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Occupying Corporations: How to Cut Corporate Power
“Corporations are people, my friend.” Mitt Romney at Iowa State Fair
Corporations are obviously not people. But Romney is accurate in the sense that corporations have hijacked most of the rights of people while evading the responsibilities. An important part of the social justice agenda is democratizing corporations. This means we must radically change the laws so people can be in charge of corporations. We must strip them of corporate personhood and cut them down to size so democracy can work. People are taking action so democracy can regulate the size, scope and actions of corporations.
One of the most basic roles of society is to protect the people from harm. The massive size of many international corporations makes democratic control over them nearly impossible.
Corporate crime is widespread. The New York Times, ProPublica and others have revealed Wall Street giants like JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have been charged with fraud many times only to get off by paying hundreds of millions. Professors at University of Virginia have documented hundreds of corporations which have been found guilty or pled guilty in federal courts.
Corporate abuse is even more widespread. For example, Corporate Accountability International named six to its Corporate Hall of Shame, including: Koch Industries for spending over $50 million to fund climate change denial; Monsanto for mass producing cancer causing chemicals; Chevron for dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon; Exxon Mobil for being the worst polluter; Blackwater (now Xe) for killing unarmed Iraqi civilians and hiring paramilitaries; and Halliburton, the nation’s leading war profiteer.
Making corporations responsible to democracy of the people is challenging considering Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest corporation, does more business itself annually than all but two dozen of the two hundred plus countries in the world. Without dramatic changes, how can we expect people in small or even big countries to force corporations like Wal-Mart, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP, Toyota or Chevron to live by the same rules all the people have to?
Justice demands we make sure corporations do not harm people. Democracy must require that they operate for the common good.
In order to cut corporations down to size, the people must strip corporations of the special artificial legal protections they have created for themselves.
The story of how corporations took the full rights of legal persons in one of the great perverse tragedies in legal history. Corporations have worked the courts mercilessly since 1819 to take a wide variety of constitutional rights that were designed to cover only people. For example, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868 to make sure all citizens, particularly freed slaves and people of color, had full rights. There was no mention of protecting corporations. But corporations jumped on this opportunity resulting in a questionable Supreme Court decision that granted them legal personhood. At roughly the same time, the Supreme Court approved “separate but equal” racial segregation. Thus in thirty years, African Americans lost their legal personhood, while corporations acquired theirs.
Corporations now claim: 1st amendment free speech rights to advertise and influence elections: 4th amendment search and seizure rights to resist subpoenas and challenges to their criminal actions; 5th amendment rights to due process; 14th amendment rights to due process where corporations took the rights of former slaves and used them for corporate protection; plus rights under the Commerce and Contracts clauses of the constitution.
The most recent corporate judicial takeover of constitutional rights is the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission. The court ruled that corporations are protected by the First Amendment so they can use their money to influence elections.
Because of the bad Supreme Court decisions, it takes a constitutional amendment by the people to change the laws back. An amendment requires two-thirds of both houses of Congress to agree then three-quarters of the states must vote to ratify. This will take real work. But despite the growing size and unrestricted power of corporations, people are fighting back.
Dozens of groups are working to reverse Citizens United and restore limits on corporate election advocacy. In January 2011, groups delivered petitions signed by over 750,000 people calling on Congress to amend the Constitution and reverse the decision. More than 350 local events were held in late January 2012 to challenge the Citizens United decision.
Groups challenging this injustice include Code Pink, Common Cause, Free Speech for People, Moveon.org, Move to Amend, National Lawyers Guild, POCLAD, Public Citizen, People for American Way, The Center for Media and Democracy, and Women’s League for Peace and Freedom.
Many groups are asking for a broad constitutional amendment that makes it clear that corporations are not people and should not be given any constitutional rights. Representatives Ted Deutsch of Florida, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont have sponsored bills in Congress to start the process for a constitutional amendment to make it clear that corporations are not people, are not entitled to the rights of people, and cannot contribute to political campaigns.
There are also many energetic actions at the state level. People for the American Way list organizational efforts in nearly all 50 states to end corporate influence in elections or amend the constitution.
Massive corporations now rule the earth. But they are recent arrivals which can and should be dispatched. It is time for people to again take control. The legal fiction of corporate personhood and the constitutional rights taken by corporations must cease. Join the efforts to cut them down to size and restore the right of the people to govern.
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52 Comments so far
Show All"This will take real work."
The corporations will not allow their servants in the republican, democrat, or libertarian parties to change anything.
They will allow them to pretend that they will do something, but that is all it will be.
A pretense.
The Green Party or possibly the Justice Party may be the only way to do the "real" work.
People tell me I am a fool for rejecting all of the corporate party members. That may be, but the record of the republicans, democrats, and libertarians clearly show that their supporters are not just fools,
they are (at best) delusional or downright insane.
They are delusional, insane people who keep wasting their votes on Dims, GOP and pseudo libertarians (real libertarians would not honor corporate charters) while accusing those of us who vote for progressives and progressive parties of wasting our votes.
You're quite right about the influence of the corporados within the Beltway, and you're quite right about the foolishness of continuing faith in the two corporate political parties, but you're quite wrong about the solution.
