Do you think the American goverment is run by big corporations and their interests?

[Vesayen]

If so, what are your feelings about it?

[Dinner]

No, in reality the corporations just have influence but they still don't call the shots.

[Lord Merciless]

Corporations have bigger influence on the government at the end of the 19th century than today.

[Japher]

Not yet, but if I had my way....mwahahaha

(we need an evil laugh emoticon)

[Tuberski]

I would have voted maybe, but it wasn't an option.

ACK!

[orange]

yes

[HolyWarrior]

SURE the corporations run the country...

...that's why they keep getting their asses sued off by the trial lawyers [/sarcasm]

[Berzerker]

That's tough, there is a symbiotic relationship between corps and government. Politicians basicly blackmail corps into handing over money for campaigns by insinuating that if corp "A" gives and corp "B" doesn't, laws and regulations may be passed benefitting "A" and hurting "B". In return for the money, pols hand over our money to corps in the form of subsidies and tax breaks. The reason the tax code is so convoluted is because of all the mysterious language designed to hide what's really going on. So, do the corps run government? Not really, the pols seeking office and re-election make threats and the corps either pony up or take their chances they won't be in a hole dug for them by the pols helping out businesses that do fund campaigns. Of course, corps have bribed pols to get what they want too, so which came first? Once pols were able to get away with the "re-distribution" of wealth, the floodgates were opened. If the pols didn't use their power to treat us differently, i.e., a regulation to benefit one corp and hurt competitors, and use taxes as a personal slush fund for themselves and their "constituents", corps wouldn't have the massive incentives to play along or offer bribes.

[Urban Ranger]

Re: SURE the corporations run the country...

Originally posted by HolyWarrior
...that's why they keep getting their asses sued off by the trial lawyers [/sarcasm]

That's why there's DMCA, or the Sonny-Bono Act?

[Frankychan]

Originally posted by Tuberski
I would have voted maybe, but it wasn't an option.

ACK!

Anyway, I think that indirectly they have control over the government. They finance the campaigns of the politicians, which get elected cause of the $$$, then turn around and do the corp's a favor by doing what they want.

"Scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" kinda deal.

[TheStinger]

Well the corporations must get some influence otherwise they wouldn't donate. How much influence is the crucial point and whether that influence overides that of the voters.

Sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't

[Kropotkin]

One could also turn Berz. analysis on its head, claiming that it's the corporations that threatens politicians and the state. As in; "If we don't get what we want we'll support another candidate/party that does or maybe we'll move to a better place where we can get what we want."

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I'd say no, not as such. But the government is run by politicians, policy wonks, and career bureaucrats who generally believe that (1) the economy should come before any other concern, and (2) the economic health of large corporations is the same thing as the general economic health of the nation. The net result is that government is not run by corproations, but is definitely run in the interest of coporations.

The media, incidently, facilitates this process; as Noam Chomsky observed years ago, newspapers have "Business" sections, not "Labor" sections, and in times of economic crisis corporate CEOs are far more likely than labor leaders to appear as "experts" on the news.