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dbackjon wrote:Agree with first, disagree with the second.

Not suprised that the Supreme Corporatists voted against public financing. Another cut to democracy.

Pwns wrote:Kudos for the first ruling, and I liked the examples of old kids's stories Scalia mentioned that are quite graphic and violent.

F the other ruling. Free speech is for individuals, not unions and corporations. I don't understand why people (especially republicans) like to cheerlead protecting speech rights for corporations. Hard to get rid of government waste when special interests are protecting their piece of the government waste pie.

TwinTownBisonFan wrote:

Pwns wrote:Kudos for the first ruling, and I liked the examples of old kids's stories Scalia mentioned that are quite graphic and violent.

F the other ruling. Free speech is for individuals, not unions and corporations. I don't understand why people (especially republicans) like to cheerlead protecting speech rights for corporations. Hard to get rid of government waste when special interests are protecting their piece of the government waste pie.

except that the second ruling had NOTHING to do with corporate money at all.

It had to do with matching funds from the state in the case of self-financing opponents.

Grizalltheway wrote:

TwinTownBisonFan wrote:
except that the second ruling had NOTHING to do with corporate money at all.

It had to do with matching funds from the state in the case of self-financing opponents.

Yep, the ruling they had a while back on corporate financing (which IT also defends ) is the one that fucked everything.

TwinTownBisonFan wrote:

Grizalltheway wrote:
Yep, the ruling they had a while back on corporate financing (which IT also defends ) is the one that **** everything.

Citizens United was a horrible decision, one of the worst court rulings since Dred Scott

Ivytalk wrote:. Corporations are legal persons.

kalm wrote:

Ivytalk wrote:. Corporations are legal persons.

In your completely nonsensical opinion.

LeadBolt wrote:

kalm wrote:

In your completely nonsensical opinion.

And also the opinion of the US legal system...

TwinTownBisonFan wrote:

Grizalltheway wrote:
Yep, the ruling they had a while back on corporate financing (which IT also defends ) is the one that fucked everything.

Citizens United was a horrible decision, one of the worst court rulings since Dred Scott

kalm wrote:

LeadBolt wrote:
And also the opinion of the US legal system...

Five corporatist activist judges.

Do you think a group of persons and and person are the same?

kalm wrote:

LeadBolt wrote:
And also the opinion of the US legal system...

Five corporatist activist judges.

Do you think a group of persons and and person are the same?

GannonFan wrote:

kalm wrote:
Five corporatist activist judges.

Do you think a group of persons and and person are the same?

Huh? The Supreme Court ruled, well before the current bench, that corporations are legal persons. Something like since 1819. And every Court since then has affirmed that. That's a lot of legal minds between here and there that actually agree on this. Except you of course.

Ivytalk wrote:

kalm wrote:
Five corporatist activist judges.

Do you think a group of persons and and person are the same?

Look, klam, you've never attended law school, so the concept of "juridical personhood" for corporations and other legal entities may be beyond you. Human beings are "natural persons." Capisce? Corporations 101. Taken to its extreme, your logic would prevent anyone from suing a corporation for a tort, like wrongful death or fraud, because there would be no "person" with deep pockets to sue. Give it up.

LeadBolt wrote:For precedent look at U.S. Supreme Court, SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PAC. R. CO., 118 U.S. 394 (1886). The 14th Amendment is cited. It is a bit of a stretch, but has been recognized for 125 years by way more than 5 activist judges.

With the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the owners of the what were then America’s largest and most powerful corporations - the railroads - figured they’d finally found a way to reverse Paine’s logic and no longer have to answer to “we, the people.” They would claim that the corporation is a person. They would claim that for legal purposes, the certificate of incorporation declares the legal birth of a new person, who should therefore have the full protections the voters have under the Bill of Rights.

It was an amazing irony, given that one of Jefferson’s original proposed Amendments was an explicit ban on corporations becoming so large as to gain monopoly power and be able to easily crush or stifle small, local entrepreneurs. But, setting the irony aside, the railroads threw massive resources into their new campaign to be given full human rights.

Acting on behalf of the railroad barons, attorneys for the railroads repeatedly filed suits against local and state governments that had passed laws regulating railroad corporations. They rebelled against restrictions, and most of all they rebelled against being taxed.

The main tool the railroad’s lawyers tried to use was the fact that corporations had historically been referred to under law not as “corporations” but as “artificial persons.” Based on this, they argued, corporations should be considered “persons” under the free-the-slaves Fourteenth Amendment and enjoy the protections of the constitution just like living, breathing, human persons.

