Establishment Fears Organized Challenge to Corporate Power

Remember the hacked Stratfor emails? Stratfor's is a geopolitical intelligence firm, whose establishment clients

get direct access to our analysts and to our global networks, enabling them to better assess geopolitical risk, make strategic investm
ents and expand into challenging regions.

One of the most overlooked or forgotten revelations of those emails had nothing to do with particular events, people or places. Rather, Stratfor revealed the establishment's fear of a movement challenging corporate power. Their email related to the Yes Men's activities surrounding the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal India poison gas disaster.

Stratfor analyzed whether the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster would lead to an increase in anti-corporate activism.

"With less than a month to go [until the 25th anniversary], you'd think that the major players -- especially Amnesty -- would have branched out from Bhopal to make a broader set of issues. I don't see any evidence of it," wrote Bart Mongoven, Stratfor's Vice President, in November 2004. "If they can't manage to use the 25th anniversary to broaden the issue, they probably won't be able to."

The Yes Men cited the e-mails, which continued well into 2011, as evidence that anti-corporate activists and movements such as Occupy Wall Street are having an effect.

"Just as Wall Street has at times let slip their fear of the Occupy Wall Street movement, these leaks seem to show that corporate power is most afraid of whatever reveals "the larger whole" and "broader issues," i.e. whatever brings systemic criminal behavior to light," the group said in a release.

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End Corporate Personhood

Take it from a Tennis Ball, we need to end corporate personhood. This could be a tangible demand of the #Occupy movement, that is, amend the constitution to Get Corporate Money Out of our elections.

The following 4-min video is a remake of the VlogBrothers 2007 YouTube call-to-action ala the Nerdfighters "Project for Awesome".

GDAE Podcast - Episode 39

December 18, 2010 Episode of GDAE Podcast

Episode 39 Conversation on Corporate Power

• Corporate Power: Conversation on how excessive corporate power is creating dysfunctional elections, health care system, financial system, news media, and its affect on American democracy and its citizens..


• Prosecute Bush: Obstruction of justice in Spain and Germany by US officials exposed by WikiLeaks. Emerging facts have a way of forcing democratically governed countries to choose between maintaining their status as democracies or admitting that they are authoritarian states. If they choose to maintain their status as democracies, they have to prosecute high officials for crimes.

Click to Download Episode 39.

Recent Series: Can the Populist Left & Right Unite to Challenge the Establishment and Regain Control of Our Republic?

The answer is "yes," as history has proven. Check out the 9-part GDAE Podcast series that explores how common people across the political spectrum can come to the aid of our democracy.

GDAE Podcast Episode 29

• Motivation for reaching out to the conservatives, from a progressive perspective

GDAE Podcast Episode 30

• The Power of Ordinary People

GDAE Podcast Episode 31

• Left & Right Populists Working Together: to fix our flawed democracy
• What is a "principled" conservative: Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine has some thoughts
• Audit the Fed: Bernie Sanders leads the Left & Right to push for Senate Unanimous vote on Amendment to "audit the Fed."

GDAE Podcast Episode 32

• Left & Right Populists: The American Populist movement of the 1800s with Jim Hightower (Bill Moyer's Journal).
• Left & Right United: The Tenth Amendment with Michael Boldin (Mother Jones Magazine).

GDAE Podcast Episode 33

• Principled and Unprincipled Conservatives: Will Bunch, Author of "The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama," on the Tea Party movement and the recent primary elections.
• Principled and Unprincipled Liberals: Glenn Greenwald, former constitutional and civil rights litigator now writer and blogger.

GDAE Podcast Episode 34

• Conversation with Vince Tola: Perspectives on the potential of principled people on the left and right to join forces and reassert the power of the people over our democratic institutions. Vince is a public school teacher and Maryland Green Party organizer.

GDAE Podcast Episode 35

• Case-study from Electoral Politics: David Sirota on Tea-party-backed candidate for US Senate in Colorado, Ken Buck.
• Shared Left/Right Populist Anger: CNN interview with David Sirota explains Bush & Obama failure on Financial Bailout.

GDAE Podcast Episode 36

• Motivation for Reaching out to the Political Right on Issues of Common Concern: Preventing the Drift toward "Barbarism".
• Right-Wing TV/Radio Incitement: The case of Byron Williams who attempted to murder eleven people in San Francisco after listening to Glenn Beck and others.
• Walden Bello: A historical perspective on the Drift toward "Barbarism" and its relation to the Moviation to reach out to genuine conservatives.
• 2006 Conservative Essay: "Now Is the Time for a Left-Right Alliance: A rebel alliance already exists that could stop Bush administration attacks on the Constitution."

GDAE Podcast Episode 37

• History: Demagogues take advantage of bad economic times for political gains including the use of government to enrich themselves.
• Three economists see three futures: Pretty Bad, Very Bad and Absolutely Catastrophic.
• Call for unity among principled conservatives and progressives: Unite to counter-act dangers of demagogues during the coming hard times.

