(Community Matters) Good gosh, I’m not only a capitalist, I’m an enthusiastic capitalist and free market advocate. Sure I recognize the imperfections, and they’re the best systems that exist. We must regulate and govern to ameliorate their gross flaws, especially the externalizing of costs (espec pollution) AND increasingly exploitive economic clout in American politics.
I am NOT a believer that corporations “are people too” and enjoy constitutional rights – that’s just bullshit. Corporations are creations of the state, a privilege explicitly granted to encourage economic activity while granting individuals limited liability in exchange for taxes.
After the bastardization of corporate rights by a runaway Supreme Court, we’re seeing unabashedly, grossly exploitive electoral activities. These are barely being hidden thanks to Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission. Former elected officials are bailing to make millions as the paid concubines of major corporate interests – insurance interests financing launch of the Tea Party to protect insurance profits, utilities and oil & gas producers financing anti-renewable energy initiatives through clandestine, false campaigns, former philanthropic icons openly, unapologetically spending hundreds of millions trying to protect themselves from prosecution for foreign corrupt practices and in order to save billions in estate taxes. We’ve got to take back American politics from corporate interests or we’ll find our country as exploited as a played out, Congo copper mine.
Community Matters 