Work hard, get screwed-Greed in action in American Business, 1950-now

In the 1950s, one of the most prosperous (financially) decades in America, the ratio of CEO pay to that of the average worker was 25-1. By 2001 it was around 300-1. Since then, workers' productivity has exploded, as has the ratio of CEO pay, now around 500-1.

The thanks people got for working hard and doing a great job?

• they got fired, (downsized)
• the people left got to do 2 jobs for 1 salary
• businesses sent as many jobs as they could overseas
• while executives raised their salaries through the roof
• and shareholders got rich

What if CEOs were required by law to share the benefits. They can make as much as they want, but only 25 times what the average salary of their company is, including perks and benefits.
It was good enough under Eisenhower.
----

Meanwhile, conservative politicians were scaring the bejesus out of people about violent crime, while passing all kinds of laws that allowed people to get mugged by

• banks
• credit card companies
• and all the rest of their rich friends

----------------
Oh, and while they were doing that, they bought as many newspapers and TV stations and radio stations as they could,
Just so you wouldn't be troubled by hearing anything other than

"What's good for business is good for America".

After all, why leave elections to chance?

Did you know that:

George Bush fired a lot of the accountants at the IRS
who were in charge of auditing the incomes of the super wealthy.

So now they are using the media to get people worked up, that bad Obama is hurting the poor rich people, (the same ones who systematically looted the country as much as they could get away with).

If someone robs you,

and you see them on the street,

do you let them get away with it?

Well, do you?

(you'll never seem them on the street, they're in the back of limos and on their yachts, they got away with it)

And now,

the biggest scam of all,

the tool of tools,

that allows a few super-rich people to rule America

the sick joke known as

Corporate Personhood, which says that
they can do whatever they want
and not be held responsible

never heard of it, did you?

that's OK,

it's still impacting every aspect of your life

A corporation is a legal fiction. There are only people; owners, shareholders, CEOs, workers.

In 1933 60 families owned most of America. How many own it today?

In 1933 Ferdinand Lundberg wrote a book, based on a great deal of research, called

America's 60 Families  http://www.google.com/search?aq=0&oq=america's+60&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=america's+60+families

in which he detailed how a small number of super rich people owned America. Some of the names may have changed, but America is still owned and operated by perhaps 1000 people.

-Through the legal fiction of "corporation", their control is disguised.

-Through the legal bribery of "campaign contributions", they buy and sell politicians to get the laws and policies that benefit the super rich at the expense of everybody else.

-They own the media, so the only message heard mainstream is "capitalism and competition'

All the people complaining about corporations miss the point that

there is no such physical thing as a corporation, only people, and 

there is a ruling aristocracy in America that has names and faces.

Please, never say corporations again. Talk about the ruling class, the feudal lords who rule America as their person fiefdom. Name the names who own specific companies.

Read Perfectly Legal, by David Cay Johnston,
an incredible, eye opening book
http://www.google.com/search?q=Perfectly+Legal%2C+david+cay+johnston&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.yahoo:en-US:official&client=firefox

The Economic Policy Institute
http://www.epi.org/issues/category/wages_and_living_standards/

Does Western Medicine Work?

Does Western Medicine work?

What a crazy question!

But does it really work, as well as it says it does, as well as many people think it does?

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Are the benefits greater than the risks?
• Is it the only choice?
• Is it the best choice for your particular problem?

Most people think of the benefits of medical treatment. They acknowledge that there are some problems, but believe that the benefits outweigh the costs, that most of the time it works.
Is that true?
Based on all the research i have done, my impression is that for emergencies Western Medicine is great, but for illness is often the worst choice, often does more harm than good, and maybe %10 of the time a good choice. Just my opinions.

The basic training that medical schools, schools usually funded by drug companies, indoctrinate doctors with is the idea that drugs are necessary. Of course, these drugs have many harmful side effects, such as turning people into zombies or destroying their sex lives, but that is considered necessary.

If you go to a doctor, there is a good chance that you too will be turned into a drug addict, although people taking these "medications" are not considered drug addicts in the usual sense. This is what the schools trained doctors to do, drugs and surgery.

