Creative Destruction

[Joseph Tracy]

Tomorrow, January 20th, citizens are going to occupy federal courthouses across the country to call for a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood and the equation of money with speech.
There is a map here. http://movetoamend.org/    Several people and groups are involved in calling for the event including Bill McKibben, Occupy Wall Street, and you can find a long list of endorsing organizations on the site.

Also McKibben wil be in DC on Tuesday at Capitol hill with protestors in referee shirts , blowing the whistle on the system of open bribery that passes for government of the people in the US.
On Jan 19, 2012, at 1:57 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> David quoted:
>> "Herein lies the paradox of progress. A society cannot reap the
>> rewards of creative destruction without accepting that some
>> individuals might be worse off
> 
> 
> that's just so wrong.  "some individuals" sacrificed to a common good
> is a blurry non-concept...
> what really happens is that a particular somebody decides to sacrifice
> a particular somebody
> 
> there is nothing about improving production or business practices that
> requires harm be done to anyone!
> 
> those are choices people make (and other people choose to enforce,
> which is also bad) (and still other people, then and later, claim to
> see as inevitable, which is also bad!)
> 
> 
> 
> ob quote - from Salon.com description of the Stevens objection to
> Citizens United:
> 
> While Stevens is reading the portion of his concurrence about the
> "cautious view of corporate power" held by the framers, I see Justice
> Thomas chuckle softly. (Scalia takes on this argument in his
> concurrence.) Stevens hammers, more than once this morning from the
> bench on the principle that corporations "are not human beings" and
> "corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no
> thoughts, no desires." He insists that "they are not themselves
> members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was
> established."
> 
> But you can plainly see the weariness in Stevens eyes and hear it in
> his voice today as he is forced to contend with a legal fiction that
> has come to life today, a sort of constitutional Frankenstein moment
> when corporate speech becomes even more compelling than the "voices of
> the real people" who will be drowned out. Even former Chief Justice
> William H. Rehnquist once warned that treating corporate spending as
> the First Amendment equivalent of individual free speech is "to
> confuse metaphor with reality." Today that metaphor won a very real
> victory at the Supreme Court. And as a consequence some very real
> corporations are feeling very, very good.
> 
> 
> --- heehee -- corporations don't have feelings, so that even the
> presumably Stevens-sympathizing Salon writer has internalized the
> metaphor...
> 
> Corporations don't have feelings!!!!!  The people who make the various
> decisions in different corporations do -- some of them were probably
> as dismayed as I am...since they will now have to compete against the
> villainous rats who brought the suit and their ilk, who do feel good
> about it...for now (wait until they are burning in Hell though...)

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