Hartmann unequal protection; how corporations became (people) and how you can fight back (2010)

Unequal Protection Also by Thom Hartmann Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America’s Original Vision Screwed: The Undeclared War against the Middle Class—and What We Can Do about It What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It’s Too Late Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination We the People: A Call to Take Back America Walking Your Blues Away: How to Heal the Mind and Create Emotional Well-being Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception Thom Hartmann’s Complete Guide to ADHD: Help for Your Family at Home, School and Work Healing ADD : Simple Exercises That Will Change Your Daily Life The Edison Gene: ADHD and the Gift of the Hunter Child ADD Success Stories: A Guide to Fulfillment for Families with Attention Deficit Disorder Think Fast: The ADD Experience Beyond ADD: Hunting for Reasons in the Past and Present ADHD Secrets of Success: Coaching Yourself to Fulfillment in the Business World The Prophet’s Way: A Guide to Living in the Now The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century Unequal Protection How Corporations Became “People” —and You Can Fight Back 2nd Edition, Revised and Expanded By Thom Hartmann Unequal Protection Copyright © 2010 by Thom Hartmann and Mythical Research, Inc All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc 235 Montgomery Street, Suite 650 San Francisco, California 94104-2916 Tel: (415) 288-0260, Fax: (415) 362-2512 www.bkconnection.com Ordering information for print editions Quantity sales Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others For details, contact the “Special Sales Department” at the Berrett-Koehler address above Individual sales Berrett-Koehler publications are available through most bookstores They can also be ordered directly from Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626; www.bkconnection.com Orders for college textbook/course adoption use Please contact Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 9292929; Fax: (802) 864-7626 Orders by U.S trade bookstores and wholesalers Please contact Ingram Publisher Services, Tel: (800) 509-4887; Fax: (800) 838-1149; E-mail: customer.service@ingrampublisherservices.com; or visit www.ingrampublisherservices.com/Ordering for details about electronic ordering Berrett-Koehler and the BK logo are registered trademarks of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc First Edition Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-60509-559-2 PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-560-8 IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-839-5 2010-1 Cover design by Richard Adelson Interior design and composition by Gary Palmatier Elizabeth von Radics, copyeditor; Mike Mollett, proofreader; Medea Minnich, indexer To my favorite Zen Master, Mike Dirkx History has informed us that bodies of men, as well as individuals, are susceptible to the spirit of tyranny —Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1774 Contents Introduction The Battle to Save Democracy Part I Corporations Take Over CHAPTER The Deciding Moment? CHAPTER The Corporate Conquest of America Part II From the Birth of American Democracy through the Birth of Corporate Personhood CHAPTER Banding Together for the Common Good CHAPTER The Boston Tea Party Revealed CHAPTER Jefferson versus the Corporate Aristocracy CHAPTER The Early Role of Corporations in America CHAPTER The People’s Masters CHAPTER Corporations Go Global CHAPTER The Court Takes the Presidency CHAPTER 10 Protecting Corporate Liars CHAPTER 11 Corporate Control of Politics Part III Unequal Consequences CHAPTER 12 Unequal Uses for the Bill of Rights CHAPTER 13 Unequal Regulation CHAPTER 14 Unequal Protection from Risk CHAPTER 15 Unequal Taxes CHAPTER 16 Unequal Responsibility for Crime CHAPTER 17 Unequal Privacy CHAPTER 18 Unequal Citizenship and Access to the Commons CHAPTER 19 Unequal Wealth CHAPTER 20 Unequal Trade CHAPTER 21 Unequal Media CHAPTER 22 Unequal Influence Part IV Restoring Personhood to People CHAPTER 23 Capitalists and Americans Speak Out for Community CHAPTER 24 End Corporate Personhood CHAPTER 25 A New Entrepreneurial Boom CHAPTER 26 A Democratic Marketplace CHAPTER 27 Restoring Government of, by, and for the People Acknowledgments Notes Art Credits Index About the Author Introduction: The Battle to Save Democracy It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe people are really good at heart —Anne Frank, from her diary, July 15, 1944 ON SEPTEMBER 2, 2009, THE TRANSNATIONAL PHARMACEUTICAL GIANT Pfizer pled guilty to multiple criminal felonies It had been marketing drugs in a way that may well have led to the deaths of people and that definitely led physicians to prescribe and patients to use pharmaceuticals in ways they were not intended Because Pfizer is a corporation—a legal abstraction, really—it couldn’t go to jail like fraudster Bernie Madoff or killer John Dillinger; instead it paid a $1.2 billion “criminal” fine to the U.S government—the biggest in history—as well as an additional $1 billion in civil penalties The total settlement was more than $2.3 billion—another record None of its executives, decision-makers, stockholders/owners, or employees saw even five minutes of the inside of a police station or jail cell Most Americans don’t even know about this huge and massive crime Nor they know that the “criminal” never spent a day in jail But they know that in the autumn of 2004, Martha Stewart was convicted of lying to investigators about her sale of stock in another pharmaceutical company Her crime cost nobody their life, but she famously was escorted off to a women’s prison Had she been a corporation instead of a human being, odds are there never would have even been an investigation Yet over the past century—and particularly the past forty years—corporations have repeatedly asserted that they