The Thai government should immediately lift the state of emergency to create conditions for national reconciliation that would allow the building of a new political consensus and the holding of peaceful elections if the country is to return to stability.
Bridging Thailand’s Deep Divide, the latest report from the International Crisis Group, says the protracted tussle between the royalist establishment and those allied with ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has left the country deeply polarised. In April and May it sparked the most violent political confrontations in decades, killing at least 90 people, injuring nearly 2,000 and inflicting deep wounds on the national psyche. Shortly before authorising a violent crackdown on anti-government protestors by the army, the establishment-backed government of Abhisit Vejjajiva unilaterally offered to opposition groups a “roadmap” to national reconciliation. It now persists with this plan despite having created an atmosphere of repression where basic rights of the pro-Thaksin “Red Shirt” movement are denied by emergency laws.
“There is little prospect that genuine reconciliation will succeed when the offer comes from the same government directly responsible for the recent deadly crackdown on the Red Shirts and their ongoing repression”, says Jim Della-Giacoma, Crisis Group’s South East Asia Project Director. “The first gesture that might demonstrate a renewed commitment to building bridges would be to unconditionally and immediately lift the state of emergency”.
Empowered by the emergency decree imposed in 24 provinces – one third of the country – authorities have prohibited Red Shirts’ demonstrations, shut down their media, detained their leaders and banned financial transactions of their alleged financiers. Reconciliation when the government’s partners in resolving this conflict are on the run and denied their political rights is impossible. While the Red Shirts have no opportunity for open and peaceful expression because of draconian laws, their legitimate frustrations are being forced underground and possibly towards illegal and violent actions.
Establishing facts of the recent violence and holding perpetrators of the crimes on all sides accountable is another critical step on the road to reuniting the country. The Independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by former attorney general Kanit na Nakhon should not only seek truth but also initiate prosecutions of those it finds to have committed violent acts. The government’s use of terrorism charges to go after Red Shirt leaders as well as Thaksin is inappropriate for what was mostly a peaceful political movement that did not target civilians. It is also short-sighted as these are the very people that will need to be brought into a national reconciliation process to address the difficult issues facing the country.
In the long run, Thailand needs to think deeply about much broader political reforms of its system of government, laws and constitution, including the role of the monarch and military. Wealth needs to be shared, justice delivered equitably, and power decentralised.
“An election that should be held as soon as possible will be the beginning and not the end of this process”, says Robert Templer, Crisis Group’s Asia Program Director. “Only a new government, with the legitimacy of a fresh mandate, if it is accepted by all sides, can move forward with such a complex reform agenda”.
Divisions and ideological debates generated by Jama’ah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT), an organisation founded by Indonesia’s best-known radical cleric, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, show the weakness of Indonesia’s jihadi movement.
Indonesia: The Dark Side of Jama’ah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT), the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines the many facets of JAT, an ostensibly above-ground organisation whose inner circle has had and continues to have ties to fugitive extremists. It has been in the spotlight since May when three of its officials were accused of helping finance a terrorist training camp in Aceh.
“JAT has a public face, advocating full implementation of Islamic law, condemning democracy as illegitimate and preaching jihad”, says Sidney Jones, Crisis Group’s Senior Adviser. “That face gives ‘plausible deniability’ to the involvement of senior JAT officials in more covert activities”. She notes that Lutfi Haedaroh alias Ubeid, arrested while fleeing the Aceh camp, was on JAT’s executive council.
JAT was founded in 2008 as a vehicle for Abu Bakar Ba’asyir’s absolute leadership. In fact Ba’asyir’s insistence on full decision-making authority within JAT makes it unlikely that involvement of senior officials in clandestine activities could have taken place without his approval. The briefing examines JAT’s structure and ideology and analyses the disputes that have erupted between JAT and other radical organisations, including Jema’ah Islamiyah (JI), exemplifying not only the fractures in the jihadi movement but also Ba’asyir’s own declining influence.
There is no indication that violent extremism is gaining ground in Indonesia, even though the constant shifting and realignment of groups will undoubtedly produce more terrorist plots in the future. “We are seeing the same old faces finding new packages for old goods”, says Jim Della-Giacoma, South East Asia Project Director. “Recruitment continues, but there’s more community pushback”. Ba’asyir was refused permission by the local Islamic council to speak in Banten province last month.
