Summary: All of our country's (US) problems (obesity, Deep Horizon, bank bailout) stem from the fact that Congress serves businesses making donations, rather than the people.
I realize that this sort of libertarianism is often viewed as "immature" or primitive. But ultimately I don't see how you can have, one the one hand, a congress powerful enough to do healthcare and financial reform, and on the other hand, be surprised when the same congress is successfully courted by financial interests. It seems to be an inevitable result.
Businesses, with current law, CANNOT make donations to campaigns! Only individuals can and the limit is $2,300.
The whole thing sounds very sensational and juicy, but the FEC data just DOES NOT SHOW THIS. See my comment down the page, email me at my username at gmail, I am really trying hard to understand campaign finances.
I'm very much disturbed by the impotence of our Congress, and that's exactly why I keep trying to understand what's _really_ wrong, but I am not about to accept some theory just because it sounds enticing when there is ZERO data to confirm it.
However, because the free speech of an individual or corporations must be protected, nothing stops a corp from paying thousands of people to shout praises from a rooftop, either about a specific candidate or just a divisive campaign issue. Because money can fairly easily be translated into free speech or the opportunity for free speech (the attention of the public) it is very hard to effectively regulate. The best that has been done is regulation around the edges that require campaign commercial disclosures. Lately, even these restrictions have been called into question as well: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1228056...
It clearly states that corporations can't use their treasury to make contributions to campaigns. From what I gather, they can start a PAC but thats subject to the more or less the same limits as individual contributors.
My understanding is that the subsidies are there to incentivize corn production. The video says that the subsidized cost of corn production is actually negative -- that you can go plant a corn field and will have made money before you sell a single ear.
Once the corn is produced, if there are additional subsidies for ethanol production from corn, then that may divert corn from food uses. It may increase the cost of HFCS production.
But the cost of corn production is still lower despite, or perhaps even because of, the ethanol subsidies.
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