Why isn't there a bigger movement to end "Corporate Personhood"?

[marmar]

I'm listening to Pap and Jim Hightower (on Ring of Fire) talk about a Bush-supported bill to make it just about impossible to sue corporations, and I was thinking about the segment in the film "The Corporation" about corporate personhood, and it occurred to me that this is a HUGE outrage that no one is outraged about. (Perhaps not many people really know this?:shrug: )
It seems to me that "corporate personhood" is a big part of the mess that we're in today, the mess that's led to outsourcing, layoffs, environmental degradation and so on and so on. So how do you get such a movement going?

I did find this organization: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/

ReclaimDemocracy.org works to create a representative democracy with an actively participating public, where citizens don't merely choose from a menu of options determined by elites, but play an active role in guiding the country and political agenda. We believe that one's influence should be a direct result of the quality of one's ideas and the energy one puts into promoting their position, independent of wealth or status. We inspire citizens to consciously choose what role corporations should play in our society and to limit them to that role. We are a non-partisan (501c3) non-profit organization. Welcome all who share our goals.

Our Mission: ReclaimDemocracy.org is dedicated to restoring democratic authority over corporations, reviving grassroots democracy, and revoking the power of money and corporations to control government and civic society.


Seems like this is way past due.:think:

[valerief]

1. Some lobbyists are really, really good at their jobs. They won't

even let the subject come up.

[Raster]

71. I recently read that lobbyists spend about $100 million A MONTH lobbying

members of Congress. While the number seems insanely high to me, the point and the message remain the same: most members of Congress are OWNED by various factions and interests. And by far the largest faction would be the corporatists. Their job is to make sure corporate entities NEVER pay their fair share of taxes, always GET tax breaks and make sure legislation FAVORING CORPORATIONS is always at the forefront. When it's a choice of what's best for the country and what's best for the corporate masters, Congress ALWAYS CHOOSES WHAT'S BEST FOR THEIR CORPORATE MASTERS. The global climate is heating out of control, we are experiencing mass species extinction, and the oceans are rapidly becoming barren aqua deserts--in short the planet is ill and getting worse--and still the wants and needs of the corporatists trump the wants and needs of the human species. There is something very, very wrong with this picture.

[nebenaube]

2. sign me up...

Wisconsin used to have a law that would revoke the coporate charter of a company that spent money to influence elections...

[tnlefty]

3. I don't think that many people know about this, and people have been

convinced that corporations and the lack of regulations on them, etc., is a good thing.

Thanks for the reclaimdemocracy link!

[femrap]

18. I read this in my local paper today...

a LTTE from a young a-hole. It's very disheartening to read such spoonfed-corporate crap from someone so dim witted:

http://www.dispatch.com/editorials-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/12/09/20061209-A9-04.html

[HughBeaumont]

22. We see this sort of RW-talking-point-laced gum-flapping all the time in the PD.

It's gotta be disheartening for the CD and the PD to be two right-wing rags in heavily blue counties/metro areas. The PD mostly prints Repuke LTTEs also. Kind of hard to push that ol' agenda on people who stopped buying into it years ago.

[NJCher]

54. ignorance of corporate personhood

Some of the most politically ignorant people (read republicans) I know can add up two and two: that this government is controlled by corporations.

It's only a short leap from there to "corporate personhood needs to go."




Cher

[rman]

61. One of those issues where many on the left and the right agree

- to bad those in positions of power don't agree. But that only exemplifies the fact that the interests of those in power are not the same as the interests of those who they are supposed to represent.

[blues90]

4. stop consuming

the reality is we don't make a damn thing in america anymore . I say stop buying crap and end this corporate stronghold .

Let the beast die after a few months . Problem is people don't try to kill the beast they keep feeding it .

[ananda]

63. The problem with conspicuous consumption..

.. is that it has become an ingrained meme in the thinking and behavior of the society as a whole.

It takes a very strong individual to be able to stop buying, and to think about boycotting and careful shopping.

Conspicuous consumption drives almost everything that happens in America today... debt... crime... greed... stuff... jobs... wars... entertainment... media... film... tv... etc. It's both overt and subliminal in its messages and nigh impossible to resist... without a greater awareness and some degree of consciousness raising and opening up of the heart and mind centers of the body, nothing new will happen in the way of change.