Using this argument for their base, the railroads repeatedly sued various states, counties, and towns claiming that they shouldn’t have to pay local taxes because different railroad properties were taxed in different ways in different places and this constituted the creation of different “classes of persons” and was, thus, illegal discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment.

For almost twenty years, these arguments did not succeed.

In 1873, the Supreme Court made its first explicit comment on the Fourteenth Amendment. The Amendment’s “one pervading purpose,” Justice Samuel F. Miller wrote in the majority opinion, “was the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppression of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.”

The railroads, however, had a lot of money to pay for lawyers, and railroad lawyer S. W. Sanderson had the reputation of a pit bull. Undeterred, the railroads again and again argued their “corporations are persons” position all the way to the Supreme Court.

The peak year for their legal assault was 1877, with four different cases reaching the Supreme Court in which the railroads argued that governments could not regulate their fees or activities, or tax them in differing ways, because governments can’t interfere to such an extent in the lives of “persons” and because different laws and taxes in different states and counties represented illegal discrimination against the persons of the railroads under the Fourteenth Amendment.

By then, the Supreme Court was under the supervision of Chief Justice Morris Remick Waite, himself a former railroad attorney. Associate Justice Stephen Field, who was so openly on the side of the railroads in case after case that he annoyed his colleagues, also heavily influenced the court. In each of the previous four cases, the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment was not intended to regulate interstate commerce and therefore not applicable. But in none of those cases did Waite or any other Justice on the court muster a majority opinion on the issue of whether or not railroad corporations were “persons” under the constitution, and so Miller’s “one pervading purpose” of the Fourteenth Amendment (to free slaves) prevailed, and year after year, the railroads were told that they’re not persons.

Having lost four cases in one year took a bit of the wind out of the sails of the railroads, and there followed a few years of relative calm. The railroads continued to assert they were “persons,” but states and localities continued to call them “artificial persons” and pass laws regulating their activities.

For twenty years corporate personhood was debated. Across America, politicians were elected repeatedly on platforms that included the regulation of corporations, particularly the railroads. But the legal fight continued - and in 1886 the railroad hit paydirt.

The Supreme Court ruled on an obscure taxation issue in the Santa Clara County vs. The Union Pacific Railroad case, but the Recorder of the court - a man named J. C. Bancroft Davis, himself formerly the president of a small railroad - wrote into his personal commentary of the case (known as a headnote) that the Chief Justice had said that all the Justices agreed that corporations are persons.

And in so doing, he - not the Supreme Court, but its clerical recorder - inserted a statement that would change history and give corporations enormous powers that were not granted by Congress, not granted by the voters, and not even granted by the Supreme Court. Davis’s headnote, which had no legal standing, was taken as precedent by generations of jurists (including the Supreme Court) who followed and apparently read the headnote but not the decision.

What is especially ironic about this is that Davis knew the Court had not ruled on this issue. We found a handwritten note in the J.C. Bancroft Davis collection in the Library of Congress, from Chief Justice Waite to reporter Davis, explicitly saying, “we did not meet the constitutional issues in the case.” (In other words, the Court had decided the case on lesser grounds, which it always prefers to do when possible.)

Yet Davis wrote that the constitutional issue of corporate personhood had been decided, and his headnote was published the year Waite died, most likely after Waite’s death. The railroads were persons, he wrote (in the headnote), implying that they’re entitled to the same rights as persons. And Davis attributed this new legal reality to Chief Justice Waite who had specifically, in writing, disavowed it (although that note wouldn’t become public for over a hundred years - it’s now on my website).

Another great irony of this event is that the Bill of Rights was designed to protect human persons because of their vulnerability in relations with other human persons who may be much more powerful. But corporations are bestowed with potential immortality, can change their identity in a day, or even tear off parts of themselves and instantly turn those parts into entirely new “persons.” Yet regardless of all these superhuman powers, corporations are now considered persons.

These non-living, non-breathing persons are now, according to the pronouncements of their own attorneys and spokespeople who cite the headnotes of the Santa Clara County case, fully entitled to the protections that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote into the Bill of Rights to shield human persons from abuse by such powerful institutions as governments. Even the American Civil Liberties Union, in a recent and misguided effort, argued before the Supreme Court that corporations should have the free speech right to lie (or say anything else they want) that’s granted to humans by the First Amendment.