Source:

GDAEman.Com

Corporate Charters Should Not be Contracts

So what? Who cares about "corporate charters" in the first place? BOOORRINGG !

True, but imagine a world in which we the people had control over corporations. Under our thumb. Whoa!

Corporations have power to literally get away with murder, because so much of their "rights" are protected by the US Constitution, among other defining laws. An example is that the US Supreme Court determined, in Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518 (1819), that a corporate charter is a "contract." This gives corporations contract powers that, like "property rights," are protected by the US Constitution.

The government (read "the people") are not allowed to meddle in the private affairs of contracts. This corporate contract shield is greater than the corporate shield that limits liabilities of the humans running and profitting from the corporate shell wrapped around a "business" enterprise... more likely these days a scam called a business.

Corporations are chartered to exist by states. These states, like Delaware, or some Caribbean nation, want the tax revenues that come with issuing corporate charters. That's because corporations make their headquarters in the place that issues their charter. So, to attract "business," states and Caribbean nations compete with each other to issue corporate charters. To attract wanna-be corporations, there is a race to the bottom in how lax their charters can be to benefit corporations. These states write corporate charters that are very favorable to corporations, but not favorable for we the people.

For example, lax charters can help corporations hide records from the public, making it almost impossible for the public to even know what a corporation is doing, let alone influence that activity if it is damaging to society.... like that never happens.

In sum, corporate charters, which give birth to corporations, are protected by the US Constitution as a "contract," which gives corporations way too much power. We need to re-define corporate charters to be something less than a contract.

Financial Underhaul

The Yahoo! News headline "Bank stocks soar on financial regulation agreement" pretty much says it all. We are a corporate state. Reclaiming the power of the people over the corporate state is the next major multi-generational struggle on par with overcoming slavery, child labor standards and women's suffrage.

"They come out of this big-time winners," Bob Froehlich, senior managing director at Hartford Financial Services, said of financial companies. "Two years later, people will look back and say 'My gosh, nothing really changed.'"

Democrats in charge... Republicans in charge... "My gosh, there's really no difference."

Revoke BP's Corporate Charter

Surely you've heard about British Petroleum's track record from the British colonial days through a litany of felony crimes. Being a "corporation" a privilege, not a right.

By now you also know about corporations being defined as "persons" by a corrupt robber baron era US Supreme Court. So, if a person is a serial felon, including negligent homicide, they "go away," usually to prison. They can no long do business, or anything else in society for that matter.

It's time to seriously consider taking the corporate privilege away from BP. And, in these days of internet activism, there is a Facebook campaign to revoke BP America's corporate charter.

Details here: http://bit.ly/9djBTb

Join the "Revoke BP's corporate charter" (facebook) group .

Sources:

The Punk Patriot.

Open Letter to DCCC

Historically my family has leaned toward the Democratic Party. However, as the various branches of government have been captured by corporate power, we feel that no party represents our views.

Pundits are saying the Democratic Party is too liberal and needs to steer toward "the center." This conflicts with surveys of public opinion, which, for example, have shown strong support for a single-payer health care system and a majority in favor a public option. The "center" has been pulled far to the right by the Reagan revolution and re-enforced by a corporate media with financial interests in a center skewed to the right.

The Democratic Party has become a prisoner of this corrupted system. So, we the people are asking ourselves, "Why perpetuate this system by supporting a party that has been captured by corporate interests? Why support a party apparently too weak to take principled stands? Would it not be better in the long run to let the corrupt system crash of its own weight and then re-build on a fresh foundation?"

Unless you can convince me, and many like me, that the Democratic Party is willing, and able, to take principled stands, then many of us will stay home for the mid-term elections. Many will do so in disgust. Others will take their chances with deeper change that comes from letting Sarah Palin and the Tea Party take control with the inevitable crash alluded to above.

Allowing such a collapse would entail many sacrifices, much like a war; however, this wouldn't be a war for corporate and establishment interests. The sacrifice would be to rid us of the undemocratic corporate powers and their corrupting influences.

The Democratic Party needs to find its bedrock principles, voice them and hold to them. Is the Party for the people or for the corporations? Unfortunately, evidence strongly suggests that it cannot be for both.

Is Corporate Personhood Legitimate?

Most educated people have heard that "corporations are legally considered to be persons." Upon hearing it, most people take on the look of a dog with it's head tilted to the side. Here's one take on corporate "people".[1]

The watershed moment came in 1886 when the Supreme Court ruled on a case called Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. The case itself was not about corporate personhood, although many before it had been, and the Court had ruled that corporations were not persons under the 14th Amendment. Santa Clara, like many railroad cases, was about taxes. But before the Court delivered its decision, the following statement is attributed to Chief Justice Waite:

"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."

