[gpga-news] Democracy for Humans! Fighting corporate power in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling

[Hugh Esco]

Published on Saturday, February 13, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/13-5

Democracy for Humans!
Fighting corporate power in the wake 
of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling

by Scott McLarty

Democracy and fair elections in the US are in grave danger.  What are
we going to do about it?

The Supreme Court's recent Citizens United ruling removed restrictions
on the amount of money that corporations can use to campaign for their
preferred candidates.  The five justices who voted for the ruling
endorsed the idea that corporations should enjoy the same
constitutional rights as human beings.

Why is this ruling a threat to America?

Corporations are not human.  They are legal creations.  They don't eat,
breathe the air, depend on health care, or do many of the other things
that humans do.  They exist to make a profit.  Because of their wealth
and size, corporations are far more powerful than humans.

The Citizens United ruling affirms the power of corporations to control
the processes of regulation, taxation, and public policy, and to avoid
accountability to the public.

For a hundred years, we've had laws limiting the power of corporations
over our government, because government in a democracy exists to serve
the people.  Now that corporations can spend unlimited money to help
candidates who serve their interests, politicians will more and more
make decisions based on the demands of lobbyists rather than the people
who elect them.  Real health care reform?  Reducing greenhouse gas
emissions to curb global warming?  Fair wages, benefits, safer
workplaces?  Forget about it.

Republican and Democratic politicians already take millions in
corporate contributions.  The Supreme Court's decision will cement the
Democratic and Republican parties' status as subsidiaries of Wall
Street, oil companies, defense contractors, insurance firms, media
conglomerates, and other top corporations.

Election years will become the season of endless ads on TV and radio
for candidates preferred by corporations.  Candidates who speak for the
public interest won't have a chance against the flood of misleading
corporate propaganda.  (If you think campaign ads are bad now....)

What can we do to bring back democracy?

• Click!  Your TV remote is a powerful weapon.  You don't have to
listen to corporate lies and propaganda.  When you see
corporate-sponsored political ads on TV, press the mute button.  Get
your information about candidates from more reliable sources -- from
newspapers, news web sites, and other sources that you trust.  Don't
believe the hype.  Stay informed (read below for more background on
corporate personhood and power).

• Take the 'Democracy For Humans' pledge: "I will vote for no candidate
who takes corporate money."  Let's elect candidates who work for our
own best interests and ideals.  Let's declare our independence from
political parties and politicians who depend on corporate campaign
contributions.

• Amend the US Constitution: demand a new amendment declaring that
rights belong to people, not to artificial legal creations
(corporations), that money is not speech, that everyone has the right
to vote and every vote must be counted.  Call your US Senators and US
Representative, tell them to sponsor, promote, and vote for a
'Democracy For Humans' amendment -- or you'll never vote for them
again.  More information: http://www.movetoamend.org (Sign the petition)

• Demand that Congress pass fair election laws.  Congress can require
that campaign advertising include full disclosure and reveal who paid.
Congress can require TV and radio stations that use the public airwaves
to broadcast ads by candidates who aren't swimming in corporate money.
State legislatures can pass 'clean election' laws that assist
candidates who don't take corporate checks.

• Help make 'corporate personhood' a major political issue.  Write
letters to the editor, call talk shows, post information online,
challenge candidates at forums and debates.  Talk to your family,
friends, and neighbors.

• Urge your local city council to pass a resolution opposing corporate
personhood.  Arcata, California, and other cities and towns have
already passed such resolutions
(http://www.californiademocracy.org/corporations/resource/ArcataRes.html).

• Use street theater: public rallies, with puppets and other kinds of
spectacle are a great way to educate the public.

Corporate Power vs. Democracy

Are corporations evil?  Should we hate them?  A corporations is an
association, authorized by a charter, for a specific purpose.
Corporations are by nature neither good nor evil.  They often perform
necessary functions, such as manufacturing, services, and trade.

A business corporation should be accountable to the public, not just to
major stockholders, CEOs, and profit margins.  When it betrays the
public trust or commits a serious crime, a corporation should have its
charter revoked and be dissolved.

