benparsons.com

one thing that’s really nice about this whole interweb thing is that you can learn about whatever you want.  this post will provide links/info/opinions for those of you who want to know about one of the big reasons things in the US are so screwy.

some links-
interesting & informative movie “the corporation” watch it.
movie “food inc.”
both movies are pretty easy to find in video stroes, netflix, etc. and probably online too…
if you’re down for more depth- a book by Thom Hartmann: Unequal Protection- [the rise of corporate dominance and theft of human rights] (you can get used copies for pretty cheap)

if you’re wondering what i’m talking about, read on…

corporations in the US have waaaay too much power.  they have the rights of US citizens, but without the conscience, and without the responsibilities.  the purpose of corporations is to make money- nothing wrong with that, but they need to do so in an ethical manner that benefits our country rather than beats it down (or at least beats down those of us who are not part of the corporate profit-taking).  in the long run, even the profit-takers will not benefit from most of the corporate actions, because they will end up destroying the economy, the environment, and the populace.

our responsibility is to keep the corporations where they belong- in their proper role of providing services and benefiting society.  corporations used to be accountable to state governments- but now many have become so large and wealthy that they can (almost) do whatever they want.

watch one of the movies. it will make you smarter.

conservatives and libertarians prepare your pitchforks, i am going to write about why unions are good.

let’s start with the opposite- what is bad? why did unions begin in the US in the first place?

one group called the Knights of Labor started in 1869. they opposed child labor and fought for the 8 hour work day. why did they need to do that? there were not federal regulations on such things then, and the corporations these laborers made possible existed only for the narrow purpose of creating profit. nothing wrong with profit, of course, but it can’t be the ONLY thing you are trying to create as a business, corporation, developer or whatever. sure, old economics tells us that whatever you can get for your product is what it’s worth. (side track alert) like nuclear energy, for example. if you can get so many dollars per megawatt, then that is how much the energy is worth to those who are producing it. unfortunately, nuclear energy creates nuclear waste, a byproduct that will be horrifyingly toxic for um, let’s see, FOREVER. we have to store this shit somewhere, and it will NEVER go away. now with that in mind, how much is the power you are selling worth? people should be paying around $100,000 per household per year for nuclear power in my estimation, given that is about how much collective money it would take to buy a new planet.

so anyway, these transnational corporations, which were given the rights of US citizens in a supreme court decision back in the 1800’s (or were they? for more on this read Thom Hartmann’s book “unequal protection”) have very little responsibilities other than creating wealth for themselves and their shareholders. because of this, they would obviously pay their laborers as little as possible to get things done, in order to maximize profits. this is why so many manufacturing jobs have moved over seas. US companies don’t care that in the long-term, moving manufacturing overseas will make it so that their customers DONT HAVE THE MONEY TO AFFORD THEIR PRODUCTS, they would rather make a few (million) quick bucks and say f-you to the american workers.

one of the only ways that workers can get what they deserve, want, need, etc, is to organize in to one group and present their demands to their industry along with a threat of shutting the factory down if the demands aren’t met. workers could use government to pursue these types of change, but unfortunately, the corporations the workers are employed by are seen as legal citizens, and can use their billion-dollar bankrolls to lobby for favorable legislation on things like environmental protection, worker safety, minimum wage, etc.

so in many cases, you’ve got a worker with low income, low education, and a family, and she or he is trying to get paid more so they can make it when gas costs $4.50 (helping to provide BILLIONS of dollars in pure profits for companies like Exxon Mobile). should they just take what the company gives them? is that the “right” thing to do? what if the CEO of that company is making, say $30,000,000 that year, and the worker is only making $30,000? is that ok with you?

(for a list of the top CEO salaries for 2007, according to the new york times, click here)

CEOs used to make 24 to 30 times what the workers at their companies made, through the 60’s and 70’s. (for a graph of this data, click here) beginning in the 90’s this sprang up to 70 times, and then further up to 300 or more. that means the CEOs of these large corporations are making more IN ONE DAY than their laborers make in FIFTY TWO WEEKS of labor. is that ok with you? does that sound right? well, if you’re a CEO it does, i guess, but how many of us are in that income bracket? very few. and we won’t ever be, either.

so what to do? aren’t unions to blame for non-union workers pay being lower than it should be? yeah, probably, but the answer is not less unionization, but MORE. workers should be getting more money from their industries, CEOs and stockholders should be getting less.

one way to make this happen is more unions. another way is to strip corporations of the rights of citizens in this country, so that they can no longer buy stock in themselves, bring lawsuits, claim unlawful search, and for crying out loud, be able to almost completely derail the political process in this country by swamping it with millions of lobby dollars.

please disagree below…

i’ve been reading a book by that title, by Thom Hartmann. the title says it all, i think.

i think it’s very important for us to understand the changes that have taken place recently due to “free trade”, the WTO, and the juggernaut transnational corporations that control so much of what happens here on planet earth.

in this post i will print an extensive quote from the book, as an overview for the uninitiated to this topic. if you aren’t interested enough to read this, you don’t really understand what’s at stake. please go to a video store and rent “the corporation“. then come back and read this.

