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Agreed 100%!

Originally, corporations could NOT own other corporations but I'm not sure what year that got hijacked.

This whole "I want to reap the benefits of a company but not have _any_ responsibility for when they are liable" has gotten WAY out of hand.

The fact that corporations are treated like people in the eyes of the Law just makes things worse.

Some interesting reading:

https://www.npr.org/2014/07/28...
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/co...
https://consumerist.com/2014/0...

Nearly a decade ago, the Tea Party Movement began its own irrational and loud stranglehold on conservative politics. There were loyalty oaths and identity politics. The Republican party is still trying to re-discover itself and its integrity having sold itself to the more ignorant side of populism.

I know what you're saying, but I think you're missing some of the history before that. The rise of populism is a reaction to the kind of Straussian fundamentalism that took over conservative politics a few decades earlier. It's hard to say when this really "began", but the place I'd identify is the Powell Memorandum of 1971. It really picked up momentum in the aftermath of Watergate.

In the late 70s, fundamentalists started hostile takeovers of conservative institutions such as the NRA and the Southern Baptist Convention, and eventually the Republican Party.

The populists have a point. It may be ignorant and irrational, but it is a reaction to the kind of heavy-handed paternalism that had already ruined conservative politics.

Think Tanks are almost entirely purposed with creating biased academic like support for propaganda purposes. They do not seek truth, only as much truth that supports their paid positions and maybe invent clever fake science to undermine confuse actual science -- smoking is actually good for you! Some people they hire are honest but believe in the same things and if that changes they are fired. Others are just intellectual whores who sell their minds out for money, arguably worse than a whore.

Think Tanks owe their huge numbers to the Vietnam era where the elite and their corporations realized the power of academic institutions to influence public policy with troublesome facts, cogent arguments, and tenure protected free speech. An effort was put together to counter the mostly selfless honest intelligent free speech and a Nixon man led the charge in a warped paranoid view only a religious zealot could have.

A professor somewhere should get news time even more for a group of them but a think tank shouldn't get anymore attention than corporate spokes person... and they get too much attention already.

Corporations should focus on their employees and their customers, not shareholders.

Corporations should act in the public interest. Otherwise there is literally no reason for them to exist.

Remember, the Constitution affirms the right to assemble, but it does not affirm some imaginary right to do so and then demand special legal treatment to limit liability!

Hey! Corporations are people too! Anyway, the Muslim ban is just another of the burdensome regulations that are strangling small businesses. Aren't we supposed to be against regulations?

That's a pretty skewed view of political history. Back in the post civil war period the largest corporations, i.e. the railroads and oil companies exercised excessive influence for the very reason - they could. And they could because government was very small, ineffectual and there were few protective regulations. Try reading the histories of Standard Oil and Southern Pacific Railroad et. al. The rise in corporate power started back in the mid- nineteenth century when the largest corporations bought the Supreme Court and SCOTUS initially ruled corporations are considered "people" under the Constitution. Back then there was little government regulation or oversight and corporations took full advantage. http://reclaimdemocracy.org/sa... OR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... A majority part of government "regulation" is a direct result of industrial, business and service industry malfeasance, profit over safety (witness recent General Motors revelations), outright theft (witness Wall Street, Burney Madoff, etc.). Those who perpetuate the myth of government oppression are either ignorant of corporate history, are willfully recalcitrant about corporate malfeasance, are merely regurgitating corporate propaganda or are themselves blind to the foundation of western capitalism- personal self-interest and greed. Government (and labor law to some extent) is the ONLY disinterested regulatory mechanism that attempts to balance profit with public safety, which for the past thirty years has been considerably undermined by the business philosophy that government serves only to hinder free-market entrepreneurship. When in fact government usually enacts limiting regulations when the corporate world has already demonstrated they cannot police themselves and act responsibly. If ... corporations want the privileges that living human beings have, they need to demonstrate they can act in a civilized manner. You need to get out of your corporate religion and realize government regulation happens mostly out of necessity.

Look at how many states received revenue for the class action lawsuit against the tobacco companies. Many states used that revenue to fund programs that had absolutely nothing to do with tobacco use or health issues as a result of tobacco use. Instead they spent the money on programs for children (won't somebody PLEASE think of the CHILDREN!?), etc. That revenue was either one-time money or was an annual payment for a few years. That money has dried up and now states are scrambling to find other revenue sources for this mess that they created.

