Our Shadow Government

Here's a quick quiz for you: has federal funding for NPR been cut recently? How about this one: has the 2010 health care legislation been repealed?

"No" is the answer to both, but I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone make a reference to NPR's funding being cut in conversation. As for the health care reform act, one in five Americans think it has been repealed, and another quarter aren't sure:

Source: KFF.org

In last week's thoroughly depressing Republican presidential debate, Michelle Bachman was again bragging about the bill she introduced to repeal the health care act. It may seem obvious that proposing impossible-to-pass legislation (such a repeal would never make it out of the Senate and if it did would be vetoed immediately) is a waste of time and taxpayer money—but here the benefit is clear: House Republicans managed to convince almost a quarter of the country the representatives had actually done something. They got a ton of political capital for sitting on their asses and appearing to work.

The NPR strategy was similar. Early this year John Boehner relaxed the House rules so that anyone could propose an amendment to the budget bill that was making its way through Congress, and Republicans started tacking on everything from eliminating Planned Parenthood to defunding scientists who research global warming. Of course none of this had a snowball's chance in hell of making it into law, but the lightning rod nature of the issues at hand was the perfect bait for a news media that cares much more about controversy than what is actually important for people to know (Weinergate sells papers, bombing Yemen does not). Thus a whole bunch of people who don't have the time or inclination to follow bills through Congress (i.e., to do the news media's job for them) wound up thinking NPR is on its own now.

Not only are people convinced the government has done things that never happened, they also believe the government hasn't done things it actually has. A report published last August found that 25 percent of people using food stamps, government housing, Medicaid, or welfare said they had never used a government program. Forty percent of those who use Medicare or veteran's benefits said the same, as did 53 percent of those with student loans.

We may have government by the people, but those people have no idea what they're doing.