The Fourth Branch of Government is the People

PEOPLE'S LEGAL FRONT

The Fourth Branch of Government
is the People

What they didn't tell you in school

In school you were taught that the Government has three branches, the Legislative branch, the Executive branch, and the Judicial branch. The Legislative branch is the Congress and they make the laws. The Executive branch is the President, who runs the daily business of government. The Judicial branch is the Courts who interpret the law and determine of laws are constitutional. These are the three branches of government you were taught in the government-controlled schools. But there is a fourth branch of government, and that's the People.

Some would argue that the People are not a branch of the Government. They would argue that we have a government that is of the People, by the People, and for the People. They would argue that through voting that the Government represents the People and that the Government is the People. In theory, and in an ideal world, this would be true. And for the most part it is true. But there are time when the Government does not represent the People and that the interests of the Government are not the interests of the People. There are times when the People have to assert their will directly and overrule the Government and assert the supremacy of the will of the People over the will of the Government.

The Government Exists for the Sole Purpose of Serving the People, not Ruling the People

The supremacy of the People is preserved throughout all the documents and papers used in the formation of the Government by the People. The preamble to the United States Constitution states, "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Clearly the Constitution was created to form a government who's sole purpose was to serve the People and for no other purpose. The founding fathers went to great pains to ensure, through the separation of powers and the balance of power that no branch of government would ever become dominate and become a force that rules the People rather than serves the People.

The History of Democracy

America was originally a colony of England, which was a monarchy controlled by the King. Although England is still a monarchy technically, the Queen is little more than a tourist attraction and serves merely to feed the tabloid press industry. But 250 years ago the King was very powerful and America was settled by people who were trying to put distance between themselves and the King and his Church of England. America was settled by people who were seeking Liberty and Freedom. We became a People and we resented being subservient to the Government and the King and we dreamed of an America where the People were the King.

On July 4th 1776 the Second Continental Congress, representing the 13 states unanimously issued the Declaration of Independence. This document was the official notice given to the King of England that the 13 states were separating themselves from the Crown in order to form a government of the People. The Declaration of Independence is an important document and in many ways is as important as the Constitution. The Constitution is the document that establishes a government of the People by the People, and for the People. The Declaration of Independence is the document that establishes the supremacy of the People over the Government and establishes the Right and the Duty of the People "to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security."

The Declaration of Independence establishes the supremacy of the People and the Right and Duty to defend the Rights of the People over the Acts of the Government.

Our Constitution provides for as many protections as possible to ensure that the Government is subservient to the People and only exists for the purpose of serving the People. However, should these protections fail it is up to the People to rise up against the Government and to put the Government back in it's place. In this capacity, the People act as the fourth branch of government to take control and to override their decisions that violate the Fundamental Rights of the People to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

By what means do the People exercise their authority over the Government? That depends on how resistant the Government is to complying with the Will of the People. In the case of the Declaration of Independence, it meant declaring war on the Government and overthrowing them. This is obviously a last resort after taking other steps less harsh. But clearly the Right and the Duty to overthrow the Government in order to restore the United States as a government to serve the People is clearly established in historical precedent.

The People Exercise their Powers

There are several examples where the People have risen up against the Government in order to reestablish the supremacy of the Will of the People over the interests of the Government. The most memorable event in recent history is the Vietnam War. The Government got us involved in a useless war and got stuck there. It was a war that was clearly wrong, the People didn't support the war, and the Government refused to serve the interests of the People and allowed themselves to be controlled by the interests of those who were profiting from the war. In fairness, there was a national pride factor involved as well. America wasn't ready to admit that we were wrong and to conceal the truth from the People. It was a time when the Government served it's own interests and the interests of people who put their personal profits ahead of the good of the people.

In this case the people rose up against the Government and we fought them. We protested, we rioted, we broke the laws, and we forced the Government to be subservient to the People and to get out of Vietnam. We put the Government back in its place to serve us, and not to rule us. We let the Government know that they can not order us into battle to die against our will to fight a war that served no public purpose.

When the Government violates the Constitution, it is the duty of the People to rise up against the Government to bring the Government into compliance with the Constitution.

On a local level, here in Springfield Missouri, the City Council decided to take the farm of a farming family, who had a well run dairy farm, for the purpose of building an industrial park. The location of the park was chosen so as to be inside the city limits so that Springfield Schools would get the taxes instead of Strafford Schools. Legally, the City had the powers of Eminent Domain to take the land. There was no procedure to stop the City from running the farmers off this 100-year-old family farm. But the People rose up against the City Council and through the shear force of will the People let the City Council of Springfield Missouri know that the People, acting as the 4th branch of Government, were going to prevent it from happening.

Powers and Responsibilities of the People

Maintaining the Government is much like maintaining your lawn. Although the plants in your back yard bring you joy for the most part, they have to be weeded and pruned to keep them growing the way you want. We try to make the Government self pruning and self weeding, but the Government isn't perfect and We the People have both the Power and the Responsibility to maintain our government in a manner that best serves the People in the pursuit of Life, Liberty, Freedom, and Happiness.

The first duty of a Citizen is to be personally involved in government. This means that voting is a requirement. And not just voting but going to the trouble to understand the issues and make a well reasoned decision. Getting good people into office is the first step in protecting the Rights of the People. I would go as far to say that failing to vote is a Sin against the Constitution. If I had my way I would make it a law that every voter got a receipt for voting and that you would get $10 off your taxes for every election you have a receipt for.

Failing to Vote is a Sin against the Constitution

Citizens also have a duty to fight and report public corruption. This includes a duty to ensure that the government institutions that control corruption actually do something when corruption is reported. Government corruption can not be accepted because if you let them get away with it, then it becomes a pattern and cover-up becomes the norm. When the government breaks the law then there is no law.

The Imperative of Judicial Integrity

In the famous Supreme Court case of Elkins Et Al. v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 80 S. Ct. 1437, 4 L. Ed. 2d 1669 the court in speaking about the imperative of Judicial Integrity stated: "In a government of laws," said Mr. Justice Brandeis, "existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."

Although I agree with Justice Brandeis for the most part, I'm not sure the term "invites anarchy" is the most accurate description of what judicial corruption invites. When you look at the People as the fourth branch of government then it is more accurate to say that judicial corruption invokes the responsibility of the People to take whatever steps are necessary in order to bring the Judiciary into compliance with the Law.

The United States Judicial System is little more that an organized crime ring for Lawyers to use the Power of the Government to Oppress and steal from the People.