Meanwhile, there has been a systematic suppression of alternatives, with the intent of leaving people no choice but to go a drug pushing doctor. A medical monopoly. Just go online and read the stories of the suppression of many alternative treatments.

How many people have suffered and died because they were deliberately denied access, or even knowledge of, cheap, safe and effective treatments? Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions? More?

Ask yourself, is the incentive for drug companies and the medical establishment to come up with a pill that costs $10  and you take one time, or is the incentive to give you just enough relief of symptoms to keep you coming back for more.

One of the biggest problems is that the basic scientific research itself can not be trusted. Very often the drug companies themselves write the research reports. Statistics are skewed (anyone who knows how statistics can easily be made to lie). Experiments that produce results they don't like are suppressed. Definitions of illness are changed so that more drugs are prescribed. In short, you can't even believe that what a doctor believes is scientifically true, because the drug companies have systematically lied and corrupted research. See some of the links i provide below.

I want to make clear that my main criticism is of the drug companies and the medical schools, and secondarily of the doctors who close their minds to anything other than drugs and surgery. There are many fine individuals out there, doctors and especially nurses, working in the spirit of service, with the highest intentions, and i am appreciative and honoring of their efforts. My wish is that the means they have at their disposal are determined by effectiveness, not profitability.

here's a partial list of problems:

• 1 Misdiagnosis
• 
  
• 2 Side effects
• 
  
• 3 Illness picked up in hospitals, that people didn't have before they got there, 6th leading cause of death in the US
• 
  
• 4 The only treatments are strong drugs with many, many side effects, or drugs and surgery. Not much else. A sledgehammer approach. Created a nation of drug addicts. Very often doesn't cure illness, just keeps people hooked on taking heart medicine and blood pressure medicine
• 
  
• 5 The Placebo effect. In studies, people have had astonishing results from water injections and fake pills, just because they believed they were getting medicine. How much is this happening with regular medicines. Do they really work as much as we think?
• 
  
• 6 The natural tendency of the body is to heal. Medicine takes credit for every person who gets better. Speaking in terms of minor illnesses and accidents, most of them would have gotten better anyway. Did the pills do anything? Did they retard healing?
• 
  
• 7 Through overuse of antibiotics, many germs have progressively evolved to be resistant to treatments, a large long term cost.
• 
  
• 8 Western medicine is one dimensional, treating people like a hunk of meat. So much illness is the result of emotions. Medicating the body without treating the heart, the head, working with the causes of illness, is at best a temporary fix. 
• 
  
• 9 Western Medicine does not address the energetic body,  including EMF poisoning
• 
  
• 10 The emphasis is on treatment of disease after it occurs, rather than prevention
• 
  
• 11 Western Medicine refuses to address the toxicity of the environment, all the poisons in the land, water and air.
• 
  
• 12 Financial Incentives-is the incentive to come up with a pill that you take one time and costs 10 dollars, or to keep people hooked
• 
  
• 13 Is the research itself valid? Medical politics make US govt politics look tame. Can we trust what we're told, or was someones' reputation or job more important than health?
• 
  
• 14 Western medicine ignores significant lines of research. Two specific examples:
• a) There have been thousands and tens of thousands of cases of what medicine calls "spontaneous remission" of illness. In other words, diseases just went away, disappeared. Another word for this is miracle.
• b) In cases of multiple personality disorder, situations have been documented where one personality had illnesses, wore glasses, etc, and the other personality didn't. In other words, people's physiology changed drastically within the span of moments, as the change from one personality to another occurred.
• Rather than investigating how these things have happened, and how they can be encouraged to happen, medicine has ignored these lines of research, lines of research which could lead to amazing healings. Why?
  In fact, really accounting for spontaneous remission and MPD would mean that currently accepted medical theory would have to totally change, and so these amazing sources of insight are ignored.
• 
  
• My personal opinion is that the Western Medical establishment represents the biggest betrayal of trust since Judas. A system more thoroughly lacking in integrity would be hard to find, although there are many fine individuals who are doing what they think is right, meaning what they've been trained by the teaching institutions to do.
• 
  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/health/research/05ghost.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
• 
  
• https://www.google.com/search?q=Fishbein+AMA&aq=f&oq=Fishbein+AMA&sugexp=chrome,mod=0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
• 
  
• this is a great one to read
  http://www.healingcancernaturally.com/medical-history.html
  
  https://www.google.com/search?q=drug+companies+%26+doctors+a+story+of+corruption&aq=0&oq=Drug+companies&sugexp=chrome,mod=0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
• 
  
• https://www.google.com/search?q=drug+companies+%26+doctors+a+story+of+corruption&aq=0&oq=Drug+companies&sugexp=chrome,mod=0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=definitions+of+disease+expanded+for+profit
  ------------------------------------------

I'm not saying to do nothing.
When we're sick, we need to take care of ourselves.