It's pretty sad to see how our "brilliant" elected officials and public employees think.

Up in smoke: Counties gave up millions from tobacco settlement for short-term gains

Once Foes of Big Tobacco, States Have Been Hooked

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#National_corporatism.2C_socialism_and_syndicalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

right about the year 1819 is when the idea started to form the avalanche that really got going in the late 1800s.

also somebody please donate your leet web design skillz to this site: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/

... and on that note, this is something you might want to look into then:
We the People, Not We the Corporations

The amendment:

Move to Amend 28th Amendment

Section 1 [A corporation is not a person and can be regulated]

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.

Artificial entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities, established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.

The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.

Section 2 [Money is not speech and can be regulated]

Federal, State and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own contributions and expenditures, for the purpose of influencing in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.

Federal, State and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.

The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

Section 3

Nothing contained in this amendment shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.

Some background (because yes, corporations are made of people, but this does not make them people):

1. Corporate Personhood in a Nutshell

There are two conceptions of corporate personhood. The first simply bestows upon corporations the ability to engage in many legal actions (e.g. enter into contracts, sue, be sued, etc). This is widely accepted and we do not object to this. However, corporate personhood also commonly refers to the Supreme Court - created precedent of corporations enjoying constitutional rights that were intended solely for human beings. We believe this form of corporate personhood corrupts our Constitution and must be corrected by amending the Constitution. Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution ever mention corporations, which were rare entities at our nation’s founding. But thanks to decades of rulings by Justices who molded the law to favor elite interests, corporations today are granted privileges that empower them to deny citizens the right to full self-governance. For example, the Supreme Court has:

• 
  prohibited routine inspections of corporate property without a warrant or prior permission, even though scheduling such visits may permit a company to hide threats to public health and safety. (Marshall v Barlow’s, 1978)
• 
  struck down state laws requiring companies to disclose product origins (International Dairy v. Amnestoy, [pdf] 1996), thus creating “negative free speech rights” for corporations and preventing us from knowing what’s in our food.
• 
  prohibited citizens wanting to defend their local businesses and community from corporate chains encroachment from enacting progressive taxes on chain stores. (Liggett v. Lee,

In the Soviet Union, perhaps. This has never been the case in the United States.

Yes it has.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation#United_States

http://blogs.hbr.org/fox/2010/04/what-the-founding-fathers-real.html

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/history_corporations_us.html

This whole conversation is silly. The Federal government needs to step in and settle this. Amazon and every internet retailer should have to collect taxes and remit them to the state. Amazon has a "presence" in every single state that has internet connected computers. Right now they are exploiting loopholes in laws that have not caught up to the internet age.

I do not understand people who can in good conscience defend what Amazon is doing. Corporate charters are granted to companies with the understanding that the companies will act in the best interests of the country. In theory (and this never happens), if a corporation does not act in the best interests of the state, the charter can be revoked. Those limitations on corporations have been largely eroded, but that is the way our Founding Fathers intended for corporations to be limited.

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/history_corporations_us.html

Amazon is basically saying "fuck you" to America. They are saying "fuck you" to the states who depend partially on sales tax to fund their operations. How much sales tax revenue do you think the state of California has lost since the year 2000? How many businesses have gone under and not been replaced because of the internet?

I am not a fan of big government by any means, but this is getting ridiculous. In case you guys have not figured this out yet, the corporations are not here to benefit us. They are here to extract as much labor from the people of the United States as possible, and provide the least amount of compensation to those people as allowed by law. The government and our ability to elect our representatives is the only tool we have to defend ourselves from the corporations. Beyond that, we can starve them of income by refusing to buy their products.

On one level I get it. A bunch of you guys are cheap bastards. You do not want to pay sales tax and believe you can spend the money better elsewhere. Fine. Stay off of the public roads, do not use electricity, water or any other necessity that is partially funded by government subsidies, never call the police or the fire department, take your kids out of school, and basically go the fuck into the cave that you want to live in. You obviously do not want to be a productive, CONTRIBUTING member of society.

Most voters don't know what rule of law is either. Look how many of them think the Constitution is just a piece of paper, and therefore Parliament can do whatever it wants.

