Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer
A slightly edited (for time) Jay Leno interview of Bill Maher (approximately 10 minutes) follows a very political and oftentimes funny Leno monologue (5 minutes). Subjects covered by Leno include Senator Vitter’s DC Madam problems, Condi Rice and Dick Cheney golfing, Bill’s backing of Hillary for president, Scooter Libby, and Al Gore. Meanwhile, Maher worries that Democrats might blow the 2008 election by nominating Hillary. And while Maher claims to never have endorsed a candidate, he calls Edwards/Obama a “no-lose ticket” and a “winning ticket.”
Sorry Alan, I need the soapbox for a minute 😉
There was an article yesterday on Raw that fell down the memory hole.
IMO, this is probably the most important thing that has happened since the 1890s as far as getting rid of corporate personhood in our Government, which they never had that right in the first place.
This is a chance for Libs and real conservative to get together on a common goal, to force the Supremes to rule that corporations are not people, therefore cannot be involved in the political process.
Snip
See how the Corporate media misrepresents the story from the get go ?
“Conservative Pennsylvanians Pass ‘Radical’ Laws Defying U.S. Constitution”
I’m convinced that if any of the current candidates gets elected it’s a NO WIN for the United States.
Thanks, Floridiot. Good news and stinko media.
Thom Hartmann has a very good article on the corporate personhood on his website.
I found it enlightening anyway
Link
I have a confession.
I’m so hot for Thomas Paine it almost makes me black out sometimes.
You’ll agree there is a problem here. 🙁
If you mean that Paine is dead so you can’t date him then yes, there is a problem 😛
That’s just precisely what I do mean! It seriously sucks!
And… Alan! I have a plan. A troll mitigation plan. Every couple of days we do a post entitled RFK Jr IS GOD! or RFK Jr CURES CANCER! or AL GORE CURES AIDS AND WINS WWII ALL OVER AGAIN! It will keep the trolls busy all the way through the next “election”. Guaranteed.
Obama and Edwards would be a winning ticket, but they are both on record for continuing to cover up 9/11. The obvious military standdown, which is the most obvious clue to government participation, has been completely overlooked in their answers to questions about the events.
The upcoming election will be a pulling down of the republican knickers and paddling their little hineys til they are red state red.
The dems don’t have near as much to do with their upcoming wins as the republicans do.
RFK Jr IS SMARTER THAN THE BUSHIES!
RFK Jr CURES CANCER!
AL GORE CURES AIDS!
AL GORE WINS WWII ALL OVER AGAIN!
Are you hot for me yet 99? 🙂
.
.
Linky poo
So I was off by a decade on my years above.
You gotta couch it in more Painesque terms, Dredd. 😆
HEY DREDD !, I have a question for ya.
Could a good lawyer for the people object to the judge about a lawyer representing a corporation proposing that they are an artificial person claiming to be a natural person in their claim and that they have no argument re the fourteenth amendment ?
Or is that a which came first, the chicken or the egg argument ?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that corporations can only argue financial elements in court and cannot argue human elements because they are not a natural person.
Does that make sense to you ?
There’s an unnatural split in my side now. I think I have to go lie down.
Yeah I see your point 99, if this thing ever went to the supremes the corporations would have liars er lawyers lined up clear over to the AEI building with money hanging out of their pockets as they came out.
We The People wouldn’t stand a chance.
I guess we’ll just have to be Revolting to them then 😉
Bill’s “no lose ticket†is very clearly a “no win ticketâ€. Thanks to HAVA and the EAC it set up as the Dictator of your “democracy”. The EAC and the EAC alone now decides who wins “elections”. The powers that be (Once again the EAC) will never credit anybody for being “elected” president who does not support their Middle East War for Oil. Bill’s “no lose ticket†is eliminated from contention by their positions on that one issue alone. Always remember it is not the voters who decide “electionsâ€. The decider of our elections is the EAC who is credited with “counting†your votes. There is no need to worry about getting your votes correct. If you make mistakes the EAC will correct them for you. That’s why they called it the “Help America Vote Act “. As an American citizen you are no longer needed in the voting process. The EAC will handle those things for you until they decide they no longer care to act as the Dictator of your “democracyâ€!
