Besides credit cards, other services you will find that use arbitration clauses nearly industry wide now are housing, home warranties, nursing home admission, computers and software, sports event tickets, admission to skating rinks, and much more. While one may theoretically decide not to ever go skating or go to a game again, these days one cannot just decide not to have a phone, etc. If the courts had upheld the intent of the Fed. Arbitration Act and left it for parties of equal bargaining strenth, and only in clauses that were not one sided or contracts of adhesion, we would not need legislation now to fix this. But the courts have enforced unfair arbitration clauses and now the Arbitration Fairness Act is needed, to fix it. Corporations are fighting this because they have been enjoying the benefits of a rigged kangaroo court system of their own devising for years and they don’t want to again be subjet to public records and accountability that customers’ right to sue can result in.

Washington’s deference to corporations has very few limits. The only example I can recall was the promulgation of the do-not-call list.

By the way, I do not expect this situation to change significantly under an Obama presidency, unless a tsunami of change hit Congress too.

The truth is: voters will have to become much more aggressive and militants if they want something meaningful to change in this country. Starting with the mainstream media, of course.