How Popular Movements Can Confront Corporate Power and Win

from YES! Magazine, via AlterNet:


How Popular Movements Can Confront Corporate Power and Win

By Michael Marx and Marjorie Kelly, YES! Magazine. Posted August 29, 2007.



The gap in power between corporations and democratic forces has widened enormously in recent decades. Here's what we do about it.


Corporate power lies behind nearly every major problem we face--from stagnant wages and unaffordable health care to overconsumption and global warming. In some cases, it is the cause of the problem; in other cases, corporate power is a barrier to system-wide solutions. This dominance of corporate power is so pervasive, it has come to seem inevitable. We take it so much for granted, we fail to see it. Yet it is preventing solutions to some of the most pressing problems of our time.

With global warming a massive threat to our planet and a majority of U.S. citizens wanting action, why is the U.S. government so slow to address it? In large part because corporations use lobbying and campaign finance to constrain meaningful headway.

Why are jobs moving overseas, depressing wages at home, and leaving growing numbers under- or unemployed? In large part because trade treaties drafted in corporate-dominated back rooms have changed the rules of the global economy, allowing globalization to massively accelerate on corporation-friendly terms, at the expense of workers, communities, and the environment.

Why are unions declining and benefits disappearing? In large part because corporate power vastly overshadows the power of labor and governments, and corporations play one region off against another, busting unions to hold down labor costs while boosting profits, fueling a massive run-up in the stock market.

Why were electricity, the savings and loan industry, and other critical industries deregulated, contributing to major debacles whose costs are borne by the public? In large part because free market theory, enabled by campaign contributions and lobbying, seduced elected officials into trusting the marketplace to regulate itself.

With all this happening, why do we not read more about the pervasiveness of corporate power? In large part because even the "Fourth Estate," our media establishment, is majority owned by a handful of mega-corporations.

Big corporations have become de facto governments, and the ethic that dominates corporations has come to dominate society. Maximizing profits, holding down wages, and externalizing costs onto the environment become the central dynamics for the entire economy and virtually the entire society.

What gets lost is the public good, the sense that life is about more than consumption, and the understanding that markets cannot manage all aspects of the social order.

What gets lost as well is the original purpose of corporations, which was to serve the public good. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/61104/

The rich are getting away with murder in this country.

1. CEO breaks law.

2. CEO receives slap on the wrist.

3. CEO is found on golf course a few hours later. :eyes: :nuke:

5. CEO gets hired by another corporation and starts it all again.

Go to http://www.dmocrats.org

and send the letter to the GOP.

or do this to end the war:


Call GOP contributor and war contractor General Electric Corporation
at 203 373 2211 and ask for the public relations department. Tell the
person in public relations that you want the GE CEO to get Bush to
end the war in Iraq and then Bush resign with Cheney and until that
happens you will not buy any GE products and that you will tell your
friends about this.

do this to enact Single Payer Universal Health care:

Call GOP contributor Rite Aid at 1-800-325-3737 ask for the manager and tell the manager to get your CEO to get the Republican party to enact HR 676 Single payer universal health care into law and repeal Medicare Part D and place the prescription drug benefit in Medicare Part B covering 80 percent of all medication with no extra premiums, no extra deductibles, no means tests, no coverage gaps, and remove the means test for Medicare Part B and until you do, we will not buy consumer products and prescription drugs from your company.

Thanks for the slappity slappity. I needed that.

I essentially sent them what you see in post number 6.

from the new.

:mad:

...a man who made his fortune FIGHTING corporate power and greed and fighting FOR common people against it - and WINNING.

You have to keep correcting - because Corporations are going to keep evolving, adapting, and attempting to break out of their constraints.

Unfortunately there are plenty in government who don't want to restrain them.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

Then there is:

6) Company moves headquarters overseas. CEO and other execs can move to new headquarters and not be in U.S. any more to answer to the law.

(predict this is what is happening with Halliburton)

According to the SEC and a century or so of case law, the only legal requirement for a US publicly-held, for-profit corporation is to increase shareholder value. That's it; all that garbage about good corporate citizenship or empowering workers or civic duty is necessarily subordinate to that fiduciary obligation. Privatize profit; socialize risk -- the American corporate way.

The combination of corporate personhood and the hideous Buckley v. Valeo ruling equating money with free speech has granted these little fiefdoms most of the rights of a US citizen (pre-Bush, of course) without any of the associated responsibilities. As a result, they're systemically non-responsive to public pressure -- unless it affects their profit margins, at which point they suddenly get religion.

Besides hitting them in the pocketbook through legal delaying tactics or by boycotting what they have to sell (and that's just not sustainable in some cases, like gasoline or utilities), I've always been fond of the possibility of revoking their corporate charters. As one online explanation puts it, "Charter revocation - essentially a corporate death penalty - means that the corporation's assets are divided amongst its chief creditors (in some cases this was the workers of the company) and stockholders, and the corporation was no longer permitted to exist." Here's the entire page:

http://duhc.org/rethinking_revoking.html


And here's a site that gives the history, fundamentals, strategies, pitfalls and solutions regarding holding these amoral bastards accountable.

http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2002/02oct-nov/oct-nov02corp1.html


Now that I can get behind.



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