This particular poll result from Pew Research does a very good job of encapsulating the mood of the country and revealing why the 99 percent movement has managed to gain so much steam over the past month and a half. In these economic hard times strong majorities say that the government doesn’t do enough for regular people such as seniors, the middle class, poor people and children. Yet an overwhelming 64 percent of the country instead feels our government does too much to help the wealthy.

Clearly the American people think there is something extremely wrong with our governments priorities and for good reason. People see that we have privatized the gains for the richest 1 percent but socialized their loses.

When Wall Street collapsed the economy they got bailed out with billions of government dollars while regular people have been forced to suffer through years of unemployment that is over 9 percent.

We have a tax loopholes that allow many of the richest people in the country to pay lower tax rates than secretaries and teachers.

The big banks get effectively zero interest loans from the Federal Reserve but regular Americans can’t get help with their debt.

Millions of Americans struggle to afford health care but the government allows the drug companies to make massive profits by giving them the power to rip off regular people. The federal government does this by refusing to regulate the prices of the monopolies they grant to drug companies and by making it illegal for Americans to buy the drugs at a cheaper price from Canada.

As long as we have a campaign system where politicians are almost totally dependent on begging the wealthy for large campaign donations to get elected, it shouldn’t surprisie anyone that we end up with a government that is most responsive to those needs of those same rich people. We need public campaign financing, so we can have elected officials who don’t need to cater to the wishes of the ultra-wealthy to get money needed to run for office.