Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1938 message to Congress warned that when private power becomes stronger than the democratic state itself, we have Fascism. There are many ways to witness the intensifying domination toward a corporate state. One way is to compare exposé books in the 1960s and the present.

Within a span of five years, there were three books in the sixties that put forces in motion leading to significant reordering of our society’s priorities. They were Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962), my Unsafe at Any Speed (1965), and The Other America by Michael Harrington (1962).

The message of these bestselling books was expanded by authors going on national TV and radio shows. They spoke around the country, before large audiences at colleges/universities and even high schools. An aroused citizenry prompted congressional hearings, legislation, and the establishment of federal agencies to deal with the problems of toxic chemicals, unsafe motor vehicles, and deep poverty in the U.S.

By stark contrast, now the volume of muckraking indictments of corporate crime, fraud, and tyranny is at least ten-fold that of the nineteen sixties. Books and blogs, documentaries and podcasts are pouring out daily with far less impact and in many cases no effect, for change.

Take a look at 65 recent searing books about corporate violence and malfeasance, crushing influence over our electoral and political systems, and expanding immunities from law enforcement and public accountability.

1. Corporate Crime and Punishment: The Crisis of Underenforcement by John Coffee
2. Mass Tort Deals: Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation by Elizabeth Burch
3. Why Not Jail? Industrial Catastrophes, Corporate Malfeasance … by Rena Steinzor
4. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
5. Closing Death’s Door: Legal Innovations to End the Epidemic of Healthcare Harm by Michael J. Saks and Stephan Landsman
6. Who Poisoned Your Bacon Sandwich?… by Guillaume Coudray
7. The Monsanto Papers: Deadly Secrets, Corporate Corruption… by Carey Gillam
8. The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business by David Courtwright
9. Frankie: How One Woman Prevented a Pharmaceutical Disaster by James Essinger and Sandra Koutzenko
10. Killer Airbags by Jerry Cox
11. Making the World Safe for Coke by Susan Greenhalgh
12. Big Dirty Money by Jennifer Taub
13. Business and Human Rights by Ellen Hertz
14. Industrial-Strength Denial by Barbara Freese
15. Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act by Nicholson Baker
16. Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations by Brandon L. Garrett
17. Capital Offenses: Business Crime and Punishment in America’s Corporate Age by Samuel W. Buell
18. Profiteering, Corruption and Fraud in U.S. Health Care by John Geyman
19. Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power by David Dayen
20. Global Banks on Trial by Pierre-Hugues Verdier
21. Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception by David Michaels
22. Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year…And What You Can Do About It by Gerald Goldhaber
23. Paradise Lost at Sea: Rethinking Cruise Vacations by Ross A. Klein
24. Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy by Matt Stoller
25. Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in An Age of Fraud by Tom Mueller
26. Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom by Katherine Eban
27. GMOs Decoded: A Skeptic’s View of Genetically Modified Foods by Sheldon Krimsky and Marion Nestle
28. GM: Paint it Red: Inside General Motors’ Culture of Failure by Nicholas Kachman
29. The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives by Jesse Eisinger
30. Watchdog: How Protecting Consumers Can Save Our Families, Our Economy, and Our Democracy by Richard Cordray
31. First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat by Christopher Shaw
32. Un-American: A Soldier’s Reckoning of Our Longest War by Erik Edstrom
33. Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War by Samuel Moyn
34. Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America by Eyal Press
35. Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? by Alexander Keyssar
36. Public Citizens by Paul Sabin
37. The United States of War by David Vine
38. The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions by Chuck Collins
39. Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America by Alec MacGillis
40. The Case Against George W. Bush by Steven C. Markoff
41. Tax the Rich: How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer by Erica Payne and Morris Pearl
42. Salt Wars: The Battle Over the Biggest Killer in the American Diet by Dr. Michael Jacobson
43. Unrig: How to Fix Our Broken Democracy by Daniel G. Newman
44. Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits by James D. Zirin
45. Stealing Our Democracy by Don Siegelman
46. Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor by Steven Greenhouse
47. All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator by Monique El-Faizy and Barry Levine
48. Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic by Christopher Shaw
49. Troubled Water: What’s Wrong with What We Drink by Seth M. Siegel
50. Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy by Mike German
51. United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America… by Mickey Huff and Nolan Higdon
52. The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age by Tim Wu
53. The End of Ice by Dahr Jamail
54. Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator by Dr. Gregory Jaczko
55. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
56. America, Democracy & You: Where Have All the Citizens Gone? by Ronald R. Fraser
57. Unsettled (on Purdue Pharma and the Sackler Family) by Ryan Hampton
58. Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas
59. China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine by Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh
60. Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World by Nomi Prins
61. Attention All Passengers: The Airlines’ Dangerous Descent and What You Can Do To Reclaim Our Skies by William McGee
62. Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science by Carey Gillam
63. The CEO Pay Machine: How it Trashes America and How to Stop It by Steven Clifford
64. World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech by Franklin Foer
65. The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, …. and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite by Duff McDonald

Despite the many books on corporate crooks, there have been no corporate crime law reforms, no additional prosecutions of these CEOs, not even comprehensive congressional or state legislative hearings. The corporate crooks at the top of giant companies still get away with profiting from their corporate crime wave. None of the top Wells Fargo executives or Opioid’s promoters or the sellers of dangerous products and chemicals are facing prosecution. You have to steal a loaf of bread or get caught with a miniscule amount of heroin or cocaine to be incarcerated.

The massive fatality toll annually (about 400,000) from preventable problems in hospitals and clinics gets exposed yet nobody stirs in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, state departments of health, or the state legislatures. That’s almost 8000 Americans losing their lives a week!

Profiteering, corruption, and fraud in the health industry are documented by many specialists, including Dr. John Geyman’s many books, but the exposés do not result in any calls for law and order by the politicians or even hearings in Congress.

Access to justice by victims faces increasingly closed courtroom doors and limits on tort laws for wrongful injury.

Meanwhile, the institutions we are expected to rely on to make a difference, with too few exceptions, are asleep at the wheel. These include the legal, medical, and accounting professions, the law enforcement agencies (there is no corporate crime index in the U.S. Justice Department), the toady legislatures, the corporate-owned media, the timid, often compromised labor unions, college campuses, and the silent corporatized organized religious institutions.

Our democracy is in serious decay. The information is readily available about what to do about it, while citizens argue among themselves, having been divided and ruled by corporate propaganda and politicians indentured to corporate supremacists.

Most active people seem unable to coalesce over their common interests at the community level. Remember, less than one percent of citizens stepping forward can turn the tide! (See breakingthroughpower.org).

For some reflections on our Auto Safety work over the past 55 years later visit https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/ralph-nader-auto-safety/.

Truth is not fake news.
Justice is not fake news.

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