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Citizens United. It's always Citizens United.

The insane conclusion that amoral and mostly unaccountable conglomerations have the right to direct US legislation and policy without limit is why we are in this mess. Until we sentence an entire Board of Directors to a life sentence in prison, I think I will remain unconvinced that "corporations are people".

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Outrage is fast. It’s legible. It doesn’t require grappling with incentives, enforcement mechanisms, or tradeoffs. But outrage has a cost: It replaces diagnosis with blame. It trains the public to expect villains, not mechanisms. It produces demands that can’t be implemented. It gives cover for inaction, because nothing concrete is being asked. From the perspective of power, it’s almost ideal. Lobbyists show up with clear goals and specific language. The public shows up angry, divided, and incoherent. Guess who wins.

Proposing life in prison for people who are doing lawful things is a non-starter.

The other part of the preceding comment was about citizens united. A concrete action would be to pass a law that explicitly excludes corporations from the definition of people and restricts the kind of lobbying/legalized-bribery that currently empowers the powerful.

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