The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy [Hardcover]

Lee Drutman (Author), Charlie Cray (Author), Ralph Nader (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2004

More than ever before, large corporations wield an unjustifiably excessive influence over every aspect of life - economic, political, social, cultural, and environmental - feeding a rabid consumer culture that harms the environment, undermines a shared sense of national prosperity, and threatens ideals of a citizen-powered democracy. A lively and engaging mandate to fight back against corporate dominance, The People's Business examines the very nature of corporate power, presenting a range of strategies to curtail it, and explaining how ordinary people can restore citizen control. Bringing together a coalition of leading authors, activists, scholars, and professionals, this book serves as a vital, clearheaded plan for strengthening individual rights, transforming corporations into engines of public prosperity, and creating a sustainable, life-respecting society where the people have the power. The book features an introduction by Ralph Nader.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Lee Drutman is the former Communications Director at Citizen Works (www.citizenworks.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded by Ralph Nader to advance justice by strengthening citizen participation in power. Charlie Cray is a policy analyst and the director of the Center for Corporate Policy in Washington, D.C.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 340 pages
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576753093
• ISBN-13: 978-1576753095
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #332,919 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two Biggest Problems Facing America: Out-of-Control Corporatism & Blind Militarism, October 8, 2005

By 

cvairag (Allan Hancock College) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy (Hardcover)

Two Biggest Problems Facing America: Out-of-Control Corporatism & Blind Militarism

