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After Republicans tried to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics in a closed door session a few days ago, people flooded Congress with calls and messages of disapproval and fortunately the GOP decided to not pursue it any more for the time being.
This is perfect validation of Margaret Mead's words of wisdom, "Never doubt that a small group of dedicated citizens can change the world."
This is if we are well informed as citizens. So many times the corporate media doesn't inform us as well as they should. Fortunately, in this case the actions of these Republicans in Congress came to light and the people's voices made a huge difference in the outcome.
There are many other instances where this is not the case. For example, how many people are aware that Florida Senator, Marco Rubio and others in Congress in 2014 inserted a provision into a 2014 spending bill that limited risk corridor provisions for the Affordable Care Act? The risk corridor provisions were part of the ACA because health insurance companies could no longer refuse patients with pre-existing conditions. If their profits fell short of expectations to cover medical expenses in the first three years under the health law, they were to be compensated for their losses. What eliminating most of this provision did was force health insurance companies to raise their rates. Everyone then blamed Obama for the ACA being ineffective. People running for president often talked about this very issue but never mentioned the real reason our rates were going up so fast.
When the corporate media doesn't cover issues like this adequately, the American public can easily get the wrong impression of many issues and thus our voices are silenced by the omission of the whole truth.
Here is a good article by the New York Times concerning the risk corridor provisions of the Affordable Care Act: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/us/politics/marco-rubio-obamacare-affordable-care-act.html?_r=0
