The Future (74 page)
Authors: Al Gore
66
corporate role in American life grew quickly
Ibid.
67
decisions in Congress and state legislatures grew as well
Ibid.
68
The tainted election of 1876
“Compromise of 1877,”
History.com
,
http://www.history.com/topics/compromise-of-1877
.
69
wealth and power played the decisive role
Korten,
When Corporations Rule the World
.
70
“government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations”
Ibid.
71
Between 1888 and 1908, 700,000 American workers
Ibid.
72
approximately 100 every day
Ibid.
73
lawyers and lobbyists flooded the U.S. Capitol and state legislatures
Ibid.
74
U.S. Supreme Court voided and made unenforceable
Jack Maskell, “Lobbying Congress: An Overview of Legal Provisions and Congressional Ethics Rules,” CRS Report for Congress, September 14, 2011,
http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metacrs1903/m1/1/high_res_d/RL31126_2001Sep14.pdf
.
75
“all the injurious effects of a direct fraud on the public”
Ibid.
76
“measuring the decay of the public morals”
Lawrence Lessig,
Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It
(New York: Twelve, 2011), p. 101.
77
Georgia’s new constitution explicitly banned the lobbying
Ibid., p. 101.
78
“where the price of votes was haggled over, and laws”
Matthew Josephson,
The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalist 1861–1901
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2010), p. 168.
79
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company
Bakan,
The Corporation
, p. 16.
80
some historians believe was written by Justice Stephen Field
Joshua Holland, “The Supreme Court Sold Out Our Democracy—How to Fight the Corporate Takeover of Elections,”
AlterNet
, October 25, 2010.
81
court reporter, who was the former president of a railway company
Ibid.
82
“the court does not wish to hear”
Pamela Karlan, “Me, Inc.,”
Boston Review
, July 2011.
83
“We are all of the opinion that it does”
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific
,
Justia.com
, 1886,
http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/118/394/
.
84
laid the first transoceanic telegraph cable in 1858
“Cyrus W. Field,”
Encyclopaedia Britannica
,
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/206188/Cyrus-W-Field
.
85
resulted in Stephen’s appointment to the Supreme Court
Lincoln Institute, “David Dudley Field (1805–1894),” Mr. Lincoln and New York,
http://www.mrlincolnandnewyork.org/inside.asp?ID=56&subjectID=3
.
86
subsequent massacre back to the United States in real time
Mike Sacks, “Corporate Citizenship: How Public Dissent in Paris Sparked Creation of the Corporate Person,”
Huffington Post
, October 12, 2011,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/corporate-citizenship-corporate-personhood-paris-commune_n_1005244.html
.
87
followed in the United States, as it unfolded, on a daily basis
Ibid.
88
Franco-Prussian War that month and the struggle
Alice Bullard,
Human Rights and Revolutions
, edited by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Lynn Hunt, and Marilyn B. Young (Oxford: Rowan & Littlefield, 2000), pp. 81–83.
89
first symbolic clash between communism and capitalism
Marx, however, wrote in
The Communist Manifesto
that the 1848 French revolution was the first “class struggle.”
90
“forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society”
Karl Marx, “The Fall of Paris,” May 1871,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch06.htm
.
91
white flag that had been flown by Parisians
Alistair Horne,
The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870–71
(New York: Penguin Books, 2007), p. 433.
92
obsessively following the daily reports
Sacks, “Corporate Citizenship.”
93
than any other story that year besides government corruption
John Harland Hicks and Robert Tucker,
Revolution & Reaction: The Paris Commune, 1871
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973), p. 60; Jack Beatty,
Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865–1900
(New York: Vintage Books, 2008), p. 153.
94
bankruptcy of financier and railroad entrepreneur Jay Cooke
“The Panic of 1873,”
The American Experience, Ulysses S. Grant
, PBS,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/grant-panic/
.
95
“opportunity or the incentive to spread abroad”
“The Communists,”
New York Times
, January 20, 1874.
96
decided to make it his mission to strengthen corporations
Sacks, “Corporate Citizenship.”
97
Theodore Roosevelt unexpectedly became president, and the following year
“Domestic Politics,”
The American Experience, TR
, PBS,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/tr-domestic/
.
98
inside his new Department of Commerce and Labor
Ibid.
99
break up J. P. Morgan’s Northern Securities Corporation
Ibid.
100
112 corporations worth a combined $571 billion (in 2012 dollars)
Korten,
When Corporations Rule the World
, p. 67.
101
“twice the total assessed value of all property in thirteen states”
Ibid.
102
This was followed by forty more antitrust suits
“Domestic Politics,” PBS.
103
protected more than 230 million acres of land
Ibid.
104
winning the Nobel Peace Prize
Historians now believe that, while Roosevelt was no doubt essential to the brokering of an effective deal, he was not truly a neutral arbiter and tilted heavily toward Japan in private. See James Bradley, “Diplomacy That Will Live in Infamy,”
New York Times
, December 6, 2009.
105
“wise custom” by serving only two terms
Edmund Morris,
Theodore Rex
(New York: Random House, 2002), p. 364.
