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george gregory's avatar

Thank God for Berni Sanders

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Deanna J Marquart's avatar

American business moguls showing their true colors is not a pretty sight. Their money-hungry selfishness displays their blindness to what is happening at the hands of trump, creating new opportunities everyday for all of us to be disheartened and embarrassed to be Americans. Who knew corporate leaders had no scruples or spine of their own and had to be LED to do the right thing by having a leader with not only a conscience but a vision of better living for everyone in our country: namely, Joe Biden. I miss you, Joey.

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clinton & susanne hollister's avatar

We miss him too, and pray that someone will step forward and pick up where he left off - after cleaning up the mess left by trumpkins, of course.

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george gregory's avatar

why do I feel like I woke up on the wrong planet

clown hair, clown make up it's a clown? right?

trumpkins it is!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Paul thomas's avatar

I woke up on the wrong side of the wormhole in the space time continuum and found myself in an alternate universe where Canada is bad and russia is good

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Linda Leee E E's avatar

Washington DC is not a State of the United States. The Federal Government sanctions and creates the money, sanctions the Banks and the economic system and Congress doles it out to control our lives. Money only works because people believe that speaking big enough numbers of dollars can buy anything they need to be comfortable. Unfortunately for US, our current administration has been so greedy that people are realizing that we can't eat, breathe, or drink money. It's meant to be a tool, not the desired end result. Corporate Culture has bigger numbers of dollars as their only reason to exist and through Citizens United, to create for the CEO's and politicians, a fantastic life by putting a price on our priceless life supporting habitat, our planet Earth's natural resources. Let's get past the paperwork purgatory and money speak to build a Plan 2B ok. Protect our National Parks and Federal Lands, WATER and Atmosphere! We are NOT for sale

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Linda Leee E E's avatar

It's not paperwork purgatory anymore, now it's going to electrical dependence and bit coin' ( whatever that is)

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Linda Leee E E's avatar

Reverse Citizens United of 2010 !

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Marie Hoff's avatar

I once read that someone explained to Abraham Lincoln this "new" form of business organization-- aka as "corporation" ; Our most intelligent President commented" Well, if this becomes dominant it would be the end of our democracy:" :: If "Honest Abe" could see the dangers of Corporation over 150+ years ago, why can't people see the source of our democratic decline now??

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Judith Green's avatar

Corporations - we can't get rid of them, but it's vital for governments to regulate them. Europe does a better job.

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Rafi Simonton's avatar

Not saying we should, but yes, we could get rid of them. They exist because of state charters granted on the assumption they serve a common good. As for regulating, see my detailed reply to Marie H. directly above.

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Rafi Simonton's avatar

1.) That was before the legal precedent that abstract corporations had the same rights as physically real human beings.

2.) The Robbers Barons and banksters who benefit so disproportionately by this fiction were beaten back by the Populist (farmer-labor) and Social Gospel movements around the turn of the 19th C. , reined in by the Republican Progressive reformers slightly later, and limited most of all by the New Deal because of the Great Depression.

3.) Starting in the late '70s, the Dem party was taken over by people who support the current econopathy. They take huge corporate and 1%er donations. No surprise they are for domestic econ policies and international treaties like the WTO that reflect the interests of the few. New Deal financial regulations were repealed under Clinton; the result was the '08 crash. Under Obama, the Wall St. vultures were bailed out. For the millions who lost jobs, pensions, homes? Nothing.

So it isn't just corporations that are "the source of democratic decline," it's very much also their political enablers.

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clinton & susanne hollister's avatar

At least you can say this for those toads: they have finally dropped the mantle of hypocrisy and are showing us who they really are - and who they have always been. We would say "shame on them", except that they have no shame. Shame on those who bend the knee to them!

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Lyle A Kleman's avatar

I thought maybe Bezos had a sympathy streak - until he shut WaPo's endorsement of Kamala. I thought maybe Paramount had some sort of conscience - until now. I even thought - silly me - that at least a couple of our IA Reps and Senators had "best for the community" in mind, even if I disagreed - until such things as Cabinet approvals and the SAVE Act came around. Sigh!

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edith fusillo's avatar

Bezos' ex-wife is worth dozens of him. She has used her wealth to support worthy causes which do not enrich her. Go, MacKenzie!

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EDWARD GARDNER's avatar

During World War 2 America used U.S. Marines who spoke the Navajo language to communicate about logistics and battle plans. They were called "Wind Talkers". The Japanese just couldn't crack the code. Diversity is strength and advantage. Period.

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David Smeltzer's avatar

Unfortunately the corporate and MAGA slime has coated virtually everything in America and I fear not even the ghost busters among us will be able to clean it away any time soon, if ever. As Senator Chris Murphy said, we probably have six months to head this off or it will be too late. It’s going to take something more radical than our courts to fix this coup of or government. Trump has committed treason by his blatant violations of his oath of office and our only chance to correct some of this is for every republican up for office in the midterms to be voted out of office. IF we have another election.

