Blaming corporations is demagoguery

[aein]

I see a lot of anti-corporate stuff on DU, and while I don't like a lot of what corporations do, I find attacking and blaming corporations as totally mystifying. Corporations are legal fictions! They don't really exist! It's a type of legal form, where people join together to run a business. So be brave, don't attack corporations. Attack the greedy CEOs that run them, that pay themselves millions of dollars, while outsourcing the jobs American workers.

Also, not only is attacking corporations a total dodge, thinking of corporations as anything other than legal fiction leads to bad policy. For example, one good idea (and probably not politically correct in Democratic circles) is to lower the corporate tax rate, while increasing tax rates on wealthier individuals. You see, corporations really don't pay taxes, people do. When you do tax them, you tax a black box, and can't really figure out who pays the tax. Is it the shareholders, customers, suppliers, the CEOs, or the people who work for the companies? Obviously, you want to tax CEOs more, and workers less, but when you tax a corporation, there is no way to direct the tax against who you want too. In fact, the people who run the corporation are likely to divert the cost of the tax less onto themselves and more onto other people.

[villager]

1. You've never heard of POCLAD, have you? Here's their website:

http://www.poclad.org/


Unfortunately, the damage corporations are doing to our society isn't "fictional" at all....

[aein]

2. It's people who are doing it

corporations = people. Get it?

[Mythsaje]

4. People HIDING behind corporations

and avoiding personal responsibility for their actions through a legal fiction.

[aein]

6. yeah, I'm saying that we should ignore the corporation, and figure out who those people are.

[Mythsaje]

11. One of the primary purposes behind a corporation is to shield

those involved from liability for its misdeeds. You have little choice but to go after the corporation first and then hit the individuals as it becomes possible.

[aein]

13. Yeah, but who does that hurt?

Forget about rules of limited liability for a second. I'm saying we should re-think the rules completely, as to how corporations are treated in the legal system. Which of these options are better?

Situation 1:

CEO decides not to fix pipeline.
People hurt sues corporation. Wins 50 million.
CEO doesn't lose job, and to pay for the cost of the litigation, offshore jobs.

Situation 2:

CEO decides not to fix pipeline.
People hurt sues CEO. Wins $50 million against the CEO, and against his personal assets.

[Mythsaje]

18. I can't forget about the laws of limited liability...

They're a major part of the problem.

Personally I'd just as soon see the corporation "killed," or, rather, reorganized and ownership transferred to the workers as the ultimate result of such a lawsuit. Strip any power or influence from those responsible and give it to those with the most to gain or lose as a result of said lawsuit.

Basically "if you can't play nice, we'll take away your toy and give it to someone who will."

[aein]

23. So I guess your answer to take the ownership of the business from the stockholders, and give it to..

...workers.

If you have a 401k, that means you. You're taking it away from yourself.

[Mythsaje]

25. Sure. Make it a three strikes clause.

Three successful liability lawsuits result in loss of ownership, whereupon it is transferred to the employees. At the point of a second such lawsuit the shareholders would have the right to cash out and take their money elsewhere or, simply, rally to get rid of the CEO and Board of Directors guilty of neglect and/or malfeasance.

[Thothmes]

36. The share holders retain the right

to get rid of the CEO and Board of Directors at any time they choose.

[Warren Stupidity]

58. In the extreme case some corporations may have to be nationalized..

Shareholders can be compensated of course, so your feigned concern for all of those 401k shareholders can rest easy.

More generally if we are going to allow corporations to do business and to have rights, as we do today, we should also demand that they operate not only for the benefit of shareholders, but also in the public interest. Along the way we need to shed ourselves of the idiocy of free market fundamentalism that has been largely responsible for wrecking not only our republic, but nations and societies around the planet.

Business enterprises need to be regulated for the public good, and the determination of 'the public good' and the agencies responsible for that regulation, have to be as free of corruption as possible. We need a huge sweeping reform of our entire system in order to undo the damage that has been done. Eisenhower warned us as he left office of the dangers of the institutionalized corruption that was forming in Washington. That corruption was held somewhat in check by the slowly diminishing new deal coalition and ethos through the 60's and 70's, but all that was swept away be Reagan and the rightwing neoliberal counter-revolution that took power in the 80s.

