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Poll: 4 out of 5 Americans don't trust Washington

Quote:

Public confidence in government is at one of the lowest points in a half century, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans say they don't trust the federal government and have little faith it can solve America's ills, the survey found.

....

The survey found that just 22 percent of those questioned say they can trust Washington almost always or most of the time and just 19 percent say they are basically content with it. Nearly half say the government negatively effects their daily lives, a sentiment that's grown over the past dozen years.

My first thought upon reading that headline is "so one out of five people don't follow the news."

I haven't heard any figures, but it may be worse in Australia. At least, a favourite Australian pastime is rubbishing the government. I've learnt to be very skeptical too. My Australian family watch a lot of the Yes Minister TV show, and worse yet, have it from several people in government that everything on that show is true in concept!

Yes Minister was reportedly Mrs Thatcher's favourite show!

I work for the government, albeit small local government. The number of people saying the small local government is screwing them over has grown a great deal. We haven't changed any of our laws There are certain media news feed that feed into the fear and hate of government and the more dramatic and off the wall those medias are the more people want to watch them, it's like the National Enquirer has taken over the news or something.

I think Ara-anna has hit the nail upon its head rather firmly. When you have a national news outlet like FOX News broadcasting nationwide 24/7/365 in a nearly feverish state preaching against "the government" is it no wonder that some folks swallow the message? I shudder to think if we would even have a USA today had FOX been around with its technology at the time of George Washington or Lincoln or FDR.

Other polls show a high level of support for specific government services such as Social Security. So the message is mixed at best.

http://www.nasi.org/press/releases/2010 ... ort-social

Or people are sick and tired of the same old bipartisan, political hacks, go with the flow entrenched bs corrupt system bullshit screwing up the country.

One or the other.

That one gets my vote.

or Both.

Holbytla wrote:

Or people are sick and tired of the same old bipartisan, political hacks, go with the flow entrenched bs corrupt system bullshit screwing up the country.

I agree.

And your solution to this problem?

Or maybe it's enough to sit around and bitch?

Vison offers this regarding the allegation that Americans do not trust their government

Quote:

And your solution to this problem?

Or maybe it's enough to sit around and bitch?

Vison that would depend on your goal. If your goal is to get the majority of people to trust government, then you would take one course of action. If your goal is to further this mistrust and encourage people to not trust government, then perhaps bitching about it is part of that program.

I would maintain, and have provided support in my link, that people do indeed support government in that they support specific functions and programs of government when surveyed about them. I offered the poll on Social Security as one specific example.

Polls which ask vague questions about supporting the vastness and totality of THE GOVERNMENT or WASHINGTON open themselves up to the charge that they are trying to shape the answer they want. If we include the last 16 months of Republican partisanship and obstructionism as WASHINGTON DC, then I most certainly do not support that and am unhappy with that. Does that mean that I do not trust Washington? No - it means I do not trust something that is going on in Washington.

It has been my experience, and I've worked for the government for many years now, that people support the government 100% as long as we the government are paving the road in front of their house, running sewer lines to their house, putting out the fires and protecting their property. But if we do that for anyone else...anyone else, we are evil commie bastard. Funny how that works.

They love love love the government as long as the government is doing their shit, but they hate the government if heaven forbid we do anything to better the whole community, say like put sidewalks in the poor part of town. Oh yes the city can subsidize the subdivision improvements (sewer, water, lights, sidewalks, roads) to the subdivision that is going to have the $300k houses in it, but have ARRA pay a pitance of the same amount of money to put sidewalks (only) in down in the poor neighborhood...oh boy the tea partiers are ragin.

So my conclusion is this...if the subdivision is being proposed by right wing conservatives, then the tax payers can foot the bill for all the infrastructure improvements (not a normal practice) at the cost of $6 million plus dollars, it's all good. However if a municipality gets $300,000 to improve sidewalks in the poor part of town from ARRA, then its the devil evil commie liberal bastards using 'our' tax money unwisely. Yes this happened.

vison wrote:

And your solution to this problem?

Or maybe it's enough to sit around and bitch?

I think we have seen the first step in the solution when Massachusetts elected a republican senator for the first time in eons.
The solution imo is to keep voting people out of office until they finally get a clue.

Finally get a clue about what exactly?

Before election day, how did the people of Massachusetts know they were even electing a Republican into office when Brown utterly refused to use the identification label on any of his advertising?

I am working on a political campaign right now and have a box filled with literature from many candidates from the last election cycle. Overwhelmingly, the ones who fail to identify their party seem to be Republicans far more than the occasional Democrat. I wonder why that is?

Ara has experience at the local level of town government. She has a valuable story there.

Get a clue about people being tired of lifelong entrenched politicians that have managed to aid us with wonderful things like;

the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac fiasco
the bail outs of private companies
stupidly high taxes that fund among other things, ill advised wars, paying for illegal alien anythings, pork barrel politics, bridges to nowhere etc.

I think that if the government won't enact some type of term limits, it is high time we do it ourselves making the pols accountable for their actions or non-actions.

Time for change and all that.

And Ron Brown is nothing more than someone who isn't Martha Coakley. That's all.
He isn't long for the world of Washington either.

We currently have laws which provide for the election of all government officials at regular time periods. Anytime the people decide that a current elected politician is no longer worth, they can take the action to vote them out.

The last time I looked - although I do not live in Massachusetts - Martha Coakley was NOT the Senator from Massachusetts when she ran for election against Brown.

Martha was the princess in waiting to inherit the Kennedy throne and she ran her campaign that way.
That is why she was upended and never will be "the" senator from Massachusetts. She did what no other republican in the last 40+ years could do. The epitome of false security and ineptitude was what caused the people to finally say enough of the typical Washington crap, and let's put any Joe blow in for now just to end the cycle.

And yeah the law says we have elections, and yeah the people are speaking.

I think people should be drafted to serve. A lottery: you're mayor this year, your neighbour is senator next year, etc.

Sort of like jury duty, but worse. They'd have to pass a law so your employer won't fire you because you got called to Washington to serve.

No, you'd get big gold stars on your shirt and everyone would be proud to hire you.