User:Bjahnke/sandbox

Plot
Jim Curry began his career as a journalist in a normal fashion. But it quickly turns extraordinary, as he and his partner in life and writing, Gert Stoltzborn, discover that corporations are having an enormous amount of control over the actions of government. Richard Clancy, a character based on former Vice President Dick Cheney, is the main corporate aggressor in the United States in the 1990s. As CEO of General Motors, he coordinates frequent gatherings of American business leaders and politicians to discuss how to change or subvert laws in order to maximize profits. Jim and Gert stumble upon one of Richard's most important meetings after a tip, and when Jim writes a column about it, Richard gets furious and uses his influence to have their jobs transferred from Chicago to Washington, D.C. The two create more issues for Richard, so he arranges for their relocation to Denver, and contracts a hit-man to eliminate them permanently. While investigating another gathering of business leaders at the corporate retreat of an insurance company in Colorado Springs, the brakes on Jim and Gert's rental car mysteriously fail and it careens off a cliff. Jim survives but Gert is killed, and after a year of recovering, Jim returns to work at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, determined to do battle with Richard. Juan helps Jim break into Richard's private retreat in Michigan during a gathering, where he overhears Richard plotting to go to war. Richard is now a candidate for vice president and Jim rushes back to Milwaukee to write, when he realizes his life may be in danger so he calls Richard's bluff, writing a tell-all letter to be released in the event of his untimely death and giving a copy to Richard. In the end, Richard's health fails, causing catastrophic results. Though Jim is satisfied to have defeated Richard Clancy, he realizes the issue of corporate control goes much further than one man.

Jerry Welch
Jerry Welch was born September 26, 1933 and raised in Madison, Wisconsin. After receiving his plumbing license at a Madison vocational school, he entered the family business, Welch Heating and Plumbing, which was the 168th largest heating and plumbing contractor in the United States at the time and operated in many parts of Wisconsin and Northern Illinois. Mr. Welch’s entrepreneurial spirit is a driving force in his life, as he has been involved in many successful business ventures and now owns properties in Wisconsin and New Mexico. Currently residing in Madison, Wisconsin, Welch has been known to enjoy periodic retreats to New Mexico, where he does much of his writing. The onset of his retirement, combined with an acute awareness of the injustices which riddle our political system, have prompted him to put a lifetime of experience and insight to paper. His experiences in various forms of business, property management/development and other events forced numerous interactions and confrontations with corporations and local authorities. These events led to his formation of the concept of "Corporacracy" and its revelations.

Themes
Jerry Welch’s novels attempt to make readers think critically about existing issues plaguing governments and corporations by injecting the symptoms and consequences of these issues into a fictionalized world. Both novels feature protagonists who are at the mercy of corporate corruption and greed and feature instances in which constitutional law specifically written to protect citizens is cast aside by those who would seek to profit from more rules, regulations, and taxes on the "everyman." Welch illuminates the telling web between many seemingly separate issues that affect our lives, such as electioneering, creation and destruction of jobs, and lobbying. Through elegant description and relatable characters, his novels paint a vivid picture of an enormous and overlooked network of organized corruption. A cognizant reader of Welch’s rich prose will find themselves at a junction between fiction and reality; this engaging world which he has created is fictitious, yet the conflicts and problems illustrated which arise as a result of corporations are hauntingly familiar.

Discussion
In the United States of America, a corporation is a legal entity recognized for all practical purposes under the law as a "person", yet a corporation, which can be anything from a business to a city or village government, remains independent from the association of individuals who form it. Having the designation of corporation effectively safeguards individuals (CEOs, government officials, etc.) from lawsuits and claims by creditors, and ensures that such individuals are not liable for the corporation's potential misdoings.

Everything the average person does in the normal course of the day is in someway controlled or affected by Corporacracy, whether they realize it or not; as Welch notes, "If you wake up in a city, you're living in a corporation; if you're pulled over on the way to work for speeding, you're issued a ticket by a corporate police officer; the food you eat and the clothes you wear are controlled by a corporate structure".

The problem with Corporacracy is that the collective interests of corporations have become so powerful that they have effectively replaced representative democracy. Government and corporations have become so much alike that they are almost indistinguishable from one another. A corporation created for political purposes to act as a government agency without similarly inhibiting constitutional restraints contradicts the very concept of democracy. In addition to contributing large sums of money to political campaigns to purchase influence, corporations run local municipalities, oversee and dictate the direction of commerce, and have become this nation's largest employers. Whereas in a democracy politicians and lawmakers express the will of the people, in a Corporacracy, the interests of the corporate “party” are placed above all else.

"Every time I turn on the TV or pick up the newspaper, it seems at least to me that I see something that relates to my subject matter, what I'm writing about," said Welch, whose novel, Welcome to Reality, fictionalizes the oppressive experience that overshadowed two years of his life and landed him and his son temporarily in prison.

