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James Kindler

Mental Health Recovery Coordinator,

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How do we get corporations out of government.

Large corperations run our government, thay donate huge amounts of money for which they are rewarded. The government no longer represents the people but rather the corporations. We are supposed to be a representitive republic but our needs are not being represented, the corporations are. This is why I'm in the occupy movement, to try and return to our constitution and excercise my rights. We want the government to represent us and not the corporations, they are not people. Everyone thinks we are there to get money from the 1%, while this may be true for many what I have just written is true for me and most in the movement.

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  • ralph haulk

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    Jan 19 2012: A bit of history on corporations. They are a creation of civil law, not common law. Blackstone points out that common law does nt recognize the authority of civil law. Corporations actually achieved "personhood" by a process of "christening" or "baptism" into English commion law by the king of England(Blackstone). Once this occured, they became "persons" in a collective sense.

    Since the US does not recognize the king, corporate personhood is abandoned for two reasons:
    1.The colonists embraced common law as their birthright, not civil law(Declaratio of Rights 1774), and SCOTUS does not have general jurisdiction over common law. Since "due process" refers to common law(see Commentaries of Justice Joseph Story) the fifth amendment due process clause cannot refer to corporations as "persons" becaus SCOTUS has no power to "baptize' them i nto common, since it has no jurisdiction over common law. Also see "United States vs Aaron Burr".


    These are points well understood by the founders(see "Original meanings" by Jack Rakove), but they have been ignored or deliberately construed in opposition to original intentions. In "Dart mouth v Woodward" for example, Chief Justice Marshall pointed out that Dartmouth College had every right tio "personhood" because it had been appointed so by the king before the revolution, and the treaty with England allowed it to remain so. That, however, did NOT grant any power of the courts to grant personhood.
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      Justen Robertson 50+

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      Jan 19 2012: This is a very nice legal and historical theory, but would your opinion or your rational conclusion be changed if the legal environment were different? Or are you convinced that your philosophy regarding corporate personhood is wholly independent of the choices and proclamations of dead men? Are we really no better than our forefathers, such that we must argue over their opinions of the problem rather than its substance?

      • ralph haulk

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        Jan 20 2012: What i wrote are the understandings of the founders, who wriote the constitution based on their experience regarding banks, corporations, and paper money. Their understanding was well founded in history, ad they were much smarter than we are, apparently. That is the foundational principles of the constitution(see Comentaries of St. George Tucker)
        Either we stick to the constitution or not, but if we're not, I'd be happy to live my life on my own terms.
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          Justen Robertson 50+

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          Jan 20 2012: Some of them may have been smarter than some of us. Some of them were certainly not as smart as most of us (for instance, Washington was known to be a bit of a dullard and made no significant intellectual contributions to the revolutionary movement, besides being a rather horrible military commander). I'm only suggesting that hero worship is misguided. For my part I'm no more interested in sticking to the constitution than I am in sticking to the Bible. I dare to believe that over the course of centuries we have gathered enough new information to make better decisions than our predecessors. :)
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      Tim Colgan 50+

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      Jan 20 2012: Ralph - have you seen Thom Hartmann’s talk on this topic?

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hziy7WR9TQc

      Would appreciate your opinion of it if you get a chance to watch it.
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        Justen Robertson 50+

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        Jan 20 2012: The funny thing is that most of us seem to realize how retarded the notion of "corporate personhood" is, don't we? We don't need brilliant people in sharp suits explaining the concept to us :) It takes law or faith to turn the absurd into the unquestionable.

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