The Tea Partiers seem to be stirring up some interest. If they ever discover the real cause of their tax burden and the reality of effective commercial tax rates, I'm afraid their loving relationship with the GOP and it's corporate outlets will quickly deteriorate.

It is a companies sole responsibility to make money for its shareholders.

Ya, and that sucks, too, and it should be changed back to more of the original US model, where there were more duties and a lot more oversight into their conduct. Originally, it was a lot harder to get to be a corporation, charters were for a limited time, then a review before a renew, and you had to be publicly responsible, they couldn't be used to influence public policy, and a lot of other restrictions. Just "making profits" wasn't the sole criteria then to get granted a corporate charter.

A little reference:

http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/history_corporations_us.html

As it is today, it seems like they can do just about anything they want to do, and even if they run afoul of the last remaining checks and balances on their behavior, if they can meet the fine and pass the costs down to their next customers..that's it, they just keep on.

And that's the problem, it's way to easy to have corporations now, and way too hard to get rid of the ones who engage in chronic serial antisocial or outright illegal behavior. They can come to life, but you can't kill them. And even if they screw up so bad they manage to go bankrupt, if they are big enough, they get emergency bailed out. I mean, WTF..you can't get rid of bad businesses or bad business creeps anymore? This is touted as some economic or social "good", because it "enhances shareholder value" or something? This is our loftiest goal?

What you said is certainly true today, but it is the cause of a lot of problems...

A lot of modern corporations look more like toxic invasive species superweeds to me than anything else.

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/

http://www.ourpla.net/cgi/pikie?CorporatePersonhood

When somebody tells you that a corporation is considered a person, that person is talking out of their ass.

Actually, no. They might well be citing established case law, including SCOTUS decisions, that very clearly bestow personhood on corporations.

Here is your reading assignment... http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/

First of all, if you reread my post carefully you will see the phrase "less morally corrupt" preceding the presidents I list. Let's put Bush and Obama aside for the moment as the debate about Bush is so partisan and I haven't made up my mind about Obama yet. I'm not trying to put any of them at the level of genocidiers or call them fascist or anything like that. However, it is an indisputable fact that America/American Presidents have in the past backed extremely corrupt, evil dictators in order to gain more influence in a region (and done other heinous things like lie about the Gulf of Tonkin or any number of other incidences). That's where the similarity is: whether it is a maniacal dictator exterminating a race or a US president backing a regime that goes on to murder thousands or millions of its own people, either way, in the pursuit of power and domain for oneself and one's political machine you have committed atrocities and made the world that much worse. I'd say there's a good argument we could do without that sort of leader.

Re: the rest of your comment, what do you think of these figures? It seems to me federal welfare in the US works pretty efficiently. Anyway, I would wager that corporate welfare poses a much larger threat to America than the more or less necessary social welfare programs. (I don't really see that the rest there is on topic, but maybe I missed something.)

The 14th amendment.

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/fourteenth_amendment_hammerstrom.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

They are corporations and as of the 1800's corporations got the same rights as human persons. So right now Bush cuold give pardons to them technically I believe.

There is a propsed Constitutional Amendment to revoke this power grab.

They are corporations and as of the 1800's corporations got the same rights as human persons. So right now Bush cuold give pardons to them technically I believe.

There is a propsed Constitutional Amendment to revoke this power grab.

This may come as a shock, but businesses are not established "for the public good"

No but this may shock you, corporations are granted charters to serve the public, or common, good. The very first company to be granted a corporate charter, the Dutch East India Company, was granted the charter for that very reason.

Well, the Mac is on TV, but it is most definitely _not_ an alternative. Jobs would have to let it be legally installable on whitebox hardware first. We're not just talking about letting Dell and HP make and sell Mac OS pre-installed boxes. Your local integrator has to be able to install it, without too many hurdles, and at a cost that leaves him some profit.

Apple won't allow OS X to be installed on beige box clones, at one tyme Apple did allow Mac clones but Apple lost more in lost hardware sales than they made in the sales of Mac OS licenses.. If the local integrator would make money then Apple would loose money. Apple isn't just a software company, Apple also makes and sales hardware. All to together Apple is a systems integrator, Apple just make things that work, the hardware and software work well together. And that totally ignores Microsoft. MS has already shown what it will do to those it views as competitors.