[slampoet]

40. Dude you ARE against Corporations, you just don't know dick about biz law.

If there isn't limited liability then it is the same as a business partnership or sole proprietorship.


Essentially you ARE proposing the end of corporations, you just don't know it.

[aein]

42. whatever. law student. limited liability protects shareholders, agency law protects executives

I have nothing against limited liability, except in the tort context, or in the close corporation context. If you get rid of limited liability, you still aren't getting at the problem.

What I'm arguing for is a change in agency-principle law, which is a separate body of law.

[JHB]

66. That explains a few things.

Go bring one of those lawsuits. More power to ya'. You think it's never been tried before? You're the law student: look it up.

And that's where you'll stop going to school and start getting educated.

[JHB]

65. Real-Life Situation 2:

CEO decides not to fix pipeline.
People hurt sues CEO.
Judge throws out lawsuit because CEO cannot be held personally liable for corporate actions.

People get nothing.

"aein" wouldn't stand for American Enterprise INstitute, would it?

[villager]

5. Supreme Court ruling said corporations = people. Get it?

Quit smarming around and click to the website, then get back to me.

[aein]

7. well, technically, corporation are 'persons' not people. Minor law point.

[villager]

12. Pretty minor, indeed. Since it still speaks to my point.

n/t

[Mythsaje]

26. Actually, from what I understand, that WASN'T the result of a Supreme Court decision

but the actions of a law clerk with an agenda.

[Occulus]

54. The case was

Santa Clara Cty. v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. Here's the Wiki on the subject.

The court reporter who wrote the headnotes for that case, which have since been so badly misconstrued, was himself a- SURPRISE!!- former rail company president.

[Cogito ergo doleo]

8. Not to put too fine a point on it, but corporations are persons, too.

[aein]

14. Just because the supreme court says it so, doesn't make it right. Remember Bush v. Gore?

edit: sorry, this was suppose to be one sub-thread up

[villager]

41. but, um, because the Supreme said it, it had an affect. Remember Bush v. Gore?

n/t

[Occulus]

55. The problem is, SCOTUS **DID NOT** say that.

In fact, they went out of their way to indicate to the court reporter that that was something they avoided saying. The court reporter wrote it into the case's headnotes anyway.

Furthermore, case headnotes, while perhaps useful, have no precedential effect, no legal standing or force. They're summaries, nothing more. Nonetheless, corporate attorneys nationwide gleefully (and they had been pursuing exactly this result for some time at that point) jumped on it as saying what people think it today meant.

They all lied about it, basically, and did so with malice of forethought.

Corporate personhood is and always was a 100% lie. Period.

[Mythsaje]

3. As long as corporations have unprecedented access to

the halls of power, are treated the same under the law as REAL people, and yet do not suffer the same mortal frailties as actually humans, I'll continue railing against those that are corrupt, incompetent, or lacking in basic compassion or decency.

Corporations are not inherently bad. But those that promote a corporate culture of exploitation or destruction of civil rights or the environment certainly ARE.

And that's all I have to say on the subject at this point.

[laconicsax]

9. Mmmm...supply-side economics....such bullshit.

So tell me, how has lowering the corporate tax rate benefited the "other people" of which you speak more than those running the show?

[aein]

10. Didn't you see the part where I said I want to raise taxes on wealthier individuals?

What part of that is supply-side economics?

[laconicsax]

17. I did and it changes nothing.

You're talking about two different things and trying to put them together. The taxes on a corporation aren't paid out of pocket by the individuals behind the curtain.

[aein]

24. Sorry, but that's Corporate Tax 101. I suggest you ask any tax professor at any MST/JD/LLM if what I

...said was true, and they would tell you yes.

[laconicsax]

29. I'll take your word for it.

[Trillo]

15. reclaimdemocracy.org has a nice little history of corporations.

http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/history_corporations_us.html

We've been dragged far down the rabbit hole since the revolutionary war against the English corporations. It's hard to pick one of Reclaim Democracy's bullet points as more important than another, but stock cross-ownership seems like a mighty big one, as well the the generalized curbing of States' power over them.

