Excessive Corporate Power and Class Warfare in the United States Today

[Time for change]

Since the onset of the Reagan presidency in 1981 our country has been on a downward slide. Reagan’s constant branding of government as the problem rather than a potential solution to our problems ushered in an era of anarchy, greed and irresponsibility, in which few have had the political courage to seriously challenge the paradigm that private pursuit of profit is sacrosanct and must be unhindered by government. From this the Military-Industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us against has grown so powerful that we now spend almost as much on our military as all the other nations of the world combined. This attitude has led to the Savings and Loan debacle of the late 80s, the current home mortgage crisis, control of much of our political process by private corporate interests, the worst economy since the depression of the 1930s, and much more.

William Kleinknecht describes how the Reagan presidency set us on this course in his book, “The Man Who Sold the World – Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America”, in which he summed up Reagan’s philosophy of government with respect to the President Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s:

Reagan stood against everything that had been achieved in this remarkable age of reform. His constant attacks on the inefficiency of government, a rallying cry taken up by legions of conservative politicians across the country, became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more money that was taken away from government programs, the more ineffective they became, and the more ineffective they became, the more ridiculous government bureaucrats came to be seen in the public eye. Gradually government, and the broader realm of public service, has come to seem disreputable… Politicians, imbued with the same exaltation of self-interest that is the essence of Reaganism, increasingly treat public office as a vehicle for their own enrichment.

In this post I assert and discuss six basic principles for the operation of our government which I believe should be self-evident from a consideration of basic human values, as well as from our own Declaration of Independence, but which too many Americans have forgotten since the onset of the age of Reagan:


Private corporations should not own our country or our planet

As income inequality has risen to unprecedented levels in our country, private corporate power has become so great that it threatens our livelihood, our lives, and the lives of future generations, and has become virtually beyond control. Yet so great is the belief in the virtues of unhindered private (corporate) license that in the midst of perhaps the worst single man-made eco-disaster in world history, the minority leader of the U.S. House had the nerve to call for a moratorium on federal regulations (of unhindered private corporate license).

Well I’ll tell you what, John Boehner and all the rest of you Republicans and corporate Democrats who agree with him on this: Neither corporations nor any private individuals have a God-given or any other kind of inalienable right to pursue private profit at the expense of the rest of humanity. No private corporation or person owns our country or our planet, and no private corporation or person has the right to destroy it or risk destroying it. Protecting a nation’s people against those who threaten to destroy them or their livelihood is perhaps the most important purpose of government. If you want to call for a moratorium on government’s ability to do that you may as well call for a moratorium on government punishment for murder or any other crime.


Freedom from corporate monopoly

The great disparity in wealth and political power that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s, as well as our more recent Meltdown of 2008, was largely the result of failure of government to regulate powerful private interests which threatened the well-being of our nation. Barry C. Lynn discusses the dangers of private monopolies in his new book, “Cornered – The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction”:

Monopoly is, after all, merely a form of government that one group of human beings imposes on another group of human beings. Its purpose is simple – to enable the first group to transfer wealth and power to themselves. Monopolists use such private governments to organize and disorganize, to grab and smash, to rule and ruin, in ways that serve their interests only…

Lynn notes that this battle has been fought since the first days of our republic, when Jefferson and Madison battled against the soon-to-be defunct Federalist Party on this issue. Lynn continues:

Ever since, the central battle in our political economy has been between those who would use our federal and state governments to establish and protect private monopolies to empower and enrich the few and those who would use our governments to break or harness private monopolies in order to protect the liberties and properties of the many.

The Progressive Movement of the late 19th and early 20th Century worked to combat this problem, which they did with such achievements as the Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Anti-trust Act of 1914. But that wasn’t enough to stave off the Great Depression, which spurred the New Deal and additional federal anti-monopoly controls. That worked out quite well for several decades, characterized by the greatest sustained economic boom of our history. But then came Reagan Revolution. Lynn summarizes the political dynamics of this:

A generation ago a highly sophisticated political movement appeared in the United States. This movement was dedicated to taking apart the entire institutional structure that we had put into place, beginning in the mid-1930s, to govern our political economy by distributing power and responsibility among all the people. The goal of this movement was to enable the few, once again, to consolidate power entirely in their own hands.

And indeed they have thus far been quite successful in accomplishing that goal.


Restoration of basic political rights

Our most basic political right is the right to vote in free and fair elections. Today in our country there are two related processes that have greatly impinged on that right: Excessive money in politics (i.e. legalized bribery) and election fraud.

Excessive money in politics
Money influences politics in our country today to such an extreme that it can accurately be referred to as legalized bribery. Bill Moyers has succinctly explained the idea in his book, “Moyers on Democracy”:

We have lost the ability to call the most basic transaction by its right name. If a baseball player stepping up to home plate were to lean over and hand the umpire a wad of bills before he called the pitch, we’d call that a bribe. But when a real estate developer buys his way into the White House and gets a favorable government ruling that wouldn’t be available to you or me, what do we call that? A “campaign contribution”. Let’s call it what it is: a bribe.

Corporate interests could not elect their candidates to office in the face of an accurate assessment of their performance and agenda by the American people. Their agenda is anti-people, and very few Americans would vote for it if they understood what it is. But corporate politicians use the corporate “campaign contributions” that they receive to conceal that agenda.

Americans want a political system that serves their interests, not the interests of the wealthy and powerful. They want national health insurance. They want a minimum wage law that helps working Americans out of poverty. But as former U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter has said, our current system “functions for the benefit of donors whose object is to place candidates under obligation …”

This of course creates a vicious positive feedback cycle in which the powerful use the wealth and power they gain through their bribery of politicians to continue to bribe them in order to gain ever more wealth and power. There is no good reason why this kind of thing should be legal in a presumably free country.

Election fraud
Related to corporate control of our political system is corporate control of our election system. Fair elections are an inalienable right of human beings. As such, they should be run by government personnel who are accountable to them, not by private interests. Yet private interests taking on government functions disenfranchised tens of thousands of Florida voters in the presidential election of 2000 and hundreds of thousands of Ohio (and other) voters in 2004, to hand those elections to perhaps the most corporate friendly president in U.S. history.

