How Corporate Executives Are Purchasing Our States—One Governership at a Time
NEWS & POLITICS
AlterNet / By Jim Hightower
How Corporate Executives Are Purchasing Our States—One Governership at a Time
Corporations are secretly funneling millions into the "dark money" vault of the RGA.
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........oops! -- the RGA made a coding error in its database of dark money donors. So in September, a mess of the GOP's secret-money corporations were suddenly exposed, standing buck-naked in front of customers, employees, stockholders and others who were startled and angered to learn that the companies they supported were working against their interests.
A lifelong champion of political money reform, Fred Wertheimer, put it this way: "This is a classic example of how corporations are trying to use secret money hidden from the American people to buy influence, and how the Governors Association is selling it,"
Feed the RGA's political-favor-meter with $250,000 a year (as Coca-Cola, the Koch brothers, and others do), and the association cynically anoints your corporation with the ironic title of "Statesman," opening up gubernatorial doors throughout the country. Well, sniff the participants, the money buys nothing but "access" to policymakers. But wait -- when was that access put on the auction block? Shouldn't everyone have access to our public officials? Of course, but call your governor and see if you can even get an office intern to call back.
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Now let's call the roll of some of the privileged corporate dreamers that were pulling the wool over our eyes, hoping we would slumber in ignorance: Aetna, Aflac, Blue Cross, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Exxon Mobil, Hewlett-Packard, Koch Industries, Microsoft, Novartis, Pfizer, Shell Oil, United Health, Verizon, Walgreens and Wal-Mart.
the rest:
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-corporate-executives-are-purchasing-our-states-one-governership-time
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