Originally Posted by TimJ
The poor and powerless are subject to these decisions. They feel it the most when a community is allowed to be designed simply to maximize corporate profit (and therefore tax receipts). It's the local government who allows, or doesn't allow, this to happen.
And in the final analysis, government, whether local, state, or federal, is owned lock, stock and barrel by corporate interests. On the federal level, David Sirota, as former chief spokesman for Democrats on the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, has had ample opportunity to observe this process first hand.
"No longer does the private-profit motive compete in the legislative process with public good; profit now owns the process, and the middle class is left to the vultures [not to mention the poor].
Industry no longer needs to lobby hard for regulatory rollbacks, because many of its own lobbyists have been appointed federal regulators. Congress openly admits that business writes many of the most important pieces of legislation. The White House slaps an official seal on memos from corporate executives and labels them “presidential policy initiatives.” The vice president is permitted to own shares of stock in a company for which he coordinates government contracts. And the Oval Office is occupied by a man whose major life experience was not public service but money-losing business deals (that somehow seemed to just make him richer and richer). In short, the government is now a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America."
The same kind of thing happens at the state and local level, too. Our only democratic choice is to vote for someone to represent us and our interests in Congress. But “our interests” always seem to turn out to be the interests of the rich and powerful. When we have the opportunity to vote on issues directly, they are referendums written by those same congressmen and their ilk that decide mainly which interest gets an economic advantage over another.