Difference
(minor diff, author diff)
Added Changed Deleted

  • Prior major revision
  • Current Revision



    <html><img src="http://deoxy.org/img/gangs-of-america.jpg" align="right" hspace="15" vspace="15"></html>
     
     
    [[[ ++I hope we shall crush in its 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 of our \
     
    '''I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.'''--~~Abraham Lincoln, 1864~~
     
    ----
     
    What is a corporation? Where did corporations come from? How
    did this particular institution develop? As citizens of a country that
    prides itself on its economic system, we Americans know a lot less
    about the institutions that make up that economy than about the institutions
    that make up our government. And increasingly, that ignorance is
    proving costly, as we realize the extent to which those “economic” institutions
    actually are our government.
     
    ++Even though corporations are not mentioned at all in [Deoxy:law/consti.htm the Constitution], they have somehow accumulated __more__ legal rights than human beings. ''How did this happen?''++
    ----
    ----
    in the hands of the various state legislatures and placed an emphasis
    on restrictions and accountability measures, rather than on privileges.
    State constitutions and statutes reinforced the restrictive stance toward
    corporations.
     
    Under this system, charters tended to be granted sparingly, in keeping
    with the widespread belief that the potential for corporations to accumulate
    power rendered them inherently dangerous to democracy.
     
     
    ----
    '''Why was control of the Supreme Court so important to railroad corporations in the 1870s and 1880s?'''
    the Civil War, the railroads seemed to have little trouble manipulating
    Congress to do their bidding. Bribery by railroad lobbyists was rampant
    among Senators and Congressmen. For example, between 1875 and
    1885 the Central Pacific spent $500,000 yearly on graft; in a single
    year, the <nowiki>LaCrosse</nowiki> and Milwaukee Railroad spent $872,000 for influence,
    including $50,000 for a governor, $10,000 for a state controller,
    $125,000 for thirteen legislators, etc. Among the fruits of these expenditures
    by railroad interests were immense land grants. '''Ultimately, they acquired 200 million acres of land, a tenth of the area of the entire country.'''
     
    It was at the state level that the railroad barons needed help from a
    Supreme Court willing to throw thunderbolts from Washington invalidating
    state legislation on constitutionality grounds.
    ----
     
    Justice Harlan playing an enigmatic
    role. In May, 1886, he writes an opinion that uses a technical argument
    to decide the Santa Clara case, declining to use the "personhood" rationale.
    In November of the same year, we see him citing Santa Clara as
    a personhood precedent. '''''The particular reasons for his change are unknown.'''''
    Revision of New Jersey’s corporate
    statutes in 1888 and 1889 immediately made that state the venue of
    choice for corporations wishing to escape more restrictive regulation in
    other states. By 1901, 71 percent of all United States corporations with
    assets of $25 million or greater were using New Jersey as their home
    base. According to corporate lawyer Charles Bostwick, “so many
    Trusts and big corporations were paying tribute to the State of New Jersey
    that the authorities had become greatly perplexed as to what should
    be done with surplus revenue....”
     
    Other states had two choices: either attempt to compete with New
    Jersey in a “race to the bottom,” or watch locally chartered corporations
    move their legal home to New Jersey. In 1899, Delaware followed New
    Jersey, and when Governor Woodrow Wilson tightened the New Jersey
    law in 1913, Delaware pulled ahead as the corporate venue of choice, a
    position it retains to this day. A half-dozen other states followed New
    Jersey and Delaware to relax their corporate statutes. Observing the
    wreckage to state authority over corporations, journalist Lincoln
    Steffens dubbed __'''New Jersey “the traitor state.”'''__ By making it easy for
    corporations to hold stock in other corporations, New Jersey’s law
    opened the door for a huge wave of acquisitions, particularly during the
    period 1897 to 1903. During that six-year span of time, a dramatic transformation of the American business landscape took place. Some 2,650
    separate firms disappeared into larger corporate entities, as industry after
    industry became dominated by a handful of immense, politically
    powerful corporations incorporated in states with corporate-friendly
    statutes. By 1903, some 250 large corporations had emerged as dominant.
     
    Such entities as International Paper (1898), National Sugar Refining
    Company (1900), U.S. Steel (1901), and International Harvester
    (1902) were all formed in this period by merging smaller companies
    into large corporations. In 1890, the aggregate amount of capital in publicly
    traded companies was a mere $33 million; in 1903, it surpassed $7
    billion. Industry after industry had seen a remarkable concentration of
    market share. U.S. Steel controlled 62 percent of the steelmarket, International
    Harvester controlled 85 percent of the agricultural implement
    market, American Can Company controlled 90 percent of the can market,
     
    ----
     
    *the right of all workers to employment at an adequate wage,
    *the right of farmers to a decent return on their products,
    *the right of small businessmen to protection from monopolies and unfair competition,
    *the right of all families to a home,
    *the right of everyone to education and medical care, and
    *the right of the aged, the disabled, and the unemployed to economic security.
     
    Roosevelt’s wider vision of rights was a natural culmination of a
    movement that had begun in the 1600s and 1700s to elevate the status of
    individuals, particularly in relation to powerful institutions.
     
    Roosevelt banished from the public discourse the social Darwinist vision.
    His genius was the win/win solution, the idea that a well-paid, socially
    secure workforce was entirely compatible with a huge expansion
    in corporate activity and profits. Under the approach created by Roosevelt
    and adhered to by both Democratic and Republican administrations
    for the next three decades, corporate growth remained brisk and expansion
    continued at the same time that the distribution of wealth in the
    United States became far more evenly distributed than before the Great
    Depression. Thus, while the share of wealth owned by the top one percent
    of the population was nearly 45 percent in 1929, it had fallen to 20
    percent by 1971.
    +++As Franklin Roosevelt once remarked, “necessitous men are not free men.” Similarly, Alexander Hamilton wrote, “the power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.”+++
    Just as it was necessary to innovate and implement specific new
    features in order to democratize and constrain state power, the same
    applies to corporate power. A short list of changes might include the
    following:
     
    # revoke the doctrine of corporate constitutional rights;
    # curb corporate “quasi-rights” as appropriate, e.g. requiring corporations to renew their charters every five years;
    # ban corporations from political activity;
    # shore up the boundaries of “non-corporate” spaces in society, e.g. prohibiting advertising aimed at children;
    # expand the scope of worker and customer rights vis-à-vis corporations;
    # strengthen countervailing institutions, especially unions;
    # promote non-corporate institutions like public schools and economic forms like municipal utilities, family farms, consumer cooperatives, employee-run enterprises.
     
    "Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and
    implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period
    of years, in the scale of financing available only through
    joint effort, and in the political power available through united
    action and national organizations."--~~Lewis Powell~~
    ----
    ]]] Also see [http://deoxy.org/korten_index.htm When Corporations Rule The World] ]]]



    • MEME · Recent · Index · View · Talk? · δεοχψ
     

    Read-only · Raw · Print · History · Changes
    Last edit 2007-06-25 00:48 by dimitri (diff)