Just as serious is the use of private corporate voting machines that count votes in a way that is invisible to public scrutiny and cannot be reproduced. That process has often been referred to as “black box voting”. It has no place in a democracy because as long as vote counting is invisible and non-reproducible there is no good way to ensure a fair election.


Right to a decent life

The right to a decent life is enshrined in the Declaration that created our nation, specifically the part that says that all human beings are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Some would counter that the right to a decent life should be earned through the exercise of individual responsibility. I don’t disagree with that in principle. However, certainly we should expect our government to at least work towards creating a level playing field. When more than 10% of Americans are unemployed and there are five applicants for every vacant job, and when so many jobs fail to pay a living wage, the failure to have a job or to become financially self-sufficient does not indicate a lack of individual responsibility.

Economic rights
President Roosevelt (FDR) first began speaking about our country’s need for economic and social rights to compliment the political rights granted to us in our original Bill of Rights during his first campaign for President, in 1932. Though his whole twelve year Presidency and four presidential campaigns centered largely on advocating for and implementing those rights, it wasn’t until his January 11th, 1944, State of the Union address to Congress that he fully enumerated his conception of those rights in what he referred to as a “Second Bill of Rights”. Here is a partial introduction to and list of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, as enumerated in his 1944 State of the Union address:

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all – regardless of station, race, or creed. Among these are:

 The right to a useful and remunerative job…
 The right to a good education
 The right of every businessman… to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies…
 The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment
 The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
 The right of every family to a decent home.
 The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.

Following FDR’s death in 1945, his wife, Eleanor, led the effort towards international acceptance of numerous elements of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, incorporated into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948. These rights were then expanded further by The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which was ratified by 142 nations as of 2003.

The commitment to economic and social rights throughout the world is manifested by their inclusion in the constitutions of numerous countries. And the European Social Charter], signed by 24 European countries, establishes such rights as the right to work for fair remuneration, health care and social security.

But unfortunately – and paradoxically – the United States, where the Second Bill of Rights originated, has not yet signed that Covenant.

The right to be free of discrimination
In addition to assistance with the basic economic issues discussed above, the other thing that government can and should do to level the playing field of opportunity is to ban discrimination based on race, sex, age, religion, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic that would unfairly strip people of the opportunity to lead a decent life.

This was what the Civil Rights Movement was all about. A lot has been accomplished, but we still have a long way to go.


Freedom from arbitrary and discriminatory incarceration by government

2008 statistics show that more than 2.3 million Americans were incarcerated at the end of 2007. That translates to more than 1% of American adults – by far the highest rate of incarceration in the world. It has been estimated that this figure includes approximately 750 thousand individuals incarcerated for victimless crimes, as well as 3 million on parole or probation. Approximately 4 million are arrested each year for victimless crimes.

Victimless crimes provide a situation rife with opportunities for violation of our Constitutional rights. For example, consider our anti-drug laws. These laws can only be enforced against a small portion of those who violate them because we don’t have anywhere near enough police and prosecutors investigate them all. This situation is tailor-made for racial discrimination because police and prosecutors must prioritize whom to target. Because court decisions have repeatedly allowed them virtually unlimited discretion in choosing where and whom to investigate, racial discrimination has been given virtually free reign.

And indeed, statistics bear this out. Though illegal drug possession and sale is no more common among blacks than whites, blacks constitute 80-90% of all drug offenders sent to prison in seven states, and in 15 states black men are admitted to prison on drug charges at 20-57 times the rate of white men. These statistics strongly point towards racial discrimination in our justice system, which is a violation of the due process clause of our 5th Amendment, as well as the due process and equal protection clauses of our 14th Amendment.

Furthermore, draconian penalties for drug crimes, such as harsh mandatory minimum sentences and (later) three strike laws (which may carry life imprisonment penalties for a third felony conviction) surely violate our 8th Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Michelle Alexander comments on this in her book, “The New Jim Crow – Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”.

In 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established extremely long mandatory minimum prison terms for low-level drug dealing and possession of crack cocaine. The typical mandatory sentence for a first-time drug offense in federal court is five or ten years. By contrast, in other developed countries around the world, a first-time drug offense would merit no more than six months in jail, if jail time is imposed at all.

A U.S. Supreme Court case, Lawrence v. Texas, illustrates some of the problems with victimless crimes. The case involved a Texas law that made consensual sex between homosexuals a crime, even within the privacy of their own homes. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the state, striking down that law. The plaintiff pursued the case based in large part on arguments against victimless crimes:

Liberty cannot survive if the legislature demands that people behave in certain ways in their private lives based on majority opinions about what is good or moral…And of course, the Founders believed wholeheartedly that majorities had no right to impose their beliefs on minorities. In Federalist 10, Madison articulated his concern…

Give up our imperialistic designs

Militarism and nationalism are strongly embedded on our culture. They are strongly related to each other and to excessive corporate power, which has throughout our history sought military adventures to expand their wealth and power, with tragic consequences to so many millions of people. Carl Boggs discusses this long-standing and seemingly intractable problem in depth in his book, “The Crimes of Empire – Rogue Superpower and World Domination”. In the introduction to his book he states the basic problem:

A central problem has been the ceaseless American pursuit of global hegemony on a foundation of expanding military power. While U.S. leaders dutifully uphold the rhetoric of democracy, human rights, and rule of law, their actual conduct has been more congruent with imperial agendas that run counter to the requirements of a peaceful international order… Not only has Washington been the leading violator of international legality, its nearly trillion dollar war machine deploys bases in some 130 nations, has ambitious plans for space weaponization, possesses a most lucrative arms sales program, and continues a pattern of military ventures that makes it the most fearsome agency of violence in the world today… No other state devotes even a significant fraction of what the U.S. spends on its armed forces, no other state deploys large-scale military units across dozens of countries, and no other state claims to be defending its own “national security” and “global interests” hundreds and thousands of miles from its home shores…

These efforts, while producing enormous profits for some politically well-connected elites, have proven to be an economic disaster for our country and for most Americans. Worse, our myriad unjustified, aggressive, and violent interventions into the affairs of numerous sovereign countries throughout our history has produced untold tragic consequences and is morally repugnant. It is extremely hypocritical too. Boggs notes:

At odds with its well-crafted political image, the U.S. has long stood opposed to a system of global norms that would limit arbitrary and unrestrained use of military force. Such outlawry not only contravenes all pretense of democratic values… Few in government, the media, or academia have chosen to endorse the perfectly rational notion that the U.S., like every sovereign nation, should be willing to accept legal and moral constraints on its international behavior.