[sandnsea]

16. They shouldn't be legal fictions

that's the point. We allow these entities to exist that are just gigantic monoliths with no final point of accountability. You try to hold a human responsible, a specific CEO, the CEO resigns with a multi-million dollar golden parachute and it takes you another 5-10 years to get the dirt on the next CEO. That's the entire problem. And if the corporation is bad enough to completely unravel, like Worldcom for instance, well some other entity buys them, they change their name and get government contracts within a year. Yeah, Worldcom bought MCI and when Worldcom went down the tubes, they just reformed into MCI again and went on their merry way.

That's the problem and no amount of holding individuals responsible is going to change it. It's the nature of the corporate system and the unwillingness of right wing nuts to rein them in.

[Mythsaje]

20. I think we should start confiscating them and giving them to the employees.

:evilgrin:

I mean, if asset forfeiture can be used in drug cases, why not here? Hell, it's even more applicable, if you ask me.

[warren pease]

50. Yup... The corporate death penalty... Personhood THIS, bastards...

The OP notwithstanding, they sure as hell are real and their actions are far too often harmful to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Thanks to a series of anti-consumer, anti-democratic Circuit and Supreme Court decisions, corporations have achieved nearly untouchable status in the US. There's almost nothing legal you can do to resist or halt their policies, which are based solely on fattening the bottom line and increasing shareholder equity. And that's exactly what they should be doing, since bumping the stock price is the only obligation a US for-profit publicly held corporation has under the law.

However, just about everything that's good for Wall Street seems to be bad for humans and most other species. Corporations, and the gigantic sums of money they wield to buy political power, are the generals in the sustained war fought by international capital against local, regional and global ecosystems; the non-investor classes; worldwide labor; and progressive political movements everywhere.

Even the Constitution is no help since it only defines the peoples' relationship to government. It says nothing about our relationships to non-governmental, anti-democratic institutions (except for the eroding wall between church and state). Current restraints on corporate behavior are the results of cleverly applied political pressure, case law, regulatory oversight, legal action by individuals and single-issue groups, and pro-environmental legislation like the Endangered Species Act.

So, given that the odds are stacked heavily against democracy and in favor of the corporate oligarchy, one of the better ways to wage war against corporate power is the so-called "corporate death penalty." In brief, it means identifying a pattern of sustained corporate malfeasance, then using that pattern to initiate legal action that would result in revoking their charters to conduct business. And it's not like it's tough to find examples of their awful behavior. Whether they're...

- busily subverting environmental regulations

- bribing Congress to enact anti-consumer, pro-profit legislation

- bribing regulators with money or the promise of lucrative careers after their regulatory hitches are done

- bitching about tort reform, then suing the shit out of some starving activist group on some thin pretext

- moving their headquarters to a PO box in some off-shore tax-free haven

- dumping their US workforces because, gee, $7.50/hr. and no benefits is really too much to spend on anybody not wearing a suit

- stealing from regional tax bases by extorting sweetheart land deals and property tax-exemptions from local idiots under the mantra of providing good jobs -- which never quite seem to materialize

- using PR and advertising to con the gullible public into believing that all this treachery is just normal corporate behavior

- and, maybe most disgusting of all, extolling the virtues of the free market while sniveling like the world champion welfare queens that they are whenever their cash flow is threatened and running to Uncle Sucker for another bailout.

For a current example of pure corporate sleaze, see this thread on Comcast's successful efforts today to keep the public out of an FCC hearing on net neutrality by packing the chambers with paid seat-occupiers, leaving no room for actual humans supporting net neutrality. Just another shining example of standard corporate citizenship.

So what's the peasantry to do with these swine? Let's hang 'em high.

Here's a good primer on the history, issues and processes involved in charter revocation. And here's an article citing cases in which such efforts have been successful.

More background here, here and here.

Personally, I think they've got it coming. I can't think of a more abusive, soul-shriveling, amoral, destructive, myopic and inhumane entity than a modern for-profit corporation. They've become exactly what Adam Smith, of all people, warned against in what he termed his "vile maxim," which, simply put, is "All for ourselves and nothing for other people."

