Corporate political power, steadily amassed with over a century of Supreme Court decisions, winds its coils around the constitution, corrupts government with its economic clout, and squeezes the life from our democracy. That’s not the way it was suppose to be.

The corporate-plutocracy funds presidential ambitions; fills congressional campaign chests; finances super-PACs; champions voter suppression and climatic denial; controls news outlets that feeds us garbage; and bankrolls an army of lobbyists seeking changes in government policies that rig the system — and more people sink into poverty as wealth concentrates at the top. It owns most of America, our government included, and strives to seal the deal on the rest.

The two parties have been accomplices in its political ascendancy. The Republicans, receiving the greater share of its largess, have morphed into a money-raising machine intent on buying elections. A plutocrat runs for president while claiming that “corporations are people too.” It’s the slickest con game since snake oil to transform our government into one … of, by, and for, the corporate-plutocracy. 

— Joe P. Buckingham

Anchorage