A New Way - Corporations are Not Persons

Most Americans have taken at least passing interest in the early "debates" among the plethora of self-declared Republican and Democratic candidates. In deference to those readers who have truly prepared and debated in their lives, ... these are pitiful excuses for debates, and truly do not rise to a level where they deserve that name. What they have truly revealed, I am sad to say, is that the two parties with which we have lived for so long, can not, or will not, allow a reasoned public discussions of the true issues which face us. I believe they will not, because the very issues they should and must address are of great interest to the American People. That in itself would not keep them from discussing them. But the interests of politicians and their clients, differ from the interests of America and Americans.

This is the first of a series of articles to address the many disconnects between what America must be about, and what American politicians seem driven to do instead. This is the first of a series of articles exploring creation of The Independence Party.

Corporations, mere abstractions of business thinking, ... relationships between investors who are persons themselves, were granted "personhood" even before the argument of a case before the Supreme Court of the United States, SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PAC. R. CO., 118 U.S. 394 (1886) . The year is noteworthy as roughly the beginning of the Gilded Age of the Robber Barons in Big Oil, Big Railroads, Big Banks, and Big Steel.

The ruling is interesting for declaring that corporations deserve the Constitutional protections as persons; indeed the arguments for and against were never presented. Supreme Court Justice Morrison Remick Waite pronounced from the bench, according to the court record, that "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth 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 opinion that it does." And so, without so much as a Constitutional amendment, nor Congressional legislation, nor Executive order, corporations attained the same rights that American Citizens, Human Beings, ... had died so often to achieve.

Did corporations toast the occasion? Did they run into the streets and hug one another to celebrate? I know, ... ridiculous! Corporations are not persons, but rather constructs created by persons to effect ownership of interests and assets. "No!", some would say, ... "A corporation can own a corporation!" True, ... but at the end of the trail of droppings and documents which corporations leave and require to survive, there are investors who are, or were persons! Let's look at these two types of people separately with regard to their ownership of corporations.

Living persons who are owners of corporations and otherwise citizens

benefit personally from every aspect of the United States Constitution and its amendments. Owners' rights to vote, and speak, and associate, accrue to them as persons under the Constitution. Indeed the right to associate could be said to give rise to that person's ability to even participate in the ownership of a corporation. That a corporation could be recognized as a "person", would, in its most ridiculous iteration, ... make a single corporate shareholder the equivalent of two persons, under the SCOTUS ruling of 1886. Nothing, of course, would prohibit that owner from creating other corporations, and leveraging his money into the equivalent of many persons, avoiding the care and feeding, the housing, the education that accompanies true "persons" as you and I recognize them. And how, in the case of misdeeds, is a corporation to be punished? Jail, execution? No, ... fines are all that a corporation can yield. Persons pay the highest punishments, after all.

Even more obscene is the effect upon citizen standing under the Constitution that arises from Justice Waite's pronouncement. Much has been written about the three-fifths provision in the Constitution that diluted the personhood of slaves in particular. In a very real sense, this judicial precedent and its adherence in succeeding cases has performed an even more sinister dilution of the rights of citizens who are persons. While persons alone can vote, corporations can contribute to political campaigns in open and insidious ways that persons can not.

Therein arises the concern with corporations owned by dead persons. In truth, the dead, even the wealthy dead, must leave their possessions behind as they cross the river Styx . But a surrogate to the dead, a corporate trust, can be created to contain the assets of the dead, with instructions to contribute to causes and political interests long after the bones of the person whose intentions are expressed, have turned to dust. "So what!", say adherents to the "corporations as corpse" crowd. "Trusts drive the museums, and the arts, and municipal parks, and grants, and , .... ", they say, and they are correct.

But in the world of politics, which is a temporal pursuit, and affects only the living, I believe it is wholly inappropriate that the dead should rule with their remainders, ... for where is the end to that? In the end, ... the money they leave could build forever, and rule over us forever! While they relinquish their vote, it could be argued that they could select the only politicians from whom we could choose our elected representatives, by controlling the funding of elections.

And if you believe this is not possible for the dead to achieve, ... I assure you that it is already occurring. The disembodied corporations of the pharmaceutical and chemical and oil and financial industries already rule over who has the opportunity to run for office. There is no body, no corpse to be found, ... just groups of monied owners and officers who vote early, ... and then go to the office to forward donations to the politicos the corporations support. In effect, corporations allow shareholders and officers to vote twice, thrice, or even more times. And while they can not collaborate in their pricing of products, ... they are allowed under the law, to form non-profit trade organizations and support lobbyists and politicians whom they collectively believe serve their collective interests. Their industries grow as a result, and their boats all rise on the tide we taxpayers fund for them through their influence over our politicians.