There is a debate raging under our noses right now. Although it has roots all the way back to the 17th century, the far reaching consequences of it flies into the present day and beyond. Are corporations “persons” and if so then do they deserve equal protection under the Constitution? Should corporations be allowed to contribute without limits to political campaigns and child organizations like ACORN for direct political use? While corporations are made up of people, they seldom actually represent the people who work for them. This governmental system is supposed to be of, for and by the people so should big business have more of a lobby than they already have?
People and corporations have a few things in common.
- The right of protection of their property
- Right to a trial
- The ability to sue and be sued in a court of law
- The ability to be taxed
- Be held under the constrains and protections of State and Federal Law
This is where the similarities stop and rightfully so. Since the 17th century in Britain, corporations have tried to work British law in order to gain advantage. Wouldn’t you if it meant freeing your corporation of regulators and laws? Just inside the law far enough to not be outside the law. Corporations claimed, that because the laws in Britain all started with “No person shall”, they were not subjected collectively to the law. Now they are claiming the exact opposite. It may soon go before the US Supreme Court to determine if Corporations should be afforded the same protections under the 1st, 5th and 14th amendments as you and I, including direct high dollar campaign contributions and politically motivated advertising. The only thing is, most of us don’t have millions and billions of dollars laying around to throw at people to “enact change” and, tell me if I am wrong here, large corporations don’t tend to lobby for the kind of change that benefits the people. Unions happen to be huge proponents of this kind of theory and argue that because they are made up of individuals who simply gather together to “act collectively”, the unions should have the same rights in America as the individual citizen.
It all started with a US Supreme Court ruling in 1886 resulting from Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad and the ensuing twisting, by a court reporter, of a statement made by Supreme Court Chief Justice Morris R. Waite before opening arguments even began.
“The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.”
This was later inserted as a header note into the final opinion, in a different verbiage, by the court reporter even though the 14th amendment was not even a consideration in the ruling.
“The Defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in Section 1 of the 14 Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within it’s jurisdiction the equal protection of laws.”
This addition to the published opinion of the court has, to many, come to mean that corporations are entitled to ALL protections as set forth by the Constitution as they apply to individual citizenry, including the freedom from regulation of political speech and campaign contributions.
Corporations today have the ability to lobby Washington D.C. and donate gobs of money through Political Action Committee groups. They also have the ability to purchase advertisements on radio and television. What they do not have the ability to do is lie or misrepresent anything that they directly state. They are bound by current law and regulation to be factually true in everything they say or else they are subject to litigation and prosecution related to false advertising. If political speech and campaign contributions by corporations become protected under the 1st Amendment of the Constitution, there will be no requirements on the truthfulness of their statements and no limit on how much money they contribute and where the money goes.
A decision needs to be made. Do we want Unions and Corporations to have unfettered and unregulated ability to push THEIR agendas in D.C. or should the agenda of the people be the first thing on our elected leaders minds?
I am by far NOT a hater of big business. I firmly believe that they are the backbone of our jobs economy and directly responsible for so much more good than evil. No one has ever received a job from a poor person. I am a capitalistic free market fan and feel corporations, for the most part, should be allowed to run their own businesses, sink or swim. But I also believe that the lobby that large corporations currently possess is far to expansive. Anything that extends the size of their pockets to make room for more politicians to inhabit is fundamentally against how our system is supposed to work.
This country is of, for and by the People. This country is not of, for and by Big Business. When the same rights that are given naturally at birth to you and I are granted to gigantic organizations that have motives that go far beyond that of what is good for the people, there is a huge propensity for illegality and corruption. The laws in place today are designed to avoid this but are not being properly enforced. I can’t, in good conscience, support anything that makes it worse.
Article 1 of the 14th Amendment can be applied to corporate America without declaring them “artificial persons”. There is no reason, other than increasing a corporations ability to push a political agenda without the requirement of truthful statements, to apply any other part of the Constitution. Originally, the 14th Amendment was written to cover the newly freed slaves after abolition.
What are your thoughts? Hit the comment link below.
September 16th, 2009 at 8:23 PM
Nice job! I am impressed!
Now to the meat of the matter, so to speak.
I too, am a fan of corporate America. The right to engage in free market enterprise, to engage as freely as possible without restraint in this practice, right up my alley, from my first lemonade stand until my last corporate adventure.
Yet, my little corporation, which had to be formed so that I could be appropriately taxed, so that I could engage in free market trade – read as business, will, in all likelihood, never compete on a scale enjoyed by the large corporations. Thats okay as far as it goes. But it leads me to the question: Are the reasons I had to form a corporation the same for me as for those monster-sized conglomerates that could and would, were I not so insignifficent, beneath notice even, tolerate instead of destroying me without a seconds notice, just to protect their bottom dollar and their shareholder’s dollars. You can bet the farm on that one!
So, I have to ask myself, what other purpose does the legal fiction serve, you know the one, that corporations are merely seen as individuals, does that legal fiction serve, since it helps me not!
The only answer I would bank on is that it is not there to help me. Therefore, who does it help, (Think Enron, etc.). I can find a lot of others, but to stay on track, I believe that the legal fiction serves a more dire purpose, a purpose more inimical to people like me, than what is stated. I believe, it allows individuals employed by a corporation to engage in acts that would normally leave the average American under arrest, convicted, and jailed. But instead it seems to leave those most responsible not just free, but also leaves them the freedom to engage in such reckless activity unopposed!
