In today's world of politics, campaigns are very expensive to run and candidates must either be very wealthy or have very wealthy backers. The biggest source of funding for the Republicans has always been big corporations. Democrats also take this money though to a lesser extent because they are the party who prefer to throttle back excesses of corporate profit in order to provide the average Americans a fighting chance.
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Election finance is the single biggest source of corruption in government. I do not refer to the direct campaign contributions given to candidates by companies or individuals. This is pretty restricted and documented and above the table. The mischief arises in the disguise of those nasty PACs and non-profits who work independent of but in support of the candidates or issues. With the recent disastrous pro-corporate decision from the conservative side of the Supreme Court, corporations are now considered "persons" under our constitution and can spend freely to influence our elections. These allow anonymous manipulation of our government through financing of political ads including attacks against specific candidates. There is no oversight to assure these ads are even truthful, many of which are not. With outfits like Fox and Citibank making contributions, and with some of their ownership in the hands of foreign nationals, one can't know how much, for instance, Saudi Muslims may be manipulating our elections, thus our Congress. Another point to remember.
Do you see a pattern in all of this yet?
If you are tempted to ask why a "good American company" would allow this to happen or, heaven forbid, assist in this destruction I refer you back to the profit motive each has. History has and continues to show them that the real money is no longer here in the USA, it is in third world and developing nations. It is not really that they are going to give up on the US, but for our nation to regain their profit driven interest we need to be more "profitable" for them. We need to become more like a third world nation for them to come home.
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When Americans are desperate and willing to "settle" for what ever bone is thrown our way, big corporations will start coming back to take advantage of us just as they have done in other parts of the world. Included in this is lower wages, few or no benefits, no safety regulations, little or no vacation time. Longer work hours. No deductions for "silly" things like our retirement, Social Security or Medicare. When we "become" China, corporations will come back home. Our middle class gone. Note this too.
The great Recession of '08. Leading up to this were a number of diabolical practices by Wall Street and mortgage lenders. I'll not try to get into explaining credit default swaps, but the simple version is that they used private pension funds and other investments that belonged to you and me and municipalities and union retirement accounts and so on, as "collateral" to bet on those same products. Then they helped things along with easy credit to bury the all-to-willing middle class. Then the housing bubble burst due in part to the mortgage games. Enter foreclosures...now who owns millions of properties and was at the same time bailed out of their own mess by us the taxpayers? We are left holding the bag and while they march on with even more of the middle class wealth moved upstream to the rich. They knew this would happen. They knew we would bail them out and that we would get nothing in return. It was what should have been a criminal scheme to steal from the middle class to give to the rich...and we fell for it, suckers that we are for shiny baubles and easy credit. Oh...lest I forget to mention it they are already raking in record profits again and nothing has been done to prevent them from doing it to us again thanks to GOP obstruction in Congress.
Let's move back to politics again. Specifically the methods politicians, parties and movements employ to get the votes to take power in an election. Depending on the current status in America there are two approaches. The first in good times is to promise even more prosperity. If the people are not particularly angry with either party, elections often come down to who can sell themselves best and who can dig the best dirt on the opponent. In tougher times when it is possible to for one party to point an accusing finger at the other, such underhanded schemes as employing hate and fear come into play by the least favored party. These days it is the GOP playing the hate/fear/racism/xenophobia card. None of the issues being drawn out today are new and they won't go away after elections, and nothing is ever intended as a real solution. When party that is out of power has no platform or solutions or qualified candidates, the tactic turns to smoke screens to keep people from looking too closely at how little is being offered.
Big business has a vested interest in seeing Republicans in power because they know they have more power over them when elected. Their agenda is better served by the conservatives who have always "had the back" of corporate interests in Washington. This is why the GOP is able to pull in the donations both directly and through the above mentioned PACs and non-profit political groups. Remember who is funding these groups including the Tea Party is some of these same mega-rich corporations and their owners.
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