Sue

[blues90]

This is true

I have this idealistic hope that possibly one day people will remove the blinders and tune out to the sellers media hype . It is a truly sad mindset to have that it takes things to complete ones life and now more than ever before these things become obsolete in less than a year and they go on to the next phase and consume more stuff .

[nebenaube]

5. On second thought...

now is the time to push this... after all the original court decision conflicts with itself much like it had been revised after the fact.

[Kagemusha]

6. Uh, simple answer, it'd throw the economy into mass chaos.

Being able to revoke corporate personhood means bringing in the death penalty for financial institutions in which many members of the public might have substantial investments.

[bettyellen]

14. oh, what reaganesque nonsense. profit reigns supreme eh? even blood $$$!

[femrap]

19. Our economy is already going to experience

mass chaos....* had bankrupted this nation and the Fed can't print $ fast enough....it's all a house of cards/paper. That's all the US economy produces anymore....Green pieces of PAPER. And the economy is based on Derivatives....more little pieces of paper. The Ponzi scheme is about to end.

So when that happens, let's make sure We, the People arrange for these Corporations to take orders from us and not the other way around.

[EVDebs]

24. The Corporation Movie

The movie The Corporation has a synopsis

http://www.thecorporation.com/index.php?page_id=2

that shows corporate deviance should be punishable by revealing their inherent pathology.

Barring that, corporate liability SHOULD be something shareholders may wish to hold accountable the corporate management for. Should this include prison time, well, then as with Enron and with So. African investment boycotting, then TIME HAS COME TODAY.

[mondo joe]

33. It would be the death penalty for which institutions?

Please be specific.

[Kagemusha]

38. I can't. It'd be at the pleasure of the government.

I can't be specific, because I have no idea which corporations would be fingered and dismantled by law. There's no way for me to know, you to know, anyone to know, in advance of it actually happening. That's why it'd create chaos. I see people disagree, believing justice is more important than order, but in this case it'd be the courts casually throwing away the stability of the economy, and they just don't see that as justified now that modern incorporation has been the way of doing business not just in the US, but worldwide, for quite some time.

[mondo joe]

40. Why would ending corporate personhood lead to dismantling of corporations?

Why would that happen to ANY corporation?

[Kagemusha]

41. Uh, sir, you don't understand...

Corporate personhood is precisely what prevents the government from dismantling corporations as punishment for its behavior in some matter. Removing it accomplishes little except for making possible the dismantling of corporations and the placing of the owners directly in the firing line for what management does, not just to the amount they invested in the corporation, but unlimited liability.

Why would that happen to any corporation? Because once the power to do so exists, the other posters on this thread would gleefully use that power to "fight back" and use jury trials and vote corps out of existence. I'm sure using government to slam corps would come up as a good idea too.

[mondo joe]

42. I fail to see how eliminating corporate personhood would give the

government authority to dismantle any corporation.

[Kagemusha]

43. Read down the thread a bit then.

It's been a while since I've argued about this with people. I won the argument and lost my stomach for it. I don't really care about the specifics anymore. Just look at what people plan to do and be glad they can't for the sake of the little people who depend on a somewhat stable, if not perfect, economy.

[mondo joe]

44. I did. I don't see where dismantling corporations comes in.

And I have little interest in devastating the economy.

[bettyellen]

46. you used exageration to create fear and confusion and claim that at one

point in time you were known to be correct on this issue?
LOL, Dubyah, Is that you?

[NJCher]

53. OK, you just lost me on that one

I was following your argument until:

...somewhat stable, if not perfect, economy.

Please.

And furthermore, just supposing what you say is true, there could be a "phased withdrawal" to provide some stability to the process.




Cher

[roody]

67. The government can already dismantle a corporation

by revoking its charter.

[Occulus]

48. But if corporations claim personhood for legal purposes, doesn't that

eliminate their ability to own other corporations? If they're trying to claim corporations are persons.... they're claiming they can own another 'person'.