are, in fact, “persons” and therefore eligible for the human rights protections of the Bill of Rights In 2009 the right-wing advocacy group Citizens United argued before the Supreme Court that they had the First Amendment right to “free speech” and to influence elections through the production and the distribution of a slasher “documentary” designed to destroy Hillary Clinton’s ability to win the Democratic nomination (Some political observers assert that they did this in part because they believed that a Black man whose first name sounded like “Osama” and whose middle name was Hussein could never, ever, possibly win against a Republican, no matter how poor a candidate they put up.) In that, they were following on a 2003 case before the Supreme Court in which Nike claimed that it had the First Amendment right to lie in its corporate marketing, a variation on the First Amendment right of free speech (Except in certain contract and law enforcement/court situations, it’s perfectly legal for human persons to lie in the United States Nobody ever went to jail for saying, “No, of course you don’t look fat in those pants!”) Corporations haven’t limited their grasp to the First Amendment; pretty much any and virtually every amendment that could be used to further corporate interests has been fair game (They haven’t * Gannett, a $6 billion corporation, also owns USA Today as well as ninety-seven newspapers and twenty-two television stations across the United States and the United Kingdom as of this writing * Just a week after Canada paid $10 million to the American corporation for lost revenues during that ban, another American company slapped Canada with a similar lawsuit under NAFTA’s multilateral agreement on investment (MAI) provision, which allows corporations to sue sovereign states That case is pending as of this writing * The World Bank provides NAFTA with a private court system called the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes * Again, the words in single quotation marks are where, in the dissent, the justices themselves are quoting from previous SCOTUS rulings I’ve removed all the reference citations, as they make it hard to read; anybody wanting to dive deeper into this ninety-page dissent can read it online at www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf * Even Ben & Jerry’s must, by law, say something nice about the outcome of this incident on their labels, although you can read the entire story on the wall of their Waterbury, Vermont, manufacturing facility, as Vermont has not yet passed a law making it illegal to question the safety of the American food supply * DDT, or dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, is toxic to human beings and animals when swallowed or absorbed through the skin It was widely used in the mid-twentieth century and has been banned in the United States for most uses since 1972 PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are a class of organic compounds and an environmental pollutant associated with birth defects and cancer The 1975 Toxic Substances Control Act required that the production of PCBs be phased out within three years * Noreena Hertz notes in The Silent Takeover (London: Heinemann, 2001) that, “beneficiaries of Ohio’s ‘corporate welfare’ included Spiegel, Wal-Mart, and Consolidated Stores Corporation, all of which were absolved from property taxes As one school treasurer put it, ‘Kids get hurt and stockholders get rich.’” * Many of the statistics in this chapter (unless cited as otherwise) are from Jeff Gates in various sources Jeff is president of the Shared Capitalism Institute and author of numerous books and articles, all of which I strongly recommend His Web site is www.shared capitalism.org period—just a few generations after Americans busted the trusts during the Populist Movement of Teddy Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan * See Sharon Beder, Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2002); David Helvarg, The War against the Greens: The “Wiseuse” Movement, the New Right, and Anti-environmental Violence (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1997); Marshall Barron Clinard, Corporate Corruption: The Abuse of Power (West-port, CT: Praeger, 1990); and Robert W McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999) * The collapse of “the Asian tigers” also had much to with IMF structural adjustment programs, according to many commentators * Democracy in America is the name by which this work is most commonly known, and that is the title of later printings The original work, published in 1835, was titled The Republic of the United States of America, and Its Political Institutions, Reviewed and Examined * Many sources say the correct quote is, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one,” but the point is the same either way * Quoted verbatim from Jeff’s article with permission * Amending America by Richard B Bernstein is a brilliant book on the process * When, during the New Deal, the Supreme Court struck down some of FDR’s progressive legislation, he contemplated expanding the number of members of the Court—something that could legally be done, as the number of justices is not specified in the Constitution— but the political blowback from his attempt to “pack the Court” was so severe that it cost him and the Democratic party dearly ... Unequal Protection How Corporations Became “People” and You Can Fight Back 2nd Edition, Revised and Expanded By Thom Hartmann Unequal Protection Copyright © 2010 by Thom Hartmann and Mythical Research,... like you and me, and “artificial persons,” which include governments, churches, and corporations The creation of a category for governments, churches (and other nonprofits), and for-profit corporations. .. Crime CHAPTER 17 Unequal Privacy CHAPTER 18 Unequal Citizenship and Access to the Commons CHAPTER 19 Unequal Wealth CHAPTER 20 Unequal Trade CHAPTER 21 Unequal Media CHAPTER 22 Unequal Influence