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Tuesday 6 December 2011
by: Dave Johnson, Truthout | News Analysis
http://www.truth-out.org/license-profit-legalized-corruption-us-congress/1323198914
Are members of Congress corrupt? Perhaps we should define the term. There is the terrible, "legal" corruption of pay-for-play campaign contributions, with wealthy donors and big corporations paying to get tax cuts, subsidies, special laws and "access." This is part of why our government is responsive to the agenda of the 1 percent and their corporations only.
Even worse, there is the new "Citizens United" form of corruption, enabled by conservatives on the Supreme Court who ruled that corporate money is "speech." Now, corporations can threaten elected officials: If they don't get what the corporations want, they can put up so much money to oppose - which in today's campaigns mean smear - that official in the next election; so that the person won't be able to be elected to any office again.
But the blatant, in-front-of-our-faces "legal" corruption of the current campaign finance system is about raising and spending millions of dollars to get a job that pays relatively little, notpersonal profit. It has the appearance of bribery, with corporate interests pouring huge amounts of money into the process. Of course, corporations don't do this for the good of the country; they do it out of profit interest. Why else would a corporation do it? By definition, offering something of value to a government official with the intent to influence what that official does is bribery, but in this case it is legal, because what's offered is considered "speech."
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