Constitution - Inner struggles
I am having an internal struggle with the concept of "Corporate Personhood" under the Constitutions Bill Of Rights which is definately in the Constitution but as an added amendment later pushed by the mainly Republican "Robber Barons". Although Republicans are sometimes considered conservatives, these days there is definately a difference. As a "Free thinking Independant Conservative", I don't feel an allegiance to the concept although some of my my conservative associates, perhaps unwittingly, are falling in line behind the "corporate Personhood" doctrine that is more Republican than Conservative. And because opposition to the concept is a Democrats talking point against Republicans and "Big Business" running things, the conservative automatically chooses the proponents stance!
I really hate to say this, but the Dems have this one right !
Being an Independent, Tea Party Conservative, with no allegiance to either Republican nor Democratic party and adhering to the principles of the Constitution befor it's dillutions, I don't trust Corporations any more than Government and find it a labor to trust a good portion of my fellow citizens.
"I hope we shall . . . crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country". - Thomas Jefferson, 1816
from; SUPREME COURT VOTES TO END DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS
I awakened to discover I am living in a nation under enemy occupation;
Richard Brennerman - I awakened this morning to discover I am living in nation under enemy occupation. It is an alien, inhuman, sovereign power that controls our military, and, increasingly, our schools, prisons, and many of the institutions of governance.
That alien power is the corporation, freshly empowered by today's Supreme Court's decision to remove any spending limits on their ability to influence elections. . .
The stage was set when, just after the Civil War on July 9, 1868, three-quarters of the states ratified the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
The corporate form is, after all, just a legal structure to facilitate the conversion of products or services into cash for stockholders. As Buckminster Fuller wrote in his brilliant essay, "The Grunch of Giants," "Corporations are neither physical nor metaphysical phenomena. They are socio-economic ploys -- legally enacted game-playing -- agreed upon only between overwhelmingly powerful socio-economic individuals and by them imposed upon human society and its all unwitting members."
During this same period, because everybody understood Paine and Jefferson's argument that human-made institutions must be subordinate to humans themselves; virtually every state had laws on the books that regulated the behavior of corporations.
Thus, states made it illegal for corporations to participate in the political process: Politicians were doing the voters' business, and corporations couldn't vote, so it didn't make sense they should be allowed to try to influence votes. States made it illegal for corporations to lie about their products, and required that their books and processes always be open and available to government regulators. States and the federal government claimed the right to inspect companies and investigate them when they caused pollution, harmed workers or created hazards for human communities, even if in the early years that right was unevenly used.
These constraints and oversights had been a thorn in the side of the barons of trade and industry from the earliest days of the new American republic. But what to do about it?
With the passage of the 14th Amendment, the owners of what were then America's largest and most powerful corporations -- the railroads -- figured they'd finally found a way to reverse Paine's logic and no longer have to answer to "we, the people." They would claim that the corporation is a person. They would claim that for legal purposes, the certificate of incorporation declares the legal birth of a new person, who should therefore have the full protections the voters have under the Bill of Rights.
Remember that corporate personhood began as a legal fiction, inserted by a clerk Bancroft Davis [a former railroad president] in the court's 1887 decision in County of Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad. . .
It was an amazing irony, given that one of Jefferson's original proposed Amendments was an explicit ban on corporations becoming so large as to gain monopoly power and be able to easily crush or stifle small, local entrepreneurs. But, setting the irony aside, the railroads threw massive resources into their new campaign to be given full human rights. Acting on behalf of the railroad barons, attorneys for the railroads repeatedly filed suits against local and state governments that had passed laws regulating railroad corporations. They rebelled against restrictions, and most of all they rebelled against being taxed.
The main tool the railroad's lawyers tried to use was the fact that corporations had historically been referred to under law not as "corporations" but as "artificial persons." Based on this, they argued, corporations should be considered "persons" under the free-the-slaves 14th Amendment and enjoy the protections of the constitution just like living, breathing, human persons.
Using this argument for their base, the railroads repeatedly sued various states, counties and towns claiming that they shouldn't have to pay local taxes because different railroad properties were taxed in different ways in different places and this constituted the creation of different "classes of persons" and was, thus, illegal discrimination under the 14th Amendment.
