Movement
28 And The Health Of
The American Republic
By Case Wagenvoord
21 February,
2008
Countercurrents.org
Cynics tell us Washington D.C. is an open septic tank overflowing with the raw sewage of corruption. In truth, it is a bit more sophisticated than this. Granted, raw sewage is pumped into the beltway via open trenches that run from the country’s power centers. But, instead of pouring into the Capitol, it is first pumped into the K Street Sewage Treatment Plant. There it is sanitized and deodorized before being piped into the Halls of Congress disguised as campaign contributions. It is still sewage, but, it smells nicer
The short answer to this mess is public funding of elections campaigns. On the surface it seems to offer much. By freeing the congress from the multiple snares of corporate purse strings, Congress might start representing the public interest. As it stands now, every time an elected official speaks of our national interests or national security, “national” is simply a code word for “corporate”. The system is gamed to minimize public influence on policy.
There are a few obstacles to this ever happening. First, Congress has a vested interest in the present system. It is a system that favors incumbents. An incumbent is a known quality who is in a position to do favors for his corporate benefactors. A challenger is an unknown quantity who can do nothing for the corporate overlords until elected. And there is no guarantee the challenger will be elected. Therefore, the lion’s share of corporate sludge goes to the incumbent. Public funding of campaigns would level the playing field for both incumbent and challenger.
But let us assume that Congress was struck blind on the road to Damascus and was seized with such an intense desire to serve to the public interest that a campaign reform bill is actually passed and was signed into law.
Before the ink was even dry on the bill, our corporatist oligarchy would go screaming to the nearest federal court claiming that the bill violated its First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Money talks, and if our corporate patrons aren’t allowed to speak through their wallets, they are being unconstitutionally silenced.
The argument would work, because under our current system, a corporation is a person.
People assume that corporate personhood was the result of a Supreme Court decision. In truth, the court made no such decision. The question of personhood arose when the court considered an appeal of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. The focus of the case was the taxation of railroad properties. As the case worked its way through the lower courts, the question of whether corporations were persons protected by the 14th Amendment was argued.
However, before oral arguments began before the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite stated, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question of whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment of 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 of the opinion that it does.”
Because formal arguments had not begun, Waite’s remark was a non-binding statement that had no bearing on the outcome of the case. The question of corporate personhood was never mentioned in the court’s written decision. The court limited its decision to the question of taxing corporate property.
However, the court clerk, when writing the header, or summary, of the case stated that, “defendant corporations are persons…”
Thus, was corporate personhood born.
The principle is so engrained in legal precedence that a judicial reversal is virtually impossible. This is why it is time to initiate Movement 28.
The next amendment to the Constitution will be the 28th Amendment. There are a lot of folks who would like to make this the Marriage Amendment that would restrict marriage to an unholy union of men and women, thus assuring the health and well-being of domestic violence.
However, the Republic would be better served if the 28th Amendment was the one that stripped corporations of their personhood. This would mean that instead of rights, corporations would only have privileges granted them by their charters, which are issued by the state. If corporations failed to behave, said charters could be revoked.
But, why stop at stripping corporations of their personhood. It is not enough to pump out the sewage. We have to disinfect the place as well.
For twenty-three years, Robert Hinkley was a corporate attorney. He left corporate practice because he’d become convinced that corporate law makes it impossible for corporations to behave responsibility. The law says that a corporation has but one obligation, and that is to make money for its shareholders. Consequently, shareholders could sue the corporation were it to behave responsibly, by its workers a living wage if this ate into corporate profits. Hinkley’s proposal is to change corporate law to read:
The duty of directors henceforth shall be to make money for the shareholders, but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, public health and safety, dignity of employees and the welfare of the community in which the company operates.
Hell, let’s add this wording to our 28th Amendment!
That our amendment would raise some corporate hackles is an understatement. Already, I hear lamentations about the sanctity of private property, etc. A very compelling argument could be made that the ownership of corporate property is so diffused amongst shareholders that it is a misnomer to call it private property. Since corporate property exists at the pleasure of the State through the granting of a corporate charter, it is more akin to quasi-public property than private property.
I admit this is heresy, but given rate at which corporations are eating us alive, I think some healthy heresy is called for.
This brings us back, in a full circle, to our corrupted Congress. If corporations were stripped of their personhood, a campaign finance reform bill that eliminated corporate money from the electoral process would be better protected from a court challenge. There is no guarantee this would clean up the system. All it would do is increase the probability that it would be cleaner than it is today.
As of this date, Movement 28 stands a snowball’s chance in Hell of seeing the light of day. However, as our corporations continue to move us closer to financial ruin through their inability to deal with deregulation, and as they continue to degrade the environment, the temperature in Hell may start to fall. This is why it might behoove Progressives that start a grass-roots murmur in this direction.
Sure, it looks hopeless, but I.F. Stone addressed this when he wrote:
The only fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing—for the sheer fun of it—to go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.
Peace.
Case Wagenvoord blogs at http://belacquajones.blogspot.com.
