[madamelic]

It isn't though.

Money = power. The US is a barely veiled oligarchy.

As long as you have enough money to pay off politicians to make it completely ok, you can do whatever you like. After you pocket a bunch of money or whatever other shenigans you want, you dump a percentage of the money into the politcian's re-election campaign.

You don't even have to get politicians to make it legal, you could do other things like getting friendly with judges and passing them thinly veiled bribes as 'gifts'.

[etrabroline]

Most nerd-types I talk to are in complete denial about this. Almost every US federal judge is the spouse of a corporate lobbyist or political apparatchik. They even get caught sometimes having their spouses taking money from parties to the cases they are hearing but nothing ever happens to them.