"I say you go to jail."

[Jack Rabbit]

59. Let's save them some trouble

We determine who allowed the crime. If it is corporate policy to dump toxic waste into the environment or to go lax on occupational health and safety, resulting in deaths in oil rig fires or mine cave ins, then the chief corporate officers or perhaps even members of the board of directors should go to jail. The corporation is just an institution and go on with new corporate officers, who hopefully are better and more responsible citizens than the old ones. In any case, the corporate officers and their political allies won't be able talk about how much the litigation is going to hurt their employees, since the corporation doesn't go out of business.

Corporate personhood makes sense in only one area that I can think of: business law. In this case, corporate personhood allows the corporation, through an authorized representative, to enter a contract as if it were an individual, with the same rights and obligations under the contract. If Wylie Coyote doesn't perform his end of the agreement, the Acme Corporation gets to sue him. If the Acme Corporation doesn't perform, then Mr. Coyote gets to sue it. It is ridiculous to extend civil rights, such as the right to participate in the electoral process, to a corporation as if it were a person. If a corporate officer wants to vote for candidate X, then I doubt there's any one here would stand in his way. If he wants to fund candidate X's political campaign, that's fine with me, too, as long as he does it with his own money and not the corporation's.

Discussion?