Happy Birthday, Corporations! (5/10/15)

© by Mark Dempsey

This May 10th, it’s time to wish a happy birthday to an unnatural “person.” On that date corporate personhood is 129 years old, thanks to the 1886 Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad Supreme Court decision where the clerk of the court, not the justices, wrote that corporations had the same rights as natural persons. That mistake is the basis of the precedent.

Thanks to the current Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision, any limit on corporate money spent to influence elections is now officially illegal too. After all, money is speech, right? And if that’s so, speech is money, and I can pay my utility bill by chatting with the customer service rep at SMUD.

Citizens United unleashed unlimited corporate money in elections, and as much protest as it has prompted, corporate personhood produces even more damage. Corporate personhood is what prevents local governments from banning noxious corporate practices--like fracking, or selling local water in a drought--because such bans would deprive corporations of profit, and when government takes property from even virtual “people,” it must compensate them.

Of course corporations are not really like persons. For one thing Texas cannot execute them. Corporate capitalism transforms all of humanity into marketable labor, all of nature into marketable land, and all human interaction into financial transactions. And profit for corporate stockholders justifies any behavior, no matter how destructive. This emphasis ignores previously respected stakeholders like customers, workers or the communities where corporations operate. It means GM can make an ignition part 97¢ cheaper even though it kills people. Since it’s profitable that’s okay. Apparently corporations can be “persons,” but remain heartless.

The corporate form is a legal fiction that protects shareholders from liability for corporate malfeasance or financial loss, and is an enormous benefit to corporations. But corporations have not compensated society for the harm they do.

Despite how loudly corporate media bemoans “high” corporate taxes, and government meddling in business practices, corporate tax collections are at a six decade low, and corporate profits are at a six decade high. Thanks to a loophole in Proposition 13, commercial properties, which used to pay 70% of California property taxes now pay only 30%. (And where are all those jobs we were promised for lowering those taxes?) Our recent experience with multi-trillion-dollar government bailouts for Ponzi capitalism, fraud in loans, foreclosures, securities and derivatives (and few government prosecutions) demonstrate corporations get away with far more than they pay to compensate society for the benefits offered by that corporate liability limit.

A resigned public is disgusted with corporate-friendly public policy, but that is not a problem, it's a desired outcome, keeping voters away from the polls. This allows the continued, even expanding existence of an immortal being--the corporation--whose sociopathy says profit justifies any behavior.

So...Happy birthday, corporations! Spoiler alert: Besides your many subsidies, your legislators are preparing to give away U.S. sovereignty with the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement as your birthday gift. Now make a wish as you blow out those candles!

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Mark Dempsey is a member of Move to Amend (movetoamend.org/ca-sacramento), an organization formed to end corporate personhood and unlimited campaign financing which meets in Sacramento the third Thursday of each month. Consult the website for time and location.