Measuring Corporate Power by the Number of Marines in Los Angeles

So, Matthew Yglesias posted this challenge on Twitter earlier this week: "This is my challenge for people who want to make reducing corporate power the lodestar of their politics — how do you measure this?"

Well, there's a couple of ways. But first, let me tell you what's happening right now: There are 700 Marines in Los Angeles. Marines. In an American city. Four thousand National Guard troops deployed. A union president arrested and facing six years in prison for observing ICE raids. Families torn apart at Home Depot, at restaurants, in the garment district.

This is America, June 2025. Trump's back, and he's moving fast. Marines—actual Marines—carrying out immigration raids in an American city. It's unprecedented, it's shocking, but here's the thing: it's tragically predictable.

This isn't just Trump being Trump. This is the inevitable result of decades of corporate power combining with an authoritarian president. It's been a journey, and we need to understand how we got here.

The system that corporations captured needed a desperate, vulnerable workforce so they could extract more profits.

For 50 years, corporations and the financial elite have been running the greatest theft in human history. The RAND Corporation—the RAND Corporation!—showed that the bottom 90% got paid $79 trillion less than they should have based on economic growth from 1975 to today. By their calculations, median income should be $102,000.

But here's the genius part: they needed someone to blame for this theft. So they pointed fingers at everyone except themselves. Black women on welfare. People getting food stamps. And especially immigrants—documented and undocumented alike.

The system that corporations captured needed a desperate, vulnerable workforce so they could extract more profits. So they made it possible—hell, they made it easy—to hire people who were undocumented. They created an entire infrastructure for exploitation.

Last night, my wife was asking how it is that undocumented people are able to work all these jobs? How is it possible? Well, they have what's called an ITIN—Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. That's something set up by the government to allow people who are undocumented to still pay taxes. They pay payroll taxes, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Now, does it give them the ability to obtain any benefits from those things? No, it does not. They'll never get Social Security. Even if they get a path to citizenship, even if they become citizens after being here undocumented for 20 years, paying taxes for 20 years, they still don't get access to that money. They only get the past two years.

You see, you've got this system that's set up that has been utilizing the labor, utilizing the hope, utilizing the desire for a better life. Our system of banking was set up for their money. Our system of car sales, home sales, taxes—everything was set up to make sure they could participate in capitalism.

Rules and regulations were changed to welcome and accommodate them economically. Not politically, not socially. No, no, no. That's when the same corporations would fund politicians and media to vilify these workers.

You've got an entire media ecosystem one in the hands of an ever-shrinking number of corporate owners that for decades has been blaming immigrants for our problems. Fox News talking about invasions and hordes. And it's not like we have an alternative media that is actually naming the real people that are taking all our shit, that are putting us in poverty, that are putting their boots on our throats—which of course is the wealthy, the top 1%, their corporations and their lobbyists and their lawyers.

You don't see that $79 trillion theft on TV every day with the faces of the villains and B-roll of corporate boardrooms showing where the money was sucked up, do you? No, you don't. Because the corporations own the media.

It's been a very Machiavellian corporate play. You bring in this thing that helps your bottom line—more desperate labor, more hopeful, more excited people ready to participate in your system. And then you use them as political pawns to maintain your power and prevent people from organizing together. You stoke hatred and class division through racial identity and racism while you keep taking and taking... and taking. Money. Power. Our democracy. They take it all.

This isn't just Trump being Trump. This is the inevitable result of decades of corporate power combining with an authoritarian president.

Here's what enrages me. Democrats thought they could play this game, too. People like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden would say, "Oh, we've got a problem at the border. We've got to do this, we've got to do that." They deported millions, but more quietly. They increased ICE funding. They stoked the flames of fear and jealousy.

Democrats thought they could use this hateful rhetoric for political gain, but keep it contained. They thought they could control people’s frustration with immigrants, whom they blamed for our collapsing lifestyles and shrinking safety nets. They'd validate the "crisis" narrative instead of naming the real villains—the corporations and extractors in our economy. They did that because they didn't want to have the fights.

The Democratic establishment would say, "We have to say, whoa, it's time to move to the center, guys. We'll protect you better than these people will. We won't call out the National Guard. We'll just use the LAPD. We won't go nuts with ICE. We'll just do a kinder, gentler deportation scheme."

