Newspeak/Groupthink/LIES LIES LIES: Election Season Brings Out the Truth

Why are reporters such pansies?

Corporate Personhood

from VoteNader.org

In 1886 the Supreme Court, in the case of in the pivotal case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, was interpreted to have ruled that corporations were “persons”—before women were considered persons under the 14th amendment to have the right to vote.

Ever since, corporations have enjoyed most of the same constitutional rights granted to real people.

But corporations are not humans. They don’t vote. They don’t have children. They don’t die in Iraq.

The people who work for the corporations are of course real people, but the corporate “entity” should never be given equal constitutional rights to real human beings.

Even Business Week magazine, in a 2000 editorial, declared that “corporations should get out of politics.”

We cannot have equal justice under law between real people and corporations like Exxon Mobil.

Multinational corporations can be in 1000 places around the world at the same time obstructing governments, states, buying and renting politicians, and going to Washington to get bailed out by taxpayers.

Congress did not legislate corporate personhood. The courts performed this jolting display of runaway activism all by themselves.

The courts destroyed the semblance of equal protection under law because there is no way even an individual billionaire can approximate the raw power of these large corporations with their privileged immunities, and their control over technology, capital and labor.

Nader/Gonzalez will work to end corporate personhood.

Nader/Gonzalez will work to subordinate the artificial corporate entity to the constitutional sovereignty of the people.

Right now it is the reverse. The sovereignty of the people is subordinated to the sovereignty of the giant multinational corporations.

But the constitution still reads, “we the people”, not we the corporations.

Corporations were chartered in the early nineteenth century by state governments to be our servants, not our masters.

They are now are masters.

Time to restore the supremacy of real people.
References:

* Unequal Protection by Thom Hartmann
* Taming the Giant Corporation
* The Corporation
* Center for Corporate Policy
* Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy

Kansas City Power and Light

The Cordish Company (wikipedia entry), responsible for the Power and Light District. You should check out the "shopping mall" of bars they have setup there, it's ridiculous, and the parking is horrible.

Civics Quiz

I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
- Thomas Jefferson

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
- Abraham Lincoln

Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.
- Woodrow Wilson

The citizens of the United States must control the mighty commercial forces which they themselves called into being.
- Theodore Roosevelt

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
- Dwight Eisenhower

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves - and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.
- Thomas Jefferson

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Civics Quiz

Which of the following candidates for President of the United States best reflects values expressed above?

a) John McCain
b) Hillary Clinton
c) Barack Obama
d) Ralph Nader

The answer?

d) Ralph Nader
(voteNader.org)

Wal-Mart Candid Video Archives Available

(Wall Street Journal)
"For nearly 30 years, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employed a video-production company," Flagler Productions Inc. "to capture footage of its top executives, sometimes in unguarded moments. Two years ago, the retailing giant stopped using the tiny company."

"In recent months, Flagler has opened its trove of some 15,000 Wal-Mart tapes to the outside world, with an eye toward selling clips. The material is proving irresistible to everyone from business historians and documentary filmmakers to plaintiffs lawyers and union organizers."

Among the revealing moments: A former executive vice president and board member challenges store managers in 2004 to continue his work opposing unionization. Male managers in drag lead thousands of co-workers in the company's corporate cheer. In another meeting, managers mock foolish or dangerous use of a product sold in its stores. In 1991, founder Sam Walton describes Hillary Clinton, then a Wal-Mart director, as "one of us."

The best part, maintains plaintiffs lawyer Gene P. Graham Jr., is that "Wal-Mart has no control over this stuff."

Wal-Mart isn't pleased. "It's difficult to understand how the company could now sell to third parties the material we paid it to produce on our behalf," says a Wal-Mart spokeswoman. "Needless to say, we did not pay Flagler Productions to tape internal meetings with this aftermarket in mind." She adds that the company is "reviewing our legal options."

In a Jan. 14 letter to Flagler, Marshall S. Ney, a lawyer for Wal-Mart, said the retailer has "claims to rights in the video library" and the film transcripts.





Huffington Post
http://walmartwatch.com/
http://wakeupwalmart.com/