The Corporate Marionette
The recent Supreme Court hearing on the free speech rights of corporations has reignited the debate about corporate personhood. Corporate personhood refers to the handful of rights that corporations share with people, rights like property ownership and contracting. To most, the notion is prima facie a legal fiction: there are certainly no corporate persons walking around except the starched and ironed suits I see hustling down Wall Street every day.
But others take the concept to the extreme. Libertarians, those lovers of money, equate free speech with the ability to spend cash and so support the right of the wealthiest among us -- corporations -- to manipulate elections in their favor. A more reasonable extension of corporate personhood, which has emerged recently in talks about how to improve regulation of the financial system, encourages financial firms to create "wills" that would provide for the dispensation of their assets and liabilities in case of collapse.
No matter your opinion on corporate personhood, the renewed debate has inspired another important question: Why the corporation? In a timely reprisal of Charles Perrow's great book Organizing America, Understanding Society reminds us that the corporation was not an inevitable organizational type:
Perrow tells the story of how the American economy came to feature the large corporation as its central business organization -- an outcome that was far from inevitable. He argues that the large corporation is a historically contingent creation; other forms of enterprise activity could have emerged. And he teases out of this account a pretty compelling set of conclusions that are very supportive of [the] basic line of thought concerning the disproportionate power that is wielded by corporations and their officers.As the Supreme Court considers expanding corporate personhood, it is worthwhile remembering that corporate America was not handed down to us from above. Indeed, the notion of the inevitability of the corporation often leads us to assume that the private sector and the public sector are competitors, constantly at loggerheads with one's gains equaling the other's losses. But this is far from true: the private and public sectors are symbiotic, feeding off each other, with corporations furthering their interests via shirked external costs that the government mops up and government regulation, as the Supreme Court case demonstrates.
The warring conception of the public and private sectors has produced a constant debate between the Democratic and Republican parties about the expansion of government versus its retrenchment: when government acts, does it act to grow itself or to limit its own size? But the GOP, out of power, has assumed a new default position: the status quo.
This provides progressives an opportunity to shift the conversation from a debate about more and less government to one about better and worse government. Indeed, this shift is not only possible, but critical. As Jeffrey Sachs writes:
In short, we have arrived at a point where the challenges of sustainable development -- including public health, infrastructure, energy and national security--require changes not only to policy but also to basic public management systems. In many crucial areas, tinkering will no longer suffice: we need an overhaul to regain government control over regulatory processes, reduce lobbying, restore public planning and ensure the adequate financing of skilled public managers, and align public management systems with holistic strategies.
It may seem obvious and productive, for instance, to frame the health care debate as a policy battle between the government and nasty private insurers. The reality is that the health care debate is about the government improving its regulation of the insurance industry, even if part of this involves creating a new government program.
The inner workings of government are much more advance in thinking about enhancing government performance. A day before congressional testimony entitled "Getting To Better Government," OMB Director Peter Orszag announced an award for federal employees who come up with ideas for improving government performance (perhaps an idea taken from the private sector). And the stimulus package is, among other things, an experiment in government performance measures. Similarly, progressives must take up good management - which often involves good regulation - as a cause as important as good policy ideas.
Libertarians argue that corporations would yield plentiful bounties for the entire country, if government would just get out of the way. The truth, though, is that corporations depend on government for their very survival. Remembering this makes them seem much less frightening.
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Do corporations cry when they lose their homes and all their belongings including important documents and family heirlooms to flooding due to failed federal levees?
Do corporations feel a hollow pain in their chest when their precious loved ones die?
Do corporations go into a slow terminal decline and before they finally die an agonizing death have to be taken care of by family members around the clock because they lost their employer-subsidized group health care insurance policy because they got laid off, got sick in the interim, and the sickness then became a "pre-existing condition" for which their new health insurance policy declined to cover? What do corporate persons do with their corporate minor children who suddenly have no mother? Or, maybe, no parents at all? Do corporate aunts and uncles then step up and take corporate babies in?
No? Why not, if corporations are "persons"? Persons are subject to all those things.
It's high time our laws discerned between real living breathing human persons, and business entities whose only objective is profit.
"Corporations have neither bodies to punish nor souls to damn."
