Mad As Hell Special Report: Corporate Personhood, When Convenient
December 16, 2011
Corporate personhood in America: where corporations are people, and because of that, they enjoy the same rights that you and I do as, well, actual living and breathing people. (Absurd, but true.)
We see its effect in politics every day — unlimited campaign donations, opened up by the disastrous Supreme Court decision, Citizens United, polluting our political system more than it already is. Today we want to shed some light on how corporations want the best of both worlds — the ability to enjoy the benefits of personhood when it comes to campaign spending, but when it comes to other legal concerns (like murder or human rights violations) they want to be protected by their corporate status against such liabilities.
If you need an example of this backwards behavior, look no further than the Supreme Court docket itself. One of the biggest and weirdest cases to come before the bench in recent years, Kiobel vs. Royal Dutch Petroleum. The big debate in that case is over the correct interpretation of international law when it comes to corporate liability in suing corporations.
Here are the facts. A dozen Nigerians claim that Royal Dutch and two Shell subsidiaries worked with the Nigerian government to torture and kill anti-oil activists. Royal Dutch claims they can’t be sued for such things (torture and murder) because they are a corporation, not a person.
“Now wait just a gosh darn second,” you’re probably saying. “Didn’t the Supreme Court decide two years ago that corporations have the same right to free speech as I do? So they get to do that, but don’t have to have to be held accountable for, oh, murdering someone?”
As Mike Sacks at The Huffington Post explains:
At least in theory, they do: Under Anglo-American law, corporations have long been considered legal persons subject to suit. But the 2nd Circuit in Kiobel held that this country’s history of corporate liability is irrelevant when it comes to a founding fathers-era statute that allows foreign nationals injured by “a violation of the law of nations” to sue in U.S. courts.
The court said that no corporation has ever been held liable for human rights violations under international law — that is reserved for actual individual human beings only.
This is what makes us Mad as Hell. Big business wants to have it both ways. They’re people when it benefits them to secretly purchase our government to preserve their business, but they’re not people when they want to use murder as a mechanism to preserve their business.
Watch as Dylan talks with John Bonifaz, co-founder and director of Free Speech For People, a national non-partisan campaign working to end corporate personhood, and Mike Sacks, Supreme Court correspondent for The Huffington Post who wrote an excellent piece on corporate personhood here.
- Meg Robertson is a digital producer for DylanRatigan.com. You can catch her on Twitter @megrobertson.
The point of the corporate business structure is for for officers (executives) to be working on behalf of the owners (shareholders). Inherent in that is the logical need for a separation of liability. The solution is the owners aren't liable beyond their investment. But it is fundamental that the corporation itself is fully liable for all its actions.
As far as corporate freedom of speech goes, there's a redundancy there. The officers and owners already have the right to free speech. One of the problems here is related to the above. The officers are not fully consulting with the owners nor representing a unanimous opinion of the owners. That means the officers are using other peoples' money to influence Congress to represent their own interests above and sometimes contrary to the wishes/interests of the people whose money they are using. There's no logical way this should be an unrestricted right.
Looking at the bigger picture, corporate executives have been playing a game. They placate shareholders by pumping up share prices by whatever means necessary (often contrary to the long-term best interests of the company) while repressing shareholder rights and leeching out as much money for themselves as possible. Accountability is the enemy.
There is ONLY ONE amendment that will really address the issue of unchecked dirty cash in politics and that is the Move to Amend measure. See and sign at http://movetoamend.org and compare to several others that fall short at http://movetoamend.org/other-amendments
When I served in the military it was taken seriously, all of it. It's a job in which you are sworn
to honor your country. When an officer of higher Rank approaches you salute and they honor
you by returning that salute.
We were also taught that that salute is to the office that he/she holds, regardless of how you
feel about the person in the uniform, the courtesy is to the office.
The people we put in office are there to serve the Country, and this country is lead by the
President. This recent disrespect for the office of the Presidency is something we should all
take note of.
I'm not saying the Congress people should Salute the president, BUT, the respect for the
office he holds should be observed. Right now, every day there are terrible examples of
disrespect for the Office of the President of the United States by those who we elected to
serve not only the President, but us .. the people of the United States of America.
We will soon have an opportunity to Vote in this country. I hope you all keep this in mind how
the GOP has sworn oaths to overthrow a sitting president and have day after day acted NOT
on behalf of the people, but on behalf of the 1% by voting against everything our President
has tried to do to fix the problems our Nation faces.
Tell Congress how you feel.