The truth is that the jihadi project in Indonesia has failed. The far bigger challenge for the country is to manage the aspirations of those who joined JAT for its public, non-violent message: that democracy is antithetical to Islam; that only an Islamic state can uphold the faith; and that Islamic law must be the source of all justice.
In August 1999, the Timorese people voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence from Indonesia in a UN-sponsored referendum. The lead-up to the polls and its aftermath were marred by crimes against humanity and other serious human rights. Most of those suspected of such crimes are still at large in Indonesia. In this report, Amnesty International sets out its recommendations to the governments of Timor-Leste and Indonesia, calling on them to develop and implement strategies that fully address the legacy of impunity for such crimes.
Secretary Clinton (June 16, 2009): "The ninth annual Trafficking in Persons Report sheds light on the faces of modern-day slavery and on new facets of this global problem. The human trafficking phenomenon affects virtually every country, including the United States. In acknowledging America’s own struggle with modern-day slavery and slavery-related practices, we offer partnership. We call on every government to join us in working to build consensus and leverage resources to eliminate all forms of human trafficking." -Full Text
It is inevitable. The muscles weaken. Hearing and vision fade. We get wrinkled and stooped. We can’t run, or even walk, as fast as we used to. We have aches and pains in parts of our bodies we never even noticed before. We get old.
It sounds miserable, but apparently it is not. A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older, and researchers are not sure why.
“It could be that there are environmental changes,” said Arthur A. Stone, the lead author of a new study based on the survey, “or it could be psychological changes about the way we view the world, or it could even be biological — for example brain chemistry or endocrine changes.”
The telephone survey, carried out in 2008, covered more than 340,000 people nationwide, ages 18 to 85, asking various questions about age and sex, current events, personal finances, health and other matters.
The survey also asked about “global well-being” by having each person rank overall life satisfaction on a 10-point scale, an assessment many people may make from time to time, if not in a strictly formalized way.
Finally, there were six yes-or-no questions: Did you experience the following feelings during a large part of the day yesterday: enjoyment, happiness, stress, worry, anger, sadness. The answers, the researchers say, reveal “hedonic well-being,” a person’s immediate experience of those psychological states, unencumbered by revised memories or subjective judgments that the query about general life satisfaction might have evoked.
The results, published online May 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were good news for old people, and for those who are getting old. On the global measure, people start out at age 18 feeling pretty good about themselves, and then, apparently, life begins to throw curve balls. They feel worse and worse until they hit 50. At that point, there is a sharp reversal, and people keep getting happier as they age. By the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18.
In measuring immediate well-being — yesterday’s emotional state — the researchers found that stress declines from age 22 onward, reaching its lowest point at 85. Worry stays fairly steady until 50, then sharply drops off. Anger decreases steadily from 18 on, and sadness rises to a peak at 50, declines to 73, then rises slightly again to 85. Enjoyment and happiness have similar curves: they both decrease gradually until we hit 50, rise steadily for the next 25 years, and then decline very slightly at the end, but they never again reach the low point of our early 50s.
Other experts were impressed with the work. Andrew J. Oswald, a professor of psychology at Warwick Business School in England, who has published several studies on human happiness, called the findings important and, in some ways, heartening. “It’s a very encouraging fact that we can expect to be happier in our early 80s than we were in our 20s,” he said. “And it’s not being driven predominantly by things that happen in life. It’s something very deep and quite human that seems to be driving this.”
Dr. Stone, who is a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, said that the findings raised questions that needed more study. “These results say there are distinctive patterns here,” he said, “and it’s worth some research effort to try to figure out what’s going on. Why at age 50 does something seem to start to change?”
The study was not designed to figure out which factors make people happy, and the poll’s health questions were not specific enough to draw any conclusions about the effect of disease or disability on happiness in old age. But the researchers did look at four possibilities: the sex of the interviewee, whether the person had a partner, whether there were children at home and employment status. “These are four reasonable candidates,” Dr. Stone said, “but they don’t make much difference.”
For people under 50 who may sometimes feel gloomy, there may be consolation here. The view seems a bit bleak right now, but look at the bright side: you are getting old.
