Bill Moyers: Why 'We The People' Must Triumph Over Corporate Power

[marmar]

Berrett-Koehler Publishers / By Bill Moyers

Moyers: Why 'We The People' Must Triumph Over Corporate Power
Bill Moyers reminds us that repairing American democracy begins with reasserting that corporations do not have the same constitutional rights as citizens.

December 11, 2011 |


(Editor's note: The following is the foreword to Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It, by Jeffrey Clements, a new book from Berrett-Koehler Publishers.)


Rarely have so few imposed such damage on so many. When five conservative members of the Supreme Court handed for-profit corporations the right to secretly flood political campaigns with tidal waves of cash on the eve of an election, they moved America closer to outright plutocracy, where political power derived from wealth is devoted to the protection of wealth. It is now official: Just as they have adorned our athletic stadiums and multiple places of public assembly with their logos, corporations can officially put their brand on the government of the United States as well as the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the fifty states.

The decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission giving “artificial entities” the same rights of “free speech” as living, breathing human beings will likely prove as infamous as the Dred Scott ruling of 1857 that opened the unsettled territories of the United States to slavery whether future inhabitants wanted it or not. It took a civil war and another hundred years of enforced segregation and deprivation before the effects of that ruling were finally exorcised from our laws. God spare us civil strife over the pernicious consequences of Citizens United, but unless citizens stand their ground, America will divide even more swiftly into winners and losers with little pity for the latter. Citizens United is but the latest battle in the class war waged for thirty years from the top down by the corporate and political right. Instead of creating a fair and level playing field for all, government would become the agent of the powerful and privileged. Public institutions, laws, and regulations, as well as the ideas, norms, and beliefs that aimed to protect the common good and helped create America’s iconic middle class, would become increasingly vulnerable. The Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow succinctly summed up the results: “The redistribution of wealth in favor of the wealthy and of power in favor of the powerful.” In the wake of Citizens United, popular resistance is all that can prevent the richest economic interests in the country from buying the democratic process lock, stock, and barrel.

America has a long record of conflict with corporations. Wealth acquired under capitalism is in and of itself no enemy to democracy, but wealth armed with political power — power to choke off opportunities for others to rise, power to subvert public purposes and deny public needs — is a proven danger to the “general welfare” proclaimed in the Preamble to the Constitution as one of the justifications for America’s existence. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/153349/moyers%3A_why_%27we_the_people%27_must_triumph_over_corporate_power/

[City Lights]

1. Excellent read!

Looks like I'll be adding Clements' book to my reading list!

[jody]

2. Say the pledge:

[G_j]

3. kick

[Uncle Joe]

4. Kicked and recommended with one quibble, in Santa Clara vs Southern Pacific the Supreme Court never

ruled on the issue of personhood for corporations.

All subsequent SC decisions using this as precedent were basing it on a headnote by a court reporter; who had been a former President of the Newburgh and New York Railway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad

"The decisions reached by the Supreme Court are promulgated to the legal community by way of books called United States Reports. Preceding every case entry is a headnote, a short summary in which a court reporter summarizes the opinion as well as outlining the main facts and arguments. Headnotes are defined as "not the work of the Court, but are simply the work of the Reporter, giving his understanding of the decision, prepared for the convenience of the profession."[3]

The court reporter, former president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company, J.C. Bancroft Davis, wrote the following as part of the headnote for the case:

"One of the points made and discussed at length in the brief of counsel for defendants in error was that "corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States." Before argument, Mr. Chief Justice Waite said:The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."[4]

In other words, the headnote indicated that corporations enjoyed the same rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, as did natural persons.[5] However, this issue was not decided by the Court."

Former Justice Hugo Black nailed it, history shows the people were told that the 14th Amendment was intended to protect weak and helpless human beings, when it was passed and not remove corporations from the control of state goverments.

The Civil War was fought to end slavery and keep the the nation united, not to promote new authoritarian corporate supremacist masters over the people and their representative governments.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.