#289: The Recent History Of Solid Waste: Good Alternatives Are Now Available

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #289
---June 10, 1992---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ========== RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com
================== Original Source ==================

Do you remember the organization Keep American Beautiful from the 1960s? Few people knew it was an industry association formed by America's largest corporations. Their symbol was a proud Indian with a tear in his eye. Their main focus seemed to be an anti-litter campaign. But there was more to it than that. 

According to the conventional wisdom of the day, to keep the postwar economy expanding, waste disposal capacity would need to keep growing. To develop and maintain a throw-away society, you needed to have plenty of "away" places. By 1960 anyone familiar with water pollution literature could see that burying waste in the ground was guaranteed to cause trouble. (See RHWN #97, #98.) In the late '60s Keep American Beautiful formed a non-profit research group called the National Center for Solid Waste Disposal. This soon became the National Center for Resource Recovery. Resource recovery meant incineration.[1] Industry had found its answer to the solid waste problem.

By the early 1970s, this industry association had EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] convinced that incineration made sense for solid waste disposal. After the first energy crisis occurred, in 1973, the federal Department of Energy (DOE) came on board; DOE became enthusiastic about "energy recovery" from the incineration of municipal solid waste.

As the '70s progressed, landfill rules were getting stricter, so landfilling was getting more expensive. The 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) greatly increased the costs of landfilling. In 1980 there were 20,000 landfills but by 1986 there were only 6000 remaining; during this period the "landfill crisis" emerged.

Simultaneously, by the mid-'70s the nuclear power industry had come upon hard times. The industry received no new orders for nuclear power plants after 1975; by 1979 when the Three Mile Island disaster occurred, the handwriting was visible to investors everywhere. Companies that built nuclear power plants had teams of people skilled at making large machines, and the four big nuclear manufacturers--Combustion Engineering, Babcock & Wilcox, General Electric, and Westinghouse--began to manufacture solid waste incinerators.[2]

DOE's goal was to build 200 to 250 new solid waste incinerators by 1992, or 4 to 5 in each state. According to a 1980 plan, these would burn 75% of the nation's trash and would require a capital investment somewhere between $11.5 billion and $21.5 billion, or roughly $50 million to $100 million per incinerator.

In 1980 DOE projected that by 1987 there would be 160,000 tons-per-day of incineration capacity in the U.S. and double this by 1992. But in reality in 1988 incineration capacity was only 50,000 tons per day,[3] and it was expanding at a snail's pace. In 1985 there were 42 new incinerators ordered, but by 1987 it was down to 25 and by 1989 new orders has dropped to 10. In 1987, for the first time in recent memory, more capacity was canceled (35,656 tons per day) than was ordered (20,585 tons per day).[4] The incineration industry had hit a wall.

That wall was made up of local grass-roots citizens concerned about many aspects of solid waste incineration: dollar cost, hazardous air pollution, toxic ash, destruction of material resources, waste of energy, the political corruption that accompanies multi-billion-dollar public works projects, and the gobbling up of small, local waste haulers by the incineration giants.

Citizens took on the incineration industry in many ways. They organized a frontal assault to kill incineration proposals one by one, but, equally importantly, they developed waste reduction, recycling and composting programs that starved incinerators by diverting trash. Eighty percent of solid waste can be recycled and composted, or it can be incinerated--but it it's an either/or proposition. If you build an incinerator, you foreclose your recycling and composting options for the lifetime of the furnace (20 years or more).

Incineration has been defeated at the local level. But the battle is not over. The incineration industry and its friends in government are doing their best to make an end run around local decision-makers. In California the industry has lobbied hard to have incineration included in that state's definition of recycling. In Ohio, the industry has lobbied to allow toxic incinerator ash to be "recycled" for roadway construction. In Michigan and New York, compliant state governments have allowed toxic ash to be exempted from hazardous waste rules. In Connecticut, state government obliged the industry by overriding local zoning laws to make it nearly impossible for citizens to oppose the siting of incinerators.

But the demise of the nuclear power industry showed that even America's leading corporations, heavily subsidized by government handouts, cannot keep a bad technology alive. Municipal solid waste incineration is not thriving for the same reasons: despite enthusiastic support and subsidies by federal and state governments, and enormous backing from private corporations, incineration is a bad idea, doomed to fail.