While I will support both the Green and Justice Party campaigns, I don't pretend that the closed election system will allow either of them more than the merest token participation. And, even if we could grow those parties and get some modest representation in Congress in a generation or two, we will never have a 2/3 majority of authentic progressives.
But We the People can and will force our government to act, as it is already beginning to do. If you don't believe that We the People have the power to change the world if we are willing to work for it, then you may as well give up. No savior - Green or Justice or other - is going to turn this around. Only We the People have that power.
We the People forced at least half a dozen constitutional amendments in the past. We can do so again. And the movement is growing stronger and broader every day.
Corporate charters have become this era's version of Patents of Nobility. They have turned the CEO's, COO's, & CFO's, among others, into this time's Earls, Dukes, and Barons, among other noble titles. Ironically, it was the rise of the mega-corporation that ushered out the powers of the hereditary nobility. Now it has become incumbent upon mankind to do away this form of perverse privilege or suffer an even worse fate than our ancestors who chaffed under it for thousands of years.
And don't forget that today's corporations trace their roots to privateers which were pirates sanctioned and supported by European governments to pursue global "trade".
Yes, we forget that the first pirates were called "privateers" because the term "private" comes from the Latin privere - to steal.
Those who say that all private property is theft know from whence the idea came.
Nate is precisely correct. I'll re-post a comment from an earlier thread:
Almost all of the evils that made this country's founders reject titles of nobility have been replicated through the panoply of privileges and immunities granted to modern corporations. I've been arguing for a while that, until we get appropriate constitutional amendments passed, we should be challenging corporate privilege under the existing federal and state constitutional prohibitions of titles of nobility. (See U.S. Const. Art. I secs. 9 & 10.)
A "title" does not have to be an honorific label like "duke" or "count." There are car titles and land titles. As Sir Edward Coke explained, "every right is a title." The framers’ intent in including the anti-nobility provisions was not simply to eradicate a set of labels. We would disrespect them by assuming that they were obsessed with forms and labels, and indifferent to substance. In order to assess the modern relevance of the prohibitions on nobility, we must identify those attributes and arrangements of nobility which the framers recognized as harmful, understand why they were considered harmful, and determine whether social or legal arrangements raising similar concerns exist today.
Some of the attributes that apply to both traditional nobility and corporate nobility: perpetual advantage; control of land and other common, sovereign resources; disproportionate political influence; favored treatment under both civil and criminal law; qualified national allegiance.
If anything, modern corporate nobility is more threatening than the earlier form, inasmuch as the legally imposed maximization-of-shareholder-profits rule compels all publicly traded business corporations to behave as sociopaths, whereas at least some of the earlier nobles might have tempered their self-interested behavior with social empathy.
For a more detailed version of this argument, see: http://www.conlaw.org/Intergenerational-III-2-2.htm.
All clues to defanging and neutering corporate behemoth power could be learnt from Gandhi. He urged everyone to boycott corporate products, scale back their personal needs, be self reliant in basic needs. His call to spin and wear homespun cloth was exactly that - that one act alone on his part sent shivers down the spines of the once mighty and cruel British empire. An austerity in Gandhian style is beyond the thought and reach of middle class people all over the world today. Yet, there are some simple and basic steps everyone can take to show popular power to these dirty corporations.
1. Firstly, withdraw all your savings from the "too big to fail" banks that ran away with the public money
2. divest from a stock market that has no connection to ground realities of the economy
3. Ride a bike for all your local travel.
4. Boycott all corporate serving TV and radio.
5. Consume only self prepared food - boycott all food loaded with additives and preservatives. Boycott all fast food.
6. If you have a yard, grow some food one it, . . .
7. Boycott products of companies like GE that evade taxes on a global scale.
One could add to the list. Starting with a few on this list and growing them every year should condition us to wean off from corporate dependence.
Good post! In addition,
1. Use mass transit wherever possible.
2. Shop locally at mom and pop stores
3. Buy only necessities
4. Buy used items if you need large ticket items
5. Support your community owned radio station
6. Lobby for a public wi-fi internet in your city.
We need to hit these huge corporations where it hurts - by cutting their revenue stream.
I'll "third" this post. Simply starve the corporate beast as outlined above. Buy as little as possible not just on "buy nothing day" but every day. Vote "no" by wittholding the only ballots you have, the dollars in your purse or pocket. And, vote "yes" in what you do judiciously choose to spend.
I'll support (and I do) all those tactics, but add another.
The most destructive corporations are the ones that are part of the military/industrial/government complex and subsidized or directly funded by tax dollars to maintain global hegemony.
So stop paying federal income taxes and instead tithe to local projects and organizations that are doing the work that government should.
Professor Quigley, we need to have a public debate about the "press exemption" found at 2 USC 431 (9) (B) (i). This so called exemption was not accomplished through the democratic process, select members of congress met with the lobbyist of our nations largest newspaper and broadcast corporations and made their deal without the general publics knowledge or conscent.
The media has refused to debate or discuss their special exemption are you willing to debate this issue?
The press exemption exempts newspaper and broadcast businesses from the definitions of contribution, coordination and expenditure. This allows these huge corporations to raise and spend an unlimited amount of stockholder money influencing the political process.
