Reports underline the suffocating influence of corporate America on politics and the tricks banks play on taxpayers

According to the IPS report, “The value of Goldman Sachs stock has never regained 
the value it enjoyed in the heady days before the market
 slide, and so all of Blankfein’s $28.9 million in deductible performance bonuses were cashed in before the bank’s
 longtime shareholders were out of the red.”
 Sweet.

Sarah Anderson of IPS says, “Taxpayers should not have to subsidize excessive CEO bonuses at any firm … [S]uch subsidies are particularly troubling when they prop up a pay system that encourages the reckless behavior which caused one devastating national crisis — and could cause more in the future.”

Hillary Clinton has claimed she wants to get rid of the deductible performance pay loophole, but there are several bills out there that would do the job and so far she hasn’t endorsed any of them. Why would she when she already relies so heavily on the counsel — and campaign cash — of many of these bank CEOs and their elite associates at law firms and corporations? So far, close to half a billion dollars have been raised for her campaign, $50 million alone during the last two weeks of August at 22 fundraisers. According to The New York Times, that’s an average of $150,000 an hour.

We are dealing, Ryan Grim and Daniel Marans recently wrote at the Huffington Post, with “a worldwide capitalistic system in which oligarchs, corporate CEOs and celebrity heads of state mingle to form a global elite that dictates a global agenda. This can sometimes take the form of quid pro quos, but it is more often a subtle form of exchange, in which exclusion from or inclusion within an elite club depends as much on whom you know as the size of the check you can write … The Clintons did not create this system, but they have become central players within it.”

Which brings me around to a study from two Dutch political scientists, Bastiaan van Apeldoorn and Nana de Graaff, who took a look at the key policymaking personnel in the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations.

“Grand strategy makers” — GSM — that’s what the researchers call them. According to Paul Street at the Truthdig website, they found that “23 (more than 70 percent) of Obama’s top 30 GSMs had ‘top-level corporate affiliations’ — executive, director, senior adviser or partner in a law firm — prior to their appointment to the U.S. executive branch.

“These 23 were linked through a combination of board memberships, executive positions and advisory roles to 111 corporations. These ‘affiliations in many cases display a revolving door pattern, indicating that the actors are not just closely tied to but actually themselves members of the corporate elite.’”

Seventy percent of George W. Bush’s GSMs were linked to 87 corporations and 60 percent of Bill Clinton’s were linked to 48.

If you wonder why inequality grew under Bill Clinton, Bush and Obama, all the numbers in the paragraphs above are some of the reasons. Capital holds a privileged status over labor, and CEOs are exalted over employees.

How can you be sure a Hillary Clinton White House will be any different? Given all the evidence, given the billions of dollars in play, you can’t.

But here’s one hopeful sign: Politico reports, “Sen. Elizabeth Warren and her allies aren’t waiting for Election Day: Months before the votes have been counted, they’re already exerting pressure on Hillary Clinton’s transition team over key hiring decisions … They’re vowing to fight nominees with ties to big banks and warn against corporate executives assuming government roles in regulating the industries that made them rich.”

Warren believes “personnel is policy.” She and her colleagues have reserved an especially hot place for the Wall Street big shots and corporate nabobs who fancy a job in the Clinton administration. It’s called the “Hell No” list.

Attention must be paid to that list or with a Clinton back in office it’s four more dreary years of greased palms and the status quo. That could be a recipe for disaster almost but not quite as horrific as an egotistical know-nothing with his fingers in the piggy bank and worse, near the button.