Are laws now created for corporations or for the people ?

[kentuck]

There was a discussion on C-SPAN this morning with call-ins discussing GM and Adelphi and the decline of unions in this country. One caller suggested that laws were passed for the benefit of corporations. I have thought about that comment. Why don't we have healthcare? Because the laws benefit corporations. Why don't we have a living wage for people that work? Because of the laws that benefit corporations. Why ar all our jobs going overseas? Because the laws benefit corporations. Why are the tax laws changed that send our country into skyrocketing deficits and debt? Because the laws benefit corporations.

And if the above is true and our laws are now passed to benefit corporations, then what is the definition of fascism? One could argue that we are not on the way to fascism but that we are already there. And how do we ever change that?

[villager]

1. pretty much since right after the Civil War, yes...

how, indeed, do we change that -- short of economic calamity and a forced "do over..."

[BlueEyedSon]

2. Why do we have the Medicare Bill? Why do we have the war in Iraq?

DUH!

[Mrspeeker]

3. No for corporation by corporations

Its all about their bottom line.

If it means replacing sugar with corn for a few cents profit margin, it will be done for the glory of the corporations.

Great documentary on this subject is,
The Corporation!

[havocmom]

4. Have your rights & privileges increased while your liability decreased?

No? Well, you must be a person instead of a corporation.

[ginnyinWI]

5. and corporations are now considered "persons".

They are "persons" with "rights"--like the right to privacy, right not to be descriminated against, etc. People have been replaced by financial entities, and have thereby been demoted in importance to the level of mere "consumer units".

Remember after 9/11, when * told everyone to go out and shop. The big worry was that the market would suffer. That's all we're good for, apparently, in the grand scheme of things.

[wordpix2]

6. can only change laws re: health care, environment, jobs, etc. & enforce

good laws already on books by ridding ourselves of this repuke Congress, pResident and repig corruption. Fight like hell to throw the bums out in '06 and '08 and replace with good Dems.

[Virginia Dare]

7. Corporations, no question...

and with the present make-up of the SOTUS, the laws will be upheld for a long time to come. The "people" are basically screwed.

[OzarkDem]

8. Corporations, silly

That's why the SCOTUS voted to make it harder for investors to sue if their stockbrokers lie or miselad them into keeping bad investments they otherwise would have dumped....

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-060321scotusinvestors-story,1,801867.story?coll=chi-business-hed

The U.S. Supreme Court, clearing up an ambiguity in the law, ruled Tuesday to limit class-action lawsuits by investors who allege they were misled into holding onto risky stocks they otherwise would have dumped.

Stockholders tricked into holding their shares are subject to the same rules that govern those who were duped into buying or selling stocks, the court ruled.

The ruling, which favored defendant Merrill Lynch, "is of great significance to all publicly traded companies and financial services firms," said Merrill attorney Jay Kasner, because it "closes an enormous loophole" in the laws covering such litigation.

[wisteria]

9. You have to ask this question? The answer is obvious, the Corps.n/t

[kentuck]

10. I have been called a master at stating the obvious...

:)

[OneBlueSky]

11. not only FOR corporation, but BY corporations . . .

and their lobbyists, who write most of the legislation affecting their particular industries . . . witness, for example, bankruptcy "reform" . . .

[kentuck]

12. Yes. They actually walk into our Congress and write the laws...

themselves and hand them to our elected representatives. Unbelievable!

[OzarkDem]

14. Actually many have offices there already

Go into any House or Senate office building and you'll see what were once meeting rooms filled with corporations writing legislation and carrying it down the hall to legislators offices. They even have the names of their companies and trade associations on signs outside the door.

Not kidding, its true.

[kentuck]

15. No shit?

I didn't know that! :mad:

[leftofthedial]

13. corporations.

Period.

people are liabilities.

[KoKo]

16. It goes back to this "Clerical Error" as to how Corporations became People

April 2003 VOLUME #5 NUMBER #4
Edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer

HOW A CLERICAL ERROR MADE CORPORATIONS PEOPLE


here’s a historic date that our country ought to mark every year, which has had as great an impact on the world as the July 4th birth of American democracy itself. The date is May 10, 1886—the day corporate supremacy was born. It came about through a court case that breathed life into these artificial, anti-democratic entities—a move that effectively gave corporations greater power than We the People.

The reason that today’s Powers That Be (which are—big surprise!—corporate powers) don’t want us paying the slightest bit of attention to this momentous date is that the birth of corporate supremacy actually was illegitimate, carrying no force of law.
An old proverb says: “A lie repeated 1,000 times becomes the truth.” This particular lie asserts that every corporate business structure is, in the eye of the U.S. Constitution, equal to real human beings, possessing all the rights of people.

As bizarre as it is, this assertion has been repeated so often by CEOs, politicians, pundits, professors, and judges that it is now assumed to be unassailable truth. Again and again, we hear the establishment speak of the “right” of this or that corporation to do as it pleases, as if the founders themselves had contemplated this as part of their grand democratic design.

http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/articles/apr03_v5_n4/apr03_v5_n4_lead1.cfm

[radio4progressives]

17. Join the Abolish Corporate Personhood Movement..

http://www.corporatepersonhood.com/