The breathtaking scope of legalized corruption:
“A 2014 Sunlight Foundation study, ‘Fixed Fortunes: Biggest corporate political interests spend billions, get trillions,’ found that ‘Between 2007 and 2012, 200 of America’s most politically active corporations spent a combined $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions,’ and received ‘$4.4 trillion in federal business and support,’ in return—$760 in benefits for every dollar spent. That return ‘represents two-thirds of the $6.5 trillion that individual taxpayers paid into the federal treasury'” [Salon].
And if you think this is only a Republican problem, think again:
“The issue is not Hillary Clinton’s Wall St links but her party’s core dogmas” [Thomas Frank, Guardian].
Unfortunately, focusing on the money being mustered behind Hillary Clinton by various lobbyists and Wall Street figures misses this point. The problem with establishment Democrats is not that they have been bribed by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the rest; it’s that many years ago they determined to supplant the GOP as the party of Wall Street – and also to bid for the favor the tech industry, and big pharma, and the telecoms, and the affluent professionals who toil in such places.
In truth, our affluent, establishment Democrats can no more be budged from their core dogmas – that education is the solution to all problems, that professionals deserve to lead, that the downfall of the working class is the inevitable price we pay for globalization – than creationists can be wooed away from the tenets of “intelligent design”. The dogmas are simply too essential to their identity. Changing what the Democratic party stands for may ultimately require nothing less than what a certain Vermonter is calling a “political revolution”.
Hat tip to Naked Capitalism