WHY THE POWER OF CORPORATIONS ISN'T DISCUSSED

THE MOST powerful organization in our society is the corporation.
Corporations have become more powerful than governments, or religious
institutions, or labor unions.

So how is it possible for a group of highly educated, well-intentioned
citizens to spend millions of dollars and more than 18 months studying
citizenship and civic action, and yet barely touch on the issue of corporate
power?

This was the question raised last week when William Bennett and Sam Nunn,
co-chairs of the National Commission on Civic Renewal, appeared together at
a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington to release the
commission's final report -- ``A Nation of Spectators: How Civic
Disengagement Weakens America and What We Can Do About It.''

At the press conference, reporters were given a copy of the commission's
67-page report, 18 working papers written by scholars from around the
country, and a book edited by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, titled
``Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America.''

In all of this work, there is little or no mention of corporate crime and
violence and their debilitating effect on civil society, of the corrupting
influence of corporate money in politics, or of how citizens band together
in labor unions, environmental groups and other citizen activists groups to
combat to corrosive influence of corporate power on America's civic life.

In the commission's final report, only three paragraphs deal with the issue
of corporate power. Under the titled ``Markets and Civil Society,'' the
authors write that while on the one hand ``there can be little doubt that
free markets help sustain a zone of personal liberty that bolsters the
capacity of individuals to associate for civil purposes,'' on the other hand
``there is no guarantee that the operation of market forces will prove
wholly compatible with the requirements of civic health.'' And what would be
an example of such incompatibility? The commission finds that
``market-driven decisions of giant media corporations have diminished the
quality of our public culture and have greatly complicated the task of
raising children.''

Of the 18 working papers, only one -- written by Rutgers University
Professor Benjamin Barber -- deals with issues of corporate power. And
Dionne's book, like his columns in the Washington Post, keeps hands off the
issue of corporate power.

What's going on here?

It's not as if powerful institutions don't tackle issues of corporate power
and its abuse. Just read the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times for
your daily dose of reporting on corporate crime and violence.

But reporting on corporate power and its abuse is one thing. Doing something
about it is quite another. Imagine the commission releasing a report
documenting how citizens around the country were organizing, through labor
unions, environmental groups, anti-sprawl citizen groups and the thousands
of other ways citizens organize, to combat the encroachment of the corporate
state into their lives. That would be a report that could be taken seriously
by citizens around the country, that could be used by citizens to help them
challenge corporate power. And it would be a report that could never have
been written by the Commission as constituted.

Nunn, after all, is a senior partner at the King & Spalding law firm, one of
the nation's premier corporate crime white-collar defense law firms. And
Bennett, although he has a thing about rude lyrics in rap and rock songs
supplied by Seagrams, is a defender of the corporate status quo. He is after
all the John M. Olin Distinguished Fellow in Cultural Policy Studies at the
Heritage Foundation, the nation's leading corporate think tank.

What about the other commissioners? Elaine Chao, fellow, Heritage
Foundation. John F. Cooke, executive vice president, corporate affairs, the
Walt Disney Company. Peter Goldmark, chair and chief executive officer of
the International Herald Tribune. Edwin Lupberger, chairman of the board and
president of the Entergy Corporation, one of the nation's largest
electricity companies. Michael Novak, American Enterprise Institute, another
corporate think tank.

You get the drift.

These commissioners would never raise the current United Auto Workers strike
against General Motors in Michigan, or the fight against nuclear waste
disposal in New Mexico, or the nationwide citizens campaign to defeat casino
gambling, as indicators of increased civic involvement.

That would offend their keepers at the Heritage Foundation and King &
Spalding. Better to blame the citizens for inactivity than commend them for
actively opposing corporate power.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett