Mr. Obvious: It would be nice to see the top corporations that are doing good also. Why not highlight the model that you would like to see these corporations follow?

The progressive agenda limits the size of corporations to something very small, to something like under thirty employees, gross sales limited to something like two million dollars, with banning of associations of such entities. The idea is to prevent them from abusing power. Power abuse manifests in excessive exploitation/oppression, inefficiency, plunder and destruction. Limiting enterprise size keeps the enterprise agenda much more responsible because the average person operating a small business is much more responsible than that average capitalist running a large business. All other types of power concentration (state, church, military, etc) have to be reigned in to a similar degree to keep the people free from oppression so they are able to maintain responsibility. If you want a functional society you have to empower the people. Large organizations of any type make this difficult.

rtdrury - My point is that some useful enterprises demand way more than 30 people. I am all for requiring responsible behavior from corporations, I just think that competition works to improve efficiency and progress. While the pharma industry is often attacked justly for non-competitive activities, they have been successful at finding important medications to treat the sick. I favor better restictions on corporate behavior rather than a limitation of size. Research activities are a good example of where many scientist are often required to advance a project. I do not want to leave this in the hands of public labs. I have seen how they operate, and the waste is criminal.

Impeachment is way past due!

bushco counts as a coporation, right?

a poorly run one, at that.

(but then, when has george bush succeeded at anything?)

/i've just voted for BushCo.
//feel free to join me

I am all for this but it really is just a stunt. These corporate offenders of the common good need to be held accountable in a way that ameliorates the grievous nature of their acts. The management of these global destroyers will not change until they are publicly humiliated and barred from their personal estates.

this is all very well and commendable but can indonesia regain those lost peatlands; can the borrowers get their money back; can the unarmed civilians get their life back; can the exploited children live their childhood again; and can the obese children/adults become healthy? all these crimes against humanity should never have happened in the first place. and they would not have happened, if people weren't so GREEDY, GREEDY, GREEDY..........................

It would be nice to see the top corporations that are doing good also. Why not highlight the model that you would like to see these corporations follow? Who are the good corporations and what are they doing to help the world?

The Carlyle Group is so slippery, even the watchdog has missed it. They are with Halliburton like two peas in a pod..
Go to Google and punch in almost any energy,
nursing homes, defense plants, Saudi Arabia,
Farzai, even Dunkn Donut. They are so much like the Clintons, makes me wonder.

Somehow, over the past 30 or so years,almost all corporations have adopted a psychopathic model. I am unsure just where it became okay to lie, cheat, and steal from those with whom they do business, but that certaionly has become the model. Perhaps it is an inevitability built into unbridled capitalism, but rears it's head more in times when psychopathy is tolerated or practiced by government leadership??? It seems to be encouraged by our current bunch of shitheads.

To any sane and aware person, one would think that hearing such travesties like these for Countrywide (the company went under, yet the CEO took 120 million)... now to you and I, we hear that and wonder why all the employees fo Countrywide didn't immediately roll out the guilitine, torches and pitchforks at this mans estate.

That would be the normal reaction to being ripped off on such a massive scale. MASSIVE scale. But Americans are anything but normal. Such apathy, dismissiveness and ignorances towards getting fleeced out of tens of thousands of dollars, each and every American - and not just on the issue of some corperation, but turn to Health Care/Insurance too. I'm beginning to believe Americans do not care if they're ripped off, they relish being ripped off on such a massive scale.

But the irony is, i'm in a department store this past weekend - and a long time ago I used to work in one myself. And i'm sitting in the service line, and I swear - listen to this because it's very telling about misplaced effort and values amongst Americans. This happens on a daily basis; these shoppers, women mostly, are complaining, whining, and yelling about not being able to return a 20 dollar shirt for a store credit, while another one is throwing a temper tantrum over not getting a 10% discount on a 25 dollar shirt ($2.50). I swear they both took up like 30 mins each in their respective lines.

Here's what you learn from that, and about women especially: If you're going to rip off Americans, make sure you rip them off for Hundreds, Thousands, Tens of THousands of dollars. Make sure it takes place on such a massive and grand scale. Because American, and American women especially will fight at all costs, any ammount of time, down to their last bit of strength to make sure they get that 2 dollar discount. But thousands of dollars pissed away per year, from them and their famalies... doesn't seem to phase them one bit, and again many seem to relish in it.