What IS the best way? I do think Western Medicine has some good to offer, is the best choice for some things, but with all the problems, you practically need to spend 10 years studying, and not at a medical institution, to know what is the best treatment for you.

My opinion is that, when you really look at the costs and benefits, "alternative" treatments are, 90% of the time, safer and more effective on deeper levels, and are gentler and cheaper.
-----

Most of us are surrounded every day by advertisements for medications and medicine.

TV shows regularly feature doctors as heroes, and have as long as TV has existed.
The underlying effect is the same as if a massive propaganda brainwashing campaign has been taking place, and maybe it has. It is very interesting to read, when one studies the history, that

• The reason alternative medicine is alternative, is because there was a deliberate creation of a Western Allopathic Medicine business monopoly in the early 1900s.

• Through the bribing of politicians, "Alternative" treatments, which had been the choice of many people, were, one by one, systematically made illegal, forcing people to have no other options than allopathic medicine, forcing them to spend their money on doctors, drugs and surgery, not on herbs or hydrotherapy.

• At the same time, the teaching institutions for doctors were taken over, in a devious way, by huge funding of medical schools, on the condition that the only thing they taught would be drugs and surgery.

• A one-two punch.

Just think of how no one is allowed to write or say anything about health without the words, "consult your doctor". Legally they have to say that, the medical monopoly in action.

Many doctors are kind people who truly care about their patients.
The question is, what were they taught?
In particular i want to mention cancer, a disease that 1 in 3 americans gets during their lifetime. I react whenever i hear an appeal to "help us do more research". Based on my studies, and people i have personally known, there are a number of safe, gentle and cheap ways to heal cancer, and they have been ignored and actively suppressed by the Medical Monopoly. For example,
did you know that

• in 1950 a Federal Court found the Hoxsey treatment an effective cure for cancer. The AMA got the FDA to drive it out of the country the following year.
• With actions like that, how much credibility can we accord the medical profession?

Watch the video below. I can also mention Macrobiotics and Wheatgrass Juice, and there are many more. Click the link for Recalled by Life, a book by a doctor who turned to Macrobiotics because he had no other choice, and then wrote this great book
Much of what you will read about health and alternative medicine is written by people who have come through the medical school machine. They were basically taught that everything except drugs and surgery is bullshit, that even mentioning it means they are failing their patients, and:
that is changing.

Please, do not take my word for anything!
Do your own research, come to your own conclusions.

Nothing original in this blog entry. Many people have said it all before, and well.

• There is a book called Sugar Blues, by William Dufty, that is basically a history of western medicine. you must read it.
• http://www.google.com/search?q=sugar+blues+william+dufty&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
  

• Also, watch Hoxsey, When Healing Becomes a crime. You can watch it free online. https://www.google.com/search?q=hoxsey+when+healing+becomes+a+crime&aq=f&oq=Ho&sugexp=chrome,mod=0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

• Andrew Weil has stated most of this much better in his new book, why our health matters, which should have been named, The Medical Monopoly, America's National Disaster, How Allopathic Medicine has created a nation of drug addicts. Brutal Treatments, high prices, no real cures.
• http://www.amazon.com/Why-Our-Health-Matters-Transform/dp/1594630666

• http://www.amazon.com/Recalled-Life-Anthony-J-Sattilaro/dp/0395325242/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

• what doctors don't tell you http://www.wddty.com

Let me summarize my core ideas quickly
1) The causes of dis-ease are primarily mental and emotional, secondarily lifestyle, diet, exercise, Modern medical treats people as biological machines; inherently this is inadequate and inacurate
2) Medicine has been corrupted by money (selling drugs) and ego (not being open to new ideas (for various reasons)), and consequently has ignored and even suppressed many useful treatments and lines of research.
3) Western medicine is good for emergencies, but for illness it is quite possible that Western Medicine does a lot more harm than good.

