Corporations Are Not People by Jeff Clements

 Corporations Are Not People
Wednesday 1 February 2012
by: Thom Hartmann, Truthout | Book Review
Published on Truthout (http://www.truth-out.org)

Most Americans don't realize that the idea that "corporations are people" and "money is speech" are concepts that were never, ever considered or promoted or even passed by any legislature in the history of America. Neither were they ever promoted or signed into law by any president - if anything, the opposite, with presidents from Grover Cleveland in 1887 to Barack Obama in 2010 condemning them.

And Congress and the executive branch are the two of the three branches of government that are elected by the people, and thus the only two to which the founders of this country and the framers of the Constitution gave the right to create laws.

The Supreme Court is so much not supposed to create law, that Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution even says that it must operate "under such Regulations as the Congress shall make."

Nonetheless, as I pointed out in 2001 in my book "Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became People [4]," the Supreme Court itself has invented, out of whole cloth, the doctrines of corporations as people and money as speech.

Now comes into our political milieu a new and significant contribution to the literature of "corporate personhood" (available directly from Truthout [3]). Jeff Clements, a former assistant attorney general for Massachusetts, has written a brilliant and very accessible guide to the 2010 US Supreme Court Citizens United decision, how it came about and what can be done about it.

Most interestingly, Jeff's book also tracks the rise of corporate power over the past 40 years since Lewis Powell wrote his infamous memo to his friend and neighbor, who was the head of the US Chamber of Commerce - which led to everything from the Federalist Society to the Heritage Foundation.

Clements suggests that the modern revival of the doctrine of corporate personhood, which first appeared back in 1819 in the Dartmouth case, reached its 19th-century zenith with a misunderstood Santa Clara County, California, decision. It came into full flower in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling, which was, in fact, a direct child of that 1973 memo by Powell and subsequent corporate and Republican implementation of his recommendations.

"Corporations Are Not People" is accessible, readable, and fascinating. It's the book you want to hand to your co-worker or brother-in-law when they start spouting corporate drivel that they heard from Limbaugh or Romney. It's a nice, tight summary of the modern application of this doctrine, with a quick overview of its history, particularly its contemporary implications.

And Jeff hasn't just written a book.

With his friend and colleague John Bonifaz, he's co-founded freespeechforpeople.org [5] - one of a half-dozen or so very accessible and well-done efforts to build grassroots support for a constitutional amendment that repudiates the notion that corporations are people and that money is speech.

As the movement grows to take back our rights under the Constitution from the transnational corporations that have hijacked them (and taken our legislators captive), "Corporations Are Not People" (with a foreword by Bill Moyers) will become an increasingly important handbook to the movement. It brilliantly makes the case for us all to recite the mantra, "Corporations are not people, and money is not speech!" and then to do something about it.


Thom Hartmann interviews Jeff Clements, Part I

Thom Hartmann interviews Jeff Clements, Part II


This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License [6].

Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/corporations-are-not-people/1328107954

Links:
[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/12093
[2] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/12093
[3] https://members.truth-out.org/bgift70-gift/choose-type-donation
[4] https://members.truth-out.org/bgift23-gift/choose-type-donation
[5] http://www.freespeechforpeople.org
[6] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/
[7] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail
[8] http://www.truth-out.org/content/thom-hartmann
[9] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[10] https://members.truth-out.org/donate

Professor Kevin Anderson - Climate Change: Going Beyond Dangerous

For a clear explanation of where we are right now concerning climate change, check out this hour-long presentation by Prof. Kevin Anderson, climate scientist from the University of Manchester. This comes from the blog Climate Code Red, whose subtitle reads: "We face a climate emergency which requires actions at emergency speed far beyond "business as usual" and "politics as usual" to bring a rapid transition to a post-carbon, safe-climate future." Available at http://climatecodered.blogspot.com/2011/12/professor-kevin-anderson-climate-change.html.

