The US is not a Democracy anymore and Unions and street protests are now the only democratic forces left to stop Corporate Capital to completely take over Democracy in the US and other democratic nations

America faces a crisis of corporate capture of democratic government, where the economic power of corporations has been translated into political power with disastrous effects for people’s lives. 

In his new book, Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) warns that “corporations of vast wealth and remorseless staying power have moved into our politics to seize for themselves advantages that can be seized only by control over government.” The book illustrates what he calls, the “immense pressure deployed by the corporate sector in our government.” We must rebalance our democracy by changing the rules to limit the power of money over government and empower people to engage politically as a countervailing force.

Currently, the domination of big money over our public institutions prevents government from being responsive to Americans. This certainly is not a new phenomenon—but it is growing. Even in 2009, before the Citizens United v. FEC ruling removed constraints on corporate political spending, 80 percent of Americans agreed with the following statement:

I am worried that large political contributions will prevent Congress from tackling the important issues facing American today, like the economic crisis, rising energy costs, reforming health care, and global warming.

In the first presidential contest after the Citizens United decision, 84 percent of Americans agreed that corporate political spending drowns out the voices of average Americans, and 83 percent believed that corporations and corporate CEOs have too much political power and influence. This aligns with more recent research showing that 84 percent of people think government is benefitting special interests, and 83 percent think government is benefitting big corporations and the wealthy.

As already noted, the undue influence of corporate interests on the functions of government is not new, and Sen. Whitehouse’s book explains how Americans have faced and overcome this threat before.

 America’s founders recognized the danger of corporate capture: In 1816, Thomas Jefferson warned the new republic to “crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of their country.” Almost a century later, President Theodore Roosevelt, in his annual address to Congress in 1907, said:The fortunes amassed through corporate organization are now so large, and vest such power in those that wield them, as to make it a matter of necessity to give to the sovereign—that is, to the Government, which represents the people as a whole—some effective power of supervision over their corporate use.

Read more at; https://www.americanprogress.org/article/corporate-capture-threatens-democratic-government/