Meanwhile alternative technologies--which, together, go by the name of "materials recovery"--are expanding rapidly. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) in 1991 published BEYOND 40 PERCENT highlighting 17 communities that are recycling and composting up to 57% of their total household, commercial and institutional solid wastes.[1] The leader is Berlin Township, N.J., a town of 5629 people. But even a large city like Seattle (population: 497,000) has already achieved 36% and is steadily climbing toward its goal of 65%. Rural communities, suburban communities, and large urban areas can all recycle upwards of 50% of their solid wastes. ILSR expects communities will ultimately learn to recover more than 75% of their trash.

Having examined the materials recovery programs in many towns and cities, ILSR makes these observations about key elements of successful programs:

1) Comprehensive composting programs--year-round collection of many types of yard waste at curbside, and incentives for landscapers to compost their yard waste.

2) Mandatory participation. Successful materials recovery programs are not voluntary; a law must be passed requiring people to participate.

3) Materials must be recovered not only from single-and multi-family homes, but also from commercial and institutional establishments.

4) A wide variety of materials must be targeted for recovery, not just metal cans, glass, and paper. The most successful programs aim to collect aluminum, batteries, brush, corrugated cardboard, christmas trees, ferrous (iron-containing) cans, glass, high-grade paper, leaves, mixed paper, newspapers, oil, plastics, scrap metal, tires, white goods [appliances and furniture], and wood waste.

Food waste and construction debris are other categories that are being recovered in some locales.

The Center for the Biology of Natural Systems (CBNS at Queens College in Flushing, N.Y.) is currently running a successful pilot program composting food waste from the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, demonstrating that urban composting programs are viable.

In Baltimore, the Loading Dock is a non-profit organization set up to receive sinks, bathtubs, cabinets and other construction materials removed from homes during remodeling as well as excess materials from contractors, manufacturers and distributors. They sell these materials at 25% to 35% below retail price to other non-profits, and for low-income housing. Presently, good are donated to them from as far away as West Virginia and New York. Begun in 1984 with a $35,000 seed grant, they became self-sustaining after seven years. Their budget last year was $346,000. They figure they've kept 20,000 tons of building materials out of local landfills.

Their latest experiment is to park a truck at the local landfill to collect throw-aways from do-it-yourselfers who are remodeling. At the Howard County (Md.) landfill on a recent Saturday they collected 2.5 tons of materials in four hours. They're now negotiating to park trucks at other area landfills.

They're also computerizing their inventory, in preparation for cooperation with similar organizations in other cities, perhaps as far away as Mexico and Canada. "They've got a sizable donation of light fixtures; we've got a lot of doors, so they'll send us down a truck full of lights and pick up a truckload of doors," says Ted Rouse, the Loading Dock's vice-president. For further information contact Hope Cucina, director, The Loading Dock, 2523 Gwynn Falls Parkway, Baltimore, Md. 21216; hone (410) 728-3625.

One of the most interesting experiments is called Wastewise, a community resource center for the town of Halton Hills (population: 40,000) just east of Toronto, Canada. Wastewise was begun as a protest against proposals to fill a local quarry with 20 to 30 million tons of garbage, and to build a large solid waste incinerator. Rita and Len Landry and some friends started Wastewise to demonstrate that people could do something sensible with trash.

Begun with a $250,000 government grant, Wastewise now has 3 full-time employees, six summer students, and 60 volunteers. Wastewise inhabits a warehouse with four sections:

 (1) Information and exhibits on waste reduction and waste avoidance--"This is our main function," says project manager Diana van de Valk.

(2) a giant flea market where they sell reusable goods for 50 cents a pound (25 cents for furniture); 

(3) a repair shop where volunteers fix appliances, bikes and anything else repairable; and

 (4) recycling of cans, newspapers, and bottles. Waste reduction is their real passion, and they're off to a promising start.

Wastewise is the subject of a new 30-minute video, WASTEWISE: A COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER, from: Video Active Productions, Rt. 2, Box 322, Canton, NY 13617; phone (315) 386-8797. $25.00.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

===============

[1] Brenda Platt and Others, BEYOND 40 PERCENT, RECORD-SETTING RECYCLING AND COMPOSTING PROGRAMS (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1991), pgs. 2-5. Paperback: $25.00. To order any book from Island Press phone 1-800-828-1302, 8 to 5 Pacific time.

[2] Louis Blumberg and Robert Gottlieb, WAR ON WASTE; CAN AMERICA WIN ITS BATTLE WITH GARBAGE? (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1989), pgs. 50-52.

