“Corporations are Selfish, Greedy Bastards”

I recently had a conversation with Susan W, Clark concerning the implications of the recent Supreme Court decision on corporate political speech. We were watching PBS Newshour.

The two commentators (Mark Shields and David Brooks) were in disagreement about whether corporations would use their now legally clear ability to spend all the money they wanted to influence elections and legislative issues.

David Brooks said that corporations are interested in the welfare of people generally because, after all, they wanted to sell to them. Mark Shields responded that he did not see corporations pushing for the Equal Rights Act, or supporting the Voting Rights Act.

Sue’s response was, “Of course not. Corporations are selfish greedy bastards!”

While her remarks can be taken as somewhat cynical, and may well be offensive to those who disagree, there is unquestionably some truth in her statement.

After all, law and precedent have repeatedly clarified that the primary responsibility of corporations in the United States is to maximize return on investment for their stockholders. This imperative is so overwhelming that it actually overrides the corporations’ responsibility to obey the law.

History holds many examples of corporations selling defective products that injure or kill people, even when the corporations had full knowledge that their products would do so. A review of the records shows that they often continued to manufacture and sell those products because it was more profitable than redesign, repair, or discontinuing them.

It is hard to disagree with the “selfish, greedy” part. The “bastard” part should probably be considered artistic license.

What do you think?

Solving the corporation problem prior to a Constitutional amendment

I understand that, based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, we are pretty much screwed as far as reigning in the power of corporations until we pass a Constitutional amendment making it clear that corporations are not people, and do not have the rights of people.

I am fully supportive of such an amendment.

However, as I understand it, there is no constitutional guarantee for corporations to exist, at either the state or federal level.

Why not simply pass federal (and state) legislation eliminating the formation of new corporations (except charitable not-for-profits) and converting all existing for-profit corporations to partnerships?

Those stockholders who wish to participate in the management of a partnership would become active partners, and legally responsible for the actions of the partnership. Those who do not wish to participate in the management of the partnership, but simply want to support the organization and share in any profits, would be silent partners and without personal responsibility for the actions of the partnership.

To do this, I believe, would take comparatively simple legislation.

Daring, perhaps – unprecedented, certainly. But not really new legislative ground.

Of course, it would take strong, bold political leadership in the government. Do we have any of that left in this country?

What do you think?

The Democrats Lost Their Filibuster-Proof Majority?

If you have watched, listen to, or read almost any of various common media the last couple of days, you now know that the Democrats are lamenting their loss of the U.S. Senate seat held by the late Edward Kennedy.

Why the hand-wringing?

Well, the Democrats no longer hold 60 seats in the Senate, and therefore cannot hold fast against a Republican threat to filibuster proposed legislation.

What?

In the first place, the Democrats did not hold 60 seats. In the second, a number of Democrats were voting with the Republicans on many critical pieces of legislation anyway.

So, what have the Democrats lost?

The moral high ground? The initiative? The political capital to drag health care in the United States up to the level of most of the rest of the world? The ability to push forward legislation benefiting the middle class instead of the wealthy?

Well, as near as I can tell, they lost all of that when they traded their backbones for campaign contributions. In any case, they certainly have not demonstrated any of those things in those legislative sessions since they “regained control of Congress.”

What do you think?

Where am I, and what am I doing in this hand basket?

For those who do not recognize the title of this piece, it comes from the exclamation, “We are going to hell in a hand basket!” An observation usually dismissed as the ravings of a Luddite or someone resisting the “benefits of progress.”

Our culture is dying, and we may be taking our species with us.

It is becoming abundantly clear that we, in the United States, are a self-destructive culture. Infant mortality is rising, disease is spreading, we spend more on our military than the rest of the world’s nations combined, we incarcerate more of our members than any other “advanced” nation, and our current generation can depend on living a shorter, less abundant life than their parents. All if this is financed by borrowing from other nations and our unborn descendants. This cannot be described as success.

We depend on unending growth and military force to preserve our way of life, and we have come to the unavoidable point where we can no longer pretend it works. But our culture is so pervasive on this planet, the only planet we know to be able to support human life, that we may destroy the entire species, along with many others, in our death throws,

If we are to survive, we must learn some serious and unpleasant truths, and we must learn them soon.

The human species is not the pinnacle of creation. We cannot continue to take whatever we can wrest from the physical world for our use. We cannot grow forever.

We are simply part of Nature, part of an incredibly complex interconnected web of living and non-living things, within which we are as dependent upon others as some of them are dependent upon us.

And we are dependent upon each other.

To paraphrase John Donne’s words, none of us is an island, complete in our self. Each of us is a part of our watershed, a piece of the ecosphere.

