APP - Does government have too much control? Do Corporations?

[Jarod]

Not really. The two party system and it's private funding guarantees that all candidates will do the same thing when it comes to the issues corporations care about. Newsflash, gay rights isn't one.

Plus, Obama has a pen, and he's proud of it.

You have a point, institutionally the political system is set up to keep the Corporations powerful, but any individual politician must keep a certain group liking him to stay in office, a CEO only has to keep his shareholders happy with the bottom line, they can hate him, they will keep him if they are making money.

If a corporation gets the consumer mad at them, they just change their name and keep moving...

 

[Lao Tse]

You have a point, institutionally the political system is set up to keep the Corporations powerful, but any individual politician must keep a certain group liking him to stay in office, a CEO only has to keep his shareholders happy with the bottom line, they can hate him, they will keep him if they are making money.

If a corporation gets the consumer mad at them, they just change their name and keep moving...

And the corporations do the same thing with the puppet government. They just put the other party in 'control' next time, and the people think they're getting something new.

None of the candidates actually do what they say they're going to do.

 

[Jarod]

And the corporations do the same thing with the puppet government. They just put the other party in 'control' next time, and the people think they're getting something new.

None of the candidates actually do what they say they're going to do.

I agree that a third party would help control the Corporations. A less structured system where alliances between the parties would form and unform to amongst the parties would make it harder for the Corporations to retain control and would give the people more power.

 

[Lao Tse]

I agree that a third party would help control the Corporations. A less structured system where alliances between the parties would form and unform to amongst the parties would make it harder for the Corporations to retain control and would give the people more power.

THat's true, it would be more complex for them to control. WHat im trying to get across is that faith in government in general is misplaced in general, until corporate influence is eliminated. It's not a real "adversary" to the corporations.

 

[Jarod]

Faith in government and complacency about Corporate power are both misplaced and dangerous if applied to generously.

 

[Jarod]

American is much less Democratic and much more fascist than most are aware.

 

[Lao Tse]

You can quit, but they are actively working to make that as difficult on you as possible. That is one of the major forces against the doing away with pre-existing condition clauses, it makes it much easier to leave a corporation. Additionally, its not just about working for Corporations, its about how they manipulate and control elements of society.

One small example. A woman I know invented a type of hair brush. She began, on a small scale to produce and sell the brush. After a few years of being in local small stores, she got into some more regional stores. This hair brush had a special design that made it, for some people, vastly superior to other brushes on the market. She tried and tried to get it into larger stores like Wall-Mart and Target. She was rejected over and over again. Privately she was told by someone in the Wall-Mart purchasing department to stop trying, it was nothing she had control over because the large beauty supply companies did not want her brush in and they had more power because of the ability to supply a bigger variety of product at lower prices. They were actively keeping her out of the larger sellers.

She was making real money selling these brushes online and at local and regional stores. She was contacted by a large cosmetics corporation about purchasing her company and they entered into negotiations. When she wanted more than they were going to pay the large corporation let it be known that they would spend money putting her out of business if she did not sell. They were going to flood the market locally and make it impossible for her to make a profit. She sold. They don't sell her superior product and the brush is dead. All they really wanted from her was not the structure of her company or even her product, they wanted her out, they wanted her legal agreement to not compete with them anymore.

This is one example of how Corporations have too much power. The public suffers because we do not have access to the superior product, and my friend was really not free to continue her business of providing that product. Sure she could have sued them based on Anti-Trust laws, but while she is well off... she would have been broken by funding such a suit against a huge corporation.

Corporations have made it so we are not on a legal level but on a practical level prevented from becoming a player in the market place on any mid-size or large level. Corporations have huge "merger and accusations" departments, some of it is legitimate, but a huge part of what they do is actively seek to terminate any real level of competition. If you threaten them at any real level, they will buy you or put you out of business.

Excellent, Jarod. To the real industrialist robber barons, competition is a sin, regardless of what they blather on about on talk radio and fox news, and their demented "think tanks".

 

[Phantasmal]

Government: Yes. Corporations: No. One I can quit, the other I cannot. One uses threat of imprisonment to ensure I do what they say, the other only the threat of employment. Only one has any true control over me therefore.

So, you don't mind Citizens United and corporate personhood? You don't mind corporation being able to buy our elected officials?

 

[Jarod]

So, you don't mind Citizens United and corporate personhood? You don't mind corporation being able to buy our elected officials?

To Damo, if big business is something the Republicans like.... he's for it. He does not consider the things they control other than his job.

