Discussion: Move to Amend Month (January)

[Official Occupy Tulsa]

The GA will be supporting a month of knowledge about corporate personhood and the courts resistance to legislating corporate rights that has been a hot button issue that affects corporate finance in politics. It is currently titled "Move to Amend Month".

Please follow these links and learn more about the issues involving this case:

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (Wikipedia)

Corporate Personhood (Wikipedia)

Get informed. Learn the real issues of the case. Help us to inform the public.

--C. J. Williams

[Official Occupy Tulsa]

Personally, after reviewing the complicated facts, I'm not sure the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is really so substantial. It seems to me to be picking at straws.

The real focus should be overturning Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) and either stop up the loophole in Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution that essentially requires an "Officer" appointed by the joint houses and approved by the President to impose any sort of campaign finance reform (which no president to date has ever permitted and which the modern Congress isn't going to do), or get the courts to agree that it doesn't apply.

The whole BCRA was a farce, because it just repeated the same circumstances of Buckley v. Valeo (1976) that the Supreme Court overturned the legislation of Congress that nobly attempted to put a limit on campaign finances, and instead of regulating money, it freed up money in the part of BvV that was permitted to limit hard money contributions. BCRA was just an attempt to silence the people calling for campaign finance reform at that time.

Personally, I think the whole Citizens United issue is a distraction that I'm starting to question the source of. It's so minor in the overall scheme that it really doesn't seem to have a major impact in the political environment at all, as far as corporate money in politics. All the case does is allow the lobbies to smear a candidate at election time. While this is unfair, it's not a major issue, but merely a symptom of the major issues.

If you overturn corporate personhood, you get rid of every aspect of corporate infringement on politics. However, overturning corporate personhood is like a baby attempting to overturn a Mac truck, because the ripple effects of the 1819 case go far beyond the effect of corporate money in politics, but affects every facet of corporate regulation. It's even substantial to most of the tax documentation and articles of incorporation.

So I think we need a more strategic stance. Attacking the Citizens United decision is like swatting at gnats in the air with your open palm. It doesn't do anything to the gnats or in resolving your problem.

However, I don't think it will hurt anything to carry through with operation: Occupy the Courts. I just don't think we should kid ourselves about the impact of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, whatever impact that is. In occupying the courts, we should be focused on getting the courts to support the will of the people and not the will of the corporations, letting actual campaign finance reform take place without hindrance from cryptic and questionable interpretations of the Constitution.

--C. J. Williams

[laura]

For the record, I am totally opposed to an amendment to eliminate corporate personhood. It is a necessary protection for consumers. Without it, these businesses cannot be taxed or sued (because under the law, an object cannot be sued). I would, however, favor an amendment that explicitly states that artificial persons (as corporations used to be called) are not the same as natural persons and their rights and protections are not equal. That is, that the equal protections clause of the 14th amendment (and perhaps the Bill of Rights) does not apply to artificial persons and their rights are more limited than natural persons'.

[shannon]

Here's another source of information.
www.poclad.org/

These folks have been in the game awhile and have amassed information that supports the idea that corporate personhood does not need to exist.

Here's the website of the folks who have organized the Occupy the Courts event across the country. We were one of 76 cities who will be participating in an event like this on Jan.20th.
movetoamend.org/

Laura, I had the same thought about the inability to hold a corporation accountable if corporate personhood were eliminated. I think the problem is that even with corporate personhood, they are not being held accountable. Tyson chicken is at this moment continuing to dump chicken poop into the Arkansas river (that eventually gets to our drinking water), even though the City of Tulsa has sued them and the State of Oklahoma has been in processes with them for over 5 years. They won't stop. They will pay the fines and go on about their business. They make far more money being unethical than they pay out in fines. Now, if we could actually incarcerate a human being... it might stop. If I knew that someone put feces in my drinking water, I would press criminal charges, not a civil suit. I'll agree that corporations should be considered people when we put one behind the bars of one of their darned corporate run slave labor prisons.

[Official Occupy Tulsa]

This page has some very good and important points:

Why Abolish All Corporate Constitutional Rights

[Official Occupy Tulsa]

Dec 29, 2011 22:23:35 GMT -6 laura said:

For the record, I am totally opposed to an amendment to eliminate corporate personhood. It is a necessary protection for consumers. Without it, these businesses cannot be taxed or sued (because under the law, an object cannot be sued). I would, however, favor an amendment that explicitly states that artificial persons (as corporations used to be called) are not the same as natural persons and their rights and protections are not equal. That is, that the equal protections clause of the 14th amendment (and perhaps the Bill of Rights) does not apply to artificial persons and their rights are more limited than natural persons'.

First, there's a difference between a "person" and an "entity". If we can make that distinction in the law, it will still be enough to protect consumers, while at the same time, not extending the protection of "persons" to corporations. An "entity" can be taxed, but not being a "person", it would not receive the same rights and expectations of a person. The "entity" language is already on the books in many, many cases. Having "identity" can also remain on the books, for taxation purposes. But since a corporation cannot be tried as a "person", it cannot be a "person". But if you identify it as an "entity" owned by a person or group of persons (shareholders), then those persons would receive the criminal prosecution they deserve. It is the personhood language that currently protects those people. Currently, the law considers the corporation, and not its owners, responsible. The only time you ever see a corporate head put in jail, like with Enron, is if they actually embezzled money from the company itself or conspired to evade taxes. Removing corporate personhood would change that, holding the owners personally accountable for all actions of the corporate "entity". This would force corporate accountability and corruption would become practically ripped from corporate life, as the owners sweat constantly, in fear of making a misstep. They'll start dotting their "i's" and crossing their "t's".

[shannon]

Dec 30, 2011 1:30:41 GMT -6 Official Occupy Tulsa said:

This page has some very good and important points:

Why Abolish All Corporate Constitutional Rights

YES! Thanks for posting that. A pdf of that is one of the educational materials we'll have available for anyone who wants to either pass them out in the general public or hang at the Occupy site and give to passersby.

[laura]

I should probably clarify that I am standing aside on this issue.

[barbaramckay]

Hi folks, Move to Amend is not attempting to just overturn the "Citizens United v. FEC" decision -- they are part of a coalition of groups seeking to get at the root of an issue that goes back to "Santa Clara county v Union Pacific Railroad" (at least in its current state). This is a separate issue from campaign finance reform...it's related but a separate subject. You can read the proposed amendment here:

movetoamend.org/amendment

Note that the first line of the proposed amendment is "The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only."

The amendment would in fact make corporations legally responsible to the body politic and subject to legal regulation in a way that they currently are not. -- Barbara

[barbaramckay]

One other thing that may really be of interest to ppl is that the Montana Supreme Court has probably just taken on the U.S. Supreme Court regarding existing state law vis-à-vis Citizens U. v. FEC:

See video @31:29 to 40:29

youtu.be/-nn9szSB60Q

[Official Occupy Tulsa]

Yeah, there have been several states so far whose courts have declared that corporations are not people and are prepared to take on the supreme court.

[barbaramckay]

In Montana's case bcs of their natural resources, they expect the decision to be challenged by American Tradition Partnership who are lobbying there against environmental regulations...so it's likely to be the vehicle that gets the challenge to Citizens United moving. Or so I have read.