One relief I could think of that might not be unreasonable for a court to order when a company continues to behave like Microsoft. Strip them of all their patents and bar them from obtaining more patents until their market presence drops below 50%. (Trade one monopoly for another.)

What could be done to MS is to have it's Corporate Charter revoked. Corporations were originally granted charters if the corporation served the Public good. Once a corporation did not serve the public or common good it's charter could be revoked. The first corporate charter was granted to the Dutch East India Company in 1602 by the government in the Netherlands. Corporate charters allowed those who invested in the corporation to limit liability to just what they paid for for the stocks they owned.

They've perverted it way beyond the original US design and intent. "Profits" were only one part, it wasn't the whole enchilada. In fact, we fought the revolution to not only get away from the "royals" and their edicts, but to get out from under the thumb of colonizing/exploitative corporations.

  In the beginning, corporations had to fulfill some public good, they were highly regulated, they couldn't own stock in each other, their charters could be revoked if they screwed up a lot easier, there were a lot more restrictions on them influencing legislation and elections, and etc.

  What we have now is people just blindly parrot the "greed is good and 'it's de law'" mantra. Nuts. I say we go back to the original idea and "incorporate" the civic duty and being responsible (and *loyal* to their own nation and peoples first for that matter) bits back into the mixture, and do it before it is too late. We have transnationals now that are more powerful than governments, including huge well armed mercenary army "corporations". How about that latest IBM set of patents, patenting how to screw over the US worker? That's crazy. Governments exist for all the peoples inside that governing body, not just the top wealthiest 1%, or that is the theory anyway. I say it's a good idea to go back to that model.

Here is a short overview history of US corporations,and here's another take on it. Google has a lot of choices there, chose those two at random from the top of the list.

Has anyone pinned down the exact moment when the government apparatus for the US became entirely the domain of corporations and their shills?

Sure. May 10th, 1886, SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY. That's when corporations were granted "personhood," with the same rights and protections as individuals.

At that point, corporations stopped being entities that existed only by charter of the people. For good, and especially for ill.

---I admire your idealism,

Thanks.

---however its blatantly against the intent that the founding fathers and their philosophical influences. The concepts of freedom of speech, religion, and others were only intended to prevent the government from explicitly denying them from the people. It was up to private citizens to form their social relationships however they saw fit, including restrictions on what one could and couldn't do or say.

That isnt quite true. If we look towards the creator of Capitalism, Adam Smith, we see that large governments and corporations were a direct affront to the freedom of capitalism. Instead, Smith saw that if everybody sold and bought from others, it would be an unstoppable market force. In the individual market place, also higher taxes along with tariffs hurt citizens who wished to trade.

Corporate entities in history harms true Capitalism as they do now. That's why Smith was against them.

---A corporation is not part of the government and therefore is not bound by the Bill of Rights. They are only bound by the laws of the government. Corporations do not trample over anyone's rights; they do not have the power to. Laws are what is used to limit corporate power. Use them.

When this Country was created, that was patently not true. Corporations were only created for public good. For example, bridges were created under a limited term corporate charter. After their goal was completed, the corporation charter was dissolved and profits were shared fairly. If a corporate charter broke laws, the managers would be found liable (unlike todays illegal hires) and risked a charter nullification. Check out this if you want to see one source of the many I use.

Perhaps it IS idealism, but I would rather look at it from a standpoint that we did wrong 100 years ago and would want to return to they was we originally handled it. Now that's individualism at its best.

There are several court cases that hinged on the concept of "corporate personhood". It can be a challenge for a non-lawyer to understand them, but below are a few links. http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juristic_person http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030919.html

As for Soviet-style economics, I think the idea should be to give more freedom/power to the people -- not to the government. Of course, in America the government is supposed to exist at the will of the people. We all know how that turned out. But I like the idea of people-power. In fact, I think we need more of it. I think we should have elections for just about everything, including the leadership positions of major utilities, like the power company, the phone company, etc.

