OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

[Garret]

After skiing today I was hanging out in the hot tub with some friends (no sympathy needed - really) & one of the guys made a great point.

I'm working on efforts (at a local level) to get the amendment passed to end corporate personhood, but I think we've got a way to make sure it happens. Since corporations now have the rights of people, shouldn't that mean they get the responsibility too? So - a corp. poisons people with fracking fluid - if someone dies, charge the corp. with murder & if found guilty, it gets the death penalty - ended, dissolved & can no longer do business. Kill people on an oil platform? Same deal. Pick your corporate catastrophe- most any should work.

I bet if one case like this happened, we'd see the amendment ratified in all 50 states inside of a month.

[Ian McColgin]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

I'm against the death penalty. Let's just jail the criminal corporations.

Didn't Mitt admit that he's a serial killer?

[purri]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

Corporations here are defined as a "real person" in order to have their boards of management held accountable for transgressions of fiduciary duty.

[Peerie Maa]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

UK A guide to the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 All politicians have to register interests, to keep corporate influence out of government, which takes the opposite approach to the US where Capitalism probably has too much influence.

[SamSam]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

It's nothing new...

The Supreme Court of the United States (Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 1819), recognized corporations as having the same rights as natural persons to contract and to enforce contracts. In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394 (1886), the Supreme Court recognized corporations as persons for the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. In a headnote—not part of the opinion—the reporter noted that the Chief Justice began oral argument by stating, "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."^[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

[David W Pratt]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

Somebody (prolly here) posted: I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.
I thought it was funny.

[Gerarddm]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

The great Canadian documentary The Corporation lays out a cogent argument that corporations are literally sociopaths.

[John Smith]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

Somebody (prolly here) posted: I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.
I thought it was funny.

That works for me. I think the concept of this thread is the closest thing to execution we can do with a corporation.

[John Smith]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

Corporations allow people to be shielded from decisions they make that harm other people.

I've always had a problem with this. If a car is sold with faulty brakes, and it is known to have a problem with the brakes, some person or persons made the decision to sell the cars with the defective brakes. When people die because of those brakes, the person or persons who made the decision hide behind/within the corporation. We can fine a corporation, which then passes the cost onto the consumer.

When the decision results in death, these people should not be allowed to hide behind the coroportation.

[brucehallman]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

The great Canadian documentary The Corporation lays out a cogent argument that corporations are literally sociopaths.

That movie actually goes further, and makes the case that corporations, by law, are required to be sociopaths.

For those that missed it, on a Colbert Report last week, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens was "interviewed" on this topic. (Stevens, being an expert, having authored the dissenting opinion in Citizen's United.) Steven's made the interesting point, that actual court precedence only says that corporations have some rights of person hood. The corporatist wing of the Supreme Court over-reached in their decision to break with longstanding precedence (effectively legislating from the bench) by granting new 'personhood' rights to corporations.

[peb]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

So, lets just say that a corporation has no rights, as a person: so the government can do a search and seizure of any corporate facility at its whim? Is that what you are saying? Or perhaps, unions should have no rights for free speech? There is no protection, under the law, for a natural person committing a crime and not going to jail; just because he is acting as an agent of a corporate person.

As to the Citizen's United vs FEC case: it is very simple to understand. People should be able to pool their financial resources and speak as a group. The McCain-Feingold law took away this right. When congress passes a law that overreaches, you run a risk that the courts then might over-reach in overturning that law. A little bit of legislative restraint is needed. They knew the law was likely unconstitutional when it was passed. For years, the ACLU, unions, NRA, and other diverse group of non-profit corporations opposed the law. It was not until the law was overturned, that the ACLU, succumbing to liberal pressure changed its mind.

[boatbuddha]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

As to the Citizen's United vs FEC case: it is very simple to understand. People should be able to pool their financial resources and speak as a group.

Ah, but that's not what a corporation is, is it? A corporation is an entity of the state and is given special rights by the state, because of that their speech should be subject to greater regulation than just a group of people who pool their resources.

[peb]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

Who says they 'should be able to pool their financial resources and speak as a group'? Is there some constitutional construction that says this? Is it an ideological position? Or merely your opinion?

It is called the right to assemble.

Furthermore, just what can they 'speak'?

Well, if I was rich enough to buy any TV add that I wanted, who should decide what I can say in a political commercial that I choose to buy? Well, I am not rich, so if I decide to take flyers and hand them out on the street corner, who should decide what I should be permitted to say with respect to politcal activism.

Now, why should not the NRA or NARAL or NRL be able to purchase TV adds advocating a candidates election?

Oh, the adds make a candidate uncomfortable and maybe force him to address issues he would rather leave in the closet. Damn, too bad.

[brucehallman]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

Who says they 'should be able to pool their financial resources and speak as a group'? Is there some constitutional construction that says this?

Yes, according to a majority the Supreme Court the Constitution says this. The "right" of corporate personhood is founded in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which established equal protection.

[peb]

Re: OK, Now That Corporations Have Been "People" For A While...

Not all rights of personhood are bestowed on corporations, that is a current fallacy of the left. BTW, it is the left who has raised the court system to such a high status over the executive and legislative branches. We should remember Lincoln's first inaugural address:

At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.

You get what you pay for. You want an all powerful supreme court, and you don't like the consequences. Well, such is life.