mothers estimated may be just 10 or 12. i still put it at 20%. predictions are high. what we get is two senators. then chairman of the senate finance committee walter .. supported their revenue active 19452 cut tax rates. if this revenue act has the effect it is hoped to 1/6 today stimulate the expansion of business to bring in revenue to create more jobs at the same time. i think we can get more revenue into the government and more jobs created if we cut the tax rate to allow businesses to expand which

was completely different from the other economic model. profits tax in my opinion may raise more revenue for the united states than it would be retained. we had a 90% corporate tax. and hawks is saying if you'll cut that tax below 90%, i think we can actually not only create more jobs because you stimulate business you'll actually grow the economy and get more revenue at the same time. and hawks added this statement, senator hawks, you cannot get a golden egg out of a dead goose. hawks led enough republicans and senator george led enough democrats to pass the revenue act of 1945. and the revenue act of 1945 cut the corporate tax from 90% to

38%. imagine that. 90% to 38%. it cut the personal income tax. plus it, promised more tax later. this is all we can get through now, more are coming later. we cut what is known as the capital tax. he eliminated regulations, slashed federal spending dramatically which, of course, you can do. we no longer in the need to tax planes and ammunition. so an enormous cut in federal expense, the end result of this was a massive economic expansion. businesses, finally, we have been under these heavy taxes for 13 years and even more and the hoover administration was not good either. we were in a great depression for 13 years.

now the at any rate have been cut. it's time to expand. you got fast food -- mcdonald's gets going. you get the holiday inn, you get television, xerox copy machines and all these kinds of entrepreneurs and many more come to the floor after world war ii and one of the most exciting statistics here is this. we had 39 million people employed in civilian employment, nonmilitary, that goes up to 55 million. the stock market increased by 90% in 1946. private gross national product increased for 30%. it's the only time it had done in that u.s. history and furthermore, the experts were estimating -- well, i think we will get $31 million into the

federal treasury in '46, maybe '47. we got 31 million. we had 43 billion. we increased that by more than 25% because the economy had expanded so much, more than anybody anticipated. the end result is that we have 3.9% unemployment in 1946. 3.9% unemployment in 1947. the united states has this burgeoning growth rate. and when europe, who is trying the other means, the keynesian means to get back on their feet -- when they're failing, the united states is able to send tons and tons of food over to feed europeans who at different points in the post-war period were dying at the rate of 1 per second. those deaths were curtailed by free food that the united states sent over after the war. we sent that food. the economy recovered and we cut the federal deficit during 1946

and 1947, slightly, but we did cut it. in part because the revenue so much exceeded expectations. so what i'm saying is this, we have a lot during world war ii that gives us lessons today, what works, what doesn't work in an expanding economy. the taxes we come to expect today, the economic bill of rights, the right to education, which we've seen, for example, with the student loan program and president obama. we've seen changes with the right to a decent home which goes to urban renewal first and then you go to the community reeve investment act in the 1970s which promises very low interest rates to poor people so that they can have homes, which excelrates, the housing crisis and. the politics today heavily

shaped by what we saw happen in world war ii. but what we saw happen in world war ii -- if at the study it more carefully, that we got out of the great depression by freeing up the economy and cutting tax rates, not by following the proscription to increase and perpetuate the high economic growth that we experienced during world war ii. thank you. [applause] >> all right, burt, and anita. we'll open it up for questions and wait until i call on you so we get everything. i'm going to ask the first question, and that is, i read this book -- i found it a more straightforward and sober history than i might have thought from the title how expanded executive powers and restricted civil liberties shaped wartime america.

i wonder your marketers at your publishers wrote that subtitle? >> actually, that sub tittitle simon and schusters named the title but they deduced it from the book. anita talked about the war production board, the price controls, the rationing and all of this, the spiraling national debt, listen, the national debt doubled in the first year of roosevelt's presidency. then it increased sixfold during world war ii. so that when you have a at the end of world war ii is a national debt of $260 billion and the interest to pay that was about what the whole national debt was when roosevelt became president. in other words, we'd gone from having a national debt of 20

