Flintstones Ken Doll, aka Mitt Romney, starred in a viral video of himself declaring that corporations were people once upon a time. Turns out that this was not an original Romney concept, as if any such thing could be ascribed to him. Lawyers and politicians, as well as a man who twice refused an appointment to the Supreme Court, went to lawyerin’ and tried to use the 14th Amendment to declare that corporations were people who, er, um, something … ipso facto ... Citizens United !! That’s the short version. Follow below the fold for a musing.
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You know I like to link to outside reading sometimes and this article from The Atlantic tells the story of how corporations became people. Hint: you’re not going to like it.
The day back in 1882 when the Supreme Court first heard Roscoe Conkling’s argument, the New-York Daily Tribune featured a story on the case with a headline that would turn out to be prophetic: “Civil Rights of Corporations.” Indeed, in a feat of deceitful legal alchemy, Southern Pacific and its wily legal team had, with the help of an audacious Supreme Court justice, set up the Fourteenth Amendment to be more of a bulwark for the rights of businesses than the rights of minorities.
So there’s your story for tonight. A bunch of business interests used an amendment designed to define humanity in the aftermath of slavery to define their corporations as people. Folks, we must simply get the money out of politics. Between this case and Citizens United there has been a long trail defining us as capitalists. I don’t know about you but I would like to be defined first as a human.
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from Arilca Mockingbird:
Nominating this comment from Lenny Flank as its nice to see someone challenge the idea that our site is over run with bots and paid trolls.
Highlighted by DrZ55:
Is this fine comment by Olephart I on what a reasonable approximation of the minimum wage should be. DrZ55’s reply updates it.
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