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CoreHard loser Registered: 05/09/03 Posts: 22 Loc: Cave Last seen: 20 years, 5 months |
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't mass dissent solve the worlds problems? I mean how many of you don't support corporate America? My guess is none, unless you grow your own food, make your own clothes, etc. You all still pay taxes to support corporate defense contracts, basically every member of society is to blame for their support of the destruction of the planet and human rights. Global (or even national) enlightenment isn't about to happen anytime soon, so until people become strong enough to deal without all those little toys, products, crap food, etc., blame yourself and your neighbors and friends. It's still OK to blame the Masters of Ceremony in the Grand Illusion (corporations and their minions), but they are literally non-existent without your money and mine.
Peace Out Bitch.
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Strumpling Neuronaut Registered: 10/11/02 Posts: 7,571 Loc: Hyperspace Last seen: 12 years, 10 months |
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What are you suggesting we do?
-------------------- Insert an "I think" mentally in front of eveything I say that seems sketchy, because I certainly don't KNOW much. Also; feel free to yell at me. In addition: SHPONGLE
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CoreHard loser Registered: 05/09/03 Posts: 22 Loc: Cave Last seen: 20 years, 5 months |
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I'm not suggesting anything, though I would like to see people stop buying huge houses and new cars, new clothes, 300 bucks a week for crap food, live minimally, end the need for money. But this won't happen obviously, so whatever, it's just an opinion.
Let's start a religion or plan a murder. Later
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mntlfngrs The Art of Casterbation Registered: 07/18/02 Posts: 3,937 Last seen: 5 years, 6 months |
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You can blame the 1884 supreme court for the corporate ills of America. And also blame a Court reporter, a former railroad president named J.C. Bancroft Davis, opened the headnote with the sentence: "The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The court ruled no such thing. A handwritten note from Chief Justice Waite to reporter Davis that now is held in the National Archives said: "we avoided meeting the Constitutional question in the decision." Corporate attorneys began to quote it like a mantra. Soon the Supreme Court itself was quoting Davis's headnote in subsequent cases. While Davis's Santa Clara headnote didn't have the force of law, once the Court quoted it as the basis for later decisions its new doctrine of corporate personhood became the law.
It is on this basis that Nike is stating that they have a constitutional right top free speech and therfore can lie to the public. So much for truth in advertising laws. Some of this post is paraphrased from... http://engaged.well.com/engaged/engaged.cgi?c=inkwell.vue&f=0&t=176 which is worth a read. really! -------------------- Be all and you'll be to end all
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mntlfngrs The Art of Casterbation Registered: 07/18/02 Posts: 3,937 Last seen: 5 years, 6 months |
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What to do? Make all the noise you can regarding Corporate staus as a person with rights of a person. Write every elected official and tell them that corporations are artificial entities with privilages not persons with rights.
Corporations have been given the rights of individuals but non of the responsibilities. -------------------- Be all and you'll be to end all
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Anonymous |
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You assume far too much. Some of us make our own soap and are as anti-capitalist as you can get.
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CoreHard loser Registered: 05/09/03 Posts: 22 Loc: Cave Last seen: 20 years, 5 months |
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Yeah, do that, start a letter writing campaign, and that will make it ok for your money to support the destruction of earth. People have to change in a fundamental way, that's the only solution to all problems.
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mntlfngrs The Art of Casterbation Registered: 07/18/02 Posts: 3,937 Last seen: 5 years, 6 months |
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Yeah thats it, lets all go back to living in caves and having life spans of 20-40 years. Read that link. If corps. did not have the legal status that they enjoy today this would be a very different world.