The so called "press exemption" redefined a "free press" which had been every Citizens "Right" to use a device a "printing press" and turned it into a system of superior and inferior "rights" newspaper and broadcast corporations are now exempt from campapign finance laws and living persons, political parties and organizations are restricted by them.
Prior to Watergate U.S. Citizens and political parties enjoyed the same "free press rights" as foreign owned newspapers operating in the United States!
Foreign owned newspapers operating in the United States are now exempt from campapign finance laws that restrict the speech and "press" rights of every U.S. Citizen, political party and organization!
Professor Quigley, does the U.S. Constitution grant foreign Citizens and corporations that operate newspapers and cable networks in the United States more "RIGHTS" to influence the political process than U.S. Citizens and political parties?
The key to better corporate behavior is to change the corporation. Failing that, the best thing to do would be to get rid of corporations entirely.
Corporations are designed to be terrible citizens. They now have all the rights of citizenship, but none of the obligations.
A government of laws does not work unless the governed have at least a modest respect for the public interest. Ideally, when their actions are found to being harming the public interest they should stop even if no law requires it. If they do not stop voluntarily and no law can be passed thet makes them stop, then democracy is in real danger, This is especially true with respect to the most powerful which have more ability to destroy and interfere in our democracy.
By law, today's corporations have no respect for the public interest. Their only goal is to serve their own interests and no balancing factor is included in the law to dictate how they achieve this goal. The corporate law must be changed to eliminate the inclination of corporations damaging the public interest in the pursuit of their own interests.
A good place to start is by going to Change.org and signing petitions to adopt the Code for Corporate Citizenship. (Don't worry, it's all about imposing on corporations the obligations of citizenship not giving them more rights.)
The Citizens United case has outraged us all, but let us not forget that corporations ruled our democracy long before this case. A change of the constitution to overturn this descision will not necessarily eliminate corporate abuse of the environment and other elements of the public interest.
You're turning the entire problem on its head, and making the case for an amendment. You say "Corporations are designed to be terrible citizens". They're not designed to be citizens at all. And they can't be citizens - either good or bad - unless we accept their role as "persons".
Corporations were, and are, created by an act of State to perform business functions, to make a profit, and to encourage risk-taking by limiting personal liability. They never were intended to be citizens in any form and that notion would have been either laughable or deplorable to the Founders. Jefferson tried to include an 11th amendment to the Bill of Rights that would strictly control corporate powers. It failed only because others felt that the several States already had control, through corporate chartering.
We don't need a Code for Corporate Citizenship. We need to eliminate the entire myth of corporate personhood and citizenship. And the only way to do that is with a constitutional amendment, which is the Peoples' veto over the Supreme Court.
Let me disagree with you both, along with the author and most all commenters so far, pretty much: an amendment would not help enough, even if we could get the beneficaries of the present system to pass it (and pigs to fly).
POCLAD has put out a nice little pamphlet that details the history of corporations in the US. It makes clear that the founding fathers were concerned about the threat of corporate power and put into place all manner of restrictions on corporations. Everything people are now advocating we somehow force our legislators to pass, was once law. But corporations are money-concentrating machines, and money is power in a capitalist system; thus is was inevitable that they would gradually use that power to undo the restrictions one by one, until they had all the rights of people and a whole lot more. Passing an amendment undoing corporate personhood would be both extremely difficult AND INADEQUATE. If they snapped their leashes once, they'll do it again. No--these monsters are too dangerous to be allowed to exist. We must terminate corporations, not just corporate personhood.
What is the difference between a small, family-owned business and a corporation? It isn't really the legal status. It's a matter of size--a small business has actual people, with hopefully normal consciences, at its heart. If it's causing harm, those affected can appeal to these people, show them the problem. But a large corporation really does not have humans at its heart. It's a machine, designed and mandated to concentrate as much money as possible, and any manager who makes decisions not designed to accomplish that and only that, will be tossed out like any other defective component. This entity is not reformable, and legal controls have failed before. What we need is a law restricting the size of businesses to a level not beyond human control and management.
An excellent article and some thought producing responses (hkpt!) ...
I'm not to sure about the "George Stepoallofus" comment but I love your moniker! Are you responding in favor of Citizens United?
Nevertheless, I have a completely different perspective that I'd like to introduce (and hear your perspectives- especially Bill Quigley's thoughts). At the outset, let me make clear that I think allowing corporations the same rights as humans is abhorrent. But I'm of the impression, that in our current system of law, the people ARE corporations (via the capitalized letters on our drivers licenses and government papers of various legal import). So my question is: do we accrue a similar or expanded quiver of rights from being sovereign citizens, or do our rights derive from being "Citizens" of the state (all of whom are "corporations" in their own unique way)? Enlighten me!
I don't know where you could be getting such nonsense, but people under our Constitution are natural persons with God-given (or Natural) rights that precede and form the basis for the State. Under law, we are also citizens with civil rights that are meant to protect and expand on our natural rights.
We are not corporations, though a State is a form of corporation. But the term we use today for a business corporation is a very narrowly-defined legal entity created as an economic tool by the State for specific commercial purposes. It has no rights, but only duties and responsibilities, and the chartering State has the legal obligation to terminate a corporate charter if the business enterprise violates those duties (though this is almost never done anymore).
