Ken Jacobson — Whose Corporations? Our Corporations!

Historically, corporations were understood to be responsible to a complex web of constituencies, including employees, communities, society at large, suppliers, and shareholders. But in the era of deregulation, the interests of shareholders began to trump all the others. How can we get corporations to recognize their responsibilities beyond this narrow focus? It begins in remembering that the philosophy of putting shareholder profits over all else is a matter of ideology which is not grounded in American law or tradition. In fact, it is no more than a dangerous fad. 

AlterNet
Whose Corporations? Our Corporations!
Ken Jacobson | senior editor for the newsletter Manufacturing & Technology News

also

3 Corporate Myths that Threaten the Wealth of the Nation

Scott Adams — Corporations versus Countries

Corporations keep getting bigger. Some have their own fleets of aircraft, ships, and sometimes even submarines. 

At the same time, the more problematic countries - in terms of spawning terrorism - are the ones that are shrinking, both in population and GDP. Syria is smaller now. Afghanistan and Iraq are smaller. 

At some point I believe it is inevitable that a corporation will go to war with a small, terror-spawning country.…

Interesting idea but in an empire, that's what the empire does for the interests that it represents.

Dilbert.com Blog

Corporations versus Countries

Scott Adams | Creator of Dilbert

Crafting a [Logical] Response to Mounting Power Grabs by Corporations Over Democracy

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Regardless of how you feel about faith-based organizations, this is an opportunity to practice "Yes, And" instead of "No, But" on a larger scale ... while also practicing return on coordination.

"A [Reasoned] Response to Corporate Power" webinar series

And if you want to actually build a future worth having, you better also remember where that future comes from, and have faith in feedback from those people as well.

David Edwards — McConnell: ‘Absurd’ to ban corporations from having same rights as ‘people’

McConnell: ‘Absurd’ to ban corporations from having same rights as ‘people’ (via Raw Story )

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Friday said that he opposed a constitutional amendment to ban corporations from having the same rights as people because the idea was “absurd.” Speaking to the conservative American Enterprise Institute, McConnell accused President Barack Obama’…

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Failure of US Long Range Strategic Planning, National Economic Security, Public Law

If we are living in the solution rather than the problem, then why not look at a National Referendum to force ethical planning and transparency into corporate and government planning documents.  

Why not seek a referendum requiring all US organizations include a paragraph in their objectives, mission statements, and long range organizational plans that would address larger national failures that resulted in the sub-prime housing bubble, savings and loan crisis, 2008 financial crisis, Dot Com Crash, high unemployment, low taxes for high income earners, federal income tax rules that can't be understood by any one individual, court systems that are too expensive for common man on Main Street, and political and regulatory capture by those with the money to 'get in the game'.

Politics based on power is no longer acceptable.  And business or multinational business based on money or power is no longer acceptable or sustainable.  That means leaving money overseas off-shore till legislation is drafted for the US Congress - is no longer acceptable for those that pay payroll taxes automatically every payday.  Balancing power between people, the government, and corporations is a much better policy.

The main advantage of a National scheme or referendum for government and organizational ethics clauses is to make up for failure of the US Constitution and Federal Legislation.  We should adopt some national pride codified by public law that supports public discussion and transparency to keep our US Organizations on the right track.  The theory being that if we think right, can point to common goals and national concerns, then we will act 'right'.  We will address as a team or community the weakness in policy or actions.  Employees will raise discussions on their own to bring their organization in line with ethical objectives.  And it is very appropriate as ethics training for our young students and businessmen and businesswomen.  

I believe there is value looking at a kind of "reorganization" of government based on transparency, ethics, and opportunity for everyone.  I believe this kind of reorganization can be accomplished though goal setting and long range planning.  Of course the idea is to position our nation for the future and correct the failures of the past.