billion to having an interest rate of 20% on a national debt that was almost 300 billion. so what i'm suggesting is that national debt and the growth of that federal spending and the economic bill of rights which was -- roosevelt had hoped would perpetuate that into the future is a big part of the war and the civil liberties -- we haven't done as much with. the japanese americans, of course, most of you know were interned. we had roosevelt using wiretapping extensively. it's essential defense. enemies might be sending messages in. well, you're granting that and pretty soon he's wiretapping republicans. and pretty soon he's wiretapping his wife eleanor. so we see an abuse of those civil liberties as well, and so as well as shutting down magazines and papers that opposed him so much for francis

biddle his own attorney general was having to fight him on a lot of this. so i think that is a fair deduction of the contents of the book, even though i have to give our publishers simon&should alsoer for doing the subtitle. we did the main title. i think anita named it fdr goes to war. >> my name is steven short. i was a little bit thrown off by the title of the book. granted, that the tax rates had reached absurd prewar levels but the other instances, the rationing, direction of production to win the war, the consequences of the expanding debt. i'm not at all convinced that any other president would have not ended up at the same locus after a two-ocean war? >> part of our premise is that

one of the reasons we wound up in the two-ocean war is because we were so weak during the 1930s. and we have information in fdr goes to war -- fdr cut military spending all during the 1930s in terms of the percentage of military spending in the federal budget, and this was on top of the fact that during herbert hoover's presidency, the preceding president, military budgets were very, very low, so the american military was just incredibly weak and also just incredibly behind the rest of the world. we were something like 17th in terms of military in both strength and innovation. but fdr, as we show, all during '1940 and '41 during pearl harbor and he has taken over lots of executive orders and the thing, he's not putting these

agencies under the control of congress or other individuals. he has fifteen defense agencies under the president's office. it's called the office of emergency management. and it's directly supervised by franklin roosevelt. so we lift some of his grabs of power. and i agree a president facing war has to do some certain things but roosevelt looked for ways to get his big government in action and you especially get this with taxation. he had been wanting high rates of withholding from a huge percentage of americans for his entire life. and he used the war emergency to get that through. >> yes. >> you should have given me a little more warning, no. two things really quickly.

the standard narrative for the post-war boom is the war spending built up this enormous pent-up demand in americas. it's not just a statement buting in the narrative you explained is counter to that because it's t-centers on reduced regulations and reduced tax rates. the question is if truman was so aligned with roosevelt in this matter, do you believe that had roosevelt not died, had he still than healthy and not died -- it was in april of '45, that he somehow would have managed to do what truman, according to you, wanted to do, but because of, you know, political naivete or whatever failed to do. would roosevelt do you think have done that and presumably if he would have done what he

wanted to do, keep tax rates high, pursue the more keynesian rather than the supply side strategy, then we wouldn't have had the post-war boom, would roosevelt have been more likely to continue the new deal programs? the new deal movement than truman? was it truman's political naivete? >> that's a good question. roosevelt had vast experience with congress and had enormous confidence that he could get his way on most things. the new deal revival was -- what he called the new deal revival, his new deal plan for post-america. he died before he do it. truman didn't even know we had an atomic bomb. he's trying to appoint cabinet members and trying to figure out what's going on because roosevelt kept him in the dark, plus, as a senator he hadn't had

close access to the executive branch so he's still learning the job, the essence is, because he's still learning the job, he hadn't developed the political skills yet to be able to get what roosevelt might have been able to get. then the question, don, said, could roosevelt have achieved this? it's one of these kind of counter-factual questions, you know, you think about, i wonder if roosevelt would have been able to do it? i am not sure he would have been able to do so. anita, what do you think? >> i think one side of this that's interest -- and we point this out in "fdr goes to war," fdr had lost a lot of clout in congress in '39 and '40. his court-packing scheme in '38 really angered a lot of people. and then he also tried to, of course, purge various members of congress and the senate. one of them was senator tidings from maryland. and if you notice in the book, then tidings leads the filibuster to defeat several of

the proposals that fdr once passed before congress adjourned in the summer of 1949 and tidings is delighted to do that because he sees fdr as an enemy. so he lost -- people were very suspicious of him and the way he manipulated and that's one side of it. >> the other side is he was sick. he worked from 20 hours a day -- >> a week. >> his physicians simply said the stress and all this, he had high blood pressure and he couldn't take that so roosevelt was only working half time, and so it's hard to be effective when you're only working half time. i don't think he would have been able to do it. the other thing is walter george, like tieding was the subject awful purge. roosevelt tried to get george out of office which is one of the reason george was so hostile to roosevelt's attitudes in world war ii. and so george i think was always going to be there to oppose him.