For almost 20 years, these arguments did not succeed.
Some are saying that by striking down a 103 year-old law that prohibits corporate contributions in federal elections, the court is allowing giant corporations and their massive stores of wealth to purchase elections at all levels of government and that this decision will devastate the integrity and moral legitimacy of our government and our elected officials. It will bring more corruption than our nation has known in more than a century. . .
The descision disallowed direct finacial contributions to a candidates coffers and this still stands. They can use moneys to purchase through advertisements, posters, radio etc under protected speach..
I'm not one of those who are afraid of foreign entities funneling money into our elections, though I'm sure it has, still can and always will, the Supreme Court left the language in that prohibits foreign money.
Starting today, large corporations will influence our country. Their money will dominate our elections and our elected officials, and will purchase more influence than we can imagine. Our nation's giant corporations have used our own Constitution to grab power for themselves much the same way that the "Progressive (liberal) DemoCrats" are undermining the Constitution. We should have no doubt that it's any other way.
Today's decision, along with the multitude Obama and his Progressive DemoCrats have been enacting foretell very dark times for our nation.
Obviously, we must work for constitutional amendments to remove corporate money from politics, and more broadly, to end corporate personhood. These will be exceedingly hard to win. The Constitutionality of many of Obama and the liberal Marxist Congress's laws will never stand. Things like foreign terrorists being given miranda rights, provided Public Attorneys and not having to give valuable info as a result. The people will revolt and, from what I've seen, that's a given.
JUSTICE STEVENS' DISSENT
From the dissent [written by Justice Stevens]:
In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races. . .
The Court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution. . .The Court operates with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel when it strikes down one of Congress' most significant efforts to regulate the role that corporations and unions play in electoral politics. It compounds the offense by implicitly striking down a great many state laws as well
The Framers took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind. While individuals might join together to exercise their speech rights, business corporations, at least, were plainly not seen as facilitating such associational or expressive ends. Even "the notion that business corporations could invoke the First Amendment would probably have been quite a novelty,"given that "at the time, the legitimacy of every corporate activity was thought to rest entirely in a concession of the sovereign."
President Roosevelt, in his 1905 annual message to Congress, declared: "'All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law; directors should not be permitted to use stockholders' money for such purposes; and, moreover, a prohibition of this kind would be, as far as it went, an effective method of stopping the evils aimed at in corrupt practices acts.'". . . Try rereading that with the word Union in place of corporations as well !
It is an interesting question "who" is even speaking when a business corporation places an advertisement that endorses or attacks a particular candidate. Presumably it is not the customers or employees, who typically have no say in such matters.
It cannot realistically be said to be the shareholders, who tend to be far removed from the day-to-day decisions of the firm and whose political preferences may be opaque to management. Perhaps the officers or directors of the corporation have the best claim to be the ones speaking, except their fiduciary duties generally prohibit them from using corporate funds for personal ends. Some individuals associated with the corporation must make the decision to place the ad, but the idea that these individuals are thereby fostering their self expression or cultivating their critical faculties is fanciful. It is entirely possible that the corporation's electoral message will conflict with their personal convictions. Take away the ability to use general treasury funds for some of those ads, and no one's autonomy, dignity, or political equality has been impinged upon in the least. . .
When citizens turn on their televisions and radios before an election and hear only corporate electioneering, they may lose faith in their capacity, as citizens, to influence public policy. A government captured by corporate interests, they may come to believe, will be neither responsive to their needs nor willing to give their views a fair hearing. The predictable result is cynicism and disenchantment: an increased perception that large spenders "'call the tune'" and a reduced "'willingness of voters to take part in democratic governance . . .'"
The majority's unwillingness to distinguish between corporations and humans similarly blinds it to the possibility that corporations' "war chests" and their special "advantages" in the legal realm. . .may translate into special advantages in the market for legislation. When large numbers of citizens have a common stake in a measure that is under consideration, it may be very difficult for them to coordinate resources on behalf of their position. The corporate form, by contrast, "provides a simple way to channel rents to only those who have paid their dues, as it were.". . .