be well,
jay dancing bear

Poem written on New Year's Morning, 2010

The body has it's rhythms
it likes to wake up slow
pause during the day, take naps
stretch, yawn
move, run, jump
play
dance

the mind, especially the ego mind
is a tyrant
ordering the body around mercilessly
forcing it to work, work, work
almost never play

Even when the ego thinks it's having fun
I'm drinking, i'm smoking, i'm talking
i might get lucky with this woman
too often the body is saying
please don't smoke, please don't drink
i need to rest, we woke up at 6am
worked all day
get lucky at 4pm, not 2am

and worse, the ego says
I have a goal,
I want to make a million dollars
that means we work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day
Eat fast food, in a hurry
We can relax and move later, so the ego says

The body says
you're not listening
i have to get your attention, and so
a little illness, and then a bigger one
and a bigger one

Still, the ego refuses to listen
takes a pill, gets a surgery
ignores the body
doesn't even feel the body most of the time

Who spends much time feeling the sensations in their
toe, foot, arm, right side, left side
except when the attention is forcibly drawn by pain

and so
the brutal master whips the overworked slave
without nourishing and nurturing

without realizing that
slave and master is a perversion of the true relationship
which is one of equal partners

without realizing the bliss to be found
in the exquisite sensation of moving one's arm
6 inches, 3 inches, one inch, one micron
if one will only fully allow oneself to
feel fully and fully value
the sensations

there is more bliss in that
than in all the toys and doodads of the world!

some say
"he who dies with the most toys, wins"

i say
he who dies with millions of toys
and millions of dollars
yet has never been truly embodied
never felt the bliss of the air in and out of the nostrils
never felt the bliss of toe, foot, arm, side
is impoverished beyond belief
the poorest of the poor

Think about it

My Business Plan

I have written over 600 songs and a bunch of poems. Never counted the poems, definitely hundreds. People tell me they like my music and poetry. I think i have all the raw materials for a cottage industry

• Music CDs
• Poetry CDs
• Downloads of songs and Poems
• Music DVDs, mixed with some interview and poetry
• DVDs of Music Videos (my songs are very visual, would lend themselves well to this)
• Written folios of song lyrics and poetry
• Frameable Poems and Lyrics, done in calligraphy, with illustrations, printed on high quality paper, or maybe just available for download. I had in mind some zen style, Paul Reps type brush and ink work

My idea used to be if i could sell 10,000 CDs a year, based on 5,000 sales of whatever my new title was, plus 1,000 each of older titles, that's a good living.

So why isn't it happening?
I'm actually a pretty good businessman and marketer, and for whatever reason, after years of saying i should, i should, the truth is, i don't, i don't, and i don't want to, because my creative efforts go into writing and composing, and i can't do both. The times i have, i stop playing and writing. Fuck that.

So, Business partner wanted. Someone to:

• Do the marketing. Spend hours on the computer contacting every fan and other music website in the world saying, check this guy out.
• Do booking and promotion
• Someone who is good at setting up the accounts with all the sales websites like imeem and CD baby
• Do the CD and DVD covers, and handle the production of the printed materials and the artwork, because i am useless at the computer graphic work.
• Ideally, this person had recording equipment, and was good with it. This is flexible, i am very good and efficient in a studio, so money takes care of that
• provide cash up front for recording and putting out the stuff

My ideal person

• 1 Honest, goes without saying
• 2 Competent. I have heard stories of well meaning people trying to help, but didn't know what they were doing, and no happy ending.
• 3 Wise, patient, caring person. Someone with heart.
• 4 Someone who can accept that i want a music career to be an important part of my life, not take over my whole life. I'm in it for the long haul. That means i pace myself, proceeding at a comfortable clip. Translation=10 shows/month, 10 months/year, travelling arranged in a healthy way, not a bunch of one night stands. I want to, for instance, go to Seattle for a month, sublet a room, and do a bunch of shows in the area. I need hours each day to do my meditation, qigong, yoga, prepare healthy food, etc.
• 5 Excellent computer skills, including graphics and layout, and dealing with emails and websites
• 6 People skills, lots of patience and tact. A lot of people in the music biz are full of themselves. You can not take offense. Actually, at times person might need people skills to deal with me.
• 7 Meticulous, diligent, responsible, especially with the accounting and keeping track of the email.
• 8 I am their only client. Maybe one other. Not spread too thin