And what it ends up being is a party that doesn't really seem to stand for much. You're going to be labeled as a party of open borders anyway. But instead of trying to embrace it and make the case for it, you push back against it.

They say, "Oh, we've got to be the alpha dogs. We've got to show alpha energy." But they really don't understand alpha energy, because by and large, they're bitches. They're little scared bitches that don't know how to stand up and fight for something they believe in. Or they just don't fundamentally believe in much of anything.

Meanwhile, the corporate capture of government continued. You can see how many people from corporations like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Citigroup end up running our economy. Tim Geithner went from the New York Fed straight to Treasury Secretary after helping bail out his Wall Street buddies. Jerome Powell? Private equity guy. Steve Mnuchin? Goldman Sachs partner turned Trump's Treasury Secretary.

Look at Scott Gottlieb, who served as FDA Commissioner, then joined Pfizer's board just 85 days after leaving the agency. Look at Ajit Pai, who worked as a Verizon lawyer before becoming FCC Chairman, where he repealed net neutrality rules that constrained his former employer.

Billy Tauzin chaired the House committee that passed Medicare Part D—which explicitly prohibited Medicare from negotiating drug prices. Upon leaving Congress, he immediately became president of PhRMA at $2 million annually, eventually earning $11.6 million in his final year.

You can look at the number of bills written by ALEC that show up in state legislatures. You can look at all the laws that block unionization. Mandatory arbitration. Right-to-work laws. Guess who pushed for those? Corporations.

How else can you tell corporate power is near absolute? We're seeing cities, towns, and states sell off their assets, sell off their services, privatize all the things that government used to do for people. Everything from trash collection to water to sewer to power.

Chicago sold its parking meters to Morgan Stanley for $1.15 billion in a 75-year lease. Parking rates immediately quadrupled. The private operators recouped their entire investment plus $500 million in profit by 2019, with 60 years remaining on the lease.

Water privatization? Private water systems charge customers $144 more annually on average. In Illinois, companies have acquired 59 water systems since 2013, with over $402 million in acquisition costs passed directly to ratepayers.

That's how we know corporations are in control.

So when an authoritarian comes to power, what does he find? A system perfectly designed for exploitation. A workforce made vulnerable by design. A media ecosystem that's been blaming immigrants for decades. Democrats who validated the "crisis" narrative. And a population primed to accept military force against the scapegoats.

Noah Smith says "unfortunately, he's right" about mass deportations. Young people are swinging hard for candidates like Zohran in New York because they're getting the squeeze economically and they know this is broken. But it's not really all that surprising that people are calling for mass deportations when you've had decades of both parties blaming immigrants for problems caused by corporate theft.

When an authoritarian comes to power, what does he find? A system perfectly designed for exploitation. A workforce made vulnerable by design. A media ecosystem that's been blaming immigrants for decades. Democrats who validated the "crisis" narrative. And a population primed to accept military force against the scapegoats.

Donald Trump deploys not only the National Guard but also the Marines. To round up undocumented house builders, restaurant workers, nannies, gardeners, baristas, retail workers, and factory workers. People that want to be Americans.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass says the city is being used as a "test case" and "an experiment." California Gov. Gavin Newsom calls it "an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism."

But this authoritarianism didn't come from nowhere. It came from decades of corporate power building a system of exploitation, then using their media and political influence to blame the exploited for everyone's problems. It came from Democrats who thought they could moderate their way through fascism.

So when Matthew Yglesias asks how to measure corporate power?

Count the Marines. Count the families torn apart. Count the $79 trillion stolen. Count the privatized water systems and parking meters. Count the pharma executives at the FDA and the Wall Street guys at Treasury. Count the ALEC bills in state legislatures. Count the Democrats who won't fight.

The theft is coming from inside the house. The theft is coming from the people upstairs in the top 10%, top 1%, and they want to blame the people in the economic basement. They have effectively utilized the cheap labor pool that they imported for decades as punching bags for that theft.

And now, when people finally rebel against this system, when they take to the streets to protect their neighbors and coworkers and families - that's when the corporate state shows its true face. Military protection for profits. Combat boots for capital.

You want to know how to measure corporate power? Look to Los Angeles, where decades of corporate exploitation and political cowardice have delivered us to this moment: Marines in American streets, rounding up the workers that corporations brought here to exploit.

That's how you measure it. The question is: what are we going to do about it?