[Corporations dont need pure food, clean air, or safe drinking
water, but they control our government and elections… and the
outcome is proving disastrous. ]
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HAS “CORPORATE PERSONHOOD” DELIVERED AMERICA TO THE BRINK OF
DICTATORSHIP? YOU BETCHA…  
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Thom Hartmann
December 6, 2023
The Hartmann Report
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_ Corporations don't need pure food, clean air, or safe drinking
water, but they control our government and elections… and the
outcome is proving disastrous. _

, Image by 1141718 from Pixabay

 

America is in the midst of a domestic political crisis with a literal
madman and his cult/Party — heavily supported by some of America’s
largest companies — threatening to turn America into a dictatorship.

As Yahoo news reports
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morning:

“Could a second Donald Trump
[[link removed]] presidency slide
into dictatorship? A sudden spate of dystopian warnings has got
America talking about the possibility less than a year before the US
elections.

“Dark scenarios about what could happen if the twice-impeached
Republican former president wins in 2024 have appeared in the space of
a few days in major US media outlets that include The Washington Post,
The New York Times and the Atlantic.”

So, where are we now and how the hell did we get here? It turns out we
are seeing the consequences of a corrupt, bribed Supreme Court from
over 150 years ago.

IT WAS A FRAUD AT THE TIME, THE RESULT OF A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE
HAVING BEEN BRIBED BY THE BIG RAILROADS, AND CONTINUES TO BE A FRAUD
TO THIS DAY. THIS DIDN’T ORIGINATE WITH AN AMERICAN BILLIONAIRE
PAYING OFF CLARENCE THOMAS; THAT’S JUST THE LATEST INCARNATION OF
IT.

Corporations are pouring increasingly large amounts of money into
politics, and like an invisible planet or black hole, it warps our
political system to the point it has brought us Donald Trump.

AND IT’S ALL BECAUSE OF A DOCTRINE CREATED OUT OF WHOLE CLOTH BY THE
US SUPREME COURT IN THE LATE 19TH CENTURY CALLED “CORPORATE
PERSONHOOD.” IT HAS BECOME ONE OF THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE FORCES IN
AMERICAN POLITICS.

The history is fascinating, and if we truly want to pull this horrible
weed out by the root, we have to understand where it first grew.

WHILE MUCH OF THE WORLD TRIES TO EMULATE THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT,
BECAUSE OF THIS DOCTRINE CREATED BY THE COURT, CONTEMPORARY AMERICA IS
MOVING IN THE DIRECTION OF MUSSOLINI’S CORPORATE-STATE PARTNERSHIP.

Executives from regulated industries are heading up the agencies that
regulate them. Other symptoms of increasing corporate control of the
nation include widespread privatization and so-called public-private
partnerships: euphemisms for shifting control of a commons’
resources (like water or electricity) from governments, responsive to
their voters, to the morbidly rich leaders of massive business
operations.

Since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court fully legalized
political bribery, corporations and their agents have become the
largest contributors to politicians, political parties, and so-called
“think tanks,” which both write and influence legislation.

THAT DISTINCTION BETWEEN CORPORATE CONTROL AND HUMAN CONTROL IS
ABSOLUTELY PIVOTAL: GOVERNMENTS THAT “DERIVE THEIR JUST POWERS FROM
CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED” SHOULD BE EXCLUSIVELY RESPONSIBLE
TO _CITIZENS AND VOTERS_: THEIR AGENCIES WERE ORIGINALLY CREATED
EXCLUSIVELY TO ADMINISTER AND PROTECT THE RESOURCES OF THE COMMONS
USED BY THOSE SAME CITIZENS AND VOTERS.

Corporations, on the other hand, are responsible only to stockholders
and are created exclusively to produce a profit for those
stockholders. When aggressive corporations control political power,
the results are predictable.

We have recently seen, all too often, the strange fruits borne by
placing a corporate sentry where a public guardian should stand: for
instance, we now know that the California energy crisis of some years
ago was manipulated into existence by energy companies to get rid of
Democratic Governor Gray Davis.

