Supremes Bolster 'Yo-Yo Economy' Via Corporate Sell-Out

"Right" reverses founder insights & centuries of history, part one of three: Seaside Signal Series.

Courtesy: commlawblog.com

(EUGENE, Ore.) - There is no possible doubt to whom our Founders deferred in their uniquely creative invention of our governance system. Their every statement rings and resonates with full and still worthy recognition of both the strengths and weaknesses of the ordinary human being.

How could it be otherwise? That still-primitive form of early business --the corporation groping and grasping for new ways to seize profits by every possible means-- was then still universally viewed as a danger to community and commonweal.

Corporations ARE NOT humans. Their very existence depends on legal-charter provisions shaped solely by human act, and their every action is only by decision of humans seeking "profits uber alles".

Leading economists and many others well-experienced now in the corporate form see that form-itself as the major generator of what is termed ”the Yo-Yo economy”: That very peculiar combination of capitalism and corporate greed forcing recurring crises, shaping the world economy into very perilous “You’re On Your Own” status and stance for millions working worldwide.

Massive manipulations leading to monstrous movements of manufacturing jobs, horrendous losses in job security, and total evaporation of longtime pension obligations, with devastating damages to every other characteristic of “the American Dream” for our middle class -- and others still seeking to BECOME “middle class”-- is the now-obvious overwhelming result.

Corporations DO NOT breath, bleed, eat, procreate; nor defecate or urinate --all defining characteristics of "a human being": Read “natural person”, in lawyer lingo, learned long ago as “legal fiction” creating a convenient major differentiation from true human entities --worthy of true “human rights” by the very fact of that status. Corporations ARE NOT “natural persons”.

They cannot and should not be treated as if they were “human”. To do so multiplies, magnifies and massively distorts the very dangers to democracy against which our Founders erected our tri-part system of governance.: Legislative, Executive, Judicial.

How astounded they would have been to find the Supreme Court --the bastion of our protection against undue influence and especially dollar-domination of our democracy-- selling out true democratic sensibilities to corporate money-muscle, now already manipulating too much of our representative-based republic.

That’s-the very last action our Founders would ever have taken --NOW unwisely visited upon us by the Supremes acting in mischievous misunderstanding OR by malign political intent. “The powers-that--be” (read: “monied interests”) have sought that unwarranted, dangerous status for what is ONLY a “legal convenience” for more than a century.

Their motivation is massive, since it brings not only strong protections for current corporate convolutions, but tremendous further future funding and governance-shaping possibilities. The Supremes specifically refused any consideration of how dangerous it is to open our governance to foreign-owned firms.

Massive money-based new ways to shape and direct our government, far beyond the impacts of “tax-breaks”, will now inevitably, take place --IF WE CHOOSE TO ALLOW THEM. The natural corrective for wild aberration by the current Supremes --intentional for sure, malign by overwhelming political evidence-- is Congressional action, by impeachment of these Justices or by actual Constitutional change to remedy their action and prevent further perversion of clear intent-and-design by our Founders.

The most significant characterization of that birth-charter, for each and every corporation, is the single-minded, simplistic and selfish foundation-and-operating principle of Pursuit Of Profit.

In fact, that is the major distinguishing characterization of the format for business and manufacturing and technical operations we have long ago learned constitutes "the corporation" these days. THAT can only create huge difficulties as demonstrated, remorselessly and worldwide, for the past 50 years.

Most economists worldwide now attribute the current extreme economic debacle to overweening, unregulated greedy grasp by burgeoning new forms of corporate combinations active worldwide. More than 100 nations have now freely applied remediating action designed to disarm, deny and defeat distortion of now inevitable globalization of trade.

They have adopted and adapted individual and mutual steps to control and contain, even collapse, the most dangerous of these desperate depredations --with more sure-to-come now. Those indisputable facts surely justify strong and rapid Congressional intervention, with clear motivation the prevention of Constitutional depredation by those charged with responsibility to protect and preserve our foundation for law and governance. Corporations DO NOT THINK, either, since they are NOT human but only a polite legal convenience for those humans who DO THINK --and manage/manipulate under corporate cover.

It is their sentiments and preferences now made most particularly powerful by this remarkable dereliction by the Supremes. It is their concept of “political speech” now sure to prevail, given the massive money-muscle of corporate income. By definition, true “political speech” demands human wisdom and human understandings and human THOUGHT -- none of which can possible originate within “a legal fiction”, used only for convenience in managing its profit-seeking, charter-demanded corporate affairs. “Legal fictions: cannot think --only human beings do so.

The only possible “passionate empowerment” of any corporation for any political opinion --and thus the need for "political free speech"-- can obviously thus originate in what thinking someone human does, for the other humans comprising the group we designate as "the corporation". Given the fact of charter-mission only to seek profit, any such activity originating with a thinking human being and then undertaken by the corporation is powered --and can be enforced legally-- by that immutable fact.

Henry Ford’s wise-and-generous action in building base wage for his workers sufficient to allow their purchase of their mutual product was challenged by Ford stockholders --and the court awarded them the “victory”!

The corporate-format group is NOW RECOGNIZED as comprising far more than merely those whose monies may be starting impetus for the publicly-chartered enterprise seeking profit-alone: Due to overwhelming strengths of capital-applied via the corporate format, responsibility for consequences-due to that strength-applied is also now firmly saddled right where it should be -- on the corporate form and the attitudes it inevitably generates.

Dangerous working conditions, constant defilement of the environment, widespread air pollution, and inevitable horrendous accumulation of industrial waste, and many other aberrations against a plundered planet, are all now clearly seen as inevitable consequences of the remorseless drive for “profits uber allies”.

Those consequence are now firmly and finally saddled right on corporate management, with full public attention now guaranteed by our long, horrible, expensive, dangerous and still too-strong and democratically-threatening experience so far.

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At 21, Henry Clay Ruark was Aroostook Editor for the Bangor, Maine DAILY NEWS, covering the upper 1/4 of the state. In the ‘40s, he was Staff Correspondent, then New England Wires Editor at United Press-Boston; later Editor for the Burlington, Vermont 3-daily group owned by Wm. Loeb, later notorious at Manchester, New Hampshire UNION LEADER for attacks on Democratic Presidential candidates.

Hank returned to Oregon to complete M. Ed. degree at OSU, went on to Indiana University for Ed.D. (abd) and special other course-work; was selected as first Information Director for NAVA in Washington, D.C.; helped write sections of NDEA, first Act to supply math, science, foreign language consultants to state depts. of education; joined Oregon Dept. of Education, where he served as NDEA administrator/Learning Media Consultant for ten years.

He joined Dr. Amo DeBernardis at PCC, helping establish, extend programs, facilities, Oregon/national public relations; moved to Chicago as Editor/Publisher of oldest educational-AV journal, reformed as AV GUIDE Magazine; then established and operated Learning Media Associates as general communications consultant group. Due to wife’s illness, he returned to Oregon in 1981, semi-retired, and has continued writing intermittently ever since, joining S-N in 2004. His Op Eds now total over 560 written since then.