consider what Thom Hartmann writes "While Nike was conducting a huge and expensive PR blitz to tell people that it had cleaned up its subcontractors' sweatshop labor practices, an alert consumer advocate and activist in California named Marc Kasky caught them in what he alleges are a number of specific deceptions. Citing a California law that forbids corporations from intentionally deceiving people in their commercial statements, Kasky sued the multi-billion-dollar corporation. Instead of refuting Kasky's charge by proving in court that they didn't lie, however, Nike instead chose to argue that corporations should enjoy the same "free speech" right to deceive that individual human citizens have in their personal lives. If people have the constitutionally protected right to say, "The check is in the mail," or, "That looks great on you," then, Nike's reasoning goes, a corporation should have the same right to say whatever they want in their corporate PR campaigns. They took this argument all the way to the California Supreme Court, where they lost. The next stop may be the U.S. Supreme Court in early January, and the battle lines are already forming. For example, in a column in the New York Times supporting Nike's position, Bob Herbert wrote, "In a real democracy, even the people you disagree with get to have their say." True enough. But Nike isn't a person - it's a corporation. And it's not their "say" they're asking for: it's the right to deceive people. Corporations are created by humans to further the goal of making money. As Buckminster Fuller said in his brilliant essay The Grunch of Giants, "Corporations are neither physical nor metaphysical phenomena. They are socioeconomic ploys - legally enacted game-playing..." Corporations are non-living, non-breathing, legal fictions. They feel no pain. They don't need clean water to drink, fresh air to breathe, or healthy food to consume. They can live forever. They can't be put in prison. They can change their identity or appearance in a day, change their citizenship in an hour, rip off parts of themselves and create entirely new entities. Some have compared corporations with robots, in that they are human creations that can outlive individual humans, performing their assigned tasks forever. Isaac Asimov, when considering a world where robots had become as functional, intelligent, and more powerful than their human creators, posited three fundamental laws that would determine the behavior of such potentially dangerous human-made creations. His Three Laws of Robotics stipulated that non-living human creations must obey humans yet never behave in a way that would harm humans. Asimov's thinking wasn't altogether original: Thomas Jefferson and James Madison beat him to it by about 200 years. Jefferson and Madison proposed an 11th Amendment to the Constitution that would "ban monopolies in commerce," making it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, banning them from giving money to politicians or trying to influence elections in any way, restricting corporations to a single business purpose, limiting the lifetime of a corporation to something roughly similar to that of productive humans (20 to 40 years back then), and requiring that the first purpose for which all corporations were created be "to serve the public good." The amendment didn't pass because many argued it was unnecessary: Virtually all states already had such laws on the books from the founding of this nation until the Age of the Robber Barons. Wisconsin, for example, had a law that stated: "No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political office." The penalty for any corporate official violating that law and getting cozy with politicians on behalf of a corporation was five years in prison and a substantial fine. Like Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, these laws prevented corporations from harming humans, while still allowing people to create their robots (corporations) and use them to make money. Everybody won. Prior to 1886, corporations were referred to in US law as "artificial persons," similar to the way Star Trek portrays the human-looking robot named Data. But after the Civil War, things began to change. In the last year of the war, on November 21, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln looked back on the growing power of the war-enriched corporations, and wrote the following thoughtful letter to his friend Colonel William F. Elkins: "We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. The best blood of the flower of American youth has been freely offered upon our country's altar that the nation might live. It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. "As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless." Lincoln's suspicions were prescient. In the 1886 Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state tax assessor, not the county assessor, had the right to determine the taxable value of fenceposts along the railroad's right-of-way. However, in writing up the case's headnote - a commentary that has no precedential status - the Court's reporter, a former railroad president named J.C. Bancroft Davis, opened the headnote with the sentence: "The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Oddly, the court had ruled no such thing. As a handwritten note from Chief Justice Waite to reporter Davis that now is held in the National Archives said: "we avoided meeting the Constitutional question in the decision." And nowhere in the decision itself does the Court say corporations are persons. Nonetheless, corporate attorneys picked up the language of Davis's headnote and began to quote it like a mantra. Soon the Supreme Court itself, in a stunning display of either laziness (not reading the actual case) or deception (rewriting the Constitution without issuing an opinion or having open debate on the issue), was quoting Davis's headnote in subsequent cases. While Davis's Santa Clara headnote didn't have the force of law, once the Court quoted it as the basis for later decisions its new doctrine of corporate personhood became the law. Prior to 1886, the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment defined human rights, and individuals - representing themselves and their own opinions - were free to say and do what they wanted. Corporations, being artificial creations of the states, didn't have rights, but instead had privileges. The state in which a corporation was incorporated determined those privileges and how they could be used. And the same, of course, was true for other forms of "legally enacted game playing" such as unions, churches, unincorporated businesses, partnerships, and even governments, all of which have only privileges. But with the stroke of his pen, Court Reporter Davis moved