Corporations are not People

Corporations are not people, yet our courts think they are.

Unlike people, corporations have no sense of shame.

Unlike people, corporations have no natural limited lifespan.

Unlike people, corporations are rarely given a jail sentence.

When a corporation commits gross malfeasance the corporation is almost always permitted to pay a fine.  The corporation is almost never placed in jail; consequently, income never stops.  The corporation is thus free to continue malfeasance but in an newer disguised way.   Knowing such, the corporation can justify future fines as operating costs.

If you commit malfeasance, you go to jail.  When you go to jail, all incomes stops.  When all incomes stops, you lose your house if you have not paid it off; your dependent family suffers.  If you complain to the judge, the judge usually says:  You should have thought of that before you committed the crime.

These words a corporation will never hear.

Why, it would a crime to do so, corporate apologists wail.  The shareholders will suffer, they add.

Your Founding Fathers on a certain level recognized the danger of corporations which is why they limited their power.  Corporations, traditionally speaking, were not afforded the same rights as individuals.

Corporations were chartered and confined to a specific purpose under penalty; if they exceeded that purpose or committed malfeasance their charter could be be revoked.  Owners could be held liable for criminal activity.

Corporations were not permitted to own stock in other corporations.  They were also forbidden from making political contributions so as to limit their ability to influence legislation.

But that was then, and this is now.

Corporations pushed to expand their rights.  One clever way to do this was by getting judges in the courts who thought their way.

One way to accomplish this would be to control the process by which judges were nominated and selected.

If they could control the Senate Judiciary committee who recommends the judges, their task would be easier.

Tne best way to control the Senate Judiciary committee would be to find a way to elect Senators who thought like them.

Thus the 17th Amendment to the Constitution that went into effect in 1913.

The 17th Amendment was sold as an improvement in democracy. Direct election of Senators seemingly gives people greater control of their elected leaders.

It does anything but.

What direct election of Senators accomplishes are costly Senatorial campaigns that are won by corporate cash and lots of it.  To ensure that they win either way, corporations finance both candidates.

Unless you support the corporations, you aren’t getting the cash, and you certainly aren’t getting prime access to big media which is controlled by you guessed it – Corporate America.

Not surprisingly your Senate is dominated by candidates beholden to Corporate America.  They pass legislation and lots of it friendly to Corporate America.  They finance wars friendly to Corporate America.

And they put judges on the bench friendly to Corporate America, judges who refuse to see that corporations are not people.