We need to stop our battle for superiority, our continual contest with each other and with Nature, and learn our place in the wonder that is our world. We must stop worshiping power and control, more and bigger, for those things lead to extinction. We need to stop, and look, and listen to the world around us. We must learn ways to live within nature so we can feel the joy of abundance, hear the sounds of the Earth, and see the beauty that surrounds us.

It is time to stop fighting with each other, and to stop fighting with the rest of the environment, for we are losing, as it is inevitable that we will.

It is time we grew up and learned to glory in diversity – of human beings, of nature, of the web of life that nurtures us all – and learn how we fit into this web of life.

What do you think?

What Can One Person Do?

Those of us who recognize that humankind is at a crossroads, and that we must make substantive changes now if we are to survive as civilized creatures, are often faced with doubt, wondering, “What can one person do?”

We have all heard the quote from Margaret Mead about “a small group of thoughtful, committed people” being the only thing that has ever made change. While it may be inspirational, how realistic is it?

I recently had the pleasure of hosting the Wednesday Morning Talk Radio program on KBOO Radio.

My Guest was Rick North, the Project Director of the Campaign for Safe Food, which is a project of Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility. In that capacity, Rick has traveled the state and the country in efforts to raise public awareness of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) and to get food companies to refuse to use it in their products, primarily by educating food producers, and by mobilizing consumers to make companies aware of consumer preferences.

I have known Rick since the time, 7 years ago, when he created the Campaign for Safe Food. I have watched (and sometimes helped) as he developed science-backed and well-reasoned arguments for avoiding rBGH, mounted educational programs for the public as well as for producers, and conducted postcard campaigns to let producers know that the public was concerned. (You may have heard of rBGH by its other name, recombinant bovine somatotropin, or rBST.)

And today, we can all feel secure that all fluid milk processors in Oregon and
Washington are rBGH-free, and almost all processors of other products too, and producers across the country have followed suit. Rick has also been instrumental in preserving the right of suppliers across the country to label their products “rBGH free”.

Rick did all this, and on a minimal budget.

Certainly he had help: The very existence of the program itself was due to the support of Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, and its board and staff, in particular their science advisor, Martin Donohoe, MD. Rick is quick to point out that he has had the support of about 40 advisors from all over the country – physicians, dairy farmers, processors, retailers, activists and more. That without this vital support there would not be these wonderful results. And without the countless volunteers and supporters who mailed in postcards and informed retailers, and did countless other small actions, none of this would have been effective.

But they did not organize themselves. They did not mount an effective effort to remove rBGH from our diary products before Rick came along.

At the core was one person: Rick North.

Rick took his passion for safe diary products and made it happen.

Never doubt that one person can make a difference. Rick did. So can you.

Find your passion, and make it happen. Like Rick, be the spark for another group of “thoughtful, committed people” who make change that matters.

For more information about the Campaign for Safe Food see psr.org/chapters/oregon/safe-food/campaign-for-safe-food.html

What do you think?

Equality vs. Equity

“We are all equal, but some of us are more equal than others”

I recently read a quote about how the law treats everyone equally – the rich as well as the poor are prohibited from begging and living on the streets, a rough reminder of the difference between equality and equity.

Of course, the current “health care reform” fast footwork in Congress is another, perhaps more immediate for some, example that we are all to be treated equally before the law. The wealthy as well as the poor are equally required to have health insurance. If your employer doesn’t provide it, you must purchase it from an insurance company. I assume that if you are already enrolled in Medicare, that counts. I don’t know if that means that you will now be required to also enroll in all the parts of Medicare.

This blatant strong-arming to force everyone to buy health insurance on the open market, or pay a fine, is a product of heavy corporate lobbying. By the way, lobbying is another example of equality before the law: we all have an equal right to pay a few hundred thousand dollars a year to keep a full time lobbyist in Washington to convince legislators to pass legislation that represents our interests. Of course, most of us can’t write it off as a business expense…

Now, equity, on the other hand, would prevent one group of people (corporations, the wealthy, religious groups, environmentalists, etc.) from having more influence on legislation than individuals. Sounds kind of subversive, doesn’t it?

Does equity, instead of equality, sound like a great idea? Well, keep in mind that the essence of democracy is the right to be wrong, and we live in the most democratic nation in history. Just ask us.

What do you think?

Money, Large and Small

A few decades ago I was being trained in estate planning. John Briece, a very astute planner, told me something that clarified my experience with my clients, and changed my understanding of finance and economics.

“You need to understand that some of the people you talk with have already made all the money they will ever spend. More money for them is not about being able to buy things, or about security. It is about investing – it is about power and control.”

It is hard for most of us to really take this in: having all the money we will ever need – to pay the rent or mortgage, car payments, food, clothes, gas, electricity… everything we will ever need to pay money for.

Hard to imagine, isn’t it?

Well, John was right.