Google has publicly released a list of the top 1000 websites in the world, raking the Facebook social networking site as the leading Web property by unique users.
According to Google's AdPlanner stats, Facebook scores more than 540 million unique visitors per month, reaching a sizeable chunk of 35.2 percent of the Internet population.
Facebook not only has the most unique visitors in Google's stats, but also the most page views per month, a whopping 570 billion views, ahead of other properties like Craigslist (#49) with 14 billion views.
The AdPlanner list does not contain any figures for most of Google's own properties, like YouTube, Gmail, News, or Search, but gives an interesting insight into which top Websites do not serve advertising.
Wikipedia (#4) and Mozilla (#10) are the only two Websites in Google's top 10 not to display advertising. A noteworthy entry on the 18th spot in the AdPlanner rankings is Twitter (#18), with 98 million unique visitors per month, which doesn't serve ads.
Destinations portals such as Yahoo.com (#2), MSN.com (#5), Baidu (#8), Sina.com.cn (#11) and 163.com (#15) are also high on the list, probably due to the fact that many people use these sites as their home page.
Search engines also occupy several top places in the AdPlanner list (excluding Google's own Search). Live.com (#2) has over 370 million uniques per month, Bing.com (#13) with 110 million, and Ask.com (#20) with 88 million.
Blogging is also high on Google's list, with Blogspot (Blogger) situated in the 7th place with 230 million uniques, and WordPress.com in the 12th spot with 120 million uniques.
Several news sources made it into the top 100 as well: Cnet.com ranks as #35, BBC.co.uk on #43, CNN.com at #64, and NYTimes.com on #83.
Other entries worth noting among Google's top 1000 websites are Microsoft.com (#6), Adobe.com (#14), Amazon.com (#22), eBay.com (#24), Apple.com (#27) and Hotmail.com (#30).
TWITTER users now broadcast about 55 million Tweets a day. In just four years, about 10 billion of these brief messages have accumulated.
Not a few are pure drivel. But, taken together, they are likely to be of considerable value to future historians. They contain more observations, recorded at the same times by more people, than ever preserved in any medium before.
“Twitter is tens of millions of active users. There is no archive with tens of millions of diaries,” said Daniel J. Cohen, an associate professor of history at George Mason University and co-author of a 2006 book, “Digital History.” What’s more, he said, “Twitter is of the moment; it’s where people are the most honest.”
Last month, Twitter announced that it would donate its archive of public messages to the Library of Congress, and supply it with continuous updates.
Several historians said the bequest had tremendous potential. “My initial reaction was, ‘When you look at it Tweet by Tweet, it looks like junk,’ said Amy Murrell Taylor, an associate professor of history at the State University of New York, Albany. “But it could be really valuable if looked through collectively.”
Ms. Taylor is working on a book about slave runaways during the Civil War; the project involves mountains of paper documents. “I don’t have a search engine to sift through it,” she said.
The Twitter archive, which was “born digital,” as archivists say, will be easily searchable by machine — unlike family letters and diaries gathering dust in attics.
As a written record, Tweets are very close to the originating thoughts. “Most of our sources are written after the fact, mediated by memory — sometimes false memory,” Ms. Taylor said. “And newspapers are mediated by editors. Tweets take you right into the moment in a way that no other sources do. That’s what is so exciting.”
Twitter messages preserve witness accounts of an extraordinary variety of events all over the planet. “In the past, some people were able on site to write about, or sketch, as a witness to an event like the hanging of John Brown,” said William G. Thomas III, a professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “But that’s a very rare, exceptional historical record.”
Ten billion Twitter messages take up little storage space: about five terabytes of data. (A two-terabyte hard drive can be found for less than $150.) And Twitter says the archive will be a bit smaller when it is sent to the library. Before transferring it, the company will remove the messages of users who opted to designate their account “protected,” so that only people who obtain their explicit permission can follow them.
A Twitter user can also elect to use a pseudonym and not share any personally identifying information. Twitter does not add identity tags that match its users to real people.
Each message is accompanied by some tidbits of supplemental information, like the number of followers that the author had at the time and how many users the author was following. While Mr. Cohen said it would be useful for a historian to know who the followers and the followed are, this information is not included in the Tweet itself.