My ideal power structure would look like this: The People > Government > Small Businesses/Utilities

Note the absence of major corporations. Yeah, that was intentional. I think it's fine to have large groups of people operating merchant-oriented enterprises, but would I give corporations "rights?" Hell no. Currently, corporations enjoy personhood status. This travesty must end. Corporations are NOT people! Corporations are immortal (and amoral), limited-liability, supremely-powerful institutions that can spawn offspring at will, influence elections, buy politicians and marshal a team of lawyers to defend their actions the way a king defends his castle. They have become a menace, a many-tentacled being that is virtually indestructible. I think we should hold people personally responsible for their actions. Enough of this limited-liability crap.

Also, I think the current power structure might have corporations on top. Within the international banking system the U.S. Government is just one more corporation (albeit one with a rancorous board of directors) to be controlled. It's worthwhile to note that our primary ideology is not democracy (we are a republic for one thing), but capitalism. And who are the Kings of Capitalism but the Bankers? Ask the Federal Reserve who it's primary shareholders are and then you will have a better idea of who really controls this country.

BTW, it's best not to assume that people are leftist simply because they see problems with the current corporate system. A better description for me might be "Green Libertarian" or "Radical" or "Nonconformist", but not "Democrat." I've never voted for a Democrat in my life.

Then you must have something to hide? If you do not have violent pornography, you would not need encryption or stegnagrophy.

Here in America, we are allowed to do what we want.

Except when whatever it is harms another person.

Violent pornography hurts poeple so it should be illegal.

Encryption can hide pornography, but has no use if you're not doning anything illegal.

Unlike China, India still imports more than it exports.

Costco is generally considered to be a "model company" in how it treats its employees and customers.

There's a couple of not-necessarily-unbiased articles about it (both seem to take a WALMART BAD! COSTCO GOOD! spin, which while I probably agree with it, is pretty definitely a spin):
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles_2004/costco_e mployee_benefits_walmart.html
http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0450/041215_news _costco.php

Also, someone mentioned Costco sells items at their cost and only makes a profit on memberships. That does not appear to be accurate:

"Costco caps its profit margin on most products at 14% and allows itself slightly higher margins only on its Kirkland Signature store brand (a name derived from its previous headquarters in Kirkland) with a strict 15% profit limit."

(From the Costco page at Wikipedia, with a reference to a source article.)

Thanks for the link, I saved the page. I don't recall if the ruling you cited is the same I was thinking of, all I recalled was that it was in the 1800s and I thought it involved a railroad but wasn't sure, so I googled and found this:

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad [1886]
Though the court did not make a ruling on the question of "corporate personhood" (whether 14 th Amendment covered corporations), the decision subsequently was cited as precedent to hold that a private corporation was a "natural person." Justices have since struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws enacted to protect people from corporate harm based on this illegitimate premise.

I also tried Findlaw, searched for "personhood", and got ten results. None of them had anything to do with corporate personhood. Because my question of whether the USSC ruled to give corporations legal personhood status hasn't been answered guess I'll have to spend more tyme researching it.

Someone already addressed the thing about the poor indeed being poorer today than they were, but here's something about social mobility. It's declining:

An article from the Economist

An article originally published in Business Week

And ancedotally, it would seem to me that the rich are screwing over the poor (or at least the non-rich), at least to an extent. I can't think of the companies, but I've heard of at least two companies that recently did pretty big layoffs (one was 3600 employees, iirc), and proceeded to give their top executives massive pay raises. It seems that those layoffs weren't so necessary, though I'd be willing to hear an explanation that put layoffs and pay raises in sync with one another.

And here's some outright bias for you: nobody should be earning what top executives do now. I don't know where I'd draw the line between a high, but legitimate salary and an exorbitant one, but for instance, it's ridiculous to have someone making 50 million a year. That salary could be defensible if trickle-down economics worked, but it doesn't. That's an exaggeration; tt can and undoubtedly does sometimes work, but there's nothing to make it inevitable. People are free to sit on enormous piles of cash that never do much but collect interest, or to spend their money outside the country. There's no guarantee that the money goes back into the economy from which it came. It also assumes a system which isn't gamed to disproportionately reward those already with money.

That said about structural factors working against the poor, they do also have self-defeating economic habits. Positing either of these as the sole cause is wrong.

1) Massive debt - I thought the President had a hand in the budget, or at least made "requests" that are usually granted. IMO, he should share accountability for the massive debt if he had a hand in setting up the budget.

