Oligarchy

There is no democracy when corporations have the ability, through their monied influence (“speech,” the Supreme Court calls it, because corporations are of course “people”), to forge policy. This is not democracy but rather oligarchy, most recently made explicit once again by the Supreme Court’s decision to block the sex-discrimination case against Wal-Mart. What the corporations want, the corporations get. They pay for it. When wealth drives decision, there is no democracy.