Deregulation
QUOTES
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"The
nature of the economic system should be a matter
for public choice, and free market capitalism should
not be accepted without any discussion of the rich
variety of alternatives ... Unlike civil laws, economic
laws are imposed on people with all the authority
of immutable laws of nature. But the economy is
created by people, supported by government intervention,
regulation, statute and subsidy, and implemented
in such a way that it gives substantial wealth and
power to a privileged few, while the majority face
a life of relentless work, stress and periodic financial
insecurity."
-- Tony Benn |
...
the 20th century has been characterized by three developments
of great political importance:
The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power,
and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of
protecting corporate power against democracy.
-- Alex Carey
The
most effective way to restrict democracy is
to transfer decision-making from the public
arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and
princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party
dictatorships, or modern corporations.
-- Noam Chomsky
What
is called 'capitalism'is basically a system
of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely
unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast
control over the economy, political systems,
and social and cultural life, operating in close
cooperation with powerful states that intervene
massively in the domestic economy and international
society.
-- Noam Chomsky
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"Deregulation
was just the removal of rules
without considering why the rules were there in the
first place."
-John Courage
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"... leadership has to be focused on some very
radical ideas that only we as 21st Century people
can talk about: making sure people have a livelihood,
making sure people receive a living wage, making
sure the environment, the Mother Earth, is embraced
and cherished and not destroyed. Making sure people
are healthy in what they eat, making sure we hold
people and corporations accountable for the damage
they do not only to our environment but to our
institutions."
-- Danny Glover
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Do
you realize that $150 billion of our tax money
is given to the corporations, unions and wealthy
people for tax breaks, special subsidies and special
regulations? That money would be available for
health and education and building bridges. --
Doris Haddock
(Granny D)
"I'm
not against the corporations. They are our wealth.
But they are getting too greedy. I don't want
to do away with corporations. I want them to make
our cars, however, not our laws."
-- Doris
Haddock (Granny D)
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One thing that corporations do not do is give
out money out of the goodness of their hearts.
-- Molly
Ivins
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Democracy
is about two things. First, it is about purpose.
In the political realm, it's about an overriding
concern for the common good. In the economic
realm, it's about having the common good trump
the narrow self-interest of the financial elite.
It's about broadening corporate purpose from
serving shareholders to serving stakeholders,
and releasing executives from the destructive
mandate to maximize shareholder gain at any
cost. Second, democracy is about structures
that bring this purpose to life. It's not about
separating good corporations from bad, but about
shaping the system forces that act on all corporations.
It's about consciously crafting new democratic
system structures, structures of voice, structures
of decision making, structures of conflict resolution,
structures of accountability.
-- Marjorie
Kelly
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The
proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is
to replace the global suicide economy ruled by
rapacious and unaccountable global corporations
with a planetary system of local living economies
comprised of human-scale enterprise rooted in
the communities they serve and locally owned by
the people whose wellbeing depends on them.
-- David Korten
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"Wake
up America! The insurance companies took over
health care!
Wake up America! The pharmaceutical companies
took over drug pricing!
Wake up America! The speculators took over Wall
Street!
Wake up America! They want your Social Security!
Wake up America! Multinational corporations took
over our trade policies!
Wake up America! We went into Iraq for oil! WAKE
UP AMERICA!"
-- Dennis Kucinich
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Utilities
used deregulation to effect a series of mergers
limiting competition. In order to accelerate profits,
cost cutting ensued, involving the layoff of thousands
of utility company employees, including some who
were responsible for maintenance of generation,
transmission, and distribution systems. A number
of investor-owned utilities stopped investing in
the maintenance and repair of their own equipment,
and, instead, cut costs to enhance the value of
their stock rather than spending money to enhance
the value of their service.
-- Dennis Kucinich
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Federal
policy over the past century has largely failed
to promote an energy system based on safe, secure,
economically affordable, and environmentally benign
energy sources. The tax code, budget appropriations,
and regulatory processes overwhelmingly have been
used to subsidize dependence on fossil fuels and
nuclear power. The result: increased sickness
and premature deaths, depleted family budgets,
acid rain destruction of lakes, forests, and crops,
oil spill contamination, polluted rivers and loss
of aquatic species and the long-term peril of
climate change and radioactive waste dumps–not
to mention a dependency on external energy supplies.
~ Ralph Nader
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It's
incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists
getting together to stop the corporate mentality
that destroys both jobs and the environment.
-- Bonnie Raitt
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Is
regulation per se bad? Is better regulation bad?
I think better regulation is good for the business community,
and I think that's something we should get together
on.
-- Ed Rendell
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We
are capable of regaining our reverence for life,
of replacing the drive to conquer with the will
to cooperate, of remaking our engineered institutions,
including our corporations, into living systems.
-- Elisabet
Sahtouris
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On
issue after issue, the polls -- and these are
not snapshot polls; these are polls over a consistent
period of time -- show that most Americans share
what one could call core liberal or progressive
values: investment in health care and education
over tax cuts; fair trade over free trade; corporate
accountability over deregulation; environmental
protection over laissez-faire policies; defending
Social Security and Medicare over privatizing
them; raising the minimum wage over eliminating
it. The country prefers progressive alternatives
to the failed policies of the conservative right.
-- Katrina
vanden Heuvel
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“The
people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did
it one lousy mortgage at a time.
It happened more than three years ago, and there has
been no real accountability,
and there has been no real effort to fix it.
-- Elizabeth Warren
Contrary
to the received wisdom, global markets are not unregulated.
They are regulated to produce inequality.
-- Kevin Watkins
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We
have to speak out now on behalf of our community
and on behalf of the land and say they're the
same thing and say "No, we are not rolling over"
and "No, this is not a corporate enterprise."
This is democracy in the fullest sense and we
must have regard and reverence and those are the
cornerstones of a just society.
~ Terry
Tempest Williams
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