tagged w/ corporate power
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.... this is a very interesting about the TNC Transnational Corporations and how they are interconnected. Worth the read...
"Doubtless, if you’ve been paying any attention to news – either online, broadcast or print – you’ve had to at least heard something about the Occupy Wall Street movement. And no matter where you fall along the political spectrum – arch-conservative, neo-conservative, raging liberal, classical liberal, Austrian liberal, middle of the road, pragmatist, mash-up, federalist, states rights, moderate, or any conglomeration of the above, or even none at all – you certainly have some opinion – good, bad, or indifferent – about the message, the messengers, and the movement – no matter what you may hold to be true about it.".... this is a very interesting about the TNC Transnational Corporations and how they... more
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From an Email I received this morning:
"Since Russ Feingold launched Progressives United earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of Americans have joined us in the fight against corporate dominance of government.
Today, to accommodate our rapid growth and take our united activism to the next level, I'm pleased to announce the launch of our brand new website.
This new website, with more tools and more opportunities to take action, will be a big boost as we fight to bring accountability to CEOs like G.E.'s Jeff Immelt, sellout public servants like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and influence-peddling corporate front groups like ALEC.
With elections coming up in Wisconsin next week and around the country soon -- and with corporate money already flowing into politics through shadowy front groups like Karl Rove's Crossroads -- we had to launch our new website right now to get these important grassroots tools into activists' hands as soon as possible.
The new site will make it easier to organize collectively to hold politicians, corporations, and the media accountable by providing you a prominent forum -- right on the home page -- to discuss and address new challenges with your fellow progressives.
In fact, right now progressives are discussing their thoughts on the proposed debt ceiling solution.
With an early victory in the Wisconsin recall elections over Scott Walker's corporate-driven agenda, we've got the momentum to make big progress in this fight.
Now, with the launch of the new ProgressivesUnited.org -- and our expanded grassroots organization -- we have a powerful tool to help us.
In all, progressives like you will drive a huge portion of the activism and content on our new website -- because Progressives United belongs to you.
So come on by, kick the tires, get involved -- and let's take our fight against the corruptive influence of corporate power to a whole new level.
Thank you for uniting as a progressive."
More at...http://www.progressivesunited.org/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/01/russ-feingold-progressives-united_n_914525.htmlFrom an Email I received this morning:
"Since Russ Feingold launched... more
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(Taken from October2011.org, trying to spread the word)
Inspired by the courageous, nonviolent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Greece, Spain, and elsewhere, people in the United States have come together to form the October2011 Movement. This fusion of peace, social justice, environmental, student, and immigrant rights organizations is in solidarity with all who seek a peaceful, just, and sustainable future and stands ready to engage in its own campaign of nonviolent resistance beginning in Washington, D.C., this October. We recognize that your revolution is our revolution, that American Empire prevents you from achieving self-determination and economic justice, and that only together can we achieve our shared goals.
October marks the beginning of the11th year of the U.S. invasion and destruction of Afghanistan. It marks the beginning of yet another federal budget that delivers unlimited funds for war and corporate interests while putting in place an austerity budget for services that meet human and environmental needs. But this October will mark the beginning of something else in the United States — a moment when we will unite to demand an end to a system that puts profits and warfare over the welfare of people and the environment.
The response to our call, which is but one week old, has been tremendous. Already more than one thousand have pledged to join this resistance action in Freedom Square and that number is growing rapidly. Leading figures from a wide range of communities have stepped up to join the call. Among them are noted African-American scholar and activist Cornel West; Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC ) President Baldemar Velasquez; Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent and author Chris Hedges; single-payer health-care advocates David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler; noted environmentalists Derrick Jensen and Harvey Wasserman; and antiwar leader Ret. Col. Ann Wright, along with numerous other prominent peace activists. You can see more of the people who signed up by visiting www.October2011.org.
Read more at http://october2011.org/node/332 or go to the main site listed above.(Taken from October2011.org, trying to spread the word)
Inspired by the courageous,... more
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The Battle to Save Democracy by: Thom Hartmann, Berrett-Koehler Publishers | Serialized Book
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Editor's Note: Truthout is proud to bring you a new, exclusive series from Thom Hartmann, the New York Times-bestselling, four-time Project Censored Award-winning author of 21 books. We'll be publishing weekly installments of Hartmann's bestselling book, "Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became 'People' and How You Can Fight Back." Join us as, chapter by chapter, we delve into issues of corporate power, popular resistance and the nature of democracy itself. We begin today with the book's introduction, "The Battle to Save Democracy."