By Supreme Court rulings of activist judges over the last 150 years, corporations have been turned from legal economic entities into legal "persons" and gradually granted civil rights which were never intended for any but natural persons. This was and is an abomination and can now be reversed only with a constitutional amendment, forced on our government by We, the Natural People.
NateW, Dreamer55, Ianista, radelcamino, Robert Riversong,hKpt16384, Kemo Sabe:
These are the most constructive and significant comments and suggestions that I have ever seen on Common Dreams. Finally someone is talking about something that can really cope with the world's biggest and most threatening problems.
This kind of action is really all that matters. Virtually everything else that is discussed on this website and most others distracts readers from doing exactly what needs to be done as you people have outlined it. If anyone truly does care about democracy, world peace, starving masses, gross injustices and inequalities, war, global crime, mother earth, and the very survival of mankind he/she will get busy doing exactly what you have outlined. Thank you for your comments.
People can't do it alone. What suggestions do you have for getting the job done? What organized efforts do you know about where others are making this happen?
nolhausen@yahoo.com
How to cut Corporate power?
Hack and delete their bank accounts.
Another tactic may be to enforce their so called "personhood" by mandating corps go through the stages of life of "personhood" as we humans do--humans DIE and get buried in cemeteries after the average age of longevity! Immediately, some are dead already, like the oil companies. Renaming a corporation doesn't apply nor passing it on to an heir so it can live beyond, say, 80 years. If people die, corporations die too, forever! We can establish corporate cemeteries and bury hundreds from around the world immediately.
Voters take control!!
It is time for taxpaying voters to own our politicians instead of Koch industries and Wal-Mart.
Politicians will only talk about term limits as they do about campaign finance reform. It is up to the people to take the matter in our own hands.
The job growth rhetoric attached to tax breaks/incentives is bogus through and through.
Finance reform can happen by way of citizens voting down the big spenders. It's not hard to tell who the big spenders are. Vote them down and out.
WE do not need congress. WE need to do it all on our own. It is time for taxpaying voters to own our politicians.
Want term limits?
Go to the voting booth without fail and vote in the low spending candidates. Apply this to national,state and local elections.
The voting booth today is owned and controlled by corporations. Voting is as fraudulent and corrupt in the US as in any tin pot despot regime.
And We the People are not defined as "voters" or "taxpayers" any more than we are defined as "consumers". We are, first, Natural Persons with unalienable rights. And second, we are Citizens, with the sovereignty and power to determine the direction for our nation.
Voting isn't going to change much, if anything. And sometimes NOT voting or NOT paying taxes is a more powerful statement than complicity in corruption - just as NOT being a consumer of corporate products is more powerful than playing the game by their rules.
A Constitutional amendment is considered the Peoples' Veto over the Supreme Court. It's time we exercised our real power.
Dude, electoral politics are a joke, an absolute waste of anybody's time if they want to have any significant influence on this issue. First off, the plutocracy (corporations and their representatives...senators and congresspeople) control things. All the laws are stacked in their favor. Secondly, the whole govt. is dysfunctional. If you do not know this, you are blind. Third, the media are corporate controlled, hence they control information. Fourth, the powers that be use elections to give YOU the illusion of democracy. You vote, hence, you think you have influence and power. Right. That explains the trajectory of American politics the last sixty years toward TOTAL DOMINATION BY THE PLUTOCRACY. Either you are naive and idealistic in the extreme, undereducated and stupid, or delusional. The last alternative is that you are too comfortable and have NO clue what is really going on in America unless it is something you read in the papers. This kind of pathetic belief by progressive types like you is what is keeping the conversation at such a pathetic level. I can only conclude that people are still far too comfortable and not suffering enough. It is when suffering reaches critical mass that people become open to revolutionary ideas, i.e. ideas which might really change things, not this ridiculous fantasy you have of working within the system. What a joke. Things are way beyond that at this point. I suggest a total boycott of elections and a campaign to explain to people why they are bullshit....or don't you even know why.....can it be????? God, the progressive forces in this country are so tame, weak, and devoid of courage.
Direct Democracy Party!
Quigley says, "Massive corporations now rule the Earth. He goes on to say this takeover has been going on for hundreds of years. Both statements are correct. It's a done deal. Welcome to the Corporate State. The corporate takeover is a logical, predictable evolution of political power in the human race, and like the Nation State it won't last forever. We have been warned of this takeover by hundreds of writers for hundreds of years. It's way to late to stop the corporate takeover. Now we have to figure out how to survive it!
Resignation is hardly a solution to anything. Nothing is a "done deal" unless we give up and give in. And neither we nor the earth will survive the kind of corporate abuse that has become commonplace.
Either we get up off our lazy duffs and determine to change this state of affairs or, surely, we will all go the way of the Dodo bird - and deserve to.
The central problem in the Constitution and constitutional interpretation regarding corporations' rights appears to me to be NOT that certain rights are attributed
to corporations via "adjudication" that corporations are persons in law; the central
problem is that the Constitution, written for We The People, but NEGLECTED
to include a clear definition of a person. That should not have been difficult to do,
and even today would not be difficult to accomplish by a simple amendment:
Merely listing defining attributes of a human being (person) -- e.g., they acquire
existence by biological conception via a male and a female Homo Sapiens
sperm and egg; they (while alive, i.e., still existing) perform certain functions
of life; such as respiration of air; circulation of blood; digestion of food;
locomotion by muscles, bones and nerves; eventual cessation of the functions
of life, which is bodily death, etc. [Perhaps drafters of an amendment will be
able to express the same ideas in a more cultered form than I've presented.]
