Jim Hightower: The Corporate Takeover of the 2012 Presidential Election

[marmar]

The Corporate Takeover of the 2012 Presidential Election


The unregulated energy hucksters behind the infamous Enron scandals of a decade ago created an array of dummy financial funds to evade public scrutiny and perpetrate fraud. To disguise the scams, they dubbed these phony funds names like Chewco and JEDI.

While Enron's house of cards did of course collapse, "Enron accounting" lives on in corporate America today. It's also infesting an endeavor that should never be tainted with such financial gimmickry: America's democracy. Corporate hucksters, intent on political profiteering, are setting up dummy funds with such star-spangled names as Make Us Great Again and Restore Our Future.

These are Super PACs, created to amass millions of dollars in unrestricted corporate cash to back the candidacies of particular presidential wannabes. These groups can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money — something the candidates themselves are barred from doing. Already, the dummy funds are becoming larger than the candidate's' own campaigns, allowing a few big money interests to pervert our democratic process into their plutocratic plaything.

How few? As of August, more than 80 percent of the money in Super PACs backing Republican candidates had come from only 35 people writing six- and seven-figure checks. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/671929/the_corporate_takeover_of_the_2012_presidential_election/

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1. I know Hightower has a few critics on this site, but in my opinion, he is

one of the best writers on the progressive side and one of the best-informed writers as well, examining issues which would barely register as blips in most media sources, even progressive ones, and his analysis is usually illuminating, while his folksy style makes reading his stuff enjoyable at the same time.

[lib2DaBone]

2. It's a done deal..

We either get corporate loving, wall street puppet Obama..

Or we get Psychopath Risk Perry...

Either way.. the wars go on.. and the middle class shrinks.