Corporate 'citizens' (Hudson Valley Daily Freeman)

[struggle4progress]

... A corporation as essentially an association of citizens, fully vested with political rights? Where in the world did that come from? If it’s in the Constitution, you must need special glasses to see it.

When Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, the founding document of American democracy, he referred to “man” being endowed with certain inalienable rights. Nowhere in that seminal document does it suggest that corporations had been so endowed.

In that context, the idea that the Bill of Rights — the first 10 amendments to the federal Constitution — was promulgated to protect the rights of corporations, as well as individuals, is, simply put, an ahistorical legal fabrication.

THE new law blazed by the Supreme Court will allow corporate and individual donors effectively to launder their identities by donating money to third-party associations that then air ads. So you’ll never know who’s behind the relentless onslaught asserting over and over and over again that the war hero running for office really was nothing of the sort. Maybe not even after the election is over and you learn the candidate really was a hero ...

http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2010/01/26/opinion/doc4b5a1c6f6ade8225552898.txt