How we CAN get corporations out of our government?

[BILL53]

History shows us that in too many cases large corporations have greatly enhanced shareholder profits by buying legislation, or a nice profitable war, from politicians all too eager to sell.
In the early part of the last century Henry Ford wanted to use corporate profits that he viewed as excessive to raise worker salaries and reduce the price of his company's automobiles. His stockholders wanted that money for themselves. The stockholders sued, and the judge ruled that the whole purpose of business is to maximize shareholder wealth, and if Ford "wanted to pursue a (charitable end) he should do it with his own money, not with other people's."(Dodge v. Ford, 1919)
http://breakthelink.org/

http://breakthelink.org/Legal.php

[gratuitous]

1. Treat them as public entities instead of private persons

Corporations shouldn't have the right to free speech, corporations shouldn't have legal standing as a person.

[IndianaGreen]

2. Put the Socialists in power!

The working class needs its own political party, with a program that expresses its collective interests independent of the parties of capital. This independent party is the political expression of the interests of the working class, and fights for the liberation of all oppressed people. A party cannot represent the exploiter and the exploited, the robber and the robbed. A party that attempts to represent the interests of all classes, or more than one class, can only, in the final analysis, really represent the interests of the ruling class because all other classes are based upon the subjugation of the working class.

http://www.debstendency.org/pointsofunity.html

[napi21]

3. You have to get the $$ out of politics!

As long as it takes MILLIONS of $ to get elected or re-elected, all politicians are going to seek $$ from Corps. Like it or not, if most of your donations come from Companies, you're going to be hard pressed to ignore their requests when it comes to voting on legislation!

Dod yu hear Obma on TV this AM? He was asked about $$ and he said "That's the part of my job I HATE the most! It takes millions for a campaign, and each candidate is forced to spen much of his/her time asking for $$$!"

I've heard this same statement from every politician many times.

Obama suggested one idea is to have the networks to give free air time to candidates, but he's also sure NBC, CBS, ABC, etc really don't want to hear about that, but it's something we should discuss!

[leftofthedial]

4. make social responsibility a higher requirement than shareholder profit

right now, the ONLY legal requirement corporations have is to maximize shareholder profit.

restore much stricter regulation on corporate practices and profits

tax them much more heavily and enforce collection of those taxes

legislate worker's rights

[acmejack]

5. Publicly funded campaigns.

See Arizona or Maine's clean elections acts for an example of what can be done. We need to reenact the Fairness Doctrine to get equal free airtime for candidates (it was suspended by Ronnie Raygun), real debates, public funding would remove even the appearance of a quid pro quo.