Challenge the Establishment: Constitution

Showing posts with label Constitution. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

A Popular Post: Challenging Constitution Cheerleaders

When I reviewed the stats on visitors to this blog I found that the most popular post is an open letter to cheerleaders of the US Constitution. In it I point out the similarities between legal Slavery and legal Corporate Charters.

Both slavery and corporations allow the accumulation of wealth by an individual or small group. Both have damaging effects on the fabric of a democracy. In the long run, both ills will have been resolved by amending the US Constitution.

Read More

Related....

Corporate America Reports Record Profits

New government data show U.S. corporations made record profits in the third quarter, earning at an annual rate of more than $1.6 trillion. That’s the highest figure since the government began keeping track 60 years ago. Overall corporate earnings are up 28 percent from the same time last year. Companies, however, have not been using the record profits to hire more workers. The Federal Reserve is predicting that the nation’s official unemployment rate will remain over 9 percent for at least another year. - DemocracyNow! November 24, 2010.

No recession for "corporate persons," but a vast number of real people are experiencing an economic depression. Corporations are tools of wealth accumulation, which have become so effective that there's little wealth left over for the rest of us. I always think of an hour glass with all the sand accumulated in one side... it needs to be up-ended.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

GDAE Podcast Episode 32

Common Interests on the Left & Right - Part III

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).
Green Economy: Energy efficiency and jobs (Demand Side Podcast).
MUSIC: Brazilita, a sweet little version of the song Brazil.

Play Episode 32 from this page:

Click to Download Episode 32.

Listen to Part II in the series, Episode 31:

Listen to Part I in the series, Episode 30, (20-minute abridged version):

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Challenge Conventional Wisdom

The recent US Supreme Court decision, Citizens United, has been called a "Pearl Harbor for American Democracy" by a coalition seeking "to overrule the decision and amend the Constitution to restore the power of people over corporations, beyond election law."

The coalition, Move to Amend, takes its name from the right that we have, but rarely use; we can move to amend our constitution. Recall these words you've probably heard or read. The Tenth Amendment states:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people."

The people can call, or move, to amend the Constitution through their states:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments,... [Article 5, US Constitution]

The active members of this coalition are not alone in their thinking, as is expressed in a blog post that questions the sanctity of the US Constitution. This thought-piece is a spring board to consider The Case Against Judicial Review, by David Cobb.

READ MORE - (Referral to full post @ GDAEman blog)

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

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.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Kyoto & the Articles of Confederation

A forgotten bit of United States history provides an analogy to what could happen to the Keyoto Protocols in Copenhagen.

The United States had a constitution before the U.S. Constitution. It was called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, or simply the Articles of Confederation. Article 13 stated that only the Congress of the states could amend the Articles of Confederation.

However, rather than amend the Articles, a series of conferences and conventions were held, which resulted in the Articles being discarded and replaced by the U.S. Constitution. A similar thing appears to be happening to the Kyoto Protocols to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Powerful nations are trying to discard the Kyoto treaty and replace it with something else more favorable to corporate interests.

It's instructive to reflect back on what motivated the dismantling of the Articles of Confederation. Following a meeting in Mount Vernon to address navigation issues between Maryland and Virginia, the conveners recommended a convention of all the States for the following purpose:

"to take into consideration the trade and commerce" of the Confederation. [1]

Ah, yes. Commercial interests at work again. According to political scientist David Hendrickson:

When the war ended in 1783, certain special interests had incentives to create a new "merchant state," much like the British state people had rebelled against. In particular, holders of war scrip and land speculators wanted a central government to pay off scrip at face value and to legalize western land holdings with disputed claims. Also, manufacturers wanted a high tariff as a barrier to foreign goods, but competition among states made this impossible without a central government.[2]

So, out with the Articles of Confederation and in with the U.S. Constitution and a central government. The same interests seem to be at work centuries later trying to say out with Kyoto and in with a corporate-directed approach to global climate change. This establishment approach must be challenged.

Sources:

1. C. Tansill (ed.), Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States, H. Doc. No. 358, 69th Congress, 1st sess. (1927)

2. Hendrickson, David C., Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding. (2003)

Challenge the Establishment