The corporate news media’s endless stories about “political gridlock” form one big reporting deception, a huge news and information fiction as fraudulent as the infamous “weapons of mass-destruction” reports.

In reality, the allegedly gridlocked left and right vote together more than 90 percent of the time on major U.S. policies.

Be it defense spending, foreign policy, corporate bailouts and subsidies, deficit spending, cuts to social services, or tax cuts and loopholes that help the wealthy, bipartisan cooperation, not gridlock, is the order of the day in Washington. This is particularly true when it comes to passing policies that favor the 1 percent at the expense of the 99 percent.

Quite frankly, without such bipartisan support, such reckless and ruinous policies could never pass.

So one might well ask, with such 1 percent commonality and solidarity on the part of the left and right, where is all this gridlock that is so universally touted and broadcast?

We can only find it in America’s culture war and the gridlock over sexual preferences and personal lifestyle choices. The pro-1 percent left and the pro-1 percent right need some kind of distinguishing issue so we can tell them apart from one another. Otherwise, with their joint 1 percent policies, they are indistinguishable.

Stephen F. Kelley is a resident of Portland.