The Supreme Court's decision on Citizens United v. FEC paves the way for corporatocracy replacing democracy.
One prominent examples is CITGO Petroleum Company — once the American-born Cities Services Company, but purchased in 1990 by the Venezuelan government-owned Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. The Citizens United ruling could conceivably allow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has sharply criticized both of the past two U.S. presidents, to spend government funds to defeat an American political candidate, just by having CITGO buy TV ads bashing his target.
And it’s not just Chavez. The Saudi government owns Houston’s Saudi Refining Company and half of Motiva Enterprises. Lenovo, which bought IBM’s PC assets in 2004, is partially owned by the Chinese government’s Chinese Academy of Sciences. And Singapore’s APL Limited operates several U.S. port operations. A weakening of the limit on corporate giving could mean China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and any other country that owns companies that operate in the U.S. could also have significant sway in American electioneering.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/...
You remember when the xenophobes went ape shit over the Dubai Ports World controversy? Well, maybe they should look into this a little deeper.
It also allows for foreign state-owned corporate political power.
Browsing the list of the Fortune 500, you have to notice that many of these companies that do business with America have no allegiance to the American people.
http://money.cnn.com/...
Sony Corporation is Japanese-based and would love to have a say in federal and state electronic energy efficiency regulations.
The United Kingdom's GlaxoSmithKline and Germany's Bayer Corporation would like to ease up on those US FDA guidelines.
There was that British Petroleum deal with Libya for the Lockerbie bomber not too long ago. But hey, it is a corporation - only human, right?
UK's Aegis Defence Services would also like a seat at the Pentagon to plan the next series of wars. Maybe something in Nigeria will do, or better yet, Yemen. We don't want to upset South Africa's De Beers diamond company or Royal Dutch Shell's oil interests in the region.
That's right for all the tea-bagging you cried about when screaming, "Freedom!" you neglected to see that knife coming from behind.
UPDATE - The specter of corporatocracy is very real. It has always been with us and has gone by another name in the past - Fascism.
A small example of what may come, but in larger proportions, is the Walt Disney Company. The corporation has a large degree of governmental powers in the Orlando area known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District.
Within the district, the corporation has the legal authority to establish its own building codes, power plants and utilities, fire departments, and to seize land outside the district under eminent domain.
The corporation protects itself from outside interference by permitting only its employees to own land within the district, keeping voting power to elect district managers (Disney executives) within company control, and thereby preventing restriction on company actions and projects within the district. Basically, a private nation.
And from the comments...
Corporations are experts in every aspect of advertising and influencing the public. Corporate opinion is constantly expressed in the marketing of their products, a skill that cannot be matched by any other agency attempting to compete on the same level. Thousands of visual arts studios and seasoned copywriters are employed by corporations routinely in the course of doing their daily business.
The SCOTUS by their decision have unleased all of these propaganda weapons to be used without reservation to effect the course of our Congressional and Presidential elections. No one with a glimmer of common sense can equate a newspaper article, or a 30 second pac sponsored TV ad with the slick creative highly influential promotion that could be turned out by a corporation's marketing group. It's not just the corporate money, it will be the use and incorporation of their own creative skills and facilities to produce material designed to influence and or confuse the voters on issues or candidates at the ballot box.
In this day of the expansion of multi-national corporations operating around the world, this decision by the SCOTUS is pure insanity. They must have been completely blinded by their ideology, otherwise they would have factored in the current global aspect of American business before they made this very dangerous decision.
I believe the SCOTUS in this instance legislated from the bench, attempting to bend the Freedom of speech provisions of the U.S. Constitution. Do you think for a minute that the founding fathers would agree with a decision that would expose the daily business of their beloved American Congress to overwhelming foreign influence under the specious reasoning that a state created corporate entity is a "person" entitled to unlimited free speech. Such an argument would be laughable if it wasn't for the immediate danger to the country created by this highly flawed action by the SCOTUS.....
Otherwise