The effect of the definition will be the same. The amendment also should
state that any attribution of personhood to any entity other than so defined
shall be in error, and of no legal effect. Then let the Supreme Justices sit
in their black robes and ponder what then must be the legal status of
corporations, cooperatives, partnerships, and any other jointly owned
business entities. If the justices obstinately insist that, e.g., corporations
still have "adjudicated rights" under the fourteenth amendment, then the
non-consenting people should commence impeachment proceedings
against the rogue justices.
There is really little dispute about what constitutes a person in the Constitution, as it was based on living people with unalienable natural rights that preceded the legal structure of the State. Corporations are legal products of the State and so cannot be included in the Constitution's notion of person.
It is not necessary to try to biologically define a person, and there would be no agreement on that. We would simply end up fighting over whether a fetus is a person under the Constitution, and we really don't want to go there. We simply need to make clear that a legal entity, such as a corporation, IS NOT a person under the Constitution. Simple as that. All else follows.
Please explain precisely how making corporations non-persons under the Constitution will solve the problem of corporate abuse of the public interest. After your amendment will corporations have the right to due process, a fair trial and equal protection? Or will they be ruled by the denial of these rights? If the latter, will capitalism survive? Why or why not? If why not, what do you see as replacing it?,
Kilroy:
Making corporations non-persons under the Constitution
will not prevent all abuses doable by corporations, but it
will remove a form of "reasoning" [by educated fools]
that corporations-as-persons have the same privileges
and protections as the Constitution guarantees to Homo
Sapiens people. Corporations wouldn't be privileged to
go to court and demand that they be permitted to utilize
as much "free-speech" money as they decide to use
in a political campaign, just because people can do so.
(In a perversion of justice, actually Home Sapiens people
cannot spend as much of their own money as they want
in a political campaign.)
As I posted in reply to Robert Riversong, I WOULD NOT
deny due process or the right to a fair trial to corporations.
They can have rights in court, and yet not be in court as
Homo-Sapiens-style persons.
I don't see anything as replacing capitalism. It's a practical
necessity. But I do advocate the U.S. moving away from
UNDUE permissiveness toward monsterous (multi-national)
corporations.
Robert Riversong:
You posted Feb. 6 at 9:32 PM: " ... the term we use today for a business
corportion is a very narrowly-defined legal entity ... . It has no rights, but
only duties and responsibilities." And at 9:47 PM: "Corporations are legal
products of the State and so cannot be included in the Constitution's notion
of a person." I reply: Tell that to the currently peopled Supreme Court,
with reference to previous memberships on the Court. THEY have
"discovered" that a corporation IS A PERSON. They went further to apply
the rights of a person -- e.g., in the Bill of Rights and the 14-th amendment --
to their inventive "corporations as persons". The courts were able to make
such a "discovery" only because the Constitution was composed with only
the NOTION of what a person is. No definition was written-in. In 1787
that omission was understandable, and today should be seen as excusable.
In the common and pervasive understanding of 1787, there was no problem.
Everyone then knew what a person is. But LATER men apparently did not
know as much. They then knew only expediency. Without a definition to
bring again to mind what the founders already knew, a "door" was found
open to the Courts' expeditiously GRANATING the status of personhood
to corporations. As the courts might have said: *Never mind that we
didn't find a constitutional foundation for corporations with personalities.
Never mind that the Constitution doesn't even envision the existence of
corporations. We just DID IT because it was seen to be EXPPEDIENT.*
In the 19-th century America, a legal fiction of corporate personhood could
be -- and was -- tolerated. That may even have been a practical necessity
AT THAT TIME, such maybe being so because corporations need SOME
rights, and corporate personhood was seen to be a "handy" way to hand
some rights to the corporate form. It was true [and still is true] that any
corporation -- assuming it should exist -- must have, e.g., the right to a
fair trial to determine it's guilt or innocence regarding some accusation
made against it. (To have the situation be otherwise would be as much
as to declare: There shall be no corporations. No human persons would
ever form a corporation if they knew it would be subject to a capricious
imposition of guilt and punishment.)
