Quotations
from the book
Corporate Predators
by Russel Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Common Courage Press, 1999
p24
Most corporate crminologists agree that corporate crime and
violence inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime
combined. That includes killings and deaths.
p47
"Capitalists now all want it one way. They want to do
whatever they feel like, but let someone else pay. It's called
privitizing the profits and socializing the risks."
Michael Thomas, former financial columnist for Lehman Brothers
corporation
p112
"These corporate executives tended to use the same language
as the paid assassins on the Geraldo show, 'I feel fine about
this because I'm just doing what the market requires,' "
Derber explains. "I develop an analogy between paid assassins
on the street and those in the suites. In the most general sense,
these corporate executives are paid hitmen who use very much the
same language and rationalization. I argue that corporations are
exemplifying a form of anti-social behavior which is undermining
a great deal of the social fabric and civilized values that we
would hope to sustain."
Charles Derber, professor of sociology, Boston College
p113
Today ... there is no mass-movement attacking the corporation
as the cause of the wealth disparity, destruction of the environment
and all the many other corporate driven ills afflicting society.
p116
...big business is eating out the democratic foundation of
this country, and when the empty shell crumbles, what kind of
chaos might we anticipate?
p130
When the Teddy Roosevelt-ear trustbusters broke up the Standard
Oil monopoly, they were motivated by political as much as economic
concerns. They understood that concentrated economic power translates
into concentrated political power, and that concentrated political
power is incompatible with democracy.
p132
The multinationals are often larger in economic terms than
the developing countries in which they do business, meaning Third
World governments are routinely going to have a ver hard time
regulating the corporate goliaths. That the company's headquarters
are outside of the country, and that the corporation has no allegiance
to the country in which it is operating, will make the regulatory
challenge that much more difficult.
p151
Our priorities are that we want to dominate North America
first, then South America, and then Asia and then Europe.
Wal-Mart President and CEO David Glass, to a USA Today business
reporter
p154
If you serve power, power rewards you with respectibility.
Noam Chomsky
p168
Disney, to its everlasting shame, has in recent years outsourced
production of Disney clothing and toys to sweatshops in Haiti,
Burma, Vietnam, China and elsewhere.
p189
It's time to redirect First Amendment law. The simple solution
to the problem is to deny corporations First Amendment protections.
Extending constitutional protections to corporations hurts democracy
by putting artificial entities with enormous resource and legal
advantages (limited liability, perpetual life, inability to be
jailed) on the same footing as people.
p198
Throughout the nation's history, the states have had the authority
to give birth to a corporation by granting a corporate charter
and to impose the death penalty on a corporate wrong-doer by revoking
its charter.
p199
... the law has always allowed the [state's] attorney general
to go to court to simply dissolve a corporation for wrongdoing
and sell its assets to others who will operate in the public ilnterest.
...convicted individuals iln California get only three strikes.
Why should big corporations get endless strikes?
Loyola Law School Professor Robert Benson
Corporate Predators