Sounds familiar; to the corporatocracy, the very notion of acting in the common interest is at best naive and more likely depraved. Since lynching seems to be all the rage these days... Well, just fill in the blanks.


wp

[Iris]

51. And this doesn't even touch on what they do to people in other countries.

How about Tom Delay and his "This is what America could be" as he stood in a factory where there were cases of women employees forced to have abortions.

[warren pease]

52. Yup, you're right... 21st century imperialism featuring Abramoff, Delay and Saipan slavery...

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/09/real.delay">Unusually decent reporting from CNN.com on the sheer awfulness of modern US imperialism and its deadly effects on the lives of any "little people" who happen to stand between profits and the slobbering, voracious jaws of the corporate monster.

Here's how Tom DeLay -- former professional bug killer and presumed victim of long-term exposure to brain-melting chemicals -- puts lipstick on this particular pig:

According to law firm records recently made public, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, paid millions to stop reform and keep the status quo, met personally at least two dozen times with DeLay on the subject (killing a proposed bill to extend US labor law protections to workers in the Northern Marianas Islands, including Saipan) in one two-year period. The DeLay staff was often in daily contact with Abramoff.

DeLay traveled with his family and staff over New Year's of 1997 on an Abramoff scholarship endowed by his client, the government of the territory, to the Marianas, where golf and snorkeling were enjoyed.

DeLay fully approved of the working and living conditions. The Texan's salute to the owners and Abramoff's government clients was recorded by ABC-TV News: "You are a shining light for what is happening to the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America and leading the world in the free-market system."

Later, DeLay would tell The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin that the low-wage, anti-union conditions of the Marianas constituted "a perfect petri dish of capitalism. It's like my Galapagos Island."

"... a shining light for what is happening to the Republican Party." Amazing what comes out in those rare moments of unguarded candor, larynx lubricated by a little of the local brew.

As if there's much doubt about the driving principles of the US corporate/GOP imperialism partnership: "If you're in the club, your life will roll along on a vast, gently flowing river of money. If you're not one of us, tough shit. We'll figure out how to make your short, miserable, meaningless life useful to us anyway. Profits uber alles!"

If you haven't already, you might consider reading John Perkins' books: "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" and "The Secret History of the American Empire."

Disgusting but informative, particularly for anyone who still harbors any illusions about what this country stands for today, and has obsessed about for the past 170 or so years: The continued expansion of markets, plundering cheap sources of raw materials and the endless growth of wealth and power for the ruling class. Anyone else can go to hell -- particularly anyone whose labor or land can be exploited in service of the great American profit machine.

USA! USA! USA!...


wp

On edit: fixed headline (it was pretty dumb just 10 seconds ago)

[Iris]

61. Thanks for looking this up and posting it here!

I had a long day yesterday and was being a little lazy!

[mrreowwr_kittty]

19. I see what you are saying but are you not aware that corps. are "persons" according to law?

Which I'd have less of a problem with if they were held to the same standards as we living, breathing types were.

As it is, they can kill, maim, and pollute the air and water in ways that you and I would never get away with. Why shouldn't they pay the same tax rate that you and I do? Why shouldn't they be held to account for breaching contracts and moral turpitude that we are? Why are they not subject to the same life span (approx. 90 years) or a death penalty when they commit mass murder, through intent or gross negligence?

Take away their "personhood" without commensurate responsibility and we'll talk, 'kay?

[aein]

22. it's an oversimplification to say that corporations are like "persons" under the..

..the law. What law are you talking about? For example, what if a business is formed as LLC. It is a 'person' for the purposes of state liability, but under the federal tax code is not a person. In fact, it pays no taxes. Its tax liability is taxed under pass-through under Subchapter K, while it still enjoys limited liability.

To say that a corporation is a person is a gross simplification, and conceptualization that doesn't hold up in many areas of the law. Another example is the doctrine of the piercing of the corporate veil.

