With Rehnquist's death, corporate takeover may be coming soon!

[cascadiance]

Everyone worries about Roe v. Wade being overturned now, with Roberts being added to the court and possibly another wingnut thug to replace Rehnquist with...

That issue we should be concerned about, but a "stealth" issue we should worry about where the balance may tip against us is on the issue of corporate personhood. Corporations have been given these rights, and the Supreme Court hasn't shut it down, so you might say that corporations already have run over us. However, what is important to know is that Rehnquist has had a histofy of dissenting AGAINST the idea of corporate personhood! It's been his voice that has helped moderate the decisions to not allow corporations to run over us. If he's replaced with someone that doesn't have his sensibilities in that area, we could lose BIG TIME if future cases come up that give the corporations the rights to run over us! And you know that corporations are buying both justices as well as congress critters and the executive branch to allow this to happen! Folks! WE must demand that our congress critters ask both Roberts and Rehnquist's replacemt on this issue. It might not seem important to us now, but I think it is VERY important to avoid moves towards fascism.

Read Thom Hartmann's book Unequal Protection, which talks about this issue a lot and also notes Rehnquist's involvement in court cases too. We should be calling Thom Hartmann's show on Monday to see what he feels should be the appropriate approach to protect us from a court system that might really rig things against us for corporations.

From this article:

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/01/int05004.html

...

It's interesting that in one of the most recent cases decided by the Supreme Court expanding corporate personhood, Chief Justice Rehnquist dissented. The case was First National Bank of Boston versus Bellotti, in 1978, and the bank was asserting that, as a "person," it had the right of "free speech" to interfere in politics. This was the case that kicked wide the door to corporations corrupting our political process in the last twenty-five years, and has led directly to the corporate capture and manipulation of Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Dubya as well as the majority of both houses of Congress, the Republican Party, and the DLC wing of the Democratic Party.

In opening his dissent, Rehnquist said: "This Court decided at an early date, with neither argument nor discussion, that a business corporation is a "person" entitled to the protection of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co., 118 U.S. 394, 396 (1886)."

This makes it pretty clear that neither Rehnquist nor his clerks actually read the Santa Clara case, but, as has been done for over a hundred years, were relying on the headnote. But, to his credit, Rehnquist disagreed with the headnote, saying:

"Early in our history, Mr. Chief Justice Marshall described the status of a corporation in the eyes of federal law: 'A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence. These are such as are supposed best calculated to effect the object for which it was created.'" Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518, 636 (1819).

Rehnquist then added, brilliantly in my opinion:

"The appellants herein either were created by the Commonwealth or were admitted into the Commonwealth only for the limited purposes described in their charters and regulated by <435 U.S. 765, 824> state law. 2 Since it cannot be disputed that the mere creation of a corporation does not invest it with all the liberties enjoyed by natural persons, United States v. White, 322 U.S. 694, 698 -701 (1944) (corporations do not enjoy the privilege against self-incrimination), our inquiry must seek to determine which constitutional protections are "incidental to its very existence." Dartmouth College, supra, at 636.

"The free flow of information is in no way diminished by the Commonwealth's decision to permit the operation of business corporations with limited rights of political expression. All natural persons, who owe their existence to a higher sovereign than the Commonwealth, remain as free as before to engage in political activity."

In this dissent, Rehnquist demonstrated the difference between a classical conservative, as he is, and the new corporatists who call themselves conservatives. Interestingly, this interview would probably be just as interesting and agreeable to readers of the website of William F. Buckley Jr. as it is to the readers of BuzzFlash. This is an issue on which both classic conservatives and classic liberals agree.

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[Erika]

1. Corporate fascist/theocracy on its way

W is big money. That's all he knows.

