Of the Corporations, for the Corporations, by the Corporations

There are a large number of people here who think that's hyperbole. I think they're all in denial. I'm afraid I'm going to make your eyes glaze over with all the links, but they're compelling and evidence that my claim is anything but hyperbole. Anyone got a cogent argument that demonstrates how wrong I am? I'd love to see it.

Corporatocracy /ˌkɔrpərəˈtɒkrəsi/, not to be confused with Corporatism, is a term used as an economic and political system controlled by corporations or corporate interests.[1] It is a generally pejorative term often used by critics of the current economic situation in a particular country, especially the United States.[2][3] The term has been used by liberal and left-leaning critics, but also some economic libertarian critics and other political observers across the political spectrum.[2][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] Economist Jeffrey Sachs described the United States as a corporatocracy in his book The Price of Civilization.[18] He suggested that it arose from four trends: weak national parties and strong political representation of individual districts, the large U.S. military establishment after World War II, big corporate money financing election campaigns, and globalization tilting the balance away from workers.[18]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy

Sachs is right, we are now living in a coporatocracy. It's worse now than it was 5 years ago. No, I'm Not blaming it on President Obama. He's essentially one more cog in the machine- a big important cog, but still a cog. Nevertheless, his administration succumbs to corporate interests on a regular basis.

Supreme Court decisions over the last few years have strengthened the corporate hand mightily. Just this week, this decision was handed down. I posted about it but I don't believe it got even one response. It's a biggie.

The Supreme Court Just Made It Easier for Big Business to Screw the Little Guy
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/consumers-get-screwed-scotus-american-express-decision-small-biz

Of course there's Citizen's United which made it laughably easy for big money to influence elections- as if it wasn't easy enough.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_United

Itchingcarpenter just posted this:

The E.P.A. Backs Off on regulating Factory Farms
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3066622

And there's this other EPA goodie posted by Will Pitt:

EPA drops fracking pollution study...So I guess I must be a racist...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3059829

Here's a recent piece from the NYT:

Corporations Find a Friend in the Supreme Court

NOT long after 10 a.m. on March 27, a restless audience waited for the Supreme Court to hear arguments in the second of two historic cases involving same-sex marriage. First, however, Justice Antonin Scalia attended to another matter. He announced that the court was throwing out an antitrust class action that subscribers brought against Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company.

Almost no one in the courtroom paid attention, despite Justice Scalia’s characteristically animated delivery, and the next day’s news coverage was dominated by accounts of the arguments on same-sex marriage. That was no surprise: the Supreme Court’s business decisions are almost always overshadowed by cases on controversial social issues.

But the business docket reflects something truly distinctive about the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. While the current court’s decisions, over all, are only slightly more conservative than those from the courts led by Chief Justices Warren E. Burger and William H. Rehnquist, according to political scientists who study the court, its business rulings are another matter. They have been, a new study finds, far friendlier to business than those of any court since at least World War II.

In the eight years since Chief Justice Roberts joined the court, it has allowed corporations to spend freely in elections in the Citizens United case, has shielded them from class actions and human rights suits, and has made arbitration the favored way to resolve many disputes. Business groups say the Roberts court’s decisions have helped combat frivolous lawsuits, while plaintiffs’ lawyers say the rulings have destroyed legitimate claims for harm from faulty products, discriminatory practices and fraud.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/business/pro-business-decisions-are-defining-this-supreme-court.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

One more, just written from the Harvard Business Review:

The Business-Friendly Legislature Known as SCOTUS

<snip>

The most impressive piece of evidence for this assertion (and the backup for the New York Times article cited above) is a new Minnesota Law Review article by the aforementioned trio of Epstein, Landes, and Posner (respectively, a political scientist who teaches law too, an economist who teaches at a law school, and a famously prolific judge and writer) documents the Court's attitude toward business with painstaking detail. By looking at Supreme Court cases going back to 1946 where businesses faced non-business opponents, and smaller businesses faced bigger ones, they rated the Court and the justices on (big-)business-friendliness. By their measure, the Roberts years have been the most business-friendly, by far, since 1946, and Roberts and colleague Samuel Alito the two most business-friendly justices.

http://blogs.hbr.org/fox/2013/06/the-business-friendly-legislature-known-as-scotus.html

And it's not only the Supreme Court:

Elizabeth Warren Hits 'Big Corporate Interests' For Putting Efforts 'Toward Influencing The Courts'
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/15/elizabeth-warren-courts_n_3446914.html


I could keep posting about the pro-corporate slant of the SCOTUS from here until next Wednesday, but don't let me bore you with that, let's move on to Congress:

Do I really need to post links to establish that Congress is largely in corporate clutches?

On the state level, there's the blandly named American Legislative Exchange Council, as malevolent a corporate organization as you can find:

United States of ALEC — A Follow-Up

A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council — presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.

In state houses around the country, hundreds of pieces of boilerplate ALEC legislation are proposed or enacted that would, among other things, dilute collective bargaining rights, make it harder for some Americans to vote, and limit corporate liability for harm caused to consumers — each accomplished without the public ever knowing who’s behind it. Using interviews, documents, and field reporting, the episode explores ALEC’s self-serving machine at work, acting in a way one Wisconsin politician describes as “a corporate dating service for lonely legislators and corporate special interests.”

Former health care industry executive Wendell Potter says, “Even though I’d known of [ALEC] for a long time, I was astonished. Just about everything that I knew that the health insurance industry wanted out of any state lawmaker was included in that package of bills.”

Following up on a 2012 report, this update includes new examples of corporate influence on state legislation and lawmakers, the growing public protest against ALEC’s big business-serving agenda, and internal tactics ALEC is instituting to further shroud its actions and intentions.

<snip>

http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-united-states-of-alec-a-follow-up/