The Nature of Community, Values , and Government

excerpted from the book

Unequal Protection

The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights

by Thom Hartmann

Rodale Press, 2002, paper

p3

Corporate Personhood

... when papers called articles of incorporation are submitted to governments in America (and most other nations of the world) ... [a] type of new "person" is brought forth into the nation (and most countries of the world). Just like a human, that new person gets a government-assigned number. (In the United States, instead of a Social Security number, it's called a Federal Employer Identification Number, or EIN.)

Under our current agreements, the new corporate person is instantly endowed with many of the rights and protections of personhood. It's neither male nor female, doesn't breathe or eat, can't be enslaved, can't give birth, can live forever, doesn't fear prison, and can't be executed if found guilty of misdoings. It can cut off parts of itself and turn them into new "persons," can change its identity in a day, and can have simultaneous residence in many different nations. It is not a human but a creation of humans. Nonetheless, the new corporation gets many of the constitutional protections America's Founders gave humans in the Bill of Rights to protect them against governments or other potential oppressors:

* Free speech, including freedom to influence legislation

* Protection from searches, as if their belongings were intensely personal

* Fifth Amendment protections against double jeopardy and self-incrimination, even when a clear crime has been committed

* The shield of the nation's due process and anti-discrimination laws

* The benefit of the constitutional amendments that freed the slaves and gave them equal protection under the law

Even more, although they now have many of the same "rights" as you and I-and a few more-they don't have the same fragilities or responsibilities, either under the law or under the realities of biology.

What most people don't realize is that this is a fairly recent agreement, a new cultural story, and it hasn't always been this way:

* Traditional English, Dutch, French, and Spanish law didn't say that corporations are people.

* The U. S. Constitution wasn't written with that idea; corporations aren't even mentioned.

* For America's first century, courts all the way up to the Supreme Court repeatedly said, "No, corporations do not have the same rights as humans."

* It's only since 1886 that the Bill of Rights and the Equal Protection Amendment have been explicitly applied to corporations.

Even more, corporate personhood was never formally enacted by any branch of the U. S. government:

* It was never voted by the public.

* It was never enacted by law.

* It was never even stated by a decision after arguments before the Supreme Court.

This last point will raise some eyebrows because for 100 years people have believed that the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad did in fact include the statement "Corporations are persons." But this book will show that this was never stated by the Court: It was added by the court reporter who wrote the introduction to the decision, called headnotes. And as any law student knows headnotes have no legal standing.

p20
It's not just American companies who are playing this role around the world. In Nigeria, a European corporation pumps crude oil that provides much of the revenues that supported a corrupt and brutal military regime, not unlike the situation I saw in Uganda. When the people of the Ogoni tribe rose up to oppose the despoiling of their lands, their leaders were arrested and tried-by a military tribunal. Nigerian author Ken_Saro-Wiwa, said in his closing statement of his trial:

"We all stand before history. I am a man of peace, of ideas. Appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people who live on a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginalization and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to this country as a whole a fair and just democratic system which protects everyone and every ethnic group and gives us all a valid claim to human civilization, I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated.

"On trial also is the Nigerian nation, its present rulers and those who assist them. Any nation which can do to the weak and disadvantaged what the Nigerian nation has done to the Ogoni, loses a claim to independence and to freedom from outside influence. I am not one of those who shy away from protesting injustice and oppression, arguing that they are expected in a military regime. The military do not act alone. They are supported by a gaggle of politicians, lawyers, judges, academics and businessmen, all of them hiding under the claim that they are only doing their duty, men and women too afraid to wash their pants of urine. We all stand on trial, my lord, for by our actions we have denigrated our Country and jeopardized the future of our children. As we subscribe to the sub-normal and accept double standards, as we lie and cheat openly, as we protect injustice and oppression, we empty our classrooms, denigrate our hospitals, fill our stomachs with hunger and elect to make ourselves the slaves of those who ascribe to higher standards, pursue the truth, and honor justice, freedom, and hard work.

"I predict that the scene here will be played and replayed by generations yet unborn. Some have already cast themselves in the role of villains, some are tragic victims, some still have a chance to redeem themselves. The choice is for each individual."

p30
The first corporations were the Dutch trading companies, chartered in the 1500s. They came into being by declaration of the government, but were owned and operated by wealthy and powerful individuals. The corporation had a status that allowed it to own land, to participate in the legal process, and to hold assets such as bank accounts. It could buy and sell things.

But while even 16th-century European kingdoms were acknowledging that humans had at least some "natural rights," corporations were explicitly limited to those rights granted them by the governments that authorized them.

p30

The Commons

In colonial times and before, a piece of land that was subject to common use was called a commons. The famous Boston Common is one example: It was originally the common grazing ground for the townspeople's cattle. The peculiar twisting streets of old Boston reflect the cow paths that were used as people walked their cattle to and from the Common.

The metaphor of the commons has been extended over the years to embrace all sorts of shared resources (as listed at the end of this chapter) The nature of a commons and how it's been considered at different times in history is central to the issue of why we have government in the first place, for the common welfare.

p40
Where do the commons begin and end? What are the things on which our quality of life depends and that we humans share in common? Different people have answered this question in different ways repeatedly over the years.

* At one time, telephone service was considered the commons, and telephone companies were both subsidized in bringing phone service to remote areas and regulated in what they could charge.

* During the Civil War era, the nation's railroad tracks were considered part of the commons.

* Today, the nation's transportation airspace is considered the commons, as government pays most of the cost of managing it and local communities pay the cost of building airports.

* Our water supplies and septic disposal infrastructure are considered part of the commons, as are our police, fire, and prisons.

* Education is in the realm of the commons right now, as is health care in most of the developed world, with the exception of the United States.

* National parks and vast tracts of forestland, pastureland, and other government-owned lands are part of the commons.

* Our banking system was often considered part of the commons: The privatizing of it was a huge and running battle in the United States throughout the first half of the 19th century. Since 1913, the 12 Federal Reserve Banks that handle the nation's money supply have been owned by commercial corporations (the member banks), as are all other U. S. banks, and the Federal Open Market Committee-which sets the nation's interest rates-does not allow the public into its meetings, does not publish transcripts of its meetings, and is responsible only to itself for its own budget.

* In some communities, electricity is part of the commons, although in most it has been taken over by for-profit corporations. But the electric utilities still have the right of eminent domain to take private land for power transmission lines, as if that land were still part of the commons. In the mid-1930s, for-profit corporations were not providing electricity to rural Americans, so in 1934 Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed the Rural Electrification Act (REA) which got electricity to rural America. The situation repeated itself with regard to telephony, requiring Harry Truman to extend the REA to telephone service.

* The nation's radio and television airwaves were considered part of the commons until they were sold at auction during the Reagan era to help finance other priorities.

* The nation's system of highways and public streets are part of the commons, as is our public library system and post office (both created by Ben Franklin, a booster of the commons).

* The beaches, sky, waterways, oceans, and land held by government are part of the commons.

... Right now, water is the hottest part of the commons, with some of the world's largest corporations pushing hard for water to be internationally defined as a marketable commodity, and for local water supplies to be turned over to them. During hard times, people may put off buying a new car or new clothes, but they must have water each and every day. No matter how poor or how frugal a person may be, they have no choice but to drink, and the battle for the commons of water is becoming global.

Unequal Protection

Home Page