When Exxon-Mobil, Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, General Electric,
Halliburton, Blackwater, or Disney have overwhelming power to determine
the decisions of elected officials, our freedoms, rights, and
well-being are in danger.

When Wall Street firms insisted that Congress strike down regulations
like the Glass-Steagall Act, their recklessness caused the recent
economic crisis, with milliions of lost homes and jobs.  When they
press Congress to reduce, privatize, or abolish successful safety-net
programs like Social Security, they place millions of older Americans
and others at risk of destitution.

When big-box chain stores like Wal-Mart are allowed to take over a
town's economy, small businesses go under, Main Street falls into ruin,
and minimum-wage no-benefit positions replace jobs with livable wages
and good benefits.

When insurance companies can deny health coverage and medical
treatment, people suffer and die.

When corporate polluters win exemptions from greenhouse gas emission
laws, they endanger future generations.

When energy companies demanded control over oil resources in Iraq, the
US went to war based on baseless claims about WMDs and other deceptions.

The Myth of Corporate Rights

A corporation is not human.  A corporation is a thing.  It's a legal
fiction, subject to the definition in the corporation's charter and
restrictions imposed by law.

A car is a thing, too.  Can a car possess rights?  No.  A car does not
have the right to drive down the street.  It has no will of its own, so
the idea of rights for cars is absurd.  Instead, the car's driver has
the right to drive the car down the street, within certain
restrictions.  The driver must have a driver's license and obey traffic
rules.

It's just as absurd to say that a corporation has 'rights.'  When we
say a company has the right to advertise its goods or services, what we
really mean is that we recognize that advertising is part of the normal
function of a business corporation, just as transportation is the
normal function of a car.

Like a car without a driver, a corporation has no will of its own.  Its
actions are guided by CEOs and other managers, owners and stockholders,
a board of directors, or some combination of these people.  They profit
through the corporation, by receiving salaries and bonuses or through
their investments in the corporation.  When those who control the
corporation use it to break the law, abuse their power, or violate the
corporation's own charter, then the corporate charter should be revoked
-- just as the driver who violates traffic rules may lose the use of
his or her car.

Corporations have become enormously powerful.  Who benefits from this
power?  Obviously, the CEOs, owners, stockholders, etc.  (Employees may
work for a corporation, but they have no say in how it is run, except
through the influence of independent unions -- which have become
increasing powerless in recent decades.)

What does it mean when a corporation can influence government to act on
its behalf, even when such actions are harmful to the public or to its
own employees?  It means that the CEOs, owners, stockholders, etc.
enjoy power far beyond what the rest of us possess as individual
citizens.

Those who defend corporate personhood, corporate rights, and the
Citizens Unlimited decision are arguing for an inequality that
threatens the basis of our democracy.  They support a new kind of
aristocracy, an oligarchy of elite citizens who get their power from
corporations.

CEOs, owners, stockholders, et al. already have the same constitutional
rights as the rest of us.  When they use their corporations, armed with
the myth of corporate rights, to expand their power so much that they
dominate political campaigns, legislation, and the public debate on
important issues, then our democracy is doomed....

...unless We the People take back our democracy and our election system.

Where did Corporate Power Come From?

When the US Constitution was written, there was no mention of
corporations.  The writers and signers of the Constitution remembered
how Great Britain had given the East India Company, Hudson Bay Company,
and other firms enormous power over the colonies.  For the first 100
years of US history, corporate power was restricted.  Corporations were
chartered for a limited period of time and did not have limited
liability.  They existed to serve the public good.

After the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, Congress passed
the 14th Amendment in 1868, which was intended to give freed black
slaves equal protection under the law.  But around the same time that
racist Jim Crow laws were enacted, the protections of the 14th
Amendment were in effect transferred from former slaves to corporations
in a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions, beginning with Santa
Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886).

Hundreds of 14th Amendment cases were brought before the Supreme Court
between 1890 and 1910.  19 of them involved the rights of Black
Americans and 288 addressed the rights of corporations. The court sided
with the corporations in more than 200 of these cases.

