The U.S. public holds Big Business in shockingly low regard.
A November 2007 Harris poll found that less than 15 percent of the population believes each of the following industries to be “generally honest and trustworthy:” tobacco companies (3 percent); oil companies (3 percent); managed care companies such as HMOs (5 percent); health insurance companies (7 percent); telephone companies (10 percent); life insurance companies (10 percent); online retailers (10 percent); pharmaceutical and drug companies (11 percent); car manufacturers (11 percent); airlines (11 percent); packaged food companies (12 percent); electric and gas utilities (15 percent). Only 32 percent of adults said they trusted the best-rated industry about which Harris surveyed, supermarkets.[1]
These are remarkable numbers. It is very hard to get this degree of agreement about anything. By way of comparison, 79 percent of adults believe the earth revolves around the sun; 18 percent say it is the other way around.[2]
The Harris results are not an aberration. The results have not varied considerably over the past five years — although overall trust levels have actually declined from the already very low threshold in 2003.
The Harris results are also in line with an array of polling data showing deep concern about concentrated corporate power.
An amazing 84 percent told Harris in a poll earlier in 2007 that big companies have too much power in Washington. By contrast, only 47 percent said that labor unions have too much power in Washington (as against 42 percent who said labor has too little power), and 18 percent who said nonprofit organizations have too much power in Washington.[3]
It highlights the need for consumer, environmental, labor and other corporate accountability advocates to defend the concept of regulation, and to connect the rampant corporate abuses in society with the deregulation and non-regulatory failures of the last three decades. There’s little doubt that the general public attitude toward regulation significantly affects the willingness of politicians — none to eager to offend business patrons in the first place — to take on corporate power. MUCH MORE
This is a powerful report. There are still too many of us that remember companies that looked-out for the loyal worker and woked to insure his or her future. In the new disaster capitalism that has consumed corporate America, corporations look at workers as an expense and nothing more. If someone from another county will do your job for 12K less a year and enters the country on an HB1-VISA, it’s probably time for you to be looking for another job. There is no “care” for the employees per se other than providing the least amount of benefits to survive in a corporate world that is power hungry and greedy, a lecherous monster that replaced an honor system that served us well for decades, but America gave-in when a select few led the stampede to increase the bottom-line and damn the consequences.
In another article I found on Op-Ed News, John Edwards has already proven he is no friend of corporate driven media conglomerates, and this is an issue that affects the entire country. There’s a time for government regulation and a time for hands off, but in this case, the “hands-off approach” has been a disaster that has led to a MSM that is barely a skeleton of its former self, and every day we can see it visibly weaken and succumbing to the interests of corporate America rather than the people:
John Edwards is pi$$ing off all the right people.
by jedreport, Sat Jan 12, 2008 at 03:52:16 PM EST
John Edwards’ campaign isn’t about him. It’s about us. It’s about taking back power from the wealthy elites who want to run this country and putting it in our hands. It’s about finally taking on the corporations that dominate more and more of the American economy. It’s about challenging the system.
And it’s pissing off the all right people.
Let’s start with Rupert Murdoch. My, how John Edwards has pissed that man off.
Sure, Murdoch hates John Edwards because Edwards led the way amongst presidential candidates in pulling out of the Faux-news debates, helping expose his propaganda network for what it is.
But he hates John Edwards even more because John Edwards has spoken out publicly against the monopolization of America’s media outlets into the hands of a small number of plutocrats like Murdoch. Murdoch’s media empire fired back, calling Edwards a hypocrite, leaking confidential information, all in an attempt to smear John Edwards to avoid talking about the real issues. MUCH MORE
