Jim Hightower

The corporate money coup over America's electoral democracy has rampaged through the Republican presidential primaries, and is now surging with even greater fierceness into this fall's general election.

A handful of millionaires and billionaires, pooling their corporate cash into secretive political arsenals called SuperPACs, which technically are independent from the candidates' campaigns. They dominated the GOP race. The one backing Mitt Romney, called Restore Our Future, was by far the richest, and it has made him the nominee. In this Brave New World of millionaire-and-up politics, size matters – not the size of the candidate's heart or ideas, but the size of the SuperPAC, which is now far richer than the candidates themselves. Against president Obama, not only will Restore Our Future be flush with special-interest cash, but the super-rich are also rolling out an even bigger, supersized-SuperPAC to back Romney. Created by political attack-miester Karl Rove and called American Crossroads, it intends to pound Obama relentlessly with a staggering $200 million in bloody-ugly negative campaign ads.

Just three Texas billionaires – Bob Perry, Harold Simmons, and Robert Rowling – have already primed Restore Our Future with $4.4 million, while also putting $16.5 million into American Crossroads. Just three men, $20 million, with much more to come – all three intent on spending whatever it takes to buy a presidency that will serve corporate power generally, and do governmental favors for their corporations specifically.

To the barricades, people! Not only must this year's crass corporate coup attempt be exposed and defeated, but the Supreme Court's disastrous Citizens United decision, which allowed such a plutocratic threat to arise, must be repealed. For information and action, go to
www.DemocracyIsForPeople.org.