Posted on 03/07/2018 6:46:00 PM PST by null and void
Somewhat unintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. How exactly did corporations come to be understood as “people” bestowed with the most fundamental constitutional rights? The answer can be found in a bizarre—even farcical—series of lawsuits over 130 years ago involving a lawyer who lied to the Supreme Court, an ethically challenged justice, and one of the most powerful corporations of the day.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Hopefully the Supreme Court decision on agency fees will bring that amount down a bit.
At least the legal amount.
Good post.
I always thought the death penalty might be appropriate for some corporations...........................
That was good, thanks for posting!
So there were no criminal charges over Deepwater horizon?
Me too!
The Bell System didn’t get killed, merely dismembered...
An excellent presentation.
Huh, darned if I remember. Gimme a few...
Corporations have destroyed the USA. They are just bureaucracies with ruthless power.
Transocean received an early partial insurance settlement for total loss of the Deepwater Horizon of US $401 million around 5 May 2010. Financial analysts noted that the insurance recovery was likely to outweigh the value of the rig (although not necessarily its replacement value) and any liabilities – the latter estimated at up to US$200 million.Apparently not, the corporations had massive penalties, but despite "reckless" and "negligent" actions no criminal penalties.Litigation, ultimate roll call of damage, and the scope of final insurance recovery were all unknown as of June 2010, with analysts reporting that the aftermath was of unprecedented scale and complexity compared to previous disasters which themselves took many years to unfold and resolve. A July 2010 analysis by the Financial Times on the aftermath cited legal sources as saying that "at some point the scale of the litigation becomes so large that it really is novel", that "the situation is likely to be complicated further because the variety of probable cases means it will be hard to aggregate them into so-called class actions" and that there was "no way to put this in historical context because we have never faced anything like this before". As with the Exxon Valdez disaster, litigation was being discussed in terms of a 20-year timescale.
In January 2013, Transocean agreed to pay US$1.4 billion for violations of the US Clean Water Act. BP had earlier agreed to pay $2.4 billion but faced additional penalties that could range from $5 billion to $20 billion. In September 2014, Halliburton agreed to settle a large percentage of legal claims against them by paying $1.1 billion into a trust by way of three installments over two years. On 4 September 2014, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier ruled BP was guilty of gross negligence and willful misconduct under the Clean Water Act (CWA). He described BP's actions as "reckless," while he said Transocean's and Halliburton's actions were "negligent." He apportioned 67% of the blame for the spill to BP, 30% to Transocean, and 3% to Halliburton. BP issued a statement strongly disagreeing with the finding, and saying the court's decision would be appealed.
On 8 December 2014, The US Supreme Court rejected BP's legal challenge to a compensation deal over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The settlement agreement had no cap, but BP initially estimated that it would pay roughly $7.8bn to compensate victims.
There is no one to prosecute if an injustice is done.
There is a documentary called "The Corporation" that brings all this up. By giving corporations personhood status under the 14th, corporations can behave like sociopaths as they can use the Constitution to buttress any of their actions, and never be prosecuted because of the protection that incorporation provides its current members.
Certain individuals within a corporation can be found guilty of individual crimes but they can avoid punishment if the actions can be shown to be corporate decisions.
And now that corporations are going full retard SJW they are going to use their "free speech" dollars to swamp conservative voices.
Someday not too far in the future we may start wishing that McCain/Feingold had not been overturned.
I agree with you. It is an archaic term that is meant to prejudice the listener to whatever statement follows.
There is no law against using it, it's just bad taste like a bit of vomit in the mouth.
I helped a friend in editing a book he wrote about early golf courses in Florida. He used the term to describe most of the men who were pioneers in their respective fields and were very wealthy. Not a robber or a baron in the group. It is a position of envy and distrust of success. I talked him into using "entrepreneurs," although I never saw the finished product.
These short videos (just 3-6 min. long each) are some of the most brilliant, pithy, and informative summaries on how we as conservatives view these things, and contrasts them with the views of the Left. (I was so impressed with these (I got a DVD for joining BillWhittle.com that I was going to spend money and buy a dozen of them to give to people as gifts, until I found out he thought these arguments and ideas were so important that he had to make them available to everyone for free on YouTube...and I agree with him)
I have to disagree with you most fervently, donna.
See my post at #32. I feel that you see it as a glass half empty...I see it as a glass half full...:)
But is the corporation Penske material?
William O. Douglas thought trees and birds should have constitutional rights.
Thanks again!
O.K. now I haven’t read the article yet but
1) Will there be a new apocalyptic movie that declares “Soylent Green is Corporations!” and
2) If Corporations make Soylent Green out of Corporations, is that like Googling “Google”? and
3) Will this cause the multi-verse to implode?
(asking for a friend)
What is American Corporatism?
Frontpagemag.com ^ | 13 Sept 2002 | Robert Locke
The first thing big business has in common with big government is managerialism. The technocratic manager, who deals in impersonal mass aggregates, organizes through bureaucracy, and rules through expertise without assuming personal responsibility, is common to both.
The second thing big business likes about big government is that it has a competitive advantage over small business in doing business with it and negotiating favors. Big government, in turn, likes big business because it is manageable; it does what it is told. It is much easier to impose affirmative action or racial sensitivity training on AT&T than on 50,000 corner stores.
This is why big business has become a key enforcer of political correctness.
(snip)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1036236/posts
Since it’s the consumer who ends up paying the taxes through the pricing mechanism, I might be for zero corporate taxes, too.
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