3c hapter - Index of

56 Locavesting
and political organizations. Commercial banks alone spent more
than $50 million in lobbying that year, and interested parties such
as Goldman Sachs, Visa, and the Private Equity Council fi elded
lobbying teams stuffed with ex- government offi cials. 21 And even
as they publicly made nice, the largest health- care organizations
spent more than a half- billion dollars to infl uence landmark
health- care legislation. The Chamber of Commerce, backed by
some of the biggest corporations in the world, spent almost $80
million in just three months in the fall of 2009.
Thanks to the controversial Citizens United Supreme Court
decision in July 2010, corporations and special interest groups
can now spend unlimited sums on political advertisements without
ever having to reveal their role. In the 2010 midterm elections,
more than $455 million fl ooded into ads aimed at defeating
or promoting candidates, much of it from opaque “grassroots”
groups created after the ruling.
The fi x is in. And what do we get in return? Outsourced jobs
and offshore tax shelters that rob the country of revenue.
U.S. corporations raked in record profi ts in 2010—$1.6 trillion
in the third quarter alone, fueled by massive cost- cutting and layoffs
and the ability to borrow on the cheap. 22 They were also sitting
atop a mountain of cash totaling nearly $2 trillion. But that did not
translate into jobs. Recent economic downturns, unlike those of the
past, are increasingly followed by jobless recoveries. What’s changed?
The balance of power between corporations and their employees,
according to a growing chorus of economic observers. Unions have
withered, courts have become friendlier to big business, and “companies
now come closer to setting the terms of their relationship with
employees, letting them go when they become a drag on profi ts and
relying on remaining workers or temporary ones when business picks
up,” writes David Leonhardt in the New York Times.
Desmond Lachman, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute,
notes, “Corporations are taking advantage of slack in the labor
market. They are using that bargaining power to cut benefi ts and
wages, and to shorten hours.” 23 The diminished work conditions
of the private sector are now the standard to which public sector
employees—such as teachers and fi refi ghters—are being compared.