I thought that was flatly illegal these days.

ed.: clarification

[MadHound]

55. Funny, it did no such thing for the over one hundred and fifty years

That we actually could hold corporations accountable, including the use of the corporate death penalty. Amazingly enough, not only did the economy continue to grow and expand, but corporations were much better civic citizens when they knew they had an guillotine hanging over them.

Sorry, you're simply peddling more new economy, Milt Friedman twaddle. Stop it before you make yourself look really foolish.

[Joe Chi Minh]

59. Too late for that. That process must have started a long, long time ago.

No-one don't get to that depth of stupidity overnight.

[duhneece]

68. With a '3 strikes, you're out' law for corporations convicted of....

The CEO's and that public with substantial investments, might pay more attention if corporations convicted of crimes against the environment, consumers, employees...crimes of fraud, bribery could be broken up. We send people to prison, partially so they don't get to have more chances of repeating crimes. We send people to their death (which I believe NO civilized nation would do)...I do believe in the what should be the 'death' of corporations.

The way it is now, is that we have no justice.

[stellanoir]

7. 2nd rec

This fundamental breach of personhood has resulted in nothing less, than a government of the corporations, for the corporations, and by the corporations.

A corporation should never have equal rights in comparison to an individual.

This has caused far too many to fall into corporate slavery. This has caused the restrictions on our individual freedoms.

They have gained complete impunity.

We have lost our presumed innocence.

They control our media, three branches of government, and our voting technology.

What's wrong with this picture???

"Wayyy past due" indeed.

[omega minimo]

26. Exactly why many folks voted for Nader in 2000

"This fundamental breach of personhood has resulted in nothing less, than a government of the corporations, for the corporations, and by the corporations."

Didn't Nader coin that phrase?

Now we're still talking about building a groundswell beneath this fundamental issue. The OP question is why it isn't already a bigger deal than it is......

6 years ago those who were aware of the dangers and primacy of the issue-- who saw 1/2 of Clinton/Gore (NAFTA, GATT, '96 Telecomm Act, the End of Social Safety Net As We Know It) running against an unqualified moron-- voted for the candidate that was focusing on it.

[mike_c]

64. bingo....

Ain't that the truth.

[omega minimo]

66. 2008 will be about Dem Corporatist vs. Dem Populist

[gollygee]

8. Something has to be done

when the government protects owners of business and offers no protection to people, that isn't capitalism, it's feudalism.

[Karenina]

9. One more rec would be a start.

;-)

[gollygee]

10. Done :D

I always forget about that "rec" thing.

[Selatius]

11. Easy: Most people are ignorant about the notion of corporate personhood

They've never heard of it.

The only way you could wrest government out of the control of corporations is to modify the 1st Amendment such that a mandatory public financing mechanism is not in conflict with the right to freedom of speech. The only money in this arena should be the people's money.

The only problem, then, is dealing with 527s and other groups that buy up ads attacking candidates. If a Repub and a Dem both receive a lump sum of 1,000,000 per candidate to run a campaign, for instance, there's nothing stopping special interest groups from spending another 2,000,000 on ads attacking the Democrat.

The result is the Dem is outspent 3 to 1 anyway because the attack ads came from somebody other than the Republican opponent.

[cascadiance]

23. Agree totally that getting public financing at a national level is necessary.

That is the only way to start getting people elected (or at least give some of them already elected now) with the option to not have to be beholden to corporate or other special interestss. The DLC won't like that, but once that's done, candidates will be able to speak out against corporate personhood and not feel threatened by a vacuum of campaign money contributions.

Public Financing is something that WE can do something about by getting very sizable efforts out to get public financing initiated state by state via initiative. We need to ourselves though get the word out, because not many "special interests" are going to help us with that effort. That's why the Nurse's Union failed to get prop 89 passed here in California (along with most of the grassroots being occupied with other political issues that they felt more important at the time to help retake congress, etc.) Heck even the teacher's union was against prop 89. When special interests from both sides work against it, that's when you know it has to be done with a VERY intensive grassroots effort.

[Mythsaje]

32. This gets to the heart of the matter...

Corporations aren't entitled to "freedom of speech." They're not PEOPLE. They're not citizens, and shouldn't be granted the same rights as actual human beings.

Corporate "personhood" is a sham.