In answer to Kilroy: Yes, capitalism will survive. It must survive because
the U.S. government, as now constituted, is INCAPABLE of running a
business in any commercially viable form, and businesses there must be --
or else the people would freeze, starve, die of curable sickness, etc. The
preamble of the Constitution clearly forbids any such sad condition to be
put upon We The People. Furthermore, some business will only be found
to be feasible within an incorporated entity. When there is an over-sized
potential for liability to guilt and punishment, no human person or group
of persons will consent to bear that liability alone. A corporation must be
formed, capitalized sufficiently, and insured sufficiently to bear any guilt
and punishment. For such reasons, I would not want corporations to be
made mere formalities of financial accounting. I would admit that, if the
incorporated entities HAD BEEN LEFT as they were "discovered" in
constitutional law in the 19-th century, and if they would have remained
of the size and management they had in the 19-th century, I likely would
have remained silent about corporate personhood. But they did not so
remain. Both in legalistic innovations and in business practice, in the
20-th century, corporations began to be huge monstrosities of greed
and of their share-owners' "hubris". The old John D. Rockefeller went
so far as to say: "God gave me my money." Just then, and thereafter,
corporations became too much! President Roosevelt [Teddy Roosevelt]
called them and their owners "malefactors of great wealth". In the old
line of permissiveness toward malefactors/corporations of great wealth,
the invented doctrine of CORPORATE PERSONHOOD was used by
the Supreme Court so as to effectively open the door to the malefactors'
{first} buying the so-so servitude of candidataes running for public office,
and {second} buying the official after he/she is elected. I refer, of course,
to the infamous Citizens United decision. If you don't agree that, in
political contests, the newly admitted flow of cash talks louder than the
candidates, just consider how often and how easily the leaders in the
Republican primaries have been rising and then falling, all effectuated
by big money's "trash talking" on the TV. (To be unbiased, I also point
out that, in 2008, Barack Obama won the nomination from Hillary
Clinton because he raised more money and she essentially ran out of
money.) It should be obvious to anyone with common sense that the
legal fiction of corporate personhood has been extended very much too
far. It has to be ended. I don't see any chance that the extension from
19-th century corporations to 21-st century corporate oligarchy could
be undone by steps backward by the courts and private wealth. Like
the Gordian knot of old, the corporate oligarchy can only be cut away;
it never could be untied.
The problem is not simply "corporations" per se but the fact that the entire economy functions as a capitalist economy. The corporation is simply a legal entity created by capitalists to protect and maximize their wealth and profit.
What is needed is a transition from the capitalist economy, which maximizes the profit and wealth of the "top 1%", towards an economy that is organized to fill the needs of the vast majority (the bottom 99%).
"We the people" need a new political party that represents the economic interests of all working people, trade union organized and unorganized. President Obama, both Democratic and Republican Parties, are completely controlled by corporate money, interests and agendas. The top 1%, through their total ownership and control of political parties, mass media, and the "leadership" of organized labor, has been able to loot the economy, minimize and eliminate taxes, privatize public institutions and utilities. etc.
The economic needs of working people for “living wage” jobs, good schools, quality health care, clean air and water, an end to war, etc. will not come about by sending emails to Obama or to Congress.
We desperately need a new political party, perhaps called the Solidarity Party, that unites all working people to seek political power to bring about the changes needed now. Promises made by "con-man" Obama before the 2008 election, have been completely reversed. Obama, so corrupted by financial and corporate money and interests. cannot claim to be a "lesser evil" in the November elections.
A first principle of the Solidarity Party must be to accept no corporate funding and agendas. The AFL-CIO, with 14 million members, today has the financial and people power, to provide the seed money to establish the Solidarity Party. Millions of unorganized working people, probably never to be organized in a traditional trade union, would gladly join such a party with small monthly dues. This solidarity of working people economic power could realistically oppose the massive economic power of corporations.
The people power of a Solidarity Party on election day would be overwhelming! By running pro-labor, pro-working people candidates at Federal, State and local office, a change would finally be realized to completely reform the corporate-capitalist economy. The economy would at last be organized to work for the economic betterment of the vast majority of people, and not just to profit the top 1%.
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Here are possible platform planks of the Solidarity Party.
* Socialize (Nationalize) the toxic Energy Industries (oil, coal, gas and nuclear). The barbaric drive to maximize private corporate profit has resulted in ecological devastation, climate change and Global Warming. The survival of humanity is now threatened.
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* End the wars for profit in the Middle East.The billions in war costs to be re-directed toward meeting the commonwealth economic needs of the people.
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* “ Single-Payer” Health Care, which excludes corporate greed, is essential to create an affordable, universal, modern health care system for all.
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* Public education, free and universal, from day-care through college level into adult education.
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* Privatization opposed. The “outsourcing” of Federal Government functions, public utilities, public education, etc. is opposed.
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* Progressive taxation on the rich and their corporations.
...
* Jobs in the “public sector” need to be restored and created for the millions of unemployed.
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* End financial plunder of the economy by corporate capitalism. State banks should be created.
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*Support Organized Labor. Support the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Oppose Right to Work Laws.
The Justice Party meets your criteria. Look up www.voterocky.org
As does the Green Party and its candidate for president Jill Stein.
But electoral politics will not solve this crisis, and the socialized form of capitalism you're describing is not, in itself, a solution (nor will it ever happen without first controlling corporate power).
The problem is less the particular economic system as the concentration of unchecked power. There was the same kind of 1% elite class power in the Soviet Union under a "dictatorship of the workers".
Surely, we need a more cooperative and localized economy, and to break up every institution that is "too big to fail". But, just as the #OWS movement struck a chord because it pointed to the real seat of power - Wall Street - any successful movement for real change in the US must begin with the taming of that power base - the industrial and financial corporation
America the melting pot of corporate foreigners buying up the majority of media outlets and controlling U.S. information, buying politicians and controlling U.S.policies domestic and foreign.
How can we cut corporate power when the media is controlled by corporate power? Example: Washington Times- Rev. Moon I wonder how many Americans know who Rev. Moon is and why it is so outrageous that his conservative news paper is read by Americans ready to get brain washed by a Korean cult leader who thinks he is Jesus?