Also, what does it mean when you say corporation maim or hurt people. People do that. You try to make the pay for its misdeeds, and because of its internally changing cast, you might end up making innocent people pay. For example, the people who work on the production lines.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

27. Here:

"...It is important to remember what a corporation is to understand the implications of corporate personhood for democracy. A corporation is not a real thing; it's a legal fiction, an abstraction. You can't see or hear or touch or smell a corporation - it's just an idea that people agree to and put into writing. Because legal personhood has been conferred upon an abstraction that can be redefined at will under the law, corporations have become superhumans in our world. A corporation can live forever. It can change its identity in a day. It can cut off parts of itself - even its head - and actually function better than before. It can also cut off parts of itself and from those parts grow new selves. It can own others of its own kind and it can merge with others of its own kind. It doesn't need fresh air to breathe or clean water to drink or safe food to eat. It doesn't fear illness or death. It can have simultaneous residence in many different nations. It's not male, female, or even transgendered. Without giving birth it can create children and even parents. If it's found guilty of a crime, it cannot go to prison.

Corporations are whatever those who have the power to define want them to be to maintain minority rule through corporations. As long as superhuman "corporate persons" have rights under the law, the vast majority of people have little or no effective voice in our political arena, which is why we see abolishing corporate personhood as so important to ending corporate rule and building a more democratic society.When the Constitution was written and corporations were part of the government, having duties to perform to the satisfaction of the people, the primary technique for enforcing minority rule was to establish that only a tiny percentage could qualify as "We the People" - in other words, that most people were subhuman. As different groups of people struggled to become persons under the law, the corporation acquired rights belonging to We the People and ultimately became superhuman, still maintaining an artificially elevated status for a small number of people.

Today the work of corporatists is to take this system global. Having acquired the ability to govern in the United States, the corporation is the ideal instrument to gain control of the rest of the world. The concepts, laws, and techniques perfected by the ruling minority here are now being forced down the throats of people everywhere. First, a complicit ruling elite is co-opted, installed, or propped up by the US military and the government. Then, just as slavery and immigrant status once kept wages nonexistent or at poverty levels, now sweatshops, maquiladoras, and the prison-industrial complex provide ultra-cheap labor with little or no regulation. Just as sharecropping and the company store once kept people trapped in permanently subservient production roles, now the International Monetary Fund and World Bank's structural adjustment programs keep entire countries in permanent debt, the world's poorest people forced to feed interest payments to the world's richest while their own families go hungry. Just as genocide was waged against native populations that lived sustainably on the land, now wars are instigated against peoples and regimes that resist the so-called "free trade" mantra because they have the audacity to hold their own ideas about governance and resource distribution. Racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and divisive religious, ethnic, ideological, and cultural distrust were all intentionally instituted to prevent people from making common cause against the ruling minority, and those systems continue their destructive work today..."

<snip>

http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/edwards_morgan_corporate.html

[McCamy Taylor]

21. If the right wing takes away corporations "protections as persons" and their power and

their prestige and the way that children in this country are told to get down on their knees and pucker up and kiss the collective asses of corporate CEOs for the greater glory of the good old Red White and Blue in a way that would have made the Old Testament prophets cringe...

then I might stop labeling corporations like Exxon and Chevron and GE and Microsoft the enemy.

Dude, this thread belongs over in Freeperville, where the working class has been deluded into thinking that what is good for the bottom line of American Airlines is good for the employees of American Airlines. Ask the actual employees of that company, and they will tell you that they accepted wage and benefit cuts to help turn their company's financial picture around, and once the good times came every cent went into the hands of the CEOs who had sacrificed nothing except a bunch of hot air extorting the workers to think about the company .

Study the Nuremberg Trials sometimes and the reconstruction of Germany. There you can see the messed up priorities of the US in action. The handful of German industrials who were selected to pay for the crimes of German industry---forced slavery and the rest--received wrist slap sentences and were out in a few years, their fortunes intact, the US ready to do business once again.

U.S. business is the High Holy of Holies. It needs to be taken down a whole lot of notches. U.S companies hire terrorists to kill third world union organizers, they destroy the environment here and abroad, the bribe politicians and no one seems to care----Max Weber had some choice words about how the Protestant Ethic had been perverted in this country into a kind of joke in which the pursuit of money by businesses was a moral end in itself.

