CORPORATION
The
system of corporate life is a new power for which our language
contains no name.
We have no word to express government by moneyed corporations
-- Charles Francis Adams
The
greatest weapon of mass destruction is corporate economic
globalization.
-- Kenny Ausubel
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"If
the corporations have their way, the Earth will
be killed, and that's in your lifetime. It's revolting
to me that students are being trained to work in
corporations. It's obscene to me that the corporations
are running the world. We've got to get cross. Anger
is an appropriate emotion."
-- Helen
Caldicott
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I think there are a lot of strong leaders around the
world who have made very convincing arguments about
the weakness of corporate-led globalization and the
compelling nature of alternatives.
-- John
Cavanagh
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...
the 20th century has been characterized by three developments
of great political importance:
The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power,
and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting
corporate power against democracy.
-- Alex Carey
The
most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer
decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable
institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes,
military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern
corporations.
-- Noam
Chomsky
What
is called 'capitalism'is basically a system of corporate
mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable
private tyrannies exercising vast control over the
economy, political systems, and social and cultural
life, operating in close cooperation with powerful
states that intervene massively in the domestic
economy and international society.
-- Noam
Chomsky
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In
considering how human rights might serve as a 'guiding
value' in American foreign policy, one should not dismiss
the historical record, which is ample. There is indeed
a close relationship between human rights and American
foreign policy. There is substantial evidence that American
aid and diplomatic support increase as human rights
violations increase, at least in the Third World. Extensive
violations of human rights (torture, forced reduction
of living standards for much of the population, police-sponsored
death squads, destruction of representative institutions
or of independent unions, etc.) are directly correlated
with US government support. The linkage is not accidental;
rather it is systematic. The reason is obvious enough.
Client fascism often improves the business climate for
American corporations, quite generally the guiding factor
in foreign policy. It would be naïve indeed to think
that this will change materially, given the realities
of American social structure and the grip of the state
ideological system.
-- Noam
Chomsky |
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"Democracy
is just a word. You have to give it meaning. The US
is not a democracy. Most Americans do not vote. We haven't
had a real choice for a long, long time now. Wealth
rules. Corporations rule. The US is a plutocracy --
government by wealthy people. Certain people control
multinational corporations. You couldn't get elected
in the US without lots of money."
-- Ramsey
Clark |
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There's
two globalizations. There's the globalization of the
elites, of the corporations, represented by the World
Bank, the IMF, the World Trade Organization. That's
the global state. It's a secret global government
information. There's another globalization that's
grass roots globalization. The Fair Trade Networks,
the Sister Cities, Sister Schools, Citizen Diplomacy,
the work we do at Global Exchange, linking people
up at the grass roots. That represents majority forces.
The elite globalization represents minority forces.
The elite globalization is about making money. It's
money values. The people's globalization, the democratic
mass globalization is about life values. So you got
two paradigms, the money cycle and the life cycle
and they're in contestation.
-- Kevin
Danaher
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What
we need is a tough new kind of feminism with no illusions.
Women do not change institutions simply by assimilating
into them. We need a feminism that teaches a woman
to say no - not just to the date rapist or overly
insistent boyfriend but, when necessary, to the military
or corporate hierarchy within which she finds herself.
We need a kind of feminism that aims not just to assimilate
into the institutions that men have created over the
centuries, but to infiltrate and subvert them.
-- Barbara
Ehrenreich
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To
the fervent proponents of ruthless corporate capitalism
I say: make a millionaire CEO live as a poor sweatshop
worker in Indonesia for one month and then ask him about
the merits of the world economic system...
-- Vassilis Epaminondou |
I
don't know how it could be more stark or clear: this
entire society is being dominated by corporate power
in a way that may exceed what happened in the late
nineteenth century, early twentieth century.
-- Russ
Feingold
The
idea of allowing corporations to have unlimited influence
on our democracy is very dangerous, obviously.
-- Russ
Feingold
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“The role of the U.S. in the new world corporate order
is going to be to export security. That means endless
wars and weapons in space. The Pentagon will send
our kids off to foreign lands to suppress opposition
to corporate globalization. How will we ever end America’s
addiction to war and violence as long as our communities
are dependent on military spending for jobs? We must
work to convert the military industrial complex to
sustainable technologies like windpower, solar, and
mass transit.”