Oh shit!, it’ has never been argued yet according to Mr. David Corten’s “Post Corporate World, Life after Capitalism”
Here is the part where “We The People” will eat shit and die because the Santa Clara Co. vs Southern Pac. decision left a huuge contradiction.
my linky poo above;
A Bush v Gore remake IMO
So corporations have the right of free speech, but they can’t be put in jail if they scream “Fire!” in a crowded theater, only fined money at the worst. Hmmm. There are a number of things wrong with this picture, not the least of which is that that is precisely what has been happening in the case of the CMSM. Man! Talk about down the rabbit hole! I’m shocked! Shocked! Shocked and appalled!!!
Hey all,
I would love to drop some bombs on some rightwinger blog sites. Anyone know of any good ones? Cause
You might not know this but I’ve heard that Al Gore lost his right testicle and now all he has is the LEFT.
czaragorn, check this out, fukin Sanjay Gupta had the right facts on his Michael Moore hit piece a full 10 days before Moore came on there and still used the wrong ones.
ALAN!, do your duty, sick-em man
Link
your right czar, how can a corporation have the same rights as an individual…there we go, they argue as an individual entity like YMCA, unions and the sort.
But the way I see it, they are a for profit entity which should have no rights as persons…that would be the whole rub.
If the corporations won that case, then we would be able to put that corporation away if they started acting psychopathic towards another human?
that would get rid of about half of them , including military
Floridiot #1, #11
Good thoughts.
Here is the definition in a general way for the issue you are talking about:
(Link). The notion that a corporation is a “person” is a legal fiction. That is what the courts call it.
The constitutional rights of corporations are likewise, therefore, legal fiction.
Hey, in this age of deceit, fiction is what the government is fundamentally about.
American citizens can be branded “enemy combatant” by Bushie Thuh Grate and not have constitutional rights via due process to challenge the label, but corporations which are fantasy do have constitutional rights.
They are crazier than a room full of neoCon preachers and prostitutes.
Very difficult to weaken the hold corporations have on the government (i.e. fascism). One reason is the love of delusion:
(Arianna the Hot). Sorry 99, the blog is sooo sloooow today I fell in love for today with Arianna … will try again tomorrow. Love Dredd.
Oneguy #19
This is a right wing blog. Remember Dredd’s law.
I’ll try to contain my disappointment….
http://tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200770711023
TITUSVILLE — Florida Rep. Robert “Bob” Allen, R-Merritt Island, was arrested this afternoon at Veteran’s Memorial Park on East Broad Street for solicitation for prostitution.
He is currently being booked into Brevard County Jail in Sharpes. The charge is a second-degree misdemeanor, according to police.
According to police, the park was under surveillance today by a detail of undercover Titusville Police officers. Officers noticed Allen acting suspicious as he went in and out of the men’s restroom three times. Minutes later, he solicited an undercover male officer inside the restroom, offering to perform oral sex for $20.
Marzi @ #7
I am not sure what you are referring to. Obama and Edwards were not in a position to make anybody stand down on 9-11. Did either of them say they did not think the 9-11 Commission ( which Bush tried to kill in the crib ) was the be-all and end-all of investigations on the subject? Please supply your links or references. Thanks.
Dredd
So basically what I hear you are saying about Dredds law and Duverger’s Law, then what, the system is fucked? Unchangeable?
or we just need to extinguish one of the parties and start a new one
Rather the whole mess even this site is designed to be a dog and pony show (no offense brad), keeping all of us up in arms about a voting system that never worked any way and the power always rests in the palms of a few people that just might be decendents from lizards and alien dna spliced together. Yeah I think I’ll go with that one.
and one other thing if this is a right wing blog, gasp, what is a left wing blog?
Oneguy #27, #19
You asked:
I did not offer a solution, only an observation and a law.
You also asked “if this is a right wing blog, gasp, what is a left wing blog?”
Anyone who thinks they are right fits the bill don’t they? We think we are right. It is not a matter of right and left, it is a matter of right and wrong.
The new name for the blogs you want to “bomb” is wrong wing blogs.
It seems especially clear when one realizes that the wrong wing wants to elect none of the above as president. Like they say they did last time.
Hey, is anyone watching the night shift over at the Senate? Reid has placed the neoCons on the night shift and they are whistling in the dark.
Floridiot #11
You asked about the legal theories behind corporations, so I am going to offer you the economic theory behind the concept of a “corporation”, so that you are not dangling out there on one leg of the complete issue.
Consider that the original purpose for corporations is to promote prosperity, while allowing reasonable risk in place of catastrophic risk.
When I started a contracting business long ago, first as a subcontractor then later as a general contractor, I considered what business structure to use.
