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1000
Points

Enact more laws that protect the welfare of American citizens and less laws that benefit Big Banks and Big Corporations

The power needs to be given back to the people.  We need more protections from fraudulent, irresponsible, and unethical behavior of big corporations.  We should not allow big business to take advantage of us and write our laws that benefit them and not the people.  Let's turn our Corporatocracy back into a Democracy, of the people, by the people and for the people.

Comments

 
volomike
1/13/2009 11:23 AM
Here here! Bravo!
 
Dan outside the box
1/13/2009 11:32 AM
And I want a pony!

What I mean is that while a nice wish, there is nothing specific here, nothing anybody wouldn't say, even corporate lobbyists.
 
JimBO
1/13/2009 11:41 AM
 Well let's see if we can all agree on this first, and then figure out what exactly we need to change and how we're going to change it.
 
jasegraves
1/13/2009 11:43 AM
Why is this posted under foreign policy? It is an economic issue.
 
korz
1/13/2009 11:45 AM

There are already laws to protect fraudulent behavior.  Who judges irresponsibility and ethical behavior?  Is firing 100 people who make $20 per hour and off-shoring their job unethical?  What if the alternative is to go bankrupt and fire all 500 people at the company?

Businesses provide jobs.  Yes, some business are unethical and do bad things simply in the name of squeezing a few more cents out of the cost of a product, but read your history.  Hoover and Roosevelt treated business as villains and the result was that the Great Depression in the US lasted 7 years longer than it did in Europe and Asia.  Read your history.  I suggest "The Forgotten Man" by Amity Shlaes, but a shorter, free option is http://www.mackinac.org/archives/1998/sp1998-01.pdf.  Penalize businesses and they will either raise prices on their goods, fire employees, or go bankrupt completely.  None of these are good choices, are they?

What's the alternative... having the gov't take over businesses?  That's the Soviet Union.  I visited the Soviet Union, in 1975, so I have first hand experience on how "wonderful" it was.  Except for the government leaders, the entire country was living in near-poverty.  Waste, corruption, and crime were rampant.  Cement was stolen from worksites to be sold on the black market.  Gasoline was stolen which was destined for trucks to pick up potatoes from farms, which ended up rotting in the field.  Nobody had any incentive to work harder except those running the black market, which was the only place you could get some items, like meat (you couldn't buy meat in stores, although the prices were very affordable).  Have you seen the movie "Moscow on the Hudson?"  The beginning of the movie was very representative of life in the Soviet Union.  It was a comedy, but the living conditions were real.  Consider every idea and if it takes us closer to how the Soviet Union was, then dismiss it immediately.

 
JimBO
1/13/2009 11:56 AM
I agree business is important.   I did not say it is unethical for a business to lay people off, if they need  too in order to survive.  That's not what I'm saying.  What I'm saying is there are laws made by corporations that can do great harm to the individual and does nothing but protect and benefit them.  I'm more upset with the banking and monetary system, than I am with other industries.  From my point of view I don't think we should allow banks and corporations write our laws for us.  Period.
 
JimBO
1/13/2009 12:03 PM
You can't even consider big corpporations as even being American.  They ship jobs overseas, they employ communists and muslim countries, support slave labor, and we are letting them write our laws.  Have we lost our minds?  No we've lost control.  I'm tired of hearing the crazy Communist arguments from the right.  We are never going to be communist.  Never.   We will rise up and revolt if anything close to that happens.  But I can tell you now the more power we give to these anti-American companies the worse we are going to end up.
 
JimBO
1/13/2009 12:20 PM
 To be honest with you, I think the path we are headed down right now is worse than communism. It's slavery.  We will end up slaves to our masters the international banks and international corporations.  Hell, we already are.  But it's only going to get more and more difficult for us to survive.  This country was not founded on an International Banking system.   Read your history.  Our governement has been overrun with pawns that work for international bankers.  We've changed for the worse.  These institutions do not care about you or your welfare.  They only care about money and power and controlling the whole world.  If we continue down this path, we may not have enough power to left to prevent them from bankrupting our country and being overtaken by a communist country or dictatorship.   
 
Whitney_Lei
1/13/2009 1:22 PM

This is a great suggestion, but who is to say which laws are which?  Which laws/policies should be removed, and what current policies should be enacted?

And why  Education, Energy and Environment, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Homeland Security, Technology, Additional Issues?  This is definitely an economic issue.  It may relate distantly to these topics, but it not definitively tied.

 
JimBO
1/13/2009 1:46 PM
I would have to disagree with you.  All decisions being made are influenced by powerful corporations.  For instance our decision to go to war in Iraq could have been influenced by corporations for profit.  There is big money to be made in war by corporations.  The war on Terrorism.  This will be a never ending war.  A war that is to be sustained forever, for the benefit of big corporations.  If it's going to help you and hurt them, you better believe they are going to try to shut it down.  Why do you think even though we have the technology to get off of using oil and coal for energy we have not yet taken action to do it?  Energy Companies.  Why do you think that even though we could fight the spread of disease and even cure the common cold we have not done it?  Drug Companies.
 
OFFdoom
1/13/2009 1:47 PM

Change must come to America if it’s Democracy is to succeed. The US must change what a corporation is and what incentives are in the law that govern how corporations act.

Corporations support professional organizations and professional organizations regulate their own rules. In the medical, accounting, banking, finance, real estate, engineering, lawyers and many other professions, the one claim is that industry knows best! This has allowed self regulation, which is a failure of government to regulate to the interest of the people, not just the interests of the corporations. The Constitution of the United States guarantees Justice and Equity from its governance, the American people are not getting Justice or Equity from the present system.

Examples of how corporations have corrupted government so far.

Patenting genes This is the corruption of the patent process in the constitution. The machine that made the gene mapping could be patented, but we knew about the genes long before we could map them. Just because we can now map them now, does not make it an invention! This is a creation of God that already existed. Corporations should not be allowed to patent genes!

The medical profession not using herbs first before chemical pills to cure America is a sign of the power of the pharmaceutical corporations have on America, to the detriment of US health. This goes against promoting the general welfare statement in the constitution.

The fertilizer and pesticide corporations have been killing the top soil and polluting the environment causing sickness and lack of fertility in the American people and the top soil of the United States. We have known this was bad since the US published a pamplet in 1936.

General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) have not protected the American people from fraud, miss information and raiding of the corporate retained earning by its officers.

Government regulation of corporations and bussiness has not protected the US ground water from pollution, nor the pollution of the waters of America.

How can immoral pollution discharges be grandfathered in, when on the face they should have been always and forever forbidden?

Why are corporate business practices allowed to pollute and use up public resources like water and minerals and soils? Like pumping ground water because its cold into cooling tower for free, where the common man cannot?

On any issue, there is always the other side that makes the issue appear to be in dispute, but is just the corporations with their paid experts trying to continue the allowance of an unjust procedure for the profit of a few against the needs of the many.

Why is healthy raw milk so hard to find?

Why does government want to pollute organic standards?

Why is Financial fraud and crimes so hard to prosecute and these criminals are not prosecuted?

Why is the nutrient value of our food going down and this is not an issue for the American government

because it is effecting the welfare of the American people?

Why is the pollution of god’s genes a problem for the farmer and not the corporations that seeds are polluting the gene of plant species thru wind pollination.?

Where is the government responsibility to insure the genes of plant and animal species are maintained in their natural form?

Why when a corporation makes a million dollar donation to get a ten million dollar tax break, this is not a illegal bribe?

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