you had the chairman of the finance committee opposing you and you had this large bloc of republicans opposing you. i think roosevelt would have been likely not to have been successful but it's hard to say. he would have really tried and the thing is, every time you try to think well, roosevelt can't pull this off, sometimes he gets something on someone and then that person ends up being an ally and he's able to pull it off. certainly, it was easier for senator george and senator hawks dealing with truman than it would have been a healthy roosevelt. >> another political change there is, the senators that roosevelt tried to purge were democrats, not republicans. it was democratic primaries he tried to intervene in. >> uh-huh, yes. his own democratic senators. and, of course, if you're looking at the influence of fdr on truman and other presidents, waiting in the wings is lyndon johnson and lyndon johnson is a new member of congress and he's soaking up everything fdr does in terms of patronage and big

government options and he's a big help to fdr in the national elections in 1940. >> roosevelt appearance delicate task using manipulating civil liberties which we haven't done as much with. for example, he wants to put moses annenberg in prison. moses annenberg is the editor of the "philadelphia enquirer" and it threatens to bring pennsylvania into the republican column and you go back to annenberg with an irs audit who is vulnerable. he doesn't just pay a fine. to go see prison. then johnson is guilty of all sorts of campaign contributions and especially some of his supporters so the irs is going after johnson, too, and so johnson comes to roosevelt. so roosevelt has to pull the irs off of johnson so that he can continue to be roosevelt's man in texas. and then put it on annenberg to make sure annenberg goes to application so you have a maneuvering here by fdr. and he did pull both of those off.

so he was someone who you're dealing with at the executive branch could be very powerful. >> yes, in the back. >> were you both united in the way that you viewed economic relations or the lack of economic relations between the united states and japan leading up to world war ii? and how surprised do you both believe the united states was by the attack on pearl harbor? >> i think we were pretty united in our view on that. and that is something that i did the majority of the work for on the book, so i'll answer first. we do think -- we point out in the book, early, in the early pages, in 1933, and this is even before fdr is inaugurated as president.

he's talking with two of his advisors, molly and tugwell and they're both new dellers they will be part of his brain trust. they are both columbia professors. and the people directing the economy should be intellectual so there should be the recipe right there. and fdr mentions to tugwell and molly and he always favored china and that a war with japan would work sooner than later so why not? fdr had that flippant side to his nature. and i will point out -- he'd never been in a foxhole. he'd never been in the military. he'd never been shot at. he took that, i think, rather lightly and when you look at the men who died in the pacific in the early days of world war ii, i find that really appalling that he let them go into those exposed areas such as guam and wake island and parts of the philippines with such bad

weapons and many of the men who died, i believe, in those conflicts could blame fdr. but as far as pearl harbor goes, i do think that we cut the japanese off from their resources. and i will say an interesting study is to read the papers of ambassador joseph grew, who was in tokyo all during the '30s and he's pleading with washington to put off this embargo. he's pleading with them in saying there is a peace faction in the japanese and we can build that if you will put the embargo off. but roosevelt and hull are determined to embargo oil and scrap iron. and they make it very, very difficult for the japanese to receive any of that so the japanese war party gains ascendiantcy in tokyo and thus pearl harbor. and i'm asked did i think fdr knew about pearl harbor -- we

say in the book that fdr knew an attack was coming and he knew an attack was probably coming the first of december, the first two weeks of december. but where was it going to be? and almost everybody thought it would probably be singapore and probably the philippines. the japanese had 50,000 troops in saigon, vietnam, back then french indochina so moving from french indochina or to the philippines or to singapore was an easy thing. and fdr had -- fdr and general marshall had the war department warn the bases to go on high alert. the problem -- if i had an hour i could go over what happened at pearl harbor. it's a perfect storm of mistakes. and everyone there believed they were in command but they were in command with the attitude, oh, it doesn't matter anyway because we're not going to really be attacked and so why bother? that's a very bad way to do