First I wanted to point out some problems with Strategic Planning, organizational missions and objectives. Maybe we can agree that a strategic plan by Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brezinski for the world based on an ethnocentric perspective is flawed and likely unethical. Perhaps we can even agree that strategic planning is a corrupting influence on the world based on the killing of non-christians and suppression of foreign governments by our own governments. 

I think a government or corporate executive can be easily understood as a human working on his mission to secure revenue, funding, profit, or value for his organization. Each of us may play roles during the work day as a corporate player, an ideologue, as a financial investor, as a person that provides service to his community, as a parent, as a friend, or as a moral citizen. Each human has many different motivations and interests.

So how do you fight the Long Range Strategic Plan for Goldman Sachs?

How do you stop a Long Range Strategic Plan by some faction of Big Businessmen, Big Multinationals, Big Petroleum Interests, World Bankers, or some evil doer?  Well you don't.  You regulate to discourage crime and fraud.  But if you can create a national imperative or national initiative to include ethical rules in all Strategic Planning it may accomplish very much in my opinion.  

In the Government they call this a "Reorganization". Clearly new rules of transparency (regulations) and new "Grand Goals", "National Goals", or "Sustainable Social Goals" would have to be adopted.

There is a precedence for this kind of legislation under public statutory law known as the social contract between a citizen and a state. The social contract defines the relationship between a state and an entity that owes allegiance to it according to wikipedia. Further, public law interacts with civil and human rights.

What is the weakness of my idea?  Well there is no way to know what government is doing. No one wants people sticking their nose into their business even government business. We have a federal "Freedom of Information Act of 1966" that has helped US Transparency and various states have passed their own version. So there is a conflict of interest between the corporate or government employee/manager/executive and letting citizens know the details of business operations. The point is large organizations by their nature do not want their operations publicly known, will resist transparency, and citizens will face years of work to get the full picture of government activities in order to demand that remedies or reparations be made through public planning documents. 

In summary this is my proposal: 

1) Insert National rules for mission statements and objective statements

2) Insert National rules for ethical behavior in goal statements

3) Mandate that US Legal Organizations Strategic Planning clearly state and addresses the community, environmental, financial interests of the government in unemployment, job preservation, and social safety nets that may be affected by job losses created by mergers and leveraged take-overs by hostile or unfriendly firms that may saddle the organization with huge debt

4) Make all US Corporations, Fountadtions, governments, and legal organizations incorporate mission, objectives, and goals that are ethical and transparent to the public and employees.

5) US Strategic Planning as practiced in the US is focused as it is on it's own goals is acting like a maverick, acting like a loner, acting to the exclusion of national identity and responsibility. US Organizations ARE Acting like an off-shore privateer, a pirate, or a disinterested party. 

6) There is nothing wrong with forcing corporations to serve the country if not the community by being transparent. I think we would expect the same of NGOs, Foundations, PACs, 501 (c)(4) organizations, 527 organizations (soft money), and any legal entity formed or incorporated in the USA.  US Legal entities must be better citizens or state economy participants.

Links for discussion of weakness in current US Strategic Planning:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_range_planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopolitics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_analysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_relations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_relations#Epistemology_and_IR_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_analysis#Bureaucratic_Politics_Model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_analysis#Other_models
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy#Grand_Strategy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_mundialization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventionism#Unilateral_intervention

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_organization

Sara Robinson — The New Totalitarianism: How American Corporations Have Made America Like the Soviet Union

Free-market capitalism was supposed to save us from the tyranny of faceless apparatchiks. But that's not what happened.

Read it at AlterNet
The New Totalitarianism: How American Corporations Have Made America Like the Soviet Union
by Sara Robinson
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

Balkin — Corporations and the Thirteenth Amendment

How the Thirteen Amendment could be used against "corporate personhood" if interpreted as broadly as the Fourteenth.

Read it at Balkinization
Corporations and the Thirteenth Amendment
by jb

Thirteen Amendment
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

UPDATE:
More on Corporations as Slaves
by JB

George Carlin brilliantly sums up our society

One of his best!