{"id":124944,"date":"2009-12-31T15:38:42","date_gmt":"2009-12-31T20:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2010653134_responsetocolumnistejdionnejr.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2009-12-31T15:38:42","modified_gmt":"2009-12-31T20:38:42","slug":"response-to-columnist-e-j-dionne-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/124944","title":{"rendered":"Response to columnist E.J. Dionne Jr."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Health care is only the beginning of oligarchy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Syndicated columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., in the course of bemoaning the mostly negative results of our so-called national health-care debate, recently put it very bluntly \u2014 we are no longer a normal democracy [\u201cPut aside your anger over the health-care bill, progressives, and get busy,\u201d Seattletimes.com, Editorials \/ Opinion, Dec. 21].<\/p>\n<p>He went on to state, \u201cpower has passed from the majority to tiny minorities, sometimes minorities of one.\u201d And clearly Sen. Joe Lieberman\u2019s posturing and preening has paid off for him.<\/p>\n<p>As we see with national health care, so we see with just about every other issue important to the general public: a political structure that confers the powers of obstruction on tiny minorities, sometimes minorities of one.<\/p>\n<p>That is not representative democracy. It is oligarchy.<\/p>\n<p>Things have come to a very alarming political pass in the U.S. when a very mainstream and rational columnist like Dionne, can advocate changing or even abolishing the Senate, and not come across as extreme.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, he makes eminent sense.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 Frank W. Goheen, Camas<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Health care is only the beginning of oligarchy Syndicated columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., in the course of bemoaning the mostly negative results of our so-called national health-care debate, recently put it very bluntly \u2014 we are no longer a normal democracy [\u201cPut aside your anger over the health-care bill, progressives, and get busy,\u201d Seattletimes.com, Editorials [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}