Corporacracy, however, isn't all bad, he insists. "On the plus side, corporacracy has the organizational ability to develop and produce a myriad of goods and services," Welch carefully pointed out. "Corporacracy performs a task that would overwhelm national and state governments, and it provides jobs and investment opportunities to the majority of Americans."

Of course, a corporacratic government still has its pitfalls. Corporacracy is susceptible to mismanagement, political entanglement, and social abuse – usually stemming from corruption – posits Welch. Additionally, the profits-at-any-cost credo of corporations may spell doom for the environment.

Corporacracy today

 * Every day brings new or recurring examples of Corporacracy.
 * Municipal corporations (cities), large and small, are declaring financial difficulties brought on by cuts in state tax income. [1]
 * Health care reform is held captive by corporate political parties and corporate lobbyists who override any influence of our citizenry.
 * Foreclosure statistics indicate corporate greed that results in the creation of public and private debt. Many corporate banks have been accused of fraud for knowingly lendng to those who could not afford loans, and subsequently selling the debt on the open market as top-rated. [2] [3]

Wall Street, The Financial Crisis, and The Executive Branch
Many sources claim that the Recession of 2008 was caused by corruption scandals that occurred within institutions on Wall Street, and also between those institutions and government officials[1][2][3][4]. Many of the Obama administration's top economic advisors have been from top institutions on Wall Street, in particular Goldman Sachs, a financial services firm which has come under fire for financial wrongdoing during the 2008-2009 crisis[5]. This can be seen as an example of Corporacracy, as here the private sector seems to merge with the public sector to govern based on economic and commercial interests that overshadow motivation to produce aggregate welfare. Paul Volcker, ex-chairman of the Federal Reserve, claims that a return to some principles of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932 would help to separate the businesses of commercial banks and investment banks, the deregulation of which caused some of the problems of the 2008 financial crisis[6]. A separation of commercial and investment banks would help to mitigate the effects of Corporacracy, as the products of investment banks would then not become so well-distributed throughout the economy as mortgage-backed securities did during the financial crisis. Additionally, the term "too big to fail" should not be a part of any politician or economist's vocabulary. Such a mindset implies that large companies are guaranteed to receive bailout funds if they are mismanaged, which did and will continue to create moral hazard where these companies lend, borrow, and invest irresponsibly.

Citizens United Case
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the United States Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the right to free speech under the first amendment of the United States constitution[1].This ruling allowed corporations to make unlimited contributions to federal campaigns. This unbridled usage of corporate funds results in a disproportionate amount of influence coming from corporations which is intended to influence officials' lawmaking irrespective of the desires of the populace. This creates an Agency problem where the managers in the government (governors, congressmen, officials) are more inclined to act on the behalf of large contributors to their campaigns (corporations) rather than average stakeholders (taxpayers) whose views they are elected to represent. The agency problem is a classic problem in corporate structure which is often fixed with economic incentives in a private company. In a government, however, such measures are illegal; politicians are elected to office to serve the public's general welfare. Re-election can be seen as an incentive, but the large amount of capital that corporations are now allowed to donate to campaigns and activist groups results in the ability to sway the opinions of many individuals in the general population. Regulations were originally placed on campaign donations for this reason, but now that spending is considered free speech, no such regulations are allowed. This can been seen through the lens of Corporacracy as private companies using their funds to influence politicians and the general populace to support measures that benefit them, including industry subsidies and tariffs, as a means to re-elect officials so that they can implement such policies.

What does this mean to you? It means that your voice has been all but silenced by the deep pockets of corporate interests. The only way that we can fight this travesty is by boycottng those companies that run campaigns in favor of certain officials and candidates, and by casting shame on those candidates who do not denounce such practices. We must unite as a populace and take back our capitol buildings and courthouses. Free speech is a right that was intended for the individual, not the "legally private entity," or corporation.

BP and the Oil Spill
In the Gulf of Mexico oil spill of 2010, British Petroleum committed gross negligence by failing to implement standard safety procedures on its oil well in the interest of extracting petroleum as quickly as possible [1]. This resulted in a catastrophic event. This is not the first such event for BP; in the 2007-2010 period BP refineries in Ohio and Texas accounted for 97 percent of the "egregious, willful" violations handed out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) [2]. The oil spill is an example of Corporacracy due to the economic backlash involved, namely that many pensions in the United Kingdom hold shares of BP [3]. In turn, this makes it a political event - British lawmakers do not want large-scale punishment brought on BP because it will hurt their constituents, despite wrongdoing on BP's part [4]. British lawmakers experience this pressure of considering re-election because BP has become a large part of the British economy, and as such any action against the company will hurt their chances of re-election. BP's status as an important part of the British economy has made supporting the company despite criminal violations a major political choice for British lawmakers. Thus, BP has essentially managed to give itself the legal protection of the British government for economic gain, an incredible melding of the private and public sectors.