Dossier mode

Ten documented tests point the same way: the government answers concentrated wealth quickly and generously, and answers the public's core asks with a bipartisan refusal.

Each test is FACT, caveats and all. The verdict that follows is graded as the editorial judgment it is.

routed to the top 1% over the decade by the 2025 tax law (~$500B of it to the top 0.1%) — while the CBO finds the poorest tenth of households lose ~$1,200 a year and the richest tenth gain ~$13,600.

CBO; Center for American Progress (JCT methodology)

When concentrated wealth asks, the yes is fast — sometimes bypassing Congress entirely.

In May 2026 the Space Force awarded SpaceX a $4.16B 'Golden Dome' contract days after a ~$2.29B award (~$22B cumulative federal contracts). In its first six weeks the administration approved nearly $12B in arms sales to Israel — including ~$4B expedited on March 1, 2025 via emergency authority that waived congressional review. Precise framing: these are contracts and arms sales, not lump-sum 'aid,' and US military aid to Israel is a bipartisan constant.

The 2025 tax law routes over $1 trillion to the top 1% while the poorest households lose income.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (July 2025) directs >$1T in cuts to the top 1% over the decade (~$500B to the top 0.1%). The top 1% average a ~$69,000 annual cut; the bottom decile loses ~$1,200/yr (mainly Medicaid/SNAP cuts) while the top decile gains ~$13,600. The law adds an estimated $3.4–4.1T to deficits.

Working people pay income tax; the largest corporations largely don't — Amazon's federal rate was 1.4%.

In 2025 Amazon paid roughly 1.4% of its US income in federal corporate tax against a 21% statutory rate — a gap ITEP values at ~$17.5B in subsidies for that single year. Precise framing: this is tax legally avoided, not money appropriated to Amazon. It is the mirror image of the individual code that hands the top 1% a trillion dollars.

For-profit health care is bipartisan policy — leaders of both parties defend it and reject universal coverage.

The US is the only high-income country without universal coverage, ranks last on health-system performance, and spends ~2x per person. Biden said he 'would veto' Medicare for All; Pelosi asked 'how do you pay for that?'; McConnell vowed it wouldn't pass. The health sector out-lobbies every other ($739M in 2023); ACA-marketplace insurers deny ~19% of in-network claims; Americans hold at least $220B in medical debt.

Industry writes the food-and-drug rules: companies self-certify their own additives and fund the review of their own drugs.

Under the 'Generally Recognized As Safe' loophole a company can declare an additive safe with no FDA review (~99% of new food chemicals since 2000 entered this way; GAO 2010). Industry user fees fund ~66% of the FDA's human-drug review program, and the revolving door is documented. Red Dye No. 3, banned in the EU in 1994, was permitted in US food until January 2025. FAIRNESS: the FDA did act on Red 3 (2025) and BVO (2024) — the capture is structural, not total.

Residents are ordered to subsidize the data centers rising around them — in tax breaks and on their power bills.

Data centers drove 63% of the price increase in PJM's 2025/26 capacity auction (~$9.3B recovered from customers). Subsidies run ~$2M per data-center job; Meta's Louisiana 'Hyperion' center won a $3.3B tax break for ~500 permanent jobs (~$6.6M each). FAIRNESS: some regulators (Virginia's SCC, Georgia's PSC) are now acting to shift more of these costs onto the data centers.

Pay was cut loose from productivity, and housing became an asset class — CEOs make 281× a typical worker, and half of renters can't afford rent.

In 2024 CEOs of large US firms were paid 281× a typical worker (up from 21× in 1965); from 1979–2025 net productivity rose 87.3% while typical pay rose 32.7% (EPI attributes the split to policy, not market inevitability). And a record 22.4M renter households — about half of all US renters — were cost-burdened in 2022, the highest ever (Harvard JCHS). FAIRNESS: JCHS finds rental markets finally cooling as new supply arrives, but cost burdens remain at all-time highs.

The defense number clears every year at record size, above the request — and punishment is outsourced for profit.

The FY2026 NDAA authorized ~$855.7B for the military (~$882.6B across national defense), roughly $8B more than the President requested — for a department GAO has kept on its High-Risk List for financial management since 1995. Separately, for-profit prison companies held 90,873 people (~8%, across 27 states + federal) at end-2022, and most ICE detainees are in privately owned/operated facilities. Precise framing: the NDAA authorizes rather than appropriates, and the 8% private-prison share has fallen since 2012.

On the questions where it can be tested, the government is not, in the main, 'for the people.'

We grade this as the editorial judgment it is — argued from the record, not an objective measurement of a normative ideal. Ten documented tests point the same way: when concentrated wealth asks, the answer is fast and generous; when the public asks for universal health care, honest food, fair taxes, or protection from cost-shifting, the answer is a bipartisan no. We stop short of FACT because 'for the people' is an aspiration one can weigh but not measure, and because the government does sometimes act for the public (the 2025 dye ban; regulators reining in data-center costs). But the weight, and its bipartisan consistency, is heavy.