The cost to humans for that corporate plunder was horrific, but a
corporation that’s now been convicted of multiple deaths of
Californians still has a stranglehold on that state’s energy.

HOW DID IT HAPPEN THAT CORPORATIONS HAVE THE ABILITY TO DO SUCH THINGS
EVEN WHEN THE PUBLIC PROTESTS VIGOROUSLY?

IT TURNS OUT, SAYS THE SUPREME COURT, THAT CORPORATIONS HAVE HUMAN
RIGHTS. IN SEVERAL DIFFERENT DECISIONS, ALL GROUNDED ON AN 1886 CASE,
THE COURT HAS RULED THAT CORPORATIONS ARE ENTITLED TO A VOICE IN
WASHINGTON AND STATE CAPITOLS, THE SAME AS YOU AND ME.

Our nation was built on the ideal of equal protection of people
(regardless of differences of race, creed, gender, or religion), and
corporations are much bigger than people, much more able to influence
the government, and don’t have the biological needs and weakness of
people.

THE PATH FROM GOVERNMENT OF, BY, AND FOR THE PEOPLE TO GOVERNMENT OF,
BY, AND FOR THE CORPORATIONS WAS PAVED LARGELY BY AN INVENTED LEGAL
PREMISE EMBRACED BY THE SUPREME COURT THAT CORPORATIONS ARE, IN
FACT, _PEOPLE_, A PREMISE CALLED “CORPORATE PERSONHOOD.”

This doctrine states not just that people make up a corporation, but
that each corporation, when created by the act of
incorporation, _is _a full-grown “person” — separate from the
humans who work for it or own stock in it — with all the rights
granted to human persons by the Bill of Rights.

THIS IDEA WOULD SHOCK THE FOUNDERS OF THE UNITED STATES.

James Madison, often referred to as “the father of the
Constitution,” wrote:

“There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the
indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in
perpetuity by…corporations. The power of all corporations ought to
be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never
fails to be a source of abuses.”

And in a letter to James K. Paulding, 10 March 1817, Madison made
absolutely explicit a lifetime of thought on the matter.

“Incorporated Companies,” he wrote, “with proper limitations and
guards, may in particular cases, be useful, but they are at best a
necessary evil only. Monopolies and perpetuities are objects of just
abhorrence. The former are unjust to the existing, the latter
usurpations on the rights of future generations.”

The concept of “corporate personhood” hasn’t been around
forever; it arrived long after the death of James Madison (and the
entire Revolutionary Era generation). Although the Court first
recognized a corporation as having some personhood rights in 1815,
today’s Corporate Personhood crisis really kicked off in 1886, when
the U.S. Supreme Court’s reporter inserted a personal commentary
called a headnote
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the decision in the case of _Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific
Railroad_.

FOR DECADES THE COURT HAD REPEATEDLY RULED AGAINST THE DOCTRINE OF
CORPORATE PERSONHOOD, AND THEY AVOIDED THE ISSUE ALTOGETHER IN THE
1886 _SANTA CLARA_ CASE, BUT COURT REPORTER J.C. BANCROFT DAVIS (A
FORMER CORPORATE PRESIDENT) ADDED A NOTE TO THE CASE SAYING THAT THE
CHIEF JUSTICE, MORRISON R. WAITE, HAD SAID THAT “CORPORATIONS ARE
PERSONS” WHO SHOULD, DAVIS SUGGESTED, BE GRANTED HUMAN RIGHTS UNDER
THE FREE-THE-SLAVES FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.

Davis had recorded a remark made in a side conversation that was never
part of a ruling by the Court; he phrased it in a way that implied it
was part of the decision, but it wasn’t.

In this, he was being encouraged by Stephen J Field, the Supreme Court
Justice from California who had been bribed by one of the nation’s
largest railroads.