Some concluding words on class excessive corporate power and class warfare

All of these issues are of course highly related. Excessive corporate power, fueled by government condoned monopolistic arrangements, has contributed greatly to the rampant militarism that Eisenhower warned us against, led to the incarceration of more of our nation’s citizens than any other country in the world, eroded our political rights, and enabled the perpetrators to act as if they own our planet. All of this has greatly impinged on the ability of Americans to carve out a good life for themselves and their children.

What all of this has in common is class warfare. The corporatists are quick to scream out the charge “class warfare” against anyone who complains of their power or tries to do something about it. FDR discussed this concept in his 1936 Democratic Convention speech, as part of his rationale for his New Deal. The following excerpt is representative of the spirit and content of the whole speech:

The privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.

And now, some 80 years later they’re still at it.

[FirstLight]

1. oh my,

Looks like and entire semester of civics and soicioeconomic history in one post!

It may take me a day or so to digest and reply, bookmarking as well


K&R for taking the time to research, embed links for reference, etc...this looks good

[OneGrassRoot]

33. +1000. K&R and bookmarking as well. :) n/t

[burnsei sensei]

2. From the 1944 speech:

Quote:
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. end quote.

Gordon S. Wood writes about similar struggles in Early America against patronage and dependency.
Both were seen as productive of corruption.
Poverty and misery are chains, not freedom.

[begin_within]

3. Great stuff - but who's going to pay attention to it as long as there's another celebrity scandal?

Who's going to be really interested in how much the rich and powerful are screwing all the rest of us, when there are new shocking photos of (celebrity) in some compromising position or the latest dirt on (insert famous person) to think about?

[bertman]

4. Thank you for another of your excellent commentaries on the state of

our nation and our political system, Time for change. Rec.

[girl gone mad]

5. k & r

[sam sarrha]

6. this link proves there is Wealth Redistribution in the USA... Link>>

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Americas Financial Wealth Distribution
Top 1% .....Next 19% ....Bottom 80%
2007 42.7% ....... 50.3% ......... 7.0% ...chart adjusted to fit, no facts changed

this is Rigged. someone is Skimming the Cream off the top then licking the bowl..

this is why there is a piss poor economy, 80% don't have the money to spend. the country is collapsing because 80% don't pay much in taxes and neither do the Rich. couple years ago they said Bill Gates paid the same taxes as a family making $80,000. we used to before Bu$h43, we had 4 jobs outsourced since. we now live on $30,000 with both working.
my wifes job made $60,000, it is now totally extinct in the USA. we have a house that was devalued, we can no longer afford, and we cant refinance it or sell it.

[LooseWilly]

65. I just spent a couple of weeks in India...

Mecca for businesses because there is no regulation, a huge population scratching to make some sort of living, low cost of living (so workers can get by with low wages), very low standard of living (so workers can get by with even lower wages still), a half-hearted infrastructure (roads sloppily paved, if paved at all... no sidewalks, just dirt/mud on the side of the roads where the shanty shops set up, toll highways and highways that you can barely do 70 kph (maybe 45 mph) on because of the potholes), few "entitlement" services (little garbage collection, few police, no sign of fire departments), ... and everything is privatized.

It's like a view into the future & past at the same time. Globalization involves a leveling of markets for goods and labor... and standards of living. Until US workers make little enough that outsourcing isn't a financial gain... it will continue to happen. Ironically, as wages sink toward the lows of India... the ability to buy things at the old US prices is lost... so the corporations that have been outsourcing their labor have also been eroding the customer base in the US. Somehow they seem to have overlooked the pain that they would be inflicting on themselves when they become forced to reduce prices in order to sell things here in the US... I'm sure the government will be convinced to begin subsidizing the corporate profit margins... or at least they'll try.

It would be funny, if it weren't so much more tragic.

[pmorlan1]

7. Excellent Post

Thank you.

[Overseas]

8. Beautiful!! Thank you. K&R ! //nt

[Peace Patriot]

9. Wonderful post! I'm especially impressed with FDR's "Second Bill of Rights"...

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all – regardless of station, race, or creed. Among these are:

 The right to a useful and remunerative job…
 The right to a good education
 The right of every businessman… to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies…
 The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment
 The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
 The right of every family to a decent home.
 The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.

--------------------------

That is one amazing political statement!

:applause: :patriot: :applause:

[ThomCat]

10. If only enough politicians were courageous enough to somehow

make this a true part of our bill of rights... :(

Can you imagine the difference this would make in American law and public policy? :wow:

We might truly be that "best nation in the world" that we pretend to be, instead of the empire-building, environment-destroying, poverty-creating, corporatocracy we have become.

[Peace Patriot]

13. I don't think it's a matter of current politicians needing to become courageous,

but rather a matter of the rest of us--citizens and voters--reclaiming or creating the practical mechanisms of power by which we elect our best people to represent us.

For example, currently one corporation--with rightwing connections that would make your hair stand on end--ES&S (which just bought out Diebold) controls 80% of the voting machine 'market' in the U.S., and runs our elections using 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code with virtually no audit/recount controls. Until we change this, we CANNOT elect true representatives of the people.

That is Priority No. 1, in my opinion. But there are other examples--none of which can really be addressed until we reclaim our vote counting system--which bar the courageous and any true representatives of the people from running for office. Money. Media. We all know what the seemingly intractable problems are. The utterly filthy campaign contribution system and the corpo-fascist press make democratic reform almost but not quite impossible. "TRADE SECRET" vote counting is the final blockade to reform--makes reform not possible at all.

A few "liberals" are sometimes permitted to be elected, to maintain this facade of democracy--but there will never be sufficient numbers of real reformers in Congress, or a real reforming President, until we restore vote counting that everyone can see and understand. That's a beginning--the bottom line of democracy.