2) Illegal war - I will concede this point. It was a holdover from the parent's post. However, I think the parent meant to imply that the President lied in order to get Congress to authorize the use of force against Iraq. However, Clinton showed us that the President isn't accountable for lying.

3a) Warrantless wiretaps - If it can be proven? I was under the impression that the President admitted to warrantless wiretaps.

3b) Raping Civil Liberties - Need I say more?

4) Guantanamo - I didn't mention Guantanamo, but I was under the impression that he is involved in the chain of command. You cite the Constitution but this Administration has already shown its disregard for that document with reference to the warrantless wiretaps. While Congress may be accountable, I believe Bush is at least partly responsible.

5) Profiteering - Ha, I notice that you don't try to refute such a claim. You are correct, however, that punishing this Administration's abuse of its power to gain money is nigh impossible.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone has compiled a definitive list of all the ways in which GW has fucked America, sorted into proven, highly probable, possible, improbable, and impossible categories.

Most of Alameda Square's businesses are profitable. Together they generate about $125,000 a year in sales tax revenue. But if the city of Denver has its way, these small businesses will be evicted to make way for a Wal-Mart super-center. The city's Urban Renewal Authority has threatened condemnation if the property owners refuse to sell and has offered Wal-Mart $10 million in public subsidies. That's right: Tax dollars would go to one of the country's most profitable and powerful corporations.

Wal-Mart leads the pack in attracting subsidies, this year collecting $10 million in Denver; $500,000 in Dallas; $36.7 million in Scottsdale, Ariz., (as part of a shopping center that includes Lowe's); $9 million in Bartlesville, Okla.; and $17 million in Lewiston, Maine.

• Assume that Bush is inconsistant, stupid, or both, taking a path in this instance that is both at odds with other executive branch actions and needlessly unconstitutional, or
• Assume that Bush is both consistant and reasonably clever, in which case he had a good reason for not seeking the warrents in these cases, and (looking at the examples from elsewhere in the executive branch) we can make an educated guess what those reasons were.

So what are you claiming? That he's too dumb realize that it's a slam dunk to get the warrents and he risks major fallout within his own party to cut corners, or that he's smart enough not to take that risk unless he's covering up for a worse offense, in which case we're within reason to assume the existence of such an offense?

Dumb and honest or smart and corrupt. You can't have it both ways.

--MarkusQ

P.S. I suppose dumb and corrupt can't be rulled out either, if you don't like the other options.

MS is not sentietn being. It has no freedoms or human rights to be given or taken away.

* cough * wrong. well, at least according to the supreme court.

You mean "liberty" as in the right to travel freely, work where you want to, voice your opinion openly on public streets--that sort of thing?

Or do you mean it in a more defined sense, like freedom of the press, right to due process, right to bear arms--that sort of thing?

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of countries out there with similar, or worse restrictions than the U.S. But let's not kid ourselves and think ANY country is truly free, or above cracking down on the internet if it has the power.

-Eric

The US constitution has no right to vote listed in it.
See Wikipedia and here.
This may not be a bad thing(tm).

Good for this current bill. Let's bring back Free Speech to the citizenry.

C'mon, let's be a little more accurate here - let's say the company in question serves its coffee 20 degF hotter than its average competitor and has had numerous complaints & out-of-court settlements due to the extreme temperature of its coffee. This company obviously knows it serves coffee dangerously hot - it admits it, and said it had no plans to change.

An elderly woman, trying to consume the coffee she just purchased, spills it on herself. She's clearly made a mistake, and it cost her dearly - 3rd degree burns *within 3 seconds* (at the temperature of McDonalds' coffee) to her thighs & groin. McDonald's says she didn't get out of her clothes fast enough. Maybe a horny college guy can drop his pants in 3 seconds, but not an 81 year-old woman.

Furthermore, at numerous points throughout this process, the woman & her attorney offered to settle out of court. McDonald absolutely refused - they offered her $800, and that was it. Tell me - how much do you think medical bills to re-flesh your groin are? I bet the painkillers alone cost more than $800.

The jury found McDonald's at 80% fault and awarded the woman $160,000 in compensatory damages. The jury then awarded the woman $2.7 million (2 days worth of coffee sales) in punitive damages, as a punishment to McDonald's. But the judge reduced that to $480,000.

