Restoring Citizen Authority over Corporations
The Obama administration has expanded the government’s whistleblower crackdown: it has invoked the Espionage Act seven times to prosecute federal officials suspected of leaking information, more than twice the number of Espionage Act indictments filed under all other presidents combined.
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Soon, Amazon customers will finally pay sales tax. While that may seem to be a victory against Amazon’s aggressive rent-seeking, it isn’t. The company is accepting the taxes on its terms. In fact, the national law compelling Amazon to pay sales tax will help it save money as it builds warehouses.
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Wired.com recently posted an amusing article about a man who sold shares in himself in exchange for a cut of his future earnings and the right to make decisions about his life. The consequences shed light on problems of our system of corporate ownership, problems which are otherwise difficult to see.
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For years, legislators have avoided prosecuting some big banks for their crimes, fearing that, thanks to their size, doing so would disrupt the economy. Recently, however, momentum is building in Washington toward reforming the banks.
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Even as the federal government executes major cutbacks, it’s giving huge subsidies in the form of tax breaks to industry, a fact legislators rarely acknowledge. The Boston Globe recently published a thorough and eye-popping report detailing the nature and extent of these breaks. A must-read.
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The biggest problems often seem less like problems and more like unavoidable features of reality – their permanence and ubiquity make them invisible. In her new book, Owning Our Future, Marjorie Kelly argues we now face a problem of this kind: ownership of corporations. We love this book.
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