[3] Richard A. Denison and John Ruston, RECYCLING AND INCINERATION; EVALUATING THE CHOICES (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1990), pg. 67.

[4] Brenda Platt, cited above, pgs. 3-4.

Descriptor terms: keep america beautiful; national center for solid waste disposal; doe; incinerators; nuclear power; recycling; ilsr; cbns; the loading dock; wastewise; incineration;

#309: New Strategy Focuses On Corporations

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #309
---October 28, 1992---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ========== RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com
================== Original Source ==================

Whenever we fight for clean drinking water, or clean air, or a safe workplace, we are likely to find a corporation on the other side of the issue. The goal of a corporation is, first, to survive, and, second, to return a profit to its shareholders (its legal owners) and if the air has to be fouled to accomplish these goals, then the air will be fouled. The Business Council for Sustainable Development (a private group made up of the heads of major corporations such as DuPont and Dow Chemical) acknowledges that this is so: "Today, for instance, the earth's atmosphere is providing the valuable service of acting as a dump for pollutants; those enjoying this service rarely pay a reasonable price for it," they say.[1] This is an example of corporations "externalizing" their costs. By using the air as a free dump, a corporation passes the costs of waste disposal along to the public while the profits from dumping fill the corporate treasury. This is standard business practice.

During the last 200 years, corporations have evolved into huge organizations wielding trillions of dollars to achieve their goals. In theory, corporations are held in check by the marketplace. If they do something bad, they will incur penalties that hurt their profits. However in practice, society has found no effective way of imposing penalties on corporations, so society today has lost control of corporate behavior. Instead of effective control, we have the concept of regulation.

In their 1991 book, POWER AND ACCOUNTABILITY, Robert Monks and Nell Minow [M&M], argue that corporations thrive under regulation: "The ultimate commercial accomplishment is to achieve regulation under law that is purported to be comprehensive and preempting and is administered by an agency that is in fact captive to the industry," they say.[2] In other words corporations WANT regulation. Regulation limits their liability and in many cases shields them from competition. Notice how tobacco companies claim that the warning label on cigarettes absolves them of liability for lung cancers. Corporate polluters WANT a permit system that regulates their emissions; such a system LEGALIZES the dumping of poisons into air, land and water. The large waste haulers FAVOR regulations that require double liners and leachate collection systems in landfills; such regulations drive the small waste hauler out of business, thus limiting competition. From a corporate point of view, the best regulations are those that appear to cover everything, can't be set aside or undercut by other regulations, and are administered by an agency that is captive to the corporate community.

It is not difficult for corporations to capture a regulatory agency. (See RHWN #210, #289.) Who will staff the agency? Often an "expert" from the regulated community. Even the most vigorous opponent of an industry soon becomes coopted; perhaps he or she wants to expand the agency's jurisdiction or budget, for which industry support is needed. Perhaps he or she wants a job with industry when the administration ends. Perhaps all the information coming into the agency is prepared by industry itself.

As Robert Monks says, "When Nell and I worked with the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, during the Reagan Administration, we found that business representatives continually sought more rather than less regulation, particularly when it would limit their liability or protect them from competition." [M&M pg. 131.] Regulation was supposed to make corporations accountable, but corporations have turned regulation into a shield against accountability.

It is this ability to mold the environment to its own purposes that causes Monks and Minow to say, "Despite attempts to provide balance and accountability, the corporation as an entity became so powerful that it quickly outstripped the limitations of accountability and became something of an externalizing machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine--no malevolence, no intentional harm, just something designed with sublime efficiency for self-preservation, which it accomplishes without any capacity to factor in the consequences to others." [M&M pg. 24.]

Several things happened during the past decade to make a bad situation worse.

When Michael Milken and his associates discovered that "junk bonds" could raise enormous amounts of money easily and quickly, this paved the way for "hostile takeovers" by "corporate raiders." As Monks and Minow describe it, "Corporations are ideally suited for self- preservation, which is the definition of the externalizing machine. When they saw what Milken was doing, corporate management proceeded to do whatever was necessary to protect their capacity to direct enterprises, and they found that protecting themselves from raiders meant protecting themselves from shareholders and squeezing any semblance of accountability out of the system." [M&M pg. 47.] Since corporate raiders gained control by buying shares, corporate management protected its turf by taking control away from shareholders. This protected corporations against hostile takeovers, but it also insulated management from accountability to shareholders.