~ Bruce
Gagnon
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the
handful of corporations that own most of the media
outlets have an interest in reflecting establishment
views.
-- Janeane
Garofalo
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"The
citizens of Love Canal provided an example of how
a blue-collar community with few resources can win
against great odds (a multi-billion-dollar international
corporation and an unresponsive government), using
the power of the people in our democratic system."
~ Lois
Gibbs
"It
will take a massive effort to move society from corporate
domination, in which industry's rights to pollute
and damage health and the environment supersede the
public's right to live, work, and play in safety.
This is a political fight. The science is already
there, showing that people's health is at risk. To
win, we will need to keep building the movement, networking
with one another, planning, strategizing, and moving
forward. Our children's futures, and those of their
unborn children, are at stake." ~ Lois
Gibbs
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"...
leadership has to be focused on some very radical
ideas that only we as 21st Century people can talk
about: making sure people have a livelihood, making
sure people receive a living wage, making sure the
environment, the Mother Earth, is embraced and cherished
and not destroyed. Making sure people are healthy
in what they eat, making sure we hold people and corporations
accountable for the damage they do not only to our
environment but to our institutions."
-- Danny
Glover
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Journalism
is the only profession explicitly protected by the
U.S. Constitution, because journalists are supposed
to be the check and balance on government. We're supposed
to be holding those in power accountable. We're not
supposed to be their megaphone. That's what the corporate
media have become. -- Amy
Goodman
Independent
media can go to where the silence is and break the
sound barrier, doing what the corporate networks refuse
to do.
-- Amy
Goodman
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"I'm
not against the corporations. They are our wealth.
But they are getting too greedy. I don't want to do
away with corporations. I want them to make our cars,
however, not our laws."
-- Doris
Haddock (Granny D)
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Recognizing
that the current form of globalization is nothing more
than a generalized downward leveling in which global
corporations are extracting more and more of the wealth,
power, and productive energies from communities and
the environment is the right approach... And knowing
that in every specific battle, what we are fighting
for is merely the substitution of the human agenda for
the corporate agenda is what can guide and sustain us.
-- Robin Hahnel |
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American
foreign policy is not understood by the vast majority
of American people. And that this is due to a media
that in this country is suppressed by Washington and
by the owners of this media, who often tend to be
corporate entities close to the [White House] and
very often are arms manufacturers with a vested interest
in chaos [in] the Middle East. And as a result Americans
do not actually get both sides of the story.
-- Denis
Halliday
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Much of the big media outlets in North America are
owned by arms manufacturers, like Westinghouse, or
G.E. [General Electric]. That’s unacceptable. So we’re
not getting editorial policy, we’re not getting a
vision of truth. People just don’t know what is going
on anymore, and that’s really dangerous stuff.
-- Denis
Halliday
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So
long as private corporations remain the dominant production
institution of society, no matter who is in power,
the long-run trend in society will be to promote the
corporate interest.
-- Michael Harrington
It
is a government of the people by the people for the
people no longer it is a government of corporations
by corporations for corporations
-- Rutherford B. Hayes
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Although
it is true that only about 20 percent of American
workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards
across the board in salaries, benefits and working
conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a
non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One
thing that corporations do not do is give out money
out of the goodness of their hearts.
-- Molly
Ivins
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Since an informed citizenry is the basis for a healthy
democracy, independent, non-corporate media are more
crucial today than ever before
-- Dahr
Jamail
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I
hope we shall take warning from the example of England
and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed
corporations which dare already to challenge our Government
to trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
-- Thomas
Jefferson
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facebook.com/OccupyDemocrats
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What
one state could not get alone, what one miner against
a powerful corporation could not achieve, can be achieved
by the union.
-- Mother
Jones
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Democracy
is about two things. First, it is about purpose.
In the political realm, it's about an overriding
concern for the common good. In the economic realm,
it's about having the common good trump the narrow
self-interest of the financial elite. It's about
broadening corporate purpose from serving shareholders
to serving stakeholders, and releasing executives
from the destructive mandate to maximize shareholder
gain at any cost. Second, democracy is about structures
that bring this purpose to life. It's not about
separating good corporations from bad, but about
shaping the system forces that act on all corporations.
