Real People v. Corporate “People”: The Fight Is On

[marmar]

from YES! magazine:



Real People v. Corporate “People”: The Fight Is On
The Supreme Court says corporations can spend as much money as they want on political advertising. Millions of Americans say they've had it.


by Doug Pibel
posted May 27, 2010


In 2009, Riki Ott was on the road for 252 days educating people about the dangers of “corporate personhood.” That’s the legal doctrine that says corporations have constitutional rights, just like human beings. She mostly spoke in academic settings, and there was some interest in the idea, says Ott, but not much.

All that changed on January 21, 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Now interest has skyrocketed, and Ott finds people eager to volunteer, to organize, to meet, to do anything to reverse the Court’s decision.

Rallying Around Citizens United

Supreme Court cases are usually interesting to lawyers, scholars, and those directly affected. Occasionally, a decision makes the news for a few days before disappearing from the public eye. But sometimes there’s a game changer—a decision that is so clearly wrong that it becomes a rallying point. David Cobb, former Green Party presidential candidate and longtime activist on corporate personhood, points to Dred Scott v. Sandford as one such decision. Citizens United, Cobb says, is shaping up as another.

The two cases are mirror images of error. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision said that a flesh-and-blood human being had no constitutional rights because he was black. On January 21, 2010, the Court, in a 5-4 decision, used Citizens United to declare that corporations—legal entities with no human attributes—have the same constitutional free-speech rights that humans have.

Dred Scott was the most notorious Supreme Court decision of its time. It was not a groundbreaking case—it simply took existing law to its logical conclusion. But it so clearly violated both logic and human decency that it forced people to look at what slavery really meant. Rather than legitimizing the status quo, as it was intended to do, the decision galvanized the growing abolitionist movement, and set the stage for the end of slavery. But it took the 14th Amendment to overturn Dred Scott. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/water-solutions/real-people-v.-corporate-people-the-fight-is-on

[Uncle Joe]

1. They're also an authoritarian construct, if you want to keep your job, you tow the line.

"Corporations are now a sort of super-being: They can live forever, they cannot be jailed, they have no conscience—yet they also enjoy virtually all the rights that humans have."

This is a modern day version of Feudalism and the American People are becoming the serfs.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.

[Doctor_J]

2. We have as much chance of winning as I do of

winning a fist fight with Wladimir Klitschko. We're to fractious, too brainwashed, too afraid, and too downtrodden to do what needs to be done. Here's a hint: If 10-20 hate radio/Cable "News" personalities were to disappear every week for a couple of months, we might get back on the right track.

By the time we can pass a constitutional amendment, the fight will be long over (we're on life support right now)

[socialist_n_TN]

3. Welcome to left wing politics.....

It's ALWAYS been this way and I'm afraid it always will. The Left is SO contentious that, even when we agree on an outcome, we argue vociferously about the means. Also, we have all sorts of "purity" tests and then splinter into a million, useless factions.