With their new-found control over everything, corporate managers began to pay themselves higher and higher salaries. Between 1973 and 1975, CEOs' [chief executive officers'] after-tax pay averaged 24 times that of the average manufacturing worker. By 1987 to 1989, the differential was 157 times the average manufacturing worker. But taxes for CEOs declined from 50 percent to 28 percent, while worker taxes increased from 20 percent to 21 percent." [M&M pg. 166.]

One consequence of high salaries in business is that smart, aggressive people are drawn into the corporate world, rather than into government or education, thus further consolidating the power of corporations. When the education system deteriorates, corporations educate workers and potential workers for their own purposes; this may provide loyal workers but it seems unlikely to produce well- rounded citizens ready to question the proper role of corporations in a free society.

Directors of corporations have never provided an effective check on the behavior of management. Directors are selected by management, paid by management, and informed by management. As compensation expert Graef Crystal says, boards are typically "ten friends of management, a woman and a black." [M&M pg. 77.] Generally speaking, boards of directors are captives of management. They provide little or no accountability.

Corporations now dominate our political life. There are 40,000 registered lobbyists in Washington--75 lobbyists for each senator and representative. A run for federal office costs anywhere from $10 million to $150 million, and most of this money comes from corporate PACs (political action committees). So every politician who gets elected is beholden to corporate interests from day one. As Senator Barry Goldwater has said, "PACs set the country's political agenda and control nearly every candidate's position on the important issues of the day. [M&M, pg. 124.]

Corporate crime is rampant. One study of America's largest 500 corporations in 1982 revealed that 23 percent of them had been convicted of a major crime or had paid more than $50,000 in penalties for serious misbehavior during the previous decade. And of course those statistics merely describe the ones who got caught.

"Why do corporations engage in criminal behavior? It has to be because, at some level, they find that the benefits outweigh the costs. Or, more likely, management finds that the benefits accrue to the corporation, while the costs are borne elsewhere--the externalizing machine at work," say Monks and Minow. [M&M pg. 133.]

Corporate greed and abuse of power seem to have worsened during the 1980s, but it has been obvious to some people for a long time that corporations exert an unhealthy influence over many aspects of American society. As W.H. Ferry said in 1959, "As the most important single factor in the lives of most Americans, the corporation should be required to make affirmative contributions to freedom and justice as our distinguishing values."[3]

Yet control of corporations has never been the focus of the environmental movement, the women's movement, or even of the labor movement. Activists have focused their attention everywhere but on the corporation, the key institution of modern life. As Richard Grossman and Frank T. Adams say,[4] "What passes for political debate today is not about control, sovereignty, or the economic democracy which many Americans thought they were fighting to secure.

"Too many organizing campaigns accept the corporation's rules, and wrangle on corporate turf. We lobby congress for limited laws. We have no faith in regulatory agencies, but we turn to them for relief....

"How much more strength, time and hope will be invest in such dead ends?" they ask.

To gain control over corporations, examine the corporate charter, Grossman and Adams argue (see RHWN #308). The corporate charter is granted by state legislatures; without a charter, a corporation ceases to exist. The charter says a corporation must obey the law, serve the public good, and do no harm. Corporations that fail to comply can lose their right to do business.

Grossman and Adams suggest a wide range of controls that might be exerted through the corporate charter, among them:

--corporate owners and officers must be liable for harms they cause; --charters must be reviewed annually and corporate officers show that all corporate harm has ceased; --the corporation is an artificial creation and must not enjoy the protections of the bill of rights; --no corporation should exist forever.

It is a curious fact of history that the environmental movement has never focused its attention on the corporate charter as a means of controlling corporate behavior. Now that seems likely to change.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

===============

[1] Stephen Schmidheiny and others, CHANGING COURSE (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), pg.9.

[2] Robert A.G. Monks and Nell Minow, POWER AND ACCOUNTABILITY*fn01 (N.Y.: HarperCollins, 1991), pg. 131. Hereafter cited as M&M.

[3] W.H. Ferry, THE CORPORATION AND THE ECONOMY (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Center for Study of Democratic Institutions, [1959),] pg. 7. Single copies available from us for $6.00.

[4] Richard Grossman and Frank T. Adams, TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS: CITIZENSHIP AND THE CHARTER OF INCORPORATION (Cambridge, Mass.: Charter, Inc., 1992). For a copy, send $4.00 plus a self-addressed, stamped envelope containing 52 cents postage to: Charter, Inc., P.O. Box 806, Cambridge, MA [22140.]22140.

