Corporate executives often enter politics, write laws affecting their former (and/or future) employers (or hand them contracts), then retire from politics to take very well-paid jobs in the very industries they were regulating -- often at the very same companies they gave sweet deals to while in office.

There are other direct and indirect ways useful politicians, their friends and families can benefit from corporations that they help. Some of these ways have been made illegal, but corporations and their beneficiaries in politics are very good at finding loopholes in the laws they write.

Another way corporations wind up being exempt from regulation is through defunding of regulatory agencies, or by pro-corporate-welfare ideologues being placed in charge of these agencies -- after which they fire the career officials at these agencies and replace them with loyal lackeys who will unquestioningly pursue the agenda of deregulation, defunding the government, and looking the other way at corporate malfeasance. Then, after breaking the government, they can blame the government for not working.

But the underlying problem is that government and corporations are not really two separate, independent entities. They are quite tightly integrated and interwoven, with one hand washing the other, scratching each other's backs, and giving each other kickbacks and bribes.

It's a real wonder any major antitrust actions have ever happend, that there are any worker protection laws or unions left, that the Envirionmental Protection Agency has any teeth, and that the National Parks haven't yet been sold to logging, mining, oil, and natural gas companies.