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ReDemocracy / ReGovernment / ReCommunity
Democracy
does not have to end on election day... It shouldn't!
Are you going
to the revolution?
Consider
taking a copy of the
ReDemocracy
Flyer
Such a shame, to have such a need for
true conservatism, yet to have been handed extreme reactionaires
masquerading as leadership.
War-fiteering:
In
this time of "national crisis", it's troubling--
some of the "Republican" party "leadership"
choices...
granting highly selective tax roll-backs as follows:
$1.4 bllion for IBM
$833 million for General Motors
$671 million for General Electric
$572 million for Chevron Texaco
and $254 million for Enron
The
"Consevative"-"led"
"House of Representatives" recently
approved alternative miminum tax
roll-backs retroactively to the late 1980s, costing
other taxpapers a loss of more than $12 Billion
in revenue next year alone. If large, profitable
companies are permitted to store their profits
overseas in tax shelters, why not you or other
average Joe Q. Publics?
Corporate
Welfare, Inc.
Laugh, we're
paying for it!
The
Tax Cut of 2001 - Bush: 10 | America: Minus $4 Trillion
It's a
good thing that top-down, supply-side works so well, because
this much less government will mean that there will be less cash
flow from the bottom to the top of the economy - meaning the
wealthy of us will get richer more slowly. This is a good thing,
right?
White-collar crime costs
us at least $250 billion annually. Street crime costs us less
than $20 billion. Go figure!
Why we cannot
afford to feed the hungry and help the needy and homeless...
$125 billion (not including tens and hundreds of
billions more in local business "subsides" and "incentives")
of your tax dollars
every year is given away in direct cash disbursements
as Corporate
Welfare, Inc.,
to profitable national and transnational corporations like:
- Archer Daniels
Midland (Price fixers to the World?)
- "The News Hour
With Jim Lehrer," [ brought to you by ADM, and you, Mr.
Ms.& Mrs. Taxpayer. Thank you for your generosity]
- McDonalds (to advertise
overseas)
- Gallo Winery (to advertise
overseas)
- Plush Colorado Ski Resorts
- Weyerhauser
- Georgia Pacific
- Walt Disney (Also received special
patent extensions to keep product prices inflated and uncompetitive
-- granted by "y'our" government)
- Martin Marietta
- Mining Industry interests
- National Meat Association
- Energy and Petrochemical
Industries
- Pepsico's Frito-Lay
- Anchor Glass Container
Corp.
- Federal Express
- Nucor
- Kidder Peabody Group,
Inc.
- Nebraska Beef, Ltd.
- Mercedes-Benz (bends?)
- Time Warner (Ted Turner
gave a big chunk to the UN...?) Check out Bill Moyers' "Free
Speech: For Sale", on video (1-800-336-1917), where it is
shown that the broadcast-media-monopoly and cartel was given
$70 + billion in public airwave channel rights free of charge...
by y'our gov't.
- General Electric (GE)
- ABB Instrumentation
Inc (subsidy of ABB Asea Brown Boveri Lt., the giant Swiss and
Swedish power generation and distribution conglomerate)
- General Motors (who
takes the goodies then moves its operations south)
- Intel
- Allied Signal
- Eastman Kodak
- Caterpiller
- Union Carbide
- Georgia Pacific
- Microsoft
- Hughes Aircraft (now
part of Ratheon)
- Motorola
- Boeing
- Corporate farmers
- Sugar industry subsidies
- RCA (now part of GE)
- Searle & Co.
- and a few select more
fat cat porkers feeding at the public trough...
- [A heartfelt thanks
for your contributions, they mean so much to us].
These are profitable national and multi or transnational corporations
that do not need nor do they or we benefit by incontinent and
unconservative (where are the fiscal conservatives when we need
them) public largesse... but there are many needy companies and
small businesses that could use this money if it were only redistributed
through the economy by direct top-down handouts, or by giving
it to the poor and homeless in meaningful amounts for public
work received... money sucked out of the system by the corporate
swine above is money denied more deserving and needy elements
of our economy... like our local small businesses which are the
real jobs- machinery, engine and fuel of our economy... so lets
stop subsidizing the downsizing of American jobs and lets begin
helping needy small businesses and the poor and homeless... for
these are far better investments than helping those corporate
giants that don't need help. If you are a small business or corporation
that is not receiving direct or indirect corporate welfare, make
sure that you let your local and national chapters of the Chamber
of Commerce know that you think the tens and hundreds of billions
of dollars in direct and indirect corporate welfare should be
better invested to benefit all Americans... and make sure that
your representatives know how you feel about corporate welfare
being recycled into the fraudulent financial merry-go-round system
of financing political campaigns... and demand that this garbagey
governance stop...
(See Time Magazine,
four issues beginning November 9, 1998, "What
Corporate Welfare Costs You," A
special investigation by Donald L. Bartlett and James B Steele,
authors of "America: What Went Wrong") -- Another (Jan-Feb
2000) Time Magazine article by these authors further describes
what happens to your tax dollars when the government goes to
bat for individual foreign (not even American) companies (Big
Bananas) against foreign economies and governments via the World
Trade Organization. Every small businessperson should have such
clout in Washington, DC.
Corporate Welfare Shame Site...
