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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
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'Global War On Terror' Is Given New Name - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

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    language = war "global war on terror" is now renamed to "Overseas Contingency Operation"
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AFP: Panasonic to fly home workers' families over bird flu fears - 0 views

  • Panasonic to fly home workers' families over bird flu fears
  • Panasonic Corp. has ordered Japanese employees in some foreign countries to send their families home to Japan in preparation for a possible bird flu pandemic, a spokesman said Tuesday.Family members of Japanese employees in parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Russia, former Soviet states and Latin America will fly back to Japan by the end of September, Panasonic spokesman Akira Kadota said.The firm decided to take the rare measure "well ahead of possible confusion at the outbreak of a global pandemic," he said.
  • Eight people have contracted the H5N1 bird flu virus in China alone this year -- five of whom died."The bird flu cases reported so far are infections from bird to human, but once an infection between human beings is reported, things can get chaotic with many other companies trying to bring back their employees," Kadota said."We wanted to take action early before it gets difficult to book flight tickets," he said.
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  • The H5N1 strain of the virus that is most dangerous to humans first emerged in Asia in 2003 and has since caused nearly 250 deaths, according to World Health Organisation figures.Bird flu, or avian influenza, kills mainly birds but scientists fear it could mutate to jump from human to human, sparking a global pandemic.Panasonic said last week it was cutting 15,000 jobs and closing dozens of plants worldwide as it braces to fall deep in the red due to the global economic crisis.
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Randall Amster: Support the Dominant Paradigm - 0 views

  • Democracy has been rendered a quaint exercise in which we are asked to select which robber baron will loot our resources, which moral entrepreneur will pander to us, and which corporate elitist will decide our fates. What makes this openly fascistic enterprise unique in history is precisely its transparent quality and the ways in which it exists alongside popular conceptions of liberty and justice for all. We don't require leaks to expose this blatant corporatocracy; the empire brazenly stands stark naked before our gerrymandered gaze.
  • The real Dominant Paradigm – the one held by the overwhelming majority of people on the planet – is more decentralized and amorphous, yet is grounded in shared values that merit enunciation. These include: a belief in the virtues of community; a desire to be part of something greater than oneself; a reciprocal relationship with nature and life's essential resources; an aversion to open hostilities and devastating warfare; an interest in the wellbeing of others as a precondition of personal prosperity; an adherence to culturally-transcendent principles such as the Golden Rule; and a willingness to work hard in return for an equitable existence.
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