President Jackson
They never have, and never will, act in the interests of their country, i.e. in the interests of the majority, because they don't have to. That's not what they're for - they're for making money. We have an unaccountable power elite because the government and the corporations work together to ensure that the greatest concentration of power and money stays with smallest number of people. This is a cartel, in short. It's certainly not democracy. If Americans want their country back they must first end the Federal Reserve system, which is basically a giant piggy bank in private hands, and limit the influence of corporations over government. Easier said than done, but do-able. Politicians feed at the corporate trough and put their own interests before those of the people they're supposed to serve because THEY DON'T CARE! "Don't care was made to care"...if only
One thing that is missing from this argument is the fact that the 19th century US Supreme Court case that allegedly treated corporations as "persons" (I apologize for not recalling its name at the moment) never actually said that. The case summary, which is not part of the opinion, mistakenly said that as a result of an error by the reporter. Subsequent Supreme Court cases citing the first opinion are all in error. Now, will the so-called "Originalists" on the current Court recognize this fact? Of course not, because they are intellectual charlatans.
EXPAND THE SUPREME COURT TO 30 MEMBERS !!!!!!!!!!!!
I've been waiting for someone to start SCREAMING about this! I thought it was dangerous when Media was being bought up by the big Corps. (which we now know it was) but this - really? We should be getting rid of Large Corporations as this past year has shown, they are vampires. they suck the life out of everything and leave dead carcasses. Now they WILL own Washington. I guess they've already bought it and we gave them the money for it. If this issue is not stopped the middle class and the poor will never have their vote count for anything. This is so bizaar!
CPAs and tax attorneys regularly counsel their clients to form a corporation for the purpose of shielding their personal assets from judgment or taxation. The difficulty of "piercing the corporate veil" is promoted as a huge advantage of forming a corporation.
The same professionals also boast to their clients about how difficult it is for the individual to collect a judgement or bad debt from a corporation. In part, this is because such corporate entities generally consist of a Board of Directors (often protected by corporate liability insurance and "hold-harmless" language) as well as numerous officers and executive employees. A litigant is forced to figure out who is liable, who has the deepest pockets, etc., in order to wage effective warfare against the corporation.
Is this the kind of entity we want to assume a greater share of rights in our system of government? No liablilty? No personal responsibility? In other words, an entity that is inherently untouchable, with the freedom to act irresponsibly and to the detriment of individuals.
An enlightened libertarian wants the minimum amount of rules and regulations
consistent with the common good.
For example, I would like to be able to buy my prescription meds from Canada
at a cheaper price than sold here in the US.
But the Big Money Profiteers and the Big Brother Government they own in DC won't let me.
So as long as the Big Brother Federal Government in DC is owned and run by
the Big Money Profiteers,
I am against both.
BTW, if a corporation is a person,
then why don't the pay the same tax rate as me on their INCOME ??
Well, use the right terminology, John; fascism. What you're saying is that the fascists have set up a system in which the government's power is used to enforce a monopoly imposed by some corporations. And you don't like it - well, neither do I!
I'm not sure there are any enlightened libertarians because if they were enlightened they'd see that the system they propose can't work in the modern world (could have 200 years ago!) because the extent and rate of possible destruction by the entities that need regulation is so vast and fast today that the corrective processes envisioned by Libertarians don't have time to be effective and any remedies are potentially vastly insufficient to actually remedy anything.
If anything, the effects of deregulation begun by Reagan illustrates we need considerably more regulation and enforcement and that self-enforcement is a joke of an idea....
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Corporations are not subject to accountability or service that individuals are. Corporations don't go to prison when they defraud or commit crimes, like Enron (that manipulated energy prices, causing the deaths of many people, and bilking investors and employees out of billions), or some of the Wall St. firms (that bribed ratings agencies, falsely advertised "government-backed" funds to investors, pushed the predatory sub-prime loans).
If they can't be penalized for crimes, and be held liable, then they aren't worthy of the same rights and individuals.
"If they can't be held liable, then they aren't worthy of the same rights" That hits the nail right on the head. Simple and logical. Thank you. I only hope enough Justices on the Court feel the same!
Could a corporation be drafted? Ordered out of town before the hurricane hits? Sent to prison?
or be compassion
If you think animals are incapable of showing compassion, you've never kept a cat or a dog. Animals are far less likely than humans, to feel compassion and act on it; but that doesn't mean it never occurs.
It's a mistake to project human emotions onto animals. Anyhow, compassion is rather scarce among humans. Why should it be commonplace among other species?
I have observed remarkable connections between animals and humans. Years ago I adopted a dog (bichan/terrier mix) from one of my patients. On house calls he was quite feisty. He always barked at me and went about his business. On my final visit to his dying master he lay quietly under her bed, never moving from his place. He exhibited the same behavior with other dying patients. He didn't have much use for healthy people, but he rescued a toddler that was heading towards traffic, grabbing his pants and not letting go. Call it what you will.