Sorry for the rant, but I could not believe it when I checked in and found a thread like this at DU.
Anyone who underestimates the power of corporations to kill, persecute, promote racism and other forms of hate and inflict poverty and suffering on the peoples of the world---all in the name of making money, and with the immunity that comes from being part of a "faceless" enterprise---is either naive or in the pay of the corporations.

[tkmorris]

28. I'm sorry MT, but you completely missed the OP's point

I only say that (instead of merely avoiding answering you altogether) because it is apparent to me that you and the OP are largely in agreement with each other, you just fail to realize it.

He/she is saying that you are correct, corporations do in fact commit all of the evils you accuse them of, and then some, but it is the fiction of corporate personhood that allows blame to be mislaid. Corporations in and of themselves are merely logos on a letterhead, it is the PEOPLE who operate them that commit those evil acts. All too often it is the fictional "corporation" that is held responsible while the people who actually made the decisions behind the corporate shield who are truly responsible, and who skate away scott free.

This is why corporations act as they do. It is the people behind them that decide what they will do, and yet if the corporation is sued or fined out of existence those people do not pay any penalty for their immoral decisions. The corporation may no longer exist, but the men who raided the pensions, overdeveloped the wetlands, stole the village's fresh water supply to make soda, endangered the employee's lives, operated child sweatshops in third world nations, those men walk away unscathed. That is what incorporating is FOR, placing a wall between the individual and responsibility for their actions.

I beg you, read his/her post again. We are on the same side.

[mmonk]

30. Multinational corporations have more rights than you or me or my children.

The courts are being overthrown for them, not abortion. We are in Iraq for them not to save the US from terrorism. I've been in private business all my life. But they aren't designed to run society just as government is not designed to run business. Corporate power and influence is definitely a problem right now.

[PA Democrat]

34. You-re right. The right wing has duped the anti-abortion crowd into thinking

that a vote for them will mean the end of legal abortions. But the REAL intent of appointing these right wing judges is to protect corporate interests. Both Alito and Roberts had extensive anti-consumer, anti-labor, pro-corporate track records.

[Echo In Light]

35. and shifting things further toward theocracy, which is about systems of control, not faith

[leftofthedial]

31. couldn't disagree more

corporations are the tumors that have sprung up as capitalism has metastasized. They are perfectly empowered to execute an agenda that people could never do without the cover of incorporation.

All rights, almost no responsibilities, almost no accountability.

[Echo In Light]

33. Private tyrannies required by law to ignore the public trust ahead of shareholders

[leftofthedial]

39. they ruthlessly externalize costs, meaning *we* support the very actions

that destroy our planet, our culture and our economy.

Corporations are nothing less than psychopathic collectives.

[crispini]

32. Have you seen the movie "The Corporation"?

I'm sure that's where a lot of this sentiment comes from. It's hard to see it and not start blaming corporations.

It's my understanding that the "corporate personhood" concept has led to a real lack of accountability, and there needs to be some adjustments in the law.

Individual humans may do the right thing out of a sense of morality. A corporation as a whole has none.

[elizfeelinggreat]

38. Yes and they exist only

to create profit.

Right or wrong doesn't come into that equation unless we implement better regulation.


We should be demanding they reinstate the regulations put in place to protect citizens (and employees) and institute caps on how much profit any corporation can make through government contracts and backtrack on media consolidation, etc.

[sendero]

37. I pretty much agree...

... except my take is "attack the moron and bought politicians that let them do whatever they want".

[jasmine621]

43. I think Hillary understands this precisely. Obama demagogues the issue.

Just wish more people would enlighten themselves. Thanks for the post.

[blues90]

44. Shit !

This is complete crap . Corporations are the power , they have made this happen through merging into larger and larger structures while eating away all competition . Once they got this done they now control everything we eat and buy and live with .

They have no beginning or end now .