that. other commanders had done that but if it was 1932, 1934 and 1936 and you were a commander in hawaii and if you could have that attitude and you could be fine and you could do two years out in hawaii and not do anything but who cares but in the summer of 1941 it was a very poor way to run things. so i don't think fdr directly knew it was going to be pearl harbor but he knew an attack was coming and what i blame him for most with pearl harbor is he had given 1900 antiaircraft guns to other countries and he had given away hundreds of fighter planes and i will give the commanders in hawaii this much credit. they didn't have the weapons either. they were very shorthanded. [inaudible] >> well, admiral richardson had gotten fired. i point this out in the book. he was pacific fleet commander in 1940 and a realist and i think a very capable officer and he went to the white house

finally in october of 1940 and argued, which you didn't do, for two hours with franklin roosevelt about keeping the fleet at pearl harbor and he said we're vulnerable. we need to move the fleet back to california. and finally he really became pretty heated and he finally told franklin roosevelt, mr. president, i have to inform you that most of the leaders of the pacific fleet do not have confidence in you to lead our navy. and fdr didn't do anything at that precise moment, but he would not act on what richardson said. and he finally was -- fdr was re-elected the next month, november of 1942, yet, a third term. and right after the election he fires joe richardson. so you have to think about -- i don't know that a movie has ever really gone into the life of admiral richardson or not, but he's back in the united states on the day of pearl harbor's attack and he's sitting there getting all that news. and he knows, i warned them all over a year ago and it still

happene happened. >> tim lynch with cato. did fdr acknowledge any limits on constitutional limits on the power of commander in chief during world war ii? you mentioned the internment of the japanese. i also have read historical accounts of when he set up the military tribunals to try the nazi saboteurs, some of the historical accounts i've read, said that he legality it be known through back channels that if the supreme court tries to challenge my authority to try and execute these people through military tribunals i'm going to execute them anyway. i wonder if he acknowledged any limits on the power of commander in chief during wartime, whether the bill of rights had any application? >> i have not seen any. if he did, i haven't run across it. >> i've never seen any.

>> he tended not to talk about that kind of thing. so it's not something he talk about that with a great deal of frequency and i felt there were any kind of restrictions during wartime. >> fdr, reminds me -- or i should say bill clinton reminds me of fdr and both really smart and they're careful not to step on land mines if they don't have to. and fdr just frequently ignored the constitution, simply ignored it. >> let me ask a follow-up, for the past four years we have debated a good bit whether the new deal model, getting out of the great depression, is a good model for getting out of the great recession today. there have been people on both sides, many sides of that, should there be a similar debate on whether roosevelt's treatment of civil liberties in wartime is

a model for what we've done since 9/11 or should be a cautionary model? >> that's good. roosevelt, of course, by putting 110,000 japanese americans into internment camps has gone way beyond anything that we've seen today. but roosevelt -- keep in mind, there was a political angle to that. not only did governor earl warren enthusiastically endorse doing that, the motive appears to be heavily political, you know, anita and i would talk about this often because the japanese were such good workers and had been on successful in the vegetable industry that many of the anglo saxons felt competitive pressures and so -- if you were to have polled california you would have find there was a majority of non-japanese, hey, if we get these guys out of the way, that's good thing. roosevelt played that and put them in the internment camps even though j. edgar hoover he

at the fbi said they are not dangerous. let's not do this and fdr did it anyway, his attorney general didn't like it france sis biddle but fdr enjoyed the political success of removing them. not only are they removed and they could vote against me and they are removed. finally, the western coordinator out there with the japanese is saying why are they still here? this is in '43. we can let them out. they joined the army and highly decorated people. why are we letting this group -- you might indict an individual who shows signs of having made overtures that should cause him to be investigated but you're talking about a whole group of people, grandma, the 6-year-old, all of these people being hauled into these camps. it was atrocious and so you have the people who are -- who are actually in charge of the camps saying, no, this isn't right. and roosevelt keeps it going and

keeps it going and finally, the secretary admits, you know, what? i've been around roosevelt a long time, i have a feeling after the election things might change. and sure enough, the first cabinet meeting after the '44 election roosevelt is safely elected, three house seats have been gained in california and then we work on getting the japanese out of the internment camps. so i think some of it is a civil liberties issue, david, but some of it is a politics issue. in other words, there are political advantages to roosevelt to choose this. and i want to add that there are military people who thought they ought to put the japanese in camps. it wasn't just roosevelt but i'm suggesting there were many who said no, let's not do this and some said let's do. and roosevelt said, yeah, i think i'll sign the executive order and let's put them in there and then he took political advantage of this and then lifted the restrictions when he was safely re-elected. >> all right. we'll take one last question

