Reply #180: I think of Madison, Jefferson and religious incorporation [View All]

[scentopine]

and their various objections to taxes and civil law and property grants for religious entities. Church of England had become a massive and quite secular enterprise with unchecked powers over legislation and tax revenue.

The bill of rights and subsequent amendments set up distinct boundaries between civil government and private enterprise, including religion which at that time was arguably the largest "private" enterprise in the world within the context of the embryonic US government envisioned by Madison and Jefferson.

If these same men saw our current legislative process being influenced by money from corporations (many with significant foreign ownership) and lobbyists as well as the limited representation available to ordinary citizens, I have no doubt there would simple and clear language prohibiting corporations from influencing the legislative process through gifts, campaign funds, kick-backs, PACs. The actions of lobbyists would be greatly curtailed. The constitution is designed to limit and balance power - our corporate influence in contemporary government is in violation of spirit and intent of the constitution, which is largely to prevent incorporated entities from usurping the rights of individual citizens.

During the HCR debacle we had congressional leadership trotting out bishops and religious leaders, pens in hand - very pleased to help draft the legislation. Just like corporations. There is no mistake about what the designers of the constitution agreed on regarding this sort of religious activity.

The new corporate model of government (remember Bush proudly hailed as the CEO president?) seems to treat individuals as common shareholders and the executive class citizens are shareholders of preferred shares that provide them with special voting rights and exceptions to common law. I'm beginning to feel like my vote is about as worthless as one of those ballots you get for annual meetings - since I don't have 10,000,000 shares of Class A shares in ACME, Inc. I just throw the damn thing in the trash since the common stock has voting rights diluted to about 10000:1.

Corporate influence over legislation would not be the only complaint by Madison et al (I wonder what they would say about the executive signing order). But certainly I have to think this would be the first problem to be tackled by watching our perverse and twisted legislative process in motion.