The Checks and Balances in the Constitution contemplates three branches of government with the ability of any one branch to have the power to ensure that the other branches comply with the law and that the Government serves the People. Unfortunately, the Judicial Branch of the Government has opted out of the Checks and Balances system to be self regulating. This clearly is not working. Although it does maintain independence of the Judiciary, it also puts lawyers and judges above the law. Or courts are no longer our courts anymore. Judges and lawyers are little more than an organized crime family who have invaded our courts and impersonate judges and create the mere illusion of a Justice System that is completely void of all forms of Judicial Integrity.

Enforcing Judicial Standards on judges is impossible under our current system. Although they have their Rules, they have the ability to break their own Rules and they are not subject to enforcement. How can you take judges to court when judges control the courts? Judges know they can get away with anything and therefore they do. And their dishonesty is contagious and the Government has been the teacher of the People and has affected and undermined the basic integrity of People in Society. People follow by example, and a criminal Judicial System has led to criminal behavior in the People.

Self Regulation of the Judicial System violates the checks and Balances system of the Constitution

The Judiciary has stolen the ability to be safe within a marriage and a family in America. Our divorce courts are dens of thieves where lawyers loot families under the authority of the Courts and the Government. Lawyers stalk families as predators looking for an opportunity to move in and destroy the lives of the People for profit and using the authority of the Government to rob the People and to make them give up all their property to lawyers to protect their children from the Government.

These abuses of the Judiciary are so serious as to rise to the level of Treason to the Constitution and to invoke the duty of every citizen to do whatever it take to rid our government from this force that has invaded our Judicial System in order to rid ourselves of this enemy from within and to restore the Rule of Law to our courts which are here to serve the People and not the self interest of the Bar or the Government.

Loving your Country by Burning the Flag

There are those who are greatly offended by Burning the Flag. And they have a right to be offended. However, Burning the Flag can and should be an act of Patriotic Duty. Our soldiers did not fight and die to defend the Flag. They fought and died to preserve our Freedoms, Liberties, and Rights, including our right to Burn the Flag. The Flag is merely a piece of cloth symbolizing the Government. The respect shown the Flag is the same as respecting the Government.

Burning the Flag is an act that reminds the Government that the People are the Masters and the Government is the Servant. It let's the Government know who works for whom.

There are those politicians who waive the Flag while reaching into your pocket to steal your money or take away your Freedoms using the Powers of the Government to commit evil acts upon the People. Many of these same people are the ones who want to outlaw Flag Burning. Often this issue is used to distract you from noticing that he's taking bribes from Tobacco Companies selling them a license to market an addictive drug to the public. To me, that is a lot bigger crime against the Flag than a person burning it to protect the Rights of the People is.

Burning the Flag, and the Right to Burn the Flag are very important to the preservation of our Rights as a People to control the Government. The act of Burning the Flag is an act asserting that the Rights of the People are superior to the Powers of the Government. To be prohibited from Burning the Flag is the Government asserting that the Powers of the Government are superior to the Rights of the People. I agree with the Supreme Court that it is unconstitutional to prohibit Burning the Flag. The very act of Burning the Flag is a message of defiance to the Government and reminding them in the crudest way possible that the People are the Masters and the Government is the Servant.

Burning the Flag is an Act of Patriotism. People who care about America Burn the Flag.

I would rather see people Burn Flags over causes I don't agree with than to not see any Flag Burning at all. When the Government gets out of line and starts oppressing the People, it is the duty of every patriotic citizen to Burn the Flag and to stand up to the Government so as to preserve our freedoms and the Liberties for the People that our soldiers gave their lives to protect.

The People's Duty to throw off Oppressive Government

The people are the ultimate protector of our constitutional rights. We are the branch of government of last resort. When the government fails to abide by the Constitution and takes away our rights then it is ultimately the duty of the people to stand up to the government and take our rights back. This is not something that should be taken lightly. It is only in the most extreme of circumstances when all else has failed. However, as the judicial system of the United States continues to deteriorate into despotism, the time has now come to begin to talk about the possibility that there exist no other way to make the courts comply with the Constitution other than the direct intervention of the people.

Like the war in Vietnam, the people might have to rise up against the judiciary and make them comply with their own rules and ethical standards. I hope the judiciary reads this an realizes that the people are not kidding when it comes to insisting that judges and lawyers are not kings and are here solely to serve us and not to rule us. When, for example, the rules of court say that orders of the court and judgements shall be signed by the judge, and the Judges of the Missouri Supreme Court refuse to do so, they are committing treason to the Constitution and need to be removed from office.

The Declaration of Independence states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Our right to justice is not something that the judiciary should play with. Our justice system is not a tool of self serving lawyers to use to allow lawyers to take advantage of the misfortunate and victimize them. Our courts are to serve the people and not as a profit center to protect the incomes of lawyers. We the people hereby give notice to the judiciary that you are acting in contempt of the people and that you will refrain from continuing to do so or face the consequences.

Acting in Faith
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Occupy Together: The Prophet and the Castle

George Lakey with his grand daughter at Occupy Philly

Photo:

Ingrid Lakey

Copyright:

Ingrid Lakey

Note: George Lakey wrote this guest post days before Occupy Wall Street began. When I asked him for a submission, he offered this as it has something to say about the potential of the movement. - Lucy

by George Lakey

I’ve thought of a metaphor that throws light on the role of Barack Obama in relation to progressives. The man decided not to follow the path of Martin Luther King, Jr., or even Jesse Jackson, admirable prophets though they have been. He decided instead to be a pragmatic politician, doing as much good as he could from inside the structure.

Obama did enter the castle. And he is, therefore, surrounded by high stone walls, the walls built long before he was born, by the powerful forces of greed and privilege that believe in empire and inequality.

Unlike some presidents, however, he has not forgotten that many of us do hunger for that great tradition of righteous prophets. After all, Obama heard many a sermon in his church in Chicago from one of the most prophetic black preachers of his day.

So from time to time Obama writes a message on paper, crumples it up, and throws it over the castle wall for us to get, to read, and to act on.

One such note, tossed to us several years ago, was to let us know that he believes that single-payer health care (“Medicare for All) would be the best system for the U.S. We had the opportunity to build a mass movement “demanding” what he, in fact, believes in.

Another such note, again tossed to us in a timely way, was that he believed the smart thing to do with out-of-control banks that lead a nation to the edge of a cliff is what the Swedes did: seize the banks, fire the senior management, make sure the shareholders don’t get a dime.

A few of us read the notes (they were public), but in neither case did a mass of progressives rise up with nonviolent direct action campaigns to demand that such policies be implemented. If we had taken a minute to notice the occupant of the Oval Office wanted to be “forced” to do what he and we both wanted, we might have taken heart.