here. >> jerry norton. i just want to ask a couple of questions. one is that 90% plus corporate tax rate you were asking about, excess profits. >> yes. >> was that applied across-the-board to companies or was that part of some progressive corporate tax system? >> that was -- it was across-the-board. you had an earnings restriction but it wasn't very high. so that really most companies were caught, if not at the 90% level, at least pretty close to it. and certainly all major corporations were -- had been caught at the 90% level. and so that was in place. and it's important to note that roosevelt, and many of his followers wanted to keep it that way, or at least close to it. after the war it was going to be a source of revenue for giving people their right to a decent home, a right to a good education and a right to a job. >> do you have another question? >> just on the politics of truman. could he have vetoed these

reductions in taxes if he had wanted to? >> yes he could have and he didn't. he went along with it. he wasn't enthusiastic about it but he went along with it. i'm not sure what -- again, roosevelt -- he's gone and you're trying to think what would he have done. but truman was willing at least on this first tax cut to go along with it. and part of it is he's new on his job and congress is urging him to do it. but when further tax cuts were passed by congress in 1946 and 1947 he vetoed them again and again and ran against them 1948 and calling them tax cuts for the rich and made that the basis, the fundamental basis, for his 1948 campaign for the election. i vetoed most of the tax cuts, most of the money are going back to the rich and i'm for the small guy. >> the book is "fdr goes to war." thank you, burt folsom and anita

folsom, now let's go to lunch. >> for more information on burt folsom, go to burtfolsom.com. >> and ralph nader gives his thoughts about the misbehavior of corporations. mr. nader goes on the big businesses. it's a little under an hour and a half. [applause] >> so it's -- it's so exciting to see some people really get so involved. i think for a long time i think we were wondering where is everybody? why is everybody asleep? people weren't asleep. they were getting steamed and this is what this book is all about. it's about people who have reached a certain sort of level of saying enough is enough and they want to make some things.

and it's a perfect analogy in this city and all over the country to see that the ripple effect of these things are pretty remarkable. you reach a tipping point where one thing happens and it creates a domino effect throughout the world and we're seeing it throughout the world and i think once this power is unleashed it gets an energy of its own and it continues it grow and grow and i hope you continue to support what these young people are doing and be involved and go down there. we've been down there several times to cook for them, to be there just sort of say we're here. now, it's remarkable, you know, we don't hear a lot more about occupation but the occupation has grown. in the square they have about 300 people now that are there that are staying the night. [applause] >> and that's remarkable. [applause] >> that's really an incredible

thing to happen being that it's in the middle of winter while it's cold while many are sitting in our warm beds there are people holding the fort so to speak and that's really exciting. so we have tonight, of course, ralph nader, someone who has been occupying so many arenas in, i think, our lives, whether it's highway safety, auto safety, health care, the drug industry. you could name any kind of industry that touches anybody's lives, ralph nader had a presence there somewhere. it's wonderful to have him here back again. he wrote this book called "getting steamed" when i read about it, i said is it a cookbook? he said well, sort of. it's getting steamed to overcome corporatism and it's basically a

call to action. that's what this is. it's a call to action to really make the change and go through the next level. and if you purchase this book today, you get along with that book "america needs a raise" by the ex-president of the afl-cio, mr. sweeney. once buy this book, you get a book. and every time ralph nader comes to busboys and poets, you get a gift. this is a perfect present for the holiday to give friends. so if you want to have it personalized to a friend that you want to give it to, please stick around afterwards. we're going to have a book-signing here. so i'd like to welcome to our stage, one more time, mr. ralph nader. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you.