Descriptor terms: corporations; business council for sustainable development; corporate charters;

Footnotes:
fn01: http://www.amazon.com/Power-Accountability-Robert-A-Monks/dp/0887305342

#308: Corporations Are Externalizing Machines; The Way Sharks Are Killing Machines.

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #308
---October 21, 1992---
News and resources for environmental justice.
------
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org ========== RACHEL-4CM = DIOXIN FOCUSED DIRECTORY Remote Access Chemical Hazards Electronic Library. Dioxinnz.com
================== Original Source ==================

The modern corporation defines our world. The invention of the modern corporation has allowed us to become the wealthiest people in all of human history. It has also allowed us--in just 100 years of industrial enterprise--to march to the brink of collapse, rapidly destroying the planet as a place suitable for human habitation.

Today, when the top 2 percent of us hold as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, it is an open question whether our democratic form of government can survive in any meaningful way. Here again, corporations are key. How to control the behavior of corporations has become the central question we must all address.

A corporation is a group of people who have been granted a bundle of rights and privileges guaranteed by the government. The government grants those rights and privileges by issuing a piece of paper, a certificate of authority called a corporate charter.

Before there was a United States of America, kings granted corporate charters, creating organizations such as the East India Company and the Hudson's Bay Company.

As American colonists fought to throw off the rule of English kings beginning in 1776, and created the world's first constitutional democracy in 1789, they carefully placed the right to charter corporations in the hands of state legislatures. Today every state legislature still has the power to grant, to amend, and to revoke, corporate charters.

Corporations chartered in other states are called foreign corporations. Corporations chartered in other nations are called alien corporations. Legislatures allow foreign or alien corporations to go into business in their states through the same chartering process. An important new booklet,[1] published this month, describes some of the changes that have taken place in corporate rights, privileges, and behavior, during the last 200 years. Called TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS: CITIZENSHIP AND THE CHARTER OF INCORPORATION, by Richard Grossman and Frank T. Adams, the booklet describes how citizens controlled corporations before the civil war of 1861. Up to that time corporations were chartered for a specific limited purpose (for example, building a toll road or canal) and for a specific, limited period of time (usually 20 or 30 years). At the end of the corporation's lifetime, its assets were distributed among the shareholders and the corporation ceased to exist. The number of owners was limited by the charter; the amount of capital they could aggregate was limited. The owners were personally responsible for any liabilities or debts the corporation incurred, including wages owed to workers. Often profits were specifically limited in the charter. Corporations were not established merely to "make a profit." Each corporation was chartered to achieve a specific social goal that a legislature decided was in the public interest.

Early Americans feared corporations as a threat to democracy and freedom. They feared that owners (shareholders) would amass great wealth, control jobs and production, buy the newspapers, dominate the courts and control elections.

After the civil war, during the 1870s and 1880s, these fears began to be realized. Owners and managers of corporations pressed relentlessly to expand their powers, and the courts gave them what they wanted. Perhaps the most important change occurred when the U.S. Supreme Court granted corporations the full constitutional protections of an individual citizen. Congress had written the 14th amendment to the constitution to protect the rights of freed slaves, but the court in 1886 declared that no state shall deprive a corporation "of life, liberty or property without due process of law." Now corporations had real legal muscle.

By the early 20th century, courts had limited the liability of shareholders; corporations had been given perpetual lifetimes; the number of owners was no longer restricted; the capital they could control was infinite. Some corporations were given the power of eminent domain (the right to take another's private property with minimal compensation to be determined by the courts). Of course a corporation cannot be jailed. It cannot even be fined in any real sense; when a fine is imposed, it is the shareholders who pay it and it becomes just another cost of doing business.

With limits on liability, perpetual life, and the same rights as every citizen, corporate growth was guaranteed.

A corporation brings together three groups of people--investors (shareholders), who are the legal owners; labor; and management, which includes a board of directors.

In theory the shareholders are responsible for all decisions. But a recent book on the modern corporation by Robert Monks and Nell Minow[1] makes it clear that this theory has been an empty fiction for many years. Ownership is now fragmented into shares so small that "the concept of ownership has been diluted to the point of disappearance." Increasing the number of shareholders reduces the incentive and ability of each shareholder to gather information and monitor management's performance.

Historically, labor has not sought control of decision-making, leaving that to management. Instead, labor has settled for a growing share of profits. In the past decade, labor's share and its power have steadily diminished.

