How Do We Shift Power to the People and Away from Concentrated Corporate Power?

[Joanne98]

The power of concentrated corporate capital was on display in Washington last week, as it has been all year. The incoming Chair of the Congressional committee responsible for banking regulation, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) says "my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks." And, President Obama sat down with the CEOs of 20 large corporations to talk about how he could help Big Business increase their already record profits. And, in the Supreme Court, 13 of 16 business cases were ruled in favor of business interests .

These actions echo a year where Sen. Durbin complained the banks "own" the Congress and where President Obama worked with the health insurance industry to keep them in control of health care while claiming it was "reform," and where the Supreme Court in Citizens United vastly increased corporate power in elections by allowing unlimited spending.

Corporate capital dominates the government and prevents the changes urgently needed in so many crisis issues for the nation and the world.

In the last year, through Prosperity Agenda I worked on many of these critical issues including the impact of corporate power on elections, providing health care to all Americans, restructuring finance regulation to prevent another economic collapse and reigning in spending on weapons and war. In all of these areas we had some impact, but in 2011 and beyond, much more will be needed.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-Do-We-Shift-Power-to-t-by-Kevin-Zeese-101223-971.html

[patrice]

1. We need to learn how to form co-operatives of various types and employee owned businesses. nt

[liberal N proud]

2. We the people don't have enough money to override the lobbyist

[Booster]

3. Get rid of the lobbyists.

[Citizen Worker]

4. We know, or should know, that the only time politicians want to see or hear from voters is every two

or four years. In the intervening time they want to see and hear from the lobbyists who come calling checkbook in hand. The only way to reverse this routine dismissal of the voters is to make our presence seen and felt during those intervening years. How do we make our presence seen, heard and felt? By making demands backed up by direct action.

[jwirr]

5. I think besides ending the person-hood idea, we need to understand

that small businesses and local corporations are not the problem. It is and has been multinational corporations for years now. I remember writing a warning about them in one of my books in the 80s. Cannot find the book back just now. They are the ones with a strangle hold on world government not just ours. That said I do not think local corporations should have a vote either. All of their owners and workers have votes - that is enough.

[oceanman]

9. Corporate personhood & other stuff

I think eliminating the concept of corporate person hood is huge. Although dems and pubs are light years apart on what's best for the U.S., that is at least a common theme. All sides are voting/contributing funds to people/proposed legislation/campaigns to resolve issues that we all think are the best solutions to problems for the country. Corporations on the other hand, particularly multinationals, have no allegiance but to themselves. Eliminating person hood should also include their contributing dollars to anything political. As you said, the individuals who are part of the corp are free to contribute and vote as they please. As far as I'm concerned, for any type of election, only citizens directly effected, i.e, only those voters within the particular district of an electoral contest should be allowed to contribute to the parties involved in that contest.

Another of my peeves is the idea that money equals speech. This needs to go away. By its very nature, the idea that some billionaire can throw a few mill at his or her favorite issue/favored legislation/political campaign directly or on the side through a PAC or whatever, while 95% of the rest us are lucky to be able to give a couple of hundred bucks at best (more like <=$50 for most I would wager), means their free speech rights are a lot greater than mine. Where is the principle of 'one person/citizen, one vote', 'equal protection' or whatever, in that equation? Forget the collective donations to a MoveOn or other such group, not that these aren't a valid source for funding progressive causes, but the opposition has their groups of this type as well, along with the Kochs, the billionaire Wall Street guys and that asshole from Pittsburgh (Scaife?)who funded most of the anti-Clinton krap. And their counter argue is what? George Soros? Unions? Pfft, please - no offense to any union folks here, but they are pikers in the political money raising scheme of things compared the other side's sources. Now I'm ranting, I'll go away.

[HereSince1628]

6. Live like my grandparents did...buy unprocessed stuff and buy

things that last.

This takes corporations that do the processing completely out of the game, closes the big box retailers that sell stuff that other people choose to call fashionable and choose to make available. It also brings back things like yard sticks and bread bowls and knowledge of how to serge a fabric and how to proof a dough.

Refusal to participate is the solidarity option. When things get unprofitable for the corporations they will pull out and leave us to rebuild.

For 40 million of us, learning, again, that it sucks to be an employee in a world dominated by employers who don't care, we're already on that path.

We just need the rest of the country to have at least one adult member in their house lose their job, and the miracle of corporate disinterest will take place--yeah I know none of this can actually happen. Society is like bridging the ocean, you run out of stuff and have to tear up what was in order to keep going forward. Unfortunately there is no path backward other than some gawdawful apocalypse

[NorthCarolina]

7. Term limits and campaign finance reform. nt

[Amonester]

11. Two important issues the government by the Rich FOR the Rich

will never do, without unprecedented pressures.

[JohnWxy]

14. term limits just empower lobbyists who are not term limited. Legislators become more at the mercy

of lobbyists who will understand the complexities of various issues (especially where regulations are involved) far better than relatively inexperienced legislators.


campaign finance reform - great idea but John Roberts pretty much emasculated that approach by allowing unlilmited undisclosed corporate funding for campaign advertizing.

[FiveGoodMen]

8. First: We -- esp DU -- need to stop worshiping the guy who is pushing against us.

[femrap]

10. At gunpoint? nt

[Demeter]

12. First, We Hire All The Lawyers

[starroute]

13. Get the unemployed working on it in their copious spare time

That may sound snarky, but it isn't meant to be.

One reason the corporations have so much power is that with people working harder to make ends meet -- two income couples, people putting in extra hours -- there isn't much time or energy for either volunteerism or activism. People's fear of losing their employment if they get involved in causes also helps discourage them from doing anything on the side.

But at the same time, there are any number of people who are either unemployed or underemployed or taking early retirement against their inclinations, many of them with serious skill levels. Taking on some of those people on either a low-paying/part-time or purely volunteer basis could enable progressives groups to do the kind of publicizing of issues that the right has been able to buy outright and the kind of neighborhood organizing that has regularly been run through conservative churches.

The tools for finding and organizing capable people are already out there -- Twitter, Facebook, Craigslist, Meetups. All it would take would be people with the knowledge and awareness to get groups lined up, probably around single issues, and set them to creating educational campaigns, getting themselves interviewed by local newspapers and tv stations, and paying calls on their congressional and state representatives.

I've often seen the complaint that progressives put too much of their efforts into electing Democratic candidates and then cede the day-to-day action on issues to the right. But both the repeal of DADT and the 9/11 responders campaign suggest the untapped power of progressive issues advocacy. All that is lacking in many cases is the money to set up campaigns and keep them going -- and this is where the unemployed and underemployed fit in.

Do-it-yourself activism with the organizing power of the Internet and the untapped skills of the downsized American workforce could be our most potent political weapon.