How Corporate America Is Pushing Us All Off a Cliff | MichaelMoore.com - 0 views
Brentwood Police - Scam Warning. - 0 views
Spreeblick » Blog Archive » Jamba Kurs - 0 views
The Time is NOW! | Soul's Talking Brain - 0 views
Ultimate Civics » Blog Archive » Corporations Are Not Persons - 0 views
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By Ralph Nader & Carl J. Mayer New York Times, April 9, 1988 Our constitutional rights were intended for real persons, not artificial creations. The Framers knew about corporations but chose not to mention these contrived entities in the Constitution. For them, the document shielded living beings from arbitrary government and endowed them with the right to speak, assemble, and petition. Today, however, corporations enjoy virtually the same umbrella of constitutional protections as individuals do. They have become in effect artificial persons with infinitely greater power than humans. This constitutional equivalence must end. Consider a few noxious developments during the last 10 years. A group of large Boston companies invoked the First Amendment in order to spend lavishly and thus successfully defeat a referendum that would have permitted the legislature to enact a progressive income tax that had no direct effect on the property and business of these companies. An Idaho electrical and plumbing corporation cited the Fourth Amendment and deterred a health and safety investigation. A textile supply company used Fifth Amendment protections and barred retrial in a criminal anti-trust case in Texas. The idea that the Constitution should apply to corporations as it applies to humans had its dubious origins in 1886. The Supreme Court said it did "not wish to hear argument" on whether corporations were "persons" protected by the 14th Amendment, a civil rights amendment designed to safeguard newly emancipated blacks from unfair government treatment. It simply decreed that corporations were persons. Now that is judicial activism. A string of later dissents, by Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, demonstrated that neither the history nor the language of the 14th Amendment was meant to protect corporations. But it was too late. The genie was out of the bottle and the corporate evolution into personhood was under way. It was not until the 1970's that corporations
F.A.Z.-Community - 0 views
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Wer sich heutzutage in den Straßenschluchten des Kapitalismus bewegt, muss aufpassen, von einstürzenden Paradigmen und herabfallenden Glaubenssätzen nicht erschlagen zu werden; die urbanen Schauplätze der gesellschaftlichen Reproduktion gleichen einem Trümmerfeld, und wo der nächste Einschlag erfolgen wird, weiß niemand so genau. Doch uns beeindruckt das überhaupt nicht: wir suchen stattdessen auf dem Ground zero der Vermögenspreise weiter nach Überlebenden. Das Schild an der Stelle, wo früher einmal die Investmentbank stand, sagt: „Bitte nicht füttern!". Das klingt merkwürdiger, als es in Wahrheit ist, weil sich dahinter jetzt ein Schwanenteich befindet: Diese elenden, schwarzen Viecher können mir aber gestohlen bleiben, ich rauche lieber erst mal eine Zigarette. Dabei erblicke ich auf der Verpackung den Warnhinweis der EU-Gesundheitsminister: „Langfristig sind wir alle tot". Na also, denke ich, dann kann von jetzt an ja alles nur besser werden ...
Forget Offshore Drilling Until We Get Some Answers | The New Republic - 0 views
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While it may take months to stop the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it's not too soon to begin asking some questions about why it happened and what can be done to minimize the chance that something like this will happen again. Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's terrific reporting last week, there are two important things we already know
Iraq Withdrawal? Don't Take It to the Bank | MichaelMoore.com - 0 views
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The Washington Post brings the unsurprising news that Iraqi leaders have agreed to begin talks with the U.S. on allowing the foreign military occupation of their country to continue beyond this year - re-branded, naturally, as a mission of "training" and "support." The move comes after an increasingly public campaign by top White House and military officials to pressure Iraqi leaders into tearing up the Status of Forces Agreement they signed with the Bush administration, which mandates the removal of all foreign troops by the end of 2011.
NYTimes.com Strikes False Balance On Climate Change | Media Matters for America - 0 views
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In a report for the New York Times' website about Al Gore's "24 Hours of Reality" event about climate change, ClimateWire lent a megaphone to Canadian climate contrarian Tom Harris. The reporter summarized Gore's event and then, ostensibly to provide balance, turned the rest of the article over to Harris, who thinks Gore's event spent "time and energy on something that's not true." ClimateWire quoted Harris' claims that the "amount of climate change impact that humans have is very small," and "This extreme weather thing is not a function of temperature," as well as his allegation that "90 percent of the important facts [in Gore's presentations] are wrong or misrepresented." The article offered no details to support this claim. Nor did mention that the vast majority of scientists agree that humans are changing the climate. And at no point did the article explain who Tom Harris is or why he was quoted evaluating statements about science instead of, say, a climate scientist.
Why Occupy Wall Street Is Bigger Than Left vs. Right | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone - 0 views
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