My apologies for not posting anything in like 2 years but I got a life and it took me awhile to get back to this. That said, I found an article  by David Noise on Huff Post that confirms my belief that our country has gone down the tubes, this time once and for all. We are now all corporately owned and getting back will not be an easy task as this has been going on since the 19th century. Here's and excerpt from the article on the making our way back:

This is a reality that liberal reformists rarely address, but it is a critically important issue that highlights the level of focus and commitment needed for real people to wrestle control. This isn’t a problem that can be solved with one or two ambitious pieces of legislation—it is deep and systemic, relating to the very nature of power within the republic. What’s needed is constitutional action put corporate power in its proper place for good, beneath the interests of real people.

Despite the lip service Americans pay to democracy, the apparatus of government is very much in the hands of corporate interests: almost all the lawyers and lobbyists in Washington, DC, work directly or indirectly for corporate interests, with real human beings enjoying no corresponding power or access. With a 24/7 focus on the singular goal of maximizing profit (and worse yet, short-term profit), combined with assets and resources far beyond those of ordinary citizens—and now with even direct influence on the electoral process—corporate interests are the real obstacle to both effective democracy and progressive public policy. If corporations are persons with constitutional rights akin to those of real humans, we must bear in mind that they are extremely powerful, narcissistic, amoral, psychopathic persons. And to the extent that their interests conflict with those of real people, they will fight relentlessly for themselves and they will usually win.
There isn’t one major area of public policy that is not greatly influenced by corporate power. It’s the reason universal healthcare has been such a struggle and the reason the Affordable Care Act doesn’t offer a public option. It’s the reason for massive military budgets. It’s the reason we are privatizing everything from prisons to schools and even, if Wall Street gets its way, Social Security. It’s the reason we’re still “debating” climate change. It’s the reason a vulnerable public is exploited to elect wing-nut politicians who will serve corporate interests when they get into office. It’s the reason labor has been crushed, temporary employment agencies are thriving, and executive pay is absurdly high. It’s the reason that critically important, major regulations (such as the Glass-Steagall Act that was passed to regulate banking during the Great Depression) can be relentlessly attacked and eroded, until they are eventually overturned. In short, it’s the reason progressivism is dead.

Of course it would be nice to think that the United States is slowly becoming less racist, and we can hope that such trends will have some positive effects on public policy. But we would be delusional, and guilty of misleading ourselves, to suggest that such social enlightenment alone will result in a reversal of Wall Street domination and a proliferation of progressive, human-centered policy. As progressives lick their wounds in 2014 and consider the future, they must focus on limiting corporate power. Otherwise, the “liberal conscience” will have little impact on the policy flowing from Washington.


Read the full article here:  http://thehumanist.com/features/articles/paul-krugman-and-the-elephant-in-the-room