President Ronald Reagan started it and President George Bush extended it. The principle of tort law is that if you are wrongfully injured, you have a remedy against the perpetrator. That's well over 200 years old. The unemployment ratedoesn't take into account the people who looked for a job for six months and gave up, and it doesn't take into account the under employed who work 20 hours a week. Part of growing up corporate is that we let corporations develop the yardsticks by which we measure the economy's progress.
Democracy is the best mechanism ever devised to solve problems.
When you see corporations dismantling democracy, you have to take it very seriously and turn it into a public political issue. Among the five roles that we play, one is voter-citizen, another is taxpayer, another is worker, another is consumer and another is shareholder through worker pension trusts. These are critical roles in our political economy. Yet they have become weaker and weaker as the concentration of corporate power over our political and cultural and economic institutions has increased year by year. We're supposed to have a government of, by and for the people.