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For Republican senators there is no evidence of responsiveness to middle-income constituents, much less low-income constituents. The views of high-income constituents, however, seem to have received a great deal of weight from Republican senators [on the issues studied]—almost three times as much … as for Democrats. Meanwhile, Democrats seem to have responded at least as strongly to the views of middle-class constituents as to the views of high-income constituents—though, once again, there is no evidence of any responsiveness to the views of low-income constituents.23

The point is that even when translating the wishes of constituents into congressional votes, money counts and the poor are effectively dispossessed. This is more than a congressman aiming for the middle or the median voter. It is, instead, catering disproportionately to those who will finance their campaigns. At least the Democrats evidence some responsiveness to the middle of the income distribution.

We can see the results of this representation bias in case after case: the “temporary” tax cuts for the rich are extended; the unpopular war in Afghanistan continues; the public option for health care is dropped; alternative energy technologies are left undeveloped; the largest banks get megabailouts and use them to continue to pay outrageous subsidies. In all of these cases, public opinion has run strongly against the decisions made by the bipartisan congressional majority in Washington.

The Role of Corporate Spin

The power of the corporatocracy is supported not only by campaign financing and lobbying, but also by relentless public relations spin. A number of studies in recent years have deconstructed the ways in which key sectors—military contractors, oil and coal, health care insurers, and Wall Street–use public relations firms and disinformation campaigns to disguise the damage they are doing to society. Major corporate media outlets, led by Rupert Murdoch’s vast News Corporation empire of newspapers and television networks, aid and abet the process. Murdoch himself is a personal investor in the oil sector (together with former Vice President Dick Cheney) as well as other industries, so the PR interest is often direct personal gain as well as corporate gain.24

In many recent cases where industries are causing environmental and public health damage, such as acid rain from coal-fired power plants, ozone depletion from CFCs, and climate change from fossil fuel use, industry lobbyists have deployed slick, well-funded public relations campaigns to spread antiscientific propaganda in order to forestall federal regulations. Big Oil and Big Coal are the most notorious abusers, and The Wall Street Journal has been the most consistent enabler of antiscientific propaganda. The main strategy has been for the industry lobby to sow confusion in the public mind by making it appear that well-established scientific findings are in fact open to major doubt and scientific dispute. Industry has shown time and again that it is possible to find people with a PhD in their title to sign off on just about any fraudulent scientific claim, if the fee is right. And experience has shown repeatedly that a poorly informed public is highly vulnerable to manipulation by a determined corporate lobby.

Climate change is the latest example of this relentless corporate assault on science. ExxonMobil, Koch Industries (the largest privately owned oil company in the United States), News Corporation, and other companies have conspired for years to spread unscientific nonsense about climate change, mainly around the theme that human-induced climate change is not yet an established scientific consensus. Several dogged journalists such as Ross Gelbspan and researchers such as Naomi Oreskes have laid bare the web of big corporate money that funds this ongoing PR effort. To a trained eye, the PR effort is rather pathetic: egregiously antiscientific and even puerile in its misuse of basic facts. Yet for a confused public, it works. Around half of the American people deny the reality of human-induced