Good Day Attorney General Spitzer,I just found my way to the 10/27/98 San Francisco Bay Guardian (SFBG) article at http://www.sfbg.com/nader/31.html entitled,
I am editor, publisher, and architect of www.ratical.org. This site includes an area on "Ending Corporate Governance, We The People Revoking Our Plutocracy" (www.ratical.org/corporations/). At the top of the entry page is a box focusing on "Charter Revocation Projects/News". (I will be including a link to a copy of this letter in that box.)
On the corporate crime campaign trail
Eliot Spitzer, Democratic candidate for attorney general of New York, is pushing for legislation that would dissolve corporations that endanger human life or the environment.
I am very interested in finding the full text(s) of what the SFBG article quotes you as saying regarding:
"A corporation that willfully subjects workers to unsafe working conditions leading to death or that engages in criminal activity that pollutes our environment should be subject to the same standards of responsibility and obligation to the community as individuals..."
"When a corporation is convicted of repeated felonies that harm or endanger the lives of human beings or destroy our environment, the corporation should be put to death, its corporate existence ended, and its assets taken and sold at public auction."
"During the 1840s and 1850s ... companies lost their charters routinely for committing serious violations... In the late 19th century, New York State led the way in revoking the charters of oil, match, sugar, and whiskey trusts when these companies created criminal acts and exceeded the powers of their charters."
I would be most appreciative if someone in your office could provide me with the exact source(s) of the above quotes as well as current sources of what the SFBG article's subhead alludes to ("pushing for legislation that would dissolve corporations that endanger human life or the environment"). I would also appreciate any other written materials stating your thoughts and observations on the subject of revoking the corporate charters of those subbordinate legal fictions that have violated the common good and public welfare.
I am almost finished with David Korten's new book, The Post-Corporate World, Life After Capitalism. If you haven't read this I strongly urge you to do so. It's signicifance towards creating a future where all life is nurtured and supported cannot be understated.
It is very exciting to learn that none other than the New York Attorney General understands the importance of dissolving those corporate entities that have engaged in lethal criminal behavior which would result in the death sentence for a human "natural person".
Thanks very much for your time with this and for all you are doing to help birth the future where human economies once more mimic and emulate the cosmic genius of living systems. As David Korten writes in his article on The Post-Corporate World from the latest issue of YES! A Journal of Positive Futures (www.futurenet.org/9economics/kortendave.html)
Life creates economies for living... Living systems are, for example:
- Self Organizing and Cooperative
- Localized and Adapted to Place
- Bounded by Managed, Permeable Borders
- Frugal and Sharing
- Diverse and Creative
David T. Ratcliffe
editor and publisher
rat haus reality press
http://www.ratical.org/rhrPress.html