from a section on “free trade” in the book: [my comments are in brackets]

-If a company wanted to compete with the one that had gone offshore for labor, it faced only two choices: 1) shut their domestic factories and move manufacturing offshore, or 2) go out of business. The result–on a vast scale–has been that the larger companies have moved offshore and the smaller companies who lacked the resources to do that have gone out of business. The number of competitors has dwindled and markets have become concentrated in fewer hands. [ie. wal-m*rt]

-As a consequence, well-paying manufacturing jobs in the developed world have evaporated at a startling pace. This echoes all the way up from the local level, through state and national economies, finally showing up as a general lowering of the standard of living in the developed world. Wages drop, benefits vanish, jobs become scarce, and people become insecure.

-Along with the economic changes come social changes. The worst of it shows up at the bottom first- the number of people in prison explodes, as do other negative social indicators. Antidepressant drug use goes up, suicide goes up (particularly among teenagers, who are developmentally most fragile and are watching their future earnings prospects evaporate), and spouses and even children got o work to help support the household. Debt goes up as the society becomes progressively poorer.

-Wealthy nations respond to the offshore challenge by trying to be competitive, which means lowering wages and benefits further. Companies may even cut promised benefits to their longtime employees who have already retired. But even if the local company cuts wages in half (doing enormous damage to the local economy), a transnational corporation is still able to hire a dozen or more workers for the same job in a poor nation. Consequently, the race to the bottom gathers momentum- the bottom is where more than 6 billion people compete for the same work that was, until recently, performed in a tariff-protected economy of 1 billion people (the developed world). Resources won’t stretch that far. The bottom is worldwide poverty supervised by a wealthy few, also known as feudalism.

-In the developing nations where these “new jobs are created,” people who have been doing traditional farming leave the land for the sweatshops, and the land is turned over to intensive corporate agriculture. People who in previous generations were independent, self-sufficient farmers become urban slum-dwellers, the working poor, dependents on the corporate farmers and supermarkets for their food.

-When the new sweatshop nation’s urban working poor begin demanding higher wages and benefits, the corporations move to another country where labor is cheaper. It happened in the 1990s when a mass exodus of multinational corporations left Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand for the ultra cheap labor of Vietnam, Burma, and China, leaving the economies of those former “Asian tigers” shattered and desperate. Poverty explodes as slums overflow with crime, drugs, and prostitution: the symptoms of people seeking some sort of income when the real jobs are gone. It is just like strip-mining, and it’s a sign of the worst corporate citizen- one without the slightest concern for the impact it has. [i've heard people say "well, at least they have jobs over there now". slavery and sweatshop conditions are not a job. they are the results of unregulated, unrestricted corporate greed. if you can lower the wage of that worker by 10 cents, the CEOs get another million dollar raise.]

-In the process, the multinational corporations become richer, moving their “mining” activities from one nation to another as profits dictate. As multinational cormporate wealth increases, stock prices go up and the top few percent of the socioeconomic pyramid become wealthier. [click HERE for an interesting illustration of wealth disparity in the US] Nations learn to watch the stock market, thinking–in complete error– that it is an accurate indicator of the nation’s wealth and economic health. In fact, from the Dutch Tulip Market collapse in 1637 to the U.S. stock market rise and crash of 1929, rapidly increasing markets have historically been indicators of an economy on the edge of implosion or undergoing radical social transformation.

here is an NY times article about how american gas companies are returning to Iraq for the first time since Saddam Hussein came to power 36 years ago.

so- the US invades Iraq for no good reason, and now that we’re committed to being there for an undetermined amount of time, US gas companies are moving in. i guess we’ll be keeping US troops there for quite a long time in order to protect “our” interests.

wait- whose interests? big oil’s? yeah, that’s worth getting killed for. sign me up.

is a book by Thom Hartmann. He is an author and liberal/progressive talk show host on Air America. he’s also really smart, and is pretty in to history (especially the constitution) and psychology. this book of his deals with the latter.

i’m half way thru the book now. it’s a short one- but i appreciate it.

Hartmann believes that trauma, rage, PTSD and other emotional challenges can be well met by something called bilateral therapy. he suggests that if done correctly, walking (yes, walking) can be a powerful instrument for emotional healing and well being. sounds weird? yeah. but i think he’s right.

the idea is that actions which activate both hemispheres of our brains, in alternating rhythm can help our brains “heal” from past or present traumas. often, modern-western people like ourselves can get stuck using only one side of our brains, and thus are unable to process thru- or move past hurt or trauma, anxieties, etc.

he says that in the past, people walked more, as well as participating in other bilateral types of activities, such as dancing or drumming. this was how these people overcame depression, the loss of loved ones, or other difficulties.

basically, i got this book because i’m very interested in the topic, in general, and want to learn more about it, and some of its relatives- like EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing).

these are intriguing to me partly because of my experiences counseling others (and myself) but also because they cause me to question much of my “spiritual experiences”.

i wonder how many of my experiences which seemed supernatural were actually closer to bilateral therapy.