What would happen if we all chartered ourselves and became corporations too? Could we take advantage of the same loopholes, and laws the way they do?
If corporations can be people, people can be corporations! Is it crazy or would it make it necessary to change the laws we have now- quickly?
Sure, you could have the same power as any other corporation - as long as you raked in a cool $billion or so and invested it in the right politicians (the return on investment in lobbying is 22,000%). The fight can't be won by becoming the enemy. There are a few thousands of "them" and a few hundred million of We the People. If we stand up and organize to once more amend our foundational legal document, this too can be fixed.
One of the best articles seen here in a long time and likewise much impressed with the quality of comments!!! Further to this comment regarding organizing to occupy your local district, I would welcome contact per the site below or vote123 at netscape.ca
Robert, regarding the ability of the people to self-assert, right on!
Now towards occupying our very next elections, vote district by vote district. While I am your neighbour to the North, nevertheless www.vote123.ca introduces you to a “poltical hydraulic jack” by which two and three among the 99% working together can begin the process of doing some heavy lifting, even when the thick-eared elected resist and occupy your local elections for the benefit “of..., by..., and for the people” instead of (s)he who can amass the most money.
For your anonymous pleasure in reviewing this site or any other, use www.pagewash.com as a filter or use https://startpage.com as your private search engine thereby avoiding big brother’s snooping into seeing who is doing what.
If the 99% decided to boycott shopping for 7 days it would be noticed in a big way.
If the 99% quit buying gasoline for 7 days it would be noticed in a big way
If the 99% quit eating out for 7 days it would be noticed in a big way.
If the 99% cancelled their bank accounts in big name banks it would be realized in a great big way. Move your money:
Move Your Money - To local institutions and do your community a large favor.
A database to assist those wishing to move their money out of big banks that took taxpayer money and used it to pay themselves large bonuses:
http://moveyourmoneyproject.org/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/move-your-money-a-new-yea_b_406022.html
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/4/move_your_money_project_urges_people
If the 99% accomplished all of the above Wall Street would dive faster than a speeding bullet.
The 99% would be realized once again = we must stick together forever!
The fiction is that change can be brought to corporations. How? Signing petitions? Get real. The Bank of International Settlements can make or break nations with the power it currently has. It's way too late for this mamby pamby talk. Change now means devastating upheavals both economic and natural with massive die offs. Big corporations have replaced nations as primary entities of power. Corporate power is projected by controlling Western militaries. The concept of full spectrum military dominance is employed to achieve world economic dominion. The process employed to achieve dominion is permanent war. Only fools watch the super bowl and wave the flag today. Good luck living your mirage. This is likely the only real positive thinking your going to read hear today because it's based on reality not hollow wishes. Only when the majority of people are corrupt could something like this manifest. Screwed is a gentle word for what we are.
Well said Stone, A corporation is an organizational structure designed to allow a group of people to work together to achieve targeted purpose and goals. The Corporate State will supplant the Nation State for many complicated reasons, but simply stated as an organization they are more effective and efficient at achieving targeted goals. Corporations are able to conspire together to achieve common goals by creating a self reinforcing matrix of resources, power and control. These matrixes join together to create super matrixes that are evolving into the Corporate State. When corporations act unethically or immorally it is the people in the corporation and the shareholders that should be held accountable. The inability of governments to do so is the reason the Corporate State will prevail.
iwonder,
You got this mostly right. However, I think you're wrong when you say "When corporations act unethically or immorally it is the people in the corporation and the shareholders that should be held accountable."
As you correctly point out "A corporation is an organizational structure designed to allow a group of people to work together to achieve targeted purpose and goals." You can't have it both ways. The targeted purposes and goals are part of the law. How can you hold people responsible who act unethically or immorrally (BUT NOT ILLEGALLY) when the law (in the form of legally prescribed purpose and goals) drives them to behave unethically or illegally?
The key to solving this dilemna is to change the law which drives people in corporations to pursue corporate goals at the expense of the public interest. For a good book on this subject see Robert Hinkley's "Time to Change Corporations: Closing the Citizenship Gap."
These entities were designed to dispose with the inconvenience of human mortality in business dealings. They are incapable of feeling pain, they are all about profit, I've got to question the sanity of anyone who would consider them to be people.
A silly and turgid essay from a silly person.
First, a comment on the silly picture accompanying the silly essay.
Corporations are being executed all the time. Heard of bankruptcy court?
Enron? EXECUTED.
WorldCom? EXECUTED.
Today, many corporations are not only executed, they are drawn and quartered (business units dissociated from the main corporate unit), a barbaric form of execution no longer used on humans in Western Civilization.
Many erroneous statements by Mr Quigly.
Mr Quigley states:"Corporations are obviously not people."
Response: Incorrect. Teacher unions are corporations. Teachers are not people?
Mr Quigley states:"corporations have hijacked most of the rights of people while evading the responsibilities"
Response:Incorrect. Whatever hijacking the silly Quigly thinks the corporations are doing is actually done by Government, NOT corporations. And who votes in the politicians? Individuals like silly Quigly!!