It's not really--or not always--a matter of courage. It's a matter of the will of the people. Voting is the actual mechanism by which we grant portions of our sovereignty to our representatives--to act on our behalf. With our permission and backing, they do our will. Sometimes it takes courage; sometimes it is routine public service. We have been robbed of that mechanism of the transference of power. It has been privatized and rendered non-public. It is now the case that NO public official in this country--not one of them!--can prove that he or she was actually elected. We are dependent upon a far rightwing corporation to tell us who won--or, in the case of an initiative, what won. This gives that corporation and its network of rightwing billionaires, multinational corporations and war profiteers ENORMOUS power over our political system. They can easily--EASILY!--fiddle any election in the country. They don't have to fiddle every election. Money and media take care of some. They can pick and choose. They can fiddle primaries (who gets to run). They can risk a "liberal" for a while but shave his mandate (as I think they did to Obama). They can push "Blue Dog" Democrats where it would be too risky (to their riggable system) to (s)elect a Puke. They can ensure vast streams of revenue right out of our pockets into theirs, and a ready supply of "cannon fodder" for their corporate resource wars, and the looting of all public services--or whatever they want--by carefully calibrating who gets power and who doesn't.

The fact that our Democratic Party leadership went along with this is a measure of how corrupt our system had become to that point (2002-2004). And how it was done is interesting. It wasn't done by fiat of the Anthrax Congress. There is no law requiring 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. It was done by the Anthrax Congress creating a $3.9 billion electronic voting machine boondoggle (in Oct '02, same month as the Iraq War Resolution), which in turn corrupted secretaries of state and election officials all over the country. ES&S, Diebold and others also lobbied heavily with many perks to election officials--a junket to the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2005, for instance, for a week of fun, sun and high-end shopping. Power, prestige, big contracts--and an infusion of the corporate culture of secrecy into all aspects of vote counting.

Our sovereignty remains in tact, as the premise of democracy. It will always be the case that we are the sovereign people of this land, no matter what they do to us or to it. But the means by which we exercise our sovereignty is gone. We are NOT PERMITTED TO KNOW how the votes are tabulated. And half the states in the U.S. do NO AUDIT AT ALL (no comparison of ballots to machine totals), and the other half do only a miserably inadequate 1% audit (insufficient to detect fraud in an electronic system).

How can we expect courage from leaders who caved to this incredible assault on our democracy? Courage is not the issue. Our power is the issue. We have to get it back, starting with counting our own votes again in plain view.

[Enthusiast]

14. I see it the same way.

Counting our again votes in plain view would be a start. I never hear much concern about this from our Democratic representatives. This has been another huge disappointment for me. I mean it should be top priority.

[CanSocDem]

19. Excellent!!

"A few "liberals" are sometimes permitted to be elected, to maintain this facade of democracy--but there will never be sufficient numbers of real reformers in Congress, or a real reforming President, until we restore vote counting that everyone can see and understand. That's a beginning--the bottom line of democracy."

.

[mother earth]

22. Kudos to you for stating the obvious that escapes far too many.

The corporate choke hold is empowered because the vote is not ours any longer. Too many people, even those with all the right ideals and hopes and dreams, just don't get it. This is the only issue, without the sanctity of the vote, we have nothing. We live under the illusion of democracy today. We know this, yet we do nothing. Is it any wonder that things have escalated into chaos and out and out plundering and pillaging in society, at the hands of the greediest corporate powers, and they continue to get away with it, right out in the open.

We have to wake up and understand how and why the voice of the "we the people" is ignored, and then do what needs to be done. Without that, everything said here is nothing but window dressing. Progressive issues are dead in the water without tackling voting and election issues, the main ones being the sanctity of the voting process and campaign funding reform.

[bvar22]

27. BBV is one of the elements I find MOST frightening.

Over 92% of the American People support transparent, verifiable elections.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x446445

After the stolen election in 2000, and the questionable election in 2004, one would think that Election Reform would be a Red Hot, Front Burner Issue with the Democratic Party.
It would also be an easy WIN/WIN since it is supported by over 90% of the American People, Democrats & Republicans
.
.
.
but NOTHING is said by our Party Leadership.
Silence on this fundamental issue of democracy.
.
.
.
I can think of only ONE reason WHY the Democratic Party Leadership has turned Election Integrity into a non-issue.
In fact, the Democratic Party has sat quietly on the sidelines as the control of our elections have become even more consolidated and opaque over the last year.

"Elections are too important to be left up to the voters!"


K&R

[mother earth]

64. Absolutely, they are complicit by deed or by fear, either

is reason more for us to truly wake up, representation is for corporate money which is in far greater abundance. Campaign reform is the answer. Transparency is needed to accomplish a true viable system. Mere words cannot accomplish this.

[glitch]

41. +18181 nt

[nicky187]

44. Planned economies.

All we have in the U.S. is a planned economy. The only difference is that we call our "planning bureaus" corporations. And people wonder why the Soviet Union fell. You can see all the same reasons at work here.

[Time for change]

69. Thank you -- I too am very impressed with FDR's 2nd Bill of Rights. Had he lived a few years longer

there's a very good chance that we would have them IMO.

[LatteLibertine]

11. Well

I love your post.

I am a person who has a strong thirst for balance and justice.

Some things vex me though. People are selfish and they do differ in degree in that regard.

We are socialized by our culture from a very young age to be mindless consumers and possibly to value the wrong things. Or perhaps I should say to value things that lead to exacerbating our selfishness. That gets compounded if we are surrounded by folks that desensitize us to the suffering of others, or that motivate us to only consider our wants regardless of the broader consequences they cause for those around us.

Often the worst people, who may be borderline sociopaths, rise to the greatest levels of power and wealth. That makes sense considering our system. It's difficult for even the most idealistic person to preserve their moral compass if they become immersed in an environment of people who may desensitize them. Look at Hitler's Germany where decent family men were gradually shaped into monsters who eventually became unaffected by even the most horrendous deeds. How about the "shock test" they did where folks delivered what they thought were potentially deadly shocks to another because an authority figure was approving of them and directing them to do so.

As people accumulate wealth and power they seem to become more open to corruption. It's not anyone thing and a combination of factors that cause this. So you end up with people that have the most power and wealth to do good robbed of the will to do it. Yes, some wealthy people are charitable and often even that may be reduced to a PR move and/or ego centered.