[GoneOffShore]

12. Kicked & recommended

[zeemike]

13. Here is a K&R and good luck

But that is one subject I will bet you never here the MSM talk about. That is son=something they want to be kept in the category of too legalistic to be understood.
And it's importance to the corporation is far more important than just giving there money the free speech.
It would put them at the mercy of the regulators because they would no longer have the right to be considered Innocent until proved guilty. It would also denies them standing in the court so they would have the burden of proof it they were to counter sue.
No it would be a big can of worms for them if that were ever taken away. and it could be taken away by just amending the Constitution to say that only living persons have the rights of citizenship.

[Phredicles]

15. I agree that this, plus ending the notion that spending $$$$ = free speech

should be part of a truly progressive platform. Recommended.

[Mythsaje]

34. Even if it WAS free speech (and I agree that it isn't)

Corporations, not being actual human beings, don't have a right to free speech anyway. They can't argue that advertisements are "free speech" because it wouldn't matter if they were or weren't. They're not people, and therefore aren't entitled to the same rights.

[roody]

16. Alliance for Democracy is another good organization.

The Womens International League for Peace and Freedom has a study on corporations and democracy. I read it with a book group and learned a lot about how corporations took over our government.

[ComerPerro]

17. one interesting idea I've heard, re: Gay marriage, specifically,

is that if gay couples decide to incorporate, they could actually have more rights, power, and protection than a straight married couple.

Not sure on the details or facts, but I've heard it from several different places.

[Alameda]

20. exactly the problem

Another good site is:

http://www.corpwatch.org/

[The Backlash Cometh]

21. This is the cornerstone of our problem.

The only way that a human being can compete against a mighty corporation is with the assistance of a jury trial, and the Republicans have cleverly eliminated that threat.

[omega minimo]

25. Contact Senator Byron Dorgan, author of " Take This Job And Ship It"

Not only is he addressing the issue of the modern robber barons, he is doing it FROM Congress AND he is doing it in a very down to earth, plain-spoken, accessible way. Perfect!

As does Thom Hartmann.

:thumbsup:


http://thomhartmann.com

[cosmicdot]

27. knr

Jim Hightower is a good one re this subject ('There's nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos' - a 10-year old book) ... he's the type of person we need in Party leadership (imho)

"It seems to me that 'corporate personhood' is a big part of the mess that we're in today, the mess that's led to outsourcing, layoffs, environmental degradation and so on and so on."

I agree ... it's central to so much; and, deserves a national platform ... a party platform ... take a theme from one of the Democratic Conventions of FDR days: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident'; and, build upon that premise. Revisit our Founders' basic principles. There's not much under the sun they had not learned either personally or through studying history. They were an enlightened bunch.

Politicians beholden to corporations vs. the people ... the privatization of 'common-good' governmental services ... corporate branding which has swept our land destroying local color and individuality (corporate-approved menus taste the same wherever you are; radio djs have corporate-approved play lists ~ 'sameness' everywhere) ... corporate globalization erodes our sovereignty (the nation-state is being replaced by a corporate feudalism or fill-in-your-own-blank ... our 'organic being' is being destroyed much like Monsanto genetically modified products might destroy/ruin organic farming ... unique stand-alone non-corporate businesses, i.e. restaurants, are becoming tourist destinations/attractions vs. everyday community staples ... the idea that one leaves their rights on the doorstep before entering a place of employment is antithetical to the Founding Principles ... some might not 'get it' (many don't if it hasn't knocked directly on their doors or they, themselves, are beholden to corporate interests) and scoff, but corporatization, the Wal-martization of America, is destroying our collective soul ... 'Bu$h' even might turn to Disneyland to re-image America's image (an image which should be 'self-evident' truth) ... dear ol'corporations and the good ol'boys who run them and thrive in them ... they can re-engineer, re-image, re-buzzword themselves, but things seem to turn out the same ... first-hand experience was convincing me 10 years ago that the corporate good ol'boys were destroying us ... when I heard one say in re the Founding Principles 'who cares?', I knew this country had some fundamental problems.