106
William Howard Taft, abandoned many of TR’s reforms
“American President: William Howard Taft,” Miller Center, University of Virginia,
http://millercenter.org/president/taft/essays/biography/1
.
107
“corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit”
Theodore Roosevelt, “The New Nationalism,” August 31, 1910,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/tr-nationalism/
.
108
given privileges to which they are not entitled
Lessig,
Republic, Lost
, p. 4.
109
“twist the methods of free government”
Ibid., p. 5. Theodore Roosevelt, “From the Archives: President Teddy Roosevelt’s New Nationalism Speech,” August 31, 2010,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/12/06/archives-president-teddy-roosevelts-new-nationalism-speech
.
110
“prohibit the use of corporate funds”
Roosevelt, “From the Archives: President Teddy Roosevelt’s New Nationalism Speech.”
111
“does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation”
Ibid.
112
secretly bribed Harding administration officials
United States Senate, “1921–1940: Senate Investigates the ‘Teapot Dome’
Scandal,”
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Senate_Investigates_the_Teapot_Dome_Scandal.htm
.
113
“menace to the welfare of the nation”
Jeffrey Rosen, “POTUS v. SCOTUS,”
New York
, March 17, 2010.
114
Historians differ on whether Roosevelt’s threat was the cause
“Presidential Politics,”
American Experience, FDR
, PBS,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/fdr-presidential/
.
115
began approving the constitutionality
Ibid.
116
return court rulings to the philosophy that existed prior to the New Deal
Jeffrey Rosen, “Second Opinions,”
New Republic
, May 4, 2012.
117
Powell, a Richmond lawyer
Jim Hoggan, “40th Anniversary of the Lewis Powell Memo Launching Corporate Propaganda Infrastructure,” DeSmogBlog, August 23, 2011,
http://www.desmogblog.com/40th-anniversary-lewis-powell-memo-launching-corporate-propaganda-infrastructure
; John Jeffries,
Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.: A Biography
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), p. 4.
118
state legislatures, and the judiciary in order to tilt
Lewis F. Powell, “The Powell Memo,” August 23, 1971,
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/
.
119
“corporate speech,” which he found to be protected by the First Amendment
Jeffrey Clements, “The Real History of ‘Corporate Personhood’: Meet the Man to Blame for Corporations Having More Rights Than You,”
AlterNet
, December 6, 2011.
120
that the law violated the free speech of “corporate persons”
Ibid.
121
have revenues larger than many of the world’s nation-states
Vincent Trivett, “25 US Mega Corporations: Where They Rank If They Were Countries,”
Business Insider
, June 27, 2011,
http://www.businessinsider.com/25-corporations-bigger-tan-countries-2011-6?op=1
.
122
“I’m not a U.S. company and I don’t make decisions based”
Steve Coll,
Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power
(New York: Penguin Press, 2012), p. 71.
123
“dependence upon the positions of particular governments”
Bakan,
The Corporation
, p. 25.
124
“Nobody tells those guys what to do”
Coll,
Private Empire
, p. 257.
125
political action committees exploded
Federal Election Commission, “The Growth of Political Action Committees, 1974–1998,”
http://www.voteview.com/Growth_of_PACs_by_Type.htm
.
126
corporations with registered corporate lobbyists
Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson,
Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), p. 118.
127
from $100 million in 1975 to $3.5 billion per year in 2010
Robert G. Kaiser, “Citizen K Street: Introduction,”
Washington Post
, March 2007,
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/citizen-k-street/chapters/introduction/
; Bennett
Roth and Alex Knott, “Lobby Dollars Dip for First Time in Years,”
Roll Call
, February 1, 2011.
128
top the list of lobbying expenditures
Roth and Knott, “Lobby Dollars Dip for First Time in Years.”
129
more than all lobbyist expenditures combined when the Powell Plan
Kaiser, “Citizen K Street: Introduction.”
130
only 3 percent of retiring members of Congress
Lessig,
Republic, Lost
, p. 123.
131
more than 50 percent of retiring senators and more than 40 percent
Ibid.
132
“ideological warfare”
Powell, “The Powell Memo.”
133
change the character of American government
Timothy Noah, “Think Cranks,”
New Republic
, March 30, 2012.
134
principal as quickly as possible in order to have maximum impact
Ibid.
135
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Ibid.
136
Adolph Coors Foundation
David Brock,
The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy
(New York: Random House, 2005), p. 43.
137
“if, in turn, business is willing to provide the funds”
Powell, “The Powell Memo.”
138
seminars organized by wealthy corporate interests
Eric Lichtblau, “Advocacy Group Says Justices May Have Conflict in Campaign Finance Case,”
New York Times
, January 19, 2011.
139
basic functions that had been performed by democratically
Emily Thornton, “Roads to Riches,”
BusinessWeek
, May 6, 2007; Jonathan Hoenig, “Opportunities in Infrastructure: Should We Privatize Bridges and Roads?,” Fox News, August 5, 2007,
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,253438,00.html
.