[cascadiance]

2. My concern is that the corporate media will intentionally downplay this...

As they also get paid by corporations too. The problem is that there will be NOONE out there that will piece together this shift in power until it's too late, because corporate influence lies with the media, all of our politicians and the courts too. They don't want it talked about, so that once they have their guys on the courts, it will be too late for us to do anything about it. Almost any other issue, corporate interests aren't as directly affected (Roe v. Wade, etc.) and therefore they would rather us get in a lather about that, where they don't have much to lose. This is one issue that they DON'T want us to have questions asked of the judge nominees on how they would rule in such cases. They don't want it exposed that these judge nominees WON'T be constructivist in those instances (despite them saying they want to always follow the constitution and not support judicial activism, which is code words to say that they would shoot down Roe V. Wade).

If they were pressed to say that they would always rule against judicial activism, then we should hold their feet to the fire and ask them to shut down the judicial activism that gave Corporations the right of personhood to start with. They won't do this of course, but it would expose them as not being *PURE* constitutional constructivist as some will try to make them out to be, and in the course of doing so, expose them as being more partisan than they would want to admit, or get them to commit that Roe V. Wade should be protected as "existing law" the same way that corporations are protected (if they want to use that line of logic to defend the concept of corporate personhood).

The problem we have is getting a congress critter to ask questions about this, since it would be dangerous to them in terms of their coporate donorships if they do so. That is why it is SO important that we up the ante as voters to let our congress critters know that this is an important issue!

[Media_Lies_Daily]

3. Gee...don't the new nominations have to be confirmed before they....

...can take the bench?

Do you see that happening anytime before 2008?

And won't that leave the following balance on the bench?:

NeoCon Conservatives:
--------------------
Scalia-Republican-Reagan
Thomas-Republican-Bush I

Moderates:
---------
Kennedy-Republican-Reagan
Souter-Republican-Bush I
Stevens-Republican-Ford

Democrats:
----------
Breyer-Democrat-Clinton
Ginsburg-Democrat-Clinton

[cascadiance]

5. O'Connor will still be on the court until her replacement is filled.

Well, I don't know if I'd call all of who you call moderates as moderates. Kennedy tends to be more conservative, though not as bad as Scalia or Thomas.

O'Connor will stay on the court until they approve her replacement. Now with Rehnquist now dead, I don't know if they will stick with an 8 justice court until Rehnquist's replacement is approved or not.

I'm wondering if this will help Sibel Edmonds in the short term get heard by the Supremes though, if they can get a "locked court" 4-4 decision on whether to hear her case or not. Hopefully they can break that tie, as I'm guessing that would mean that they wouldn't hear it if that outcome came through.

[elehhhhna]

4. Watch Bush appoint Jack Welch

[cascadiance]

6. Kicking...

as it's important that we see this aspect of losing Rehnquist now, since both Bush-appointed replacements will probably tip the balance away towards the rule by corporations in ways that we all are generally not aware of!

Here's a Usenet post that has a paragraph that indicates the same thing...

From:

http://groups.google.com/group/misc.activism.progressive/browse_frm/thread/31c20cf3b7ef4caa/46d0b3adf5ce0f69?lnk=st&q=&rnum=3&hl=en#46d0b3adf5ce0f69

"The Supreme Court has used different theories over time to decide cases regarding corporate rights. At the beginning of the Court and until 1886, they regarded corporations as artificial entities. We can see this in their written opinions. After 1886, corporations were regarded as legal persons by the Court. In the 1960s there was another shift in reasoning. The court seems to no longer care whether a corporation is a person or not. The new reasoning revolves around the question of what are the rights. What is the history and intent of, say, the First Amendment? What best serves the First Amendment? The Court's answer, to justify their corporate speech rulings, seems to be the more speech the better. This shift in theory is interesting and important as we consider arguing a case at the Supreme Court.

The timeline contains excerpts of several famous judges' dissents, beginning in the 1930s. The Court has not been unified on the issue of
corporate personhood rights since. Many important recent rulings were 5 to 4. The judges do not split along traditional right/left lines on this issue, with Rehnquist writing great dissents, basically saying corporations are not persons. This is the view of a strict constructionist- corporations are not mentioned in the Constitution.

The timeline emphasizes corporate powers and rights. But these powers and rights are to achieve an end-a system that keeps wealth in as few hands as possible- putting into law Noam Chomsky's rule of capitalism "Privatize the profits, socialize the costs."

..