by Mike Mercer, Hamilton
Some of our founding fathers qualify as founding teenagers; this nation was built by young warriors but is now run by ancient political thespians, so nothing kind comes to mind when addressing politics. It is an ugly business run by corrupt people hiding behind a few noble minded but disposable people. These noble warriors are few but my optimism wants to say a third of them at least start out being righteous.
Both parties now bow to “BlackRock” and other thugs with a “corporate seal” which actually enjoy the same Constitutional protections that people do through the 14th Amendment. Congress granted that equal protection under the law to every person. That last word is important, since in the eyes of the law, a corporation is an artificial person.
This part is strange but true: A court reporter in the Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad chose to make his own addition to the records and noted that the court had decided that corporations are persons under the 14th Amendment, and as such are subject to the same protections under the law as anyone else. The justices hadn’t ruled that way at all and as it turns out the court reporter was a former railroad president… fishy? It is my contention that only that which occurs naturally should have these protected rights.
The legal fiction of treating a corporation as an artificial person has created a rogue player in our representative republic. Thomas Jefferson suggested language in the Constitution to govern corporate entities; it didn’t make the cut. Perhaps it’s time we revisited that notion before we are all just shares traded on the exchange. This is what we should be fighting, not each other; time to wake up America and the world.