This book performs the crucial service of organizing and structuring our thoughts about the seemingly remote possibility of popular containment of the pervasive and widespread corporate abuse, which has devastated our lives and now poses a very real threat to the continuation of human life as a whole. How do we pressure Congress (predominantly bought and signed for by the corps) to even begin to introduce the topic of corporate reform in legislative discussion? This challenge, the argument here, well grounded in fact, takes up.
The authors list seven basic strategies:
1. Crack Down on Corporate Crime
A permanent, well-funded and staffed corporate crime division should be established within the Justice Department. Budgets for Justice Dept agencies responsible for pursuing corporate criminals such as the SEC should be beefed up. An annual corporate crime report equivalent to the one the FBI produces on street crime should be generated. Federal acquisition regulations should be tightened so lawbreaking corporations do not receive any fraction of the $265 billion worth of government contracts given out each year.
2. Rein in the Imperial CEO's
Warren Buffett once suggested that willingness to curb excessive CEO pay is "the acid test of corporate reform." Yet the ratio of average large company CEO pay ($11.8 million) to average worker pay ($27,460) spiked from 301 to 1 in 2003 to 403 to 1 in 2004. While Wal-Mart paid CEO Lee Scott 871 times what it paid the average "associate," the ratio between executive and worker pay in Europe hovers closer to 25 to 1. In 1982 the ratio at US corporations was about 42 to1; by 2000 it had spiraled to about 525 to 1.
The SEC should give shareholders - the true owners of the corporations - the right to curb out-of-control executive pay packages, which often expand while the companies' earnings and performance decline. Representative Martin Sabo in July 2005 introduced the Income Equity Act, which would eliminate tax deductions for executive compensation exceeding twenty-five times that of the company's lowest-paid full-time employee.
3. Shore Up the Civil Justice System
This strategy stands in direct opposition to the current trend of "tort reform" legislation now pouring through Congress. One of the lost lessons of Enron and other corporate crime scandals is how Washington's deregulation created an incentive for the market system's professional "gatekeepers" - the accountants, bankers, and attorneys - to avoid their responsibilities and, in some cases, even aid and abet the fraud. "Tort-reform" type legislation, such as the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) of 1995, weakening the ability of shareholder victims of corporate fraud to sue, embolden the corporate perpetrators of such frauds to cook the books. So-called "tort-reform" provides incentive for even further corporate abuse - and although the facts are in (see www.citizen.org, www.centerjd.org), civic and political organization to safeguard the public's right to protect itself against such abuse must be enhanced. The process of establishing such safeguards as legal institutions begins with education. Most Americans have no understanding as to the degree to which the twisted "tort-reform" argument threatens not only their interests, but their personal safety.
4. Regulate in the Public Interest
The ferocious corporate assault over the past quarter century (since the advent of the Reagan Administration) on regulations that worked has cost lives, health, and trillions of dollars. Most of the companies involved in recent giant accounting
scams fall within the industrial sectors that were radically deregulated just years before - energy, banking, brokerage, and telecommunications. In these industries, deregulation, or taking the government cop off the corporate beat, created a kind of gold rush mentality. The authors claim that much of the investment craze of the past two decades has been in part fueled by deceptive scenarios emanating from this situation: a false sense of prosperity bolstered by phony accounting practices.
Corporate lobbies have blocked much needed reforms and resources for corporate law enforcement, which almost passed during the 1970's. The widening schism between `have' and `have not' and wholesale destruction of our environment are
thus the direct legacy of `Reaganomics'. The successful effort to reverse all of the directives and directions of the New Deal - the defamation of indisputably the greatest and most benevolent American president of the last century, FDR - in deference to the sleezy, big money favoritism of the corporate spokesperson, Reagan - is a remarkable chronicle of how easily a significant percentage of Americans, through stubborn adherence to cultivated ignorance, can be hyped and manipulated into voting against their own best interests.
5. Trust-Busting in the New Century: Start With the Media
The so-called `free' market is not free for all, but for the very few - the playing field is hardly level, and conditions are worsening. How are the corporations in evident domestic and international collusion able to avoid regulation, fix prices, and `brand the world'? We need new and powerful legal instruments to assert and enforce popular control over the corporations, effective anti-trust legislation.
The primary means of corporate control over the American public has been through a corporate-owned media. `De-regulation' and regular practices of wild corporate abuse have been sold, through an orchestrated media campaign, by a press which, without a hint of dissent, uniformly obeys the whims of a powerful few. As Louis Brandeis famously put it: "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
The key to corporate reform is a vibrant press. When the media fail to provide coverage of civic engagement, change is difficult. Because today's media are essentially dominated by six multinational conglomerates, much of the news sounds and looks the same, regardless of what channel we may be watching or what newspaper we may be reading and regardless of our own political views. One way to insure the broader spectrum of opinion necessary for a healthy democracy is to enact competition rules - limits on cross-media ownership, especially in localities, and on vertical integration, for example - that essentially mandate diversities by prohibiting media conglomerates and restoring the fairness doctrine on the public airwaves.
In addition to advancing the nonprofit, noncommercial media outlets, including low-power radio, today's media activists are battling the corporate takeover of new media technologies like community wireless networks, key community assets that deserve to be protected from predatory corporations. Meanwhile, legislation, which would reduce media concentration and restore fairness to broadcasting, such as Representative Hinchley's Media Ownership Reform Act, remains stalled by powerful interests with an opposed agenda.
6. Get Corporations Out of Our Elections
The cost of running for a seat in the House Of Representatives is more than $1 million. The cost of winning a seat in the Senate is well over $5 million - run ning nearly as high as $40 million in the largest states. The Bush/Cheney 2004 re-election campaign spent $367 million. As a result, those who run for office package their candidacies in a manner attractive to those with money. Roughly 75 percent of the money raised in campaigns comes from business or business related interests. Corporations are legal entities, not human beings: as such, they should be prohibited from contributing to campaigns, sponsoring PACs or lobbying.
7. Reclaim the Constitution
The court-made doctrine of "corporate personhood," created by pro-corporate judicial activists in the late nineteenth century, continues to expand as the result of a well-orchestrated "business civil liberties" movement led by dozens of corporate-front legal groups and right-wing think tanks. The consequences are far-reaching and often insidious. Corporations' growing use of referendums to advance their economic interests and the intrusion of commercial advertising into the public sphere are often legitimized by questionable claims to First Amendment speech rights. Corporations also increasingly use constitutional challenges to undermine local decision-making authority and federal regulations and to impede the right of association by workers, consumers, and small investors.
The relentless colonization of the Constitution by corporations and their proxies has overwhelmed citizens' ability to express their collective interest and exercise their sovereign authority over big business. Comprehensive corporate reform should be a central concern of progressive legislators. But they must drop the bills in the hopper to get the discussion under way. Avoidance of corporate power issues reaches deeply into both parties. This problem was reflected in the non-questioning of former corporate attorney John Roberts during his Senate confirmation hearings for the post of Justice of the Supreme Court - not an insignificant portent for our future.
We must reclaim the lost understanding that corporations are creations of the state - chartered under the premise that they will serve the public good - as our servants, not our masters. By restoring the sovereignty of citizen democracy, we will be able to create a more just and sustainable economy, driven by values of humanity and community, rather than relentless pursuit of short-term financial profit at any cost - market and military - to the innocent peoples of the world.

(...)

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Corporuption Explained, December 4, 2004

By 

William Walsh - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy (Hardcover)

To one extent or another, regardless of your politics, everyone shares the dread sense that too many large corporations are out of control these days - stifling competition, buying up our politicians, and driving down the quality of life for their employees, consumers and the communities in which they are based. In this book Drutman and Cray do a fine job of exploring contemporary indicators of corporate excess. Then they go an extra lap and explain how the history of the corporation in America holds the key to understanding what can be done now. The book reminds me of some of William Greider's work, such as Who Will Tell The People. More than the usual polemic against big business, The People's Business makes clear that with the tools available to us in this democracy, we can restore the corporation to its proper place in service to our society. This idea is as old as the founding fathers, and as fresh as pages of this great new book.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This Book Restores Hope for a True Democracy, December 3, 2004

By 

Richard A. Hind - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy (Hardcover)

This book tells the truth about the unseemly influence corporations have over our everyday lives. But it also provides a road map to reclaim that power. It reminds us that there is such a thing as a social contract and corporations are grossly out of compliance with that contract.

It's empowering to read an analysis that provides a well documented critique but also offers vision and hope. Whether you're just buying a car or paying your utility bills you need to read this book. It suggests hope for democracy and not the hypocritical George Bush brand but an economic democracy where people can regain control over the largest part of their lives, their economic lives.