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

[Stuart Levy]

On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 08:27:14PM -0600, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> So you'd agree that the task should be to control corporations, not speech?
>

I'd think that a better approach would work toward equalizing access to
means of speaking.

> 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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