thank you very much, andy. we all read the cover article of the "washington post" magazine this last sunday where he's called democracy's restaurateur, something that i thought was an inappropriate label for him, and he brings so many people together. it's so good for many of you come this evening. we want to welcome booktv. c-span is here, so we'll stress the informality of this effort as this is tradition of booktv, which is going to relay some of your comments as well. now, we've all heard about dozens of corporate abuses, and we've all heard how ineffectual the responses have been to these corporate predatory activities, whether they're economic, financial, health, safety, environmental, war, poverty, posterity. again and again the media,

although it could do much better, does report far more than we as citizens are organized to use. whether it's national, international, local, regional. and the district of columbia bereft of any voting rights in the congress has an example of that. we've had that documented many times and we've seen how much damage it's done to the self-realization of people here in the district. now, the question is, not how much we know in order to be upset with the concentration of power in so few hands, where the few decide for many and the few called the plutocracy ruled by the wealthy control our government and turn that into an oligarchy and that's what franklin roosevelt meant when he sent a message to congress in 1938 to establish a temporary

national economic commission to study concentrated corporate power. he said, and i paraphrase him quite closely, whenever government is controlled by private economic power, that is fascism. that is 1938. that's the control of government by concentrated corporate power. now, we have a very matured corporate state now. i'm sure franklin delano roosevelt would be astonished as well as our founding fathers as to how much of the power of the people has been sucked away into a few hands whose principal yardstick of behavior and measurement is commercial. it's profiteering and it's good to know that many, not all of the conflicts in human society, have been the collision between

commercial values and civic spiritual values that really define a civilization and define the good society. way back when the three major religions were coming forward, every one of them as well as other major religious doctrines many centuries ago warned their adherence not to give too much power to the merchant class, not to give too much to the pursuit of money or the pursuit of profit. now, why did they all come to the same conclusion? you think it was revelatory? it was daily experience. the money lenders, et cetera. now, in the last 2,000 years, we have seen all kinds of formulations where power is concentrated in the hands of the

commercial interests, so much so they have led to wars. they have led to sectarian differences. they have led to a lot of consequential effects. in our history, there were some of the founding fathers who wanted who wanted to put the corporation in the constitution, by way to subordinating that to the human beings but that provision never got through. you see, at that time, they remembered and they knew about the enormous power of the east india company which ruled india with an absolute iron hand for many years, with devastating human casualties. they knew about the hudson bay company that was in north america and while the modern formula corporation was being established with the textile mills some years after the constitution was ratified through england, their reference

point was the menacing of these gigantic corporations and they didn't want to replay in proliferating form in the country that they thought would exceed their constitutional structure in the usa. now, what is important here to realize is that there has been a whole series of ways to fight back. people have fought back. they fought back his workers. they fought back his parents. they fought back his buyers and shoppers, they fought back as farmers. they fought back as women. they fought back as slaves. they have fought back and we have in our history the following ways that they fought back. they fought back trying to use the vote. they fought back with regulation of these companies. you can see the farmer and work fight back in the 19th century

to create some of the foundations of fair labor standards and protecting farmers from the banks and the railroads leading to the populace progressive movement. they fought back in the courts, winning cases now and then. some of them fought back as owners, shareholders. some of them fought back as cooperatives, a new model that wasn't so commercially determined. it was owned by the farmers or owned by the consumers. some of them fought back by organizing rallies and demonstrations. you can see the occupy movement in that mode at the present time. some of them fought back by striking. some of them fought back by forming unions. some of them fought back by whistle-blowing, by blowing a whistle inside these companies and taking the terrible information to the public, to

the prosecuting attorneys or to legislators or to the media. now, because they have fought back, they attracted the attention of various transformations of corporate structure in power. corporations have as their purpose, the aggregation of sales, the aggregation of profits, the aggration of executive bonuses and to do that they have to control labor, technology. we're not talking about small business now. small business has its own main street accountability doesn't have anywhere near the power. we're talking about these large multinational corporation that is now number about 500 -- real big ones, operating globally and the 1500 or so corporations who control the majority of 535 members of congress getting

their way. that's the -- that's the terrain and these corporations are counseled by very brilliant corporate attorneys who are really the strategists of the power brokers that are the circle, the accountant and the publicists and the lobbyists and the shareholder controllers -- all of these are animated and directed by these corporate law firms, which themselves are concentrated in perhaps 3 or 400 firms. and let's face it. they are geniuses in concentrating power. the creativity of the modern corporate system is probably one of the greatest intellectual achievements, however, nasty, however corrupting, however destructive in american history. they are always dynamically