Perhaps we’re not politically sophisticated enough to know how the castle works, to know how power is structured in our country. Or maybe it’s just that there’s more pleasure in complaining about Obama than in stepping up with people power.

In each case – real health care reform and bringing Wall Street under control – we failed to use our organizing skills to build a powerful movement. In each case, we left the stage empty, in a theater full of citizens who cared strongly about the issues. In each case, the forces of privilege then occupied the stage and created the drama! They did that through manipulating the authentic feelings of working class and middle class people and creating an astro-turf “populist” campaign: the Tea Party, full of people resentful of Wall Street and scared of bankruptcy from family medical emergencies! Despite their schooling, middle class people were even more taken in by this scam than were working class people.

But our President is nothing if not patient. He knows that we progressives do have our own proud history of creating drama, even facing down the White Citizens Councils and Ku Klux Klan defending vicious racial segregation. We do have that legacy. Perhaps he hasn’t given up on the chance that progressives in the U.S. will now take to the streets to give him the space he needs to act more fully, for example, on climate change.

In February of 2011 he threw another note over the castle wall. "Egyptians have inspired us,” he said. “In Egypt it was the moral force of nonviolence that bent the arc of history toward justice.”

Perhaps he realized that his previous messages were largely ignored by progressives, because he didn’t stop. He went on to quote Dr. King: “There's something in the soul that cries out for freedom."

Do we, like the Egyptians, cry out for freedom – from the rule of the super-rich? Then how about, instead of acting like dependents complaining about Obama not saving us, we try emulating the Egyptians, drawing on the most effective approach that we Americans ourselves have used in our history: nonviolent direct action? Surely the time has come again!

George Lakey has been a leader in the field of nonviolent social change since the 1960s and has published extensively for both activist and academic readers. He is the founder and executive director of Training for Change, a Philadelphia-based organization internationally known for its leadership in creating and teaching strategies for nonviolent social change. Lakey has worked in the United States with mineworkers, steelworkers, and civil rights leaders, and, internationally, with South African anti-apartheid activists, Cambodian human rights organizers, and many others. He is a member of Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.

