What issue is most important to you?
- Perpetual War?
- Civil Rights?
- Healthcare?
- Poverty?
- Defending the Constitution?
- Global Warming?
- Fascism?
Odds are that many of these issues rank quite high in your ideological heirarchy. I believe that these issues are extremely important to all human beings, and I think they all should be part of a Human Agenda.
What is the root problem that keeps us from moving forward on the issues in a Human Agenda? What or Who stands in the way?
The Corporate Agenda is what stands in the way of progress on a Human Agenda. It is the base element that stands, nearly alone, in protecting business as usual and the Corporate Agenda.
Who can’t eat when the American Worker is fired because he can’t ‘compete’ with Chinese slave labor?
An American Family, that’s who.
Who dies because they were denied access to medicine?
An American Citizen, that’s who.
Who’s going to die of cancer from industrial pollution?
An American Citizen, that’s who.
Who goes to jail for being the wrong color or too poor?
Whose privacy is violated?
Human beings pay these prices. Human beings should not be forced to pay these unbelievable prices in service of the Corporate Agenda.
This is only going to happen if we start to draw attention to the realities of the Corporate Agenda and contrast that with the needs and requirements of a Human Agenda.
It is time for Human Beings to shrug off the responsibility of taking it on the chin for the Corporate Agenda.
It can work, speaking in terms of a Human Agenda.
It’s been done for years, well kind of.
Check this out…
At election time, the Right trots out the same old tired issues and pitches them in terms of a Human Agenda:
* Abortion
They’re Babies not Embryos. Stop Killing Babies!
* Immigration
They’re going to steal your jobs and our culture!
* Taxes
They’re taking your money!
* “National Defense”
They’re going to Destroy America.
Over and over. The CT usage of ‘THEY’ is even in there. It’s amazing, really. Speaking for human beings in human terms on human issues.
They seem of vital importance to the Human Agenda.
Protect my family.
Protect my belief system.
Protect my livelyhood.
Protect my wealth.
Protect my country.
I think it’s funny because these things always steal all the air our political room. As proponents of a broader Human Agenda, why doesn’t the Left follow suit on their Human Agenda issues?
Instead of devaluing our ability to self govern by hopping to serve the Corporate Agenda: blaming the government, Defending the Hidden Hand and talking about money all the time, how about trying to devalue the idea that being exploited by Corporate Sponsored Public Policy is somehow the American Dream?
Devaluing Government, the collective power of the people, the only institution that is capable of protecting Human Beings from being exploited and robbed by Giant Corporations, while lauding and legislating the Corporate Agenda has got to stop!
Where is the “It’s your fault, you deserved it.” argument that is levied against the poor and disenfranchised people. Where are the Welfare Mom, Illegal Immigrant, and Violent Superpredator Achilles Heels of the Corporate Agenda?
They have to be Legion!
But where is the expressions for this?
They don’t exist because we have no practice speaking out for a Human Agenda. Nobody’s done it for so long. Our public officials are Corporate Sponsored, and they serve the Corporate Agenda first with America and the American People coming in a distant second.
We have to start to speak forcefully, emotionally, of and for a Human Agenda. This should be pit directly against the Corporate Agenda.
The world will not change for the better until we expose the Corporate Agenda and contrast it with a Human Agenda.
Well said, k9disc.
Check out the Program On Corporations, Law and Democracy. They are doing some fine work to correct the situation of corporations having equal standing under the law with humans.
POCLAD is a great organization.
I used to get By What Authority, but I haven’t gotten in a few quarters. I’ll have to go get on the list again.
It’s nice to see someone else recommend this great organization.
http://poclad.org
Corporate excess is certainly a problem, but it requires delving deeper. It is true that those at the top in the US are getting a disproportionate amount of the wealth, but the same trends exist in most advanced societies where the abuses are not as extreme.
Corporations have as much power as they do because most people benefit from the current arrangement. There are three principle ways:
Those who want to see firms run more responsibly are going to have to propose how the this can be achieved while satisfying the three requriements I listed.
Personally, I believe that People are more important than profit.
You know, corporations used to get by fine with a 54% tax rate and responsibility for pensions.
They did fine when they were not allowed to Sponsor Politicians.