WHEN I WAS WRITING MY BOOK ON THE 14TH AMENDMENT, UNEQUAL PROTECTION
[[link removed]], SEARCHING THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS’
ARCHIVES WE FOUND A NOTE IN WAITE’S HANDWRITING, SPECIFICALLY SAYING
TO DAVIS, “WE AVOIDED MEETING THE CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION IN THE
DECISION.”

As far as I can tell, nobody had seen the document in over 100 years.

[Chief Justice Waite’s reply to Davis]
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[Chief Justice Waite’s reply to Davis (continued)]
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Nonetheless, the headnote for that decision, falsely claiming the
Court ruled that corporations have rights as persons, was published in
1887 (a year Waite was so ill he rarely showed up in court; he died
the following year).

SINCE THEN, CORPORATIONS HAVE CLAIMED THAT THEY ARE PERSONS —
POINTING TO THAT DECISION AND ITS FRAUDULENT HEADNOTE — AND,
AMAZINGLY ENOUGH, IN MOST CASES THE COURTS HAVE AGREED.

MANY LEGAL SCHOLARS THINK IT’S BECAUSE THE COURTS DIDN’T BOTHER TO
READ THE CASE BUT INSTEAD JUST READ THE HEADNOTE, WHICH HAS NO LEGAL
STANDING. BUT AT THIS POINT, AFTER A CENTURY OF ACCEPTANCE, THE
MISREADING HAS BEEN REPEATEDLY QUOTED BY THE SUPREME COURT ITSELF,
MAKING IT INTO REAL LAW.

The impact has been almost incalculable. As “persons,”
corporations have claimed the First Amendment right of free speech and
— even though they can’t vote — they now spend billions of
dollars to influence elections, prevent regulation of their own
industries, and write or block legislation.

BEFORE 1886, IN MOST STATES THIS BEHAVIOR WAS EXPLICITLY AGAINST THE
LAW.

In Wisconsin, for example, on the eve of his becoming chief justice of
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, Edward G. Ryan said ominously in his 1873
address to the graduating class of the University of Wisconsin Law
School:

“[There] is looming up a new and dark power…the enterprises of the
country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled
capital, boldly marching, not for economical conquests only, but for
political power….

“The question will arise and arise in your day, though perhaps not
fully in mine, which shall rule—wealth or man; which shall
lead—money or intellect; who shall fill public stations—educated
and patriotic freemen, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital….”

THE WISCONSIN LEGISLATURE HAD RECENTLY PUT INTO LAW SEVERE
RESTRICTIONS ON CORPORATE ELECTION INTERFERENCE:

POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS BY CORPORATIONS. No corporation doing
business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer consent or
agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, ANY money,
property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value
to ANY political party, organization, committee or individual
for ANY political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of
influencing legislation of ANY kind, or to promote or defeat the
candidacy of ANY person for nomination, appointment or election
to ANY political office.

PENALTY. Any OFFICER, EMPLOYEE, AGENT OR ATTORNEY or other
representative of any corporation, acting for and in behalf of such
corporation, who shall violate this act, shall be punished upon
conviction by a fine of not less than one hundred nor more than five
thousand dollars, or by IMPRISONMENT IN THE STATE PRISON FOR A PERIOD
OF NOT LESS THAN ONE NOR MORE THAN FIVE YEARS … and if a foreign or
non-resident corporation its right to do business in this state may be
declared forfeited. (emphasis added)

And it wasn’t just Wisconsin: _every_ state had similar laws to
limit corporate power, particularly when it came to inserting
themselves in politics.

Pennsylvania corporate charters were required to carry revocation
clauses starting in 1784; and in 1815 Supreme Court Justice Joseph
Story said explicitly that corporations existed only because they were
authorized by state legislatures. In his ruling in the _Terrett v.
Taylor _case, he wrote:

“A private corporation created by the legislature may lose its
franchises by a misuser or nonuser of them…. This is the common law
of the land, and is a tacit condition annexed to the creation of every
such corporation.”

IT WAS A CONCERN THE NATION SHARED. AS PRESIDENT GROVER CLEVELAND SAID
IN HIS 1887 ANNUAL STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING
THE _SANTA CLARA _DECISION:

“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the
existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen
is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron
heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures
of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the
people’s masters.”

