NAVIGATING THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

Hey all

My mom was taken to the emergency room last night and has a blood clot in her abdomen area. The diagnosis seems to be that last week when she was on a catheter they accidently tore a hole that caused bleeding in her stomache lining and intestinal area. Please pray that everything turns out alright.

I think what struck me the most this week as I did research was the term Joel Bakan uses to describe what greed looks like at the higher levels of corporate power. He calls corporations in todays free market economy "pathological." That is a term you would use for a serial killer. Someone who plans and executes events which precisely fit their notions of what they want regardless of what victims lie in their wake. Since we have talked about "the powers" in class I found that particular phrasing helpful. It is almost as if corporations just sort of feed off their own identities. They perpetuate greed and will not be stopped until everything crumbles around them. Enron's shady economic practices and government ties would have gone nearly unnoticed and unchecked if they hadn't gone belly up. And I imagine that it doesn't seem like evil is happening up in the corporate headquarters. Selling out must be nearly normative.
I also was Ted Nace's book and the issues he addresses. He calls corporations the gangs of America. He says they bully to get there way. Legislationg seems to favor big corporations more than it does the every day working American. He questions the democracy of this and the irony that while we are a very individualistic culture in general, the greater governmental assistance goes to large corporations who get tax breaks for all kinds of things along with the rich. On his website (that I did not include in my resources) you can read a chapter online and you can even download a copy of the book in PDF format. His book seems to go through a logical, systematic and historical look at the rise of corporations and reduction of individual democratic rights. He even has two interesting chapters entitled; "Fighting Back: A Movement Emerges to Challenge Corporate Hegemony" and "Intelligent, Amoral, Evolving: The Hazards of Persistent, Dynamic Entities." It seems he began this research in grad school where he saw first hand corporate, legislative maneuvering in energy projects that threatened natural resources near his rural hometown. It is funny to me that most conservatives are for "trickle down" economics which primarily focuses on the rich and corporations and that conservatives also tend to laugh at any form of environmental reform. I have always wondered why those two things went together. His thoughts helped me work through that a little bit more.