Election 2014: rise of the secret oligarchs.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: VOX POPULIST - Column

A stunning surprise came out of this year's elections. The most dominant contenders were not glad-handing braggarts, but shy people.

That's strange, since running for office these days is assumed to be an ego game, attracting the loudest of self-promoters. But the big winners on Election Day were a group that actually campaigned anonymously, not even whispering their names to the voters.

Indeed, these were not the candidates listed on your ballot, but shadow candidates that are not even people. They're corporations that have been empowered by the Frankenstein-majority on our Supreme Court to exercise the political rights of us real human-type persons.

Only they've been endowed with far more political power than you and me, for the court decreed that these corporate "persons" can spend unlimited amounts of their shareholders' money on TV ads and other campaign tools to elect or defeat whomever they choose--without disclosing their names to voters.

What we have here is the rise of a stealth oligarchy in America.

These politically shy corporations are pumping untold millions of dollars out of their practically bottomless corporate treasuries to elect Congress-critters, governors, and, ultimately, Presidents who will serve their narrow special interests at the expense of the public interest.

You would know these cagey corporate campaigners, for they are major brand names from Big Oil, Big Food, Big Pharma, and the likes. Normally, they're not at all timid about promoting themselves, but--shhhh--they don't want us to have any inkling that they're orchestrating surreptitious, multimillion-dollar campaigns that have become a deciding factor in who holds public office in America.

One reason they hide their names is that they run overwhelmingly negative campaigns, degrading our so-called political...