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Jefferson Was Right: Rebel Against the Corporations
(Dr. Michael P. Byron, 05/24/03)
Most Americans don't know it but Thomas Jefferson, along with James Madison worked assiduously to have an 11th Amendment included into our nation's original Bill of Rights. This proposed Amendment would have prohibited "monopolies in commerce." The amendment would have made it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, or to give money to politicians, or to otherwise try to influence elections. . . . Jefferson and Madison were so insistent upon this amendment because the American Revolution was in substantial degree a revolt against the domination of colonial economic and political life by the greatest multinational corporation of its age: the British East India Company. . . . In the end the amendment was not adopted because a majority in the first Congress believed that already existing state laws governing corporations were adequate for constraining corporate power. Jefferson worried about the growing influence of corporate power until his dying day in 1826. Even the more conservative founder John Adams came to harbor deep misgivings about unchecked corporate power. . . . The meaning of the Constitution, and hence the very nature of our political system, was now in the hands of an un-elected and effectively uncontrollable body. "The Constitution has become a thing of wax to be molded as the Court sees fit" Jefferson lamented. . . . The precipitating event was the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. This case is cited to the present day as having conferred the status of "natural" as opposed to "artificial" personhood upon American corporations. In fact the Supreme Court declined to rule on the issue. J.C. Bancroft Davis, the Clerk of the Court, an attorney, who curiously was also a former railroad company PRESIDENT, used his position to simply write this conclusion into the head notes which summarized the case. Ever since this fateful event; this sleight-of-hand rewriting of the Constitution, corporations have had the status of "actual" persons whose rights are fully protected by the Constitution. It was a coup against democracy which succeeded because there were no real external checks and balances on the Court, and because the Court itself chose not to act to repudiate Davis' rewriting of the Constitution. The thing stood. Precedent was established. Jefferson's "thing of wax" nightmare had come to pass. . . . Consider the implications: Actual flesh and blood persons are indeed all roughly equal in overall attributes. But a corporation can possess MILLIONS of times greater resources than does any "natural" person, or even a group of such persons. Neither labor unions, nor any other category of "special interest" group possesses this attribute of personhood and so they too are fundamentally and intrinsically unable to compete against corporate "persons." . . . To make a long and sad story short: The concentrated power of corporate persons has overwhelmed our democratic system. The unsound decisions of our unchecked and unbalanced Supreme Court have handed the "keys to the Kingdom" over to our corporate overlords. . . . But now, in the era of global mega-corporations, after a long struggle, our "democratic immune system" is finally being overwhelmed. Democracy, rule of, by, and for the people, is dying in America. . . . Contemporary America is a nation almost wholly under the dominion of plutocratically wealthy, corporate quarterly-profit uber alles overlords. A seamless web of corporate power connects our multinational corporations with our mass media--now almost wholly owned by a handful of mega-corporations. This military-industrial-media complex largely determines which politicians will and will not get elected. Thus they control the government. They control access to money as well as determine how a candidate will be presented to the viewers. . . . Arguably, our corporate media has seen to it that the average American is as brainwashed as is say, the average citizen of North Korea. Our primary role in this atrocious system is simply to consume. We are consumers, corporate subjects, not citizens. Under this materialistic system our lives are devoid of deep meaning as we are conditioned to work ever harder and go ever deeper in debt to accumulate ever more useless junk as though if we just piled up enough of this crap we would somehow, magically, become happy. . . . Let's admit that our democratic, constitutional, system was derailed more than a century ago. Until we return power to the hands of flesh and blood citizens EXCLUSIVELY, until corporations are summarily striped of "personhood", until this legal obscenity is abolished, we can have no real freedom, democracy cannot flourish. . . . It's up to each of us to act NOW. Freedom itself hangs in the balance.

posted by LoZo 4:47 PM