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On September 2, 2009, the transnational pharmaceutical giant Pfizer pled guilty to multiple criminal felonies. It had been marketing drugs in a way that may well have led to the deaths of people and that definitely led physicians to prescribe and patients to use pharmaceuticals in ways they were not intended.
Because Pfizer is a corporation—a legal abstraction, really—it couldn’t go to jail like fraudster Bernie Madoff or killer John Dillinger; instead it paid a $1.2 billion “criminal” fine to the U.S. government—the biggest in history—as well as an additional $1 billion in civil penalties. The total settlement was more than $2.3 billion—another record. None of its executives, decision-makers, stockholders/owners, or employees saw even five minutes of the inside of a police station or jail cell.
Most Americans don’t even know about this huge and massive crime. Nor do they know that the “criminal” never spent a day in jail.
But they do know that in the autumn of 2004, Martha Stewart was convicted of lying to investigators about her sale of stock in another pharmaceutical company. Her crime cost nobody their life, but she famously was escorted off to a women’s prison. Had she been a corporation instead of a human being, odds are there never would have even been an investigation.
read the rest of this installment here:
http://www.truth-out.org/introduction-the-battle-save-democracy68271The Battle to Save Democracy by: Thom Hartmann, Berrett-Koehler Publishers |... more
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Not-yet-public documents reviewed by House ethics investigators have revealed lobbyists and corporate officials talking bluntly in e-mail exchanges about connections between making generous campaign donations and securing federal funds through members of an important House Appropriations subcommittee.Not-yet-public documents reviewed by House ethics investigators have revealed... more
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The New York Times reports that after the US Supreme Court ruled that the federal government may not ban political spending by corporations or unions in candidate elections, officials across the country were rushing to cope with the fallout, as laws in 24 states were directly or indirectly called into question by the ruling.The New York Times reports that after the US Supreme Court ruled that the federal... more
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Overturning a century-old restriction, the US Supreme Court ruled last week that corporations could spend as much as they wanted to sway voters in federal elections.Overturning a century-old restriction, the US Supreme Court ruled last week that... more
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We shouldn't have been surprised. I'm right now working on a book that exposes anew our corporate-owned government, which didn't change in any way when hope was reported to have prevailed a year ago. The new day in Washington when lobbyists would supposedly take backseats to citizen needs became instead The Washington Post calling last summer the Summer Of The Lobbyist. We're seeing now that insurance industry lobbyists did their work well.
Thus, I wouldn't get too excited about health care reform just yet. The word "historic" has been liberally tossed around everywhere since the House bill passed by five votes on Saturday night, but commentators in other countries noticed before the bill even made it to vote that it's ludicrously light fare compared to citizen health coverage in other countries.
The House bill -- which is more ambitious than the Senate bill -- does almost nothing to contain runaway health care costs. Those are what threaten to consume one-fifth of the US gross domestic product in coming years. Health insurance companies are surely laughing themselves silly as the bill would force people to buy insurance from them. The remnant of the public insurance option is pretty barebones, so those unable to pay for insurance won't be well covered.
Nothing is law yet and it remains to be seen if reform will get through, but even if it does, it's almost guaranteed to turn into another bonanza for health corporations, more national debt, and little improvement in access to health care. That's the worst of all combinations, but seems to so often be the one we get. More spending with real benefits would be good, less spending and thus less collected in taxes so we have more left over to get our own coverage would be good, but more spending and little new coverage is not good.
I'm afraid this will end the way so many issues end, with corporations winning while citizens get screwed.
In my opinion, the best summary of what's wrong with the ramshackle attempt to reform American health care was presented by Ohio Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich in his article, Why I Voted No. I recommend that you read it. At just 770 words long, it's worth your time.We shouldn't have been surprised. I'm right now working on a book that... more
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asherp
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2 years ago
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Stephen Colbert talks about the Citizens United v FEC case.