It's about consciously crafting new democratic system
structures, structures of voice, structures of decision
making, structures of conflict resolution, structures
of accountability.
-- Marjorie
Kelly
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We
are experiencing a unique convergence of forces, not
only the forces of scandal, but the forces of change.
We can use this moment to take corporate social responsibility
to the next level, the level of economic democracy.
We can become a new founding generation, completing
the design in the economic realm that our forefathers
began in the political realm. Instead of chasing one
form of corporate wrongdoing at a time, we can put in
place enduring structures of justice, effective structures
of checks and balances. For it is only in this way that
we can truly safeguard the common good, not only for
today, but for generation after generation to come.
-- Marjorie
Kelly |
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The
proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is to
replace the global suicide economy ruled by rapacious
and unaccountable global corporations with a planetary
system of local living economies comprised of human-scale
enterprise rooted in the communities they serve and
locally owned by the people whose wellbeing depends
on them.
-- David
Korten
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First
of all, the Social Security money belongs to Main
Street, not to Wall Street. It needs to be said very
clearly here that privatization is off the table...
Social Security, as a matter of fact, is a better
investment now than the stock market. There’s a higher
return. There’s guaranteed cost-of-living increases.
Privatization you have to worry about the value of
your account.
-- Dennis
Kucinich
Corporations
are reneging on pension obligations. Social Security
is under attack. -- Dennis
Kucinich
"Wake
up America! The insurance companies took over health
care!
Wake up America! The pharmaceutical companies took
over drug pricing!
Wake up America! The speculators took over Wall Street!
Wake up America! They want your Social Security!
Wake up America! Multinational corporations took over
our trade policies!
Wake up America! We went into Iraq for oil! WAKE UP
AMERICA!"
-- Dennis
Kucinich
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At
a time when corporations are exerting increasing power
over people's lives and the environment, it is vital
that we work directly with companies to promote greater
responsibility.
-- Todd
Larsen
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The
workers of the nation were tired of waiting for
corporate industry to right their economic wrongs,
to alleviate their social agony and to grant them
their political rights. Despairing of fair treatment,
they resolved to do something for themselves.
-- John
L. Lewis
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I
see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves
me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country....corporations
have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high
places will follow, and the money of the country will
endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the
prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated
in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel
at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country
than ever before, even in the midst of war.
-- Abraham
Lincoln
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The
role of globalization is to homogenize all cultures,
and to turn them into commodified markets, and therefore,
to make them easier for global corporations to control.
Global corporations are even now trying to commodify
all remaining aspects of national cultures, not to mention
indigenous cultures.
-- Jerry
Mander
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"Fair
Trade is part of a larger movement about corporate
social responsibility, influenced by the public's
desire to deal with companies that are (committed)
to workplace quality, the environment and employee
well-being."
--Mac McCoy
We
live in the richest country in the world. There's
plenty to spare and for no man, woman, or child to
be in want. And in addition to this our country was
founded on what should have been a great , true principle
-- the freedom, equality, and rights of each individual.
Huh! And what has come of this start? There are corporations
worth billions of dollars--and hundreds of thousands
of people who don't get to eat.
-- Carson McCullers
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You
can't have a people's democracy as long as corporations
are considered people.
-- Bill
Moyers |
Fascism
should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of
state and corporate power.
-- Benito Mussolini
The
corporations are powerful only because we have allowed
them to be. In theory, it is we, not they, who mandate
the state. But we have neglected our duty of citizenship,
and they have taken advantage of our neglect to seize
the reins of government.
-- George Monbiot |
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"We live in such a corporate world where everyone
is passing the buck, it seems to me. Therefore I
like stories where the individual takes responsibility
for BEING the individual, and not just for himself,
but for his comrades, his society and ultimately
for his country. Ultimately, we can all learn a
lesson from that and not be browbeaten by the corporate
world which is taking over."
-- Liam
Neeson
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It's
incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists
getting together to stop the corporate mentality that
destroys both jobs and the environment.
-- Bonnie
Raitt |
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We
have to end corporate welfare now! ~ Robert
Reich
When
corporations get special handouts from the government,
subsidies and tax breaks, it costs you. It means you
have to pay more in taxes to make up for these hidden
expenses, and government has less money for good schools
and roads, Medicare and national defense and everything
else you need.