There are those of us who have a completely different view of money: it is not about paying the bills, because all that is already taken care of. Money is about power and control – donating money to the college and getting a building or stadium named for us, having the power to call the mayor, or the governor, or our congressperson, and to get through to them personally, and to have our opinions taken seriously. Power to have laws enacted that favor us and our friends and what we want to have happen.

These are the people who do not understand what it is like to try to work for a living in this country. They do not know the month/money problem (is there money at the end of the month or month at the end of the money?) They do not understand what it is like to be unable to find work, even when you are well qualified, because the jobs simply are not there. They do not know what it is like to be stuck in a job that is underpaid, but to be unable to leave for a better job because there is no better job, and this job includes health insurance, although the insurance does not provide much actual health care.

From this pool of very wealthy people come most of our politicians, and we elect them to public office, to represent our interests and to make our laws.

Maybe we should stop. Maybe we should start electing people who know what it is like to work for a living, and care about the rest of us who still do, or are at least trying to.

Then perhaps our laws would reflect our needs and desires. And our economy would provide rewarding jobs for us all, paying living wages and providing real health care.

What do you think?

Taxes and Interest

We have been taught, during the last 3 decades, that taxes are bad. That the government takes “our” money and wastes it on bloated bureaucracy and wasteful programs for the undeserving.

We have often been told that we would all be better off if the government was run “like a business”, the implication being that businesses do not have bloated bureaucracies or indulge in wasteful activities.

So, we object to paying taxes, but we still want functional court systems with swift justice, honest police forces, effective fire departments, well-maintained roads, etc., etc. – all paid for by taxes. And we want more and more for less and less.

But we don’t seem to object to paying interest on credit cards, in return for which we get what? The ability to spend money we don’t have? Interest is every bit as much a tax, albeit imposed by lenders, as any tax imposed by the government.

The difference is that we actually get valuable services from the government. With a lot less bureaucracy, and a lot less waste. (Do you know any government bureaucrat who gets multi-million dollar annual bonuses?)

Doesn’t seem to make sense to me.

What do you think?

We’re All Ignorant

Let’s start with common ground: we are all ignorant, we’re just ignorant about different things. The other side of that coin is that we all know stuff, and while a lot of the stuff we know is common knowledge, each of us has some knowledge no one else around has.

That’s one of the great benefits of diverse gatherings of people: when we get together we can call on our broad collective knowledge to cover for our specific individual ignorance. This applies equally to families, towns, states, and nations.

This is one of the reasons I glory in diversity, and support it whenever and wherever I can.

But that does not mean that I give up my responsibility to think for myself, and to evaluate as best I can what I hear, what I see, and what makes sense.

Essential to this evaluation process is the ability to think clearly, and to have access to accurate information.

Both of these essentials have been under attack for decades, and the results are clear to anyone who looks.

Schools, particularly primary schools, no longer teach analytical thinking (essential to evaluating information), nor vast parts of the history of this country (essential to a sense of perspective). Schools no longer challenge students to form, and defend, their own viewpoints. There is little or no discussion of ideas and principles, and none of everyday ethics or of the commons.

Accurate information is almost a thing of the past – most popular media is owned by a few large corporations, and these corporations use their media to present only those viewpoints that support their ideologies.

The traditional protections for public access to the airwaves have been dismantled. The fairness doctrine not only is gone, it is unknown to the majority of listeners and viewers.

Case law now supports the Fox News Network’s position that corporations using the public airwaves are under no obligation to tell the truth, even in “news” programs. Media owners can lie in their programs, even when they know they are lying, and it is legally condoned activity, say the courts.

Reasonable entry of individuals into the public discourse has been, like political dissent, limited to “free speech zones”. Even the Internet, an unprecedented opportunity to open discussion to “the masses”, is under attack, with the powerful demanding control of who speaks, and when, and how.

The founders of the United States of America knew, and said, that our democracy depends upon an informed public. We are uninformed, and misinformed, and we are therefore losing our democracy.

What do you think?

The Essence of Democracy

Here is a really short post for today.

The essence of democracy is the right to be wrong.

The key to democracy is the right to state your opinion, and to have it heard – to place your ideas in the public discourse, for review, discussion, and development.

Remember that we are all ignorant, just about different stuff. So, no matter what we say, there are those who are certain we are wrong, just as there are those who we know are wrong.

What becomes fascinating as we move through life is how many things we knew were wrong tend to become not wrong as time goes by. Our understanding of the world, and of people, tends to become broader, and we better understand that things we previously saw as black or white are in fact shades of gray (and red, yellow, blue, green…)

If we are allowed only to be right. most good ideas would be suppressed – by those who have the power to control what is determined to be right and to be wrong.

It is a ability to voice our understandings and to hear the ideas of others that makes for an informed public and a reduction in ignorance. It also results in improvements in a democratic society, usually a threat to those in positions to control what is determined to be right and to be wrong.

So, speak up!

What do you think? Really.