Fun weekly "coincidence":
First, Frank Rich (HT: Kristina Melomed) opines that:
What the Great Recession has crystallized is a larger syndrome that Obama tapped into during the campaign. It’s the sinking sensation that the American game is rigged — that, as the president typically put it a month after his inauguration, the system is in hock to “the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few” who have “run Washington far too long.”. . . What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand, from commercial transactions as trivial as the sales of prime concert tickets to cultural forces as pervasive as the news media.
Then we hear about a paper from Cooper, Gulen & Ovtchinnikov entitled "Corporate Political Contributions and Stock Returns":
In our paper Corporate Political Contributions and Stock Returns, which was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Finance, we study whether there is a robust relation between firm contributions and contributing firm returns. . . . We find that the number of supported candidates has a statistically significant positive relation with future abnormal returns for firms which contribute to political candidates. . . . [T]he contribution effect appears to increase for firms that have longer relationships with candidates, support more home candidates, and support more powerful candidates.
And people call me paranoid when I write that "corporations have for some time been increasingly taking on roles as pseudo-governmental actors without incurring the accountability to the people generally associated with state action."
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RE: "We find that the number of supported candidates has a statistically significant positive relation with future abnormal returns for firms which contribute to political candidates. . . . [T]he contribution effect appears to increase for firms that have longer relationships with candidates, support more home candidates, and support more powerful candidates."
Gee, what a revelation. And all this time I thought corporations financed, wined, dined, and lobbied the pols just because they were a bunch of nice folks who wanted to make a hard working public servant feel appreciated.
I hope this research was funded with my lower middle class tax dollars so I can feel good about contributing to the greater good of the world of knowledge.
Might be on to something; on the other hand unsuccessful corporations probably wouldn't have much $$ to give. Is it clear from this that they donate and then get rich?
But as to your stated suspicion that corporations are pulling the strings of govt., It's hard to imagine anyone doubting that anymore. Although Reagan endeared himself to me before being sworn in and immediately after by putting Iran on notice (something Jimmy Carter was too sweet to do) , it was also Reagan who applied laissez faire to the whole shebang including banks and insurance, with the result that financial conglomerates came to be in essence bigger than the government. This was an example of applying doctrine instead of gray matter. Doctrine will always run into a brick wall at some point.
Public funding of all federal campaigns is the answer.
No one in the D.C Village wants to hear the question. And so, it's never heard.
RE: "Public funding of all federal campaigns is the answer."
Why stop at federal campaigns? EVERY election campaign for a public office should be funded from a pool of ALL donations for that race. Let individuals, PACs, SIGs, etc. donate whatever sum they want to the pool. The candidates could split the pot evenly and let the voters decide based on the quality of the evenly funded media blitzes.