Forum Post: Focus the Demands on Ending Corporate Manipulations Of Government

We all know there are plenty of things to fix in this country. But there's a reason why this protest is occurring on Wall St, and not in DC: because the target is a body of corrupt corporations and other members of the 1%, not the government agencies they have bribed and manipulated. It's a protest against the members of the 1% who have manipulated the market in order to get insanely wealthy at the expense of the 99%, and then manipulated the government for hundreds of billions in bailout money when the bubble burst.

So then, it seems fitting that the demands of such a protest be focused on changing the relationship of the 1% with the government so that they can no longer do what they’ve been doing. These recommendations are not directly targeting the myriad problems on the surface, which would take far too long, but instead are focusing on the root of the problems:

1) Put an end to corporate personhood and with it, any possibility for corporations to contribute to political campaigns

2) Create new legislation for both the SEC and the Fed that prevents the creation of artificial market bubbles that the super-rich can ride to inordinate profits at the expense of the rest of the nation.

3) Enact strict policies prohibiting public-private collusion in all government institutions susceptible to corporate pressure, such as the FDA, the USDA, the EPA, etc. (Perhaps a quarterly audit of the personal finances of every decision making member of these institutions.)

4) Prevent the corporate influence of the law by creating better policies for how laws are created, where a) the names and associations of every person who actually wrote the law are publically disclosed, and b) Congressional members go on record before voting to clarify whether or not they have actually read the bill they intend to vote on, and c) unrelated “riders” tacked onto the end of a bill should not be permitted. Under these new conditions, laws written by a demonstrably biased private influence and unread by many representatives should be subject to appeal.

These changes may seem abstract to you at first, but if you take a moment to study what they’re doing, you’ll realize that, if passed, they would significantly reduce the usurpations of public power by private corporations.