They did fine when they were balanced by a union made up of Human Beings.
Unfortunately, today things are different.
And the idea that most people benefit is ridiculous. Tell that to the third world slave labor.
Tell that to the 3 million American Families who’ve lost a bread winner in the manufacturing sector.
Tell the rest of America that in order to compete with Chinese Labor we are going to have to take a 90% pay cut.
Tell your grandchildren that most people benefitted while they’re dying on a sick planet.
It’s crap, I tell you, that whole notion, that Corporations benefit people.
People benefit corporations, and it’s time we started to get a little credit for it. We pay their bills. We give them their profit. We perform their labor. They can’t treat us like capital. We are more than Human Resources and Consumers. We are human beings, and we should be treated as such.
The factual inaccuracies in your comment are equal to the number of statements in it. So I’ll start with this.
The “current arrangement” has brought about the following: global warming, a toxic food supply, a broken health care system that ranks below most industrialized nations except in terms of cost, the largest disparity in wealth among citizens for over 80 years, wages that are lower in terms of purchasing power than they were in 1972, a political system that is owned and operated by corporate power.
You can’t imagine a world without the concentrated wealth and political power of corporations. Corporations are creatures of government power not nature. Corporations are not beneficial to any human beings other than the managerial elites who serve as CEOs and on the crony Boards of Directors for ludicrously exorbitant fees. Corporations do not create lower prices, they seek monopoly and higher prices. And of course, one only needs to think of Enron, Arthur Anderson, MCI etc. to think about the high ethical standards of corporate America and their commitment to the retirement plans and pensions of their employees.
You know, let’s make this twisted money issue a twisted health issue to illustrate a point.
Do a bunch of cocaine and you’ll get some wonderful short term physiological benefits. You’ll be faster, more alert, and you’ll feel alive.
Do too much of this and you’re going to get sick, mentally and physically.
Your argument on #3 is basically an argument to ‘do as much coke as possible’ because it makes us feel wonderful and gives us some benefits. Because the pitfalls are hidden, it’s no big deal. We shouldn’t worry about it, or someone’s going to have to come up with some coke that doesn’t hurt us, but in the meantime, chalk up a line.
I’m not defending corporate excess, just pointing out the world is organized so that large corporations affect the lives of most people in the industrialized countries to a greater extent than some might realize.
To say that they did all this in spite of the will of the people means that democracy is no longer operative. It is true that people have less direct ability to influence public policy than they might have had in the past because of the big money influence in politics, but if this is true then we must take some of the blame ourselves for letting things get so far out of balance.
Corporations didn’t behave better in the past voluntarily, they were forced to by things like health and safety regulations as well as strong anti-trust legislation. The right to organize by workers was also honored. This didn’t happen by itself, there was a period of 75 years where lots of heads got broken by Pinkerton men before these rights were won.
These gains have been taken away without much of a peep from anyone. Give them a wide screen TV and an SUV and they lose interest.
I believe that we operate in a society driven by “might makes right”. If you want your rights upheld you have to organize and fight for it. And as I said, more people now have a stake in corporatism than during the Populist era so they are even less inclined to oppose the status quo.
No one has been forcing people to buy SUV’s or cheap Chinese crap that they don’t really need, or, for that matter to drink carbonated sugar water and eat at fast food joints. Corporations can try (and do) influence public attitudes and promote excess consumerism, but that doesn’t mean people can’t think and act for themselves.
If one really believes that the public consists of mindless robots easily influenced by advertising and propaganda then who do you think is going to change things?
I was interested in your list:
From a non-US western country I think that Defending the Constitution would be Defending International law. I suspect that most western countries do not feel the same need to defend the constitution. Now I understand GWB, but this thing about the constitution seems to me has been there for a very long time.
It is doubly interesting to me because it seems that there might be a conflict between Defending the Constitution and Defending International law.
Not really. Where I come from, they took away the constitution, and right then and there, they started violating interantional law. Sometimes they go hand in hand.
I am most definitely an internationalist as opposed to a nationalist, but this is meant to challenge the current situation here in the US, and is intended for an US political audience, so the focus is on our constitution instead of international law.
I agree with you, mostly, but I do not agree that supporting the constitution would have negative effects on international law.