Take Money off the Table

John Dayton sent me a video by Daniel Pink about motivation, See http://www.danpink.com/archives/2010/06/whiteboard-magic. I thought it was interesting and cute.

Then I read "Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic" because I was so impressed with how well the Mayo Clinic is run. Mayo has institutionalized Minnesota "nice" by creating a purposeful organization - just what Pink was talking about.

If people work because they want to be creative, cooperate, be productive, and give back to the community - rather than work for money - what does that say about the moral foundations of our society?

WikiLeaks

After reading the article in the 6/7/10 issue of the New Yorker about WikiLeaks and it's founder, Julian Assange, I was prompted to take a look at the WikiLeaks website. I love this take on corporations and why it's important to civilize them.

Corporate corruption comes in many forms. The number of employees and turnover of some corporations exceeds the population and GDP of some nation states. When comparing countries, after observations of population size and GDP, it is usual to compare the system of government, the major power groupings and the civic freedoms available to their populations. Such comparisons can also be illuminating in the case of corporations.

Considering the largest corporations as analogous to a nation state reveals the following properties:

1) The right to vote does not exist except for share holders (analogous to land owners) and even there voting power is in proportion to ownership.

2) All power issues from a central committee.

3) There is no balancing division of power. There is no fourth estate. There are no juries and innocence is not presumed.

4) Failure to submit to any order may result in instant exile.

5) There is no freedom of speech.

6) There is no right of association. Even romance between men and women is often forbidden without approval.

7) The economy is centrally planned.

8) There is pervasive surveillance of movement and electronic communication.

9) The society is heavily regulated, to the degree many employees are told when, where and how many times a day they can go to the toilet.

10) There is little transparency and something like the Freedom of Information Act is unimaginable.

11) Internal opposition groups, such as unions, are blackbanned, surveilled and/or marginalized whenever and wherever possible.

While having a GDP and population comparable to Belgium, Denmark or New Zealand, many of these multi-national corporations have nothing like their quality of civic freedoms and protections. This is even more striking when the regional civic laws the company operates under are weak (such as in West Papua, many African states or even South Korea); there, the character of these corporate tyrannies is unobscured by their civilizing surroundings.

Through governmental corruption, political influence, or manipulation of the judicial system, abusive corporations are able to gain control over the defining element of government — the sole right to deploy coercive force.

WikiLeaks endeavors to civilize corporations by exposing uncivil plans and behavior. Just like a country, a corrupt or unethical corporation is a menace to all inside and outside it.

http://www.wikileaks.net/wiki/WikiLeaks:About

Episcopal Church in Tucson

Waking Up From the American Dream

Yesterday MoveOn sponsored a forum in Port Townsend entitled "Waking Up From the American Dream". It was on target. 200 people attended and told moving stories about health care and the food we eat being controlled to their detriment by big corporations. It was a good rally.

Unfortunately, however, MoveOn has yet to come up with a realistic way to support candidates who are not in the corporations' pocket - they all are - or find a way to fund an effort by the People to take back our government by taxing the corporations and publicly funding elections.

So let me repeat a proposed solution I made earlier:

Since our elected officials can't or won't do it, we the people should mount a referendum - here in Washington and across the nation - proposing a simple progressive income tax on both corporations and individuals - something like 30% on all income above $200,000, 50% on that above $500,000 and 75% above that - no loopholes. Make it expensive to be "too big to fail". Give the local hardware store a chance to compete with Home Depo. End insurance and drug company control of the health care system. Promote competition, favor American enterprise. Put a dent in corruption and corporate control of our government at all levels.

And pay for it, $10 at a time, by clicking on our cell phones - like we were able to help with the relief effort in Haiti a couple of months ago. We the people have the votes and the power to control our own lives, even if the corporations and political parties they own don't like it.

Representative Anthony Weiner, D, NY, says it pretty well, "Republicans are a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry". See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#35573472

I'd like to find out what his support is and how he gets elected. And his friend, Pete DeFazio of Oregon, too.

Tax the Corporations

The Democrats say,"for less than ten percent of Exxon's 2008 profits, it could spend $10 million on every congressional race in America. I say tax the corporations with a really simple progressive tax to make it expensive to be "too big to fail".

And publicly fund elections so politicians will represent the people - not corporations.

Health care and corporations

I participated in a MoveOn sponsored rally for health care today in Port Angeles, WA. This, of course, just after the Democrats lost Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts and the Supreme Court ruled that corporations need no limits in exercising their free speech rights as "individuals".

I thought the rally was a little disappointing. Only about twenty people showed up at Congressman Norm Dick's office to urge the Democrats to "have a backbone" and stick with the program. Dicks wasn't even there. Nice people begging for help and fairness but we had no plan that I could see to seize power and accomplish anything.

Here's what I would do and it takes considering the following, seemingly disparate, elements:

1) Tim Eiman has scared the bejesus out of Washington politicians by his referendums.

2) This week there is a referendum in Oregon to tax the rich and tax corporations.

3) The news is full of outrage about the size of corporate salaries and benefits.

4) I just donated $10 to Haiti simply by texting a few numbers into my iPhone.

5) Americans, from the Tea Party radicals to those who wish the Obama Administration would stick to the program of ending the wars, reforming health care and regulating the banks, insurance, drug and auto companies are "mad as hell'.

Okay, that's enough. All the above are tied together and I have a solution ....

Mount a referendum - or many state-level referendums - proposing a simple progressive income tax on both corporations and individuals - something like 30% on all income above $200,000, 50% on that above $500,000 and 75% above that - no loopholes. Make it expensive to be "too big to fail". Give the local hardware store a chance to compete with Home Depo. End insurance and drug company control of the health care system. Promote competition, favor American enterprise. Put a dent in corruption and corporate control of our government at all levels.

And pay for it, $10 at a time, by clicking on our cell phones. We the people have the votes and the power to control our own lives, even if the corporations and political parties they own don't like it.