... it's time to nip it in the bud ... it'll require leadership without corporate logos to help -- to use a corporate buzzword -- 'facilitate' change and reforms ... an American Renaissance sounds pretty good to me ...


from Thom Hartmann re Unequal Protection:

~snip~ Then I walked a few blocks to the office of an old friend of mine who is a lawyer in town, and laid the copies out on his desk. "I want to ask you about the 1886 Santa Clara County case," I told him, and he answered, "Oh, you mean the one where corporations become persons." Really, that is how lawyers inevitably respond. Then I asked him to take a look at the last paragraph of the case. He read it, and said, "That's interesting." But when I had him read the first sentence of the head notes, his response was "Holy Cow!" or actually, something a little stronger. "Clearly," he said, "the head notes don't say what the ruling says." "Which means . . . ?" I asked. "Which means there is a mistake," he answered.

~snip~

By the way, it turns out that the clerk who wrote the head notes, John Chandler Bancroft Davis, had been the Assistant Secretary of State in the Ulysses S. Grant administration. The Grant administration was arguably the most corrupt in American history, and they were especially known for being in bed with the railroads; many people in that administration had to resign because of bribery scandals. Further, Davis had served on the board of a major railroad himself. ~snip~

http://www.bodhitree.com/lectures/hartmann2.html

http://www.unequalprotection.com/unequalprotection.shtml

[Jcrowley]

28. That's it right there

how many folks do ya' think know the real history of this. Not exactly in the curriculum of compulsory schooling.

K&R

[jaybeat]

29. Thom Hartman's all over this

He talks about it regularly. Corporate person hood is one of the cornerstones of the loss of our democracy--ending it is an essential step in getting it back.

http://www.thomhartman.com/unequalprotection.shtml">http://www.thomhartman.com/unequalprotection.shtml

[Mythsaje]

35. Thom's the one who got me started on thinking about this..

Corporate personhood is one of my personal demons. It's a ridiculous concept that needs to be addressed and eliminated.

[marmar]

39. Thom Hartmann does seem to spend at least a portion of every show....

talking about runaway corporatism, and debating those nutso rightwingers he regularly has on the show.

[puebloknot]

30. Thom Hartmann's book "Unequal Protection"...

is a great read on this subject.

I work in the court reporting arena, Thom used to own the Court Reporters' Forum on Compuserve, and he asked some of us to read the rough draft, and that's how I became aware of corporate personhood. Here's a clip that casts a rather bad light on a certain court reporter, who seems to have felt the same divine right that GW does with his "signing statements."

From Thom Hartmann's web site for his book Unequal Protection:

http://www.thomhartmann.com/summary.shtml

In 1886 the court reporter of the U.S. Supreme Court claimed that the court had ruled that "corporations are persons" in the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case. If you read the case itself, you find that in fact the court ruled no such thing. But the reporter wrote it up in the headnotes of the case - not a legal document, but only a commentary on the case - and subsequent generations of corporate attorneys claimed it was so. Over time, it became so.

I never learned about this in either high school or college civics classes!

[tbyg52]

75. Amazing, isn't it

All this talk about "corporate personhood," and it actually has no basis in law. The pararaph you quoted needs to be spread far and wide.

[Bjorn Against]

31. It is time to start arresting corporations

If they want to be considered persons they should have to follow the same laws as people, and if they break any laws they should be arrested just like a normal person can get arrested. Sure you may not be able to lock them in jail physically, but you can shut them down.

The current system has it set up where corporations have all the rights of a person without the accountability. If they had the same level of accountability as you or me then I am willing to bet they would not want to be considered people anymore.

Remember no person is above the law.

[Mythsaje]

36. Can't jail 'em? Fine. We're seizing all assets.

Establish a "corporate death penalty" for law breaking.

[roody]

37. We the people can revoke their charters.

[donheld]

45. You're correct this should be one of our top priorities

I can think of few things that top this as a priority. Yet, it seems few even think about it.

[pat_k]

47. The Big Lie -- Equating Associations of People with Corporate Industry

We MUST distinguish between associations of people (e.g., member associations like AARP, unions, anti-defamation league) and corporate industries (e.g., Oil, Pharma, Insurance, or their "industry associations").

Demonizing all the above as evil "special interests" is one of the most insidious of the Big Lies.

