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Summary: The need of the many versus the rights of the few
Review: Margaret Mead's "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has..." has proven right many times. Hartmann's UNEQUAL PROTECTION is a great case study: here, it's one person, a court reporter, who changed history with a set of "headnotes". Thom Hartmann discusses the case of J. C. Bancroft Davis and his impact on globalization today in his fascinating study on the rise of corporate dominance around the world. At the same time, and in the spirit of Margaret Mead, he also calls for grassroots and community action. Hartmann's starting point is the question: How did corporations manage to become persons before the law with, at least, the same rights as human beings? How did corporations change from being "virtual entities", meaning that they were subject to the controls and supervision by local governments (and humans), into becoming legal entities equal to citizens but without the restrictions and responsibilities placed on people. How have "multinational corporations become the tail that wags the dogs of governments of the world"? Well it's the result of a US Supreme Court Decision regarding the Fourteenth Amendment. Or is it? Hartmann delves deep into US Constitutional history to set the framework in which the fundamental issue of corporate personhood has to be understood. He traces the concept to its roots in 1886, and to court reporter Davis, the official recorder for the Supreme Court Case: The Southern Pacific Railroad vs. the Santa Clara County. Corporate personhood was introduced during this case, but not, as constitutional and corporate lawyers have assumed for some 120 years, by the Court - but by David in the headnotes. That meant it had no legal basis whatsoever. The evidence found by Hartmann confirmed that the Supreme Court specifically decided NOT to rule on the issue of corporate personhood. Hartmann explores possible reasons why this application of the Fourteenth Amendment became so popular with corporate lawyers. He also states categorically that "he is not looking for culprits but to point out a flaw in the social system." The impact of the misinterpretation of the Supreme Court decision since 1886 has been fundamental and has reached far beyond the United States. Hartmann traces American history from "the birth of American democracy through the birth of corporate personhood" ending with the rise of transnational corporations and their role in world trade. He reflects on the emerging conflicts between government and corporations, citing no lesser authority than President Thomas Jefferson and his conviction that "freedom from monopolies are one of the fundamental human rights". Hartmann devotes a chapter to the analysis of the "unequal consequences" on all major aspects of civil rights and responsibilities: protection from risk, taxes, wealth, trade and (political) influence, to list a selection. He concludes on a more positive note with a call to all concerned to redress the power balance and to restore the sharing of responsibility for the Global Commons. This book should be essential reading for all interested in and concerned in our modern trade systems, whether in the US, in other countries or globally. This well researched study is a dramatic read and leaves the reader with ample food for thought.
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Summary: Should Corporations be able to Vote?
Review: Prior to the first century no court applied constitutional rights for corporations. In 1886, Santa Clara County verses Pacific Railroad, in a head note explain the case the author implied that "corporations were persons" as a reason for the court administering a 25 dollar fine to the corporation. The foundation for "personhood" gave rise too a constitutional claim of equal protection of the law for corporations. Using this precedence, Corporations were quick to fight for constitutional protections for 1. Free speech (1st amendment) 2. privacy protection (10th amendment) 3. Freedom from search and seizure (fourth amendment) 4. double jeopardy (5th amendment) 5. Self-incrimination (5th amendment) 6. and anti-discriminations (14th amendment). It seem corporations had done the impossible, they had received the same scrutiny or equal protection as race. Over the century, the vast number of 14th amendment cases has been equal protection claims against anti-discrimination policies for corporations. Corporations have established civil liberties and constitutional rights protected by law. So why not let the corporation vote? One could argue, in a republican form of government a small governing body holds representation of power and decision-making; so, why not let corporations vote? Corporations represent the wealth, resources, and jobs of America. Further one may observe that the vested interests of the corporation could be represented, if they were given a vote. So why have corporation not been given the power to vote? If corporations received the same protection as a person the democratic process would be destroyed. Apparently the founding fathers did not want to give corporations this level of power over the people, so no constitutional provision or implication was made to give corporations an elective vote for selection of a candidate or local law. Do corporation remain powerless or silent on this issue of voting constraint? Corporations vote with money. In an election year politicians receive tens of millions of dollars to their party, which in my opinion is a loophole. Political campaigns were designed too be limited in the contribution amounts to safeguard against buying an election. The magnitude of financial difference between corporate donations and people donations is staggering. Persons give hundreds or thousands of dollars too politicians, whereas, corporations give millions to politicians. This allows corporations too buy favorable legislation manipulation. However, the people still have the power too elect their government officials and this fundamental power gives the people the ability too prevent government representatives from being completely controlled by the corporations. If the elected official performs contrary to the people opinion they have the right the next election to select a different representative. The people have the power to select their representatives. The representatives have the obligation to listen to the interest for the people. The representatives are too account for good and moral decisions, while in office. It is the job of the people are too voice their concern, as poor legislation becomes law.