~ Robert
Reich
Corporations
are not people, despite what the Supreme Court says,
and they don't need or deserve handouts. ~ Robert
Reich
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As long as people and the planet are being exploited,
and billions of dollars are being made precisely because
laborers and the environment are being abused and
used up, there will be children going hungry and ecological
destruction. As long as war and violence are in our
hearts and our streets as well as in our nations,
as long as corporate greed and unsustainable consumption
are at the forefront of our economies, no child will
be born into a truly safe, peaceful or loving world."
~ Ocean
Robbins
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We
are capable of regaining our reverence for life, of
replacing the drive to conquer with the will to cooperate,
of remaking our engineered institutions, including
our corporations, into living systems.
-- Elisabet
Sahtouris
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Our
civilization is locked in the grip of an ideology
- corporatism. An ideology that denies and undermines
the legitimacy of individuals as the citizen in a
democracy. The particular imbalance of this ideology
leads to a worship of self-interest and a denial of
the public good. The practical effects on the individual
are passivity and conformism in the areas that matter,
and non-conformism in the areas that don't
-- John Ralston Saul
The
acceptance of corporatism causes us to deny and undermine
the legitimacy of the individual as citizen in a democracy.
The result of such a denial is a growing imbalance
which leads to our adoration of self-interest and
our denial of the public good.
-- John Ralston Saul
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Our
goal is to create a world where citizens, communities,
corporations and nations work together in a responsible
way. Where decisions are not based on how much things
cost or how much profit can be made, but on the value
that it adds to the lives of our citizens and employees,
and its impact on the environment. This sustainable
life begins when we make our own lives more sustainable.
--
Robert
Alan Silverstein
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Today
I send this message to every emerging global corporation:
"justice; family, community, and union" are the same
in every language and, wherever you go and whatever
you do, a new global labor movement is coming to find
you.
-- Andy Stern, SEIU President |
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“The
result [Republicans winning the Senate] would be devastating
for reproductive choice, the environment, civil liberties,
Social Security and health care, as well as corporate
accountability.”
-- Barbra
Streisand
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We
can no longer allow multi-nationalists to parade as
agents of progress and democracy in the newspapers,
even as they subvert it at the workplace.
—John Sweeney
Did
you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience,
when it has no soul to be damned, and nobody to be
kicked?
-- Lord Chancellor Thurlow
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On
issue after issue, the polls -- and these are not
snapshot polls; these are polls over a consistent
period of time -- show that most Americans share what
one could call core liberal or progressive values:
investment in health care and education over tax cuts;
fair trade over free trade; corporate accountability
over deregulation; environmental protection over laissez-faire
policies; defending Social Security and Medicare over
privatizing them; raising the minimum wage over eliminating
it. The country prefers progressive alternatives to
the failed policies of the conservative right.
-- Katrina
vanden Heuvel
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The
corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of
the wonders of the Western world.
No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so
entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.
-- Gore Vidal
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"People
have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get
sick, they cry, they dance, they live, they love,
and they die. And that matters. That matters because
we don't run this country for corporations. We run
it for people."
~ Elizabeth
Warren
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Facebook.com/runwarrenrun2016
"I'm
helping to create an economic system that will respect
and protect the earth -- one which would replace corporate
globalization with a global network of local living
economies. Business is beautiful when it's a vehicle
for serving the common good."
-- Judy
Wicks
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“We
must not leave the health of our families and protection
of the world ecology to corporations, governments
and military organizations preoccupied with profit,
power and armed conquest. Rather, we must take that
responsibility into our own hands. It’s up to us to
come together across cultural and political divides
to prevent these military-industrial polluters from
degrading the earth and threatening the well-being
of our communities for their own selfish interests.”
-- Craig
Williams
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We
have to speak out now on behalf of our community and
on behalf of the land and say they're the same thing
and say "No, we are not rolling over" and "No, this
is not a corporate enterprise." This is democracy
in the fullest sense and we must have regard and reverence
and those are the cornerstones of a just society.
~ Terry
Tempest Williams
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The strike, the boycott, the refusal to serve, the
ability to paralyze the functioning of a complex social
structure-these remain potent weapons against the
most fearsome state or corporate power.
-- Howard
Zinn
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