 

[Lao Tse]

So, you don't mind Citizens United and corporate personhood? You don't mind corporation being able to buy our elected officials?

None of that bothers Damo. He thinks it's freedom.

 

[/MSG/]

So, you don't mind Citizens United and corporate personhood? You don't mind corporation being able to buy our elected officials?

That's a misnomer. All that money goes to buy advertising, and in the past few years, advertising hasn't been able to justify the cost spent. So the system currently in place maybe be failing regardless of how much is spent.

 

[/MSG/]

None of that bothers Damo. He thinks it's freedom.

So it's not freedom to spend money however you want?

 

[USFREEDOM911]

You can quit, but they are actively working to make that as difficult on you as possible. That is one of the major forces against the doing away with pre-existing condition clauses, it makes it much easier to leave a corporation. Additionally, its not just about working for Corporations, its about how they manipulate and control elements of society.

One small example. A woman I know invented a type of hair brush. She began, on a small scale to produce and sell the brush. After a few years of being in local small stores, she got into some more regional stores. This hair brush had a special design that made it, for some people, vastly superior to other brushes on the market. She tried and tried to get it into larger stores like Wall-Mart and Target. She was rejected over and over again. Privately she was told by someone in the Wall-Mart purchasing department to stop trying, it was nothing she had control over because the large beauty supply companies did not want her brush in and they had more power because of the ability to supply a bigger variety of product at lower prices. They were actively keeping her out of the larger sellers.

She was making real money selling these brushes online and at local and regional stores. She was contacted by a large cosmetics corporation about purchasing her company and they entered into negotiations. When she wanted more than they were going to pay the large corporation let it be known that they would spend money putting her out of business if she did not sell. They were going to flood the market locally and make it impossible for her to make a profit. She sold. They don't sell her superior product and the brush is dead. All they really wanted from her was not the structure of her company or even her product, they wanted her out, they wanted her legal agreement to not compete with them anymore.

This is one example of how Corporations have too much power. The public suffers because we do not have access to the superior product, and my friend was really not free to continue her business of providing that product. Sure she could have sued them based on Anti-Trust laws, but while she is well off... she would have been broken by funding such a suit against a huge corporation.

Corporations have made it so we are not on a legal level but on a practical level prevented from becoming a player in the market place on any mid-size or large level. Corporations have huge "merger and accusations" departments, some of it is legitimate, but a huge part of what they do is actively seek to terminate any real level of competition. If you threaten them at any real level, they will buy you or put you out of business.

You could support this, instead of it just looking to be yet another of your stories, by posting the name of her brush and it can be searched for.

 

[canceled.2021.1]

Faith in government and complacency about Corporate power are both misplaced and dangerous if applied to generously.

Where does this faith in government that you have come from?

Is their ability to manage money?

 

[Dantès]

This is kind of a silly poll since government is run by the corporations and therefore the premise on which the poll is based that somehow government is controlling corporations or that there is some kind of standoff with government on one side and coporations on the other side is just a false dichotomy. There are some few laws which appear on their face to control corporations but they are laxly enforced and in fact as far back as McKinley (before he was assassinated) stocked his cabinet with lawyers for the corporations that the different agencies were supposed to be regulating. And when that great progressive vice president Theodore Roosevelt took over after McKinley's demise, at the age of 43, he did not change one of the cabinet members, keeping McKinley's crew in toto.

Today we have had example after example of different president's putting lobbyists for industry in change of the very industries that they are supposed to be regulating and doing nearly nothing when such tragedies as the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill occurs the industry is quickly and quietly allowed to set the parameters of the public resolution, absolved of most legal blame, slapped on the wrist, and regulations be damned, the people are encouraged by the actions of both government and industry to take what they can get, while the spectre of government working hand-in-glove with industry to get the people to sign off and forget about it gives even the most stubborn holdouts the sense that they are taking on goliath alone and there is little they can do but capitulate. So they do and are much the poorer for it. If the government were really working against big business and for those injured or for the people of this country, then the kinds of blatant disregard for life and the environment would be punished in a real and forceful way.

It isn't and this is nothing but a socially constructed false dichotomy that no one in the twenty-first century should even prescribe to anymore.

 

[Dantès]

That's a misnomer. All that money goes to buy advertising, and in the past few years, advertising hasn't been able to justify the cost spent. So the system currently in place maybe be failing regardless of how much is spent.