Corporate welfare would
make sense if it didn't cost us more than it gives us back as
it doesn't do time after time... it actually would make more
sense to merely give these tens of billions of dollars to the
poor through poverty maintenance handouts (sometimes called welfare)
because at least the money would be spent in the economy on a
regular basis, and it would then float (percolate) up to the
wealthy positioned at the top of the economy... and along the
way it might help some of the more seaworthy boats rise higher
in the water... as opposed to dumping this public money in at
the top of the economy where it finances costly jobs, wages and
economic downsizing. Perhaps someday we will discover that the
same economic carrot and stick regime works to discipline the
wealthy as it does the poor. If impoverishing the poor works
so well in motivating them to self betterment and productivity,
imagine what it might do for the well-healed.
Why corporate welfare?
Because, democracy like economics, is merely a matter of whatever traffic allows...
as long as we
eat what's being served economically, democratically and socially,
then that's what'll be for breakfast, lunch and dinner...24/7/365...
... and Because your government hasn't gotten your message,
or is ignoring it! Are you getting your money's worth? Some of
us are, why aren't you? How long are you going to permit
your "representative" government to give away your
money to profitable corporate slouches like Archer Daniels Midland
(ADM), to help it pay its fines for fixing prices for which it
recently was found guilty.
Apply for your welfare
reform dividend today...?
Common
Cause (a
non-partisan public non-profit) is working to put an end to these
outrageous federal giveaways to large profitable corporations
(not small businesses which provide the majority of America's
jobs). Consider joining this effort.
Common,
beCause: (202) 833-1200, (202) 659-3716 (fax), 1250 Connecticut
Avenue, NW, Washington DC 20036
A couple of
government waste references:
"The Government
Racket 2000: All New Government Waste [$325 billion worth] From A to Z" by Marshal C. Gross.
[Identifies
$325 billion in legislative sausage--waste you likely would not
approve if you merely had a direct and meaningful voice in your
national government]
"The Buying of
The President 2000"
by
Charles Lewis
"Natural Capitalism?"
(See Mother Jones
Magazine, April 1977) See what most traditional economists leave
out of their theories and models (Perhaps this is the wave of
the future...whether we choose it or whether we are forced into
it due to diminished resources and increasing populations...)
"Shoveling Fuel
For A Runaway Train"
by Brian Cech
"The Activist's Handbook" by Randy Shaw
"Unmande In America:
The True Costs of a Global Assembly Line" by Barry Lynn (Harpers, Later
May 2002)
Until America finds its democratic voice
again...
All hail
the Neo(pseudo)
conservative Monolithy!
Every Saturday precisely at
noon, everyone is to mantra the following Ode to the Neoconservative
Monolithy:
"Big Business,
small government...
Up with the Corporataucracy,
down with democracy...
Rah, Rah, Rah..."
MoreOver:
CORPORATIONS = Virtual
Persons Who Enjoy More Power and Benefits than Real People, by
design...
- Corporations enjoy many
benefits that have correctly been labeled as "super-personhood,"
and have won legislative benefits that are not extended to individuals
which were granted specific rights under the Constitution. Corporations
are now in a position of usurping individual rights, essentially
becoming a private government equally or more insidious than
any undemocratic form of government.
We would do well to consider the anti-individual (anti-social,
anti-public) potential of corporations with which many of our
conservative, centrist and liberal brothers and sisters view
big government. Many corporations individually and cooperatively
enjoy the power of a private government and wield considerable
power over individuals and of even public government itself,
far in excess of the sanctity and sovereignty with which the
Founders vested real individual persons.
Laws granting corporations the status of personhood have corrupted
individual rights, government in general and democracy itself.
And we would do well to put in place the economic, social
and political structures that best work for democratizing and
three-dimensionalizing the marketplace for the benefit of everyone,
not merely the few who have amassed the most money and power.
Its simply a matter of social and individual rights and public
health, safety and welfare. For the first two decade period in
history, between 1972 and 1992, the top 1% of America's wealthy
corporations and individuals have concentrated 90% of America's
wealth, while the lower 80% or wage and salary earners make less
in real dollars today than their counterparts did in 1972, even
though they are more productive and work harder.
Clue: We have not demanded or taken a direct voice from the power
brokers, like our national ancestors took government away from
the Crown of England for themselves. One must wonder about the
moral, spiritual and psychological health of a culture, having
the right -- the freedom to amend their Constitution, but which
fails to take advantage of their democratic institutions and
rights for their self benefit. Is this not evidence of social
or cultural masochism? Were our nation's foreparents made of
better or different stuffing then are we? "Don't waste your
food, there are people in the world that don't have any."
Do we really believe that in four more years government will
be any less broken then it is now unless we do something differently
about it today? Lets try something that has a chance of bettering
democracy and self-governance. Democracy Direct: A modest, yet
real government reform, not merely political musical chairs.
Demand it today, as a real reform in governmental policy or as
a codified amendment to the US Constitution. Reclaim representative
government from the special interest middlepersons who have bought
it at pennies on the dollar from "y'our" representatives.
Links of Interest to
Fellow ReDemocratists
Ratifiers
For Democracy
Vote.org
Spark's
Real Democracy Real Change
Political Resources
Net
The Direct Democracy
Center
The Committee For
Direct Democracy
Alliance For Democracy
"The
Strange Disappearance of Civic America"
"Bowling
Alone: America's Declining Social Capital"
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