There is no simple straight line from corporations to politics to job
             loss in the economy. Nor is it possible to consider politics as being
             simply corporations making donations to a particular candidate's campaign,
             and then that candidate somehow shutting down a factory. The issue is more
             complex, and it is now also global. Nevertheless, the result is pretty
             much the same as if XYZ Corporation paid off Rep. Smiley Face to vote to
             increase taxes on XYZ's product's components making it advantageous to move
             XYZ's plant to Mexico, where the peasants work cheaper and the investors
             will get a greater return on their XYZ stocks.
             But because of the interrelationships between corporate America,
             global commerce and politics, perhaps one of the first places to look at
             corporate political influence and unemployment is by looking at the events
             surrounding the World Trade Organization.
             In 1999, more than 50,000 took to the streets of Seattle to
             demonstrate against the policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
             Their problem concerned the power and privileges of an elite class that
             controls U.S. wealth (corporations) and politics. It is also, by
             extension, a fight against multinational corporations and governments that
             view workers as no more than pawns in a global chess game (O'Meara 2000)
             and unemployment as no more than a bunch of numbers on a balance sheet.
             The media, as is increasingly common knowledge, consists of major
             corporations with political agendas. The media tried to portray the
             demonstrators as a bunch of flower children left over from the 1960s.
             Although some such were involved, mainly, it was a demonstration of "middle-
             American workers, environmentalists, conservative nationalists and
             Teamsters and longshoremen, religious activists, campus
             crusaders against sweatshops, Reform Party furies, feminists,
             Birchers, hu...