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Judith Green's avatar

It's a big "IF" and I'm not optimistic...

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Jean Jacoby's avatar

The modern corporation is authoritarian, hierarchical, oppressive of speech, sees employees as nothing more than resources like computers and office furniture, and as such is fundamentally at odds with any democratic society. Back in the day, some corporations also tried to have community-supporting goals in addition to profit, but that is now ancient history, or maybe a charade. While people cheered Bezos for buying WaPo and saving it, they forgot how badly he treated his employees. He saw WaPo as a jewel in his imagined crown, saving a great newspaper famous for its fearless, quality journalism. This made him feel elevated to the world of the intelligentsia, which he craved. But it was never about fearless quality journalism, just his ego, so of course he caved as soon as he saw Trump might be elected again.

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Paul thomas's avatar

Bozos probably bought WAPO to stifle any information about his own business .

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Paul thomas's avatar

You would think the president and his polyps would have everything they could want. But greed is their motivation and they are being led by someone who praises pootins leadership for messing with our military so he can make a fortune by repealing the sanctions on russia. Business and Republicans are in a literal limbo contest to see how low they can go.

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clinton & susanne hollister's avatar

And just when you think they can't go any lower, there they go again!

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Paul thomas's avatar

The bar keeps getting lower after 2016 I don't think the Jamaicans have a chance

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Gary Harper's avatar

Oligarchs Dictatorship, buy your 5 million dollar gold card now. Become a Trump American. Watch poverty and crime grow like never before. Homeless living under every bridge in every town. The new Un-United States of Trump America. What a sight to behold!

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Phyllis's avatar

Greedy corporate leaders have been set free. They’ve never liked having to spend time and resources on DEI hiring practices and mandated DEI staff developments. They have contempt for that level of political correctness. It costs them time and money. Now, it’s official- it’s all about the money! Workers be damned. I was going to add “guilt free”- but they’d need a conscience for that.

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William Politt's avatar

Somewhere along the line, the tolerable (if not ideal) paradigm of corporate Amorality has evolved into outright corporate IMmorality. How many major corporations behave as out and out psychopaths?

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Rafi Simonton's avatar

I knew by experience the Dem elite dumped the New Deal decades ago. I knew through U.S. history the Rs have for the most part been the party of Big Biz for a century. Multinational corporations have become so powerful that entire governments are little more than subsidiaries to an econ system enabled legally to serve the few.

I had assumed the issue was how econ data were interpreted; of course progressives would see the same reality quite differently than conservatives. When I actually read what is foundational to conservative (reactionary) econ thinking I was appalled. Very little, if any, empirical evidence. Mostly it's belief in the infallibility of The Market. Regulations, like those of the New Deal, are therefore threats to their liberty to do as they see fit. Since their wealth and success are the products of the natural laws of The Market, they are most fit to make all the important econ decisions. Think 1890s Social Darwinism.

They're smart enough to realize, as Irving Kristol said in the '50s, "who wants to live in a society where one's fellows are fully engaged (only) in...single-minded self interest?" They had to have some moral justification. Enter in the late '50s "Spiritual Mobilization," founded by a vehemently anti-New Deal Congregational minister, Rev. Fifield. He said "much of our energy...has been spent in trying to thwart the laws of nature, which would make the fittest survive and in upholding the weak, whom nature would destroy,.." Furthermore, he said "the blessings of capitalism come from God."

Of course he's wrong about nature, which is predominantly symbiotic, and obviously about Christianity to anyone who has read the Bible, particularly the words of Jesus. However, it sure fit the capitalist crusade. Point is it took decades for this unholy alliance to achieve their version of Never Again, meaning the New Deal and government for the people. That's the belief system we're up against.

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Lawrence McCavitt's avatar

Think Ralph Nader!

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Rafi Simonton's avatar

In my on-going research about the anti-New Deal corporate crusade, I just read an anecdote about Lewis Powell, The one who wrote the infamous '71 Powell Memo, the Big Biz agenda now considered econ gospel by both major U.S. parties. Powell saved a Fortune mag profile of Nader because he saw Nader as a dangerous man "aimed utterly at smashing utterly the target of his hatred, which is corporate power..."

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Kathleen Yezierska-Hulley's avatar

At my school at NYU, students often pointed out that

"Business Ethics is an oxymoron".

The new government currently destroying democracy in Washington DC now demonstrates that reality without shame.

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Marie Hoff's avatar

PS>> 19th century Americans also saw that Democracy and "Empire" cannot co-exist. How might our military respond if DJT orders them to take over Panama or Greenland (directly or by more devious means????????

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Linda Leee E E's avatar

Or to take over Houston, Texas? Vermont, U.S.A.

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Linda Leee E E's avatar

Washington DC is not a part of the United States, it's the District of Columbia, separate from the States.

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