However, once in office, special interest lobbying applies pressure too government representatives for support to their viewpoints. These viewpoints may not be confined to America. Since, corporations are global entities and represent global interests, corporations can own more than one corporation; corporations often campaign for inter-continental interests in their campaign for rights, interests, and support with the government representatives. These corporations can span multiple countries, whereas, a citizen must reside in one country. The fact that corporations can represent viewpoints for various countries and receive legal and political recognition, as a person in this country seems grants foreigners a new level of leverage with the American political process. If corporations have constitutional rights, do they have responsibilities to other citizens? Corporations have migrated from state privileges to constitutional rights. Corporations are expected to act like good citizens: pay taxes, obey the laws, keep the environment clean, and pay a living. Citizens are expected to operate under moral constraints, whereas, corporations are expected to make money. A corporation is not expected to operate on moral constraints. What that means is the corporation may apply force since no moral guardian stands in the way from them achieving their goal of profits. If no legal constraint exists, the corporation plows forward to make money without consideration of any moral constraint. For example, the liberal media corporations claim the right to freedom of expression. This means the corporation is free to sell media with high levels of sexual content, violence, and degrading morality. The impact can span generations. The selling of produce can span many decades because a corporation exists in perpetuity. The produce is subject to taxation, protection under copyright law, and free commerce between states and other nations. Laws and regulations force the media companies too have movie content rated. Since companies have similar protections as persons, the first amendment rights extend too the corporation.
The first amendment includes prohibitions against the government from censoring speech and freedom of expression and this gives the corporation a tremendous liberty to sponsor lascivious and immoral content in movies.
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Summary: Response to that Moron "danieleclark"
Review: Response to that Moron "danieleclark" Get an education! Our political system isn't a true Capitalistic-Democracy. If we have a welfare sytem, social security, subsidies for people attending college and running farms, etc, it all points to a form of socialism. Let's face it, our society can't be built on one econimic model, hence we are a socio-democracy.
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Summary: Man's most dangerous invention Run Amok
Review: Since the advent of science fiction, for more than 100 years, writers have predicted that man would invent some kind of "thing" that would turn on humanity, enslaving or killing hundreds of thousands or millions, wasting the planet, or terraforming to meet the needs of the invented "things." That's what the movie series Terminator is about, for example. Some stories propose the "thing" to be a robot, or computer, or androids, or biological concoctions of some mad scientist. The truth is, the "thing" exists and has been doing all of the things threatened above. The "thing" was invented over 100 years ago, and it keeps getting stronger, hurting more people. But the "thing" is not what the futurists predicted. The "thing" is the big corporation, which 116 years ago was granted personhood by what seems to me to have been malicious error on the part of the supreme court of the US. Thom Hartmann tells an extraordinary story, starting with the colonial era, about how big business has caused havoc and suffering among humanity. For example, the Boston Tea Part was aimed at a megacorporation, not the British Government. The book tells how human rights, created for humans, have been stolen by corporations and used to corrupt the government created of by and for the people. Corporate personhood is the prime weapon they wield to manipulate laws that should be protecting real people. In Jurassic Park, the cloned dinosaurs got out of control when a "theoretical" lock on their breeding failed. Humanity lost control of corporations when a former Railroad company president took a job as a court reporter for the Supreme Court. He added a note on a case that said that corporations were persons and entitled to rights under the 14th amendment. The truth is that the justices of the court explicitly avoided a ruling on that issue. Since then, cases have been based on that "plant" court reporter's sabotage of the Justices actual ruling. He wrote the book before the Enron and Tyco and Worldcom horrors reached the news, but the book does an amazing job of explaining how these were possible. Most important, the book is a call to action with solutions. Bush doesn't have the answers, Greenspan has cute terms, but no answers. Hartmann's book is a powerful read about a monster behemoth invented by man. Yes, it is a horror story that is true. But at least it opens up the door to discussion about how corporations can cause the massive levels of death, enslavement, human suffering and ecological disaster that is going on right now. Hartmann actually includes model legislative verbiage that can be used at the state level to reign in out-of-control corporations. For this alone, the book is worth the investment. But, like Thom's other books, Prophet's Way, and Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, the book is written so it rivets your attention in a page-turning way. if you are passionate about making the world a better place, this book will whet your passion, and give you some focus and concrete strategies for doing something to make a difference.
