I think what Martin is talking about is the presence of PACs and similar 'soft money' channels in the US political context. This creates an explicit and quasi-legitimate link between various corporate interest groups and the pols they have paid forshared their concerns with and this drives any discussion of policy matters to be framed in terms of lobbyist-mandated power relations and factions as a matter of course.

On the Euro side there may well be plenty of money arriving with the pols via anonymous suitcases and/or plain brown envelopes, but because this is plainly and clearly illegitimate it allows us to maintain the conceit that policy considerations are not structured by the priorities of corporate benefectors (even if the actuality is rather different).

So it's not that our pols aren't whoring themselves to the corps, it's that the default assumption of their being bought and paid for doesn't structure our political discourse the way it does Stateside.

Regards
Luke


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