A Random Thought
Given that many things associated with the political system require that those involved are citizens, and given the apparently high level of proof required by the wingnuts and GOP, if corporations are “persons”, how do they prove their citizenship?
If they can’t prove their citizenship with a “long form birth certificate”, which they obviously can’t, they certainly can’t be allowed to participate in political activities. Candidates aren’t allowed to accept money from foreign contributors.
Just a thought, a nasty, subversive thought, but just a thought.
11 comments
If they can’t prove their citizenship with a “long form birth certificate”, which they obviously can’t,
hmmm… the forms are indeed long, and the labor required to get through the process is unlike almost any other.
of course, men can labor and bring forth corporations, so perhaps this disqualifies them from being ‘persons’ since we all know that only women can get pregnant and give birth to humans. which means that corporations are what? sea horses?
.-= last blog ..dog-liek tyeping detected =-.
I believe that John of Patmos referred to them simply as the Beast, but then he had probably chemically enhanced his imagination.
Actually I would go after them under the equal protection clause, as recognizing them as persons and citizens doubles the standing of share holders.
With no bar to the purchase of stock by foreigners, I fail to see how participation of “multinational” corporations can be legal under US law.
I was thinking that, if corporations are persons, we can re-institute the draft. Then we can have “Private Microsoft” and “Corporal Exxon-Mobil”.
Each corporation would, of course, receive the pay commensurate to their rank. As with soldiers, while enlisted, the product of their efforts would belong to the nation. So, all profits (minus the pay for their rank) would belong to the US.
When their tour was up, then the stockholders would once again enjoy the profits from their person-properties.
Of course, these particular members of the armed forces may receive some stop-loss orders 😉
That goes to a real sore point in this entire controversy – corporations are being given the rights of a person, but aren’t subjected to the responsibilities.
When they break the laws, they aren’t forcibly separated from society, like people. That’s part of my “equal protection” complaint, if they get the rights, they should suffer the consequences, just like people.
Drafting them would be nice, but that would require determination of sex, which, again, requires a birth certificate.
Bryan, your point on “responsibilities” is on target.
Although, I must admit that I am loath to give up on “Private Microsoft”. Perhaps the state-issued charter of a corporation could be treated as equivalent to a birth certificate for purposes of the draft? If need be, I think we could define the third gender of “none” for them for this purpose as well!
Some other thoughts of mine on the notion of corporations as “persons”
1) You note that we can’t forcibly separate a company from society. However, we could replace the board of directors and management with court-appointed directors and managers answerable to only the court. They would run the company for the duration of the prison term. (If stockholders, management, and directors don’t like this, they simply need to ensure that their property/person doesn’t break the law.)
2) Any existing “three-strikes” laws apply to corporations. As the adult life span is of order 50-60 years, convictions more than 50 years old don’t apply to corporations.
Three strikes and the corporation is nationalized, and all stock- and bond-holders lose their interests. New stock is issued and auctioned off. Proceeds go to cover the injuries to the victims of the offense and the costs of prosecuting the case. Anything left goes into the nation’s general funds.
3) When faced with complaints that corporate taxes represent a “double taxation” on the owners of the corporation I noted that I would happily allow no corporate taxes on entities whose owners are willing to be held personally liable for all civil and criminal offenses of their property.
Conversely, any corporate entity real enough to absorb the liability for hurting people (remember Bhopal?) is real enough to pay taxes.
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Or, we can agree that the notion of “corporate personhood” is limited to ensuring that they, too, get due process and nothing else.
Best,
Jim
One of the annoying things about people who discuss capitalism and free markets is that they fail to understand that the structure of a corporation which limits the liability of shareholders, protects the corporation from the most important control of the market – risk.
A small business owner is liable for everything they own, but a shareholder only loses the value of their stock. That isn’t an equal risk; that isn’t competitive.
There need to be some real penalties imposed, not just fines that simply affect the profits for a single quarter. Corporations need to start feeling real pain for misconduct, and the top management needs to participate in the pain.
If Congress can decide to cut off all Federal funding to ACORN based on accusations, why do corporations that have committed fraud, and in some cases gotten people killed, still receive government contracts? If it’s so easy to cut off Federal funds to a non-profit, why is KBR still receiving government payments?
Why is Congress worried about the affect of health care legislation on corporations, more concerned that for the tens of thousands of Americans who die every year from a lack of access to health care?
Of course the answer is simple, corporations spend money on Congresscritters. We have the best political system money can buy.
If a corporation is a legal person, then sex could be determined by the sex of the CEO. And it should also be defined that all employees of that corporation are deemed to be ‘cells’ of that body corporate. If the body corporate (or the corporate ‘person’) is found guilty of a crime, then all the cells (from the CEO down) are part to that crime and all, therefore, guilty. If that were made actual law, I doubt many of these corporations would be able to attract many employees, except the stupid or criminal types, which is fine as they would no doubt do something illegal, and be caught, fairly quickly.
Would solve a lot of problems simply and quickly IMHO. 😉 😀
OT: Your system still hates dumka.com, but accepted the Phone Company address. Now I’ll have to wait to see if I can receive the e-mail, not assure with the TPC, which is why I don’t use it. Among other things, they want you to use their webmail system, which I refuse to do because they don’t do screening on incoming mail for viruses and other crap which I do.
We’ll see what happens.
OT: LOL I just posted a message in the original thread (Real Americans?) about your registration. 😉 I didn’t want to clutter other threads. 🙂
Just FYI, My registration system is not blocking any domains. Basically, all it does is check that the correct POP/SMTP ports are available at the domain supplied as a basic check that it is at least a valid mail server. I have included a list of some 30 ‘popular’ webmail services, such as gmail, as most don’t have *real* pop/smtp ports to check (they generally use a virtual system via IMAP). I guess that if you are masking or blocking those ports (which would be against the RFC’s), that would cause my rego system to complain. 🙂
OT:Received the first e-mail and dumka.com is served through a different server than the host for the site. They just use mail vice pop/smtp as a prefix for the process. The mail server is just that, a separate mail server on a totally different system.
TPC uses the standard prefixes, which may be why it was found.
OT: Ahhh… OK. I’ll see what I can do about that! 🙂
And… you are in, and I put you in the Admin group (you should get a PM when you next logon).
Thanks again, and no pressure! 🙂