The board of directors is appointed by management. Its compensation is set by management. The average corporation director puts in less than three weeks each year but draws compensation ranging from $20,000 to $60,000 or more.

"Since they are selected by management, paid by management, and-- perhaps most important--informed by management, it is easy for directors to become captive to management's perspective," say Monks and Minow.

Management has the Board of Directors in its pocket. This leaves but one remaining check on management--the shareholders. Management is directly accountable to the shareholders; at least that is what the theory says. But the reality is quite different. Monks and Minow trace, step by step, court case by court case, the disintegration of accountability in the modern corporation. Particularly during the 1980s (when Monks was a top Reagan appointee), corporate managers cut their last remaining ties of accountability to shareholders.

People like to think that the power of management is balanced by the power of shareholders. "This remembered sense of balance is so powerful that it persists despite unmistakable proof that it no longer exists," say Monks and Minow. "Management accountability to shareholders is more than an economically beneficial arrangement; it is the basis on which we, as a matter of public policy, give legitimacy to the impact that private entities have on our lives. We would no more create a private entity without accountability than a public one; we don't want corporate dictators any more than we want political ones. But today, any remaining accountability is little more than a vestige of the original contract, the last remaining trace of the myth that no one seems to want to give up."

Monks and Minow describe in detail the tools that corporate managers developed during the 1980s to diminish the decision-making power of shareholders. They argue persuasively, and in detail, that today the modern corporation is run by management chiefly for the benefit of management. Though shareholders continue to benefit from profitable decisions, shareholders no longer call the shots. Management rules the roost.

But even management is not entirely in control. Monks and Minow argue at length that the modern corporation has a life and a logic all its own. The main goal of a corporation is to gather benefits for its members, and to pass costs on to others--to "internalize" benefits and to "externalize" costs.

"Despite attempts to provide balance and accountability, the corporation as an entity became so powerful that it quickly outstripped the limitations of accountability and became something of an externalizing machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine--no malevolence, no intentional harm, just something designed with sublime efficiency for self-preservation, which it accomplishes without any capacity to factor in the consequences to others."

What about government regulation? Monks and Minow argue that governments do not have what it takes to control corporations. "In fact, government is now as much a creation of business as the other way around," they say. Historically, they argue, corporations have turned government controls into corporate shields. And: "...the actual impact of all the laws, all the regulations, and all the bureaucrats on large corporations is surprisingly small."

What is left?

Grossman and Adams suggest that anyone concerned about justice-- anyone skirmishing with corporations to stop them from doing harm-- should focus attention on the corporate charter, the original source of control created for us by the earliest Americans--a source of power still available to us today, if we will only explore it and put it to use.

All state legislatures still have the right to grant, to amend, and to revoke corporate charters. Legislatures are still responsible for overseeing corporate activities through the chartering process.

Citizens can define and control corporations. It will require some homework, examining state histories and precedents, examining the charters of existing corporations, thinking creatively about how to assert control, focusing, and organizing.

Grossman and Adams say, "Our right to charter corporations is as crucial to self-government as our right to vote. Both are basic franchises, essential tools of liberty."

WE STAND IN PERIL OF LOSING OUR LIBERTY AND OUR LIVES--THE HEALTH OF OUR PLANET AND OF OUR CHILDREN--IF WE DO NOT LEARN TO CONTROL CORPORATE BEHAVIOR. THIS MUST BECOME A CENTRAL FOCUS OF OUR WORK, LOCALLY, NATIONALLY, AND WORLDWIDE. THE BEHAVIOR OF CORPORATIONS IS CENTRAL TO EVERY DANGER THAT THREATENS US. THERE IS NO MORE CRUCIAL CHALLENGE THAT WE FACE.

--Peter Montague, Ph.D.

===============

[1] Richard Grossman and Frank T. Adams, TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS: CITIZENSHIP AND THE CHARTER OF INCORPORATION*fn01 (Cambridge, Mass.: Charter, Inc., 1992). To inquire about copies, write: Charter, Inc., P.O. Box 805, Cambridge, MA [22140.]22140.

[2] Robert A.G. Monks and Nell Minow, POWER AND ACCOUNTABILITY*fn02 (N.Y.: HarperCollins, 1991).

Descriptor terms: corporations; corporate charters; shareholders; labor; management; corporate accountability;

Footnotes:
fn01: http://www.ratical.com/corporations/TCoBeij.html
fn02: http://www.amazon.com/Power-Accountability-Robert-A-Monks/dp/0887305342