The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy

JeanwahJeanwah Posts: 6,363
edited February 2010 in A Moving Train
by Noam Chomsky
www.planetarymovement.org
Feb 5, 2010

Jan. 21, 2010, will go down as a dark day in the history of U.S. democracy, and its decline.

On that day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban corporations from political spending on elections—a decision that profoundly affects government policy, both domestic and international.

The decision heralds even further corporate takeover of the U.S. political system.

To the editors of The New York Times, the ruling “strikes at the heart of democracy” by having “paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.”

The court was split, 5-4, with the four reactionary judges (misleadingly called “conservative”) joined by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. selected a case that could easily have been settled on narrow grounds and maneuvered the court into using it to push through a far-reaching decision that overturns a century of precedents restricting corporate contributions to federal campaigns.

Now corporate managers can in effect buy elections directly, bypassing more complex indirect means. It is well-known that corporate contributions, sometimes packaged in complex ways, can tip the balance in elections, hence driving policy. The court has just handed much more power to the small sector of the population that dominates the economy.

Political economist Thomas Ferguson’s “investment theory of politics” is a very successful predictor of government policy over a long period. The theory interprets elections as occasions on which segments of private sector power coalesce to invest to control the state.

The Jan. 21 decision only reinforces the means to undermine functioning democracy.

But cost-cutting cannot be seriously undertaken when largesse is showered on the drug companies, and healthcare is in the hands of virtually unregulated private insurers—a costly system peculiar to the U.S.

The Jan. 21 decision raises significant new barriers to overcoming the serious crisis of healthcare, or to addressing such critical issues as the looming environmental and energy crises. The gap between public opinion and public policy looms larger. And the damage to American democracy can hardly be overestimated.
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Comments

  • Godfather.Godfather. Posts: 12,504
    sounds like a Republican hostile take-over. :lol:
    big corp's have been in my opinion have pulling strings for a long time now,
    in Rockford Il. Hamilton Sundstrand Aerospace closed down a plant to out source,
    before it all came to be the State and the union (IAM) togeather offered a $ 80 million package to keep
    the company there and it was shot down by United Techologys Corp (owners of Hamilton Sundstrand).
    so anyway get ready for some radical corprate power to be seen in the comming years,also the unions will
    take a huge hit with this.

    Godfather.
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