BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 05:11 PM

Stilly River Sage

A well reasoned argument. This will be the central issue in which Abrams will be arguing on behalf of Corporate Free Speech before the high court this coming week.


I wrote 500 words on the probable situations that would occur should the corporate plantif wins. The billion dollar movies against certain candidates will become a new phenomenon.
Perhaps my hypotheticals confused some readers here if they did not see I was speaking about fictional possibilities.





The problem I have is that when I clik on my name I no longer get a list of my posts !!!!!!!!!

This index was the best thing about this forum.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: heric
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 12:42 PM

Already said above but with slightly different wording:

The sentient individuals who act in multiple ways through and with a coporation have inalienable rights to free speech. Most of them will have no realistic way to resist the power of the mob which is the larger bulk of the people (with varying degress of authority and discretion) in this legally manufactured "entity" that exists only under the laws created to allow the concerted efforts of all these people to function in certain multple ways. People delegate much of their authority to the corporate "leaders," i.e. directors who might re-delegate to executives, but if you do not constrain the corporate "rights," you will be impinging upon the free speech rights of individuals. Can an individual delegate free speech rights to others, even in advance of knowing what the words will be? Would an individual ever choose to do so? Some would, some wouldn't.

Constituional rights of individuals require constraints on the "rights" of a group.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: John P
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 12:38 PM

Wouldn't it be nice if corporations who knowingly take actions that kill people were put to death? All assets taken away, all investors out in the cold. Do that to a few large corporations, and investors would start demanding ethical behavior instead of profits at all costs.

Corporations are, by their nature, immoral. Their only reason for their existence is to produce money for investors. If some CEO started acting ethically instead of profitably, they would be out of a job in a nanosecond and some less ethical person would be making the profitable decisions.

Until the owners of corporations start getting hit big time for the sins of their organizations, there is no reason to expect them to act like real people.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 12:32 PM

Let's hope they surprise us with their common sense.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 12:23 PM

Another point that I think is worth pointing out is that while other countries may extend some rights of personhood to "juristic persons", like lawsuits, property ownership and contracts, the governments of those countries do not become subordinate to those juristic persons. In the US, when the 14th amendment is taken to apply to corporations, this gives them far more rights than just those needed for the purpose of making contracts and owning property and things that are directly related to the functioning of their corporations, and include the right to engage in political activity and to have freedom of expression, which puts the government in a subordinate position to the corporation. It's an entirely different situation.

At any rate, since the Supreme Court has never ruled on this question before, it will be interesting to see if they finally do that, or if they, like their predecessors, will continue to kick that can down the road. Since the Court is still largely the same corrupt court that installed Bush in power in 2000, I don't hold out much hope.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 12:01 PM

Why is this not strictly a freedom of speech issue?

You have to look to the animal rights issue to find a good push-back to the corporate rights discussion, and to the rights of individuals with diminished capacity.

Humans who are very young and adult humans of diminished capacity may have someone speak for them. Their personhood is not in question, but the right to speak for them comes into play. Who will speak, and are they keeping the best interests of those individuals in mind? You may have seen the woman who thought she could interpret grunts for a brain dead husband years ago, and it was determined that she was simply speaking for herself and her understanding was made up. (This is an old story, it may have been on 60 Minutes long before the Internet). That kind of thing is at question when one speaks for another, are they serving the other individuals or themselves?

In the environmental movement there is a book that came out years ago called Do Trees Have Standing? that fed into the animal rights discussion. When people stand up to speak for non-human persons, or to demand personhood for non-humans, their motivation is in question and the rights they ask to support or fight for are highly subjective.

Corporations with personhood are a different creature. They have that personhood to protect the corporation's individuals from personal loss if the corporation takes a financial or legal hit. The corporation assets may be siezed, but the personal property of the corporation partners is exempt from seizure (though the individual corporate leaders can and do go to prison. This wasn't always the case). This corporate citizen is a sort of super-human personhood.

Free speech rights are what are being examined by the supreme court, in relation to the corporation as a person. But the corporation is usually standing for many actual humans who aren't necessarily of one mind, and if there are investors such as mutual funds, then the money of those individuals may be used in ways that those individuals oppose, in their name.

Newspapers and book publishers (after the 1960 decision around Lady Chatterley's Lover that prohibited the U.S. Post Office from blocking the distribution of print material it found objectionable) are one form of corporation that have free-speech rights from the Bill of Rights. The first ammendment oversees the speech of writers within the publishing corporation as well as the corporation itself.

