I just posted the following to the Obama administration's change.gov "Share Your Thoughts". And, if you and enough people do the same and pass the word, maybe someone above the level of email-drone might actually see it and DO something!
--jim
http://www.change.gov/page/s/economy
In the '60s, when "radicals" were trying to start a peace, one sometimes heard the insightful slogan: "Small is Beautiful!"
Never has it become more obvious that the nation needs to roll-back the power and dangers of bloated conglomerates.
As the FOREMOST move to DEFEND Americans from attack, we need to begin steps towards breaking up the natural/Darwinian concentration of wealth and power in faceless, unaccountable overpowering conglomerates (FUNCTIONAL cartels, trusts, monopolies):
1. For the first time in history, the federal government - instead of unelected and unaccountable political appointees to the Supreme Court - need to declare that corporations are NOT "persons"; that "person" and "people" refer EXCLUSIVELY to humans; and thus and most importantly, that corporations have NO rights or privileges other than those that may be explicitly stated in legislation.
2. To protect and obtain for ALL of We, the People, the REAL benefits of business competition, we need to begin defining policies - by statute and regulation (e.g. FTC, EPA, DoD contracts, etc.) - that (a) force the break-up of conglomerates that threaten the nation's safety by being "too big to allow to fail", and (b) prohibit mergers and acquisitions that create such dangers.
--jim
http://www.change.gov/page/s/
In the '60s, when "radicals" were trying to start a peace, one sometimes heard the insightful slogan: "Small is Beautiful!"
Never has it become more obvious that the nation needs to roll-back the power and dangers of bloated conglomerates.
As the FOREMOST move to DEFEND Americans from attack, we need to begin steps towards breaking up the natural/Darwinian concentration of wealth and power in faceless, unaccountable overpowering conglomerates (FUNCTIONAL cartels, trusts, monopolies):
1. For the first time in history, the federal government - instead of unelected and unaccountable political appointees to the Supreme Court - need to declare that corporations are NOT "persons"; that "person" and "people" refer EXCLUSIVELY to humans; and thus and most importantly, that corporations have NO rights or privileges other than those that may be explicitly stated in legislation.
2. To protect and obtain for ALL of We, the People, the REAL benefits of business competition, we need to begin defining policies - by statute and regulation (e.g. FTC, EPA, DoD contracts, etc.) - that (a) force the break-up of conglomerates that threaten the nation's safety by being "too big to allow to fail", and (b) prohibit mergers and acquisitions that create such dangers.
Just in from a friend, re my anti- corp-personhood proposal. --jim
These from two earlier radicals:
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy
of our monied corporations which dare already
to challenge our government to a trial of strength,
and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
--Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?
"When I took the office the antitrust law was practically a dead
letter and the interstate commerce law in as poor a condition. I
had to revive both laws. I did. I enforced both. It will be
easy enough to do now what I did then, but the reason that it is
easy now is because I did it when it was hard. Nobody was doing
anything. I found speedily that the interstate commerce law
by being made perfect could be made a most useful instrument
for helping solve some of our industrial problems. So with
the antitrust law. I speedily found out that almost the only
positive good achieved by such a successful lawsuit as the
Northern Securities suit, for instance, was in establishing
the principle that the government was supreme over the big
corporation, but by itself that the law did not accomplish any
of the things that we ought to have accomplished; and so I began
to fight for the amendment of the law along the lines of the
interstate commerce law, and now we propose, we Progressives,
to establish and interstate commission having the same power
over industrial concerns that the Interstate Commerce Commission
has over railroads, so that whenever there is in the future a
decision rendered in such important matters as the recent suits
against the Standard Oil, the Sugar - no, not that - Tobacco -
Tobacco Trust - we will have a commission which will see that the
decree of the court is really made effective; that it is not made
a merely nominal decree. Our opponents have said that we intend
to legalize monopoly. Nonsense. They have legalized monopoly. At
this moment the Standard Oil and Tobacco Trust monopolies are
legalized; they are being carried on under the decree of the
Supreme Court. Our proposal is really to break up monopoly. Our
proposal is to lay down certain requirements, and then to require
the commerce commission - the industrial commission - to see
that the trusts live up to those requirements. Our opponents
have spoken as if we were going to let the commission declare
what those requirements should be. Not at all. We are going to
put the requirements in the law and then see that the commission
requires them to obey that law."
--Theodore Roosevelt, October 14, 1912
http://www.theodore-
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