… to restrict their activities? <\/p>\n
David Cay Johnston doesn’t say that, but on reading his essay, I was thinking that. The corporations that occupy Congress<\/a> won’t tell you anything you weren’t already thinking about how the government serves corporations, but it is a well framed and well written and reasonably detailed update that you should read. <\/p>\n James Madison wrote disapprovingly in 1792 of \u201ca government operating by corrupt influence, substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty\u201d where eventually \u201cthe terror of the sword, may support a real domination of the few, under an apparent liberty of the many.\u201d<\/p>\n …<\/p>\n The late U.S. president\u2019s fears have come to life. For swords, just substitute police with rubber bullets, batons and pepper spray at Occupy demonstrations, including perfectly peaceful ones.<\/p>\n Company reports to shareholders show that among the 30 companies in the Public Campaign report, the 10 firms that spent the most on lobbying during the same three-year period fired more than 93,000 American workers.<\/p>\n Those firings took place in an economy that had five million fewer people with any work in 2010 than in 2008.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I think part of the problem is that corporations not only act in their own self interest, but as individual people tend to do, do so only in the very short term, looking only one or two iterations out. When a major delivery company spends lobbying money to avoid a union, they get to pay their workers less. Good move. But the lower paid workers pay fewer taxes (and the delivery company certainly isn’t paying any significant taxes) and they spend less and their homes get foreclosed fueling a baking crisis, etc. etc. Channel ling more money through middle-range pay grades means more money moving and moving money is the thing that makes an economy work. <\/p>\n Anyway, go read the essay. There’s a nice graph too. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" … to restrict their activities? David Cay Johnston doesn’t say that, but on reading his essay, I was thinking that. The corporations that occupy Congress won’t tell you anything you weren’t already thinking about how the government serves corporations, but it is a well framed and well written and reasonably detailed update that you should … Continue reading If there were lobbyists in the 18th century, would there be a provision in the US Constitution …<\/span>