A Wall of Separation Between Corporation and State

The Tea Party advocates told me that the Constitution protects capitalism.  That perplexed me.  I have read the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights several times and couldn't recall seeing anything about capitalism.  As a matter of fact, I carry a copy of the Constitution with me like a Christian will carry a Bible.  I can't say that I am a great Constitutional scholar, but I have a pretty good familiarity with it.  

I contended that I never saw anything about capitalism.  The closest thing I could imagine is the right to own private property.  They responded that this right IS capitalism, but the founding fathers just didn't have that word yet.  I again contended that capitalism means buying low and selling high, which is not at all the same as the right to own private property.  They disagreed, and affirmed that it is the same.  

So I looked up the word Capitalism: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision for profit, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market. 

The first real capitalists were the Dutch East India Company founded 1602.  They used capital for investment, but no one ever used the word Capitalism until it was coined in 1867 by Karl Marx in his book co-written with Engels, Das Capital.  The meaning Marx gave it was using capital (money) to buy commodities to sell for profit.  That seems pretty simple to me and confirmed my contention that capitalism is not the same as the right to own property.  There is no right in the Constitution to own property for profit.  Although the founding fathers assumed that shops and businesses would conduct commerce everywhere in the new Republic, they found no reason to guarantee the right to free enterprise or the right to make profits. 

That's why I believe we need to amend the Constitution to guarantee Constitutional rights only to human persons, as well as making election financing answerable only to the Public for which they will be elected.  These together will make a wall of Separation between Corporation and State. 

What to do when you feel like giving up

A friend asked: "When humans keep proving themselves stupid and greedy and justice is nostalgia what do you do? Seriously, don't you ever feel like giving up? And if so, what do you do?"

Reply:

The corporate interests are happy to exhaust you.  You are looking at the half empty cup with a hole in the middle that can never seem to fill up.  That's why you are exhausted.  Please, sister M, look at the cup half full.  We will fix the hole in the middle if we all work together. 

The public is generally disgusted with the Republican extremists, but they are likely to forget very soon, likely before the next congressional election.  One of our jobs is to keep the public apprised of the extremist BS so they don't forget.  I'm reading “Brave New World” right now.  The public can all just take some Soma and sleep with propaganda quietly playing in their dreams. 

What keeps me energized is my love for humanity and my strong sense of justice.  I assume it is the same for you.  I am repeatedly shocked at how corporations and governments can wantonly and brazenly break all the laws, and no one takes them to task for it.  For example, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act is still a law on the books, but no one enforces it anymore, and so we have "too big to fail."  Another example, the MERS database records real estate transactions electronically, but the County Recorders never receive the recording fees.  Yet, I can't find a single law that legally shifts the mandate to record RE transactions away from the County Recorder.  MERS just took the liberty, and county recorders just let it happen.  I guess they were just complying with an order from above. 

The Constitution talks about several different types of persons.  It talks about We the People, citizens, people, and persons.  The Court has clarified that of these 4, corporations are legal persons but not included in We the People, citizens or people. 

To me, one way to fix the hole in the middle of the cup is to take constitutional rights away from corporations.  In addition, all elections should be publicly funded and limited time, i.e. 6 weeks of campaigning, and corporations should be barred from campaign donations the way it used to be.  What changed is that corporations have patiently spent a century eking out human rights under the Constitution, every one granted by the Supreme Court.  The first human right they won was Due Process of Law in 1886.  The corporate lawyers argued that since everyone knows that corporations are “fictional persons” under the law, then the Constitution says in both the 5^th and the 14^th Amendments that every person has the right to due process of law.  So aren’t fictional persons also persons? the corporate lawyers argued.  And so a non-living aggregate of capital designed to maximize profits achieved their first human right. 

Over the years, corporations have been granted more and more human rights.  You can get a PDF timeline corporate rights here: http://movetoamend.org/timeline-personhood-rights-and-powers.  Interestingly, the corporate Right to Privacy was struck down by the Supreme Court because they distinguished between “person” and “personal.”  The Court reasoned that personal privacy was something only a human could have, but fictional persons were undoubtedly “persons.”  So now, although corporations have the Rights to Free Speech, to Right to be Indicted by a Grand Jury for crimes, not twice in jeopardy for the same crime, nor witness against itself, the Right to Speedy trials, Jury Trials, nor be deprived of Life, Liberty or Property, Equal Protection of the Laws, but NOT the Right to Privacy.  Pretty soon a corporate person is going to run for office! 

What we need to do is create a groundswell of public sentiment in favor of a constitutional amendment that makes it clear that only NATURAL PERSONS have Rights under the Constitution, and that money is NOT Free Speech.  Such an amendment will cut the root of corporate abuse.  Next (or simultaneously) we need another amendment that makes all elections to public office be publicly funded and limited to 6 weeks; and bar outside funding and partisan election commissions or partisan electronic voting machines. 

Right now, Move to Amend is doing a canvassing campaign called We the People Listen, in which we are going door to door in our neighborhoods and asking people what their biggest issues are and if they have noticed corporations impacting their lives?  We are asking rather than telling.  I’m excited to do this.  This is how we create coalitions in our neighborhoods.  This is how we create the groundswell of sentiment and keep people awake.  Http://movetoamend.org/listen

We can solve the issue non-violently with a constitutional amendment

The new fire in the growth of Liberty and Democracy initiated by the Arab Spring and OWS has accelerated the process of our sovereign People taking back control of our government from the corporate oligarchy. We will non-violently take back our government from within the system set up by our Founding Fathers by amending the Constitution.

The Supreme Court never actually ruled in their Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad 1887 that corporations are persons under the Constitution. The justices actually REFUSED to rule on that issue in this decision. Yet, the court reporter, a schill for the railroad barons, wrote it into his headnote, and as such, a century of court decisions have been based on this false precedent.  This is a 115 year-old corporate farce! 

In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled in Buckley v. Valeo that political money is speech and is protected under the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court made their worst decision to date, even worse than the Dred Scott decision. In Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court legislated from the bench that if corporations are persons under the Constitution (1887), and money is speech (1976), then corporations and trade unions have the right to free speech under the First Amendment and can spend unlimited amounts of undisclosed money to influence elections. This decision overturned a century of campaign finance reform, and was certainly the most anti-democratic decision in history. 

The Citizens United decision opened the floodgates for international corporations to buy our elections. It drove the final nail into the coffin of Democracy, which is now dead. We no longer live in a Republic with government by the People. Our elected representatives are beholding to the special interests that financed their election campaigns, and not to the electorate. The whole system is seriously, seriously flawed. 

We need to take our government back. The Declaration of Independence 1776 says, “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Short of an armed revolution, many people have concluded that we may be able to solve the issue non-violently with a constitutional amendment. A sudden rash of amendments have been proposed to Congress in both Houses. Most of them concern campaign finance reform. A couple of the proposed amendments go right to the crux of the issue. They propose that only human beings are persons under the law, and money is not speech.