Told You So: The Big Book of Weekly Columns

Signed copies of my new book: Told You So: The Big Book of Weekly Columns, are now available at Politics & Prose.

Combating corporate abuses requires constant vigilance. Corporations shape America’s political process as much as they shape America’s economy through PAC contributions and threats to move manufacturing and service jobs to low-wage countries.

The columns in the “Corporate Power” section of Told You So: The Big Book of Weekly Columns, catalog the rotten fruit of our diseased political process, including the gigantic growth in corporate welfare (a.k.a. crony capitalism) even as smaller, key social welfare programs are cut; the consolidation of monopoly power while antitrust laws are not enforced; and successive waves of corporate crime.

The Occupy movement’s push to get the concerns of the “99 percent” into the political debate was an important milestone. Unfortunately, the agenda of the 99 percent won’t be heard over the corporate pleas for more government bailouts and tax cuts, unless “We the People” rise up to tell Washington that we’re tired of being shut out of the political process.

Large U.S. corporations lack a patriotic commitment to our country. They receive public services, subsidies and protections in this country, yet they continue to ship jobs overseas, pressuring their suppliers to do likewise, and create tax havens on faraway islands to run away from their tax responsibilities to the United States.

The corporate crime wave that has been continuing for years and that caused the 2008 financial crisis has barely been addressed by lawmakers in Washington. Corporate crimes see little retribution because corporate bosses place the blame on lower-level employees. There is very little corporate accountability. These columns help to inform and encourage the everyday citizen/consumer to push to counter corporate abuses and corporate control of our political economy.