Forum Post: Corporations Are Not People
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 4, 2011, 3:02 a.m. EST by Ryanwc67
(18)
from Stanwood, WA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Number rule for a corporation is maximize profits! Above all else buy law to maximize profits! That's not a moral person, to grant person-hood to a company is disgusting. Corporate law needs to change! Law one, best interest of the people! Law two, clean air, land, water! Law three, maybe profit, but i'm sure someone else has great ideas! Corporate greed has ravaged our earth to the point of destroying our whole ecosystem! Money isn't most important!
Corporate Free Speech There needs to be better corporate representation. Money is speech. Every individual, even individual stockholders, "ownership," has a right to free speech. Free speech means no one can force or prevent an individual's speech. Ownership has the right to direct the corporation's speech and political contributions. Majority control of contributions may violate an individual's free speech. Corporate management can speech for the corporation, but ownership needs to authorize that speech. No speech or money spent on political contributions may be made without ownership authorization and such contributions must be taken from the individual's dividends. No dividends means there is no allowance for contributions. Corporate management must poll the ownership to determine the amount and placement of all individual stockholder directed contributions. The assignment of all corporate contributions must be made public so that ownership can verify the correct placement of their contributions. Management can not make contributions on the behalf of nonresponsive ownership and thus can only make contributions for which they have been directly authorized.
Money is speech. Corporations are people, because people get the money. Free speech means people are not forced to pay for someone else's speech. Corporations may not force to pay or deny dividends, to a person who does not approve of money spent on speech. Corporations may only spend money on speech that is taken, by approval, from the people who get the money. Every person who gets money, from the corporation, must approve the money spent on speech, in order to protect the right to free speech. Since the money spent on speech is identifiable with a person then that money is subject to caps associated with that person and must be reported. Also, tax consequences flow, to each person, for tax exempt contributions. If the corporation feels that the cost of polling and reporting the money spent on speech is prohibitive, then the corporation is prohibited from spending on speech. Corporations spend money on product ads and any political placement in a product ad must have unanimous consent of ownership.
Your describing current law, we all know the current law! and its crap! The people in a corporation should vote as an individual including the C.E.O. Money is not speech our laws have been perverted by the wealthy that want their vote to hold more weight then ours. ONE MAN ONE VOTE that's the constitution! The current law is failing the public good and needs to be changed!
If you have 100 shares of Exxon, the Exxon, management does not contact you, for how you want the political contributions to be made, which is what I am describing. Causing management to go to the ownership for permission to spend their dividends on political contributions is the point I am making. Management may not otherwise spend money on contributions and also must ask permission for a budget for lobbying.
Slavery: A legal fiction in which a person is property
Corporation: A legal fiction in which property is a person.