The Court's blinkered and aphoristic approach to the First Amendment may well promote corporate power at the cost of the individual and collective self-expression the Amendment was meant to serve. It will undoubtedly cripple the ability of ordinary citizens, Congress, and the States to adopt even limited measures to protect against corporate domination of the electoral process. Americans may be forgiven if they do not feel the Court has advanced the cause of self-government today.
I really hate to say this, but the Dems have this one right !
Being an Independent, Tea Party Conservative, with no allegiance to either Republican nor Democratic party and adhering to the principles of the Constitution befor it's dillutions, I don't trust Corporations any more than Government and find it a labor to trust a good portion of my fellow citizens.
"I hope we shall . . . crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country". - Thomas Jefferson, 1816
from; SUPREME COURT VOTES TO END DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS
I awakened to discover I am living in a nation under enemy occupation;
Richard Brennerman - I awakened this morning to discover I am living in nation under enemy occupation. It is an alien, inhuman, sovereign power that controls our military, and, increasingly, our schools, prisons, and many of the institutions of governance.
That alien power is the corporation, freshly empowered by today's Supreme Court's decision to remove any spending limits on their ability to influence elections. . .
The stage was set when, just after the Civil War on July 9, 1868, three-quarters of the states ratified the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
The corporate form is, after all, just a legal structure to facilitate the conversion of products or services into cash for stockholders. As Buckminster Fuller wrote in his brilliant essay, "The Grunch of Giants," "Corporations are neither physical nor metaphysical phenomena. They are socio-economic ploys -- legally enacted game-playing -- agreed upon only between overwhelmingly powerful socio-economic individuals and by them imposed upon human society and its all unwitting members."
During this same period, because everybody understood Paine and Jefferson's argument that human-made institutions must be subordinate to humans themselves; virtually every state had laws on the books that regulated the behavior of corporations.
Thus, states made it illegal for corporations to participate in the political process: Politicians were doing the voters' business, and corporations couldn't vote, so it didn't make sense they should be allowed to try to influence votes. States made it illegal for corporations to lie about their products, and required that their books and processes always be open and available to government regulators. States and the federal government claimed the right to inspect companies and investigate them when they caused pollution, harmed workers or created hazards for human communities, even if in the early years that right was unevenly used.
These constraints and oversights had been a thorn in the side of the barons of trade and industry from the earliest days of the new American republic. But what to do about it?
With the passage of the 14th Amendment, the owners of what were then America's largest and most powerful corporations -- the railroads -- figured they'd finally found a way to reverse Paine's logic and no longer have to answer to "we, the people." They would claim that the corporation is a person. They would claim that for legal purposes, the certificate of incorporation declares the legal birth of a new person, who should therefore have the full protections the voters have under the Bill of Rights.
Remember that corporate personhood began as a legal fiction, inserted by a clerk Bancroft Davis [a former railroad president] in the court's 1887 decision in County of Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad. . .
It was an amazing irony, given that one of Jefferson's original proposed Amendments was an explicit ban on corporations becoming so large as to gain monopoly power and be able to easily crush or stifle small, local entrepreneurs. But, setting the irony aside, the railroads threw massive resources into their new campaign to be given full human rights. Acting on behalf of the railroad barons, attorneys for the railroads repeatedly filed suits against local and state governments that had passed laws regulating railroad corporations. They rebelled against restrictions, and most of all they rebelled against being taxed.
The main tool the railroad's lawyers tried to use was the fact that corporations had historically been referred to under law not as "corporations" but as "artificial persons." Based on this, they argued, corporations should be considered "persons" under the free-the-slaves 14th Amendment and enjoy the protections of the constitution just like living, breathing, human persons.
Using this argument for their base, the railroads repeatedly sued various states, counties and towns claiming that they shouldn't have to pay local taxes because different railroad properties were taxed in different ways in different places and this constituted the creation of different "classes of persons" and was, thus, illegal discrimination under the 14th Amendment.
For almost 20 years, these arguments did not succeed.
Some are saying that by striking down a 103 year-old law that prohibits corporate contributions in federal elections, the court is allowing giant corporations and their massive stores of wealth to purchase elections at all levels of government and that this decision will devastate the integrity and moral legitimacy of our government and our elected officials. It will bring more corruption than our nation has known in more than a century. . .