SINCE THE 1890S, HOWEVER, CORPORATIONS HAVE REPEATEDLY AND
SUCCESSFULLY SUED TO HAVE THESE “UNEQUAL” RESTRICTIONS REMOVED,
BASED ON THAT PHONY HEADNOTE IN THE _SANTA CLARA_ CASE.

As a “person,” corporations can (and do) claim the Fourth
Amendment “right of privacy” and prevent government regulators
from performing surprise inspections of factories, accounting
practices, and workplaces, leading to uncontrolled pollution and
hidden accounting crimes.

Before 1886 concealing corporate crimes was also, in most states,
explicitly against the law. Ironically, corporations have also
successfully claimed that when people come to work on their
“corporate private property,” those very human people are agreeing
to give up their own constitutional rights to privacy, free speech,
and even to the control of their own possessions.

AS A “PERSON,” CORPORATIONS CAN CLAIM THAT WHEN A COMMUNITY’S
VOTERS PASS LAWS TO BAN THEM, THOSE VOTERS ARE ENGAGING IN ILLEGAL
DISCRIMINATION AND VIOLATING THE CORPORATION’S “HUMAN RIGHTS”
GUARANTEED IN THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT — EVEN IF THE CORPORATION HAS
BEEN CONVICTED OF FELONIES.

The result has been an Alice In Wonderland situation where a
corporation convicted of felonies can and did own television stations
(GE, for example, was convicted of multiple felonies but owned many
television stations), but when a human being in the Midwest was
convicted of a felony the FCC, moved to strip him of his TV station.

THE TERRIBLE IRONY IS THAT CORPORATIONS INSIST ON THE PROTECTIONS OWED
TO HUMANS, BUT REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE RESPONSIBILITIES AND
CONSEQUENCES BORNE BY HUMANS.

They don’t have human weaknesses: don’t need fresh water to drink,
clean air to breathe, uncontaminated food to eat, and don’t fear
imprisonment, cancer, or death.

GRANTING PERSONHOOD TO CORPORATIONS IS AN ABSOLUTE PERVERSION OF THE
PRINCIPLE CITED IN THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, WHICH EXPLICITLY
STATES THAT THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES WAS CREATED BY PEOPLE
AND FOR PEOPLE, AND OPERATES _ONLY_ BY CONSENT OF
THE _PEOPLE _WHOM IT GOVERNS. THE DECLARATION STATES THIS IN
UNAMBIGUOUS TERMS:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed.”

The result of corporate personhood has been the relentless erosion of
government’s role as a defender of human rights and of
government’s responsibility to respond to the needs of its human
citizens.

Instead, we’re now seeing a steady insinuation of corporate
representatives and those beholden to corporations into legislatures,
the judiciary, and, with corporate CEO’s Trump, Bush, and Cheney,
even the highest office in the land.

WE’VE REACHED THE POINT IN THE UNITED STATES WHERE CORPORATISM HAS
NEARLY TRIUMPHED OVER DEMOCRACY.

If events continue on their current trajectory, the ability of our
government to respond to the needs and desires of humans — things
like fresh water, clean air, uncontaminated food, independent local
media, secure retirement, predictable weather, and accessible medical
care — may vanish forever, effectively ending the world’s second
experiment with democracy.

WE WILL HAVE GONE TOO FAR DOWN MUSSOLINI’S ROAD, AND MOST LIKELY
WILL ENCOUNTER SIMILAR CONSEQUENCES, AT LEAST OVER THE SHORT TERM AS
WE SAW BEGINNING TO EMERGE DURING THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY: A MILITARIZED
POLICE STATE, A GOVERNMENT UNRESPONSIVE TO ITS CITIZENS AND OBSESSED
WITH SECRECY, A RULING ELITE DRAWN FROM THE SENIOR RANKS OF THE
NATION’S LARGEST CORPORATIONS, AND THE THREAT OF WAR.

