Americans have always been skeptical of corporate power. In fact, this country was founded by a revolt against the biggest corporation of its day - the British East India Company.
You know how conservatives are always going on about how the Boston Tea Party was an example of America’s anti-government roots?
Well, the Boston Tea Party was actually an anti-corporate protest, not some 18th century version of an Americans for Tax Reform rally.
When the good citizens of Boston threw chest upon chest of East India tea into the freezing winter water of Boston Harbor, they were protesting a law -- the Tea Act of 1773 -- that was their era’s version of the bank bailout.
The Tea Act gave the British East India Company total control over the North American tea trade, exempted it from having to pay taxes on exported tea, and gave it a refund on any tea it was unable to sell.
It was the largest corporate tax cut in the history of the world, and set up the East India Company to pull a Wal-Mart and put all the small, local tea shops across America out of business.
Not surprisingly, this really angered the American colonists, and so they took action, setting off a chain of events that eventually resulted in our independence from Great Britain.
So skepticism of corporate power is in our blood.
It’s what the American Revolution, or at least the event that sparked it, was all about, which makes the latest polling about money in politics anything but surprising.
According to Bloomberg Politics, a full 78 percent of Americans think we should overturn the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that opened up our election process to floods of corporate money.
This isn’t, by the way, a situation where a bunch of Democrats are tipping the scales.
Money in politics often gets painted in the media as “liberal” or “progressive” issue, but this new Bloomberg poll shows that all Americans of all political persuasions overwhelmingly oppose Citizens United.
Eighty-three percent of Democrats want to overturn it, as do 80 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of self-declared independents.In other words, wanting to get money out of politics is about as mainstream as the Super Bowl, blue jeans, and FM radio classic rock.
Thom Hartmann Program
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