But there’s nothing private about who follows whom among users of Twitter’s unprotected, public accounts. This information is displayed both at Twitter’s own site and in applications developed by third parties whom Twitter welcomes to tap its database.
Alexander Macgillivray, Twitter’s general counsel, said, “From the beginning, Twitter has been a public and open service.” Twitter’s privacy policy states: “Our services are primarily designed to help you share information with the world. Most of the information you provide to us is information you are asking us to make public.”
Mr. Macgillivray added, “That’s why, when we were revising our privacy policy, we toyed with the idea of calling it our ‘public policy.’ ” He said the company would have done so but California law required that it have a “privacy policy” labeled as such.
Even though public Tweets were always intended for everyone’s eyes, the Library of Congress is skittish about stepping anywhere in the vicinity of a controversy. Martha Anderson, director of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program at the library, said, “There’s concern about privacy issues in the near term and we’re sensitive to these concerns.”
The library will embargo messages for six months after their original transmission. If that is not enough to put privacy issues to rest, she said, “We may have to filter certain things or wait longer to make them available.” The library plans to dole out its access to its Twitter archive only to those whom Ms. Anderson called “qualified researchers.”
BUT the library’ s restrictions on access will not matter. Mr. Macgillivray at Twitter said his company would be turning over copies of its public archive to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, too. These companies already receive instantaneously the stream of current Twitter messages. When the archive of older Tweets is added to their data storehouses, they will have a complete, constantly updated, set, and users won’t encounter a six-month embargo.
Google already offers its users Replay, the option of restricting a keyword search only to Tweets and to particular periods. It’s quickly reached from a search results page. (Click on “Show options,” then “Updates,” then a particular place on the timeline.)
A tool like Google Replay is helpful in focusing on one topic. But it displays only 10 Tweets at a time. To browse 10 billion — let’s see, figuring six seconds for a quick scan of each screen — would require about 190 sleepless years.
Mr. Cohen encourages historians to find new tools and methods for mining the “staggeringly large historical record” of Tweets. This will require a different approach, he said, one that lets go of straightforward “anecdotal history.”
In the end, perhaps quality will emerge from sheer quantity.
Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.
By almost every conceivable measure Americans are less positive and more critical of government these days. A new Pew Research Center survey finds a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government – a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash, and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials.
Rather than an activist government to deal with the nation’s top problems, the public now wants government reformed and growing numbers want its power curtailed. With the exception of greater regulation of major financial institutions, there is less of an appetite for government solutions to the nation’s problems – including more government control over the economy – than there was when Barack Obama first took office.
The public’s hostility toward government seems likely to be an important election issue favoring the Republicans this fall. However, the Democrats can take some solace in the fact that neither party can be confident that they have the advantage among such a disillusioned electorate. Favorable ratings for both major parties, as well as for Congress, have reached record lows while o pposition to congressional incumbents, already approaching an all-time high, continues to climb.
The Tea Party movement, which has a small but fervent anti-government constituency, could be a wild card in this election. On one hand, its sympathizers are highly energized and inclined to vote Republican this fall. On the other, many Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say the Tea Party represents their point of view better than does the GOP.
These are the principal findings from a series of surveys that provide a detailed picture of the public’s opinions about government. The main survey, conducted March 11-21 among 2,505 adults, was informed by surveys in 1997 and 1998 that explored many of the same questions and issues. While a majority also distrusted the federal government in those surveys, criticism of government had declined from earlier in the decade. And the public’s desire for government services and activism was holding steady.
This is not the case today. Just 22% say they can trust the government in Washington almost always or most of the time, among the lowest measures in half a century. About the same percentage (19%) says they are “basically content” with the federal government, which is largely unchanged from 2006 and 2007, but lower than a decade ago.
Opinions about elected officials are particularly poor. In a follow-up survey in early April, just 25% expressed a favorable opinion of Congress, which was virtually unchanged from March (26%), prior to passage of the health care reform bill. This is the lowest favorable rating for Congress in a quarter century of Pew Research Center surveys. Over the last year, favorable opinions of Congress have declined by half – from 50% to 25%.
While job ratings for the Obama administration are mostly negative, they are much more positive than the ratings for Congress; 40% say the administration does an excellent or good job while just 17% say the same about Congress.
