Dubai: Corporations as Supreme Being
If you had any doubt about the corruption that has infected the very bloodstream of American politics, look at today’s ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court said corporations can spend unlimited amounts to influence the outcome of elections.
I’m gonna repeat my sad joke: we are approaching the time when there will be “corporate creationists” so convinced of the divine status of the corporate life-form that they will deny vehemently that corporations evolved from human beings. Americans, we are the new monkeys.
At the root of the Court’s attack on popular democracy — and it is an attack, and it will promote if not guarantee rule by unaccountable corporate oligarchy — is the Court’s infamous 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision that said money equals speech. Left unaddressed in today’s decision — and others — is the absurdity of this formula. When money equals speech, outfits with more money have more speech. And that destroys the very principle of free speech.
Ask yourself this question. If you had to persuade your community about political opinion X, but corporations opposed your view, would you stand a chance knowing that their “political speech” was worth much more than your political speech? The answer is obvious. Mere people have been thrown on the scrap heap. The U.S. Supreme Court is lifting corporations to the top of the evolutionary ladder.
Teabaggers, do you get it now? You are outraged by your powerlessness. Can you now see the real source of that powerlessness? It is not government. Government has been turned into the handmaiden of the corporate oligarchs.
I’m compelled to repeat something else: I’m a fan of entrepreneurship and responsible capitalism. But it’s not the so-called heavy hand of government that is the enemy. It’s the corporate monopolists.
I also share the view of the sanctity of the individual in a democracy. While many anachronistically worry about creeping socialism, it is the unrestrained power of unaccountable global corporatists that threatens individual rights with extinction.
The Supreme Court’s decision should be a wake-up call to America. The corruption has gone far enough. Democracy hangs in the balance. This is not hyperbole. This is a day that will live in infamy.
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About Glenn W. Smith
Glenn W. Smith has spent the past 30 years in journalism and politics, where he’s made a name for himself as a writer, campaign manager, activist, think tank analyst and, as Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas says, a “legendary political consultant and all-around good guy.” “There’s no one like him,” says author George Lakoff. CNN commentator Paul Begala says, “He has unmatched experience, a graceful pen (or pixel nowadays) and deep insight into the best and worst of us.” Novelist Sarah Bird speaks of his “lucid and lyrical” prose. And, she says, he’s fun. Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington says Glenn writes with “grace and abundant humor” and “uses his colorful experiences in Texas to enlighten us all.”
Smith led Ann Richards’ successful 1990 campaign for Governor of Texas. He worked for former Texas Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby and U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen. Earlier, Smith was a political reporter for the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post. He’s coordinated national campaigns for groups such as MoveOn.org. In 2004, he authored the highly acclaimed book, The Politics of Deceit: Saving Freedom and Democracy from Extinction. He also wrote Unfit Commander, a book that detailed George W. Bush’s mysterious disappearance from military service.
In 2004, Smith was featured in the film, Bush’s Brain, a documentary about Karl Rove. Smith provided commentary on Rove’s role as then-President Bush’s senior advisor. He has made numerous media appearances with Chris Mathews on Hardball, Joe Scarborough, Brit Hume, and many others. He writes a regularly for top national web sites, including FireDogLake and Huffington Post.
As a senior fellow at George Lakoff’s prestigious Rockridge Institute in Berkeley he studied, wrote and taught on the power of metaphor and narrative in political communications. He also lectured on religion and politics at the Starr King School for Ministry in Berkeley. As a sponsor and organizer, he has pulled together numerous national events with progressive religious leaders. He also organized a celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King at Riverside Church in New York City as well as “Freedom and Faith” bus tours, which was a nationwide campaign for social justice and progressive values.
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Actually, Glenn, I think it was Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific from 1881 that really went boom today. It’s one of the great land-mines in American political history, and it established in law — thanks to RR lawyers on the court — the principle of corporate personhood.
Here’s the decision.
http://www.ratical.org/corporations/SCvSPR1886.html
Sotomayor was making interesting noises early on in the current case about revisiting Santa Clara but, apparently, got nowhere.
Yea, I need to get into that. And to think, it was done in a footnote! I believe, fitting, I guess, since actual human beings can only hope now for footnote status in history….
I’m shocked! Shocked to find corporations running our nation!
Do you think they’ll give me a few bananas before my nap?
Comment appears out of sequence. I’m responding to Charles’ very, very important note about the Court granting corporations personhood in 1881, Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific.