The management of these global destroyers will not change until there is a long fall with a short bungee

It's utterly amazing to me how often women are blithely denigrated on a progressive website.

mastershake -

we need more observations like yours, which credibly show how the forest has been lost for the trees in unexamined day to day behavior.

observations like yours require, firstoff, a consciousgrounding in humanist Scale perceptions, embedded at the level of the individual beholding the Whole.

your post shows a keen, simple sense of Human Scale Values at a Whole-by-compaison perspective; and i hope you'll use your observational gifts to feel/think/write further about why these Scale distortions have come about so awfully, so suicidally, in the USA -- and then, what those of us who see this same thing happening, can do about it by way of our fellows.

observations like yours go to the heart of things, much more powerfully than a lot of the strictly-political analysis posted here.

In America you can steal, pollute, bribe, rape, murder and still win as long as you wave the most flags and thump the most bibles.

Why would anyone doing "good" want to be a corporation?

The purpose of incorporation is to avoid facing consequences for doing "bad".

It is absolutely no surprise that a needed publicity exercise like this failed to be "noticed" by the corporate media.

J D Smith said:
"Why would anyone doing "good" want to be a corporation?

The purpose of incorporation is to avoid facing consequences for doing "bad"."

Doing good is what public corporations do. If the public would incorporate then we could all do good together, like get out of Iraq which we elected our Congress of, by and for other corporations, to do.

One purpose of incorporating We the People is to make those doing "bad" face the consequences of their criminal actions.

Call a corporation an offender for polluting, call a brick one for flying through a window. The men and women who manage these organizations should be branded - it is not the corporation, but these people who commit the criminal and immoral acts, and hide behind the corporation's legal status as an "individual" - that single weasel-wording allows these real human culprits to escape the consequences of their ruinous decisions. They should be under 24-hour surveillance, and indictment for high crimes and misdemeanors against humanity and the planet.

#
Mr. Obvious March 24th, 2008 4:19 pm

"It would be nice to see the top corporations that are doing good also. Why not highlight the model that you would like to see these corporations follow? Who are the good corporations and what are they doing to help the world?"

OMFG, I can't believe it, a great post. Thank You!!!

At the risk of burdening over tasked progressives who avail themselves for convenience sake to the cheap communist Chinese crap in Wall Mart,
the genetically altered foodstuffs of ADM, the alledgedly diabetes inducing burgers of certain transnational fast food businesses, say enough. Boycott the lot. Proselitze an alternate meme. It's not that you deserve a break today, but that you deserve to ween yourself from counter productive consumer habits. Spending money with transnational corporations and then bitching about buying oil from the police state in Saudi Arabia, come on. Most of the world gets this. But let it be progressives, bless them, in the US who again lead the way in cleaning up corporate/capitalist excesses. At every book group, every tofu fondue party, every city council meeting there must be the seeds of boycott planted, the meme of focusing locally on our fundamental consumer needs. Without that, well, learn to love Saudi oil and all the benefits that that cop out brings with it.

Corporate media needs to be added to the list...

Very progressive--Don`t vote for anyone that could win an election and don`t buy anything from a corporation that is making money!

That means one cannot buy a vehicle, appliance, fly using an airline, take a cruise, go to a hospital, etc. If it sounds good to live the way people did 50 years ago, go ahead and boycott all but Mom and Pop stores, if they can be found. It may take awhile to break all the corporations, but it sure sounds like a worthy cause.

If we just stop buying

Then they'll be a'crying.

If we just stop voting

Then they'll stop gloating.