We have a system and culture that is crippling to a cause of justice and common interest, unless that interest happens to be the accumulation of wealth. Success is often solely defined by raw wealth.

Besides a reform in government. We need that in our culture, philosophy, and perspective. Reforming our laws will have little impact if our hearts and minds remain the same.

I haven't said all I wish to say, or articulated myself that well and I've babbled enough. It's likely pointless.

[Time for change]

18. Thank you -- You make a lot of important points here

I certainly agree that we are taught to value the wrong things. I believe that is purposeful. Our nation's rulers need a compliant population in order to fulfill their agenda. If the American people fully knew what our government does in the cause of empire building they would be horrified. My special beef is that even in school we aren't taught the things we need to know, especially with regard to our history. That will have to change if we're going to make much progress.

You note that we have become desensitized to the suffering of others. The "Reagan Revolution" beginning with Reagan's presidency in 1981 set the stage for that. Ronald Reagan taught us that greed is good, and way too many people continue to believe that. We live with the consequences -- tragically.

You also note that many of the worst people rise to the highest levels of power. That I believe is becoming more and more true in our country. I think that at least 90% (probably more) of Republican U.S. Congresspersons are psychopaths. Bob Altemeyer, a psychologist who studied authoritarianism most of his life, had a lot to say about that. I discuss his work in these two posts:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=5385774
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=5692371

Somehow we're going to have to learn to deal with these issues.

[LongTomH]

37. "90% or more of Republican U.S. Congresspersons are psychopaths."

So that's why Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Michele Bachmann creep me out!

[puebloknot]

42. "Somehow we're going to have to learn to deal with these issues. "

Yes, and I've spent endless hours thinking and wondering about how we can do this, in an age of draconian weapons and tracking devices that give us practically the status of lab rats.

My mind always turns to Gandhi's nonviolent tactics. "They" have the big guns, so warfare is basically out of the question, unless the populace becomes armed with their own unthinkable weapons. Rather, Gandhi used Refusal as his means of bringing down the British Empire.

We have not yet learned to refuse. We have tremendous monetary power if we, at the micro level, learned to sit on it, not spend it, in a multitude of ways. The difficulty is not to starve out We, the People with that kind of tactic. We need to find ways to kill the parasite without also killing the host.

The idea of a "soft" general strike is a discussion that first got me invited to DU, in 2005. My username was given to me by a luminary at DU who no longer posts here. It was based on the history of the Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico, when all of the twelve pueblos coordinated a revolt against the Spanish by coordinating the timing of the uprising with knotted ropes. Seven knots, seven days. And then the people of the pueblos all rose up, of one accord, and threw out the Spanish despots. It was a short-lived revolution, but the event resonates in this area to this day. And I often wonder how we might coordinate such an event on a national level. We have the "ropes" in the form of the Internet. We do not yet have a unifying philosophy strong enough to cause us to act.

Even a "sit down" strike can lead to violence against those who participate and thumb their noses at the PTB. David Swanson and some of his associates have done some of this. Cindy Sheehan just had to stand trial (and was acquitted) for such actions.

I have been watching the "John Adams" mini-series on television again, and am so inspired by the courage of our founders. They had hard lives, many of them, and put their very existence on the line to gain freedom. I fear that we won't see that kind of giving up of creature comforts in service of a cause until events bring us somewhat to our knees, when there is not so much to give up in terms of comfort and the current illusion of safety we live with.

When there is not so much to lose, fighting back in some way becomes obvious. There is a growing army of the dispossessed in America -- and some are very recent middle class people who have had the rug pulled out from under them, not just people who have lived with poverty for many years -- who may march toward a critical mass, a tipping point, when there is nothing left BUT REFUSING! Most thinking people in this country are no longer comfortable in their own skins, and live waiting for the next political/social shoe to drop. Eventually, I can only hope that a certain level of desperation will explode the myths (religious and otherwise) that have the majority of our population in a death grip of delusion.

All the above is stream-of-consciousness musing. I wish I had an answer.

[Lifelong Protester]

55. I really appreciated your thoughtful reply

as I feel much the same way. Here is what I thought was great: the idea of REFUSING....



"We have not yet learned to refuse. We have tremendous monetary power if we, at the micro level, learned to sit on it, not spend it, in a multitude of ways. The difficulty is not to starve out We, the People with that kind of tactic. We need to find ways to kill the parasite without also killing the host.

The idea of a "soft" general strike is a discussion that first got me invited to DU, in 2005. My username was given to me by a luminary at DU who no longer posts here. It was based on the history of the Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico, when all of the twelve pueblos coordinated a revolt against the Spanish by coordinating the timing of the uprising with knotted ropes. Seven knots, seven days. And then the people of the pueblos all rose up, of one accord, and threw out the Spanish despots. It was a short-lived revolution, but the event resonates in this area to this day. And I often wonder how we might coordinate such an event on a national level. We have the "ropes" in the form of the Internet. We do not yet have a unifying philosophy strong enough to cause us to act."

[puebloknot]

78. Thank you.

We, as a people, don't know how to REFUSE, I think. As a pre-meditated act, there is too much fear involved. But when there's nothing much to lose (coming soon to a locale near you), we may find the community spirit needed to take our lives back.

John Adams didn't want to become involved in revolution, but when he did throw in his hat (and his life), he was a force to be reckoned with. Later, that force turned to the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were a throwback to tyranny.

We inch our way from tyranny to tyranny, it seems. In our efforts to find our way, we are sometimes sidetracked by tradition and lack of certainty about the best path. But "there is a tide in the affairs of men" ..... (With a nod to Mr. Shakespeare.)

[Time for change]

77. That's damn good musing for "stream-of consciousness"

[puebloknot]

79. From *you*, that's a damn high compliment! nt

[azul]

38. Well and bravely said, and It's not pointless.

I think the point, that many people are figuring out finally, is that this capitalistic economic system is ultimately unsustainable and destructive, and rewards and empowers people who have a mental illness.

Excessive love of sex and drugs and money are addictions that light up the emotional brain rewards and can lead to non-rational and destructive behavior in seeking these rewards.