Challenging this Big Lie could go a long way to clearing up what our Constitutional Democracy is actually all about.

There is NOTHING wrong with "special interest" lobbies that represent associations of people -- that is what politics IS and SHOULD BE.

When factions of PEOPLE associate, hire resources, and create supporting infrastructure in order to better represent some common interest, they are engaged in the political process precisely as it is intended for the purpose we intend it -- solving our common problems and balancing the conflicting interests of PEOPLE. That's the name of the game, but it's a game that only works, and only makes any sense, when Actual Humans with Human interests are engaged in it.

Corporate entities created solely to participate in, and profit from, the "market" are NOT people. They are not groups of people. They are entities designed to earn profit. They are entities created under the rules that "We the People" lay down to serve a purpose within the structure of our economy. They can be run morally or immorally, for good or ill, but one thing they most definitely are not is "people."

Stockholders do not have "interests" that are "represented" by the actions of CEOs and Boards of Directors. The stock certificates they own are products, just like a plate or a painting. Corporate industries could care less who their stockholders are.

If corporate entities are to serve us as intended, our collective will -- all those competing interests -- must be the ONLY force capable of controlling "the rules" through our political processes. If corporate entities are allowed to serve as a force in and of themselves, for themselves, everything goes tragically pear-shaped, as our current state of affairs is proving.

The "Big Lie" is everywhere. For example, just before the election http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2505468">posted the following classic example from Cafferty's Money Line:

Get out your clue sticks -- Cafferty needs a good knock in the head

Once again, we get the opposite of reality. This time from Jack Cafferty on Money Line.

He reports that "Big business. . . Corp American is pouring money into races. . .", looks at the FEC info that demonstrates the black and white difference between Republicans and Democrats, and then is compelled to squawk "Both sides, Both sides," like all the other media parrots.

• Segments of "Corporate America" pouring ⁽¹⁾ money into Democratic races:
  
  
  • Lawyers
  
  
  • Teachers Unions
  
  
  • Trade Unions
  
  In short, groups of people who serve others and who, in the case of those "evil" trial lawyers and trade unions, are people who protect their fellow Americans from Corporate abuse.



• Segments of Corporate America pouring money into Republican races.
  
  
  • Oil and Gas
  
  
  • Pharmaceuticals
  
  
  • General Contractors
  
  
  Let him know what you think of his crackerjack "analysis."
  
  http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.html?24">Money Line Contact Form
  
  ____________________________________________________
  
  (1) It's impossible to know whether the amounts "pouring" are comparable, since he doesn't present the numbers.
  

BTW, I don't have it, but Thom Hartmann's book, "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights" looks like it is worth a read. You'll find some excerpts http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/Birth_Demo_Corps_UP.html">here

[OneBlueSky]

49. we need to address far more than corporate "personhood" . . .

because corporate capitalism, in its current form, is largely responsible for EVERY major problem facing our nation and our planet . . .

corporations that make ghastly profits from the Iraq war -- and from increasing oil prices . . .

corporations that pollute the air, water and land with no regard for the environment or for the future . . .

corporations that cavalierly move jobs overseas to increase shareholder profits, regardless of the impact on American workers . . .

corporations that create all kinds of new chemical compounds that pollute the environment and cause diseases like cancer . . .

corporations that degrade the food supply with genetically modified crops . . .

corporations that overfish the oceans to the point of destroying fish stocks . . .

corporations that endanger consumers through horrific factory farming practices . . .

corporations that make healthcare in the U.S. the most expensive and inefficient of any developed nation . . .

corporations that literally (and secretly) control the voting process and, more importantly, the vote counting process by which we "elect" our leaders . . .

corporations that write the laws "regulating" their own industries in ways that pretty much allow them to do whatever they wish in pursuit of bigger profits . . .

and on, and on, and on . . .

unless we recognize how toxic the current system of corporate capitalism is, and take drastic steps to reign it in by strictly regulating corporations and their behavior, the problems we face today will seem like mere annoyances in future decades . . .

[marmar]

57. Agreed. We need to deal with the entirety of a corporatocracy...

or corporate fascism, as many call it.

[tbyg52]

77. corporations that endanger consumers through horrific factory farming practices . . .