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Some of their executives could and should be sent to prison.
If Obama wanted to make an impression on Wall Street and the banking swindlers, he'd prosecute a few of them and put the others on notice. Handcuffs have a way of getting attention.
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The missing piece of this equation is the fact that modern corporations are trans-national entities. They have no national loyalty. They treat America as a colony from which to extract as much wealth as possible. Sure, "the busines of America is business," but where did the manufacturing jobs go? How do we sustain a consumer economy when the consumers are out of work or if they're working they haven't had an inflation adjusted pay raise in 35 years.
Treating corporations as persons whose free speech is money is to recreate the status of slaves at the founding of the nation when they counted for 3/5 of a person. "We're all equal; some are more equal than others." George Orwell wrote Animal Farm in response to fascism. The pigs were the corporations. Get it? The root cause of this pending catastrophe of de facto fascism (rule of the corporations) is our money driven electoral system. We must end the auction of legislators and begin public financing--with real equal time on the broadcast media. Equal face-to-face time. Equal advertising time. Maye then politicians will return to campaigning based on ideas rather than demagoguery.
United States of Corporate America...
a democratic government.
Advocates for corporate personhood demand that corporations should be accorded the same constitutional rights as real persons especially under the first, fifth and sixth amendment. Ok but it is all or nothing. They also ought to be entitled to the same rights under the thirteenth amendment which would make corporate ownership slavery and would therefore render Wall Street as unconstitutional. The corporations would necessarily have the same obligatios as a real person. Draft them into the army and give them private's pay.
Pardon me, but don't all the employees of a corporation already have free speech and voting privileges? If those people who make up the corporation are already exercising those rights then by conveying those same rights to the corporations gives them two votes over my single vote. So, in essence, a corporation already has personhood by the fact it's made up of people and those people exercising their rights to free speech and voting. What's not being discussed is the corporate body hasn't any control over those in their employment to speak and vote on their behalf - there are laws on the books that keeps them at arms lengths. This SCOTUS ruling is either going to strengthen the Constitution or put a very large tear in its' fabric that may not be repairable given the republicans political posturing to appease corporate America for campaign contributions and executive positions when they decide to leave government.
"The truth, though, is that corporations depend on government for their very survival. Remembering this makes them seem much less frightenin
Except that corporations have purchased governing power from a majority share of government representatives.
"Libertarians argue that corporations would yield plentiful bounties for the entire country, if government would just get out of the way."
This sounds so familiar. The Trickle Down Theory, piss on you peons.
I am glad to see this discussion on HP. While the SCOTUS deliberates this case of "free speech", we wait to see if our democracy will survive!
At the risk of using hyperbole here, we (the people) are fighting for the life of this democracy! If the high court rules as expected (5-4 in favor of corporations), our votes will become meaningless in future elections. The corporation with the deepest pockets will choose our leaders for us. They will be allowed to run aggressive advertising campaigns for or against a candidate, basically buying the election of candidates who will further their agendas.
If anyone has any doubt about the effects of an aggressive ad campaign, just look at what has occurred with the health care debate. The insurance lobby has run non-stop ads designed to scare the American people into compliance with their wishes...a
This case may be the most important case before the Court in our history. If the corporations have the right to donate to campaigns DIRECTLY, we can simply call it what it will be...FASCI
Right on the money Emerald! This case is probably the most important in our history. All of the fights we engage in now are based on one thing, money, and the political influence and power it buys, the votes it buys. Campaign finance reform is essential for the survival of our republic to eliminate that power, and this case is an attempt to eliminate any chance of that essential reform. The greatest Bush Regime coup was the intentionally very young justices, that we will be saddled with for probably 35 years. The court is where the real money is. FDR came close to pushing for an expanded SCOTUS to 11 or more justices, as the Constitution allows, when an obstructionist court opposed his agenda; we could still possibly ram that through and water down the Bush corporate/fascist court.
It has been long said that when fascism arrives in the United States, it will be carrying a bible and be wrapped in the flag. It has arrived, and it is. The so-called supreme court, until more of the older ones retire and get replaced with sensible INTERPRETERS of the LAW rather than creating law to please the rethugs who appointed them them to their cushy life-long jobs that we have now will see to it that everything gets twisted to give ever more money to the very richest. It is time for that revolutionary war.
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