End Corporate "Personhood" - Ideas for Change in America

What do you think is the most effective way to turn this idea into real policy? Add your suggestions here for how you think we should run an advocacy campaign to advance the idea – including the overall strategy, messaging, targets, and tactics.

Approach this from the standpoint that people reading this forum already agree with you on the importance of the issue, and are asking "What can we do to help make this a reality?"

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The growing anger over the arrogance (pride of ignorance) of the Wall Streeters offers we real humans a wider audience to discuss this. We should be continually bringing up the idea of corporate artificiality throughout this debate. The only media person I know who talks about this regularly (or at all) is Thom Hartmann. We need to get him some help with some guest appearances by him and others on TV, as long as enough time is given to explain the history and relevance to today's events.

Suggested by Norm Conrad on 03/17/2009 @ 09:31PM PT
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Oh please implement this. Corporations, these mindless legal entities, often run by greedy, uncaring individuals are very often favored over the citizens of this country. They are allowed to run rampant over our safety, our environment and pull far more strings in Congress than citizens could ever hope to do. This is complete insanity! Do people exist solely to serve the corporations or do corporations exist to service the needs of citizens? Until we can definitively answer the latter we will continue to be raped raw.

Suggested by Michael O'Connell on 03/17/2009 @ 08:45PM PT
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We need to reach agreement on the definition of a 'person' as interpreted by our founders. American Rights are SELF-EVIDENT. Exist within PERSONAL consciousness. Described in words as equality, truth, peace, compassion or freedom. "Justice for All" and respect for personal worth,--or a sense of personal responsibility for the welfare of other people,--all flow from, and are realized deep within personal thought,--are only SELF-EVIDENT! From within a 'person' flows our 'humanity'.
Corporations have clearly shown they have not been 'endowed with knowledge of these inalienable rights' given by "Nature and Nature's God" to each person. Do not possess this common social conscience. These synthetic persons are clearly defective. The inhuman behavior of these 'persons' is the cause of our downfall; and I don't believe we will resume our ascent until the Amendment is repealed.

Suggested by Dinah Dubble on 03/17/2009 @ 02:22PM PT
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this should happen, the amendment that gave them these rights in the first place should be repealed

Suggested by Christopher Toon on 01/29/2009 @ 12:32PM PT
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There's another group working on this issue - Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. (Full disclosure: I'm a freelance paralegal/organizer for CELDF). Richard Grossman, one of the founders of POCLAD, now works with CELDF. http://www.celdf.org/

They've pioneered a strategy of educating municipal officials and local activists on the history of corporate dominance and fictitious legal personhood, leading to several municipalities adopting local ordinances that explicitly revoke corporate personhood within their municipal borders.

These local laws have begun to draw lawsuits from corporations - often assisted by state attorneys general - to overturn the local ordinances as unconstitutional. They've also drawn attention from other countries, including Ecuador, which last year adopted a federal constitution with rights of nature provisions - first in the world to do so.

As for the specific rights claimed by corporations to preempt community decision-making to protect local health, safety and welfare, it generally falls into six categories:

First Amendment (corporate right to free speech via campaign donations/lobbying and right to not speak, i.e., not disclose rBGH in dairy products, for example);

Fourth Amendment (search and seizure, ie. corporate right to keep information about harmful activities out of public hands);

Fifth Amendment (due process, double jeopardy and takings, i.e. corporate right to be compensated for lost profits caused by regulations on activity to protect health and welbeing);

Fourteenth Amendment (due process, equal protection under the law, used by corporations to subordinate governmental authority on issues like differential taxation for corporate entities, on the grounds that a corporate "person" had to be treated exactly the same as a natural person);

Contracts Clause (used by corporations to bar state action altering contracts, i.e., to promote small scale, local agriculture over large, polluting factory farms); and

Commerce Clause (used by corporations to bar governmental action to regulate harmful interstate commerce, such as waste hauling or landfills).

Responding to the comment just above, the power differential is far greater than simply CEOs being double an ordinary person. It's the concentration and deployment of capital to further private corporate aims rather than public aims that so disempowers individuals and communities, and the capital differential between a corporation and an individual, and between a corporation and a communtiy, is enormous.

As Thomas Paine put it in Rights of Man

"...I begin with charters and corporations. it is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect - that of taking rights of way. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few...They do not give rights to A, but they make a difference in favour of A by taking away the rights of B, and consequently are instruments of injustice."

http://books.google.com/books?id=BlyaBjZyouoC&pg=PA217&lpg=PA217&dq=i+answer+not+to+falsehood+or+abuse&source=web&ots=EHFdRgq75L&sig=sFQHgwHCftITcA9hyVDqt7YJQJo&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA218,M1

Suggested by Katherine Watt on 01/24/2009 @ 12:06PM PT
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Corporations definitely have way too much power and not nearly enough oversight. They are now the "machines" that drive our modern economy. I say machines because most of them seem to have a programmed profit-driven mindset that is not affected in any way by the social and environmental consequences of their actions. Those are merely externalities which, as of now, they have not had to include into their cost-benefit analysis.