Mr Quigley states:"radically change the laws so people can be in charge of corporations"
Response: Silly statement and unnecessary. Stockholders elect the board of directors. Stockholders are people like silly Quigly and you. Stockholders are also other corporations such as union pension funds. Often the excesses of corporations are due to the demands FROM union pension funds.
Mr Quigley states:"One of the most basic roles of society is to protect the people from harm."
Response:Incorrect. The basic role of society is its own survival. Often the survival is at the cost of some individuals: Prison, Execution, Banishments, and Deportations are institutions present in ALL societies, be they Democratic, Republican, Socialist, or Communist.
Mr Quigley states:"Corporate crime is widespread."
Response:Correct! And non-profit corporations are just as criminal in their activity as their for-profit counterparts.
Mr Quigley states: "Justice demands we make sure corporations do not harm people."
Response:Correct! Corporations do less harm to people than politicians do. Once it is known that a corporation harms people, said corporation goes bankrupt and die. Politician keep implementing harmful programs for decades despite the documentation of harm done. Can you say "War on Poverty"?
The essay is silly because Statists like Quigley has a fundamental disrespect in the intelligence of the people. It is not so much corporations per se that Quigley is opposed (teacher unions, liberal foundations such as the Ford Foundation are corporations also), it is corporations (most of the them for-profit) whose agenda are conservative that Quigley is opposed.
A false message is broadcast 1000 times and a true message is broadcast 1 time and I will buy the true message every single time.
Many rich candidates (Corzine: liberal; Meg Whitman: conservative) spent millions of their own fortune and lost. Progressive/Socialists like Quigley want the unwashed masses to remain dumb, stupid, bare-foot, and pregnant.
Corporations can have their corporate charters dissolved, the thing is that they can thereafter be revived. People do not get infinite do-overs, but corporations can just as long as someone wants to keep them around. So no, corporations are not people.
Our founders went to war due to corporate abuses and influence peddling by the world's first multinational corporation, look up the East India Company sometime, it was their tea that Boston Harbor was blockaded over.
Don't get me wrong, corporations can be a useful thing, but they are, after all just a tool and nothing more. A hammer can help you frame up a house, or if you don't know what you are doing it can be used to break your hand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
Talk about silly, much of what you say above is silly. You obviously believe that you have all of the answers. Apparently you believe that you can do this all by yourself and YOU are the one who knows what precisely to do. That is more than silly.
We need remarks like this like we need diarrhea.
Please take the time to read all of this: People v. corporations.
Corporate boards and members, when impacting through their corporate structures, are often acting against the common good and are not upholding the oath to the United States.
After the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had produced the Constitution for ratification by the thirteen colonies, two years went by without enough state ratifying it to make it law. They had to add the first 10 amendments... and also adopt a code of conduct ...... a voluntary oath for all citizens to uphold.
It was their belief that for a nation's people to be free, they had to have trust, and to have trust, the people had to uphold honor.
Without honor there is no freedom. To the degree that there is honor, there is untrammeled freedom. Honorable behavior created the atmosphere in which freedom can thrive.
If any individual acts dishonorably, they are traitors to the dream of a free society and cannot be tolerated.
Colors:
White: The background banner representing purity and innocence, lack of guile.
Red: The stripes applied to the white banner: Cheer, Hardiness and Valor (worthiness)
Blue: Honor, Vigilance, Perseverance, & Justice
13 Stripes: 13 colonies
(7 red, 6 white)
A blue field with one white star for each state.
As in the Declaration of Independence: "We pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor".
Old Glory
by
Timothy K. Price
Let me tell you a story,
About our flag, old glory,
The stars and stripes of red, white, and blue;
And of its creation,
ThIs symbol for our nation,
And what it mean to folks like me and you.
They took the purity of white,
The brightly shining light
All the colors in the spirit of our souls
For our banner of trust,
Our pledge of good intention,
For all who live beneath her to uphold.
They emblazoned her with red,
Stripes which clearly said
With a boisterous, cheering humor, “Have no fear”.
We are hardy souls of valor,
Worthy our intent,
To do good is the reason we are here.
We are many joined as one,
Honest folk, and fair,
For honor is the air that we breathe;
So to represent our nation,
Took a patch of blue sky
And placed on it a starry constellation.
With a star for every state
Each joining in its fate,
A union which no one will leave,
Finding happiness in freedom,
This flag is our dream
That none who live among us shall deceive.
Our flag is made from scraps,
For frugal is our way.
Simple living lets others simply live.
We will shame you for your riches,
Scorn your vanity,
If greed should get the better of your soul.
There’s salvation in compassion,
Poverty in greed,
So what we have we share with loving care.
We understand hard work,
Have no tolerance for cheats,
Politician in their office should beware.
When we pledge our allegiance,
We pledge a way of life,
To be true to the meaning of our flag.
We pledge a life of honor,
To be truthful and fair,
This is our way... here in the USA.
So this is my story,
About our flag, old glory,
The stars and strips of red, white, and blue.
And of its creation,
ThIs symbol of our nation,
and what it mean to folks like me and you
Tea.
Harbor.
sj
Another "We must...' article--Sigh. What about: "We must build a pedestrian walkway to the moon?" Is there anything preventing "us" from getting started on it?
No, lets do it.