Sad testament to the state of the policy making process in this country that the most we can hope for to stop one terrible piece of legislation advanced by corporations to further theirs interests is for another set of corporations to oppose it to further their diverging interests.
It is. Corporations exist for the purpose of maximizing their own profits. Government policy making should be about maximizing the people's well being. These might sometimes be related ends, but they're far from being the same thing.
No, formally speaking we have fascism in the US (from fasces, bundle of ax or spear handles), where we have the government and large corporations (think Goldman Sachs) working hand-in-glove.
Another name might be corporate welfarism.
They all add up to the same thing: elites running the country as their private playground.
Most of the Tea Party and Occupy * folks have absolutely no idea what's going on, nor any idea of how to fix it, but they do know something's horribly wrong, and are taking to the streets to demonstrate at least that fact.
If you want to learn more, read http://lewrockwell.com/ over a period of months--some of the best libertarian / Austrian school writers on the planet, and others with a similar bent.
I think it's the 60s, as the drumbeat of Vietnam was approaching, sparked by the assassination of both Kennedy brothers. The so-called End of Innocence for America, the Killing of Camelot. It's when we learned that dissent on even the highest pulpit will be silenced.
We were warned before then by Eisenhower in his final Presidential address, but the tail end of the 60s was likely when Americans started to realize that we could not stop the rush. Endless money and inscrutable power will be forever intertwined, from the Medici's silent rule of Italy to now, where a few million dollars donated to the policeman's union by JP Morgan can buy the emptying of Zuccotti park and put the kibosh on the months-long Occupy movement.
While the connection between the "bribe" and the deed are speculation at best, there is no doubt that bankers made the donation and announced just a month into OWS. It was actually JP Morgan Chase that donated 4.6 million[1] (I've amended my comment to reflect that).
