America\u2019s\u00a0claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While having super rich and powerful American oligarchs\u00a0running\u00a0the show is one thing, the reality of the situation is actually far worse. Thanks to a recent article in\u00a0<em>Vice<\/em>, we now know that foreign governments are aggressively\u00a0employing\u00a0their extraordinary wealth to advance their\u00a0interests\u00a0here on American soil. In many cases, these are autocratic regimes, which not only do not care about the best interests of the nation, they are often caught actively funding ISIS and even perpetuating 9\/11 itself. Here are some excerpts\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.vice.com\/read\/the-middle-east-on-shopping-spree-to-hire-former-members-of-congress-112?utm_source=vicetwitterus\">from the piece<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For Sale to the Highest Bidder \u2013 How Middle Eastern Governments Are Buying Off the U.S. Political Process The quaint notion\u00a0that the U.S. political system remotely resembles either a Republic or a Democracy should have been abandoned long ago. Any lingering illusions were surely extinguished last year, when an academic study\u00a0empirically proved that the USA [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1769,446,522,1092,843],"class_list":["post-4499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-corruption","tag-isis","tag-middle-east","tag-oligarchy","tag-us-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4500,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4499\/revisions\/4500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}