I naturally wanted to deal with risk, so I decided upon the corporate structure. It offers a structure where loss can me limited to the corporate assets, excluding personal assets of officers, directors, and stockholders.
The theory is that a person will not take risk and try to do something if they could loose everything in the process. Like a poker game where you can decide not to loose all, just ante up and bet as the scene unfolds. Fold up when you have a loosing hand.
If a corporation gets hit in the process of some economic process, it can go down without taking its officers, directors, and stockholders down with it to the point they all become bankrupt.
In general, a parnership or a sole proprietorship is not like that and much more is at risk.
It works because it stimulates the entrepreneurial spirit. These days it helps the small business mostly.
I was using that in my thinking already Dredd, thanks.
Because back in the day when, lets say you were a farmer, that would be considered a sole proprietorship, you would be put in debtors prison if you went broke and just before that under the Brit rule, you would be tied to a tree and whipped for going broke and then put to work for someone as an indentured slave until your punishment (debt) was worked off.
That’s where the argument whether the thirteenth amendment comes into play or not for the corporate side of the personhood argument, which doesn’t apply today IMO.
So therefore, if a Limited Liability corporation has no responsibilty under the law to follow natural persons law, the entity itself should not be guaranteed protections under the constitution, but the people inside of that entity would have constitutional rights separately when they are not working within that entity.
That’s how I would argue the case for the peoples side I guess with the sole proprietorship being a whole different argument.
(ow, that made my head hurt)
Corporations are different from Limited Liability Companies. You choose limited liability over no liability when you want to be certain to maintain control of your company. When it is a corporation, that cannot, lawfully, be guaranteed: your board can, essentially, take away your control. It’s all rigged to favor letting the individuals off the hook if they know how to squirm just right, but an LLC does not fall under the same laws as a corporation. It started out that corporations were separate ENTITIES from the persons who owned and ran them. Persons are also entities, but not all entities are persons. It’s that simple. This one distinction is what was blurred by the Court to provide the plutocrats with what they want.
Yeah it was supposed to read Limited Liability companies and corporations
Why I said that was because if they use that Limited Liability protection, they should give up their constitutional protections under the natural persons part of the arguement
Picky, picky
It’ll make yer head explode! That’s their stock in trade. Are we talking about a particular company, or just companies/corporations in general?
In general, the fix is pretty “simple”. Legislation.
Companies/corporations are ENTITIES, not persons.
Persons are entities AND persons.
Persons are covered by the Bill of Rights (in theory) and entities are not.
If you have to proceed with something with corporations being considered persons by the Court, while you want to get at the persons who run them, you have to “pierce the corporate veil” and that is not easy at all, so not easy as to be almost impossible when it’s a big corporation with a full board and the works. You have to go after the persons behind them by proving that they were acting unlawfully toward the corporation while acting through it.
If your purpose is to get corporations in general to stop being allowed to get away with shit under their corporate personhood, you gotta get Congress to close the loophole the Court opened.
The whole argument IMO will be about natural persons (entities,humans,people, etc.)vs artificial persons (corporations, entities, LLC’s, etc).
What I said in #30 will still hold true, I didn’t even bother to get into the semantics of it, that would take a whole lot of typing 😉
Well. Fine. I’m rusty as hell anyway, but… LLCs, at last count, do not enjoy this corporate personhood about which you complain. And the only reason the corporations do is because of a bad decision giving them the ability to buy government officials (freedom of speech, I think it was). Specifics can, however, vary from state to state… but I don’t THINK the LLCs got that federal personhood… irrespective of state. Could be that states are fucking with it to make that happen for LLCs too. Head exploding stuff like that happens every 13 seconds nowadays.
So. I’ll shut up now, and go back to watching the 9/11 videos on neufneuf. xoxox
99 you said, “Are we talking about a particular company, or just companies/corporations in general?”
Anything that isn’t a sole proprietorship that doesn’t follow the natural persons law that me and you have to follow should not have protections under the constitution/bill o rights as they are now officially an artificial person/entity.
That also would include the person working in that corporation/company/entity while ‘on the clock’. IMO
…if they only knew how to make that law without stuffing their pockets full of cash.
And I’m trying to stay away in my mind from the current way they interpret the constitution, I’m just trying to stick it in my head how to argue how it should be interpreted.
And if the LLC has protections that you or I do not enjoy then yes, they are now an artificial person.