The statement appeared in the header of the case in the published version, and the Court made its ruling on other grounds. How this statement appeared in the header of the case is a matter of some mystery and competing theories, but because it was later cited as precedent, corporate personhood became the accepted legal doctrine of the land.

Corporations acquired legal personhood at a time when all women, all Native Americans, and even most African American men were still denied the right to vote. And this was not an era of good feelings between the average person and corporations. It was the time of the robber barons, and the Supreme Court was filled with former railroad lawyers. It was the time of the Knights of Labor and the Populist movement. 1886 was the year of the Haymarket Massacre, the Great Southwestern Strike, and the next year the Pullman Strike. The people were struggling for real democracy and the wealthy ruling class did whatever it took to keep them down.

Great way to set Supreme Court precedent, eh? So, if the foundation of corporate personhood is... corrupt... established by a Supreme Court put in power by the corrupt corporations of the robber baron era, then we have to ask, "Is Corporate Personhood legitimate?"

Confused? You're not alone...









Sources:

1. Abolish Corporate Personhood, Jan Edwards and Molly Morgan, May 20, 2004.

To Constitution Cheerleaders

I recently received an e-mail from someone touting Ron Paul's push for Americans to read their constitution. I used to think the US Constitution was sacred and should not be tinkered with. That was my dear father's advice and what we were all taught in school.

But, as my father has grown older and wiser, and more knowledgeable about the history of the Constitution, he no longer thinks of it as sacrosanct. True, one doesn't want to mess with it willy nilly, but... Here's my reply to the person who sent me the e-mail.

Yes, but of course the US Constitution allowed for African people to be property. Even when it became clear that slavery was wrong, the inertia in the political and economic system of the time perpetuated the ownership of humans. So did the US Supreme Court.

Various aspects of the Constitution were designed with the intent of maintaining the power of the small wealthy minority that crafted the Constitution. Call it a compromise... yes, the US Constitution was compromised. For example, the original Constitution had US Senators elected by State legislatures over which the wealthy minority had control. The Senate was, and still is, a check on the chamber of the humans (the House). Maybe with all the crazy Sarah Palin followers around that check is a good thing? That's what the aristocratic minority would want you to believe... oddly, if you follow the money behind some of the teabagger organizing groups, it leads you straight to some people in our modern day aristocracy.

Now it is becoming painfully clear that we need to consider the place of corporations in our less than perfect union. The concept of corporations, that are so integral to our culture and economy today, isn't even mentioned in the Constitution. Corporations were originally chartered to be a vessel of wealth accumulation for taking on challenging tasks. These charters also provide a shield on liability for those humans who take on the challenging tasks... good idea when limited to challenging tasks that were narrowly defined and had a finite time horizon, like building the Erie Canal. Unfortunately, those wealth accumulation creatures of man's legal creation accumulated so much wealth and power, they started changing the underlying rules of our democracy. Now corporate power has gotten out of control to the point that some humans claim we couldn't put the corporate genie back in the bottle even if we wanted to (a functional definition of "out of our control").

I'm sure in the 1820s humans who knew that the legal creation of slavery was wrong felt the same way (owning slaves was legal.. said so, indirectly, right in the US Constitution). They knew of the corrupting nature of slavery, but they understood the integral economic role that human property played in providing labor, which allowed the Country to be competitive in world trade. Slaves allowed wealth accumulation, without which, some of the most grand historic mansions that speckle our countryside would not exist. Many great achievements, including beautiful works of art funded by wealthy slave owners, simply would not have been possible without the means to accumulate wealth that was enabled by the legality of slavery... so it was argued... for decades.

Some day humans might look back at the corporate legal construct in wonder as we look back at slavery today. They will see all of the inequities, the environmental damage, the murders and other evils wrought by this legal creation, like the legal creation of slavery.

So, the US constitution was far from exceptional when written and remains so today. This was recently evidenced by the US Supreme Court decision in Citizens United Vs Federal Election Commission. It might take until 2050 to rid the world of the legality of corporations as we know them today, but the writing is on the wall and re-writing of the Constitution will be the path to that salvation.

CU v FEC: A Blessing in Disguise?

The US Supreme Court decision in CU v FEC might be a blessing in disguise... it is helping to educate and galvanize people to the real issue. That is, we need to replace bounds on corporate rights (corps. used to be very tightly controlled... for reasons that have become obvious as those controls have been loosened). The campaign finance reform movement is a tangible way to motivate progress on the multi-generational struggle to change our power relationship with corporations.

One challenge we face is that corporations are chartered by states not the fed... the Supreme Court found in Dartouth College (1819) that a corporate charter is a contract. Contracts, like property rights, are sacred cows (unless of course it's a contract with a labor union). So, controlling the scope of corporate charters is spread across states... the fed might be able to place bounds on state charters of corporations, but I'm not sure.

The folks at the Program on Corpoations, Law and Democracy would know (POCLAD.org).