Yes and of course, since the corporations have not been able to get what they wanted in these elections and all those adcvertising dollars have failed to attain their supposed results, we have seen the end of capitalism as we used to know it in America and we have turned into a socialist state with citizen and worker ownership and control of the means of prodiuction and the general population enjoying the full fruits of their labor instead of only a minute fraction in the best of instances of their productivity gains. And aren't we all glad for those changes. Yes, KUMBAYA is today's song of choice as all the gains workers are making are going directly into the pockets of the workers. What a great world. It's fantastic. Sure glad the voters have finally woken up and thrown off their chains.

 

[Dantès]

Here's more evidence that the dichotomy of government power v. corporate power is a false dichotomy. Indeed this shows once again that there is no such thing as government oversight that in fact corporations are running the government and the idea of government oversight or even independent government decision making is a notion that was passe by the time McKinley became president and nominated industry lawyers for all his cabinet positions. When Theodore Roosevelt, the darling of the left--probably for his environmental accomplishments--took over, after the assassination of McKinley at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition, he didn't change a thing. So we know for certain lawyers for industry have been in key positions for years. But this, this is a step too far.

Chevron’s Lobbyist Now Runs the Congressional Science Committee

Lee Fang
February 21, 2014 - 12:28 PM ET

This post was originally published at RepublicReport.org

For Chevron, the second-largest oil company in the country with $26.2 billion in annual profits, it helps to have friends in high places. With little fanfare, one of Chevron’s top lobbyists, Stephen Sayle, has become a senior staff member of the House Committee on Science, the standing congressional committee charged with “maintaining our scientific and technical leadership in the world.”

Throughout much of 2013, Sayle was the chief executive officer of Dow Lohnes Government Strategies, a lobbying firm retained by Chevron to influence Congress. For fees that total $320,000 a year, Sayle and his team lobbied on a range of energy-related issues, including implementation of EPA rules under the Clean Air Act, regulation of ozone standards, as well as “Congressional and agency oversight related to offshore oil, natural gas development and oil spills.”

Sayle’s ethics disclosure, obtained by Republic Report, shows that he was paid $500,000 by Chevron’s lobbying firm before taking his current gig atop the Science Committee.

In recent months, the House Science Committee has become a cudgel for the oil industry, issuing subpoenas and holding hearings to demonize efforts to improve the environment. Some of the work by the committee reflect the lobbying priorities of Chevron.

In December, the Science Committee, now chaired by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), held yet another hearing to try to discredit manmade global warming. In August, the committee issued the first subpoena in twenty-one years, demanding “all the raw data from a number of federally funded studies linking air pollution to disease.”

Though Chevron has gone to great lengths to advertise a lofty environmental record, the company continues to break air pollution laws while quietly backpedalling on its prior commitments to renewable energy. A Bloomberg News investigation reported that Chevron estimated that its biofuel investments would return only 5 percent in profits, a far cry from the 15 percent to which the oil giant is accustomed, and quietly moved to shelve renewable fuel units of the company. In California, Chevron is battling the newly created cap-and-trade system for carbon pollution. And in states across the country, Chevron has lobbied and provided financial support to a range of right-wing nonprofits dedicated to repealing carbon-cutting regulations, including the low-carbon fuel standard.

Earlier this year, Dow Lohnes’ lobbying practice merged with Levick, a public affairs firm.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/178489/chevrons-lobbyist-now-runs-congressional-science-committee

 

[Don Quixote]

information is power and governments and corporations have access to huge amounts of information about whomever or whatever that they choose to focus on

 

[Teflon Don]

You can quit, but they are actively working to make that as difficult on you as possible. That is one of the major forces against the doing away with pre-existing condition clauses, it makes it much easier to leave a corporation. Additionally, its not just about working for Corporations, its about how they manipulate and control elements of society.

First of all removing pre-existing conditions from insurance ceases to make it insurance. But, that is for another day. You still miss the salient point that a corporation cannot FORCE you to do anything. You yourself decided to cease working for one because you felt you could do better striking out on your own. Did the corporation stop you? Did they say "NO YOU CAN'T WORK FOR YOURSELF"? My guess is that they didn't even blink an eyelash that you were gone and don't miss you one iota.

One small example. A woman I know invented a type of hair brush. She began, on a small scale to produce and sell the brush. After a few years of being in local small stores, she got into some more regional stores. This hair brush had a special design that made it, for some people, vastly superior to other brushes on the market. She tried and tried to get it into larger stores like Wall-Mart and Target. She was rejected over and over again. Privately she was told by someone in the Wall-Mart purchasing department to stop trying, it was nothing she had control over because the large beauty supply companies did not want her brush in and they had more power because of the ability to supply a bigger variety of product at lower prices. They were actively keeping her out of the larger sellers.

