How funds opened the door to corporate abuse.

[Nitro Express]

Corporations used to be owned by stockholders who all had a proxy vote. Not today. Various funds own the major percentage of outstanding stock in a corporation and funds have no proxy vote; even though, they own the majority of the stock. The individual stockholders who own the minority of the outstanding shares have all the voting power. Very rich individuals like David Rockefeller have the voting rights. It's estimated that the Rockefeller family own 4.5% of 90% of the world's corporations and control $10 trillion of wealth around the world. The money is hidden away in a huge array of foundations most having a flavor of being charitable but really are fronts for other purposes. Other rich families do the same.

So the majority of companies are owned by mutual funds, pensions funds, other various types of funds but controlled by a small minority of people with all the voting rights. The funds marketed as a conveniant way to diversity one's investments has actually put the power of corporate America into very few hands.

Corporations used to a tool for various investors to own a part of a company and have voting rights based on their ownership. Stockholders actually used to fill large rooms once a year during the proxy voting and influence the direction of the company. The stockholders used to have a lot of pull. Now they are just faceless owners of a fund that has no power.

[FORD]

Corporations also (once upon a time) had to somehow serve a public interest in order to be granted the right to exist in the first place.

[Nitro Express]

Corporations also (once upon a time) had to somehow serve a public interest in order to be granted the right to exist in the first place.

Yup. Also 100 years ago a corporate charter was good for only 10 years and then you had to renew it. Part of the renew process was the government would assess how the corporation behaved and whether it served the public good or not. If it was abusive it's charter was not renewed.

John D. Rockefeller hated this and used his money to buy off the politicians in Delaware and Maryland. One reason so many companies are incorporated in those states. The rot started a century ago and it really went to shit in 1913 when the Federal Reserve Act and Federal Income Tax were signed into law. The biggest ponzi scheme in US history. Over the past century the corporations took control of the government. The Deffense Department became the war industry. Corporations became international and cared little about any country or it's people trolling the world for the cheapest labor. Politicans are bought and paid for. Fascism is sold to the public as a social program. This is where we are now.

[Nitro Express]

The United Nations and all these world wide organizations like the World Trade Organization, World Banks, and such benefit the multinational corporations. It's corporations now and not sovergn governments and all of this is a way to roll over constitutions and rights so the corporations can have more power to do whatever they want. It's called globalism and it's not about fixing global warming, saving the environment, eliminating wars, or making the world a nice place for the average person to live. It's all about empowering the world's richest 1% and herding the rest of the population like cattle for whatever reason they seem fit. It's actually modern slavery and they have been real cleaver at selling it to us.

[Nitro Express]

There really is nothing wrong with the honest corporate model. The selling of stocks made money possible for goods and services to be produced that society needed or wanted. Then if it was successful the stockholders made money on their investments and over years of doing this, had something to retire on. It became corrupt when the corporations bought the government and changed the laws that regulated them. Now the massive share of the outstanding stock has no proxy vote.

[kwame k]

Here's a great doc that hits all the highlights of how Corporations rule the world......little circulated fact is that Corps are considered a human being and protected by the Constitution giving them the same rights as us.......

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[FORD]

Here's a great doc that hits all the highlights of how Corporations rule the world......little circulated fact is that Corps are considered a human being and protected by the Constitution giving them the same rights as us.......


At the moment, that's not actually what the law says, though the written opinion of one right wing court clerk from the late 19th century led to that horrible misinterpretation of the 14th amendment.

Sadly this is likely to change soon, and not for the better, when the 5 BCE appointees on the Supreme Court, led by Chimpy's pet corporatist Opie Roberts, will actually write corporate personhood into the law. :(

On the other hand, if we are to accept that corporations are persons, than shouldn't a corporate person guilty of murder and treason be subject to the death penalty?

[standin]

yes, they should Ford.
People should not be able to hide under a corporation when the corporation's practices kill or commit other acts, such as crimes against humanity.

Often times it is the bankruptcy laws that allow those sorts to skirt fiscal liability. Criminal liability need an actual person, such as a CEO to punish. A corporation also need to be able to present charges when policing their own. What is difficult is the classification of corporations. Small, medium, large and private or public.
Gibson for example is private and small for the sake of classification. However, in perception that is not the case.

[Nitro Express]

I really don't see the next conflict country against country. I see the people vs. the corporation. We need to stop being intimidated by them and put them in their place. Walmart would crumble if nobody shopped there. Don't do business with a company that got bailed out. Don't pump your gas at Shell or buy Nike shoes because they support Cap and Trade.

The politicians are just opportunist whores. The people were more concerned with getting rich overnight in .com start ups, real estate flipping, and they could care less about what Washington was doing. Credit was easy and available and everybody was going to get rich quick. The politicians had no heat on them so they sucked the special interest tit. Now people are noticing what they are doing in Washington because the distractions are gone and so is the giddy get rich feeling.

[standin]

Not shopping at walmart is really not an option. At this very moment if I needed cough syrup for my child. Walmart is the only place to purchase it. I could go to a convenience store and pay a 3 times the price a half the amount of product.
And once you go to walmart for that got to have item at midnight, you have already broken the "diet".

An interesting fact is the biggest fear of committing corruption or crime is not the sentence, it i getting caught.

One of the most very annoying thing to me about wall mart is the pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters that slide "under the radar" at a local level. That change is a lot of money. The mis-pricing is just rampant. And their "pre-paid" cash cards for a while was an incredible scam. There is not much the average worker at walmart can do.
When I found out about the pre-paid cash card scams( gift cards if you will) I filed a report about the theft by walmart of $3. My $3 was not much but $3 dollars at each store 3 times a day is a whole hell of a lot of money. The process of the gift cards has changed and that is good.

You must remember, if you see fraud report it. You individual report together with others can make a difference. And sometimes your individual report might be the very one that makes a difference.

[Seshmeister]

Everything is just varying levels of shit.

The key thing from my observations of the US is political funding.

The US is totally fucked until this is sorted.

Once that is sorted out you can join the rest of Western democracies in just being quite fucked.