Remember, I’m not talking about the way it is now, I’m talking about the way it should be after we the people win this argument.
…and the ‘on the clock’ thing would have to be separated from labor (w/human rights) to management (fuck em).
there is tons of semantics to be worked out
Okay. I guess I was so unclear because I’m already at “the way it should be’ in my head… not trying to get there. It appears we are in complete agreement. When we fix things, we just put it back to business entities are not persons. Period.
Floridiot #30, Agent 99 #31
Corporations are ancient entities, existing centuries before the United States came into existence:
(Wiki poo, emphasis added). See also Wiki poo on Corporations, where they have a picture of 1/8 share of the Stora Kopparberg mine, dated June 16, 1288.
In the US corporations are, in general, created by and governed by state law. There are a few federal corporations, e.g. The US Postal Service, which are created by federal law.
Under state law the incorporators can make it work any way they want to. They draft the Articles of Incorporation and the Bylaws. The bylaws govern the behavior of the corporation. Any form of government, from fascist to pure democracy can be fashioned.
They are alot like a political party, so, to put them all in one basket and do allie samie rhetoric about them is less than accurate.
Many entities that we think are good are actually corporations, some profit, and some non-profit.
And another thing, if a Corporation wins the same rights as humans, they would have to completely liquidate (die) after 30 years, about the same time as a sole proprietorship would be in existence, and not be allowed to re-use any of the liquidated money, property or goods for a similar venture because they are dead.
OOPS, I guess I didn’t refresh…mornin Dredd
Dredd, I’m only talking about Corporations allowed to do business within our borders…what some of the framers were trying to figure out at the onset.
I see we need anothr semantic..’For Profit Corporation’ 😀
Floridiot #44
The only problem is that our constitution says that the common law of England is to be followed to the extent relevant. That common law goes back thousands of years, and it includes aspects of corporate law.
I have perhaps an exiting idea for you. A movie called Juristic Person, the sequel to Jurassic Park.
You and 99 would star in it.
It would be about some of these creatures that go around eating up everything in sight.
Some would be friendly, however, and the adventure and plot would be how to tell which is which. And the consequences of mistakes as to which is which.
How sayest thou?
I’d sayeth that was another compromise that they wrote into the constitution under the Cincinnati or the federalists, that’s why “Red” Island and many others didn’t get in on the writing and why they sent Jefferson away to France at the time because, I believe he also thought that corporations should have a limited existence .
Horseshitith
And yes I would love to star in that movie, because I would eat everything up in sighteth.
You see, I was not trying to write the arguments for them, I was, in the most basic terms, trying to figure out how they MIGHT argue the argument.
I was saving the parsing and semantics for them to figure out.
Someone will get the bigith bucks for thateth.
Your new handle is now Captain Bringdown, because the people will get their ass kicked in court when this comes up, which I had assumed in the first place
“We The People” have always lived outside the aristocrats castle, every once in a while there is a hole in their fortification that we can poke through.
Lets hope that this is one of those times
It’s also too bad that the articles of confederation didn’t hang around a little longer either IMO.
We might have found out a better economic blueprint to work off of from one of the states being it was an experiment and all, instead we ended up with a semi-aristocratic monarchy with a bill of rights instead of a state run aristo-monarchy.
The common law was generally good law, improved by the bill of rights.
You are missing the obvious point that corporations are what the people that run them make them.
Bad people rob banks even tho the law against bank robbing is a good law, and a constitutional law.
You are a lot like a soldier in Baghdad who can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys cause they are all Iraqi folk.
“I am a corporation” and “I am an Iraqi” are meaningless terms unless and until one gets off their arse and finds out the real nitty gritty.
The gadfly party is growing by leaps and bounds, however, it will not address the problems in any manner other than “good enough for gummit work”.
And that is not a winning ticket. 🙂
OOh, had a nice lightning strike, the power went out for about an hour
I agree absolutely, even a good soldier or bad bank robber will use the rules given to them, good or bad.
But it still doesn’t prevent the fascists from sticking their noses into the peoples business.
Hopefully us “Gadflies” will get to the bottom of this problem before we have to be so revolting again 🙂
I hadn’t watched C-Span for a while, this morning I did and the old ladies and gents calling in are getting thoroughly freaked out so maybe there is hope.
BTW Dredd did you see Cheneys new privilege over on Raw Story ?
I think it’s called “Cheneys Special Privilege” too
WTF ?
I’M REVOLTING!