[Peace-discuss] Fw: Fw: GP RELEASE Greens: 'Citizens United' ruling will...

[unionyes]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "unionyes" <unionyes at ameritech.net>
To: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2010 8:22 PM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Fw: GP RELEASE Greens: 'Citizens United' ruling 
will...


> Unions, Cooperatives, 501c3's, etc. are NOT the corporations people are 
> concerned with.
> The ONLY reason the above are classified under the law as " corporations " 
> is because there is no other legal definition / pigeon hole for them in 
> this corporate controlled country.
>
> People are concerned about large global profit making corporations and 
> YES, in my opinion, the global for profit corporations ARE the source of 
> most evil in the world today.
>
> David Korten's book " WHEN CORPORATIONS RULE THE WORLD " is as relevant 
> today ( if not more so ) as it was when he wrote it in 1992.
> Korten is an MBA graduate and worked for twenty years for some U.S. 
> government aid organization in various countries in Asia.
> He originaly thought that the American Business Model was the sollution to 
> world poverty. But by the late 1980's he came to the realization that the 
> American Business Model and global for profit corporations were the 
> problem.
>
> The for profit corporate entity is monsterous. It has a life of it's own 
> that out lives any of it's CEO's or Board of Directors. Korten compares it 
> to a cancerous cell. That destroys all in it's pursuit for profit, and has 
> no loyalty to person, place or thing.
> If I were religious I would almost say that the corporation is the 
> Anti-Christ.
>
> David J.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
> To: "unionyes" <unionyes at ameritech.net>
> Cc: "Peace-discuss List" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2010 7:41 PM
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Fw: GP RELEASE Greens: 'Citizens United' 
> ruling will...
>
>
>> [The following is an amalgamated ("corporate") response from comments on 
>> Doug Henwood's excellent LBO email list.  The burden is that denying 
>> personhood to corporations is an exercise in missing the point - which is 
>> to control corporations.  --CGE]
>>
>> In response to the Citizens United v. FEC decision, there seems to be a 
>> movement afoot by some folks on the left to amend the Constitution to end 
>> corporate personhood. See here: <http://www.movetoamend.org/>. Maybe I'm 
>> missing something important, but this seems insane. Legally speaking, 
>> labor unions are corporations ("non-stock corporations") - so are all 
>> cooperatives, and Amnesty International, and the Economic Policy 
>> Institute, etc. They're all corporations, as is pretty much any 
>> non-governmental organization. "Corporation" is a legal term, but 
>> basically it's just a synonym for "collectivity." Is the left in this 
>> country so hyper-individualistic that it wants to stymie all economic and 
>> social life not based on the rugged individual?
>>
>> [What's necessary instead is serious regulation of business 
>> corporations - democratic control of investment decisions, 
>> nationalization of banks, redistribution of wealth - as Joseph Stiglitz 
>> recommends in his new book.]
>>
>> ...It's a legalistic, petit bourgeois illusion that doesn't seem very 
>> thought through. Not a word about increasing social control over 
>> investment or worker control over the workplace. Instead, there's an 
>> instinctive focus on the corporate form itself, as if that were the focus 
>> of evil in the modern world, to borrow a phrase from Ronald Reagan.
>>
>>
>> unionyes wrote:
>>>  ----- Original Message -----
>>> *From:* David Sladky <mailto:tanstl at aol.com>
>>> *To:* undisclosed-recipients: <mailto:undisclosed-recipients:>
>>> *Sent:* Sunday, January 24, 2010 5:55 PM
>>> *Subject:* GP RELEASE Greens: 'Citizens United' ruling will...
>>>
>>> Sent: Sun, Jan 24, 2010 8:38 am
>>> Subject: Re: [usgp-media] Re: Draft - GP RELEASE Greens: 'Citizens 
>>> United' ruling will...
>>>  In a message dated 1/24/2010 1:34:06 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, 
>>> cobbweb at greens.org <mailto:cobbweb at greens.org> writes:
>>>
>>>      > Many Greens are supporting Move To Amend
>>>     (http://www.movetoamend.org), which, like the Green Party, asserts
>>>     that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to
>>>     constitutional rights; that money is not speech; and that the right
>>>     to vote and have one's vote counted must be guaranteed. Move To
>>>     Amend demands a constitutional amendment enacting these principles.
>>>
>>>  I certainly support the general positions the Greens are taking on 
>>> this, and certainly oppose the concept that corporations are persons 
>>> under our constitution (and are aware of the controversy over the 
>>> deceptions that went into the court allegedly recognizing corporations 
>>> as people).
>>>  One caution that I have is that, as a lawyer, having briefly read the 
>>> summary of the case, most of the majority decision, and some of the 
>>> dissenting opinion, there does not appear to be a simple remedy. My 
>>> concern is given a court decision that once again seems more driven by 
>>> personal ideological biases rather than sound legal reasoning, merely 
>>> overturning the concept of corporate personhood does not necessarily 
>>> overturn the court's recent decision. (Restoring a Supreme Court that 
>>> upholds the law is the clearer solution).
>>>  The idea of a constitutional amendment related to corporate personhood 
>>> seems to be getting a fair amount of attention. Something the Greens 
>>> support for reasons far beyond this court decision.
>>>  The website cited above - movetoamend - goes far beyond this particular 
>>> approach in a way greens would support, but I wonder how difficult and 
>>> complex it would be to draft (and more importantly, then pass) a 
>>> constitutional amendment that would actually accomplish the goals it 
>>> lays out
>>>
>>> -- 
>>
> 


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