corporations out of that "privileges" category - leaving behind all the others (unions, governments, and small unincorporated businesses still don't have "rights") - and moved them into the "rights" category with humans, citing the 14th Amendment which was passed at the end of the Civil War to grant the human right of equal protection under the law to newly-freed slaves. On December 3, 1888, President Grover Cleveland delivered his annual address to Congress. Apparently the President had taken notice of the Santa Clara County Supreme Court headnote, its politics, and its consequences, for he said in his speech to the nation, delivered before a joint session of Congress: "As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters." Which brings us to today. In the next few weeks the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear Nike's appeal of the California Supreme Court's decision that Nike was engaging in commercial speech which the state can regulate under truth in advertising and other laws. And lawyers for Nike are preparing to claim before the Supreme Court that, as a "person," this multinational corporation has a constitutional free-speech right to deceive. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Exxon/Mobil, Monsanto, Microsoft, Pfizer, and Bank of America have already filed amicus briefs supporting Nike. Additionally, virtually all of the nation's largest corporate-owned newspapers have recently editorialized in favor of Nike and given virtually no coverage or even printed letters to the editor asserting the humans' side of the case. On the side of "only humans have human rights" is the lone human activist in California - Marc Kasky - who brought the original complaint against Nike. People of all political persuasions who are concerned about democracy and human rights are encouraging other humans to contact the ACLU (125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004) and ask them to join Kasky in asserting that only living, breathing humans have human rights. Organizations like ReclaimDemocracy.org are documenting the case in detail on the web with a sign-on letter, in an effort to bring the ACLU and other groups in on behalf of Kasky. Corporate America is rising up, and, unlike you and me, when large corporations "speak" they can use a billion-dollar bullhorn. At this moment, the only thing standing between their complete takeover of public opinion or their being brought back under the rule of law is the U.S. Supreme Court. And, interestingly, the Chief Justice of the current Court may side with humans, proving this is an issue that is neither conservative or progressive, but rather one that has to do with democracy versus corporate plutocracy. In the 1978 Boston v. Bellotti decision, the Court agreed, by a one vote majority, that corporations were "persons" and thus entitled to the free speech right to give huge quantities of money to political causes. Chief Justice Rehnquist, believing this to be an error, argued that corporations should be restrained from political activity and wrote the dissent. He started out his dissent by pointing to the 1886 Santa Clara headnote and implicitly criticizing its interpretation over the years, saying, "This Court decided at an early date, with neither argument nor discussion, that a business corporation is a 'person' entitled to the protection of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co., 118 U.S. 394, 396 (1886). ..." Then he went all the way back to the time of James Monroe's presidency to re-describe how the Founders and the Supreme Court's then-Chief Justice John Marshall, a strong Federalist appointed by outgoing President John Adams in 1800, viewed corporations. Rehnquist wrote: "Early in our history, Mr. Chief Justice Marshall described the status of a corporation in the eyes of federal law: "'A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence. These are such as are supposed best calculated to effect the object for which it was created.'..." Rehnquist concluded his dissent by asserting that it was entirely correct that states have the power to limit a corporation's ability to spend money to influence elections (after all, they can't vote ? what are they doing in politics?), saying: "The free flow of information is in no way diminished by the [Massachusetts] Commonwealth's decision to permit the operation of business corporations with limited rights of political expression. All natural persons, who owe their existence to a higher sovereign than the Commonwealth, remain as free as before to engage in political activity." Justices true to the Constitution and the Founders' intent may wake up to the havoc wrought on the American political landscape by the Bellotti case and its reliance on the flawed Santa Clara headnote. If the Court chooses in the next few weeks to hear the Kasky v. Nike case, it will open an opportunity for them to rule that corporations don't have the free speech right to knowingly deceive the public. It's even possible that this case could cause the Court to revisit the error of Davis's 1886 headnote, and begin the process of dismantling the flawed and unconstitutional doctrine of corporate personhood. As humans concerned with the future of human rights in a democratic republic, it's vital that we now speak up, spread the word, and encourage the ACLU and other pro-democracy groups to help Marc Kasky in his battle on our species' collective behalf. " -------------------- Be all and you'll be to end all
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mntlfngrs The Art of Casterbation Registered: 07/18/02 Posts: 3,937 Last seen: 5 years, 6 months |
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More...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- when this nation was founded, the Founders and the Framers had a very clear and explicit view of the difference between "human beings" and "human institutions." Human beings were born into the world with certain inalienable *rights* and these were clearly acknowledged in the Bill Of Rights (and the Declaration and other places). Human institutions, however, had only privileges. And those privileges were defined by "We, The People" - the sole holders of the rights. This was true of corporations, unincorporated businesses, fraternal groups, churches, and even the institutions of government itself. All had privileges - rights were reserved solely to humans. What they teach in law schools today, however, is that in 1886, in the "Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad" case, the US Supreme Court plucked corporations alone - not unions, not churches, not governments, not unincorporated businesses, but corporations alone - out of the "privileges" category and dropped them into the "rights" category along with