For some reason, i had the thought of someone who had lived in a zen center and was looking for means of right livelihood to support their spiritual practice.
Basically, i am looking for a cross between King Solomon and Steve Jobs. Maybe the solution is not one person, maybe it's a team. I like teams.

The deal:50-50.

I am a very cautious, conservative person in some ways. I would want months getting to know anyone i am going to get seriously involved with in a business way, because once we start working together, i am not looking to change horses in midstream.

Potential issues down the road;

• If i got really successful, at some point a professional booking agent, with contacts already in place all across the country, would make sense. Ditto for distribution. Some financial adjustments have to be made. Maybe we split the booker's percentage.
• What if we decide to part ways. This could happen for a variety of amicable reasons, as well as other reasons. What percentage of my sales are you entitled to, and for how long, after we split?

I really have to tell the truth here. I still believe, %100, that i have the potential to go all the way. Maybe it's ego, maybe it's pipe dream, but i could see my music reaching a lot of people, maybe even selling 20 million units.
I'm not holding my breath, i'm not expecting it, but i really do believe it could happen. It's not that i want to get rich and live in a mansion; i do want to be comfortable financially, screw the mansion. It would be nice to have some money to use for helping others and good causes.

So, there it is, my business plan. I make the music, you do the business, we split the proceeds.

Tactics against GMOs

Suggestions

1 REVOKE Monsanto's corporate charter. Google "revoke corporate charter"

2 PETA has a lesson for every progressive movement in the world. They have gotten media time and attention, changed the behaviour and beliefs of a public that really didn't care, even gotten laws passed. How?
By using the two great laws of advertising;
1) Sex sells
2) celebrity sells, meaning people listen to what celebrities say

One bareass celebrity at a protest gets more attention than 100,000 signatures on a petition.
Naked women get attention.
We can take advantage of that, because i know there a lot of beautiful women against GMOs.

Imagine 1000 naked women in front of the White House chanting "No no GMO, GMO has got to go"!
This can be done anywhere, scaled to size. It works for PETA, it can work for us.

3 CELEBRITIES- movie stars, music stars, even porn stars. People pay attention to celebrities. We would do well to pay special attention to recruiting as many celebrities as possible, including on the local level, because there are tons of celebrities out there who feel strongly about GMOs, so let's give them a chance to help. If you are doing an event in your town, recruit the local celebrities, make sure to prominently include their names in the press releases you send out and the flyers you put up

4 CONCERTS Remember the Tibet concerts, farm aid, bangladest, the more recent events. It would be great if some big name like Neil Young (i'm dating myself) would front an event. Even on a local level, it can be your local band playing a benefit night at a bar, or your local folksinger playing a house concert in someone's living room

5 DESTROY DEMAND, by Sowing seeds of doubt in people's mind.

Men, are GMOs ruining your sexual performance?
Women, are GMOs spoiling your health and beauty.
Mothers, will GMOs cause your children health problems later in life.
The government says GMOs are safe. They said that about DDT.
The government says GMOs are safe. You trust your government, don't you?
How does it feel to be a guinea pig (for GMOs)
How does it feel to be a lab rat?
Hey, have you heard-Monsanto just won an award for Most Unethical Corporation in the world, mostly because of GMOs
Is it really worth using a product that will give you cancer, just to kill a few weeds (Roundup)

Don't lecture, just throw it out there. Even if you are a single mom going crazy with your kids, this is something you can do.

It would be great if ads like these made it into Sports Illustrated, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, but even if they don't, every person you ask these questions of, is one more person doubting GMOs, and if people stop buying, no more GMOs.