WATCH THIS
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asherp
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2 years ago
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http://www.dontgetrolled.org
Once upon a time, corporate titans bankrolled our elections with no limits. There were no social safety nets, no real labor laws, and no voting rights for most Americans. There were the haves and have nots.
This fall, a century of modest limits on corporate influence in politics could be completely rolled back, crushing progress on health care, the environment, energy, economic recovery … on everything!
The Supreme Court on September 9 hears a case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that reopens the question of unlimited corporate money in our elections. In a stunning move, the Court will reach back and reconsider two other pivotal campaign finance cases settled long ago. The potential result? A century-old pillar of campaign finance doctrine could be swept away.
Sound like a good idea? Sounds so very last, last century — except this time it wouldn’t be the robber barons — it would be the giant, multinational corporations buying our politicians outright.
Don’t let our elections and progress get rolled by corporate power!
http://www.dontgetrolled.orghttp://www.dontgetrolled.org
Once upon a time, corporate titans bankrolled our... more
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asherp
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2 years ago
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Is there a shadow government made up of secret societies all linked to one another scheming to bring about a New World Order? Sure looks that way to me now. That's why anyone being allowed to run for president in this country receives my skepticism regardless of their words. Is there a shadow government made up of secret societies all linked to one another... more
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Stuart Townsend interviews Ralph Nader for the new 1999 WTO protest resource page.
http://www.youtube.com/user/whocontrolstheworld
Ralph Nader discusses how corporations have been able to gain almost total power over major decisions that affect the US and the world. Stuart Townsend interviews Ralph Nader for the new 1999 WTO protest resource page.... more
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For all of America's shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, "The system works." Now all bets are off.
The following is an excerpt from Bill Moyers' new book, "Moyers on Democracy" (Doubleday, 2008).
Democracy in America is a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck. The reigning presumption about the American experience, as the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has written, is grounded in the idea of progress, the conviction that the present is "better" than the past and the future will bring even more improvement. For all of its shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, "The system works."
Now all bets are off. We have fallen under the spell of money, faction, and fear, and the great American experience in creating a different future together has been subjugated to individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power -and to the claims of empire, with its ravenous demands and stuporous distractions. A sense of political impotence pervades the country -- a mass resignation defined by Goodwyn as "believing the dogma of 'democracy' on a superficial public level but not believing it privately." We hold elections, knowing they are unlikely to bring the corporate state under popular control. There is considerable vigor at local levels, but it has not been translated into new vistas of social possibility or the political will to address our most intractable challenges. Hope no longer seems the operative dynamic of America, and without hope we lose the talent and drive to cooperate in the shaping of our destiny.
The earth we share as our common gift, to be passed on in good condition to our children's children, is being despoiled. Private wealth is growing as public needs increase apace. Our Constitution is perilously close to being consigned to the valley of the shadow of death, betrayed by a powerful cabal of secrecy-obsessed authoritarians. Terms like "liberty" and "individual freedom" invoked by generations of Americans who battled to widen the 1787 promise to "promote the general welfare" have been perverted to create a government primarily dedicated to the welfare of the state and the political class that runs it. Yes, Virginia, there is a class war and ordinary people are losing it. It isn't necessary to be a Jeremiah crying aloud to a sinful Jerusalem that the Lord is about to afflict them for their sins of idolatry, or Cassandra, making a nuisance of herself as she wanders around King Priam's palace grounds wailing "The Greeks are coming." Or Socrates, the gadfly, stinging the rump of power with jabs of truth. Or even Paul Revere, if horses were still in fashion. You need only be a reporter with your eyes open to see what's happening to our democracy. I have been lucky enough to spend my adult life as a journalist, acquiring a priceless education in the ways of the world, actually getting paid to practice one of my craft's essential imperatives: connect the dots.
For all of America's shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, "The system... more
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meecho
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3 years ago
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This is a short video documenting a protest against one instance of corporations, i.e. the auto industry, taking over our government agencies, in this case the National Highway Traffic Safety Agency. The NHTSA was created to protect citizens by creating safety standards for motor vehicles, but instead it is about to not only neglect to protect us, but prevent citizens from filing lawsuits for injuries or deaths due to this negligence.This is a short video documenting a protest against one instance of corporations, i.e.... more
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meecho
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3 years ago
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