individual human beings. Human rights are, of course, a huge club with which humans could beat back government. It was intended that way, should governments ever become oppressive, among other reasons. And so once corporations got that club, they began to subdue government and to compete hard against humans. They claimed the First Amendment right of free speech, and claimed that meant they could give money to politicians, overturning hundreds (perhaps thousands) of local, state, and federal laws forbidding such activity. They claimed the 4th Amendment right of privacy to keep you and me and the government from knowing what they were doing. They claimed the 14th Amendment right against discrimination (the 14th was passed to free the slaves, along with the 13th and 15th), so now it's nearly impossible to "discriminate" against a Wal-Mart and keep it out of your community, etc. And, in the ultimate irony, although in law schools today they teach that the Court ruled thus in 1886, the court actually ruled the opposite - they explicitly chose NOT to decide the constitution issue. But the court's reporter wrote a commentary (headnote) to the case, and corporations have been pointing to that ever since, even though it has no precedential status or legal standing. Here are a few examples: First Amendment (?freedom of expression?) Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted in the landmark 1919 Shenck v. US case that shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater does not constitute free speech; the Bill of Rights guarantees that a person?s opinion can be expressed, not that there are no limits on what one can do. But consider how this fundamental freedom has been bent since Santa Clara. Companies have claimed: ? Freedom to spend what they want on lobbyists: claiming the same right as everyone else to ?express themselves? to the government (without limit), companies won approval to spend whatever they want on lobbyists in Washington. At one point there was a full-time tobacco lobbyist for every two legislators on Capitol Hill. As of this writing there are roughly 38 registered lobbyists for every member of Congress, over 20,000 in total, and 138 of them are former members of Congress. ? Pediatricians ask for restrictions on corporate ads to children; industry is unmoved: The American Academy of Pediatrics has proposed that the federal government initiate controls on advertising directed at children, and recommended that parents educate their children about how advertising can manipulate them. Business, using their First Amendment rights to freedom of expression, have instead increased its spending on ads to children. ? Utility refuses to comply with a government order to notify customers, because of a First Amendment ?right not to speak?: The California Public Utility Commission told a public utility that it must include a statement-stuffer in their bills, to inform consumers on a key point. In a move that was startlingly reminiscent of the Santa Clara case, the utility (a government-authorized monopoly) sued the state that gave it the monopoly, and took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court ? and won. They asserted that they didn?t have to comply because they had ?a new corporate First Amendment right ?not to speak,?? and the Supreme Court, extending the logic of the Santa Clara case, agreed. ? Lawyers recommend using the First Amendment to invalidate SEC regulations on truthful disclosures: Lawyers at a 1988 judicial conference recommended that corporations ?use the First Amendment to invalidate a range of Federal regulations, including Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure requirements that govern corporate takeovers, and rules affecting stock offerings.? Fourth Amendment The Fourth Amendment, against unreasonable search and seizure, was instituted because in pre-Revolutionary America, soldiers were allowed to burst into anyone?s home for no particular reason. Companies have used it to push away government regulators is if they were British dragoons. Two Supreme Court cases, in 1967 and 1978, affirmed that corporations don?t have to submit to random inspections because, as ?persons? under the Fourth Amendment, they?re entitled to privacy and freedom from unreasonable searches. Corporations have pursued this logic for many years: ? Antitrust compliance: Referencing the 1886 Santa Clara decision, the Supreme Court granted Fourth Amendment rights to a corporation in 1906, just 16 years after the Sherman Act had been passed. As William Meyers notes in The Santa Clara Blues: Corporate Personhood versus Democracy, ?This ruling made it difficult to enforce the Sherman anti-monopoly act, which naturally required the papers of corporations in order to determine if there existed grounds for an indictment.? ? Deterring a health & safety investigation in Idaho: An electrical and plumbing corporation in Idaho cited the Fourth Amendment and deterred a health and safety investigation. ? Pollution & safety compliance: Meyers continues that ?Without random inspections it is virtually impossible to enforce meaningful anti-pollution, health, and safety laws.? In a 1986 Supreme Court case, a corporation sued the Environmental Protection Agency because the EPA hired a professional photographer to fly over the plant with a camera after the corporation had turned down a request by the EPA for an on-site inspection of the plant. The Court acknowledged the corporation?s right to privacy from inspections by the EPA within its buildings. Fifth Amendment Like the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment was written to prevent a recurrence of government abuses from colonial days. Among other thngs, it says that a person cannot be compelled to testify against himself, as often happened under English royal rule, or be tried twice for the same crime. This was in a time when the balance of power was definitely in favor of the government; governments could, and routinely did, execute people. Today the shoe is on the other foot: the more powerful party, business, is claiming protection, again to avoid government investigation of its alleged misdoings. Convicted once of criminal misdoing in an anti-trust case, a textile supply company used Fifth Amendment protections and barred retrial. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- If this isn'r horrifying I don't know what is. The idea of corporate personhood is entrenched and taken for granted in the U.S. legal system and culture. It was fascinating to learn how things got this way and to think about the consequences of the current system. -------------------- Be all and you'll be to end all
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Anonymous |
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