Thomas Paine said it best.

“It has been thought,” he wrote in The Rights of Man in 1791, “…that government is a compact between those who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.”

Thus, Paine and others of the Revolutionary Era reasoned, any institution made up by and of humans - from governments to churches to corporations - must be subordinate to individual living people in terms of the rights and powers held by the institution.

Because of the unique frailties and depths of passion unique to humans, just after the United States Constitution was ratified Thomas Jefferson and James Madison began a campaign to amend it with a 12-point explicit statement that would clearly and unambiguously place humans - who had created government - above their creation. This was the birth of what would become the Bill of Rights, and it originally had twelve - not ten - protections for citizens’ rights.

On December 20th, 1787, Jefferson wrote to James Madison about his concerns regarding the Constitution. He said, bluntly, that it was deficient in several areas. “I will now tell you what I do not like,” he wrote. “First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land, and not by the laws of nations.”

LeadBolt wrote:For precedent look at U.S. Supreme Court, SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PAC. R. CO., 118 U.S. 394 (1886). The 14th Amendment is cited. It is a bit of a stretch, but has been recognized for 125 years by way more than 5 activist judges.

Ivytalk wrote:

TwinTownBisonFan wrote:
Citizens United was a horrible decision, one of the worst court rulings since Dred Scott

Hyperbole of the year award goes to TTBF. Corporations are legal persons and have been so recognized for decades. Corporations act by their agents -- directors and officers -- to further the interests of their owners, the stockholders. And yes, corporations themselves have interests, which they should be free to pursue with all of the First Amendment rights that "natural persons" have. Not sure why this concept is so hard for some folks to grasp. But at least TTBF agreed with the result in the Arizona case. For such small favors we should be grateful.

TwinTownBisonFan wrote:

Ivytalk wrote:
Hyperbole of the year award goes to TTBF. Corporations are legal persons and have been so recognized for decades. Corporations act by their agents -- directors and officers -- to further the interests of their owners, the stockholders. And yes, corporations themselves have interests, which they should be free to pursue with all of the First Amendment rights that "natural persons" have. Not sure why this concept is so hard for some folks to grasp. But at least TTBF agreed with the result in the Arizona case. For such small favors we should be grateful.

here's the problem: "natural persons" have a life span of 100 years at the high end... they die. they cease accumulating power and wealth and influence... corporations do not. THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE. Their directors and officers and owners and shareholders have EVERY SINGLE RIGHT to act for the benefit of their corporation - including forming political action committees to pool PRIVATE donations that will further their companies agenda... but they DO NOT have same rights as individual CITIZENS.

That's why I say it's the worst ruling since Dred - it undermines our entire system to enable an ENTITY to have the same rights as a citizen... at this point I'd wonder when they'll ask for the right to vote... but I suspect with the ability to pour money from their coffers directly in to the system now... who needs it?

93henfan wrote:Getting back to the first decision mentioned, which I completely agree with, I am again reminded of our curious stances toward violence and sex in this country.

A kid cannot purchase a magazine such as Playboy which discusses sexuality and shows boobs and bush, but he can purchase a game that allows him to bind, gag, rape and kill the human image of that female in a video game.


Just an observation about how completely bass ackwards this country is... carry on.

TwinTownBisonFan wrote:

Ivytalk wrote:
Hyperbole of the year award goes to TTBF. Corporations are legal persons and have been so recognized for decades. Corporations act by their agents -- directors and officers -- to further the interests of their owners, the stockholders. And yes, corporations themselves have interests, which they should be free to pursue with all of the First Amendment rights that "natural persons" have. Not sure why this concept is so hard for some folks to grasp. But at least TTBF agreed with the result in the Arizona case. For such small favors we should be grateful.

here's the problem: "natural persons" have a life span of 100 years at the high end... they die. they cease accumulating power and wealth and influence... corporations do not. THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE. Their directors and officers and owners and shareholders have EVERY SINGLE RIGHT to act for the benefit of their corporation - including forming political action committees to pool PRIVATE donations that will further their companies agenda... but they DO NOT have same rights as individual CITIZENS.

That's why I say it's the worst ruling since Dred - it undermines our entire system to enable an ENTITY to have the same rights as a citizen... at this point I'd wonder when they'll ask for the right to vote... but I suspect with the ability to pour money from their coffers directly in to the system now... who needs it?