by Mike Hall, May 10, 2006

The 1950’s cult classic movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” tells the tale of an alien takeover of a small town as the alien pods morph into identical duplicates of the townspeople.

“At first glance, everything looked the same,” the narrator says. “It wasn’t. Something evil had taken possession of the town.”

Author and political strategist David Sirota paints another terrifying picture of transformation—the U.S. government, which at first glance by most people looks like the same good ol’ government we learned about in civics class.

In his new book, Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government (available at The Union Shop Online), Sirotka outlines how the government may look the same, but it’s really being controlled by a new corporate life force. This is how he describes the new reality:

There no longer is a boundary between Big Business and government, and our politicians are wholly owned subsidiaries of Corporate America.

Blog pundit Arianna Huffington says Sirota’s book is:

…a blunt, two-fisted attack that pulls back the covers on the cozy canoodling between corporations and our government.

Sirota spoke May 9 as part of a panel discussion of the book at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C.

In the book, Sirota delves into examples of Big Business’s stranglehold on politics, legislation and government: HMO lobbyists writing health care legislation, corporations working with the Treasury Department to kill pension reform legislation, and the credit card industry winning its battle to gut bankruptcy protection for ordinary Americans while guaranteeing itself exorbitant interest rates.

During the discussion, Sirota described how the political debate is limited to:

…those with money who can buy access and a seat at the table, and if you understand that politics works that way, all of a sudden the mess that is the outcome of many politics debates, especially here in Washington, becomes far more easy to understand. On most major economic policies, the debate in Washington is limited artificially to make sure that the outcomes are only outcomes that serve those who bought a seat at the table.

Sirota pointed to the oil companies’ influence on energy policy decisions as an example of how entrenched corporate interests shape economic policy:

The political debate on energy has been one between which tax breaks to give to which oil companies. Anything that actually challenges the oil companies, or challenges those who are making huge amounts of money—I think Exxon Mobil made $8 billion last quarter at the same we have $3 gasoline—has been largely left out of the political debate. A windfall profit tax, a federal price-gouging law, even a serious investigation into price collusion has not been part of the debate. And I would argue that is deliberate and not an accident.

That kind of limiting our debate on economic issues has driven up voter cynicism, has made sure that government doesn’t really solve problems because you can’t really solve economic problems if you are not willing to challenge at least some of the interests—the entrenched interests—at the center of the problems.

Also on the panel, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D), outlined some of the strategies he used to overcome that voter cynicism to win the governorship in a state with a 45 percent–to–30 percent edge for Republicans over Democrats and a state that picked George W. Bush over John Kerry, by 60 percent to 38 percent, in 2004. Schweitzer said one of the keys was distancing himself from special interests:

First, we said we’re not going to take any PAC money. We’re not taking a doggone dime from any political action committee, because there will be nobody who buys their way to the front of the line. People in Montana said, “I like that.”

Sirota told the crowd that corporate influence on politics and policy won’t be eliminated until there is public financing for campaigns, taking Big Business money out of the electoral equation.

Other panelists included author Thomas Frank, columnist Harold Meyerson, and MoveOn’s Washington, D.C. Communications Director Tom Matzzie.

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