Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Dignity - Hardcover

Hartmann, Thom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1579546277 ISBN 13: 9781579546274

Publisher: Rodale Press, 2002

Synopsis

Corporations rule the world, claims Thom Hartmann, and they are despoiling it for profit. He traces the historical friction between individual rights and the corporation, culminating in a landmark 1886 court case. Since then corporations have steadily acquired power, shifted an unfair share of the tax burden, taken control of the media, and co-opted the regulatory process for their own purposes, according to Hartmann. Hartmann cites examples of the absurd and frightening power: sterile streams and undrinkable water, poisonous neighbourhoods, deathtrap trucks for an extra USD2 in profit. To end the abuses, Hartmann calls for a grassroots revolution He says it's time to understand the true costs of our consumerist society, take back the government and shift to a values-based economy. Pre-drafted legal templates encourage individuals to begin work at the local level.

About this title

About the Author

Thom Hartmann is an award-winning author of more than a dozen books, an international relief worker and psychotherapist, a former business and marketing consultant, and the founder and former CEO of seven corporations that have generated over a quarter-billion dollars in revenue. The father of three grown children, he lives in central Vermont with his wife, Louise.

From the Inside Flap

Unequal Protection
The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights

Was the Boston Tea Party the first WTO-style protest against transnational corporations? Did the Supreme Court sell out America's citizens in the nineteenth century, with consequences lasting to this day? Is there a way for American citizens to recover democracy of, by, and for the people?

Thom Hartmann takes on these most difficult questions and tells a startling story that will forever change your understanding of American history. He begins by uncovering an original eyewitness account of the Boston Tea Party and demonstrates that it was provoked not by "taxation without representation" as is commonly suggested but by the specific actions of the East India Company, which represented the commercial interests of the British elite.

Hartmann then describes the history of the Fourteenth Amendment-- created at the end of the Civil War to grant basic rights to freed slaves-- and how it has been used by lawyers representing corporate interests to extend additional rights to businesses far more frequently than to freed slaves. Prior to 1886, corporations were referred to in U. S. law as "artificial persons." But in 1886, after a series of cases brought by lawyers representing the expanding railroad interests, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were "persons" and entitled to the same rights granted to people under the Bill of Rights. Since this ruling, America has lost the legal structures that allowed for people to control corporate behavior.

As a result, the largest transnational corporations fill a role today that has historically been filled by kings. They control most of the world's wealth and exert power over the lives of most of the world's citizens. Their CEOs are unapproachable and live lives of nearly unimaginable wealth and luxury. They've become the rudder that steers the ship of much human experience, and they're steering it by their prime value-- growth and profit at any expense-- a value that has become destructive for life on Earth. This new feudalism was not what our Founders-- Federalists and Democratic Republicans alike-- envisioned for America.

It's time for "we, the people" to take back our lives. Hartmann proposes specific legal remedies that could truly save the world from political, economic, and ecological disaster.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thom Hartmann is an award-winning author of more than a dozen books, an international relief worker and psychotherapist, a former business and marketing consultant, and the founder and former CEO of seven corporations that have generated over a quarter-billion dollars in revenue. The father of three grown children, he lives in central Vermont with his wife, Louise.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rodale Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1579546277
• ISBN 13: 9781579546274
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 360