These decisions helped set off the Robber Baron Era of unrestrained
corporate power, when factory workers suffered inhumane work conditions
and farmers were at the mercy of unscrupulous banks and railroad
companies.

Many Americans fought corporate power during the Robber Baron Era,
seeking reforms like the eight-hour work day, job safety, and an end to
child labor.  Groups like the Populist Party and, eventually,
progressives like Teddy Roosevelt were able to get laws passed
restraining corporate power.

Throughout most ot the 20th century, unions fought for and won the
40-hour work week, benefits, workplace safety laws, job security, and
good wages.  Congress passed laws preventing the excesses that led to
the Great Depression and enacted Social Security, Medicare, and
Medicaid.  By the middle of the 20th century, millions of Americans
enjoyed an unprecedented degree of prosperity because of these battles.

Corporations resisted these reforms every step of the way.

Many reforms were reversed in the 1980s and 1990s, when Presidents
Reagan, Bush, and Clinton signed legislation striking down many
regulations on corporations.  They used rhetoric about 'big government'
and manipulated fears about socialism to satisfy the interests of
corporate lobbies, while wages and financial security for working
people began to decline.  During the George W. Bush administration,
corporate honchos actually wrote new legislation for Congress to pass.
Companies like Enron used 'corporate personhood' to claim that the
government had no right to open up their books after they swindled
people.

Despite promises of change, President Obama appointed Treasury
Secretary Timothy Geithner, financial advisor Larry Summers, and others
who espouse many of these same policies.  The result has been
multi-trillion-dollar bailouts for the Wall Street firms responsible
for the current mortgage crisis and economic meltdown, with minimal
help for suffering homeowners and people who've lost their jobs.

The Citizens United ruling eliminates one of the most important
restrictions on corporate power and puts America in danger of a new
Robber Baron Era.

The End of Democracy?

The Citizens United decision comes nine years after a similar 5-4
Supreme Court majority delivered the politically biased Bush v. Gore
ruling, which voided legitimate votes, handed the White House to George
W. Bush, and held that the Constitution doesn't guarantee anyone the
right to vote.

Republicans benefit from the Supreme Court's recent ruling -- but so do
many 'moderate' Democrats.  In 2008, for the first time in recent
history, the budget for lobbying, grassroots outreach, and advertising
of the US Chamber of Commerce has surpassed the spending of both the
Republican and Democratic National Committees.

'Moderate' Democrats and Republicans share a bipartisan addiction to
corporate contributions and a dedication to the idea that government
should primarily serve big business interests instead of the people
they were elected to represent.  In 2009, they made sure that any
health care reform plan placed before Congress would protect insurance
and pharmaceutical manufacturing companies and do as little as possible
for people in need of medical treatment.  They declared Medicare For
All (single-payer national health care) "off the table" and sabotaged
the public option.

These politicians shouldn't be called moderate.  They're extremists who
subscribe to an ideology of corporate power, profit, and privilege.

Media commentators and broadcasters like Rush Limbaugh have praised the
ruling.  Their goal is an America far different from the one envisioned
by our Founding Fathers and Mothers and by all those who've fought for
human rights, freedoms, and fairness for working people and those who
are powerless.  They've duped too many Americans into believing that
what's good for insurance companies, Wall Street firms, defense
contractors, and other behemoths is good for America.

"We the People" does not mean corporations.  Unless we act now to
defend the principle that free speech and other constitutional rights
and protections belong solely to human beings, our democracy will be
history.

More Information

"Challenging Corporate Personhood: Corporations, the U.S. Constitution,
and Democracy" Interview with Jan Edwards in Multinational Monitor
magazine, October/November 2002
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Controlling_Corporations/Challenge_Corp_Personhood.html

Move To Amend (sign the petition) http://www.movetoamend.org

Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County (DUHC) http://www.duhc.org
If you need help with actions against corporate personhood or if you
have ideas, contact DUHC at 707-269-0984

Multinational Monitor http://www.multinationalmonitor.org

Scott McLarty is national media coordinator for the Green Party of the
United States (http://www.gp.org), which does not accept corporate
contributions.  He lives in Washington, DC.

-- 
Hugh Esco 
http://GeorgiaGreenParty.org