trying to figure out how to blunt, co-op, weaken, undermine or even smear all of these ways i just mentioned to hold these corporations accountable, to hold them responsible. the more they succeed, the more these corporations can be charged with not delivering an adequate level of economic activity for the people as they control the gateways, since they control the capital labor and technology. and indeed the evidence is truly overwhelming. in 1900, there were a lot of poor people in this country. in the year 2011, there are a lot of poor people in this country. there are a lot of uninsured people for health care in this country. in 1900 there were a lot of uninsured people for health care. the difference is, that the worker productivity has increased 25 fold adjusted for

inflation per worker. so why is there any poverty? why do 15 million children go to bed hungry at night and why is poverty increasing even though the gross national product continues to increase? two general reasons, one is power is so concentrated that the wrong things are being produced and the important things are not being produced in sufficiency and well distributed health care with the focus of prevention. for example, adequate food supply with nutrition, for example. public transit of a modern and convenient style. the wrong things that are being produced, huge portion of the economy making money for money, the papered economy.

speculating on top of speculation, the derivatives that keep using other people's money, often pension money, mutual fund money, people's savings by speculators who often don't use their money. they use our money and they use our money to generate huge fees and profits that are generally unregulated. so we have, number 1, not the right things are being produced, not the right things in the right way are being produced, environmental environmental environmentally repsych.le ways, acid rain, land erosion, oxygen depletion in the ocean, et cetera. the second aspect what is produced is very poorly distributed. this is the achilles hill of

capital corporation because no matter how much is produced in the aggregate apart from the quality of what is produced and what isn't, the one claim they have to legitimacy is they know how to grow an economy. they know how to build the gdp. they know how to aggregate the capital. and if they can't distribute it in a way to prevent people from slipping behind, as they are now, they lose their legitimacy. the highest wage for the majority of workers in this country, adjusted for inflation was 1973. it has been downhill ever since. 1 out of every 3 workers in this country makes wal-mart wages, under 10, $10.50 an hour, that is 7.5, 8, $9 an hour gross before deduction. millions of children are in very, very serious poverty, inadequacy of housing has only

gotten worse with the whole foreclosure catastrophe. and we have seen increasingly that if you add all the taxes people pay, the sales taxes, the payroll taxes as well as the income tax, people in the lower third of the economy pay as much a proportion of their taxes as the rich pay in proportion of their taxes. even though many in the bottom third make so little that they hardly pay any federal income tax but there are others taxes they have to pay. and so what's the problem in this country? why can't we control these corporations? they don't have a single vote. they don't have a human interest story as artificial entities. they have a terrible record that's been documented. they have politicians who are their minions taking positions

again and again at the -- against the declared interests of workers and patients and children and the environment, what people eat, breathe, what people drink, contaminated drinking water constantly comes up. look at the district of columbia, for years people didn't know that there were unacceptable levels of lead in their drinking water. here in the nation's capital, "the washington post" broke the story. so what's the problem? why do we think that these corporations can continue to rule us? by what authority as richard grossman, bless his soul, said in so many ways around the country. who gave these artificial entities -- we're not talking about the employees here. who gave these artificial entities the same constitutional rights as you and i as human

beings? why should artificial entities who are given limited liability, who are given perpetual life, who can go bankrupt and get rid of their labor claims and their creditor claims and their tort claims and bounce right back without missing a beat in terms of executive compensation? who can pit one government against another through these trade agreements and other maneuvers including bribery? the wto, the nafta. who can in effect strategically plan every aspect of our lives to make sure that none of these aspects challenge their domination? that's what corporations do, don't they? they're strategically planning our elections with money and trumped-up candidates. they're strategically planning our government, swarming all over washington, dc, and the state capitals, putting their own people in high government positions.

they're strategically planning our environment in terms of what they are willing to pollute and not pollute. they're strategically planning our educational system, the commercialization of universities, the commercialization of lower grades is rampant and well documented. they are continuing to strategically plan our food supply. look what they're doing with our food supply. the chemicals, the herbicides, the fungicides, the agribusiness, the diminishing of the family farmer, the whole agrarian structure has been collapsed. the genetic engineering. they are strategically planning our genetics, they're strategically planning our health care, aren't they and doing an effective job of denying it for people who can't pay. they established a payor die system. indoor, harvard medical