The whole state of affairs is a mess, but brain research is pointing to where we are going wrong. The hurdle is the medical and media industries are owned by these addicts and will lie to keep fixated.

The fight against money addiction is to be won by intelligent purchasing power. Do not feed these fools that would try to get you high too.

[CrispyQ]

39. "Reforming our laws will have little impact if our hearts and minds remain the same."

:applause:

[citizen477]

46. A Tear-Jerker

LatteLibertine:
Reading your response actually brought tears to my eyes. Wow! You are an erudite. I have always said that we need to start with appealing to people's hearts. We need to return to a simpler, more people-focused way of life that is deliberate yet sincere. We need to recognize that having a bigger house, driving a fancy car (or driving a car at all), and these really trival things when you think about it, DON'T MATTER.

One of the reasons corruption becomes so alluring is because those on the upper end of the caste system continue to place value on the wrong things, and we who are on the lower end continue to get sucked into that lie. We need to slow down, take a deep breath and truly think about what it is we're trying to achieve in life as individuals, which will help us to determine what we're trying to achieve as a society.

[Greyhound]

12. K&R. Exactly the point.

Thank you and good night.
:kick: & R

[mmonk]

15. Excellent.

[tiredtoo]

16. This is an excellent post

It clarifies what most of us here think or feel is going on in our country. So what do we do ? We all get on here and praise post and K & R post and then feel a little better.
We have to do more then this. I am working on Jerry Campbell for Congress' campaign. Jerry is running in Mi. 4th district. A gerrymandered blood red district that has been held by a corporate whore for the past 20 years. We do not have the money to wage a strong campaign but Jerry still thinks we will prevail.
My thoughts are:
With the current anti-incumbent fervor we have a chance to send a message. If we can produce a strong showing in November, someone may hear us.
I am trying to point out the fact that we each have a vote and our votes are of more value then the corporate dollars our opponet has.
But it is a cold hard fact that we do need money to get our message out.
Anyone here willing to help can go to this website
http://jerrycampbell.org/index.html.

Or drop me an email at [e-mail]

[Agony]

17. Nice Work! K&R

I am going to try (probably very awkwardly given my writing skills) to distill what you wrote into a letter to the editor.

thank you for your time.

Cheers!
Agony

[Duval]

20. Excellent post!

I have bookmarked it and intend to send it to my 49 yo son, who has spent most of his life under the influence of Reaganomics. He refuses to discuss any issue that goes against what he believes he Knows, and he "knows it all"...NOT. He was taught in college in NC that global warming does not exist, that it is only a "trend" that occurs naturally. Ah! IMHO, he has been successfully brainwashed and I find it very sad.

[Richard Steele]

21. K&R

[rhett o rick]

23. Rec. But what can we do? Working within the process is losing ground. nm

[rurallib]

31. I agree with that

This is one of the best threads I have ever seen at DU. I intend to use it as a basis for a blog post this week.
But the question remains, what do we do.
We thought we had a champion, we thought we had another FDR. But so far (and I am not giving up yet) no such luck.
I don't know if the populace will band together until there is another humongous depression.

[rhett o rick]

51. It is possible that Pres Obama cant do more. Even FDR needed a lot of help.

I think that CorpAmerica is deeply entrenched. I am not sure that FDR could recover at this point. The methods used to delay a depression are temporary and only will make the eventual crash much bigger. When CorpAmerica is done with us (We the People) we will be just like Haiti.

I dont think we have any choices. Violent revolution is a fantasy that lots of us like to entertain once in a while, but only a fantasy.

[mother earth]

24. K & R.

:kick: :kick:

[OnyxCollie]

25. K&R

Great post, Time for Change.

[raouldukelives]

26. K&R! nt

[LWolf]

28. k&r

[90-percent]

29. How Quaint

You have amassed a stunning piece of work, there, Time-for-Change.

However, all of this will be utterly moot after the 2010 and 2012 Election Cycles, due to the January 2010 Supreme Court Citizen's United Ruling.

How can we as Americans do anything about this while we're all fretting over how long Lindsay Lohan's jail sentence will be?

We need 100 Bernie Sanders in the Senate, and 435 Alan Grayon's in congress - QUICKLY. That will not happen and I fear all is lost.

Fascism is upon us.

Well, whaddaya know! I GUESS IT CAN HAPPEN HERE!

-90% Jimmy

:sarcasm:, kind of. Mostly because there's no "facetious" emoticon....yet!

[Time for change]

32. I don't believe all is lost

If it was, we may as well all give up.

History runs in cycles. And we have one big ace in the hole: They need us. Their agenda depends upon willing cooperation from the great mass of people. What it takes to upset that agenda more than anything else is mass awareness of what's going on. Ideas spread, and sometimes they catch on. A tipping point is reached where people look at side issues like Lindsay Lohan (or Bill Clinton getting a BJ in the WH) for the ridiculous distractions that they are.

[90-percent]

48. Tipping Point

I, for one, will not give up until they pry my gun out of my cold dead hands.

Wait, I don't own a gun.

I won't give up until I give up on life altogether. I fight by preaching to the choir on DU, going to my Congressman's public meetings, writing him occasionally, counter protesting at one tea party Rally, slathering my tail gate with bumper stickers, and trying to influence my family and friends with emails and links to DU about profound stuff.

Oh, and I call into Thom Hartmann. (once) I asked him about the right of media to knowingly lie, and he told me he had as guests the broadcasters that were the principals in this case: http://ceasespin.org/ceasespin_blog/ceasespin_blogger_files/fox_news_gets_okay_to_misinform_public.html

I pass this Carlin vid on to many I know via email: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI It reiterates almost exactly the message of your original post and I think it is a good basis to get people to question what's going on all around us.

I also serve on my town's conservation and energy commissions, and I'm a member of the Democratic Town Committee. This afforded me the opportunity to tell Ned Lamont that all our institutions are failing us and all our institutions are run by sociopaths.

I COULD BE DOING A HELL OF A LOT MORE!

I bought a gamer PC from a college kid recently. He was 19 and was pretty well informed. He had a real good handle on how bleak his future was and the struggles he would face as he made his way through life. I'm almost 3 times his age, and when I get a chance to talk to people so young, one of the first things I do is apologize for my generation wrecking his generation's future. This young man really seemed to understand what I was talking about. I owe him an email.