If we pay no tribute

Then no more galoots!

www.dangerouscreation.com

What about the monopoly of the diamond buisness? I had to quit listening to comercial radio, because it was one jewelry store comercial after the other. There must be a lot of money there if they can run comercials 24/7.
Rather than being protected from monopolies in this country it is being run by them. Our Congress is sponsored by them. They treat us citizen's as an after thought, like we don't even exist.

hey now - Just wanted to be sure of the position of most posters here - that any large business is bad, and therefore any product or research effort that requires a lot of people to perform should never be in private hands. Public government intitutions like universities should do all this work. This is clearly the case in pharmacuticals where all our best medicines come from universities. We are just all capitalist pigs. No wonder everyone is fleeing the United States and we don't have a problem with illegal immagration. (sarcasm intended)

Mastershake: I was stunned by finding your misogynist comments in what is supposed to be a progressive forum.

Example:

"American women especially will fight at all costs, any ammount of time, down to their last bit of strength to make sure they get that 2 dollar discount."

Maybe you should have gone to a tire or hardware store to find some men. How can you be sure that the women fighting for their discounts don't write and call their representatives, or are active in progressive organizations, as am I. To blithely dismiss more than half the population based on your limited observation really saddens and angers me. I am hurt and disappointed that this sexist attitude stll exists. Using your logic, I could extrapolate that all men are warmongering incompetents, based on my observation of the presidents during my lifetime. My experience tells me we wouldn't have war and sex scandals if women held political office at the highest levels.

What you said applied to both sexes, not just women, and even then it ignores those who care but feel helpless to do anything. That more "Common Dreams" readers didn't call you on your inappropriate remarks disappoints me even more.

I wish I could talk to your directly; I know it would affect your lowly opinion of women, and we both might learn something.

mastershake: i can't agree with your sterotyping women, but the essence of what you say has some truth. Part of the reason we tolerate the rapacity of corporations and their CEOs is that many Americans still believe that they could be at the top getting millions each year. Reagan masterfully made the middle class identify more with the rich than with the poor. Maybe now that the middle class is fast becoming the poor, we will learn where our real identity lies.

but, as dylan sang:

"steal a little and they throw tou in jail;
steal a lot and they make you king."

Research has pointed to the strong connections between corporate behavior and psychopathic personalities. Psychopaths have no empathy for others. This endows them with personality traits ranging from greed through sadism. These characteristics combine to make them ruthless in business dealings. These people are actively sought by corporate headhunters. It's no surprise, then, that corporations can so accurately be viewed as psychopathic entities. Sadly, there's no law against psychopathic behavior per se, so justice (such as it exists in the US today) has to wait until they either go too far or make a mistake (think, Enron). Bushco has gone so far over the line that if they were held to the same laws as everyone else they'd all be in prison.

The first post calls for Bush&Co. which, while I believe is part of my vote, I would include it as the US Government for the total collusion which has gone on long enough. Impeach and Prosecute Now Not Later and enough of this voting for nonsense. And no America can't wait for the next round of elections. Impeachment and prosecution would not only remove these scoundrels from office and put some in jail and/or subject some to International Tribunals but would keep them out of our governing bodies on every level. This I believe would have the further benefit of awakening those left to the fact of being responsible for their actions, which would surely trickle up or down to the corporate leaders which I believe is the idea wanted by this story.

If the US Constitution is still alive I believe it should be followed and lived by, not ignored and danced around.

A little like mastershake's post, and I think it was back in the 1990s, the govt was raising the price of postage stamps, or saying it would do this, from a whopping 30 or 32 cents apiece, to ... a whopping 2 cents more; and the country was outraged, an uproar occurred.

I say a little like mastershake's post not in terms of the nominal amount of monetary difference, but in terms of percentage. F.e., 2 cents is a little less than 7% of 30 cents; while $2.50 is 10% of $25. But the "a little like" works either or both ways anyway.

Those ladies mastershake speaks of should try clothing themselves in Canada, or in Quebec anyway. They'd be shocked ... dead.

Buy one pair of pants here or 3 pairs in the US, and while still paying less, for the 3 pairs, that is. The 'sill paying less' is because in some states anyway) there wouldn't be any sales tax, while it's roughly 15% here.

Buy a pair of shoes here for $150 or down in the US for $70, in addition to no sales tax there; and when a sales tax does apply, it's always much less than 15%. Buy a Pendleton 100% wool shirt there for $60 or here for $100 or more, plus the extra-bonus %15 sales tax. ETC.

Note that the above is with purchasing the same products, from the same manufacturers, etc.