Houston Hooker and Edd Bass

In this video,Arthur Potts in his TED TALK, goes over how he is trying to change the way restaurants are operating by making them more Eco friendly and creating less waste to go to the dumps. In one of his restaurants that he talks about, he explains how the kitchen itself is in the front of the restaurant instead of the back so people can choose how much food they want to consume there so there is not a lot of waste. Also other very important things that he has in his restaurants are reconditioned and reused items, worm farms, co0mpost bins, water tracks to make the water cleaner to reuse. Another restaurant that he owns uses the water channels temperature and current to power the entire restaurant's appliances, such as air conditioning. His vision is to encourage restaurants to create less waste and recycle all items that can be recycled. During his TED TALK, he explained how this was possible so that others can follow in his footsteps to creating a more sustainable future for restaurants.

Electric Cars

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNeEVkhTutY

The Nissan Leaf represents the future of cars. Its electric and sustainable build contributes to sparing our environment. It has no tail pipe, so its not letting out any bad fuels, it runs on an ion battery and much more. It is a 100% electric, no gas car. If we aren't releasing the burning gas into the air, we aren't polluting the air through cars anymore. So why not do this for every car? If every car was electric the amount of fossil fuels going into the air would lessen greatly. These fossil fuels are what are causing problems such as global warming (as shown in this video) and if these fossil fuels stop coming into our environment at an unnatural rate, then global warming, and other things, would be much less of a problem. The fossils fuels are releasing the CO2 very very quickly and this heavy amount of CO2 is trapping heat and polluting our world. The less were releasing these fuels, the less were contributing to the pollution and the more were sustaining this world. Electric cars needs to be the future of cars if we want to sustain our world and create a safe environment for the future generations.

Building a New Green Economy- David W. Orr

In the video, “Building: A New Green Economy” by David Orr, he discusses how before our economic downturn, we were much more wealthy than we thought, and we lost it all very quickly. As a result, Orr wants to find environmental alternatives quickly and in inexpensive ways in order to withstand any problems presented in the future. Currently 7 billion tons of carbon are released into the air each year and the amount of carbon eliminated per dollar spent will either make or break our strive to obtain alternative energy resources. The author all states how we must become more self efficient and find new technology to start a new revolution and bring us back to prosperity and fairness. The main argument that he presents in the video is the need to bring all levels of sustainability into one project containing agriculture, urban renewal, education, and climate neutrality. The way this will happen is by having a downtown be a large part of the driving economy and build a green belt surrounding it. By doing so, we will have a cheap fossil fuel economy and the town will move to carbon neutrality. Orr finally concludes his speech by convincing the audience that we need to envision a better world that is not necessarily that same world we grew up in, but one that will be sustainable for everyone in the future.

Stephanie Kerbis and Gino Inzerillo

To imagine a sustainable future for the planet and its inhabitants is not an easy task at the present moment. However, when looking to implement change the corporate structure of capitalistic society seems to be an obvious and ever more accessible solution in the current state of the economy. As corporate giants look to win over every aspect of the consumer market, the role that each company plays as a sustainable part of the community is becoming ever more important. With the goal of the corporation in mind, it is important to take notice of how effectively and genuinely a company implements sustainable ideology. Cemex, the company we chose to analyze, is making conscious and genuine efforts to remedy realistic ecological problems in society.

"Sustainability is central to our business strategy and one of the keys to our future growth. As the largest concrete producer in the world, we have both a responsibility and a great opportunity to help lead the transition to a truly sustainable construction industry. That, in turn, would be a critical element of a low carbon economy."

Lorenzo H. Zambrano
Chairman of the Board and
Chief Executive Officer

Second nature is a nonprofit organization that is working to create a sustainable future by transforming higher education. At this moment, college students make up around 2% of the country's population. However, college student are the key to creating a sustainable future. If college students are given knowledge and skills for living a sustainable life they will be able to generate ideas that are beneficial to society. Currently 673 colleges are apart of the ACUPCC and are integrating the ideas of a green society in their curriculums. Hopefully this green trend will surpass the college student population and expand worldwide.

Second Nature

American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment

Santa Clara's Sustainability Practices