Some History about how we got here.
Legally a lot of this starts out with the 14th Amendment. The Amendment that was intended to grant former slaves full citizenship, but was co-opted through legal shenanigans to grant corporations personhood.
The great depression, the great wars, and continual deregulation and recessions further accelerated the consolidation of wealth that gave corporations more power over politics and the media and integrated them into the world’s economic system making them “too big to fail” multinational corporations that are not beholden to but are continually subsidized by the American tax payer. A system more correctly called corpratocracy.
This is why a 2004 Princeton study concluded that public opinion has “near-zero” impact on U.S. law. This is why your boss controls your access to your healthcare and minimum wage has remained stagnant.
Then, in 2010 a group of billionaires calling themselves Citizen’s United won its Supreme Court case that gutted the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that restricted and regulated corporate spending in elections.
Unencumbered by “pesky” laws their spending went from $16,000,000 in 2008 to an astounding $2,600,000,000 in 2024. This is why their lobbyist can sit down with our representatives and we can’t even get a townhall.
These wannabe oligarchs are actively creating a kleptocracy – a corrupt government to be sold to the highest bidder – this is their design because they are the highest bidder.
To them this is not ideology. It is simply a business plan – an investment in our politicians to rig the game in their favor.
And that is the key to change.
They must be made to understand that they have made the wrong investment !
"History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes" - Mark Twain
The Horse AMERICA, throwing his Master, 1779
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."
- President Dwight D Eisenhower, 1961