You may think that superpeople only exist in comic books and other fictional stories, but it’s not true, they walk among us. We pass them on the internet, the city streets, even buy goods and services from them. I have heard about it before, corporations afforded the same rights as an individual, but I was too busy with other items in life and politics to concern myself. The recent Supreme Court decision brought this random fact back to life for me, highlighted by President Obama’s comments on the decision.
I’ll admit that my confidence in the Supreme Court eroded significantly when it barged into Florida’s legal and political process during the Bush vs. Gore 2000 election. Initially sending the case back to the Florida Supreme Court in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, it appeared to me that the US Supreme Court was politically dissatisfied with Florida’s decision for a state recount. Why else would five conservative judges who espouse the rights of states, make such an about face? And now this recent decision sends me further into distrust of the system of government on which I had previously lavished such praise. “The system of checks and balances is what keeps our government fair,” I would say. Granted this was said most often in my twenties when I believed in the promises presented by my high school standard course on American history, now that I’m in my forties, I’m more than a little bit chagrined over my arrogance in simplifying such complex subjects.
In my research for this post, I found the most helpful explanation of how corporate interests obtained the title of personhood in an article on the Global Policy Forum website. To summarize, it dates back the 14th Amendment, which was a part of the laws that abolished slavery, specifically it granted “equal protection of the laws.” The railroad companies took advantage of these changes in an effort to avoid taxation and other restrictions, and sued local and state governments. Using an archaic term from the past that referred to corporations as “artificial persons”, the railroad lawyers claimed discrimination under the 14th amendment. After years of losing court battles, it was J. C. Bancroft Davis, formerly a president of a small railroad and the Recorder of the Supreme Court, that changed history with a lie. Although the Supreme Court had not ruled on the case, he wrote in his headnote “that the Chief Justice had said that all the Justices agreed that corporations are persons.”
It appears that a magnified lie was the precedent for a series of decisions leading to the US Supreme Court’s ruling that corporations are granted freedom of speech under the Bill of Rights. Pandora's box is opened even wider allowing the deep pockets of corporate interests to fill the campaigns of our aspiring politicians. As if politics weren’t already skewed against the common good, the previous campaign reforms are as good as dust. I won’t bother spending the words on how I believe this will play out. We have all experienced first-hand the power of money and its ability to corrupt, cajole and convince.
In the midst of the health care reform angst, I haven’t heard of any movement on the part of the US Legislature to counteract the impending, unlimited influx of corporate money. The fact is that corporate organizations are not democratic by nature and have only the bottom line of the shareholders for any type of accountability. I’m worried that the current health care fight overshadows a real threat to good governance in the US. I wonder if the corporations will now ask for the right to vote?
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