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Deregulation QUOTES

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"The nature of the economic system should be a matter for public choice, and free market capitalism should not be accepted without any discussion of the rich variety of alternatives ... Unlike civil laws, economic laws are imposed on people with all the authority of immutable laws of nature. But the economy is created by people, supported by government intervention, regulation, statute and subsidy, and implemented in such a way that it gives substantial wealth and power to a privileged few, while the majority face a life of relentless work, stress and periodic financial insecurity."
-- Tony Benn

 

... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance:
The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power,
and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
-- Alex Carey

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.
-- Noam Chomsky

What is called 'capitalism'is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close cooperation with powerful states that intervene massively in the domestic economy and international society.
-- Noam Chomsky

"Deregulation was just the removal of rules
without considering why the rules were there in the first place."
-John Courage


"... leadership has to be focused on some very radical ideas that only we as 21st Century people can talk about: making sure people have a livelihood, making sure people receive a living wage, making sure the environment, the Mother Earth, is embraced and cherished and not destroyed. Making sure people are healthy in what they eat, making sure we hold people and corporations accountable for the damage they do not only to our environment but to our institutions."
-- Danny Glover

Do you realize that $150 billion of our tax money is given to the corporations, unions and wealthy people for tax breaks, special subsidies and special regulations? That money would be available for health and education and building bridges. -- Doris Haddock (Granny D)

"I'm not against the corporations. They are our wealth. But they are getting too greedy. I don't want to do away with corporations. I want them to make our cars, however, not our laws."
-- Doris Haddock (Granny D)

One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.
-- Molly Ivins

Democracy is about two things. First, it is about purpose. In the political realm, it's about an overriding concern for the common good. In the economic realm, it's about having the common good trump the narrow self-interest of the financial elite. It's about broadening corporate purpose from serving shareholders to serving stakeholders, and releasing executives from the destructive mandate to maximize shareholder gain at any cost. Second, democracy is about structures that bring this purpose to life. It's not about separating good corporations from bad, but about shaping the system forces that act on all corporations. It's about consciously crafting new democratic system structures, structures of voice, structures of decision making, structures of conflict resolution, structures of accountability.
-- Marjorie Kelly

The proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is to replace the global suicide economy ruled by rapacious and unaccountable global corporations with a planetary system of local living economies comprised of human-scale enterprise rooted in the communities they serve and locally owned by the people whose wellbeing depends on them.
-- David Korten

"Wake up America! The insurance companies took over health care!
Wake up America! The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing!
Wake up America! The speculators took over Wall Street!
Wake up America! They want your Social Security!
Wake up America! Multinational corporations took over our trade policies!
Wake up America! We went into Iraq for oil! WAKE UP AMERICA!"
-- Dennis Kucinich

Utilities used deregulation to effect a series of mergers limiting competition. In order to accelerate profits, cost cutting ensued, involving the layoff of thousands of utility company employees, including some who were responsible for maintenance of generation, transmission, and distribution systems. A number of investor-owned utilities stopped investing in the maintenance and repair of their own equipment, and, instead, cut costs to enhance the value of their stock rather than spending money to enhance the value of their service.
-- Dennis Kucinich

 

Federal policy over the past century has largely failed to promote an energy system based on safe, secure, economically affordable, and environmentally benign energy sources. The tax code, budget appropriations, and regulatory processes overwhelmingly have been used to subsidize dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power. The result: increased sickness and premature deaths, depleted family budgets, acid rain destruction of lakes, forests, and crops, oil spill contamination, polluted rivers and loss of aquatic species and the long-term peril of climate change and radioactive waste dumps–not to mention a dependency on external energy supplies.
~ Ralph Nader

It's incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists getting together to stop the corporate mentality that destroys both jobs and the environment.
-- Bonnie Raitt

Is regulation per se bad? Is better regulation bad?
I think better regulation is good for the business community,
and I think that's something we should get together on.
-- Ed Rendell

We are capable of regaining our reverence for life, of replacing the drive to conquer with the will to cooperate, of remaking our engineered institutions, including our corporations, into living systems.
-- Elisabet Sahtouris

 

 


On issue after issue, the polls -- and these are not snapshot polls; these are polls over a consistent period of time -- show that most Americans share what one could call core liberal or progressive values: investment in health care and education over tax cuts; fair trade over free trade; corporate accountability over deregulation; environmental protection over laissez-faire policies; defending Social Security and Medicare over privatizing them; raising the minimum wage over eliminating it. The country prefers progressive alternatives to the failed policies of the conservative right. -- Katrina vanden Heuvel

“The people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time.
It happened more than three years ago, and there has been no real accountability,
and there has been no real effort to fix it.
-- Elizabeth Warren

Contrary to the received wisdom, global markets are not unregulated. They are regulated to produce inequality.
-- Kevin Watkins

We have to speak out now on behalf of our community and on behalf of the land and say they're the same thing and say "No, we are not rolling over" and "No, this is not a corporate enterprise." This is democracy in the fullest sense and we must have regard and reverence and those are the cornerstones of a just society.
~ Terry Tempest Williams

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