It seems to me like corporations are able to take whatever actions they calculate will maximize their profit return for shareholders, regardless of any legal implications (if any). There have been many examples in the past 100 years which I'm sure you are all aware of. If not, I advise you to take a look at the following websites:

->www.stopcorporateabuse.org (check out their Corporate Hall Of Shame)
->www.multinationalmonitor.org
->www.corporatewatch.org (they have a great Company Profiles section)
->www.thecorporation.com (great film and excellent website)

In a lot of these situations their only punishment has been a pitiful fine. Even though these fines have reached in excess of hundreds of millions of dollars in the past, I say pitiful because this is usually a very tiny fraction of their revenues. For example, suppose a company decides to start dumping its waste materials into a local river instead of treating it properly. Eventually it gets caught and fined millions of dollars. To the people at the top making the company's decisions, it actually makes economic sense to risk being fined because, even though they are now out a large sum of money, they saved a lot of money by not having to go through the expensive process of treating their waste.

This type of cost-benefit decision making is what has led to many of the destructive actions performed by corporations. It seems like the only way to stop it is to internalize the cost of the social and economic damage they impart on society.

Is there any legal precedence for revoking corporate charters? I have not done much research in this area, but it seems logical that there should be some sort of "3-Strikes" rule or something (personally I would make it 1-Strike). If a corporation is continuously performing actions that undermine the health and vitality of society and/or the environment, then its corporate status should be revoked for a certain period of time. This would be very costly to any corporation, no matter what length of time it is revoked for. They would then have to adjust their cost-benefit analysis, and most likely would stop doing such stupid things.

Thank you for your time, and keep up the good work!!

Suggested by Kirk Taylor on 01/24/2009 @ 08:24AM PT
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P.S. Perhaps we need to revisit the
"If they don't have bread, let them eat cake!" scenario.

Suggested by Margo Nielsen on 01/23/2009 @ 11:38PM PT
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I learned that corporations had personhood in a junior high school civics class in the 60's. I couldn't believe it then. I can't believe this sleeping dog is still lying there and our society, except for a few, hasn't noticed.

I tried to debate with the teacher about the logic or lack of it in this idea. It was readily apparent even then that the incredibly wealthy industrialists of the time had great power over the government and even the law, and just made millions of people miserable and destitute for generations.

The recent revelations about what the banks' CEOs did with the billions they received from the first part of TARP should be held up in effigy as a symbol of the worst of corporate greed, abuse and manipulation. It represents what has brought this economy to its knees, and is almost suicidal in nature, hopefully signing its own death warrant.

The government gives Bank of America $20 billion to cover their losses, $15 billion of which went to Merrill Lynch's employee bonuses. The taxpayers' wealth has been coopted by an immune being. The power of corporations must be curtailed and redirected to provide benefits to our society.

So it is time to remove the immunity to civic and financial responsibility from these entities and obligate robber barons to become responsible for their actions. An amendment now would prevent those of a different political persuasion from being able to overturn this kind of essential decision.

Presented in this light, the intersection of what is taken for granted on one side and what has been taken away from the other side, I believe you will get plenty of votes from those in foreclosure, those who have lost their jobs, those who can't afford their utilities, just to begin with...Thank you.

Suggested by Margo Nielsen on 01/23/2009 @ 11:36PM PT
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Corporations are more than individuals, they are immortal beings which must grow every year, for ever. This runs into mathematical absurdity with only one immortal being attempting to grow to infinity in a finite planet. The current economic system is based on infinite growth on a finite planet. Even our wonderful and intelligent new president does not understand that this is a primary source of the ecological collapse we are experiencing.

Suggested by Garrett Connelly on 01/18/2009 @ 07:27PM PT
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With Professor Obam's Constitutional expertise, I expect he is aware of this travesty of justice. Several authors see ReclaimDemocracy.org or Thom Hartmans "Equal Protection Under the Law" proposed amendments to the Constitution to solve this problem. With the democratic power in government, now is the time for an attempt. I submitted this suggestion earlier and it didn't get the votes. A Gallup poll in Dec 05 said 90
percent of people think big corporations have too much power,
the difficulty is organizing and mobilizing a campaign. I know there are many organizations that are interested if we can get concentrated attention on the issue. This has been an interest of mine for several years as a comittee leadader on Corporatism in a Democracy for America local group in East Tennessee.
I would be happy to be of help if we can get some skilled and knowledgable poliltical leadership.

Suggested by tim holt on 01/18/2009 @ 06:08PM PT
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