ALTERNATIVELY, IF WE REVERSE THE 1886 FRAUD THAT CREATED CORPORATE
PERSONHOOD, IT’S STILL POSSIBLE WE CAN RETURN TO THE DEMOCRATIC
REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLES THAT ANIMATED OUR FOUNDERS AND BROUGHT THIS
NATION INTO BEING.

Our government — elected by human citizen voters — can shake off
the neoliberal experiment of the Reagan Revolution’s past forty
years with its exploding corporatism, and throw the corporate agents
and buyers-of-influence out of the hallowed halls of Congress.

WE CAN RESTORE OUR STOLEN HUMAN RIGHTS TO HUMANS, AND KEEP CORPORATE
ACTIVITY CONSTRAINED WITHIN THE BOUNDARIES OF THAT WHICH WILL HELP AND
HEAL AND REPAIR OUR EARTH RATHER THAN PLUNDER IT.

The path to doing this is straightforward. Citizens across the nation
are looking into the possibility of passing local laws denying
corporate personhood, and increasing numbers of Democratic politicians
are looking for ways to correct the Supreme Court’s reporter’s
1886 lie and its spawn, like_ Buckley, Bellotti_, and _Citizens
United_.

TAKING ANOTHER PATH, SOME ARE SUGGESTING THAT THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
SHOULD ITSELF BE AMENDED TO INSERT THE WORD “NATURAL” BEFORE THE
WORD “PERSON,” AN IMPORTANT LEGAL DISTINCTION THAT WILL SWEEP AWAY
A CENTURY OF LEGALIZED CORPORATE EXCESSES AND REASSERT THE PRIMACY OF
HUMANS.

Congress could also exercise its _Article 3 Section 2_ power and
tell the Supreme Court that corporations are not persons and that is
an “exception” to the Court’s ability to create doctrine without
congressional consent.

An expanded Supreme Court could even take up this issue, along with
its bizarre twin, the Court-created doctrine that money is the same
thing as free speech.

The concern is not corporations _per se_; the bludgeon of corporate
personhood is rarely used by small or medium companies; it’s used
almost exclusively by a handful of the nation’s largest, to force
their will on governments and communities.

THIS MEANS A VERY SMALL NUMBER OF PARTIES (THE BIGGEST CORPORATIONS)
ARE ALL THAT STAND IN THE WAY OF REFORM, WHICH SUGGESTS THE CORPORATE
PERSONHOOD DOCTRINE IS THE WEAKEST LINK IN THE CHAIN OF CORPORATE
POWER.

And it’s a link that can be broken by alert and activist citizens,
thus steering America away from Mussolini’s view of government and
back on course toward that of our nation’s Founders. What is
required is that we undo that 1886 court reporter’s incorrect
headnote, by any of the various means people are beginning to try.

Corporations don't need pure food, clean air, or safe drinking water,
but they have the ability to influence our government and elections.
To rescue democracy, America must reject the bizarre Supreme
Court-created doctrine of "corporate personhood."

Once again in America, we must do what the author of the Declaration
of Independence always hoped we would:

“[T]he people, _BEING THE ONLY SAFE DEPOSITORY OF POWER,_ should
exercise in person every function which their qualifications enable
them to exercise, consistently with the order and security of
society.” (emphasis added)

Donald Trump and the GOP would not be the threat they are to America
today were it not for billions in corporate money, particularly
corrupt corporate money from industries like fossil fuel, tobacco, and
weapons, holding them up. \

In a very real way, you could argue that this corrupt act by the
Supreme Court has brought America to the brink of dictatorship.

We must take back from corporations the power to govern if we ever
hope to have a government that is truly representative of We the
People, and save a viable planet for our children and our children’s
children.

_Thom Hartmann is a NY Times bestselling author 34 books in 17
languages & nation's #1 progressive radio host. Psychotherapist,
international relief worker. Politics, history, spirituality,
psychology, science, anthropology, pre-history, culture, and the
natural world._

* Corporate Personhood
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* Money in Politics
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* dictatorship
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