Yep, they'd sure love doing their shopping here; or, at least it'd be a blast for observers watching such "shock-and-awed" shoppers, anyway. They'd never again complain in the US the way mastershake describes.

Anyway, corporate corruption and crimes, expect EN MASSE of this. Surely rare are large corporations that don't commit serious crimes.

Somone above-posted with respect to CARLYLE GROUP and I checked CAI's website to see if it has any content on 'Carlyle', but no. Just prior to that I did a Web search to try to find out if CG is indeed a corporation, and when searching on only 'Carlyle Group', I saw none additionally specifying that it's a corp. Then I tried searching on 'Carlyle Group Inc' and this turns up links which do seem to be to articles on the same CG. Then I checked CAI, given its '[Corporate] Hall of Shame'.

Maybe CAI only covers corporations that citizens in general deal with or use. Perhaps that's why CAI would not mention CG? I wonder, because CG sure does seem to be of major ... badness.

At least CorpWatch covers these additional businesses. F.e.:

"Carlyle Group May Buy Major CIA Contractor: Booz Allen Hamilton
by Tim Shorrock , Special to CorpWatch
March 8th, 2008"

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14963

BAH is bad, to say the least, so combining ...; not good news anyway.

People who've read that CorpWatch article but not this original copy, above, might want to check it. There are side-column texts that a truthout.org copy I also checked didn't contain; didn't seem to, and definitely not as side-column texts, anyway.

ZIMMIE/MASTERSHAKE: Try this on for cognitive size: Supppose people that ARE informed, people that occasionally also shop, feel the same sense of impotence WE do, as per the various immoral confiscations of people, property and principle as is being engendered by those prophets of the shock doctrine, and their ONLY recourse is to feel empowered over that $2.50 refund?

With prices rising all around us, with the 3 branches of government effectively coalesced into one insensitive 'branch' that only seeks to grow for its elite financial backers... what family is not facing one of the following (or more): 1. a member with a serious health challenge 2. a member who is unemployed 3. financial difficulties 4. marital difficulties, or difficulties with a child who is using an illegal drug 5. deep sorrow over the direction of our nation 6. actual domestic repairs/threat from climate events 7. other

These are VERY challenging times we're living in. I seem to remember something prophetic about children turning on their parents, neighbor against neighbor, etc and the varied tensions consciously felt and reaching us unconsciously through the collective consciousness are profound indeed. Live simply, seek to maintain inner peace by whatever acts 'center' you, and try to show compassion. Easier all said than done.

hey now - Just wanted to be sure of the position of most posters here

Whee! Those straw men go down real easy, don't they? And you look so much the great Defender of America standing over them with your hands on your hips. Good job, good job.

Last night, I'm watching/recording bush's war on PBS. I go upstairs and me bride is watching faux news. You can't win with corp/media in control. One could blame them for ALL of our problems.

leftsailor - Everyone brings bias. The best we can hope for is to hear both sides.

Add everyone to the list, every job application I have seen in the last 20 years asks "as a condition of employment will you submit to random drug testing?" And "bah - bah" like sheep that we all were - we created a corporate welfare program for doctors and medical testing laboratories and law enforcement.

Corporate Welfare? yes. Consider this. I have excema - just a little bit. Nobody know a cause or a cure, but there is a treatment that works. Its an ointment. Costs about $150 for a years supply. I haven't had any for over ten years - no insurance. But due to our drug policy, I would now have to pay $150 for the doctors fee for the yearly "visit" (a welfare program existing only in the mind of the greedy doctor), his fee for writing the prescription, the cost of transportation and time off - I don't drive - and he doesn't even write a prescription, he tears it off of a pre printed pad - becuase it is so common.

My wild guess is that a dermatologists patients are at least 50% just like me. Mild condition, treatment - no cure, and the SOB just made a fortune. Imagine the glee of dermatologists all over the country when that law was passed. In one legislation his fees for at least half of his patients more than doubled - and for no good reason - and for people who can't afford it.

I have come to the conclusion that the "hippies" were right about everything. I am proud to be one of them, and also proud to have served honorably during the Viet Nam Era.

n3140f - Maybe he would just write that prescription if we were not all sue crazy.