Publicly-owned Banks as an Instrument of Economic Development

Publicly-owned Banks as an Instrument of Economic Development: The German Model

by Ellen Brown
Global Research, October 13, 2011
Web of Debt

Publicly-owned banks were instrumental in funding Germany’s “economic miracle” after the devastation of World War II. Although the German public banks have been targeted in the last decade for takedown by their private competitors, the model remains a viable alternative to the private profiteering being protested on Wall Street today. One of the demands voiced by protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement is for a “public option” in banking. What that means was explained by Dr. Michael Hudson, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, in an interview by Paul Jay of the Real News Network on October 6: [T]he demand isn’t simply to make a public bank but is to treat the banks generally as a public utility, just as you treat electric companies as a public utility. . . . Just as there was pressure for a public option in health care, there should be a public option in banking. There should be a government bank that offers credit card rates without punitive 30% interest rates, without penalties, without raising the rate if you don’t pay your electric bill. This is how America got strong in the 19th and early 20th century, by essentially having public infrastructure, just like you’d have roads and bridges. . . . The idea of public infrastructure was to lower the cost of living and to lower the cost of doing business. We don’t hear much about a public banking option in the United States, but a number of countries already have a resilient public banking sector. A May 2010 article in The Economist noted that the strong and stable publicly-owned banks of India, China and Brazil helped those countries weather the banking crisis afflicting most of the world in the last few years. In the U.S., North Dakota is the only state to own its own bank. It is also the only state that has sported a budget surplus every year since the 2008 credit crisis. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the country and the lowest default rate on loans. It also has oil, but so do other states that are not doing so well. Still, the media tend to attribute North Dakota’s success to its oil fields. However, there are other Western public banking models that are successful without oil booms. Europe has a strong public banking sector; and leading it is Germany, with eleven regional public banks and thousands of municipally-owned savings banks. Germany emerged from World War II with a collapsed economy that had degenerated into barter. Today it is the largest and most robust economy in the Eurozone. Manufacturing in Germany contributes 25% of GDP, more than twice that in the UK. Despite the recession, Germany’s unemployment rate, at 6.8%, is the lowest in 20 years. Underlying the economy’s strength is its Mittelstand—small to medium sized enterprises—supported by a strong regional banking system that is willing to lend to fund research and development. In 1999, public banks dominated German domestic lending, with private banks accounting for less than 20% of the market, compared to more than 40% in France, Spain, the Nordic countries, and Benelux. Since then, Germany’s public banks have come under fire; but local observers say it is due to rivalry from private competitors rather than a sign of real weakness in the sector. As precedent for a public option in banking, then, the German model deserves a closer look. From the Ashes of Defeat to World Leader in Manufacturing Germany emerged Phoenix-like from its disastrous defeat in two world wars to become Europe’s economic powerhouse in the second half of the 20th century. In 1947, German industrial output was only one-third its 1938 level, and a large percentage of its working-age men were dead. Less than ten years after the war, people were already talking about the German economic miracle; and twenty years later, its economy was the envy of most of the world. By 2003, a country half the size of Texas had become the world’s leading exporter, producing high quality automobiles, machinery, electrical equipment, and chemicals. Only in 2009 was Germany surpassed in exports by China, which has a population of over 1.3 billion to Germany’s 82 million. In 2010, while much of the world was still reeling from the 2008 financial collapse, Germany reported 3.6% economic growth. The country’s economic miracle has been attributed to a variety of factors, including debt forgiveness by the Allies, currency reform, the elimination of price controls, and the reduction of tax rates. But while those factors freed the economy from its shackles, they don’t explain its phenomenal rise from a war-torn battlefield to world leader in manufacturing and trade. One overlooked key to the country’s economic dynamism is its strong public banking system, which focuses on serving the public interest rather than on maximizing private profits. After the Second World War, it was the publicly-owned Landesbanks that helped family-run provincial companies get a foothold in world markets. As Peter Dorman describes the Landesbanks in a July 2011 blog: They are publicly owned entities that rest on top of a pyramid of thousands of municipally owned savings banks. If you add in the specialized publicly owned real estate lenders, about half the total assets of the German banking system are in the public sector. (Another substantial chunk is in cooperative savings banks.) They are key tools of German industrial policy, specializing in loans to the Mittelstand, the small-to-medium size businesses that are at the core of that country’s export engine. Because of the landesbanken, small firms in Germany have as much access to capital as large firms; there are no economies of scale in finance. This also means that workers in the small business sector earn the same wages as those in big corporations, have the same skills and training, and are just as productive. [Emphasis added.] The Landesbanks function as "universal banks" operating in all sectors of the financial services market. All are controlled by state governments and operate as central administrators for the municipally-owned savings banks, or Sparkassen, in their area. The Sparkassen were instituted in Germany in the late 18th century as nonprofit organizations to aid the poor. The intent was to help people with low incomes save small sums of money, and to support business start-ups. The first savings bank was set up by academics and philanthropically-minded merchants in Hamburg in 1778, and the first savings bank with a local government guarantor was founded in Goettingen in 1801. The municipal savings banks were so effective and popular that they spread rapidly, increasing from 630 in 1850 to 2,834 in 1903. Today the savings banks operate a network of over 15,600 branches and offices and employ over 250,000 people, and they have a strong record of investing wisely in local businesses. Targeted for Privatization The reputation and standing of the German public banks were challenged, however, when they emerged as competitors in international markets. Peter Dorman writes: [T]he EU doesn’t like the landesbanken. They denounce the explicit and implicit public subsidies that state ownership entails, saying they violate the rules of competition policy. For over a decade they have fought to have the system privatized. In the end, the dispute is simply ideological: if you think that public ownership should only be an exception, narrowly crafted to address specific market failures, you want to see the landesbanken put on the auction block. If you think an economy should be organized to meet socially defined needs, you would want a large part of capital allocation to be responsive to public input, and you’d fight to keep the landesbanken the way they are. (There is a movement afoot in the US to promote public banking.) The vicissitudes of German banking in the last decade were traced in a July 2011 article by Ralph Niemeyer, editor-in-chief of EUchronicle, titled “Commission’s Dirty Task: WESTLB Devoured by Private Banks.” He notes that after 1999, the major private banks left the path of sustainable traditional banking to gamble in collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and derivatives. Private German banks accumulated an estimated €600 billion in toxic assets through their investment banking branches, for which German taxpayers wound up providing guarantees. Deutsche Bank AG was feeding its record profits almost exclusively through its investment banking division, which made a fortune trading credit default swaps on Greek state obligations. When this investment turned sour, the German government had to bail out the financial institution into which Deutsche Bank AG dumped these toxic assets. While the large private banks were betting on the casinos of the financial markets, lending to businesses and the “real” economy was left to the public Sparkassen, which were more efficient in serving average citizens and local business because they were not stock companies that had to satisfy shareholders’ hunger for ever-larger dividends. Today the market share of private banks in Germany is only 28.4%, and Deutsche Bank AG dominates the segment. But with its 7% market share, it is still well behind the public banks owned by municipalities and communities. Neimeyer says the private banks wanted to break up the market dominance of the public banks to get a bigger piece of the pie themselves, and they used the European Commission to do it. The Commission had been lobbied since the early 1990s by German private banks and by Deutsche Bank AG in particular to attack the German government over the country’s “inflexible” public banking sector. The IMF, too, had long demanded that any competing public monopolies in the German banking market be broken up, citing their “inefficiencies.” When the German public Sparkassen and Landesbanken were reluctant to turn to investment banking with its skyrocketing profits, they were branded as bureaucratic and “unsexy.” When they were pressured to increase their returns for their government owners, the German Landesbanken did get sucked to some extent into derivatives and CDOs (fraudulently rated triple A). But while they “lost billions in the Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers Ponzi scheme,” Niemeyer says the extent to which they became involved in highly speculative transactions was “laughable in comparison with the damage done by private banks, for whom taxpayers are now providing guarantees.” It was the public banks and Sparkassen that supplied the real economy with liquidity, and that stepped in for the private banks when they withdrew to bet in the financial casino; but it was on the failings of the Landesbanken and Sparkassen that the media focused their attention. The real motive, says Niemeyer, was that the large private banks wanted the public banks’ market share themselves: In order to win back this important market share, it has become a prerogative to destroy public banking in Germany completely. This unpopular move could never come from the German government itself, so that’s why the [European] Commission is being employed for this dirty job. The Price of Success The German public banks were brought down by knocking their public legs out from under them. Previously, they had enjoyed state guarantees that allowed them to acquire and lend funds at substantially better rates than private banks were able to do. But in 2001, the European Commission ruled to strip the Landesbanks of their explicit state credit guarantees, forcing them to compete on the same terms as private banks. And today the European Banking Authority is refusing to count the banks’ implicit state guarantees in their “stress tests” for banking solvency. The upshot is that the German public banks are being stripped of what has made them stable, secure, and able to lend at low interest rates: they have had the full faith and credit of the government and the public behind them. By eliminating the profit motive, focusing on the public interest, and relying on government guarantees, the German public banks were able to turn bank credit into the sort of public utility described by Prof. Hudson. The example of Germany shows that even success is no guarantee in the face of a relentless onslaught of propaganda by large privately-owned banks interested only in making money for their CEOs, wealthiest clients and shareholders. But peering behind the propaganda, the public banking model that helped underwrite Germany’s economic success might be the fast track to a U.S. banking system that serves Main Street rather than Wall Street. Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://webofdebt.com and http://ellenbrown.com.

Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Ellen Brown

Ending Capitalism Without Throwing Out the Baby With the Bathwater

Capitalism and the Alternative

by Al Engler / October 14th, 2011

Capitalism is a system that gives major shareholders and top corporate executives—one per cent or less of populations—the right to direct means of livelihood in their private interests. The system’s dominant institutions are corporations. Deemed in law to be individual persons, corporations actually combine the capital of numerous shareholders with the intention of dominating markets.

Corporations are privately owned capitalist collectives. The largest control more revenues than most governments. To maximize profits, corporations expand production and introduce labour saving machinery, cut wages, and move employment to places where labour is cheaper. A recurring result is that the income of majorities who depend on labour falls as production increases. With declining markets for consumer goods, capitalist investment turns to financial speculation. Market crashes follow. Production facilities are shut down. Unemployment worsens, more jobs are lost, wages are cut further. Individual lives are disrupted. Communities are impoverished.

To deal with disaffection, the system relies on repression, militarism, and war. Within countries, surveillance is expanded and tightened. The marginalized, the dispossessed, and the disorderly are racialized and demonized as criminals. More people are jailed for longer periods. Globally, people who actively oppose the system are demonized as terrorists; countries are bombed and occupied. Wars are highly profitable for well connected corporations and divert attention from domestic divisions. Wars also glorify the violent machismo that encourages the subjugation, abuse, and marginalization of women.

