The problem with controlling the influence and control of corporations is the power money brings to propaganda. A simple example today is the little media attention given to outsourcing as a factor in unemployment. Corporate ownership of media makes this a non topic. The comments from the corporate tools above aside, the issue requires constant vigilance.
See.
Amazon.com: Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (9780393059304): Kim Phillips-Fein: Books
"Historian Phillips-Fein traces the hidden history of the Reagan revolution to a coterie of business executives, including General Electric official and Reagan mentor Lemuel Boulware, who saw labor unions, government regulation, high taxes and welfare spending as dire threats to their profits and power. From the 1930s onward, the author argues, they provided the money, organization and fervor for a decades-long war against New Deal liberalismfunding campaigns, think tanks, magazines and lobbying groups, and indoctrinating employees in the virtues of unfettered capitalism."
The Ideological Management Industry
"This chapter is about the modern development of techniques for the ideological management of liberal societies in order to preserve the interests of capitalist elites. More specifically, it is about the introduction to Australia of techniques for taking the political risk out of democracy (from the point of view of protagonists of the market economy) that have long been developed, refined and applied in the US and more recently and to a much lesser extent in the UK. Virtually nothing in these developments is indigenous to Australia. A considerable sample of them has already been imported direct from the United States (commonly retaining the name of the model US institution, as in the cases of the Committee for Economic Development, the Business Roundtable, the Business Council and the Foundation for Economic Education). To a lesser extent American techniques have reached Australia via Britain, as in the case of Enterprise Australias promotion of the free-enterprise system through special annual reports for employees and courses in economic education designed for corporate employees and schoolchildren. 1
At another, intellectually more sophisticated level, there is in prospect a growth of think-tanks funded by business with the purpose of ...shaping the political agenda in Australia (to cite a report on the subject to the Australian Institute of Directors) through production and dissemination of free-market-oriented ...policy research. 2 The inspiration for this development comes from the relatively favourable conditions for the political influence of business which have been created by such initiatives in the US. 3 There the amount of economic policy research produced by think-tanks funded by corporations is so great and so effectively marketed that business has been able, through its hundreds of selectively sponsored scholars, largely to redefine the terms of debate on many issues in ways favourable to business. For example, by transforming ...quality of life issues into esoteric ...cost-benefit analysis issues. 4 At present the relatively limited Australian progress in this direction is supplemented by importing and distributing publications resulting from business-sponsored policy research in the US and the UK."
How Corporations Influence the Government
"However, it is very difficult to reform campaign financing. If you try to bar corporate campaign contributions, then the members of the board will contribute personally. If members of the board are not allowed to contribute, their wives will contribute, and so on. There are always loopholes that corporations will try to find. And, since they are well connected and have a lot of high paid lawyers on their side, they will find loopholes. It's very difficult to control this. We have been trying to control corporate contributions for the last 100 years now--without much success!"
and this:
The Conservative Nanny State