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Summary: Corporations as Supra Human
Review: The founders of the United States were most concerned about state and religious tyranny when they added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. The power and machinations of companies that had been chartered by the crown were thought to be a matter of the past and not of sufficient concern to be dealt with in the new Constitution. From today's vantage point, greater naiveté could not have been demonstrated. Corporations were chartered by state legislatures throughout the nineteenth century, but the corporations were put on a relatively short leash, being subject to controls including charter revocation. But as the author indicates, corporations became very powerful entities with the coming of the Civil War, in particular in the legal arena. The phalanx of attorneys that corporations could muster constantly pushed the legal envelope for corporations. The author attaches great importance to an (as it has turned out) erroneous reporting of the Santa Clara County Supreme Court decision in 1886 that supposedly held that corporations fell under the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees due process for all persons. After that decision, corporations came to be viewed as legal persons with all of the rights of natural persons. Not only do citizens' rights apply to corporations, but corporations have the advantages of existing in perpetuity and of having limited liability. Corporations have, in essence, gained at least equal social standing with real people, but they in fact do not have human values. Corporations are institutions concerned almost exclusively with profitability and not with the well being of the greater society, as would actual people. One ramification of that is that, from a monetary standpoint, it makes sense for corporations to shift the costs of their operations onto the greater society, if possible. For example, degrading the environment is often not paid for by corporations, despite social effects. From a human standpoint, that is irresponsible, unsociable behavior. It is the combination of full citizenship standing, immense wealth and resources, and a rational disregard for the greater social good that has produced, what the author calls, unequal consequences when corporations and people operate in the same arena. In general, the consequences have been that corporations have distorted and molded the social, economic, and political aspects of our society to their benefit. Huge corporations control much of public speech including the constant bombardment of advertising through their consolidated ownership of the media. They heavily influence tax and trade legislation by being a part of and controlling the political process. They control the global location and relative rewards of employment as wealth has continually been redistributed upwards over the last thirty years. They flaunt accepted environmental and labor laws and standards. Basically, their penetration into all aspects of our lives has been both immense and subtle. There is a certain amount of disingenuousness in this book. The author is reluctant to place blame in this corporate dominating scenario. He would contend that corporations are simply doing what they do best aided by their unmerited legal status as full rights-bearing persons. Simply put, his solution is to remove that legal designation. However, there are many who would not view corporate power in such a benign manner. They would regard the actions of transnational corporations roaming the globe and pressuring even the largest nations in the world to bend to their needs as out-and-out class warfare. It is warfare that has been devastating in its effects on entire societies. He has the notion that local governments will one-by-one deny corporations various rights. That is a most optimistic view, if not delusional. Corporations and the capitalistic class are relentless in preserving and extending their prerogatives. Their teams of lawyers eat local attorneys for snacks. This is one of several recent books on corporate domination written by someone with a business background. Others are by David Korten and Noreena Hertz, to name two. They all add a little bit to the picture, including this book. But none of them have written what I would call a working class manifesto.
