Should Corporations have their own representatives in Congress?

Yesterday, Rep. Joe Barton (R) Tx. sat in the House and issued a public apology to the CEO of BP for what he termed a "shakedown" by the Obama Administration in setting up the $20 Billion Trust Fund for the victims of their oil spill. Seems their campaign contributions have purchased a Congressman.

The question here is, when are the American people going to put a stop to this, or is this acceptable political behavior for corporations have their own representatives in Congress? After all, the Supreme Court has ruled that Corporations can participate in our elections.

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I'm new here so I apologize for chiming in so late, and I have to say that I'm surprised that no one responded to the original post.

As I see it, corporations (which I'll use as an umbrella term which includes banks and Wall Street as well as all of the other big money industries) have controlled the government since the Reagan years. Our so-called representatives in both parties view corporations as their real constituents. The Citizens United supreme court decision was the greatest blow to the republic in recent memory and should have brought on massive protests but was, for the most part, downplayed in the media.

My belief is that the root cause of nearly every problem that this country has experienced in the past thirty years (excluding natural disasters) is directly due to the corrupting influence of the corporation on both the government and the media. The corporate owned media (faux news being the most blatant and obvious) intentionally plays up polarizing issues and misleads as to the real causes of the problems. If they can keep us fighting amongst ourselves, they can do their thing unnoticed. Sadly, most Americans get their news from a single source, and if that source is either hard-right or hard-left, they get a skewed perspective of what's really going on.

This has spawned the huge and very loud moron contingent, who scream SOCIALIST! and COMMUNIST! and NAZI! without the faintest idea of what any of those words mean, and who do valuable advertising for the 1 percenters and against their own interests... the very things that would benefit them the most... without ever asking for a penny in return. I used to think the Beverly Hillbillies were fictional characters but, fuck, there they are in real life on my teevee.

The US government today is a sick joke. It's owned and operated by big industries and almost none of the politicians on either side are the least bit interested in getting out of the corporate pocket and doing the right thing, no matter how dire the need is or how bad it makes them look to the public. Because the public doesn't vote them in anymore, you see. Your vote doesn't mean shit anymore because Monsanto or GE or Cigna buys their seats for them. Your vote doesn't mean shit anymore since every politician is a carbon copy of the others with the same simple game-plan... get into government, sell favors, make connections and then become a lobbyist once you're ready to "enter the private sector" and make some real money.

The people of this country have been sold-out by their representatives.

Everything... every situation, every crisis from the attack on the WTC to Hurricane Katrina to the gulf oil leak... is strategized to make people with a lot of money a lot more money. Every decision is made with corporate constituents in mind... not average people. Almost every piece of legislation is rewritten and manipulated to transfer wealth upwards.

It's like the Mafia has taken over government.

And this is happening not just in America but worldwide through the machinations of the World Bank and the IMF.

I believe that there are still a few good people in government (Franken, Sanders, Weiner, Kucinich) but they're few and far between and have no real hope of changing anything since the way is blocked by corporate money. They're also marginalized in the media as "liberals," which became a dirty word akin to "child-fucker" while Bush was in office.

What's really disheartening to me is that Obama has turned out to be just another politician. He's had enormous opportunities to make some real changes and I'm seeing very little success and not much effort being made. In the middle of the worst economic crisis in nearly a century, he appointed the very people to "fix" it who were in the middle of creating the environment that allowed it to happen in the first place. He's kept in place several Bush era policies regarding privacy that he should have thrown out in the first few weeks of his presidency. Right out of the gate, he dropped the ball on health care reform, allowing it to become a jackpot for the insurance industry. He allowed the crimes of the Bush administration to not only go unpunished, but unexamined.

The country needed an FDR and we got a Jimmy Carter... smart, like-able and (maybe) well-meaning, but completely ineffective. He's more pop star than he is president.

I guess the good news is that the stock market has made a remarkable recovery... while, in the meantime, working- and middle-class jobs and savings are still evaporating.

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Recommended reading: The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

Recommended viewing: The Corporation The full film is available in 23 parts on youtube if you don't want to rent or buy. Part 1 is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y&NR=1"]HERE.

 

Reagan had nothing to do with the corporate takeover of America(well aside from helping it along), for example, the business plot of 1933 is well known, but we can go back to 1920:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal

Or the massive business trusts of the late 1880's-1910's, don't forget the railroad interests before then.

 

There are certainly precedents, but Reagan's quest for deregulation and union-busting and his so-called trickle-down economics got the ball rolling on the current situation. Before Reagan, most politicians still believed that they were at least partially accountable to voters. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

 

The Doctrine of [Democracy]

[with apologies to Benito Mussolini]

 

I know the question was rhetorical ,Jack. No sir--you can't fool me.

 

I wouldn't think of it, but I can't tailor all of my posts geared to the best and brightest.

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I keep waiting for the great "orator" that the media and Oprah sing about...but I can't remember any speech he's given that's memorable. I can't even find him to be worthy of celebrity status, he's almost like a failed American Idol winner. Who can even remember their names or even the names of some of the winners. Who was that guy with the grey hair? The most memorable things I've seen him do is is throw the fight for a single payer health care reform bill, have a beer and apologize for an honest response to a stupid response by the police. Not really presidential so far. Waited for him to do an FDR on Wall St., but I guess he was busy doing something else while the rest of us lost our jobs and homes.

I will always remember that a constitutional scholar lowered himself to discuss his religion with McCain and Rick Warren. If that was memorable we don't have very high standards.

To respond to the original intent of the thread. Why do corporations need their own representatives when they are entrenched in the cabinet? Goldman Sach's hasn't got a thing to complain about.