Did you know that 14 of the Federal cases against the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were dismissed as posing no constitutionally valid question, four of the cases upheld the Constitutionality of the law, while only 3 ruled against it in whole or in part? And the courts upholding the law included the DC Court of Appeals, probably the closest court to the Supremes.

Furthermore, did you know that the individual mandate vilified by Republicans was originally a Republican idea, and was floated by Republicans as an alternative to Hillary's attempt at healthcare reform back in the early 1990's? Until 2010, no law professor thought there would be even a question of constitutionality for the mandate. After all, insurance for cars are mandated and so much more.

I bring up these points (documented in Media Matters 6/25/12), because that's not the impression you would have gotten from any of the mass media, including the New York Times. The decisions asserting unconstitutionality received 58% of the coverage by newspapers, those upholding ACA's constitutionality 29% and the dismissals 13%. Even worse, TV and cable spent 97% of their time on the decisions finding the law unconstitutional.

This demonstrates how skewed our news has become. What are the effects on American opinion? Seventy-two percent in a Gallup poll thought the individual mandate was unconstitutional, only 22% thought it constitutional. According to another poll (Kaiser), 51% thought the Supremes should rule the mandate unconstitutional, while only 27% thought the Supremes should uphold it.

So, what was considered not even worthy of worrying about before 2010, now becomes almost a super-majority against. The media, in other words, is driving American politics in such a conservative direction that Republican positions of the 1990's are not only dismissed, but considered radical socialism.

The same kind of analysis would probably show that support for budget austerity versus more stimulus, has undergone a similar media-driven change. So, despite the warnings from many economists that we shouldn't repeat what happened in 1937, mass and elite opinion insists that we must--both here and in Europe. 1937 was when FDR and the Democratic Congress cut spending, before the Depression was over, creating a massive economic double dip, only corrected once the government began to spend with abandon, first on the Lend-Lease program to support Britain against Nazi attacks and then on our own participation in WWII.

The end of the USSR began when Russians believed the opposite of what the official media told them. In the Roman Empire, what official information there was became increasingly sycophantic the more dysfunctional the Empire became. By the Fifth Century, there were only paeans to the Emperors.

Why this skewed information? To support the elite, what Occupy labeled the 1%, which wants only lowered taxes and less government for itself, so that it can more fully dominate society, as did the Roman Senators in the Fifth Century, those I've labeled 'The Selfish Class.'