6 what if someone wrote a book called
"Are GMOs undermining your health", (or something like that), and then a website went up, http;//www.aregmosunderminingyourhealth.com. What if that book got advertised, not as a political ad, but purely as business, meaning the ads could not be refused. Just putting that title out is a message. It could go on flyers, or in the little classified ads in local papers, the type that cost $5-10, and all the ad would have to be is "New book, aregmosundermining your health.com"

7 PRESSURE BUSINESS
Corporate Social Responsibility is the technical name (google it) for a movement to pressure businesses into sustainable practices.
Especially now that Monsanto has been winning awards for Most Unethical Corporation in the World, it will be a lot easier to pressure food stores and hardware stores to stop carrying their products, and to make the deeper point about dangers of GMOs.
Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Costco, Ace Hardware, True Value Hardware.
Also,does anyone remember the grape boycotts, which were used on the behalf of farmworkers

8 LABELING Getting certain businesses to label foods without GMOs
Where i live, there is a chain of stores, mostly catering to average middle class people, called Trader Joe's. They already have labels on cheese that has no rBGH. Could they be gotten to label foods without GMOs, which would get people asking the question, what wrong with GMO? Certainly there is a worldwide movent to label all foods; getting some big chains with the program would be a big impetus. If anybody says why bother, response is "people have a RIGHT TO KNOW"

9 DIVEST
during the anti apartheid movement, a major tactic was pressuring large institutions, especially large public institutions, to divest themselves of stock and investments in South Africa. Can this be started with Monsanto, later turned to all GMOs?

10 TWO GROUP NAMES that sound especially powerful to my ear are
MOTHERS against GMOs
STUDENTS against GMOs
If these groups don't already exist, it's time they did

11 CONFLATE Monsanto=moral leprosy=GMOs
monsanto has now been named Least Ethical Company in the world.
If we can, in the public mind, equate monsanto with GMOs with sliminess, Monsanto can be used as a poster child.
This is not strictly logically correct, but is a tactic that has been used to win a lot of elections. 1988 comes to mind, when George Bush I successfully equated Mike Dukakis with Willie Horton.

This is all about how you present the statement. i don't have a clear suggestion for wording how the issue is framed, and it's hugely important. Google the work of George Lakoff at the Rockridge Institute to see how important

12 TWITTER
this might go with Conflate. Twitter to everyone you know the news about Monsanto's #1 Award. Especially if we can get some people with big followings to retweet, it could go viral, destroying GMO credibility almost overnight, if we can link Monsanto=GMO=Moral leprosy.
Later on, keep twittering about the latest atrocities.

13 NETWORK with ALLIES
It seems to me that every environmental group in the world is a natural ally. Every progressive political organization. Every left wing church, like the Unitarians and Religious Science. Even mainstream churches, if they thought about it, might get riled up if asked
"Do you think it's right for man to play god?"
"Do you think it's right to interfere with God's handiwork"?

Certainly, many of us are horrified at anti abortion, anti Gay, anti immigrant groups, but there is an old saying "my enemy's enemy is my friend", and if anyone is against GMOs i say Amen, brother, and let's agree to disagree on the other stuff.

More on Corporate Personhood tactics

Corporate Personhood is an inherently absurd, ridiculous idea.

The idea that a legal fiction should have the same rights as a human being is insane.

Who gets rights next? Mickey Mouse? Bart Simpson? Family Guy?

The egghead that came up with this idea must have really smoked a lot of wacky weed that night!

The only way that this could have gotten into law was to pay someone off, and that's what happened.

People are more often persuaded by appealing to their guts and hearts, not so often persuaded by appealing to their minds.
I live with Republicans. They turn off when then hear about court cases and bad corporations. They listen when you make statements like the ones above.
The anti corporate personhood movement has to frame it's arguments in basic terms that even the truck driving, country music set resonates with.

George Lakoff, at the Rockridge Institute, has done incredible work on this subject. Anyone running a political campaign, which this is, needs to read his work. There is a link below.

WONK WON'T WORK. YOU HAVE TO GO FOR THE GUT!
The best way to end corporate personhood is to ridicule it to death.
---
Along with this, I strongly suggest adopting PETA's tactics of naked protests, especially naked celebrities. PETA has demonstrated an amazing ability to educate people, change behaviours, and get laws passed, all because they decided to accept people as they were, and deal with them on those terms, which means PETA staged one stunt after another, got tremendous media attention, and took advantage of the fact that people idolize stars and pay attention to what they say.

