“Independent and uncoordinated activity by individual corporations
will not be sufficient. Strength lies in organization,
in careful long-range planning and implementation,
in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years,
in the scale of financing available only through joint effort,
and political power available only through
united action and national organization.”
Lewis Powell, 1971
Powell, Tobacco Institute lawyer, director of Philip Morris Inc., sent his confidential memo Attack on American Free Enterprise System to the Chamber of Commerce the same year he was appointed to the Supreme Court by Tricky Dick Nixon, with an 89-1 Senatorial vote of confidence.
Justice Powell was the architect of a decades long war on real persons, by the artificial constructs of corporations. These legal fictions provide financial cover for their investors, when the corpse goes belly up or lawyer piranhas bleed it dry for their crimes. Everyone wins, except real people.
It’s not odd that conservative justices claim to be originalists, loyal to the constitution and its property owning founders intent, passing judgments based on literal interpretation of dusty texts, with a cut off date before our modern era. It is odd though, how they’ve overridden the primary fear of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson that corporations formed by “rich and powerful” investors, united in the “spirit of speculation” and “corrupt influence” would replace private interests in place of public duty. After all the first corporations were monopolies granted by the recently renounced crown to favored friends.
American corporations were meant to be tied down and regulated by Gulliver’s Lilliputian lawyers and legislators by Founding Fathers. None proposed that Frankenstein corporations should break those bonds, come to legal life, be granted the rights of persons, then reign o’er the Seven Seas. The Gilded Age following the Civil War proved their fears well founded, as incorporated industrial titans bought or rented every level of government from lowly clerk to highest halls. Millionaires hobnobbed in our Senate, swimming in cash like Scrooge McDuck.
Corporations took their first gasping breath in 1886 when “a conservative Supreme Court conferred the divine gift of life on the Southern Pacific Railroad and by extension to all other corporations.”1 baptising it as a person protected by the 14th amendment, meant by Radical Republicans to secure citizen rights for freed slaves in 1868. Instead, corporate camels got their nose in the tent. A series of vertical stare decisis rulings, gutted the Sherman Antitrust Act, then invalidated child labor, minimum wage and work hour laws over the next decades.
Rural Farmers organized, educated and built cooperative collectives2 affiliated with urban immigrant workers, across race and region as Populists, but were crucified on a Cross of Silver in a Fusion national election as the century ended. Middle Class Progressives wielded New Brooms to sweep out Stygean stables barred to Poor Populists in the New Era of citizen organization. They were thwarted at every turn by Nine Men in Black. When the Supremes struck down FDR’s New Deal acts meant to help real people recover from the Great Depression caused by speculative fever, didn’t gnash their teeth in despair.
Despite Communist Fever frying socialism after the War, real people became aware of inequities, formed bonds of solidarity, elected political officials and pushed them to create a more fair social contract within a modern constitutional interpretation. While not all was Great, reining in corporate power to originalist intent, fed a Slow But Steady economy for thirty years. Wages grew, wealth accumulated for middle and working class white people until the early 1970’s. Tortoise Economy trickled down more than corporate Rabbit Economics and ensured steady profits for well run business from small to large, with fewer boom and busts.
Owners and management had Country Clubs and Cadillacs, but not unbridled and plutocratic power. Corporations and their wealthy owners and investors were chafing at their bits. They’d had it with democracy, they would cut off the head of the snake by packing the Supreme Court. With Powell in the majority seat for the next fifteen years, they took up residence in the palace, spitting in the eyes of the little people. Legal Foundation “brainchilds”, funded by the Chamber of Commerce acting on his protocols, brought juicy meat to the lion’s den.
Personal rights for corporations selling Coal, Oil and Gas, Pharmaceuticals, Military, Medical, Chemical, Alcohol, Tobacco, Agricultural, Food, Electronics, Media, Banking and Finance products were duly recognized. Their Freedom of Speech naturally, but also not to speak. Truth in Advertising regulations were mowed down like GMO corn.
Politicians and presidents eagerly sought corporate cash. Who else can fund the enormous costs of campaigning? Especially when there’s no limit on corporate spending as speech and greedy assembly as lobbying persons.
If the state that 80% are incorporated in never rescind their personhood charter, Corporations are Technically Immortal. The Senator from DuPont, Delaware rode this dromedary all the way to the top. His Good Son Beau, Attorney General of that state, refused to nullify Massey Energy’s charter when petitioned. King Coal’s mountaintop scraper, serial killer, scofflaw felon was quartered in poor people’s Appalachian home.
Congress banned the FTC from regulating children’s TV advertising in 1980. Corporations groomed Children as addicts of their fattening treats, sickening smoke and depressing devices, like Drag Queens in living rooms. Look Up from your corporate screen, their boot is on your neck. Incorporate don’t Demonstrate. Rest is Resistance! Don’t Worry, No Hurry. There’s plenty of time in Immortality.
Immune Resistance without Inflammation protocols. Follow Whiplash Science to adjust your cervical vertebrae. Tip Tongue to Palate. Engage your occipitals with an Indian Nod and Unbelieving Eye Roll. Balance axis on atlas. Cant forward and back. Tilt Left and Right. Look Twice for One Less Car. Center Skull over engaged spine. Tripled Vagus flowing, breath follows from coccyx to crown.
Corporations are Not People: Why they Have More Rights than You Do, and What You Can Do about It, Jeffrey D. Clements, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2012
Populists are Revolting, from An Occupied Economy: A Decade of Essays, Stephen Simac, Paradise Press, 2022
Another well researched and to the point article! Keep up the good work.
I will say resistance is fertile, it brings about all sorts of imaginative ways to deal with the evil organizations.