New Release From Public Citizen Rises Up Against “Business as Usual”
THE CORPORATE SABOTAGE OF AMERICA’S FUTURE. And What We Can Do About It. Robert Weissman. Joan Claybrook. Foreword by Joseph W. Cotchett. Public Citizen.
…[T]he oil industry is not a free market – the government has subsidized it to rescue oil companies. The banking industry is not a free market, the government [had] to pay billions of dollars – hundreds of billions of dollars – to subsidize the savings and loans catastrophe…And as far as media…what free market there is is co-opted by the monopolies …
Allen Ginsberg, “On The Record” interview printed digitally in The Daily Pennsylvanian on February 8, 1995
Your time, your voice, your knowledge, your vote, your participation…People must get involved in the process, whether it is at the school board, city council, state, national or non-profit levels – everything counts….Get your ass out there and make a change.
Joseph Cotchett in The People Vs. Greed (page 269)
In his preface to this book, renowned consumer attorney Joseph Cotchett, who forged his career on the ideal that corporations should be held accountable for their misdeeds, states that The Corporate Sabotage of America’s Future should be required reading in America’s classrooms. And his assertion couldn’t be more correct: If the issues the authors confront in this study are ignored and go unchecked, this nation will soon cease to function as a true democracy.
Here, Robert Weissman (President at Public Citizen) and Joan Claybrook (Public Citizen president emeritus), have published a treatise that illuminates the central cause behind the deterioration of the United States landscape – that being the insatiable greed of the corporate power elites that run much of today’s America.
Public Citizen was founded in 1971 by consumer attorney Ralph Nader – a public advocacy group meant to given the ordinary citizen a tangible voice in Washington. Over the last 50 years, Public Citizen has sought to isolate itself from partisan politics, instead working to serve the day-to-day interests of the people by dissecting facts and not campaign agendas.
In its fledgling years, Nader’s group worked tirelessly to obtain safety reforms in the auto industry while also forcing the FDA to ban the use of cancer-causing red dye as a food coloring agent. In recent years, Public Citizen successfully gutted President Donald Trump’s attempt to impose higher fees on immigrants attempting to gain asylum in the United States.
The Corporate Sabotage of America’s Future eloquently continues Nader’s original mission, with the Weissman-Claybrook team presenting a detailed analysis of the way that corporations have usurped power and devoured the countryside. As the authors note, the two main culprits are Big Oil and Big Pharma, with the special interest groups who propel each of these industries commanding a well-honed machine that controls Washington like a puppeteer manipulating strings. And the authors write:
“Making Big Oil’s sordid record all the more infuriating is this fact: The industry couldn’t survive without taxpayer-funded subsidies, tax breaks and other privileges from a captured government. The biggest subsidy that the United States and other countries confer on Big Oil firms is permitting them to externalize costs. “Externalize” is the term economists use when a corporation imposes costs on society rather than “internalizing” or absorbing them itself (page 103).
As Weissman and Claybrook point out, Big Oil doesn’t consider the people at the pump, it only cares about increasing the next quarter’s profit line – this fact evinced by the staggering $7.29 price-tag affixed to a gallon of gas in Menlo Park, California on October 7, 2023. Most folks know these prices are too high and that price-point volatility is driving the cost of food to historic highs. People want a change, but no one knows how we make it happen.
Even though the situation appears dire, there are nonetheless things that can be done to reverse this perilous course. But as the authors posit, we won’t be able to implement real change unless we completely understand the collective mistakes that have pushed us to the brink. In turn, The Corporate Sabotage of America’s Future provides a detailed analysis of the corporate misdeeds driving the carnage against the middle class. It isn’t a pretty picture, but it’s wholly accurate. And the authors write:
“In fact, it turns out that Big Oil-employed scientists identified the ways burning fossil fuels would drive climate chaos around the same time that a scientific consensus started to emerge on the issue. But Big Oil kept quiet about its internal findings…” (page 94).
The latter half of the Weissman-Claybrook collaboration focuses on identifying solutions to halt the corporate takeover of our lives, including ending corporate capture; levying a fair tax on corporate profits; restricting monopolization of the market; and restoring the employees’ ability to form labor unions.
The enforcement of both state and federal antitrust statutes should be an immediate priority: There are already enough laws on the books with teeth that can be used to foster competition and balance power in the marketplace, but they are not being used with sufficient enough urgency. Revisiting these antitrust statutes should be the first step in our quest for change. And the authors write:
For the past several decades, one could be forgiven for thinking that the United States had repealed its antitrust laws. We saw Exxon and Mobil combine into one company, along with Chevron and Texaco…Hospitals, insurers and drug companies have [also] gobbled each other up…All this centralized power has meant more political influence and more economic power for the corporate Big Boys…
Pages 146 and 147
The problems confronting the American citizenry discussed here are truly sweeping in their enormity, requiring vigorous attention. Honestly, it’s difficult not to get smothered by the scent of hopelessness that hovers about. But in the end, it took real guts for Robert Weissman and Joan Claybrook to step out and call these devious players into the spotlight. And now it’s up to each of us do something with the information.
Actually, we have no choice but act: Long ago, Rome fell. And if we don’t wake up, the United States will soon follow in line.
Electric Review 