She was making real money selling these brushes online and at local and regional stores. She was contacted by a large cosmetics corporation about purchasing her company and they entered into negotiations. When she wanted more than they were going to pay the large corporation let it be known that they would spend money putting her out of business if she did not sell. They were going to flood the market locally and make it impossible for her to make a profit. She sold. They don't sell her superior product and the brush is dead. All they really wanted from her was not the structure of her company or even her product, they wanted her out, they wanted her legal agreement to not compete with them anymore.

This is one example of how Corporations have too much power. The public suffers because we do not have access to the superior product, and my friend was really not free to continue her business of providing that product. Sure she could have sued them based on Anti-Trust laws, but while she is well off... she would have been broken by funding such a suit against a huge corporation.

Corporations have made it so we are not on a legal level but on a practical level prevented from becoming a player in the market place on any mid-size or large level. Corporations have huge "merger and accusations" departments, some of it is legitimate, but a huge part of what they do is actively seek to terminate any real level of competition. If you threaten them at any real level, they will buy you or put you out of business.

Now, let's get to your "friend" because there is so much to digest here.

First question I would ask is how special is a hair brush? Did she have a utility patent on the hairbrush? If it was that special she could have gotten a patent and protected her intellectual property. You also said that "for some people" it is vastly superior, that tells me that it is a niche market and probably not suited for the Big Box stores. And so what if the larger companies were keeping her out of Walmart even if that is true? That doesn't stop her from selling her brushes. If they were that much better and she believed it, she could have persevered. She has no inherent right to sell her products in Walmart and they are free to sell or not sell what they choose. Obviously, they didn't think they could make more money with her product than doing what they were doing. For all I know, she didn't have the manufacturing capacity to supply all of Walmart. Or maybe it was such a niche product that it just wasn't worth giving up valuable floor space.

You yourself said she "was making real money" selling her product. Nobody was stopping her from making "real money", so what was the problem?

Now, let's move to the cosmetics company that wanted to buy her out. Of course they are going to try to get the company at a discount and of course they are going to try to negotiate conditions that are more favorable to her. So what if they threatened to use their resources to try to put her out of business? If she had a superior proprietary product she could kick their ass if she chose to do so. Big companies have an inherent problem in that they can't move as swiftly as smaller more nimble competition.

Maybe you were her lawyer and gave her bad advice?

Bottom line is that the corporations did not FORCE her do anything. She had choices. She made them freely. Competition is a bitch. Some of you lefties don't like it because it requires hard work.

Now, if it were the gobblement, they would say "YOU HAVE TO USE THIS TYPE OF BRUSH AND YOU HAVE NO CHOICE". or "YOU HAVE TO USE THIS TYPE OF LIGHT BULB AND YOU HAVE NO CHOICE". And you really have no choice.

Up and down throughout your tale of woe, people were able to make free choices. The consumer was free to make choices and more importantly your friend was able to make choices. Yes, the big bad corporations made life difficult. Tough titties. But, at no time was she left without a choice.

That is a key distinction you are missing from gobblement and corporations.

Think about this. I do not use any Microsoft products. I do not use any Google products. I refuse. Can they force me? Can they penalize me? Can they make use their products? Not a chance. But, the gobblement can coerce me to buy things I do not want. Why do you not see the difference?

 

[Truth Detector]

Let's all try a little mental experiment. In both scenarios, pretend that we still have enforceable laws. First imagine a world without Government but lots of corporations. Would people be able to survive without Government? Now imagine a world without any corporations but JUST Government. Would people be able to survive without corporations?

Government cannot exist without first taking from those who produce. It doesn't produce food. It doesn't make cars. It doesn't manufacture goods and materials. It consumes and it takes through force. If you don't believe me, try refusing to pay your taxes.

Corporations cannot survive unless it provides a good or service people want and demand. Stop providing, and soon the company is no longer big and powerful and goes out of business. A new more efficient and responsive company replaces it.

Government, on the other hand, never goes out of business. If it spends too much and is inefficient, it extracts even greater sums of money from the sheeple. Eventually, it runs out of other peoples money to spend.

Corporations are not a threat to the sheeple as long as we enforce our laws; but corrupt and dishonest politicians determined to wield power over their fellow man by promising dunces something for nothing, and corrupting that system by demanding bribes (lobbying), that is what struck the most fear into our wise founders thus the many limitations placed on politicians within our Constitution. It should be what we, the sheeple, should fear most. But based on the comments on this forum, there are a lot of really dumb people who think big business is the problem.