So let's see... McDonald's serves coffee at dangerously hot levels capable of harming consumers more than they realize (did *you* know you could get 3rd degree burns in 3 seconds from McDonald's coffe??). A woman is painfully injured as a result of this. McDonald's completely denies liability for her accident. The jury disagrees and finds them 80% at fault. McDonald's pays $640k to the woman (total), which is about a half-days' worth of coffee sales. That's not a drop in the cup to McDonalds.

Maybe they settle a couple of hundred-thousand dollar cases every few years. That's just another cost of doing business. Software companies don't even have that cost at all. How much was Microsoft sued for when Code Red took down IIS servers all over? How much does Microsoft settle for out of court everytime a new worm spreads through Outlook/Exchange servers? What was Microsoft's profit margin again last year?

All corporations are greedy. Software companies just managed to skip out on the liability "cost of business".

This is where we started from.

Why did we change?

We made a dire mistake- three actually. During the chaos of the Civil War, Virgina's state house was burned to the ground. This gave the parasites the opening they needed. They started by getting the original 13t Amendment nullified due to an accident of history (the ratification from Virgina was never actually delivered to Washington DC, and records of it didn't exist outside of the Virginia State House). This allowed lawyers to become judges- something that had not previously happened (in fact rightly, by the original 13th Amendment, Abraham Lincoln was not eligible to serve as President- for as a lawyer he had taken the title Esquire, a title of nobility, and had therefore given up his citizenship). The industrialists from Wall Street also took the opportunity to hijack the abolisionist movement- replacing slavery with wage slavery, in which the slave owner has no actual requirement to provide a living for his slaves/employees. But the real blow to the right to rule ourselves came about 25 years later- in 1889, with the ratification of the 14th Amendment and soon after Southern Pacific Railroad's claim to personhood for corporations. With that- money, corporate money in particular, became the loudest free speech in the country, and we've been going downhill ever since.

I'm really glad that you (and others like you) seem to be tackling this aspect of the corporate unaccountability problem. I'll be checking your web site out. What do you think of the movement to end corporate personhood? There is a lot of evidence that the priginal Santa Clara decision that gave personhood to corporations was never made as such, but was written into the record by an overly-enthusiastic clerk, Bancroft, who had a vested interest in corporate personhood.. (he had been a lawyer for the railroad companies, who were the pharma /oil corps of his day)

For more, see http://poclad.org/ and http://reclaimdemocracy.org/

I agree that eminent domain has NOT (as far as i've heard) been applied to intellectual property. My point was that given the recent supreme court ruling, I can imagine someone may attempt it. In any case, check out this CNN Story: "A recent study by the property rights group Institute for Justice, which is representing the New London homeowners in court, found about 10,000 cases from 1998 to 2002 of local governments in 41 states using or threatening to use eminent domain to transfer home and properties from one private owner to another. Courts in at least six states have upheld the practice."

Wal-mart is mentioned specifically as a beneficiary of eminent domain here: Wal-Mart, the Abuse of Eminent Domain and Corporate Welfare.

"With no power, of which they are possessed, do [legislatures] seem to be less familiar, or to handle less awkwardly, than that of eminent domain. . . . At times they fail, or seem to fail, to distinguish accurately between public and private ends, and if their terms and language be alone consulted, to pervert the power to uses to which it cannot lawfully be applied."

-- Sherman v. Buick
(California Supreme Court, 1867)

Check out Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights by Thom Hartmann as a good account of the rise of Corporations in America.

"Of the 150 cases involving the Fourteenth Amendment heard by the Supreme Court up to the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896 that established the legal standing of "separate but equal," 15 involved blacks and 135 involved business entities."

Quote from The Hijacking of the Fourteenth Amendment

The industry will fight vociferously to protect them.

