How the Corporate Right Hijacked America's Courts to Enrich the Top 1 Percent

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AlterNet / By Joshua Holland

How the Corporate Right Hijacked America's Courts to Enrich the Top 1 Percent
America's political-economy is caught in a vicious cycle, with concentrated wealth at the top leading to outsized political power.

May 10, 2012 |


For a generation, America's political-economy has been gripped in a vicious cycle. Those at the top of the economic pile have taken an ever-growing share of the nation's income, and then leveraged that haul into ever-greater political power, which they have in turn used to rewrite the rules of “the market” in their favor. Wash, rinse and repeat.

It's the result of years of institutional investments by the corporate Right to advance a reactionary legal regime in America's courts. In the process, the richest Americans now have their hands in both our legislative and judicial branches, while working America has become a voiceless stepping stone.

“The more pernicious effect of economic inequality comes indirectly through its impact on political inequality,” says MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, co-author of Why Nations Fail. In an interview with Think Progress, Acemoglu explained what he called, “a general pattern throughout history”:

When economic inequality increases, the people who have become economically more powerful will often attempt to use that power in order to gain even more political power. And once they are able to monopolize political power, they will start using that for changing the rules in their favor.

This dynamic is best understood in the realm of electoral politics. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/news/155379/how_the_corporate_right_hijacked_america%27s_courts_to_enrich_the_top_1_percent/

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