[davep]

For Every Dollar Spent Influencing US Politics, Corporations Get $760 Back

That's your tax dollars, btw.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-16/words-greatest-investment-every-dollar-spent-influencing-us-politics-corporations-ge

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '.')..According to the foundation's analysis, between 2007 and 2012, 200 of America’s most politically active corporations spent a combined $5.8 billion (with a B) on federal lobbying and campaign contributions. What they gave pales compared to what those same corporations got: $4.4 trillion (with a T) in federal business and support.

Putting that in context, the $4.4 trillion total represents two-thirds of the $6.5 trillion that individual taxpayers paid into the federal treasury. Said otherwise, by "spending: a paltry $6 billion to bribe the US government, or just a little more than what GM will spend on stock buybacks alone, US corporations are getting the direct benefit of two-thirds of US taxpayers' labor!...

[davep]

A smart 16 year old kid read about corporate personhood and was so shocked he created A free browser extension for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox that exposes the role money plays in Congress and highlights key election races. Displays on any web page detailed campaign contribution data for every Senator and Representative, including total amount received and breakdown by industry and by size of donation. Puts vital data where it’s most relevant so you can discover the real impact of money on our political system.

http://allaregreen.us/

So when you browse the news and hear what your representatives are saying, you get a little reminder of who funds them like this:



The correlation between funding and their public stance in the media is pure coincidence, of course.

[Plantagenet]

The Federal Elections Commission (FEC) databases where the campaign donation info come from are publicly available here

This new brower extension organizes it all nicely and makes it easily accessible and as a bonus it adds a mugshot of the perpetrator politician.

[GHung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]U.S. companies hoard record amount of cash

Corporate America has so much cash sitting in the bank that it could purchase the Dallas Cowboys 437 times without borrowing a dime.....

.... In other words, big American companies literally have more cash than they know what to do with.

The mountain of cash in corporate vaults climbed to a record-high of $1.4 trillion during the fourth quarter, according to a FactSet analysis of S&P 500 companies. ...
More: http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/20/investi ... l?iid=Lead

[Pops]

We all (of a certain age) heard about the paperless office, turns out that we misheard; it was the peopleless office. I see this as Gilded Age 2.0. During the industrial revolution, people were initially required to pull the levers and of course drive consumption but now the levers pull themselves and people are only needed to provide consumption.

At this particular juncture citizens no longer think their vote counts, and of course it doesn't if they don't vote. One thing fer sure a person will be wrong in forecasting is The End.

I say hang around, eventually it will get more interesting.

[onlooker]

Doesn't anybody wonder why for as long as we can remember here in the US, we have had two parties. Because nobody else has been allowed to participate. Why two because you have to have more then one, or God forbid Americans would start to wonder if we really are the "land of the free, home of the brave". Politics is corrupt everywhere in the world, only difference is that in US, we like to think naw, not here. At this point only the most gullible or Fox news watchers buy that haha

[Pops]

People vote for who they think represents their values, no different than anywhere.

But here is the thing, in most systems there are one or two vetoes in government. In the US there are 5:

A law:
starts in one house
goes to the other
goes back to the first
goes to the POTUS
goes to the SCOTUS (optional)

There is the opportunity for a veto at any step. That is not accidental, the founders were afraid of powerful interests or individuals taking over government and so wanted many checks and balances.

It isn't that no one else is allowed to participate, for a long time the owners have been on one side and the workers on the other. Lately our good same old legacy has shuffled that up a bit but it will come back in a generation or less. It is simply that there is no way to wield power (or carry out the people's will) with so many opportunities for vetoes.

A good first step would be to ratify a constitutional amendment on personhood:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.

[Keith_McClary]

It's not just corporations:
Clinton Charity Tapped Foreign Friends
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')img]http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-BT123_CLINTO_9U_20150319181242.jpg[/img]
Between 2009 and 2013, including when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation received at least $8.6 million from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, according to that foundation, which is based in Kiev, Ukraine. It was created by Mr. Pinchuk, whose fortune stems from a pipe-making company. He served two terms as an elected member of the Ukrainian Parliament and is a proponent of closer ties between Ukraine and the European Union.

Mr. Pinchuk and his wife—the daughter of former Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma—began donating to Clinton charities in 2006 after being introduced to Mr. Clinton by Doug Schoen, a pollster who has worked for both Clintons.

In 2008, Mr. Pinchuk made a five-year, $29 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative, a wing of the foundation that coordinates charitable projects and funding for them but doesn’t handle the money. The pledge was to fund a program to train future Ukrainian leaders and professionals “to modernize Ukraine,” according to the Clinton Foundation. Several alumni are current members of the Ukrainian Parliament. Actual donations so far amount to only $1.8 million, a Pinchuk foundation spokesman said, citing the impact of the 2008 financial crisis.

During Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department, Mr. Schoen, the pollster, registered as a lobbyist for Mr. Pinchuk, federal records show. Mr. Schoen said he and Mr. Pinchuk met several times with Clinton aides including Melanne Verveer, a Ukrainian-American and then a State Department ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues. The purpose, Mr. Schoen said, was to encourage the U.S. to pressure Ukraine’s then-President Viktor Yanukovych to free his jailed predecessor, Yulia Tymoshenko.
Mr. Schoen said his lobbying was unrelated to the donations. “We were not seeking to use any leverage or any connections or anything of the sort relating to the foundation,” he said.

The Pinchuk foundation said its donations were intended to help to make Ukraine “a successful, free, modern country based on European values.” It said that if Mr. Pinchuk was lobbying the State Department about Ukraine, “this cannot be seen as anything but a good thing.”