Logically it should follow, either the board members should be held responsible for all transgressions or that those who had elected those individuals to that august body, (corporate), should be held responsible as well. Therefore the share-holders should be held as equally responsible for the crimes as well. That would be a lot of people to jail.
So the fiction that a corporation is not to be considered guilty of a particuler crime because it sheds and dilutes its responsiblity among its shareholders, that no one is penalized, is false. It acts as an umbrella where all illegal activities have no ties to real people and therefore no liability as to respnsibilty for those actions are the very same people who voted to commit them in the first place.
This I find intolerable! Therefore, I believe that corporations that have acted criminally should be sentenced to jail as if they were real individuals. Which would mean, they can not engqge in business until their term is up. I bet that would make stock-holders sit up and pay attention. Therefore, I believe that corporations should be treated as the legal fiction they seek to use as protection from the laws we have to obey.
Send corporations to jail!
Red.
September 17th, 2009 at 4:01 AM
I am all for responsible reporting on the public airwaves! Those that use the airwaves to deliberately and repeatedly use fabrications that are not true, are dangerous to the public safety and to the constitution that is supposed to guarantee our rights of free speech. Americans have free speech rights, … but not the freedom to shout “FIRE!” when their is no fire, inside a crowded theatre!
The irresponsable reporting by the likes of “Glenn Beck” creates a “mob” mentality! A mob mentality that can and will (according to history) incite to violence, those that are portrayed as different from that of the mob!
Let’s face it! There are those in america that are looking forward to inciting a “RACE WAR,” and are using the public air waves and the fact of a black president to incite mobs to act violently against the government of the USA!
You have to be blind to not recognize the conservative movement direction toward insurection of a pluralistic and multi-cultural america and instituting in it’s place what existed in our racist fundamentalist bigoted past!
All of this backward movement toward our unenlightened past is being done in the name of fighting “COMMUNISM!
http://despicable.wordpress.com/
September 17th, 2009 at 7:02 AM
“Are corporations “persons” and if so then do they deserve equal protection under the Constitution? Should corporations be allowed to contribute without limits to political campaigns and child organizations like ACORN for direct political use? While corporations are made up of people, they seldom actually represent the people who work for them. This governmental system is supposed to be of, for and by the people so should big business have more of a lobby than they already have?”
Check out “The Corporation”, one off the best movies ever about the damage done to the American way of life by corporate “people”: http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=102. . .”and the truth shall set you free”
September 17th, 2009 at 7:08 AM
Despicable,
First I would like to thank you for reading my blog. I assume you actually READ the post right? Second, next time you comment on one of my posts, try to refrain from merely copy/pasting an entry off YOUR blog into my comments. Be a little more creative than that. Your comment has almost nothing to do with the subject above.
Now on to the fun.
Those in the mass media on both sides ARE protected by the first amendment. They say almost anything they want. Unfortunately that is a necessary evil. I disagree with your assessment of Glenn Beck but YOU are also protected under the first amendment. We are protected individuals, as is Glenn Beck and Larry King and the others at the “Clinton News Network”.
Corporations, on the other hand, do not and should not share those rights.
3 questions.
1. Name a specific thing that Glenn beck has said that points you to believe he is a racist bent on creating a race war.
2. Define Communism
3. Do you think copy/pasting your own blog entry into my blog comments is considered joining the conversation or spreading your own agenda and talking points on someone else’s forum? Hijacking so to speak? I read your blog. It’s full of hateful, Marxist drivel about how capitalism stole your birthday and the CIA was formed by Nazis. Come on, really?!
Have you ever noticed how those that speak out the loudest about the evils of capitalism are those that seem to profit from the system the most? Michael Moore for instance. If it wasn’t for the system he professed to hate, he would be sitting on an old couch, in a single-wide mobile home somewhere in middle America with nothing but one more Schlitz in the fridge next to some moldy cheese. Your ideas look to be strait out of Carl Marx’s play book. Championing the proletariat (laboring working class) by demonizing the bourgeoisie (producing owners and employers) with false social class warfare. It’s an old tactic that Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini and even FDR used to fool the masses into forming a mob of their own. Now Obama is doing the same outwardly but only pandering to the Union bosses who helped him get elected in the first place. Typical liberal progressive method.
Keep this in mind. A government strong enough to give you everything you need is also strong enough to take it all away. It happened in Russia and every other county that moved in the direction your blog espouses.
My suggestion to you is learn history and stop spreading the liberal progressive Hillary Clinton it takes a village BS.
I lied… one more question. Name one, just one, “managed economy” that is still alive and well today where the people who your Marxists profess to care about the most, are prospering. Socialism ALWAYS leads to oligarchy my friend and oligarchy always leads to tyranny. Look to Russia as a great example. It worked so WELL for them didn’t it?
I can’t stand Barak Obama because he is a Marxist. It has nothing to do with his color, but it is easy for you to demagogue me with the race card isn’t it?
I left the link you placed at the bottom of your blog because I want people to read what you have to say and make up their own mind. I have.
September 17th, 2009 at 7:14 AM
Red,
Well said my friend!
Although I would hate to give them the false identity they ask for just to hold responsible the ones that actually get caught. The current laws in place, if enforced, would do a great job of things. Unfortunately, they just are not being used as intended. Too many loopholes and those that would enforce are too corrupted by the very money funneling through said loopholes.
What do you think about just taking the money out of the system all together?
October 13th, 2009 at 11:58 PM
Your a good a good American Jay ! I will stop sending all your packages back to the shipper ! Your UPS MAN