And please. No jokes about prying me out of that chair.
I found what I believe to be three worthy places to send a little spare change--in part thanks to Mary B. and her daughter.
Now I'm looking for one more place to send my last few spare dimes. I would like them to go to some outfit that has a mission that is as radical as it is possible to be in the direction of promoting structural changes that *might* promote democratic socialism and yet still have a realistic chance of implementation in, say, the next 30 years.
Abolition or neutralization of the electoral college? Proportional voting? Public financing of all campaigns for national office? National uniform regulation of voter registration?
(I reckon most or all of the foregoing likely would require a constitutional amendment)
And then there's the stuff below. I'm going to ramble on about it a bit
I am interested in an idea that I ran across in a book by Lynn Stout titled, *The Myth of Shareholder Value.* Her thesis is that the current corporate ideology of promoting "shareholder value" at the expense of all other considerations is at the root of all current and recent corporate malfeasance & indifference to the public interest. She maintains--and she is a legal scholar with a specialty in corporate law--there is nothing in current law that mandates the priority of shareholder interest and moreover that shareholder priority actually is damaging to the economic well being of corporations and the shareholders themselves.
Not necessarily related to the issue of shareholder priority, there are laws in most states and a few at the federal level that could be invoked to rein in corporate excesses, but they are little known and seldom used to much effect--but that is yet another story.
So I am thinking; therefore, federal legislation to mandate the re-arrangement of corporate priorities would seem to be a long stride in the right direction: first comes the public interest, second comes the well-being of the firm's employees and third, the interest of the shareholders. And, oh. In determining the impact of the firm's activities on the public interest and its employees, it should be much easier for regulators to "pierce the corporate veil," that is, determine individual liability of the firm's officers in isolation from whatever penalties the corporation might face for screwing up.
The trouble with such reforms is they are not even as sexy as abolishing the electoral college--and really hard to express support for on a bumper sticker. But if anybody knows of a good organization devoted to furthering any of the above causes, let me know. Or if anybody has any additional ideas.
R.
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/
