January 18, 2011 12:44 AM UTC

"Wal-Mart is Not a Person"

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• by: Mike Collins

Thom Hartmann writes an excellent weekly installment in chapters, this particular one is Chapter 10 from his new book, “Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country.” The chapter is a summation of the corporate personhood debacle, it’s historical perspective and its conservative origins.  Me thinks that small goverment is code for less democracy and more corporate/theocratic power.  The “Conservative Worldview” is at least a triple if not an outright out of the park home run.  MC

A Historical Perspective

The Founders of this nation were so wary of corporate power that when the British Parliament voted to give a massive tax break- through the Tea Act of 1773-to the East India Company on thousands of tons of tea it had in stock so that the company could wipe out its small, entrepreneurial colonial competitors, the colonists staged the Boston Tea Party.

This act of vandalism against the world’s largest transnational corporation, destroying more than a million dollars’ worth (in today’s money) of corporate property, led the British to pass the Boston Ports Act of 1774, which declared the Port of Boston closed to commerce until the city paid back the East India Company for its spoiled tea. It was an economic embargo like we declared against Cuba, Iraq, and Iran, and it led the colonists straight into open rebellion and the Revolutionary War.

Thus the Framers of our Constitution intentionally chose not to even use the word corporation in that document, as they wanted business entities and churches to be legally established at the state level, where local governments could keep an eye on them.

Throughout most of the first 100 years of our nation, corporations were severely restricted so that they could not gain too much power or wealth. It was illegal for a corporation to buy or own stock in another corporation, to engage in more than one type of business, to participate in politics, and to even exist for more than 40 years (so that the corporate form couldn’t be used by wealthy and powerful families to amass great wealth in an intergenerational way and avoid paying an estate tax).

All of that came to an end during the “chartermongering” era of the 1890s when, after Ohio prepared to charge John D. Rockefeller with antitrust and other violations of the corporate laws of that state, he challenged other states to broaden and loosen their laws regarding corporate charters. A competition broke out among, primarily, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Delaware, which Delaware ultimately won by enacting laws that were the most corporate-friendly in the nation. This is the reason why today more than half of the NYSE-listed companies are Delaware corporations.

The Conservative Worldview

In part, this belief is derived from a more fundamental-and insidious-belief that political power in the hands of average working people is dangerous and destabilizing to America; this is the source of the antipathy of such conservatives to both democracy and labor unions. They believe in “original sin”-that we’re all essentially evil and corruptible (because we came out of the womb of a woman, who was heir to Eve’s apple-eating)-and therefore it’s necessary for a noble, well-educated, and wealthy (male) elite, working behind the scenes, to make the rules for and run our society.

Among the chief proponents of this Bible-based view of the errancy of average working people are the five right-wing members of the current U.S. Supreme Court-John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy-who have consistently worked to make America more hierarchical, only with a small, wealthy “conservative/corporate” elite in charge instead of a divinely ordained Pope.

Sorry about the link:

Chapter 10

http://www.truth-out.org/wal-m…

All the Chapters:

http://www.truth-out.org/thom-…