Federal agencies and institutions also are viewed much more positively than is Congress. Nonetheless, favorable ratings have fallen significantly since 1997-1998 for seven of 13 federal agencies included in the survey. The declines have been particularly large for the Department of Education, the FDA, the Social Security Administration, as well as the EPA, NASA and the CDC. In terms of job performance, majorities give positive ratings to just six of 15 agencies or institutions tested, including the military (80% good/excellent) and the Postal Service (70%).
As was the case in the 1997 study of attitudes about government, more people say the bigger problem with government is that it runs its programs inefficiently (50%) than that it has the wrong priorities (38%). But the percentage saying government has the wrong priorities has increased sharply since 1997 – from 29% to 38%.
Perhaps related to this trend, the survey also finds a rise in the percentage saying the federal government has a negative effect on their day-to-day lives. In October 1997, 50% said the federal government had a positive effect on their daily lives, compared with 31% who said its impact was negative. Currently, 38% see the federal government’s personal impact as positive while slightly more (43%) see it as negative.
Rising criticism about government’s personal impact is not limited to the federal government. Just 42% say their state government has a positive effect on their daily lives, down from 62% in October 1997. There is a similar pattern in opinions about the impact of local government – 51% now see the impact of their local government as positive, down from 64% in 1997.
Despite the attention captured by demonstrations and other expressions of anti-government sentiment, Americans’ feelings about the federal government run more toward frustration rather than anger. In the current survey, 56% say they are frustrated with the federal government, 21% say they are angry and 19% say they are basically content. Since October 1997, majorities have expressed frustration with the federal government, with a single notable exception; in November 2001, two months after the 9/11 attacks, just 34% said they were frustrated with the federal government.
And despite the frustration most Americans feel with government, a majority of the public (56%) says that if they had a child just getting out of school they would like to see him or her pursue a career in government; and 70% say the government is a good place to work, unchanged from October 1997.
However, along with the frustrated majority, which has remained fairly steady over the years, the survey also identifies a small but growing segment of the public that holds intense anti-government views. The proportion saying that they are angry with the federal government has doubled since 2000 and matches the high reached in October 2006 (20%).
Over this period, a larger minority of the public also has come to view the federal government as a major threat to their personal freedom – 30% feel this way, up from 18% in a 2003 ABC News/Washington Post survey. Intense anti-government sentiment is highly concentrated among certain groups – Republicans, independents and others who lean Republican, and those who agree with the Tea Party movement.
For example, 43% of Republicans say the federal government presents a major threat to their personal freedom, as do 50% of independents who lean Republican and fully 57% of those who agree with the Tea Party movement. That compares with just 18% of Democrats, 21% of independents who lean Democratic and just 9% of those who disagree with the Tea Party movement.
The Perfect Storm
The current survey and previous research have found that there is no single factor that drives general public distrust in government. Instead, there are several factors – and all are currently present. First, there is considerable evidence that distrust of government is strongly connected to how people feel about the overall state of the nation.1 Distrust of government soars when the public is unhappy with the way things are going in the country.
The recent downward trend in trust in government began in the fall of 2008, when public satisfaction plunged amid the financial crisis. In early October 2008, 11% said they were satisfied with the way things were going in this country – the lowest measure in more than two decades of Pew Research Center polling. That same month, a CBS/New York Times survey found just 17% saying they could trust the government in Washington to do what is right, which matched an all-time low seen previously only in the summer of 1994.
A second element is presidential politics. Trust in government is typically higher among members of the party that controls the White House than among members of the “out” party. However, Republicans’ views of government change more dramatically, depending on which party holds power, than do Democrats’. Republicans are more trusting of government when the GOP holds power than Democrats are when the Democrats are in charge.
This pattern is particularly evident in the Obama era. The president’s policies – especially the year-long effort to overhaul the health care system – have served as a lightning rod for Republicans. Currently, just 13% of Republicans say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right, nearly equaling a low point reached in June 1994 during the Clinton administration (11%).
A third factor is that a particular subgroup of independents, who are financially pressed, chronically distrustful of government and who typically lean to the Republican Party, appears to be especially angry today. Pew political typology surveys in the past have labeled these individuals as “disaffecteds.” This group may explain, in part, why at least as many Republican-leaning independents (37%) as conservative Republicans (32%) say they are angry with the government. And identical percentages of Republican-leaning independents and conservative Republicans (53% each) say they agree with the Tea Party movement.
