They [corporations] need to be held accountable as if they were part of the government, since they have been acting by proxy for the government. The founding fathers did not foresee this development.

Alas, the founding fathers did foresee this development, and indeed the power of wealth has always sought to subvert democracy in America as an impediment to its profits, from the beginning to the present day, and many have said so:

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

- Thomas Jefferson

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.

- Andrew Jackson

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

- Abraham Lincoln

The communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrown of overweening cupidity and selfishness which assiduously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wide disorder the citadel of misrule.

- Grover Cleveland

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The DEMOCRATIC idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.

- William Jennings Bryan

We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both.

- Louis Brandeis

We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.

- Woodrow Wilson

In the councils of government, we must guard against unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.

- Milton Friedman

Keep in mind that many in the US corporate establishment sided with the Nazis, and that one of the leaders of American corporatist fascism was Prescott Bush, Dubya's grandfather.

Many scholars believe the last fifty years of progressive middle-class freedom and prosperity to have been only a temporary aberration of history, since most of human history has been characterized by large poor populations dominated by small ruling classes. Indeed, fascism appears to be the natural political disease of modern society for a number of reasons, and may indeed be the natural end result of human civilization.

Totalitarian fascism in the 1930's found democracy, because of social distortions, inequality, and resultant economic weakness, completely unprepared for the heavy and decisive blows which its implacable enemy intended to deal it, through propaganda, terror, and war. Thus it happened that it became a world-wide movement which put democracy not only on the defensive but in mortal danger.

The reforms of FDR in the 1930s delayed the conversion of American democracy to fascism, but could not prevent it. It has taken fascism in America fifty years to recover from the reversals it suffered from the Great Depression and WWII.

Therefore we now see that corporatist fascism has returned, led now by the grandson of Prescott Bush, and the reforms which delayed fascism in America are now being voided so that fascism may now be enabled.

History teaches us that we learn nothing from history.