[Iris]

46. I second that

[Uncle Joe]

45. Exxon is still alive and making record profits almost twenty years after the Valdez oil spill

ruined tens of thousands of people's livelihoods doing massive damage to the environment. Today, nearly twenty years later, 20% of those victims or people have died. Instead of receiving any practicable justice, those people's mortality against a virtually immortal by comparison corporation eliminated that possibility.

Today Exxon has waged corporate political and propaganda war against the scientists and the people's elected political leaders as they attempt to warn the people against the looming catastrophe of global warming climate change. It's not that people don't work for Exxon and won't die with the rest us when global warming climate change truly hits the fan if their own personal mortality doesn't catch up with them first, it's just that the corporation doesn't give a damn while also having disproportionate power over the free people, their elected leaders and the people who are employed by that corporation.

Frankenstein was a fiction as well and didn't really exist and it's not that he wasn't made up of people, he was made up of lots of people and yes he was also misunderstood, but at least he showed some compassion.

Exxon's example of corporate mores and power is just one small example of the super citizens, we've created to rule over us whether directly or indirectly.

[Iris]

47. and how about health insurance companies?

They make life or death decisions every day based soley on profit margins.

[Uncle Joe]

48. I suspect the same can be said for the lobbying efforts of the growing for profit

prison industries and private mercenary corporations, two things I can almost gurandamntee they will never lobby for is more freedom for the people and world peace.

One other point I don't believe it was just a coincidence that it was the corporate owned media that did the lion's share of misleading the American People by slandering and libeling the primary political champion for empowering those same people by opening up the Internet to them, instead of giving him credit for his vision and perseverance, just because they felt the Internet threatened their monopoly on information, control, power, money and influence. So in spite they rewarded mediocrity at it's best and corruption at it's worst by enabling it to the most powerful job in the land.

[Iris]

49. yep - don't get me started on the for-profit prison system

And I love Al Gore, too!

[Warren Stupidity]

53. Seeing as how a cabal of large corporations run our federal

government for their corporate enrichment, I don't quite follow how attacking this obvious and longstanding deformed corruption of what was supposed to be a republic of free citizens is 'demagoguery'.

Are all corporations bad? No. Do we have a huge problem with the military/prison/security-industrial-complex, a network of large corporations who have established complete control over our republic? Yes we do.

[wtmusic]

56. Antitrust is the real issue.

If legislators were willing to uphold the Sherman/Hatch Acts and keep megaliths like Microsoft, ClearChannel, Adobe, and others from dominating market sectors through sheer intimidation, competition would not only force corporations to lower their prices but force CEO compensation down.

[KG]

57. corporations will be the death of this country.

[bemildred]

59. I would be more than happy to go after the weasels that run them too ... nt

[treestar]

60. People here tend to use the term "corporations" to describe

huge corporations, not aware that the average business can be a subchapter S corporation with one shareholder.

They attack the form rather than the real problem: big business.

Big business has also started moving on to the LLC form. It doesn't matter what they use or call themselves. They are still "big business."

And a small business running on a shoestring making a living for one family could be a "corporation."

[sarcasmo]

62. Did you come over from free Republic?

[kelligesq]

63. What are you, a member of Tom Donahue's Chamber of Commerce, the biggest lobbyist in DC?

Yeah, the multinational corparations ARE the problem.

They picked the US consumer and laborer and US resources dry- threw them away, and moved on to pick China and India dry with cheap labor and no consumer/safety laws.

[kelligesq]

64. Do something

do we walk the talk or

just talk the talk ?

It's WE THE PEOPLE against "we the corporations" and all those they've bought in
DC.

We either stand up and say "that's enough" - return to the Constitution, the
Bill of Rights, the Law because we are 300 million people against you 1 percent
or we sink further into "fascism" also known as "corporatism".

John Edwards is so right. The system is broken and it happened because we have been sheeple.

It's time to speak up and let the Pelosi's and Rahm Emanuels and Harry Reid's know THEY LIED TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE just as much as the current mis-administration has. They're a rubber stamp for the mis- administration.

And we're gonna stand up , tell them so, and not take it anymore !:mad:


http://www.PetitionOnline.com/DraftJRE/petition.html