Finally, record discontent with Congress – and dim views of elected officials generally – have poisoned the well for trust in the federal government. Undoubtedly, this has contributed to growing discontent with government even among groups who are generally more positive about it, such as Democrats. Today, many fewer Democrats say they trust government than did so during the later Clinton years. And just 40% of Democrats have a favorable impression of the Democratic Congress – the lowest positive rating for Congress ever among members of the majority party.
For the most part, the public sees the members of Congress themselves, rather than a broken political system, as the problem with the institution. A majority says (52%) that the political system can work fine, it’s the members of Congress that are the problem; 38% say that most members of Congress have good intentions, but the political system is broken.
Public opinion about elected officials in Washington is relentlessly negative. Favorable ratings for the Democratic Party have fallen by 21 points – from 59% to 38% – over the past year and now stand at their lowest point in Pew Research surveys. The Republican Party’s ratings, which increased from 40% last August to 46% in February, have fallen back to 37%.
When asked about a series of criticisms of elected officials in Washington – that they care only about their careers, are influenced by special interests, are unwilling to compromise, and are profligate and out-of-touch – large majorities (no fewer than 76%) agree with each of the statements. And while 56% say they would like their child to pursue a career in government, far fewer (36%) say the same about their child making a career in politics.
It’s Not Just Government
While anti-government sentiment has its own ideological and partisan basis, the public also expresses discontent with many of the country’s other major institutions. Just 25% say the federal government has a positive effect on the way things are going in the country and about as many (24%) say the same about Congress. Yet the ratings are just as low for the impact of large corporations (25% positive) and banks and other financial institutions (22%). And the marks are only slightly more positive for the national news media (31%) labor unions (32%) and the entertainment industry (33%).
Notably, those who say they are frustrated or angry with the federal government are highly critical of a number of other institutions as well. For example, fewer than one-in-five of those who say they are frustrated (18%) or angry (16%) with the federal government say that banks and other financial institutions have a positive effect on the way things are going in the country.
Familiar Complaints, Growing Concerns
As in the past, poor performance is the most persistent criticism of the federal government. Fully 74% think that the federal government does only a fair or poor job of running its programs, which is on par with opinions in the late 1990s.
But another strain of criticism is that the federal government’s priorities are misguided and that government policies do too little for average Americans. More than six-in-ten (62%) say it is a major problem that government policies unfairly benefit some groups while nearly as many (56%) say that government does not do enough to help average Americans.
Since 1997, there has been a substantial increase in the percentage saying that middle-class people get less attention from the federal government than they should; 66% say that currently, up from 54% thirteen years ago. In contrast with many opinions about government, this view is shared by comparable percentages of Republicans (68%), Democrats (67%) and independents (65%). Conversely, about half of Republicans (52%), Democrats (52%) and independents (47%) say that Wall Street gets more attention than it should from the federal government.
The size and power of the federal government also engender considerable concern. A 52% say it is a major problem that the government is too big and powerful, while 58% say that the federal government is interfering too much in state and local matters.
The public is now evenly divided over whether federal government programs should be maintained to deal with important problems (50%) or cut back greatly to reduce the power of government (47%). In 1997, a clear majority (57%) said government programs should be maintained. Greater support for cutting back government programs is seen among Republicans (up 14 points) and independents (eight points); by contrast, just 27% of Democrats say programs should be greatly cut back, unchanged from 1997.
A desire for smaller government is particularly evident since Barack Obama took office. In four surveys over the past year, about half have consistently said they would rather have a smaller government with fewer services, while about 40% have consistently preferred a bigger government providing more services. In October 2008, shortly before the presidential election the public was evenly divided on this issue (42% smaller government, 43% bigger government).
The Regulation Paradox
Despite the public’s negative attitudes toward large corporations, most Americans (58%) say that “the government has gone too far in regulating business and interfering with the free enterprise system.” This is about the same percentage that agreed with this statement in October 1997 (56%).
Along these lines, the public opposes government exerting more control over the economy than it has in recent years. Just 40% say this is a good idea, while 51% say it is not. Last March, the balance of opinion was just the opposite. By 54% to 37%, more people said it was a good idea for the government to exert greater control over the economy.
