Resolution Calling to Amend the Constitution Banning Corporate Personhood

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Ban corporate personhood: Because what we really want is to take away the corporate right to pay taxes and get sued.

Non-corporate businesses still pay taxes.

FFS.

And get sued.

That's one of the main reasons TO incorporate, to keep one lawsuit from taking not just your business but your home and all of your personal assets.

I know.  It's just that the incorrect pedantry has gone from hilarious to annoying.

[Requia ☣]

I'm curious roger, what exactly do you think revoking corporate personhood would do?

[Chairman Risus]

Limit corporate campaign contributions?

Or am I way off base on that one?

[Telarus]

Trolling thought the wikipedia page on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

It seems a big one would be invoking 5th Amendment rights to refuse to hand over incriminating evidence.

Edit: didn't read the whole thing, that wasn't upheld.

Bah, complex legal fiction bullshit.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Ban corporate personhood: Because what we really want is to take away the corporate right to pay taxes and get sued.

Non-corporate businesses still pay taxes.

FFS.

And get sued.

That's one of the main reasons TO incorporate, to keep one lawsuit from taking not just your business but your home and all of your personal assets.

Word.

I don't know how Requia can be so consistently wrong.

[Telarus]

[Read a bit more] The abilities of Corporations to act as "Artificial Persons" goes back to 16th Century British law.

It should be understood that the term 'artificial person' was in long use, prior to the Dartmouth College decision, and was in principle distinct from any contention that corporations have the rights of natural persons. 'Artificial person' was used because there were certain resemblances, in law, between a natural person and corporations. Both could be parties in a lawsuit; both could be taxed; both could be constrained by law. In fact the corporations had been called artificial persons by courts in England as early as the 16th century because lawyers for the corporations had asserted they could not be convicted under the English laws of the time because the laws were worded "No person shall...."

So, that does away with those issues. The main issue presented here is that recently (since the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad) the corporate layers have been invoking numbered Amendments in the name of corporations "as persons" (Rights that have been traditionally afforded only to Natural Persons). The whole Money = Free Speech thing. But these aren't Rights...... they are privileges, and the corporate leverage of these have nearly totally fucked our political system.

[Cain]

I'm OK with corporate personhood...so long as every other kind of organization can apply for personhood as well.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I'm OK with corporate personhood...so long as every other kind of organization can apply for personhood as well.

Like, say, religions?

[Cramulus]

http://cramul.us/2010/09/postergasm-disinfomercials/

I'm curious roger, what exactly do you think revoking corporate personhood would do?

a nice benefit would be that foreign corporations would have a cap on how much money they can dump into our electoral process.

We individuals cannot hope to compete with the buying power of a corporation - when it comes to investing in politics, individual citizens have no voice, the only voice that matters is the booming bankrolls of a legal fiction.

Last January, Roger hit the nail on the head: Voting seems rather inefficient now, doesn't it? We should just have "democrat products" and "republican products" - whichever one gets more sales will win the election.


It's a lot like the justice system. We have this great idea of liberty and justice for all. But in reality it comes down to who can afford justice - or rather, who can afford to be above it. It's hard to win a legal battle against a big corporation - they have lots of time and resources, us real people do not. The free speech of individuals gets trumped all the time if an artist is commenting on a brand protected by powerful lawyers. Corporate personhood ultimately means that this country is not for us. It's designed so that the strong corporations can prosper, not individual citizens, unless they happen to be standing on top of a legal fiction. We're just the pit crew.

[Cain]

I'm OK with corporate personhood...so long as every other kind of organization can apply for personhood as well.

Like, say, religions?

Absolutely.  Religions, unions, NGOs, the lot of them.

[Requia ☣]

http://cramul.us/2010/09/postergasm-disinfomercials/

I'm curious roger, what exactly do you think revoking corporate personhood would do?

a nice benefit would be that foreign corporations would have a cap on how much money they can dump into our electoral process.

We individuals cannot hope to compete with the buying power of a corporation - when it comes to investing in politics, individual citizens have no voice, the only voice that matters is the booming bankrolls of a legal fiction.

Last January, Roger hit the nail on the head: Voting seems rather inefficient now, doesn't it? We should just have "democrat products" and "republican products" - whichever one gets more sales will win the election.


It's a lot like the justice system. We have this great idea of liberty and justice for all. But in reality it comes down to who can afford justice - or rather, who can afford to be above it. It's hard to win a legal battle against a big corporation - they have lots of time and resources, us real people do not. The free speech of individuals gets trumped all the time if an artist is commenting on a brand protected by powerful lawyers. Corporate personhood ultimately means that this country is not for us. It's designed so that the strong corporations can prosper, not individual citizens, unless they happen to be standing on top of a legal fiction. We're just the pit crew.

Foreign corporations aren't allowed in that I'm aware of, except through the private funds of the employees.

While I agree that the other things you say, I don't see how corporate personhood is a cause of the problems (except maybe artists getting sued by corporations, hard to do that if there's no right to file a lawsuit).

[Cramulus]

have you seen something which indicates foreign-owned companies operating in America are capped in how much they can donate to a campaign?

Either way, foreign or not, that shit should be capped so that flesh-and-blood citizens who don't have billions of dollars can play politics too.

Obama on Corporate Personhood:
"this decision gives corporations and other special interests the power to spend unlimited amounts of money -- literally millions of dollars -- to affect elections throughout our country. This, in turn, will multiply their influence over decision-making in our government."

[Requia ☣]

No corporation, labor union, federal contractor or foreign national may donate more than 0$ to a campaign.  The whole thing about the Citizen's United case changing that was media hysteria.

CU changed the rules about spending money related to the election, but not donations themselves (it also explicitly did not change the rules for foreign corporations).  I've also been unable to find evidence that a significant amount of corporate money was ever spent that way (after all corporations can found PACs and use the money of whoever they can dupe into donating, costs less than spending their own money).  There's been a lot of talk on the news about how the Chamber of Commerce spent record amounts of money last election, but the CoC was never effected by the McCain-Feingold ammendment in the first place.

While I do admit the threat of some corporation spending a few million dollars on ads to change the outcome of the election is real (whether or not it's happened in the past), the easiest solution is to rewrite the McCain Feingold ammendment to have tighter language (which was recommended by the courts) to prevent spillover into things that weren't advertisements like in the CU case (they wanted to put their movie for sale on Comcast on Demand, not take out ads).

The real issue with campaign financing is that the cap on private donations is too high, it's easy for a rich man or a PAC to spend 2400 dollars on 20 different politicians (twice, since they can donate in the primaries and general election separately) for a total of nearly a hundred thousand in campaign contributions.  Drop the cap down to 100$ or so and you put the rich on more even footing with the middle class.

[Cramulus]

from enki

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/03/01/in-att-case-chief-justice-roberts-has-a-little-fun-at-companys-expense/

[Cain]

Yeah, I saw that as well.  It's a sad day when a company argues a point that even Roberts finds too much to take seriously.