I guess it’s apparent that I have a problem with Corporate America. That fact must bring great trepidation to those individuals within the highest echelons of Big Business. They live in fear of my every plan to take them down and the great power I wield over them.
My disappointment in their species intensified back in the 1970’s when I participated as a photographer in Project Documerica, a photographic project that attempted to document in pictures the environmental crisis in America. It was organized by Gifford Hampshire under the auspices of the Environmental Protection Agency when that Agency was still young and idealistic, actually trying, on occasion, to protect the environment instead of the polluters. It was a throw back to the Farm Security Administration project that hired artists, photographers and writers to capture the essence of the Great Depression in drought-stricken rural America. The F.S.A. project remains the highest example of what can be achieved when the Federal Government establishes a meaningful collaboration with artists and writers for a worthy objective.
What I discovered with my camera was that the General Electric Company along with numerous paper companies throughout New England were using some of our most revered rivers: the Hudson, the Housatonic, the Androscoggin, as their own personal sewers. A cocktail of raw sewage and toxic chemicals were being dumped into these convenient liquid exhaust systems rendering them unfit for fish and aquatic life and unsuitable for human recreation. What gave these companies the right to use our rivers for the purpose of depositing their waste products in order to make money? Can you imagine if you or I did the same thing; we’d be in the slammer so fast, we wouldn’t know what hit us.
Then there was the issue of air pollution. It had always been my understanding that human creatures needed pure clean air in order to breathe. Yet, these same companies along with countless others were using our air as just another exhaust system for their noxious and dangerous waste products, again in the pursuit of that highest of spiritual values, making money. Let the individual dishonor our atmosphere, and the prison door would clang shut and the key would be indefinitely missing.
If polluting our water and befouling our air doesn’t upset you, then how about outright murder. Which, of course, brings me to the tobacco companies. For more than one hundred years they have been given a license to kill under our “buyer beware” system known as Capitalism. When challenged in court, they usually come out unscathed by citing that the buyer of their products that cause premature death had the right not to buy them. “It doesn’t matter if we knew that what we were selling them would kill them, it is, after all, the buyer’s responsibility.”
Well, I have a new approach to Capitalism which I’d like to try out when I assume power. Making a profit is not guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. It is not one of the Bill of Rights. In my administration, a corporation is allowed a profit as a bonus if and only if that company produces a product that is safe and beneficial to the consumer, treats its workers with dignity and class by providing a decent wage, substantial health benefits, fully-funded pensions, matching funds for employee 401K plans and safe working conditions. If it can do all those things without harming the environment in any way, then it is eligible for becoming a profitable organization (provided it pays its full share of taxes just like individuals). Welcome to the world of SELLER BEWARE.
So you see, we’ve got things backwards in this country. Does Big Business have to be regulated? Of course they do. Every time we deregulate an industry, all hell breaks loose. Greed runs wild, and the consumers, otherwise known as people, get screwed. Putting the fox in charge of the hen house is a ticket to wholesale fraud. We tried it their way, and it obviously hasn’t worked. Now it’s time to do a 180 and hold Corporate America’s feet to the fire on behalf of the people. It’s part of what we call taking our country back. And it may take the Second American Revolution to accomplish it. Of course, the American people will have to come out of their endless collective coma before we can begin our reclamation project.
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