Not just that it endangers consumers, but that it is inhumane and we ought to be ashamed and put a stop to it.

Kinda puts me in mind of how people remembered the unsanitary meatpacking conditions from _The Jungle_ but often overlooked what Upton Sinclair said was his main point, which was how the workers were being treated. He said, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."

[nadinbrzezinski]

50. Part of it is extremely succesful propaganda

by the whose who of the power structure.

They have managed to convince Muricans that corporations need a voice equal to a person's, even if the Founding Fathers did not quite see it that way.

[The2ndWheel]

51. Institutions are more important than people?

We live in a world of, by, and for the large scale?

We hold production up as the be all-end all of existence?

[Robeysays]

52. isn't it sad.

:(

[Az]

56. Corporations are a hot button topic for me

In small and medium forms they aren't that bad. But once they go large or bigger they lose all ties to humanity and begin operating on a pure survival of the fittest agenda. This causes them to start feeding their amoral mentality back into our society.

We are a species that learns by observing. When a corporation acts like a person then people tend to learn from it how to behave.

[uberllama42]

58. A few weeks ago I was actually trying to put together a campaign

with a group of fellow students to push for the end of corporate personhood. I kind of laxed about it, but it shouldn't be too hard to put together over the Internet. I don't expect to make any progress, I just want to learn how to lead an advocacy campaign. I think it would look great of a resume.

[SoCalDem]

60. Because elected officials need the money they get from those "corporate persons"

to pay for the commercials they need to buy to remain in office.
That's it in a nutshell.

If we could ever get public financing and term limits, the corporate persons would lose their clout, because then the elected officials would have not reason to toady to their whims.

Taking money from one would immediately be apparent, because it would be for purely personal greed, and would be easy enough to expose.

The corporate lobbyists would not be as eager to dump load of cash at the doorsteps of a legislator who would not be there all that long, and had no more clout than any other legislator.

That;'s the solution

[rman]

62. have a look at some of those old regulations

(from reclaimdemocracy.org)

- A charter was granted for a limited time.
- Corporations were explicitly chartered for the purpose of serving the public interest - profit for shareholders was the means to that end.
- Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
- Corporations could be terminated if they exceeded their authority or if they caused public harm.
- Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts they committed on the job.
- Corporations could not make any political contributions, nor spend money to influence legislation.
- A corporation could not purchase or own stock in other corporations, nor own any property other than that necessary to fulfill its chartered purpose.

[nealmhughes]

65. Screw their "personhood." The state chartereth and the state taketh away.

They exist only upon our sufferance. (both meanings of the word intended)

[marmar]

78. Agreed. But is there the will to make that happen?

I suppose there would be such will if we, the voters, made it clear that's what we want. :think:

[Leftist78]

69. This is a no brainer

and anyone who's opposed to it is just carrying water for the Milton Friedman crowd.

[LWolf]

70. Because rank and file Dems vote for people

who benefit from corporate personhood. As long as voters continue to support TPTB that have too many corporate strings, you're not going to see a big movement.

[cool user name]

72. Thank you for posting!

I read this article a few years ago and thought you might be interested:


Our Hidden History of Corporations in the United States
First published January 2001

When American colonists declared independence from England in 1776, they also freed themselves from control by English corporations that extracted their wealth and dominated trade. After fighting a revolution to end this exploitation, our country's founders retained a healthy fear of corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society.

Initially, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively to enable activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end.

The states also imposed conditions (some of which remain on the books, though unused) like these:

* Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.

* Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.

* Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.

* Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.

* Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.

* Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.

<more>

[EstimatedProphet]

73. The average person doesn't see a big enough part of the picture

They see that now every corner has a Starbucks, which they kind of like, and a McDonalds, whcih they also kind of like, and they never see how their options are shrinking because corporate buyouts of the local stores and businesses shrink the marketplace. So, every community over 1,000 people in the US has the same businesses now, and the bigger communities just have more of them, rather than real diversity. We're too stunned by future shock to remember 3 or so years ago when it wasn't this way.

[Karenina]

74. BTTT!

:kick:

[mdmc]

76. The Dems are in power

should be n/t, but will add God Bless the Democratic Party.