From HARVARD LAW SCHOOL (2012): The Corporate Capture of the United States

[Triana]

American corporations today are like the great European monarchies of yore: They have the power to control the rules under which they function and to direct the allocation of public resources. This is not a prediction of what’s to come; this is a simple statement of the present state of affairs. Corporations have effectively captured the United States: its judiciary, its political system, and its national wealth, without assuming any of the responsibilities of dominion. Evidence is everywhere.

The “smoking gun” is CEO pay. Compensation is an expression of concentrated power — of enterprise power concentrated in the chief executive officer and of national power concentrated in corporations. Median US CEO pay for 2010 was up 35 percent in the midst of a lingering recession, while CEO pay over the last decade has doubled as a percentage of pre-tax corporate income. Yet there has been no justification for current levels of CEO pay based on economic value added

. . .

The financial power of American corporations now controls every stage of politics — legislative, executive, and ultimately judicial. With its January 2010 decision in the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court removed all legal restraints on the extent of corporate financial involvement in politics, a grotesque decision that can have only one effect: maximizing corporate – not national — value. Today’s CEOs have been granted the power to direct political payments and organize PAC programs to achieve objectives entirely in their own self-interest, and they have been quick to use it.

. . .

Finally, capture has been perpetuated through the removal of property “off shore,” where it is neither regulated nor taxed. The social contract between Americans and their corporations was supposed to go roughly as follows: In exchange for limited liability and other privileges, corporations were to be held to a set of obligations that legitimatized the powers they were given. But modern corporations have assumed the right to relocate to different jurisdictions, almost at will, irrespective of where they really do business, and thus avoid the constraints of those obligations.

The whole thing is a MUST read:

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/01/05/the-corporate-capture-of-the-united-states/

[PatrickforO]

1. OUTSTANDING article. I've shared with several friends.

This is why Bernie and Trump are doing so well. People from all parts of the left/right spectrum are sick of the deck being stacked against them. There's no excuse for allowing these parasites to suck us dry with their greed. It's obscene.

[Gregorian]

2. Bernie Sanders has the plan to cure this disease, but only a few see the truth.

All we can do is keep pointing it out. I just hope people don't do what they're doing with the environmental problems, and hope someone else will fix it for them.

Each person is responsible. It sounds wrong. But you have to educate yourself in order to make change.

[Triana]

3. Conservatives and even many Dems think it's "opinion"

that corporations and Wall St. have taken over and completely control our gov't and the Fed.

It's not an "opinion". It's a FACT. And the sooner Americans realize this, the better. We have to STOP voting for slimebag politicians bought/controlled by profit-driven corprats and greedy rich assholes who want the gov't to work for themselves only and no one else. Sanders is the ONLY one running that even mentions this!

You're right: people have to educate themselves on issues. It's part of each person's civic duty to be informed/inform themselves - read and do a little research - AND to vote every election!

IMO anyone listening to mainstream media who doesn't know that what they say isn't necessarily true or necessarily the whole story - is being bamboozled.

US media is controlled by the same entities that own and control our government: The Great Corporations. They're not going to tattle on themselves. They're part of the problem.