One naked movie star demonstrating against corporate personhood would get more media attention than a wonky petition with 100,000 signatures, or imagine 1000 naked women in front of the white house, including a scattering of celebrities of all sorts, shouting "Abolish Corporate Personhood Now".

This movement can be dignified, respectable, stuffy, wonky, intellectual, and lose, or it can be
Wild, loud, in your face, and win

http://www.google.com/search?q=george+lakoff+rockridge+institue&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.yahoo:en-US:official&client=firefox

Strategies For Abolishing Corporate Personhood

Corporate Personhood is an odious stench in the nostrils of society.
----
I'm probably not saying anything that hasn't been said before or better, but here goes;
----
There are three mass movements in the recent past i think we can learn from;
1 The civil rights movement. Main lesson, the great moral power of nonviolence
2 The anti-Vietnam war movement. Main lesson, the huge power of students
3 The Christian Coalition's rise to power-main lesson, the power of the grassroots
---
Let's start with
THE POWER OF THE GRASSROOTS
which was also a key factor in the anti-vietnam war movement. Right now, the Corporate media are the propaganda mouthpiece of Big Business, LLC. Not to expect too much access or mention there, but maybe. What that means is face to face, person to person. The media may not report it, but it will still be there changing the world.

One important exception; advertising for a commercial product. If someone were to write a book with the title "How Corporate Personhood is Destroying America and Hurting Your Family", or something similar, that book could be advertised everywhere, since it would be a commercial message, not a political one, and of course that would cost money.

TEACHINS and teaching
Back to the grassroots. The immediate challenge is that most people have never heard of CP, let alone know how it is devastating their lives. In the 60s, there were teach-ins all over the place. That needs to happen now, in a grassroots way, tables in front of Post Offices and stores, flyers on bulletin boards.

Some tactics:
1 the christian coalition got power by running candidates for every small political office in america, school boards, etc. I think that Abolish candidates need to do the same. the point is not to win, but to have the legal right to present one's views as part of the electoral process.

2 I think Abolish people should register as Republicans and run in Republican primaries all over the country. Believe it or not, i think that the average Republican can clearly get the absurdity of the idea that a legal fiction should have the same rights as a flesh and blood human being. It is almost a Republican issue.

3 to this end, i think that the way the case is made needs to be in plain English, not wonkspeak
1 an appeal to the idea above,
2 a ridiculing of the absurdity of how things are and
3 A detailing of unsafe products and how you and your family are suffering harm from the present system.

4 Simple ad slogans; things go better with Coke, If a corporation commits a crime, who do you put in jail? Some simple message should be everywhere people look, bumperstickers, bulletin boards, shirts, local classified ads

There are three basic points to make
1 What CP is
2 How it hurts people
3 the dubious and corrupt way it started in the headnotes

I think the most Christian, truck driving, conservative cowboy will get it, if put in terms he is used to.
see Moral Politics, by George Lakoff, on the importance of framing.

THE IMPORTANCE OF STUDENTS
So much political change in the world is the result of young people. Generally, when people get to their late 20s-early 30s, have a job, credit card debt, maybe married, maybe kids, well, people like that do not usually change the world. Students and young people, idealistic, energetic, social, not so much to lose, they change things. I think that for the Abolish movement to be successful, it must start with students. I was 13 in 1969, and i remember the Vietnam War Moratorium, basically a one day teach in across the country. Students may not have stopped the war, but they sure slowed it down; without the anti war movement, Vietnam might have lasted another 5 years. That means something.

BIG TENT AND ALLIES
Corporate personhood is an issue that, when people understand it, cuts across every divide. We need to have a big tent. I think that this is a natural issue for many conservative people, some of whom leftists generally denigrate. However, if an anti abortion, anti gay, anti immigrant person is anti corporate personhood, i say amen brother, welcome to the fold, because my enemy's enemy is my friend.

As for natural allies-there are tons of environmental and political organizations that deal firsthand witht he toxic effects of corporate personhood every day.

In summary, the total absurdity of Corporate Personhood is so obvious that everyone in America and the world can get it, if the harm resultant is pointed out to them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcx9BJRadfw

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