Military intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya increased sales of B-52s, guided missiles, helicopter attack ships, aircraft carriers, and drones. In the invaded countries, life was made worse. Power and water plants, bridges, railways, communications systems, schools, neighborhoods and entire towns were destroyed. Tens of thousands have been killed. Millions have become refugees. Invading countries gain no tangible benefits, but for politically influential aircraft and munitions corporations like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing profits did rise substantially.

Supporters of military action abroad claim it is humanitarian intervention. In Haiti the aim of “the responsibility to protect” was to make the poorest people in the western hemisphere so desperate that they would work for even less. In 2004, the U.S., France, and Canada sent troops to remove Jean Bertrand Aristide, the elected and widely popular President. Haiti was occupied in the name of the UN Security Council. Haitian government and municipal institutions were dismantled. Public workers lost their employment. The minimum wage law was abolished; so was public transit. Education was turned over to foreign aid organizations. With no functioning public institutions, Haitians were left with no means to protect themselves from hurricanes or to rebuild after major earthquakes.

Capitalism is at the root of growing environmental crises. Private capitalist entitlement allows corporations to externalize environmental costs, to pass these on to communities, workers, future generations, and other species. Science has convincingly demonstrated that rising carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels disrupt weather patterns, melt glaciers and polar ice caps, and acidify oceans. Still, major transnational corporations continue to fund campaigns of denial.

When the supporters of capitalism concede the seriousness of carbon emissions, they propose profit-making schemes (scams) like cap and trade, or they insist that consumers are to blame and should pay. Here in BC, corporate business supported the Campbell government’s carbon tax—paid by final users of gasoline and heating oil. This ostensibly green policy fits neatly with neoconservative plans to shift the tax burden from business to working people. Meanwhile, the government increased tax-breaks and write-offs for oil and gas exploration and development.

In capitalist rhetoric, unions, public sector workers, and local communities are reactionary vested interests, opposed to change. From a human perspective, capitalists are the most socially and environmentally destructive vested interest. They shamelessly use their wealth and political influence to increase their wealth by impoverishing others and blocking changes that undermine the profits made from fossil-fueled production and trade.

The working-class alternative

The working class—everyone who depends on labour not capital for their income—has the capacity to challenge the right of capitalists to direct social labour for their private profit. The working class includes wage and salary workers and the self-employed—shopkeepers, owner operators, farmers, and self-employed professionals, all whom depend on income from their labour. Those without capitalist entitlements also include most artists, artisans, full time parents, pensioners, students, the unemployed, and those unable to work.

Being the overwhelming majority—everyone but the one per cent, 0.1 percent or 5 percent who control and live off capital—the working class frees itself only by freeing all. So long as some are exploited and oppressed, the wellbeing of everyone who depends on income from labor is threatened. A world of human equality requires the replacing of capitalist title with human entitlement, corporate ownership with social ownership, and master-servant relations with workplace democracy.

With equal human entitlement, residents of owning communities will replace shareholders as the legal beneficiaries of means of livelihood. Social labour will be motivated and directed not for private profit but for general wellbeing. When all inhabitants including people whose livelihood depends on tourism and organic agriculture, berry and mushroom pickers, scientists, educators, parents, and students as well as manufacturing and resource workers have a voice and equal vote in economic decisions, communities will limit industrial activity to the carrying capacity of environments.

With social ownership means of livelihood will no longer be bought and sold for private gain. Social ownership must be distinguished from state ownership. State ownership as it exists continues the top-down command structures of corporate capitalism. Social ownership means ownership by towns, neighborhoods, cities, regions, nations, and perhaps international communities. Social ownership means democratic and transparent planning by inhabitants for their wellbeing.

With workplace democracy workers in all occupations—machine operators, clerical workers, trades people, administrators, professionals—will have a voice and equal vote in the direction of their labour time. All occupations will be self-regulated professions. Assembly line workers will have a voice and vote in the direction of assembly-line work. Skilled trades people, clerical workers, engineers, and administrators will democratically direct their labour time. General assemblies of workers in all occupations may elect managers; owning communities will elect or appoint auditors and perhaps the directors of enterprise boards.

When capitalism is replaced with economic democracy, social labour and economies will no longer be directed in the interests of capitalist profit. When everyone is equally entitled to participate in economic decisions, communities will aim to provide acceptable employment opportunities for all available labour. No longer pressed to give priority to private profit, communities will be freed to balance industrial activity with the carrying capacity of environments. The financial costs of social services will be balanced with revenues generated in exchange. The cost of needed imports will be balanced with exports.

Capitalism is based on market exchange, but capitalism should not be confused with the latter. Markets flourished long before capitalism. Ending capitalism does not mean abolishing market exchange. The working class has an obvious interest in democratic control of means of livelihood and labour time. Majorities have an equally obvious interest in expanding social entitlements—employment at decent wages, education, food, housing, health care, child care, leisure. However, people who depend on wages and salaries cannot reasonably be expected to support the abolition of market exchange. Half and more of working people are employed in the production and distribution of goods and services for exchange.

The right of individuals and communities to freely exchange goods and services with others—subject to democratically agreed taxes and regulations—is and will remain a basic human right. The widest practical access to supplies and markets is a major source of material wellbeing. Perhaps when capitalist entitlement has become a distant memory, exchange values and market forces will be anachronisms. Until then, communities from the local to the international will aim to base trade on the exchange of equivalents in labour time.

Three twentieth century dogmas have obscured the working-class alternative. The first narrowly defined the working class as blue-collar industrial workers. The second held that the alternative to competitive capitalism is centralized state control. The third is that ending capitalism requires armed revolution to seize state power.

Factory workers have a vital role in production and in mass movements against the system, but production workers alone do not provide an alternative to capitalism. The working class is far broader. It includes blue collar, pink collar and white collar wage and salary workers—service providers, skilled trades people, clerical workers, and professionals as well as assembly line workers. When the self-employed are included, the class of people without capitalist entitlement unquestionably does everything necessary to initiate, plan, produce, transport, distribute, and sustain the production of goods and services required for human wellbeing.

In the twentieth century, top-down centralized state control was generally viewed as the alternative. The collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s adoption of capitalist policies, did embolden corporate oligarchies. From a working-class perspective the demise of what was called actually existing socialism was not entirely negative. We no longer have to answer for external alternatives that divide people. We can look for the alternative within, in the working class, in the collective capacities and human aspirations of overwhelming majorities everywhere.