While the public is wary of too much government involvement with the economy, it suspends that concern when it comes to stricter regulation of major financial companies. A clear majority (61%) says it is a good idea for the government to more strictly regulate the way major financial companies do business, which is virtually unchanged from last April (60%).
Government Distrust and Midterm Politics
Hostility toward government seems likely to be a significant election issue and an important element in both midterm voting intentions and turnout. While there was widespread distrust of the federal government in the late 1990s, just 37% went so far as to say that the federal government needed “very major reform.” Today, that figure stands at 53%; increasing numbers of Republicans, independents and Democrats say that government needs very major reform. Still, far more Republicans (65%) and independents (54%) than Democrats (41%) express this view.
Consistent with this pattern of partisanship, anti-government sentiment appears to be a more significant driver of possible turnout among Republicans and independents than among Democrats. Among Republican voters who are highly dissatisfied with government, 83% say they are absolutely certain to vote in the midterm elections; that compares with 67% of Republicans who express low levels of frustration with government. By contrast, there is no difference in intention to vote among Democrats who are highly frustrated with government (63%) and those who are less frustrated (64%).
Perhaps more troubling for Democrats, the link between dissatisfaction with government and voting intentions is at least as strong among independent voters. Independents who are highly dissatisfied with government are far more committed to voting this year than are independents who are less frustrated (78% vs. 58%). Overall, independents voters slightly favor the GOP candidate in their district by a 41% to 34% margin, but those who are highly dissatisfied with government favor the Republican candidate by an overwhelming 66% to 13% margin. Independents who are less dissatisfied with government favor the Democratic candidate in their district (by 49% to 24%), but are much less likely to say they are certain to vote.
While the GOP has a decided enthusiasm advantage predicated on discontent with government, it has a potential unity problem given the appeal of the Tea Party to many of its members. Only about half of Republicans (49%) say that the GOP is the party that best reflects their views right now, while as many as 28% cite the Tea Party. Among independents who lean Republican, the problem is potentially greater: As many say the Tea Party best reflects their views right now (30%) as the GOP (29%), with nearly as many saying nobody is representing their views (28%).
This extensive study of public attitudes toward the federal government serves as an update and expansion of the Pew Research Center’s 1998 Deconstructing Distrust report (http://people-press.org/report/95/how-americans-view-government). Results are based on interviews from four telephone surveys conducted on landline and cell phones of nationwide samples of adults living in the continental United States.
The main survey was conducted March 11-21, 2010 with a sample of 2,505 adults. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. For the total sample of 2,505 interviews, the margin of sampling error that would be expected at the 95% confidence interval is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. The margin of error for subgroups is larger.
Three other surveys of approximately 1,000 adults each were conducted March 18-21, April 1-5 and April 8-11. Interviews were conducted in English. The margin of sampling error for these surveys is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
The HSX is essentially a web-based game that utilizes virtual currency to predict the success (or failure) of a given film, actor, or director. But the virtual prices at which one sees filmic properties being traded on HSX strongly correlates to real-world box-office dollars – and players’ favorites can translate into professional accolades. For example, in 2007, HSX correctly predicted 82% of Academy Award nominees in major categories and around 88% of Oscar winners.
However, HP’s dissection of Twitter streams shows that the social site is more accurate than HSX at determining box-office revenue, even for pre-release movies, by 1-2 percent. This might not seem like a significant statistic, but when one considers the box-office take of a Hollywodd blockbuster, a percent or two can add up to millions.
Also, Twitter provides a free and open stream of data that’s fairly simple to grab and parse – something most competent social media analysts can appreciate. And in addition to simple charts showing URL mentions, retweets, and acceleration curves, Twitter also provides a rich bank of user-generated sentiment – emotionally weighted statements that further show whether users are recommending or slamming a particular movie to their friends.
These sentiments can forecast trends in sales, as well. One movie analyzed in this study, The Blind Side, had an “enormous increase in positive sentiment after release,” reads the paper. The film’s score jumped from 5.02 to 9.65 on HP’s scale. After a “lukewarm” first weekend, with sales around $34 million, the movie “boomed in the next week ($40.1 million), owing largely to positive sentiment.”