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Summary: The Ascent of the Artificial Person
Review: The story that Hartmann tells is one that everyone should know, but nobody does: how the corporation came to have the power it now has as an institution in the United States. Normally, when activists or the general public confront the sheer, imposing bulk of the corporatocracy, we get diagnoses of greed and corruption, with antidotes of regulation or resignation. But what Hartmann uncovers is the very specific LEGAL history of how corporations came into being in their modern incarnation. There are a handful of pivotal Supreme Court decisions that laid the tracks for the freight trains of abuse and audacity that then rolled on through, and all over regular citizens. This is a very important insight. Since the corporation's power is fairly narrowly and legally based, it can be undone as well. The notion that we can regulate big companies into being good "corporate citizens" is nonsense if we don't withdraw the legal basis of their recognized rights. Constitutional protections should be for natural citizens only, period. We should be able to hold corporations to whatever standards we want, since they are simply artificial profit-machines with no inherent legal standing vis-a-vis the rights of natural citizens. As always, Hartmann's writing is engaging, precise, and exciting. Buy this book!!
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Summary: The Ascent of the Artificial Person
Review: The story that Hartmann tells is one that everyone should know, but nobody does: how the corporation came to have the power it now has as an institution in the United States. Normally, when activists or the general public confront the sheer, imposing bulk of the corporatocracy, we get diagnoses of greed and corruption, with antidotes of regulation or resignation. But what Hartmann uncovers is the very specific LEGAL history of how corporations came into being in their modern incarnation. There are a handful of pivotal Supreme Court decisions that laid the tracks for the freight trains of abuse and audacity that then rolled on through, and all over regular citizens. This is a very important insight. Since the corporation's power is fairly narrowly and legally based, it can be undone as well. The notion that we can regulate big companies into being good "corporate citizens" is nonsense if we don't withdraw the legal basis of their recognized rights. Constitutional protections should be for natural citizens only, period. We should be able to hold corporations to whatever standards we want, since they are simply artificial profit-machines with no inherent legal standing vis-a-vis the rights of natural citizens. As always, Hartmann's writing is engaging, precise, and exciting. Buy this book!!
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Summary: Loved Moore's "STUPID WHITE MEN?" READ THIS NOW!!!
Review: The thoughtful, articulate reviews which precede mine say it all: every American should read this book and act upon it. Hartmann's challenge to reverse the unfortunate legal precedent set over 100 years ago in a wholly backhanded manner should be taken seriously. As a citizen of the town whose chief corporation published this book (Rodale Press of Emmaus, Pennsylvania), I suppose I should start attending borough meetings in order to promote legislation modeled on the highly pragmatic appendix provided by Hartmann. I commend Mr. Hartmann for using his excellent mind to create a book far more important (according to this particular lover of human rationality) than his earlier explorations of religion and philosophy. This is Rodale Press's Most Important Book: READ IT!!!
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Summary: Examination Of Advent Of Corporate "Constitutional" Rights
Review: This absorbing, provocative, and thoughtful book by author Thom Hartmann is an extremely well'documented exploration of a plethora of ways in which corporate entities have assumed special rights and privileges in the last century through the slow and systematic abrogation of constitutional protections of private individuals from such impersonal business enterprises. By employing what is essentially a sidestepping of the clear intent and letter of constitutional law, corporations have gained the functional equivalence of the rights of individuals to protection under the law, foisting what is no more than a legal fiction in order to successfully pursue what now constitutes special, preferential treatment from both federal and state governments. In fact, the various governmental agencies and representatives now seem to be acting more in concert and collusion with the corporations as enthusiastic cheerleaders of corporate progress in the public domain rather than serving in their intended function as overseers and protectors of the common weal by restraining and limiting the rights and prerogatives of such global corporations. Under Jeffersonian law as encoded in the U.S. Constitution carefully limited and restricted such access to the rights of individuals by large organizations, and was especially concerned about such organizations usurping the powers and privileges of the government itself. Yet as the society progressed, the corporate entities such as the railroads became more influential, gradually gaining sufficient access to policy makers as to begin to gain rights heretofore restricted to private individuals. Considered as a person, a corporation could seek legal protection from oversight through such devices as the Fourteenth Amendment, which was originally intended to redress grievances associated with the vestiges of slavery for recently emancipated African'American slaves. The virtual tripwire that unfortunately opened the proverbial barn door to corporations parading as private individuals was a Supreme Court decision, which in essence created a 'legal fiction' by portraying the corporation (a railroad firm) to be a 'corporate person'. This unfortunate precedent is father to all of the many subsequent decisions, which over time, have gradually extended this notion of corporate entities as having so-called individual rights which according to the author the Constitution had not only never intended, and in fact specifically used language to constrain and prevent.