I posted a NY Times link about retraining in manufacturing that was sent by my wife's cousin. (I'm in CNC and out of work) What amazed me is not so much the article, which had a Chamber of Commerce aroma, but the posted LETTERS in response to the article. Most of the responses indicated we the people know we're being hosed by greedy corporations that want the skills, but don't want to grow the workers or pay the taxes to get them. Our current crop of corporate management seem to think THEY are the only ones that should be making ANY MONEY!

Here's the link http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/business/economy/02manufacturing.html?_r=3&hp and it's almost as if 80% of the respondents are fellow DU readers! This leads me to believe Americans may be better informed than we all realize!

I think the tipping point will come soon as a result of the greedy over reach of the corporate powerful. With all the human misery we all see in our communities, it seems almost crazy that Republicans are out there blaming the unemployed for being broke and the only reason we don't have lower unemployment is because we're all milking our unemployment benefits instead of getting a job.

Your OP is a component of helping us all get our country back.

-90% Jimmy,

not giving up. I just get hyperbolic when I try to make my points

[Time for change]

67. You do a great deal!

:thumbsup:

And thank you for the links.

[rhett o rick]

54. I wish I had your optimism. Yes things go in cycles but some times the cycles

are very long. Many of us may not live long enough to see the good cycle again.

When you say they need us, just how do you mean. Our labor? No, there is a glut of cheap labor, if not here, abroad. What they need is our money. We, as a middle class, still have a lot of money. They are draining that from us by cutting wages and selling us crap from abroad. But they have a fast trap method. The bank bailout is an example. They borrowed on our money to bail out the banks. We wont have any money as a class if they continue borrowing on us. They dont need us as consumers as there is a world full of potential consumers.

And again, I appreciate what you write.

[txlibdem]

58. The cycle is just a ruse to syphon money from the middle class toward the wealthy

Boom and bust repeated over and over and over, ad nauseum, is the tool used by the rich to remove your savings, your house, your retirement accounts, etc. Capitalism is a ponzi scheme meant to fool the workers into thinking they'll ever "get ahead" in the long run while all the while robbing them blind.

They don't care if it takes 50 years to steal all your net worth. Most people face multiple boom and bust cycles in their working lives. Capitalism is a failed system that needs regular influx of stolen cash to keep it afloat.

Here is a political cartoon that sums up how they are now able to keep doing evil. http://www.naturalnews.com/021909_America_United_States.html

Here's a question to ponder. If corporations have the same rights as people then why can't we throw them in jail when they commit crimes? Sounds like a lop sided benefit in favor of the multinationals.

[Time for change]

68. Thank you -- Yes, the cycles can be very long, and we may not see the end of this one

in our lifetime. My optimism goes up and down. Sometimes I just have to satisfy myself with the belief that things will get better and that I'm doing something to help.

I'm reading "No Logo" by Naomi Klein. One of the major points she makes in the book is that megacorporations get very concerned about bad PR (for example, as when there are public boycotts against them) and they work very hard to make their PR better. I have to believe that they need us in some way, otherwise why would they be so concerned about their PR? But I admit I have great difficulty pinpointing exactly what it is that they need from us. Perhaps above all they need our cooperation (and yes, our money) -- not from all of us, but from most of us. They go to great lengths to hide what they do. Why, for example have they gone to such great lengths to convince us that JFK was shot by a lone crazy gunman (when the great bulk of evidence says that he wasn't)? If too many people lose confidence in our system I believe it could make a huge dent in their agenda, and maybe derail it.

[rhett o rick]

74. I also cycle between optimism and depression. When GWB was president, I was totally fired up.

We had to get that fascist bastard out of office. I was very suspicious when Bush/Cheney stepped down so easily. IMHO CorpAmerica was done with them, apparently not yet ready for a complete fascist take-over (everything was in place to do it). I was fired up when Obama became president. But, in spite of what the Pres has done, I dont think our progress is enough to turn around our slide into complete oligarchy.

By the way, I think someone that is a better writer than myself should continue the meme of "War on Greed", I heard from someone on here. Or maybe make it "War on Greed and Corruption". It's catchy and may catch on. Be a good slogan coming into the elections.

NGU (I write this for my own benefit)

[90-percent]

82. optimism and depression

The biggest kick in the nads I got was when Obama did not want to "look back" at the war crimes and torture and murder and lying of the GW Bush White House.

The second biggest is when Obama claims the rights to hunt down and kill any American anywhere in the world without any due process. He claims the power of a Dictator with that one, and a Professor of constitutional Law should know better about Habeas Corpus and the principals of the Constitution that 99.99% percent of the rest of us.

Emotionally, it's like finding out you married a serial killer. It's also horrifying that 99.998% of Americans don't even know this, and if they do, don't seem to care or appreciate the totalitarian police state implications of such power.

IT CAN HAPPEN HERE

CAN, not can't. And it's happening right now, this very moment. Two more Citizen's United election cycles is the time we have left to do something about it and I don't see much to right the situation and I fear our country is lost, along with most of our Constitutional Rights. Ironic that our last hope as Citizens could be the right to bear arms!

-90% Jimmy

[Joe Chi Minh]

30. Amazing how much of this prophecy of Micah could speak to our time:

I wonder if the warnings do. I know they will for the next life, but I mean the here and now. Whatever the case, the future will be very, very different.

'Woe to those who plan iniquity,
to those who plot evil on their beds!
At morning light they carry it out
because it is in their power to do it.
They covet fields and seize them,
and houses, and take them.
They defraud a man of his home,
a fellow-man of his inheritance.

Therefore, the Lord says:
I am planning disaster against this people,
from which you cannot save yourselves.
You will no longer walk proudly,
for it will be a time of calamity.'

...................

Hear this, you leaders of the house of Jacob
you rulers of the house of Israel
who despise justice
and distort all that is right;
who build Zion with bloodshed
and Jerusalem with wickedness.
Her leaders judge for a bribe,
her priests teach for a price,
and her prophets tell fortunes for money.