As the HP researchers note, “While in this study we focused on the problem of predicting box office revenues of movies for the sake of having a clear metric of comparison with other methods, this method can be extended to a large panoply of topics, ranging from the future rating of products to agenda setting and election outcomes. At a deeper level, this work shows how social media expresses a collective wisdom which, when properly tapped, can yield an extremely powerful and accurate indicator of future outcomes.”
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While job ratings for the Obama administration are mostly negative, they are much more positive than the ratings for Congress; 40% say the administration does an excellent or good job while just 17% say the same about Congress. 
Despite the attention captured by demonstrations and other expressions of anti-government sentiment, Americans’ feelings about the federal government run more toward frustration rather than anger. In the current survey, 56% say they are frustrated with the federal government, 21% say they are angry and 19% say they are basically content. Since October 1997, majorities have expressed frustration with the federal government, with a single notable exception; in November 2001, two months after the 
Over this period, a larger minority of the public also has come to view the federal government as a major threat to their personal freedom – 30% feel this way, up from 18% in a 2003 ABC News/Washington Post survey. Intense anti-government sentiment is highly concentrated among certain groups – Republicans, independents and others who lean Republican, and those who agree with the Tea Party movement.
The current survey and previous research have found that there is no single factor that drives general public distrust in government. Instead, there are several factors – and all are currently present. First, there is considerable evidence that distrust of government is strongly connected to how people feel about the overall state of the nation.
Finally, record discontent with Congress – and dim views of elected officials generally – have poisoned the well for trust in the federal government. Undoubtedly, this has contributed to growing discontent with government even among groups who are generally more positive about it, such as Democrats. Today, many fewer Democrats say they trust government than did so during the later Clinton years. And just 40% of Democrats have a favorable impression of the Democratic Congress – the lowest positive rating for Congress ever among members of the majority party. 
Public opinion about elected officials in Washington is relentlessly negative. Favorable ratings for the Democratic Party have fallen by 21 points – from 59% to 38% – over the past year and now stand at their lowest point in Pew Research surveys. The Republican Party’s ratings, which increased from 40% last August to 46% in February, have fallen back to 37%. 
While anti-government sentiment has its own ideological and partisan basis, the public also expresses discontent with many of the country’s other major institutions. Just 25% say the federal government has a positive effect on the way things are going in the country and about as many (24%) say the same about Congress. Yet the ratings are just as low for the impact of large corporations (25% positive) and banks and other financial institutions (22%). And the marks are only slightly more positive for the national news media (31%) labor unions (32%) and the entertainment industry (33%). 
The size and power of the federal government also engender considerable concern. A 52% say it is a major problem that the government is too big and powerful, while 58% say that the federal government is interfering too much in state and local matters. 
A desire for smaller government is particularly evident since Barack Obama took office. In four surveys over the past year, about half have consistently said they would rather have a smaller government with fewer services, while about 40% have consistently preferred a bigger government providing more services. In October 2008, shortly before the presidential election the public was evenly divided on this issue (42% smaller government, 43% bigger government).
Despite the public’s negative attitudes toward large corporations, most Americans (58%) say that “the government has gone too far in regulating business and interfering with the free enterprise system.” This is about the same percentage that agreed with this statement in October 1997 (56%).
Perhaps more troubling for Democrats, the link between dissatisfaction with government and voting intentions is at least as strong among independent voters. Independents who are highly dissatisfied with government are far more committed to voting this year than are independents who are less frustrated (78% vs. 58%). Overall, independents voters slightly favor the GOP candidate in their district by a 41% to 34% margin, but those who are highly dissatisfied with government favor the Republican candidate by an overwhelming 66% to 13% margin. Independents who are less dissatisfied with government favor the Democratic candidate in their district (by 49% to 24%), but are much less likely to say they are certain to vote.
While the GOP has a decided enthusiasm advantage predicated on discontent with government, it has a potential unity problem given the appeal of the Tea Party to many of its members. Only about half of Republicans (49%) say that the GOP is the party that best reflects their views right now, while as many as 28% cite the Tea Party. Among independents who lean Republican, the problem is potentially greater: As many say the Tea Party best reflects their views right now (30%) as the GOP (29%), with nearly as many saying nobody is representing their views (28%).
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