The twentieth century identification of fundamental social change with armed revolution did not inspire working-class opposition to capitalism. Violence and disorder damage immediate and long-term working-class interests, undermining employment, democracy, and human rights. Young men are maimed and killed. Women and children are victimized, terrorized, and killed. An anti-capitalist working class will look not to armed struggle but to strategies and tactics that rely on the energy, spirit, and knowledge of men and women, on workplace organization, political action, and community mobilizations

Extremists among wealth-holding minorities may initiate or provoke violence to protect and advance their privileges. While people have an inherent human right to defend themselves and their interests, the working-class response is to look to mass support and to winning soldiers and police—who are themselves wage and salary workers—to the side of working-class majorities. Venezuela, Bolivia, Egypt, and Tunisia provide recent evidence that police, soldiers and officers can be won to the side of majorities.

From gross production to human wellbeing

So long as capitalism is unopposed, the working class appears dependent on capital, but it is capital that depends on labour. Capitalists as capitalists are drones; their function is to appropriate values produced by others. Every activity required for human wellbeing is now done by the working class—including the self-employed, as well as wage and salary workers. What the working class lacks is the understanding that capitalism is a house of paper entitlements that rests on the acquiescence of majorities.

Ideally, people who depend on labour for their livelihood would overwhelmingly refuse to accept rule by, and in, the narrow interests of a wealthy minority. Everyone would continue doing the work they now do, but instead of submitting to master-servant relations, people in all occupations—production, transportation, distribution, and sales people, professionals, managers, day care workers, service providers, teachers, accountants, nurses, and doctors—would democratically direct their labour time. Instead of working for the profit of shareholders, they would work in the interests of their communities.

Realistically, so long as capital is dominant substantial numbers will believe that their relative wellbeing and status depend on capitalism. Many will ignore capitalist privilege and see the enemy as the state, big government, foreign countries, unions, the poor, minorities, immigrants, liberals, Ivy League elites, feminists, older white men, communists, anarchists, criminals, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus.

Seeing human equality, cooperation, and democracy as a realistic alternative will encourage the disaffected to look to human solidarity, to respect diversity and each other. It will deepen opposition to a system that gives the interests of wealthy minorities priority over human and environmental wellbeing. It will encourage community mobilizations, workplace organization, and political action for gains and reforms that weaken capitalist title and strengthen human entitlement. As such gains are made, more men and women will be inspired to mobilize against the system.

In the second half of the twentieth century, a time of virulent anti-communism, Keynesian reforms that improved living conditions did dampen opposition to capitalism. When motivated by visions of economic democracy, movements for reforms that improve the quality of life can convince more people that opposition to capitalism is practical.

The exact issues that will inspire mass mobilization against the system cannot be predicted. We can start by campaigning for steeply graduated income taxes. Rates of 75 per cent or higher on incomes over $250,000 a year could increase government revenues by an equivalent of five per cent or more of gross national income. The revenues raised would eliminate government deficits and provide needed funding for social services, health care, education, public transit, and renewal of needed public infrastructure. Higher wealth and inheritance taxes can be similarly beneficial. Tobin taxes on financial transactions and the re-regulation of international currency and interest rates would reduce the negative impact of financial speculation and raise more public revenues. Increasing tariffs enough to encourage domestic production would further increase government revenues and weaken the power of transnational capital over markets.

Supporters of the system claim that attempts to increase taxes on the rich inevitably backfire because capital will move elsewhere. In fact, capitalists invest where it is profitable. Capital does move in response to marginal changes in profitability, but wherever we are, we are not alone. Raising taxes on capital can inspire similar movements elsewhere, potentially limiting the threat of capital flight and weakening the power of capital to play regions and countries against others for their private benefit.

Public ownership of banks would direct savings away from speculative manias to socially useful investments. Reversing privatizations, renewing public ownership of utilities, transportation and communications systems, and natural resources could methodically weaken the power of capital and strengthen democratic control of means of livelihood. Reforming political campaign finance rules, lobbying regulations, electoral laws would reduce the control capital now has over political agendas.

Local communities can take initiatives to set up cooperatives and community owned financial institutions, social housing, electrical power and communications utilities. Public support for local food production can make people less dependent on the vagaries of capitalist markets. Environmental action can help ensure a better human future. Local, national, and international mobilizations can help reduce dependence on fossil fuel and replace automobiles with public transit and bicycles. Cities can be reconfigured so that walking once again is a pleasant, healthy mode of daily transportation.

Community and workplace mobilizations in solidarity with First Nations, racialized minorities, the marginalized, women, and immigrants will build human bonds and help expose the mean-spirited divisiveness of wealth-holders’ privilege. Support for policies that are intended to reduce disparities increase global human cooperation. These include the right of people to democratically direct their domestic markets as well as international funding with no strings attached for education, housing, health care, and infrastructure. Development should be directed not by foreign agencies but people themselves. The aim is to help provide people with capacity to help themselves.

The capacity of capitalists to use violence against working-class gains can be reduced. Vocally supporting the work police do in protecting persons and property, while exposing covert politically motivated policing, demanding public accountability of the criminal justice system, and mobilizing against police assaults on opponents of the system can help win police to the side of the people. Supporting soldiers in the sacrifices they make while opposing militarism and war can expose capitalist profiteering at the expense of soldiers as well as of people abroad.

Unions will have critical roles in movements against capitalism. Workers not represented by unions have no means to formulate their workplace interests independent of capitalists. Unions were organizing centres of campaigns for freedom of assembly, association, speech, and the press, as well as the right to vote for men and women. Unions are largely responsible for the wages and working conditions that allow capitalism to claim it provides rising living standards. Now in a time when capitalist interests are eroding collective bargaining rights, unions have been preoccupied with conserving past gains. Still unions have provided critical support for First Nations, racialized minorities, women, gays and lesbians, and immigrants.

Revived opposition to capitalism may begin with the unemployed, marginalized, dispossessed minorities, immigrants, or students. Wherever it begins, rising opposition to capitalism will encourage workers already organized for collective bargaining to join in solidarity. As opposition to capitalism grows, more wage and salary workers will demand collective bargaining rights. Revived unionism will convince more people that a working-class alternative is practical.

Recent mass protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Wisconsin, Greece, and Israel show that people will rally against repression, privatizations, public sector layoffs, cuts to social programs, rising food costs and the high cost of for-profit housing. Immediate results may be disappointing, but as people come to see that they are not alone in opposition to a system directed by and for super-wealthy minorities, mass protests can turn into general strikes and workplace occupations as well as into electoral gains for democracy and equality.

Allan Engler is a Vancouver trade unionist and social and environmental activist. His Economic Democracy, the working-class alternative to capitalism was published earlier this year by Fernwood Books. Read other articles by Al.

This article was posted on Friday, October 14th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Capitalism.

