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

[C. G. Estabrook]

So you'd agree that the task should be to control corporations, not speech?


unionyes wrote:
> 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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