The descision disallowed direct finacial contributions to a candidates coffers and this still stands. They can use moneys to purchase through advertisements, posters, radio etc under protected speach..
I'm not one of those who are afraid of foreign entities funneling money into our elections, though I'm sure it has, still can and always will, the Supreme Court left the language in that prohibits foreign money.
Starting today, large corporations will influence our country. Their money will dominate our elections and our elected officials, and will purchase more influence than we can imagine. Our nation's giant corporations have used our own Constitution to grab power for themselves much the same way that the "Progressive (liberal) DemoCrats" are undermining the Constitution. We should have no doubt that it's any other way.
Today's decision, along with the multitude Obama and his Progressive DemoCrats have been enacting foretell very dark times for our nation.
Obviously, we must work for constitutional amendments to remove corporate money from politics, and more broadly, to end corporate personhood. These will be exceedingly hard to win. The Constitutionality of many of Obama and the liberal Marxist Congress's laws will never stand. Things like foreign terrorists being given miranda rights, provided Public Attorneys and not having to give valuable info as a result. The people will revolt and, from what I've seen, that's a given.
JUSTICE STEVENS' DISSENT
From the dissent [written by Justice Stevens]:
In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races. . .
The Court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution. . .The Court operates with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel when it strikes down one of Congress' most significant efforts to regulate the role that corporations and unions play in electoral politics. It compounds the offense by implicitly striking down a great many state laws as well
The Framers took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind. While individuals might join together to exercise their speech rights, business corporations, at least, were plainly not seen as facilitating such associational or expressive ends. Even "the notion that business corporations could invoke the First Amendment would probably have been quite a novelty,"given that "at the time, the legitimacy of every corporate activity was thought to rest entirely in a concession of the sovereign."
President Roosevelt, in his 1905 annual message to Congress, declared: "'All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law; directors should not be permitted to use stockholders' money for such purposes; and, moreover, a prohibition of this kind would be, as far as it went, an effective method of stopping the evils aimed at in corrupt practices acts.'". . . Try rereading that with the word Union in place of corporations as well !
It is an interesting question "who" is even speaking when a business corporation places an advertisement that endorses or attacks a particular candidate. Presumably it is not the customers or employees, who typically have no say in such matters.
It cannot realistically be said to be the shareholders, who tend to be far removed from the day-to-day decisions of the firm and whose political preferences may be opaque to management. Perhaps the officers or directors of the corporation have the best claim to be the ones speaking, except their fiduciary duties generally prohibit them from using corporate funds for personal ends. Some individuals associated with the corporation must make the decision to place the ad, but the idea that these individuals are thereby fostering their self expression or cultivating their critical faculties is fanciful. It is entirely possible that the corporation's electoral message will conflict with their personal convictions. Take away the ability to use general treasury funds for some of those ads, and no one's autonomy, dignity, or political equality has been impinged upon in the least. . .
When citizens turn on their televisions and radios before an election and hear only corporate electioneering, they may lose faith in their capacity, as citizens, to influence public policy. A government captured by corporate interests, they may come to believe, will be neither responsive to their needs nor willing to give their views a fair hearing. The predictable result is cynicism and disenchantment: an increased perception that large spenders "'call the tune'" and a reduced "'willingness of voters to take part in democratic governance . . .'"
The majority's unwillingness to distinguish between corporations and humans similarly blinds it to the possibility that corporations' "war chests" and their special "advantages" in the legal realm. . .may translate into special advantages in the market for legislation. When large numbers of citizens have a common stake in a measure that is under consideration, it may be very difficult for them to coordinate resources on behalf of their position. The corporate form, by contrast, "provides a simple way to channel rents to only those who have paid their dues, as it were.". . .
The Court's blinkered and aphoristic approach to the First Amendment may well promote corporate power at the cost of the individual and collective self-expression the Amendment was meant to serve. It will undoubtedly cripple the ability of ordinary citizens, Congress, and the States to adopt even limited measures to protect against corporate domination of the electoral process. Americans may be forgiven if they do not feel the Court has advanced the cause of self-government today.
posted by Cu'cullen | 12:26 PM
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