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Corporations Are NOT Citizens
I know this for sure. Until somebody can show me a birth certificate indicating a time and place of birth that is in this country then all the assholes who say corporations are citizens are full of shit.
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Corporate Personhood is the noxious idea that led us to this FUBAR place where we are now. Business ventures are not citizens and in no way deserve to enjoy the same rights.
June 29, 2009 8:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Santa Clara vs. Union Pacific.
Here's the birth certificate. Warning, it's kind of a sick thing.
June 29, 2009 8:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is cute: "The corporation is owned by its shareholders and is therefore their property. If it is also a legal person, then it is a person owned by others and thus exists in a condition of slavery -- a status explicitly forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. "
June 29, 2009 8:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
The whole thing is kind of a farce, eds.
June 29, 2009 9:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
A legal fiction and a farce would be different things in principle even if the fiction happened to be a farce or vice versa!
TPM is a farce, in a similar sense, whether we are all merely actors and the world a stage without an audience.
June 30, 2009 2:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not everyone is counted in the U.S. Census but I wonder if they count corporations as an individual person?
June 29, 2009 10:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
No they get counted by the amount of $$ they have. It is a weighted thing...
June 29, 2009 10:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
We hold these truths to be self evident that all chartered companies are created equal if they have the filing fee
June 29, 2009 10:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
This so has to change.
Everyone who needs to prove citizenship in this country is expected to provide a document, accepted as a legal proof, and commonly known as a certificate of birth, filed with a local civil authority, indicating time, day and place of birth.
I doubt a corporation can meet this legal test. If ever there was a Supreme Court ruling that needed to be challenged and overturned this is it.
June 30, 2009 3:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Of course they're citizens, that's why we can sue them.
June 30, 2009 10:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am beginning to feel the need for a real third party movement. The Democrats are certainly part of the problem, when it comes to issues like this.
Founding Principles for the New Progressive Party (NPP):
+ Corporations are not Persons.
+ As such, corporations do not have a right to free speech, and should be prevented from funding political campaigns.
+ Congress should pass laws to eliminate corporate money from the political process, and instead provide some form of public financing for elections.
This is the only route to real health care reform, in my opinion.
Would love to hear suggestions for further Founding Principles for the NPP.
-- ARG
June 30, 2009 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
That might be an approach which has merit. However it comes with complications that make the task harder than it already is. We know the framework we have is viable and can do the job. It just needs to be gotten back on track. This thing about corporations being citizens is just one of many where something very obvious has been restated into a fundamental falsehood and has gone unchallenged. The only reason this occurs is to allow for an illicit action which is a natural outgrowth of the illicit thing that it is founded upon.
This ends up with building one lie upon another which can only end with the entire thing crumbling.
June 30, 2009 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Damn right!!!!!!!!!
Any group of legal citizens that organizes itself into a collective, for whatever purpose, are not collectively citizens and do not deserve the rights of normal people.
Businesses, charities, non-profits, labor unions and any other organized group of citizens should be considered a collective of legal persons to whom the rights of normal people do not apply.
Veterans' Associations, TPM Media and Credit Unions fully owned by its members do not deserve the same rights as the people who make them function.
That's because there are no real people presiding over these groups. Didn't you know?
They are all managed by illegal aliens. And nobody will argue that aliens are not human. Come clean now, Josh Marshall.
June 30, 2009 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
guess there's really no such thing as a corporate citizen. Not sure what the legal definition of this stuff is.
But set aside the law for the sake of argument (which our government seems to do quite often, by the way) and consider this:
Is the U.S. government essentially a private enterprise?
What abou the Department of Defense? Over 700 bases worldwide, and expanding. Do other governments pay or barter for the services of our military? Our weapons? Isn't there a reason the line is being blurred between defense and security contractors and the armed services?
June 30, 2009 2:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
This blurring of the line between government and private enterprise is at the root of this discusssion. It is more than a little evident that the argument has merit. The door to this was opened over a century ago but it has only been used for the latest thirty or forty years. That it has been flung so widely open is of particular note.
June 30, 2009 7:27 PM | Reply | Permalink