THE THEFT OF AMERICA: CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE

BOOK REVIEW

By JOHN KAVANAGH

“Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became People and What You Can Do to Fight Them Back” by Thom Hartmann 

U.S. Supreme Court never voted on seminal decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company 

In my opinion, May 10, 1886 was the most corrupt moment in United States history.  To me, it even dwarfs the Constitutional Treason of Bush v. Gore! That was the date the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394 (1886). 

The decision helped lay the foundation for modern laws regarding corporate personhood,  that the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause applies to corporations as well as people.

 I consider it to be the most important book in our history.  Mr. Hartmann strips away the nonsense surrounding the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case upon which the legal fiction of corporate “personhood” was purportedly based.  Mr. Hartmann makes it clear that the question whether or not corporations share in the concept of “personhood” as embodied in the last paragraph of the Fourteenth Amendment was never voted on by the Court.  

Hartmann notes that the usual practice when announcing a decision in a Supreme Court case was to have the author of the majority opinion start reading the decision immediately.  However, with regard to the Santa Clara-Railroad case, the Chief Justice made a statement prior to the reading of the decision:  

Wall Street protester

“The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to corporations.  We are of the opinion that it does.”  

If the Court did not vote on the question of corporate “personhood” how did that notion become enshrined in our legal history?

Hartmann says, “It was in the Headnote!”  

As Hartmann implies later in the first chapter, it amounted to collusion between the Chief Justice and the Court Reporter.  The Reporter, a “gentleman” by the name of J. C. Bancroft Davis, put the Chief Justice’s comment into an introductory paragraph before the actual decision was printed and inserted the word “all” into the Chief Justice’s comment:  “We are ALL of the opinion that it does.”

If you reread the fifth paragraph above you can see the discrepancy.  Hartmann goes into great detail about the Chief Justice and the court reporter and their dealings over that “Headnote”.   In my opinion, it boils down to that word “all”.  In effect, the Chief Justice and the Court Reporter inserted a decision where there had not been a decision.  They “voted for” the other Justices.  

I consider that action to have been the “Highest Crime” in American history.  

I would further note that a dead person can be Impeached!  Impeachment doesn’t have to do with criminality.  It cannot carry any penalty other than suggesting that the Impeached person did something that was dishonorable.  

As corporations reel out of control I would suggest that one of the most needed actions on the part of Congress is the Impeachment of that Chief Justice!  

Who was that Chief Justice?  His name was Morrison Remick Waite.  President Grant had nominated six judges to replace Salmon P. Chase when Chase died.  None of them could get Senate Approval.  His seventh nominee, Waite, got instant Senate confirmation:  Waite was a railroad lawyer!  

The railroads stole the Constitution!  And, Congress let them do it!   

Hartman: Chapter 2–The Corporate Conquest of America

“While corporations can live forever, exist in several different places at the same time, change their identities at will, and even chop off parts of themselves or sprout new parts, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, according to its reporter, had said that they are “persons” under the Constitution, with constitutional rights and protections as accorded to human beings. Once given this key, corporations began to assert the powers that came with their newfound rights.”  

The evolving corruption is much worse today than it was in the late 19th century.  Indeed, so much so that I get the impression that the corporate elite view ordinary people as a joke.  Not only that, the ordinary people let the corporate elite win so that those ordinary people cooperate in solidifying that joke.  

The biggest parts of the joke:

Corporations–and, therefore, the government–are intent on curtailing “Freedom of Speech” on the part of individual citizens (for example, attempts to “buy” the Internet.) at the same time that the Supreme Court is equating speech with money.

We ordinary mortals can be executed!  Corporate money has been able to buy light “sentences” for the most horrendous corporate misconduct.  

We die!  Corporations don’t die!  

And, funniest of all:  Corporations buy elections!  

Life seems to have become a very slow-motion badminton game in which actual humans are the bird being “ponged” back and forth between the two businessmen’s’parties; the full strength Republicans and the Business-Lite Democrats.  

I doubt if it is possible to return to before Santa Clara v. railroad, but I would suggest that we need to start by rebuking Morris Waite.  You do not deconstruct a rotten system without dealing with its corrupted root.  

You cannot reform what you do not understand!