Beholden

Photo from the Smithsonian Collection

by Max Johnson

In the wake of the Citizen United decision by the Supreme Court, there is a flood of anonymous money supporting the Corporate Party in America. I thought the Peter Overby and Andrea Seabrook story on NPR was especially telling. They reviewed political advertisement purchased in the Pittsburgh area and found all of the them targeting Democrats. But what does this mean in the end? It has to be that many or most of these newly elected candidates will be beholden to corporations for their stay in Washington. Will they serve this multi-national master? Jon Stewart described the hypocrisy on the part of the right asking for disclosure over the money to build the New York City Muslim Community Center.

My concern is that this is a competition between government vs. corporations, and if the corporations paid for your ticket to the big dance they will want payback. Those boys at Ford will not stand for government taking over the competition. We are going to eventually have to take over the toxic mortgage assets in this country to stop the flood of foreclosures. Then the government will own 25% of the housing industry, and they will have resell them into the private market. The Banks will demand some payback from the candidates that they placed in office. They will not stand for revaluing these assets to their true value for fear of a further decline in the price of housing. This is a battle between government operating the roads, postal service, voting machines, and the BMV or some multi-national with their secrecy, profits-over-people mentality overseeing these fundamentals functions of democracy. Do we want "we the people" reviewing our taxes and protecting our diplomats in foreign countries or do we want an overpaid group of rich people?