Six Demands to Make of Wall Street

Published on Wednesday, October 12, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Six Demands to Make of Wall Street

by Bernie Sanders

The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous, and secretive economic and political force in America.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

If this country is to break out of the horrendous recession and create the millions of jobs we desperately need, if we are going to create a modicum of financial stability for the future, there is no question but that the American people are going to have to take a very hard look at Wall Street and demand fundamental reforms. I hope these protests are the beginning of that process.

Let us never forget that as a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street, this country was plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, and life savings as the middle class underwent an unprecedented collapse. Sadly, despite all the suffering caused by Wall Street, there is no reason to believe that the major financial institutions have changed their ways, or that future financial disasters and bailouts will not happen again.

More than three years ago, Congress rewarded Wall Street with the biggest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. Simultaneously but unknown to the American people at the time, the Federal Reserve provided an even larger bailout. The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed’s lending programs during the financial crisis.

As a result of this audit, the American people have learned that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in low-interest loans to every major financial institution in this country, huge foreign banks, multi-national corporations, and some of the wealthiest people in the world.

In other words, when Wall Street was on the verge of collapse, the federal government acted boldly, aggressively, and with a fierce sense of urgency to save our financial system from collapse with no strings attached.

Now that the middle class is collapsing and a record-breaking 46 million Americans are living in poverty, the Federal Reserve has failed to act with the same sense of urgency to make sure that small businesses receive the affordable loans needed to put millions of Americans back to work and prevent millions of Americans from losing their homes.

As a result, Wall Street is back to making record-breaking profits, handing out record-breaking compensation packages, and taking the same risks that caused the financial crisis in the first place. Meanwhile, 25 million Americans are unemployed or under-employed; middle class families are making $3,600 less than they did ten years ago; the foreclosure rate is still breaking new records; and the American people are still paying over $3.40 for a gallon of gas.

The financial crisis and the jobs crisis have demonstrated to the American people that we now have a government that is of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent and for the 1 percent, as Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz eloquently articulated. The rest of the 99 percent are, more or less, on their own. We now have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major, advanced country on earth. The top one percent earn more income than the bottom 50 percent and the richest 400 Americans own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

Now that Occupy Wall Street is shining a spot light against Wall Street greed and the enormous inequalities that exist in America, the question then becomes, how do we change the political, economic and financial system to work for all Americans, not just the top 1 percent?

Here are several proposals that I am working on:

1) If a financial institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. Today, the six largest financial institutions have assets equal to more than 60 percent of GDP. The four largest banks in this country issue two-thirds of all credit cards, half of all mortgages, and hold nearly 40 percent of all bank deposits. Incredibly, after we bailed out these big banks because they were "too big to fail," three out of the four largest are now even bigger than they were before the financial crisis began. It is time to take a page from Teddy Roosevelt and break up these behemoths so that their failure will no longer lead to economic catastrophe and to create competition in our financial system.

2) Put a cap on credit card interest rates to end usury. Today, more than a quarter of all credit card holders in this country are paying interest rates above 20 percent and as high as 59 percent. When credit card companies charge 25 or 30 percent interest rates they are not engaged in the business of “making credit available” to their customers. They are involved in extortion and loan-sharking. Citigroup, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase should not be permitted to charge consumers 25-30 percent interest on their credit cards, especially while these banks received over $4 trillion in loans from the Federal Reserve.

3) The Federal Reserve needs to provide small businesses in America with the same low-interest loans it gave to foreign banks. During the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve provided hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign banks and corporations including the Arab Banking Corporation, Toyota, Mitsubishi, the Korea Development Bank, and the state-owned Bank of Bavaria. At a time when small businesses can't get the lending they need, it is time for the Fed to create millions of American jobs by providing low-interest loans directly to small businesses.

4) Stop Wall Street oil speculators from artificially increasing gasoline and heating oil prices. Right now, the American people are being gouged at the gas pump by speculators on Wall Street who are buying and selling billions of barrels of oil in the energy futures market with no intention of using a drop for any purpose other than to make a quick buck. Delta Airlines, Exxon Mobil, the American Trucking Association, and other energy experts have estimated that excessive oil speculation is driving up oil prices by as much as 40 percent. We have got to end excessive oil speculation and bring needed relief to American consumers.

5) Demand that Wall Street invest in the job-creating productive economy, instead of gambling on worthless derivatives. The American people have got to make it crystal clear to Wall Street that the era of excessive speculation is over. The “heads, bankers win; tails, everyone else loses” financial system must end. Most important, we need to create a new Wall Street that exists not to reward CEOs and investors for the bets they make on exotic financial instruments nobody understands. Rather, we need a Wall Street that provides financial services to small businesses and manufacturers to create decent-paying jobs and grow the economy by productive means. Think of all of the productive short- and long-term investments that could be made in our country right now if Wall Street used the money it has received from the federal government wisely. Instead of casino-style speculation, Wall Street could invest in high-speed trains; fuel-efficient cars; wind turbines and other alternative energy sources; affordable housing; affordable prescription drugs that save people’s lives; and other things that America desperately needs. That is what we have got to demand from Wall Street.

6) Establish a Wall Street speculation fee on credit default swaps, derivatives, stock options and futures. Both the economic crisis and the deficit crisis are a direct result of the greed and recklessness on Wall Street. Establishing a speculation fee would reduce gambling on Wall Street, encourage the financial sector to invest in the productive economy, and significantly reduce the deficit without harming average Americans. There are a number of precedents for this. The U.S had a similar Wall Street speculation fee from 1914 to 1966. The Revenue Act of 1914 levied a 0.2 percent tax on all sales or transfers of stock. In 1932, Congress more than doubled that tax to help finance the government during the Great Depression. And today, England has a financial transaction tax of 0.25 percent, a penny on every $4 invested.

Making these reforms will not be easy. After all, Wall Street is clearly the most powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill. From 1998 through 2008, the financial sector spent over $5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to deregulate Wall Street. More recently, they spent hundreds of millions more to make the Dodd-Frank bill as weak as possible, and after its passage, hundreds of millions more to roll back or diluter the stronger provisions in that legislation.

Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 after serving 16 years in the House of Representatives. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. Elected Mayor of Burlington, Vt., by 10 votes in 1981, he served four terms. Before his 1990 election as Vermont's at-large member in Congress, Sanders lectured at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and at Hamilton College in upstate New York. Read more at his website.

AlterNet.org


ECONOMY

On the Commons / By David Morris

5 New Rules for an Economy That Works

The 99% is growing stronger and larger. The next step is to move the country. Which requires us to decide where we want to go and how we want to get there.