A PR department of a non-journalistic corporation department is not the same as a publishing corporation, and I think the question will boil down to who is speaking for whom, and who is entitled to speak. The PR speech is sponsored to promote the needs and wishes of the corporation, it is sales speech, not freedom of expression. The sales speech can be examined and punished if it misrepresents an item. The owners of the corporation take a financial hit if there is an action against the corporation. The owners of a business corporation are invested in the production of something, and may not want it to engage in political speech on their behalf. A newspaper can spout off all it wants, be as hateful as can be, but that is free speech and is what those investors expect.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 10:52 AM

Very well covered, Carol. ;-D

It is quite clear that the architects of the Constitution of the USA did not anticipate the rise of certain things that would come in the future, such as...

political parties
multi-national corporations
modern mass media
weapons of mass destruction
massive urbanization in place of a once largely agrarian society
modern transportation systems
enormous loss of natural habitat
etc...

Had they been able to foresee what would happen with all these various things, I think they would have probably worded the Constitution quite differently in some sections, so as to protect future generations of Americans.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 11:12 PM

Correction: under a Constitutional amendment that was intended to protect the personhood of human beings...

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 11:07 PM

By the way, my comment that "only a corrupt system can produce such an outcome" was not only referring to the idea that corporations could have personhood, but rather to the outcome that corporations could be given the status of personhood under a law that was intended to protect the personhood of human beings, while those same human beings were having their personhood denied - especially in light of the fact that juridical personhood and corporate personhood is not mentioned at all in the Constitution, and the Supreme Court never ruled on it. And it's true that such an outcome could only be produced by a corrupt system.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 10:49 PM

Also, "Juristic persons" are not in any way a part of the 14th amendment.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 10:45 PM

Corporate Personhood is nevertheless not a part of the 14th amendment, and the Supreme Court has never ruled on it. I would suggest that I am not the one is ignorant...


"The Civil War accelerated the growth of manufacturing and the power of the men who owned the corporations. After the war corporations began a campaign to throw off the legal shackles that had held them in check. The systematic bribing of Congress was instituted by Mark Hanna, sugar trust magnate Henry Havemeyer, and Senator Nelson Aldrich and their associates. [Jonathan Shepard Fast and Luzviminda Bartolome Francisco, Conspiracy For Empire, Big Business, Corruption and the Politics of Imperialism in America, 1876-1907 (Quezon City, Foundation for Nationalist Studies, 1985), p. 92-97] Most Supreme Court judges who were appointed were former corporate lawyers.

In 1886 the supreme court justices were Samuel F. Miller, Stephen J. Field, Joseph P. Bradley, John M. Harlan, Stanley Matthews, William B. Woods, Samuel Blatchford, Horace Gray, and chief justice Morrison. R. Waite. Never heard of a one of them? These men subjected African Americans to a century of Jim Crow discrimination; they made corporations into a vehicle for the wealthy elite to control the economy and the government; they vastly increased the power of the Supreme Court itself over elected government officials. How quaint they are forgotten names. In all fairness, Justice Harlan dissented from the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision [163 U.S. 537 (1896)], which, as he said, effectively denied the protection of the 14th Amendment to the very group of people (former slaves and their descendants) for whom it was designed."

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 10:34 PM

You make a good point, Q. The problem isn't that "only a corrupt system can produce such an outcome"...because a non-corrupt system can certainly come up with similar ideas to the present legal status of the corporation.

The problem is that a corrupt system finds very bad ways to misuse a concept such as the corporation.

And that is what has occurred.

A corrupt system can, in fact, ruin any humanly devised arrangement...whether it be the idea of monarchies, the idea of religion, the idea of political parties, the idea of representative democracy or the idea of legal entities termed "corporations".

When the general leadership of a nation fall under the influence of gross corruption (when they are bought out, in other words), then the system...whatever it is...WILL be corrupted.

It is the corruption itself that is the problem.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 10:30 PM

Where did you hear about this?

Why is this not strictly a freedom of speech issue?

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 09:48 PM

The 14th Amendment, originally a reconstruction amendment after the Civil War, has been extended and enlarged in several ways' i. e. citizenship (citizenship cannot be revoked), and 'due process'.
The latter was applied in 1897 to provide protection to private contracts. The freedom of contracts , however, was negated in 1937.

