Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, but I was so awed at the jaw-dropping lunacy of the following that I had to comment. As you might be aware there's a huge case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, where the Citizens United side wants pretty much unbridled speech for corporations in political campaigns (at least!) John Roberts, head of the Supreme Court, is evidently about to make an idiotic ruling furthering corporate control of our government. An editorial in today's NY Times catches the idiocy:
The courts have long treated corporations as persons in limited ways for some legal purposes. They may own property and have limited rights to free speech. They can sue and be sued. They have the right to enter into contracts and advertise their products. But corporations cannot and should not be allowed to vote, run for office or bear arms. Since 1907, Congress has banned them from contributing to federal political campaigns — a ban the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld.
In an exchange this month with Chief Justice Roberts, the solicitor general, Elena Kagan, argued against expanding that narrowly defined personhood. "Few of us are only our economic interests," she said. "We have beliefs. We have convictions." Corporations, "engage the political process in an entirely different way, and this is what makes them so much more damaging," she said.
Chief Justice Roberts disagreed: "A large corporation, just like an individual, has many diverse interests." Justice Antonin Scalia said most corporations are "indistinguishable from the individual who owns them."
"A large corporation, just like an individual, has many diverse interests."
Really?
No, actually, it's bullshit. Utter, complete bullshit, and he should be held accountable for it.
The interests of a corporation are very clearly spelled out in their foundational documents.
Just you know, like the interests of the United States government are spelled out in our constitution:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Now, as an example of the "many diverse interests" of a large corporation, let's take General Electric's Certificate of Incorporation (emphasis mine):
A. To manufacture, process, construct, develop, assemble, and produce in any way, to sell, lease, supply, and distribute in any way, to purchase, lease, mine, extract, and acquire in any way, to own, operate, experiment with, deal in, service, finance, and use in any way, equipment, apparatus, appliances, devices, structures, materials, processes, information,
tangible and intangible property, services and systems of every kind, nature and description:
- for any electrical, or energy-conversion, application or purpose, including but not limited to the production, transmission, distribution, storage, regulation, control and use in any manner of electricity, or in any way connected with or deriving from any electrical, or energy-conversion, application or purpose, and,
- for any other application or purpose, whatsoever, including but not limited to industrial, utility, consumer, defense, governmental, scientific, educational, cultural, financial, recreational, agricultural, transportation,
construction, mining, and communication applications or purposes.
B. To conduct studies and research and development, and to engage in any other activity relating to the development, application, and dissemination of information concerning science, technology, and other fields of endeavor.
C. To acquire by purchase, subscription or otherwise all or part of any interest in the property, assets, business, or good will of any corporation, association, firm, or individual, and to dispose of, or otherwise deal with, such property, assets, business or good will.
D. To engage in any activity which may promote the interests of the corporation, or enhance the value of its property, to the fullest extent permitted by law, and in furtherance of the foregoing purposes to exercise all powers now or hereafter granted or permitted by law, including the powers specified in the New York Business Corporation Law.
Well, those interests are pretty diverse, right? I mean, they encompass making and doing anything as long as it's making and selling stuff.
If it's about educating kids, no GE doesn't give a shit.
If it's about making sure the environment is safe, no, that's not one of GE's "purposes."
If it's about ensuring we have a secure retirement...oh, c'mon! If it's not about any activity which promote the interests of the corporation (i.e., making and selling stuff!) they just don't care. It's not a "purpose" of the corporation.
And if they can "own the law," then they can do whatever they please "to the fullest extent permitted by the law," and well, it'd be like the law wasn't there.
Now I actually don't want to pick on GE; I actually have tremendous respect for aspects of their business (excluding their ownership of Ronald Reagan and their conservative political advocacy and their pollution record and their involvment in nuclear power and...) No seriously, I have a lot of respect for the corporation as it was originally envisaged: a business smartly conceived to take advantage of the commercialization and distribution of electricity in America. It was brilliant.
But this diary's not about GE, it's about those guys on the Supreme Court that are about to pull another Bush v. Gore on us. I just chose GE at more or less random because I had a hunch this document was on-line. I could just as easily have chosen my Home Owners' Association's Articles of Incorporation.
But one big point should be hammered home here: All corporations are supposed to be run for the interests of the shareholders.
Now in reality, many corporations are not run like that; they're run for the benefit of their top management. But however you slice it, corporations do not act on behalf of all Americans, no way, no how.
And this point about legal incorporation isn't some obscure part of the law, and anyone who had to fight a developer control of an Home Owners' Association figures this stuff out intuitively.
So either Roberts and his minions are complete total imbecilic incompetents, or evil... hmmm...what's the result of deciding Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission?
By allocating political power to a corporation on a footing with individuals (actually greater, because the Supreme Court has previously ruled in one of their worst decisions that "money = speech") they implicitly give more power to some of the owners of corporations (really their management) than the poor schnook who doesn't own any stock, or the guy who only owns the corporation through a mutual fund or exchange traded fund.
So John Roberts and Scalia are trying to make some people more equal than others.
So, I'd vote evil.
Anyhow, as I said at the outset, I'm not a lawyer.
But this Court should be accountable to the people.
So how to bring this Court to heel?
Evidently 500,000 Friend of the Court Briefs will likely not be viewed well.
Any thoughts?
Update
Some folks take umbrage at the usage of the term evil. I disagree, and I think the reason why is worth putting here:
There's a lot of bad repellent, repugnant, immoral stuff still in America from previous years.
If corporations are people, the people are nothing more than organizational ideas formed for making and consuming stuff. No flesh and blood. No pain. No soul. No laughter. No memories. No grieving. No existence other than as an economic unit.
Do you know anyone whose sum total of purposes and interests even remotely approach GEs or any other corporation?
When corporations = born people you show contempt for the very idea of a human being; and that contempt is rightfully called evil, just as when the religious right says zygotes = born people they are contemptuous of the reality of what it means to be a human being to human beings.
One must be a psychopath or evil to adhere to such positions. Denying the reality of what makes people people is the heart of antisemitism; it was what made genocides happen.
So, yeah, evil's the right word.