October 7, 2011 |

Jim Hightower likes to tell the story of the moving company in Austin whose slogan is, "If we can get it loose, we can get it moving." The thousands of people occupying Freedom Plaza in Washington and Zuccotti Park in New York, along with the tens of thousands others protesting around the country may have pried us loose from our cynicism and despair.

The 99% is growing stronger and larger. The next step is to move the country. Which requires us to decide where we want to go and how we want to get there. Which in turn requires us to agree on the new rules for a new economy.

Last week the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street adopted a declaration of principles that will inform the new rules.

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

From that declaration of principles a program will emerge. Conversations about the elements of that program have already begun. Grassroots driven fundamental change is not without precedent. We can look to the Arab spring. #Occupy Wall Street was self-consciously inspired by the occupation by Egyptians of Tahrir Square.

But we can also look to our own history. At the end of the 19th century a political movement arose to confront many of the same concerns that torment us: concentrated wealth, corporate power, the influence of money on democracy. The populist uprising led not only to the passage of state and national laws (e.g. anti trust legislation, minimum wage and maximum hour statutes) but several Constitutional amendments. In 1913 the 16th Amendment allowed an income tax; the 17th Amendment, ratified the same year required the direct election of Senators; the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, gave women the right to vote.

Five New Rules

The conversation about program will go on for months. To contribute to that conversation I offer five new rules: two of them Constitutional Amendments and three of them laws.

1. Corporations are not persons.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 gave blacks the constitutional right of citizenship: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

In 1886, in a case that had nothing to do with corporate personhood, the court clerk wrote a headnote to the case that contained these fateful sentences, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.”

Since the case itself never addressed the question these words did not comprise a legal precedent. Nevertheless, from then on the Supreme Court has considered the question settled. Some 65 years later Justice William O. Douglas observed, “the Santa Clara case becomes one of the most momentous of all our decisions. Corporations were now armed with constitutional prerogatives.” And they made the most of these new prerogatives.

The 14th Amendment, written to protect weak and largely defenseless ex-slaves, was mostly used to protect big and powerful corporations. Of the 150 cases based on the 14th amendment the Supreme Court heard between 1886 and 1896, 15 involved blacks and 135 involved business entities.

In the next 20 years, relying on the 1886 “precedent” the Supreme Court steadily expanded the number of Constitutional rights accorded to this new type of person. The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) offers a partial list: in 1893 the Court accorded corporations the right of due process under the 5th Amendment. In 1906 it extended to them the protection against search and seizure in the 4th Amendment. In 1908 it extended to corporations the 6th Amendment right to a trial by jury.

By the 1940s Justice Felix Frankfurter could accurately declare, “Artificial or not, corporations have won more rights under law than people have– rights which government has protected with armed force.”

In early 2010 the Supreme Court gave corporations the right, as persons, to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.

Does it need to be said that unlike a real person, a corporation lacks a conscience. It is guided neither by ethics nor morality but rather by laws that required its Boards to elevate the maximization of profits above all other concerns. Does it need to be said that if a person makes a decision that kills or maims people he will go to jail. If a CEO makes such a decision he, at worst, receives a golden parachute.

A wonderful sign at the Occupy Wall Street protest reads, “I won’t believe corporations are people until Texas executes one.”

We need a constitutional amendment consisting of four words. Corporations are not persons.

2. Money is not speech

In 1976 the Supreme Court ruled that money is speech and therefore protected by the First Amendment. Today members of Congress now spend 25-40 percent of their time begging for money. Political scientist Thomas Ferguson observes, “Public opinion has only a weak and inconstant influence on policy. The political system is largely investor-driven, and runs on enormous quantities of money”.

When states or the federal government have tried to make elections fairer the Supreme Court says no. Vermont passed a law to cap campaign expenditures for state offices. The Court struck it down.

Congress tried to close a loophole in the campaign finance law that allowed billionaire candidates to spend an unlimited amount of their own money on their own campaigns. The Court struck down the law. Speaking for a 5-4 majority, Justice Samuel Alito told Congress that trying to “level electoral opportunities for candidates of different personal wealth” is not “a legitimate government objective.”

The Supreme Court rulings declaring money is speech and corporations are persons make for a lethal cocktail. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland state senator and law professor at American university points out that Fortune l00 corporations had profits in 2008 totaling about $600 billion. If they spent only l percent of their profits on elections, a trivial sum to protect and foster their interests, the total comes to $6 billion. That is more money than was spent for and on behalf of all congressional and presidential candidates in 2008.

We need a Constitutional Amendment consisting of four words. Money is not speech.

3. Tax Financial Transactions

In 1936, John Maynard Keynes first proposed a financial transactions tax. “The introduction of a substantial Government transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available, with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation over enterprise in the United States.”

Economist Dean Baker suggests that a modest tax (0.25 percent) could easily raise more than $100 billion a year. “A small increase in trading costs would be a very manageable burden for those who are using financial markets to support productive economic activity. However, it would impose serious costs on those who see the financial markets as a casino in which they place their bets by the day, hour or minute.”

4. Tax all income as ordinary income

Billionaire Warren Buffett has commented on the unfairness of having a lower tax rate than his secretary. That is so because most of his income derives from dividends and capital gains taxed at half the rate as income from work. (I think it altogether fitting that economists use the term “unearned income” to describe this kind of income.)

In 2007 the 400 Americans with the highest income—nearly $345 million—were taxed at less than 17 percent, less than half the ordinary income tax rate of 35 percent because most of their income was derived from investments. If we were to require that all their income be taxed at the 1999 tax rate of 39.6% this alone would generate an additional $300 billion in revenue over the next 10 years.

5. Declare a moratorium on foreclosures

Foreclosures hurt individuals, neighborhoods and the economy. Dumping millions of homes on the market depresses the overall value of all real estate, increases unemployment and disrupts lives and neighborhoods.

The most effective way to stop the tidal wave of foreclosures is through permanent, sustainable loan modifications that reduce homeowners’ mortgage principal and interest rates to market value. In a 2010 report, National Peoples Actionproposed one strategy. “Across the country, some 11 million homeowners are $766 billion under water with their mortgages. Paid off over 30 years this means $73 billion a year needed to reset all underwater homeowners’ principals and interest rates would be about half of the $143 billion the top six banks alone are getting ready to pay in 2010 in bonuses and compensation. Even if the top six banks were to absorb the full cost of modifying all underwater mortgages in the country, they would still have $70 billion left for bonuses and compensation.”

The Wall Street occupiers have taken a stand against monied democracy and corporate power. We would do well to join them. Make your voices heard. And demand new rules that will honor the 99% and restore democracy to the nation.

David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, Minn., and director of its New Rules project.