buying your laws - oligarchy

So this might be an example of how large corporations buy favorable laws & regulations through campaign contributions, lobbying efforts, etc...  http://www.alternet.org/food/156195

Partially related: http://boingboing.net/2012/06/13/meritocracies-become-oligarchi.html

I could have said that we've decided that the people who are the best at making money must obviously also be the best at all other activities, like governing or setting policy, or maybe heart-surgery or philosophy.  But really, its just that the aggregation of great wealth has become so concentrated wealth-holders have unprecedented mechanisms for re-shaping society into forms that solely benefit further wealth consolidation.  Its ironic that at a time in history when we have, also, unprecedented mechanisms for broadening democracy and citizenship, we've decided instead to build a class of wealth those in the Gilded Age could have imagined only with envy.