In a recent interview given to truthout.org, Ralph Nader identified what is perhaps the most pressing problem Americans face, the influence of multi-national corporations on the U.S. government. His new book, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us, leads one to ask, what do we need to be saved from? Nader provides this thoughtful response:
[We need to be saved] from the concentrated power of multi national corporations over our government. It's a corporate state, almost clinically defined, and FDR warned against this in 1938. Any government that's taken over by private economic power -- he used the word -- he said that's fascism.Nader went on to explain that both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of kowtowing to these business interests and that it is a significant impediment to effecting any substantive change. The entire interview is available here.
The National Association for the Self Employed reports that the Internal Revenue Service will begin reviewing the tax records of 5,000-6,000 randomly chosen businesses beginning this November (2009). The program will be completed over the course of three years on both for profit and non-profit employers.
The NASE makes the following suggestions to make sure your company is ready:
Oliver Wendell Holmes served on the United States Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932. The quotable Holmes, perhaps best known for writing that the First Amendment would not protect a person from falsely yelling, "Fire!" in a crowded theater, was also a soldier in the Civil War, a Harvard Law School professor, and Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
The Harvard Law Library recently made much of Holmes's works and effects available on the web as part of its Digital Collection project. Many items of interest are now accessible by the public, including Holmes's own annotated copy of The Common Law, perhaps his most significant work.
The Holmes collection can be accessed here.
