General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow Rich People Are Taking Over America Robert Reich,
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-selling-of-american-democracy-the-perfect-storm-2012-7Whos buying our democracy? Wall Street financiers, the Koch brothers, and casino magnates Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn.
And theyre doing much of it in secret.
Its a perfect storm:
The greatest concentration of wealth in more than a century courtesy trickle-down economics, Reagan and Bush tax cuts, and the demise of organized labor.
Combined with
Unlimited political contributions courtesy of Republican-appointed Justices Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy, in one of the dumbest decisions in Supreme Court history, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, along with lower-court rulings that have expanded it.
Read more: http://robertreich.org/post/27128864190#ixzz20bBNAQTU
snappyturtle
(14,656 posts)K&R
datasuspect
(26,591 posts)you have to make them scared that socialism or communism has a chance of being represented in Congress.
Sirveri
(4,517 posts)They think they can establish a corporate plutocracy and that media/propaganda and infotech control will enable them to pull it off.
They might be right.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)kentuck
(112,301 posts)in the Republican Party.
KG
(28,760 posts)and, initially, you couldn't vote unless you owned land.
our society has become somewhat more egalitarian, but brothers and sisters, the rich have ALWAYS owned this country...
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)corporation -- the british east india company.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002909671
Although schoolchildren are usually taught that the American Revolution was a rebellion against "taxation without representation," akin to modern day conservative taxpayer revolts, in fact what led to the revolution was rage against a transnational corporation that, by the 1760s, dominated trade from China to India to the Caribbean...
The East India Company's influence had always been pervasive in the colonies. Indeed, it was not the Puritans but the East India Company that founded America. The Puritans traveled to America on ships owned by the East India Company, which had already established the first colony in North America, at Jamestown, in the Company-owned Commonwealth of Virginia, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi...
Most of the members of the British government and royalty (including the king) were stockholders in the East India Company, so it was easy to get laws passed in its interests. Among the Company's biggest and most vexing problems were American colonial entrepreneurs, who ran their own small ships to bring tea and other goods directly into America without routing them through Britain or through the Company. Between 1681 and 1773, a series of laws were passed granting the Company monopoly on tea sold in the American colonies and exempting it from tea taxes. Thus, the Company was able to lower its tea prices to undercut the prices of the local importers and the small tea houses in every town in America. But the colonists were unappreciative of their colonies being used as a profit center for the multinational corporation...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-hartmann/the-real-boston-tea-party_b_187189.html