If only the citizenry of the US would fight as hard for our REAL property rights! Over the last several years, eminent domain has been used by many municipalities to force people off of the property they OWN so that developers like Wal-Mart can build stores. Some examples:

Alameda Square in Denver Colorado: The City of Denver is considering condemning the shopping center so that Wal-Mart can build a super center. story

Alabaster, Alabama: Colonial Properties Trust wants to build a shopping center anchored by a Wal-Mart in the town of 24,000. The local government is all for it because they're "not receiving enough in tax revenue to support the town." Trouble is, there are a few property owners that don't want to sell. Answer, local government is resorting to eminent domain. They're citing the increase in tax revenue as the "public good" that justifies condemnation of the property. story

Ardmore, Pennsylvania. A local government plan to "revitalize" the town of Ardmore has officials seeking to use eminent domain to oust property owners and demolish several historic buildings. story

New London, Conneticut. (This is the Supreme Court case that's being heard and was referenced in the posted article). The town is attempting to use eminent domain to forcibly evict seven property owners and sieze their property so that a private company can develop more tax-profitable properties on the land. story

Lakewood, Ohio. Scenic Park, a middle class neighborhood, was seized under eminent domain. The homes were deemed "blighted" because they didn't conform to certain criteria. They didn't have three bedrooms, two baths, an attached garage or central air. Incidentally, the mayor's house, in another neighborhood, doesn't fit these criteria, either. The homes were razed in order to put in a mall and high-end condos. story

Ogden, Utah. The Mayor and City Council want to demolish 34 homes and 6 businesses in order to erect a Wal-Mart (there's that Wal-Mart again) Super Center.

Clemson, SC (right up I-26 from me). Pickens County Council voted to invoke eminent domain to condemn a tract of land zoned residential for the purpose of building a Wal-Mart. story

Between the years 1998-2002, TEN THOUSAND properties were seized via eminent domain in order for the municipalities to sell to private developers!!! The right to own land and property is directly tied to all our other rights. Now, I'm not a big, Anti-Corporation type of guy as I recognize that corporations are not vast, faceless entities, but are made up of individuals that work, eat, sleep, and all that. I have BECOME extremely anti-Wal-Mart, though, in part due to this eminent domain thing and also because of their recent trouble with the labor laws. I don't begrudge Wal-Mart's right to exist, but they've demonstrated time and time again that they are willing to tight rope the law and even break it if necessary in order to continue growing. They're like a virus that must be stopped. I'm on a personal boycott of Wal-Mart. If something isn't done about governments seizing property rightfully owned by law-abiding individuals, a huge pillar of our democratic republic is going to be severely compromised. This is no joke, people. This poses one of the most severe threats to our country.

If you want to keep abreast of the situation, here are a couple of good links. And I especially want to thank Neal Boortz (national talk radio guy, Libertarian). Were it not for him, FAR fewer pe

Unfortunately you're about a century behind the times. After the passage of the 14th Amendment, the railroads repeatedly got before the Supreme Court, arguing that since the amendment didn't specify "natural" persons, it granted full civil protections to corporations as well. In 1886, they got their way, and the situation has gradually deteriorated since. This is why corporations can sue on First Amendment grounds. More info, or just google it.

Although I agree with you that most companies are strictly short-term thinkers, there is at least one out there that is taking a different approach. Which naturally pisses some people off on Wall Street because all that money spent on wages and insurance should be bettering valuation or dividends instead.

If you'd like to dispute this, look at the relevant law - I did, when I incorporated.

I own your house, if you'd like to dispute this, please look at the contract that I took the liberty of signing your name to. You might want to consider that the "corporation as artifical person" fiction was created by a SCOTUS clerk scribbled it practically between the lines of a totally separate case. You can read about that here or if you don't trust such a blatantly anticorporate site, you can look up the court proceedings for yourself and observe how the case, which had nothing to do with corporate entity, was recorded. You can probably dig through their huge library of documentation on the subject to determine just how much corporate greed went into creating the "relevant laws" that you used to incorporate.

Yes, its all paranoia and delusions and none of this is really happening. Software and information are not having an exponentially increasing role in human civilization and noone is really trying to take control of it. Just as noone is patenting new DNA strains and then suing people on whose fields they spread. We can all go back to sleep. You sure did.

I'd suggest the War On Drugs at the very least, and more likely an international banking conspiracy of some kind, or perhaps something involving plagues and/or famine.

I find it curious that you suggest the kinds of pursuits which are the favourite of those who promote "intellectual property". Last time I looked it was MPAA/RIAA who were conducting "War on piracy" and it was poeple like me who were against it. I guess you probably call all those who used to point out non-existence of WMDs in Iraq prior to the war "paranoid people obsessed with famines and plagues" too.