Trade Practices: Blog

  • It Goes Way Back Before Citizens United…

    Posted by
    David Morris
    Thursday
    1/10/2013

    These organizations [joint stock companies] had raised hackles from the very beginning. Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), for example, had complained that “they cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed or excommunicated, for they have no souls.” Two centuries later, the lord chancellor, Edward Thurlow (1731-1806), echoed his words: “Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like.” (p.33)

    And, because it’s been tossed around a lot lately (usually in juxtaposition to Mitt Romney saying, “Corporations are people too, my friend.”

    I hope we shall take warning from the example [of England] and crush in it’s [sic] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country.
    —Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to George Logan, Nov. 12th, 1816

    And I’ll repost that quote from the earlier post about this book, just to keep themes together:

    This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.
    —U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes

    Micklethwait, John & Adrian Wooldridge, The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea.

    Comments

    Those who take up the Citizens United / Corporation boogie man should really educate themselves on the background of the case, its is undeniably a VICTORY for the Free Speech of everyone (individual or corporation). 

    Briefly a group of Citizens filed a complaint on the basis of the (illegal) McCain Fiengold Act against the advertising of Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 911 close to an election.  They said it was tantamount to a political contribution.  They were denied (rightly so).  So taking a page from Moore’s playbook they made a high critical Hillary Clinton movie and started advertising that (or rather attempting to).  Well, a complaint was filed against them an accepted!  An obvious case of “Free Speech for Me but not Thee”. 

    The Supreme Court rightly saw the slippery slope the country was headed down here and took appropriate action. 

    And btw ...  is “here.org” organized as ... gasp ... A corporation?

    Posted by Greg on January 15, 2013

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