researchers a couple of years ago put out a study that showed -- and it was peer reviewed in the journal of public health, 800 americans die every week because they can't afford health insurance to be diagnosed and treated. nobody in france, england, germany, luxembourg, japan, taiwan, israel, nobody dies there because they don't have health insurance. they have health insurance. but in the richest country in the world, we watch 45,000 americans die because aetna and cigna and united health care want to continue their profitable hegemony. so we know this. but you know what something? social movements do not move forward only on knowledge. they don't even move forward on self-specific interests. they don't even move forward on

parental care for the children and the grandchildren. they only move forward when people get fire in their belly. it's the fire in the belly, which psychologists call emotional intelligence, that break our routine daily and get us to look to our neighbors and our community and our representatives and politics and elsewhere and say, come here. we're the ones in charge. we're the ones who pay. we're the ones who suffer the consequences of your concentrated power and misbehavior. you're the ones who have taken our power and misused it. it's not going to happen anymore. so what is it going to take? well, these corporations have trillions of dollars. they don't have a single vote. they can threaten to move abroad, shut down factories as they have in communities.

what do we have? what do we have? what are our assets? our assets are immense but they control a lot of these assets. we own the greatest wealth in the countries, it's called the commonwealth. we know that. but we don't connect it with any consequence in terms of shifting power to the few, to the many. we own the public lands, can't get any richer than that. own the public airwaves. we don't have any audience networks. we don't have over the some independent media. we own all the trillions of dollars that have created and expanded all the modern industries. did you know that? did you know that the biotechnology industry, the aerospace industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the communication industry, the containerization industry -- what do you think all this came from? it wasn't their investment.

it was your investment. taxpayer research and development from various agencies and departments, from the nih to nasa to the pentagon to the department of agriculture and you name it. so if we own all these assets, and there are many more in the commonwealth -- if we own them, why don't we control them? why don't we decide how they're disposed? why don't we tax the companies that use them like the radio and tv stations that use the public airwaves? so you see once again, we don't make an inventory of our assets in order to make sure that we have a clarified understanding of how we're being ripped off in order to get that emotional intelligence, that fire in the belly connecting with what we know in our minds. what's the other asset? well, how about the vote? we have the vote. corporations may be considered

persons under our supreme court decision but they don't yet have the right to vote. not yet. now, what are we doing with that vote? that vote represents the sovereignty of the people. why have we let so much of that power taken by politicians who then go to washington or state capitals and use the government against the very people that the government is supposed to be responsive to on behalf of these corporate entities, these corporate giants? why do we allow a two-party tyranny to deny us multiple choices on the ballot because the two-party tyranny, democrat and republican dialing for the same commercial dollars is in effect a tyranny against the voter. because if you deny other candidates, other parties, other agendas, you are denying the

voters from having a choice between two increasingly similar corporate indentured major parties. and that's the way they do their duopoly. they make sure that third parties and independent candidates -- they don't get on debates. and so it's a horrendous difficulty to get on the battle, many states, dilatory, subject to harassment. and because they don't have a chance to grow from one election to another, people get used to just looking at the franchises and saying, okay, if we don't like the two parties, we can stay home. or we can vote for least of the worst, or if we're hereditary voters, grandparents republican or democrat will vote for one of the two that come from our political inheritance. so no one can stop us from expanding the occupy initiative around the country. no one can stop us from marching. no one can stop us from

demonstrating. no one can stop us from organizing and summoning our representatives to seminars on corporate power back home, call-in town meetings, only on corporate meetings. no other issue, senator, representative, you will be summoned to a meeting in an auditorium where people who are quite knowledgeable about your record, about the history of corporate abuses, and we will discuss only one question, by what authority are these corporations controlling our lives and our lives of our descendents? and what can be done about it? that's the key. doing things that nobody can stop us from doing. now, in this book, i have a proposal which is so simple, yet, it's so powerful that no one can stop us from doing it.

the reason why i called this book "getting steamed to overcome corporatism" is because of the subtitle. "build it together to win." so i decided, let's try an experiment for the reader, call it an experiment, call it an experience, call it a happening. what would happen if readers who are very worried about their country in the world -- they're very worried about what their descendents are going to inherit but they don't really know what to do. what if they took this little experiment and they read short descriptions of 200 or so corporate ravages, corporate crimes, corporate greed, corporate damning across the whole continuum, you think of one abuse it's in this