Thom Hartmann has long spoken out about this. You can read some of his work on the subjec here: http://www.thomhartmann.com/2009/10/08/transcript-thoms-corporate-personhood-rant-09-september-2009/
In part, Hartmann writes:
“To my mind, the fallacy, if I may be permitted so to term it, of the argument lies in the assumption that corporations are entitled to be governed by the laws that are applicable to natural persons. That, it is said, results from the fact that corporations are [artificial] persons, and that the last clause of the Fourteenth Amendment refers to all persons without distinction.”
Actually, as I understand it, the comment in question in the Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific decision was not made by any of the Justices, but by a clerk writing up the decision for the official record; and the clerk in question was a long-term railroad lobbyist. Nonetheless, the damage was done as subsequent Supreme Court decisions used that as precedent.
I do not think at this point the Santa Clara decision will ever be undone by Supreme Court judgments. The only chance is a constitutional amendment stating unambiguously that “legal persons” that are not also “natural persons” are not protected by the US Constitution, but are subject to whatever regulations are placed upon them by the states within which they operate (not those in which they are headquartered). Of course that will require a Constitutional Convention, since there is no way the corporate-bought-and-paid-for legislative bodies would ever pass it. It should also be at this point the single most important item on the progressive agenda. (I would put a reform of the US Senate as the second most important, but that has a better chance of passage once the immortal superhumans that the SCOTUS has created are disposed of.)
That’s right. It was a clerk.
The really interesting thing to me is how completely lacking in consciousness about the “corporation-as-a-person” metaphor Kennedy, Scalia, and Roberts seem in their opinions. Their rhetoric is simply incoherent absent that idea. It assumes the most central question, meaning that most of the words don’t address what the case really turns on. It’s nuts to think that we are going to have this huge change in our electoral system, without having (these five people who got to decide it) engage this issue.
I will say this – the campaign finance regulatory system was a mess to begin with. While this development is disturbing, it could be a blessing in disguise. We needed Clean Elections before. We need them even more now. Maybe this blow can be the catalyst we need.
David, I agree completely about the mess that is our current campaign finance system, and I even think there’s a chance there is a silver lining here. Let’s hope we’re not dreaming!
Rep. Alan Grayson is taking steps to minimize the damage. Let’s hope he can get his bills passed.
He’s a hero, and his bills deserve support. I fear more will need to be done. A constitutional amendment, or the replacement of one of the five judges of the Court’s majority, when that becomes possible. Grayson was prepared for this way in advance. And I have personally thanked him for his work.
Unfortunately, the teabaggers don’t get it. That’s the problem. If they got it, they’d work with us to stop this madness, but they’re too busy calling us socialists to see what’s really happening.
I’d love to convince a few of them to join the cause. We’d disagree on everything else, but this is about as important as it gets.
I’m not sure about this. I do think that discussions of amending the constitution and about what kind of justice should be picked for the next vacancy are important.
But the amendments being discussed are too narrow. This decisions was the final nail in the coffin – a ban on corporate direct spending fails to address the mess we had as of yesterday. We have a society where most of the money is in the hands of corporations and the uber-wealthy. They find ways to get around the rules. Our elections require increasing amounts of big money cash because of the kind of campaigns we run. We need to work on the demand side, not the supply side. It’s hard for me to see how we can get an amendment to change the system given the existing system.
I do think an amendment can be used to mobilize support – as long as it is broad based and we can tie smaller reforms (at state and federal levels). If the intermediate change happens, we might get an amendment.
As for replacements, my fear is that activists and the rank and file don’t engage the issue, and instead the White House works it out behind closed doors. They have shown that they don’t know how to talk about the SC – their brief use of empathy was always a superficial frame unconnected to any deeper frames, and they abandoned it at the first Republican objections. We – all of us – need to be talking about that now. Again, this can be used to rally our side and make our case, but a replacement alone won’t necessarily help. The SC minority is less corporatist than the majority, but that is not saying much.
What’s more, shifts in the Court often come because of shifts in the political context, rather than shifts in the text or membership. The Court here is responding to the corporatism that rules our government and our media. Some of those Democratic officials may not approve of this manifestation of their ideology, but that’s the rub – it’s impact it blunt. If we can reverse that, we can begin to change course.
I will say this – the campaign finance regulatory system is not something worth defending. It was a mess. What needs to be defended is the idea that citizens should control their government – that it is We the People, not We the Corporations. We don’t need a shift on the Court or an amendment to do Clean Elections – and that is a better solution anyway.