[Odin2005]

34. K&R

[Overseas]

35. I'm glad you covered our discriminatory system of incarceration.

I read about Michelle Alexander's book elsewhere and hadn't thought about our discriminatory incarceration rates as yet another incarnation of Jim Crow until then. A way to disenfranchise a whole group of potential Democratic voters.

[Time for change]

70. It's a very good book.

It's interesting that Alexander herself says in the introduction (or preface) to her book that she herself bought into the "War on Drugs" until she had enough personal exposure to it (as an attorney) to convince her otherwise.

[defendandprotect]

36. K/R --

[unblock]

40. "Monopoly is... merely a form of government that one group of human beings imposes on another"

this is a very important quote. the simplistic free-market view of the market AND the standard view (both in the media and in the classroom) that politics is only about elections and the formal institutions of government fail to consider that it's all about WHERE THE POWER LIES.

if the government is ineffective and the power lies in the hands of corporations, then it is the corporations that are governing, at least in their realm of influence.

just because you have elected office and you call it government doesn't mean that that's where the real power is. sure, obama is capable of doing SOME things, as is congress, but so is the wal-mart family, etc.

at some point, the government becomes an impotent joke, this has happened in other countries. mexico is on the verge; look at how they can't get the drug and kidnapping activity under control.

[puebloknot]

43. K&R And marked for further digestion. This is a Ph.D. dissertation! nt

[nicky187]

45. Planned economies.

All we have in the U.S. is a planned economy. The only difference is that we call our "planning bureaus" corporations. And people wonder why the Soviet Union fell. You can see all the same reasons at work here.

[citizen477]

47. Brilliant Notion, Indeed

Nicky187:
That is a brilliant notion. Would you mind expanding on that? Thank you.

[Soylent Brice]

49. bookmarked.n/t

[alfredo]

50. k&r I just wrote a letter to the editor talking about how the rich aided by

Sen McConnell have been waging class warfare against us and that it is about time we started fighting back. I used McConnell's support of bush's tax cuts for the rich, and his opposition to extending unemployment benefits. He was fine with borrowing a trillion to give a tax break to his rich friends, but finds unemployment insurance extensions as too expensive.

[rhett o rick]

52. As always, very well stated. nm

[Octafish]

53. Corporatism, Fascism and the Secret Government

What ABCNNBCBSFixedNutsNoiseworks left outta their "coverage" of Obama's statement a few days after 9-11:

"There exists a government within the government of the United States. That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks....The United States should trace the perpetrators of these attacks to those persons who want to make the present century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own nation could survive." Daily Ummat, Pakistani newspaper, 28 Sept. 2001

We the People are being played by professionals, the best money can buy and power can coerce.

[Time for change]

71. Obama said that??

[puebloknot]

72. Here's a kick for those who might have missed this. Must read! nt

[Octafish]

75. Aargh! Osama bin Laden said that.

Sorry, Time for change, it was a typo on my part.

The thing is, We the People are being played by a small number of people with power and means. Their reprehensible activities date to the founding of CIA, when many former NAZIs reunited with their pre-war Wall Street financiers to prosecute the Cold War, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror and all the rest you documented in your outstanding post.

Know your BFEE: The Secret Government

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

Know your BFEE: Bush and bin Laden Clans Together in Bed

Know your BFEE: Money Trumps Peace. Always

Sorry about the confusion. I'm typing "Obama" more than "Osama" these days.

[Time for change]

76. I realized some time after I asked the question that that was probably what you meant

But you never can tell these days. So much strange stuff going on!

This is the top book on my "to read" list, to give me a better clue as to what's going on:
"A Presidency in Peril -- The Inside Story of Obama's Promise, Wall Street's Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future":
http://books.google.com/books?id=MyD7zNg_C14C&printsec=frontcover&dq=a+presidency+in+peril+kuttner&source=bl&ots=UdsrQnajTu&sig=-_CLG04z23BuV25tY1GNE1-ZlWQ&hl=en&ei=gW1ETOyuD4WKlweaxsHyDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Sounds like someone did some dot connecting.

[laughingliberal]

56. Huge K & R. eom

[Zorra]

57. Bing bada boom K&R. Great post, thanks.

[xchrom]

59. Recommend -- a new manifesto. Nt

[txlibdem]

60. Corporations aren't the symptom - they are the PROBLEM

The Reagan Agenda: "The goal of this movement was to enable the few, once again, to consolidate power entirely in their own hands." And it worked. Wages have been either stagnant or negative growth versus inflation since the 1980s. Corporate CEO pay shot through the roof. Corporate profits shot through the roof. This IS class warfare but when the Rethugs get on the airwaves they are quick to decry any talk of class warfare. They don't want the American people to wake up and realize that they have been waging class warfare against us for decades now. Corporations were given all the RIGHTS of a person but none of the responsibilities so they are not a legal person, they are legally a SUPER person.

The solution? I say give Corporations all the RESPONSIBILITIES of a person along with all the benefits.

If the actions of a Corporation cause a person's death then try, convict and execute the CEO, all the VPs, and the Board of Directors for this crime. If a Corporation is found guilty of fraud then put the leadership of the Corporation in jail for 10 years. Wouldn't that stop the Corporate crimes? If an insurance company fails to pay a legitimate claim to rebuilt your house after a hurricane then all the top officers forfeit their property holdings (all of them) to make restitution.

In addition, while the top crooks are serving their jail term the Corporation is held in receivership by the gov't, it's accounts are frozen, and is not allowed to conduct any business transactions. It is wiped from the face of the earth for the entirety of the jail term.

[Omaha Steve]

61. Oh hell yes!

K&R!

[Uncle Joe]

62. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Time for change.

[BrklynLiberal]

63. Wow! What a great post. I am going to print it out and read it more carefully....

[AllyCat]

66. Bookmarking for later.... thanks. This looks good.

[KakistocracyHater]

73. puts it better than I do, outlaw CEOs-they override our Consitution & Bill of

Rights, they break our laws using their "private"(& Cheney-approved) multinational corporations.

[wiggs]

80. Great post...thank you. Gets to some of the root of the problem, especially

regarding global royalty, corporate monopolies, degradation of democracy through money and election fraud, and despoliation of the commons.

Regarding the commons and who benefits and controls it, read Earth Democracy. Eye opener, for me anyway.

[Norrin Radd]

81. kr