The Amendment has evolved to follow the developing standards and needs of the people; i. e., in 1880 blacks could no longer be banned from juries, but in 1896 separate but equal facilities were ruled OK; Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) began the reversal of that ruling and in 1974, protection was expanded to cover Hispanics and other groups.
Tha Amendment covers apportionment of representatives, but also was amended effectively by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Corporate Personhood first came to the fore in 1886, dealing with taxation of railroad properties, and the "juristic person". Juristic persons are entitled to protection under the 14th Amendment. A juristic person is a legal entity through which the law allows a group of natural persons to act as if they were a single composite individual, or for a single person to have a separate legal identity other than their own- they are not 'human beings,' but may act as persons for certain purposes, such as lawsuits, property ownership and contracts. The concept is found in most legal systems (including England's), throughout the world.

"Only a corrupt system can produce such an outcome" is a nonsensical statment; only ignorance is behind that remark.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 09:06 PM

To treat a corporation legally the same as if it were a living human being is ludicrous.

A corporation is potentially immortal, since it has no physical body, but is simply an idea put into legal form. Ideas are capable of living forever. A human being has a physical body, is mortal, and inevitably dies in time...but a corporation lives on and on by replacing its expendable human representatives (the board of directors) with other expendable human representatives.

It has no soul, but people serve it as if if were a living being that could command them.

It has no mind, but they obey it.

It has no body or heart or consciousness, but they let it become their master.

It becomes, in effect, a deathless and meaningless monster created by the ambitions of men whom it outlives and it is served by those men and others who eventually replace them.

Its sole purpose is to profit through competition and thereby enlarge itself. Thus its material appetites are unlimited...and they are not controlled by any form of moral consciousness.

That makes a corporation one of the most dangerous and ammoral artificial lifeforms that could possibly be imagined.

You could say that it's a sort of a Frankenstein monster, but unlike that monster it does not exist in bodily form. Therefore you can't shoot it, burn it, or destroy it through any physical means. You can only go after its human servants....those who work for it.

It is madness to abandon the control of society to the ambitions of these mentally created entities called corporations, which are by their very nature heartless, mindless, and soulless and live only to devoure and enlarge themselves. The corporation has come to serve the same function as a growing cancer does in a human body...and that is to eventually consume and destroy its host.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 07:30 PM

They get fined, but they often go into bankruptcy in order to avoid having to pay, in the case of large fines, and then continue with business as usual. But since they own the lawmakers and sometimes the judges, they often only get a slap on the wrist, or they are not held responsible in any way.

But obviously, they don't have all of the same attributes as a human being. They can't vote for president, for instance. That's a big part of the absurdity of the whole thing. But it was a corrupt Supreme Court clerk, and corrupt Supreme Court justices that make it possible for this absurdity to exist in the first place, and to continue.

The 14th amendment was created to protect the recently freed slaves and their descendants. But later on, the people that amendment was enacted in order to protect had their rights taken away from them and no longer had the status of "person", and the corporations were given the status of "person" instead. Only a corrupt system can produce such an outcome.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 06:42 PM

If a company is a person, presumably it must be subject to the same penalties for lawbreaking as ordinary people? Is it really true that conpanies can be sent to jail or executed?

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 06:25 PM

The question is whether corporations have the same "inalienable rights" as human beings (as outlined in our Constitution). If they have the same rights, their funding of political activity is protected as "free speech". This creates most of the problems we have in this country that arise from the ability of corporations to essentially buy our elected officials, and to some extent, also our Supreme Court Justices.

As the article I posted says, it flips the relationship that corporations have with our government from being one in which the corporations are subordinate to the government (the will of the people) to being one in which the government (the will of the people) is subordinate to the corporations.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: Amos
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 06:24 PM

The corporation should be bound by at least the laws that bind individuals but more to the question is whether they should have an individual's rights. For example, an individual's right to speak his mind freely is sacrosanct; for a corporation to do so is a falsehood since it is highly improbable the PR office will have unanimous support throughout the corporation. Corporations also wield far larger budgets than individuals by their nature, which means they can become Gorillas Among Citizens.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: Lox
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 06:13 PM

The thought of corporations not being bound by the same laws as people is scary.

How many corporation bosses would get away with crimes on the basis that it wasn't them what done it, it was the corporation.

Subject: RE: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 06:10 PM

I know several corporations I wish would have had abortions....

~S~

Subject: BS: Corporate Personhood vs Democracy
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 04:58 PM

The Supreme Court is going to decide whether or not the campaign finance rules that apply to human beings also apply to corporations. This is a rehashing of the question of whether or not corporations are "persons" under the 14 amendment of the Consitution. The SCOTUS never actually ruled that they do, despite the widespread belief that they did, but this fiction has taken on the force of law anyway, and has enabled corporations to become the rulers and masters of the citizenry of this country, with more rights than actual human beings. Here's some background on this subject:

http://www.iiipublishing.com/afd/santaclara.html