The author's argument complements the arguments and perspectives of legal scholar and author Charles Reich's 'Opposing The System'. Hartmann uses a writing style, which is quite straightforward and therefore makes it eminently readable, not at all written in 'legalese', which makes the book more approachable and better suited for a lay audience that it would be otherwise. The research and scholarship he has invested in this work is obvious, and the text has many anecdotes illustrating the various ways in which the legal fiction perpetuated by the collusion between the corporations on the one hand, and the federal and state governmental agencies in lock-step with them on the other, works in insidious ways to undermine and diminish the constitutional rights and protections of the population at large. Hartmann also provides a virtual roadmap to the methods and arguments that the public can use to mollify this untoward encroachment on our rights, most specifically through a grass-roots movement that among other things, will serve to awaken ordinary Americans of this peril and its potential consequences for the society at large, and for us as private individuals as well. This is an important book, and one I can heartily recommend. Enjoy!
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Summary: Author wants to stamp out economic freedom.
Review: This book is basically a tirade against the idea of organizing into voluntary cooperative groups for their benefit. This power held by the people threatens the perogatives of ruling elites. It is not surprising that the author proposes ways for the ruling elites (government) to curb popular economic power. For example, the mis-truths about "personhood". Corporations do not have right to vote; so they are in this aspect and others clearly less than persons. Also, the reason for the legal status has to do with protection for frivolous lawsuits. Reform the legal system, and this would not be necessary. Also overlooked is the fact that the corporation is made of individuals who do have rights of personhood. The intent of the book is quite ... (as in appealing to much greater tyrannical control by the rulers; such is necessary to quash popular economic activity). The author is alarmed that individuals are allowed to organize into cooperative organizations as corporations, and these organizations let people strive without the total control of government tyranny. That is what the author really has a problem with: people having too much power at the expense of the rulers. It is OK for the government to have "new kingdoms" over people's lives, but not for the people themselves to organize and control things on their own. The author is especially fearful of NAFTA and GATT and WTO. After all, these threaten the power of rulers to profit from international trade (via tarriffs and other means). To him and others, world trade freedom is bad of course because it lets people trade freely regardless of international borders and the greed of local leaders. In reality, free trade has nothing to do with "corporations", and has everything to do with individuals making economic decisions without regard to silly old fashioned things like international borders. There are examples of shifty logic in the book. For example, the author laments that the law enforcement statistics only report crimes by individuals and not corporations. Well, duh! A corporation cannot commit a crime without the cooperation of individuals, so of course there are no corporate crimes: all the crimes show up as offenses by individuals. Also lacking is a criticism of the least accountable corporation in America. .... At all times during its history, it has in varying ways relied on forced labor. At many times in its history, critics of it have been punished severely. It has engaged in intentional widespread environmental devastation (even ordering many species to be exterminated; no other American corporation can claim this). It is the least accountable corporation, as we are forced to participate in it (we have to leave the country to flee it). This corporation is the United States Government. The Constitution devotes far much more material to reigning in this entity than it does for relatively-harmless cooperative voluntary business ventures. The Founding Fathers realize, unlike Hartmann, that there is more danger from abuse of power by rulers than there is from the people having their own economic power. Not worth a read, this book is just another paranoid rant from the Stalinist left that gets shriller and shriller at the idea that the people should be in control instead of the State.
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