Tuesday, December 30, 2008

End Corporate Personhood!

When we want to come up with truly terrible SCOTUS decisions, Dread Scott comes immediately to mind, but in terms of lasting and intractable damage to democratic governance, perhaps nothing exceeds Santa Clara County versus Southern Pacific. To effect foundamental structural change:
Vote here to End Corporate Personhood

How about this: if the gaggle of accountants and crooks that run your HMO decide they don't want to pay for your child's surgery and prosthesis and you sue, you are granted lawyer for lawyer and dollar for dollar equivalency with the corporation in court. They have 150 Harvard Law School lawyers working against you, you get 150 Harvard Law School lawyers; they spend $50,000,000 in defence, you get $50,000,000 to pursue your case all the way to SCOTUS.
If equivalency is good, let's have real equivalency.
From the citizen driven social action network, CHANGE.ORG

1590
END CORPORATE "PERSONHOOD"

An 1886 Supreme Court clerk's headnotes misreading (Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad) applied the 14th Amendment to corporations, extending to them all the rights, but none of the responsibilities, of human persons. The result has been the steady erosion of our democracy since then, and the consequent rise of the corporate state, which is primarily responsible for the military-corporate-media-academic complex, the expansion of the often brutal U.S. global empire (including the IMF, WTO, and World Bank) with its protecting militarism, and the destruction of our only planet's environment, all in the service of corporate capital's endless lust for power and profits. Corporate personhood is at the core of all of our problems. Ending it is the start of the way back to humane civilization.
- ED CIACCIO (RETIRED TEACHER/CURRENT ACTIVIST) Nov 26 @ 12:12PM PST



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