Ha! It thinks it's people!

This story reminds me of a 'Simpsons' episode in which Bart's teacher says to an animal, "Ha! He thinks he's people!" In this story, it's a corporation that thinks it's people - and a federal judge was happy to oblige.

It's often argued that a corporation is really just a group of people doing business. If it was simply a group of people, corporations wouldn't be used as much by individuals to protect their own assets and asses. A corporation is actually a special type of entity that is supposed to have no personhood or human rights whatsoever.

But in America, it often does. In 1886 the Supreme Court declared in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that corporations are people. Chief Justice Morrison Waite said that "the court does not wish to hear" whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to corporations as it does to people, because "we are all of the opinion that it does." There was no legal basis for this declaration, and the court offered none. The statement was not considered a binding precedent, but it set the stage for later corporate-centered thinking - from the robber baron era to today.

Jurists have yet to find any legal basis for this reasoning. When someone says corporations should enjoy the same rights as people, the reason is always the same: They have rights because they do. It's so because it's so. The fact of the matter is, however, corporations have no constitutional rights. None. Zero.

Not long ago, 2 of the 3 judges on a U.S. appeals court ruled that 4 men held at the Guantanamo Bay death camp were not legally people - because they were not American citizens and because Gitmo is not on U.S. soil - so they had no human rights to violate. But while individuals are denied human rights, corporations are granted human rights out of whole cloth. Last year, U.S. District Judge Paul Barbadoro - who was appointed by the elder Bush - gave rights to corporations that exceed even those of American citizens.

Barbadoro's ruling was a conservative ruling and an activist one - and it harms consumers. He struck down a New Hampshire law that protected doctors and patients by preventing greedy pharmaceutical companies from learning what drugs and the amount of drugs physicians prescribed. The law was there to stop drug companies from pressuring doctors to prescribe their wares - but now that law has been gutted. With it, patient confidentiality is gutted too.

Clearly, the Constitution gives New Hampshire the right to have such a law. It's a state decision, not that of some bossy federal regime that has Coprorate (sic) America in its dick pocket. The judge's excuse was that drug corporations have free speech rights because corporations are people, and that the state law infringed on them. Even the free speech argument is bizarre, because the law didn't actually stop drug companies from saying anything.

Now a federal appeals court is reviewing Barbadoro's wayward ruling.

The Constitution lists our rights so that we may be protected from oppressive government and by its equally wicked twin sibling, Big Business. These twin forces of loom and doom overlap heavily today, as each does the bidding of the other.

With corporate-centered policymaking the rule today, corporations are actually treated as if they have more rights than people. You can't grow your own medical marijuana for personal use, but a corporation that produces synthetic drugs can make doctors tell them whether they're prescribing their product. A corporation can buy every radio station in the area (save some noncommercial allocations), each with several thousand watts or more, but you can't even set up your own transmitter that broadcasts with only one watt.

If a corporation wants rights like a person, it should be punished like a person. I'm in favor of holding corporations' boards of directors personally responsible for criminal and civil penalties levied against their business. That these powerful individuals escape such penalties only underscores how corporations are often used to save a person's hide.

But corporations are not people. Even if they're made up of people. Am I an atom just because I'm made up of atoms?

If I had to support one and only one new amendment to the Constitution, I think an amendment abolishing corporate personhood would be it. It's been proposed by others before, and any national populist campaign should make it a priority. If I had to write the amendment anew, it would say that:

1) Corporations shall not be treated as having the same rights as people.

2) This shall not prevent corporate board members from being penalized if the corporation is held liable in any criminal or civil case.

3) This also shall not prevent the free flow of ideas or consumers' choices. Under this clause, my amendment can't be used as a back door to violate individual rights by imposing censorship or some nanny state bullshit.

4) The government would still be empowered to limit media concentration using rules like TV and radio station ownership caps.

This amendment would be a nifty tool in the people's arsenal against Corporate America's hoarding of power. This would make it clear that a corporation can't think it's people any longer.

(Source: http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkid=51986)