No matter which direction you look in America today, things are in decline: job opportunities, wages, benefits, healthcare, educational opportunities, home values, retirement security, infrastructure maintenance, the environment, life expectancy — you name it. In decline, that is, unless you are one of the fortunate super-rich. In that case, things are looking great. And, in case you don’t know it by now, that’s no coincidence. The wealth that is increasingly finding its way into the hands of that top 1% is coming directly out of the pockets of all the rest of the 99% of us. How could that be happening? Simple — the masters of industry have labored for generations and have crafted the perfect money machine, the international corporation.
To understand how they did this, we have to travel back in time to the days before America’s Revolutionary War. We were all taught that we went to war with Great Britain to win our independence so we could be free to establish the government of our choice and not have it forced upon us at the point of a bayonet. And we were all taught wrong. We went to war to break free of the economically crushing methods of the East India Company, the largest international corporation in existence at the time.
The straw that broke the camel’s back and led to hostilities was when Parliament levied a tax on the sale of all domestic teas in the colonies while at the same time they exempted East India Company from that tax. That, of course, meant that all domestic tea sold in the colonies cost more than tea sold by the East India Company and would have driven all the domestic tea merchants out of business. When the merchants complained to Parliament, they were met with no sympathy — seems most of the members of Parliament, and King George as well, were big stockholders in the East India Company.
So, that situation, along with many similar earlier events, led to the decision that, if Parliament wasn’t going to protect them from economic ruin at the hands of the East India Company, then they would take matters into their own hands. What many suggested they do was commit an act of civil disobedience against the company, something that would get a large amount of attention. But others cautioned that by attacking the company, they would be attacking Parliament and would thus bring the world’s largest military down on their necks.
But passion prevailed and the act of civil disobedience they chose, throwing the cargo of tea from three East India Company ships into Boston Harbor, is now firmly embedded in history as one of America’s finest moments. Unfortunately, as I said earlier, history records that our fight was against Great Britain when in fact it was with the East India Company, the world’s first too-big-to-fail corporation.
When the Revolutionary War was over and we had miraculously won, our leaders got together and fashioned a new form of government — one that, amongst other things, was dedicated to protecting American citizens from the predations of ruthless corporations. Corporations were chartered as very limited tools of commerce and were limited to the time it took to accomplish the goal of the charter granted by the government. When the charter mission was accomplished, the corporation was ended.
And if the corporation strayed from its charter or misbehaved in any way, its charter was revoked and the corporation was terminated — permanently.
Had we only been able to keep corporations limited in the fashion that our founding fathers intended! But that was not to be. Greed, like water, will always find a way around barriers and obstacles.
The thing about a corporate charter is, it gives men powers and protections that they don’t have as individual businessmen. And men who covet wealth and power just naturally want all those corporate powers and protections — and more. The ink wasn’t even dry on the Constitution before men were conspiring to push those limits of corporate powers and protections further and further. Very clever men. Very powerful men.
For decades they managed to push the limits further bit by bit, but they hit the big time after the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment was passed. The amendment was passed specifically to give freed slaves and their children full equality before the law. What some corporate lawyers for the railroads managed to pull off was getting that equal protection applied to corporations as well. In other words, they got a law that applied to “natural persons” to be equally applied to “fictional persons.” Do you see the absurdity of that? A corporation is a financial tool, not a living being in any sense of the word, and should certainly not have the same legal rights as human beings.
How that situation came about is very unusual and deserves much more discussion that I want to get into in this article. I will attach a very well-researched and written article by Thom Hartman for you at the end of this article. Do not neglect to read it — our society has been severely impacted by that “equal protection” interpretation and was the foundation for the recent Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United vs. FEC case. That was the decision that opened the floodgates for corporations to spend unlimited amounts on elections and have no obligation to even be identified. And that is the decision that voters most fear spells the end of our democracy.
What do you think our Revolutionary War heros and Founding Fathers would think if they saw that we have come full circle, back to being a country dominated by unscrupulous and greedy international corporations again? Wouldn’t you think they would ask, “How could you possibly let that happen? After all the suffering and hardship we all went through to win independence and craft a country free of the predations of such corporations — for YOU as well as ourselves. And now they’re back? What next — another king?”
Unless you like the prospect of living in a third world country, it’s time for us to take a stand against the continuing encroachment of what I consider corporations gone wild. If we don’t do something effective and soon, we could end up with a failed country, like the USSR. Do not make the mistake of thinking it couldn’t happen — it has happened to others and it could happen to us. All we would have to do to assure it will happen is to do nothing — just sit back, relax, and the country will collapse around you.
Or, you could join with us, as well as many others around the country, and take the steps it will take to put the beast back in the box. What are some of the steps? 1. form a large consumer organization that can be used for boycotting and other offensive techniques, 2. form a large legal team that can be used to reduce the legal powers that corporation so often abuse, 3. form a political action team that can be used to pressure state legislators to revise the state corporate chartering methods to require ethical behavior or face charter revocation.
These are just a few of the steps that could be taken — there are certainly more, and likely more effective ones. And as we find them, we will post them here, on this page — as well as what progress has been made and what new corporate misdeeds have been done. We are in another Revolutionary War and blogs like ours are the new pamphleteers. Let’s hope we can win this one without bloodshed.
Thank you for your interest and we hope you will share this website with family and friends. Now, check out Thom Hartman’s article. http://www.truth-out.org/thom-hartmann-unequal-protection.
