Very rich people and (to the extent that they are lumbering hive minds driven by their own rules to persue profit at any cost) corporations have undue influence

Very rich people and (to the extent that they are lumbering hive minds driven by their own rules to persue profit at any cost) corporations have undue influence at most levels of US government. Thats pretty obvious to most of us watching from afar. If you wanted a pithy term to sum this up you could go for 'big money'. The US has ostensibly good democratic structures and systems but they have to a very large extent been 'captured' by the rich and powerful, as the parlance goes.