Thom Hartmann; Corporate Personhood Update; Supreme Court Justices Are Kings of America

Talking about Corporate Personhood, how it relates to Occupy Movement and  the religious right

Supporters include Dylan Ratigan John Bonifaz, David Cobb.

If you're going to have a constitutional amendment, do th whole thing-- just ending corporate personhood is not enough. There are two problems-- corporate personhood and Supreme Court Judicial Review and Judicial Supremacy.
The Supreme Court justices are the Kings of America

Before there was corporate personhood was the the decision that corporations could come before the Supreme court.

In 1886 Santa Clara vs Southern Pacific Railroad.
There was at least one SC justice then, Steven Field, bought off by railroad.

Clerk of the court, a former Railroad company pres, ... wrote a headnote, for the case, that the case had decided that corporations are persons with equal protection under the law as persons.

Headnotes are not legal, just notes.

Buckley vs. Vallejo

Bellotti

Renquist's dissent  court ruled that corporations could... be a player.

Was trying to do Unequal Protection from original source material.

Twin Doctrines of judicial review and judicial supremacy.

marbury vs Madison.

(article 3 of constituion, which creates the judiciary-- section 2 creates supreme court-- defines seven or eight things about the supreme court. Says supreme court shall be the final arbiter of the law of fact, like if you sue me for bumping into your car and banging the car-- essentially it has to end somewhere. That is the job that is described for the supreme court in article 3 section 2. Furthermore, it says that the supreme court will be subject to regulations by congress.

Hamilton pointed out that Supreme court didn't have any police.

If congress passed a law that was unconstitutional the president would veto it or the people w ould throw the bums out and reverse the law. There is nothing in the constitution that gives the supreme court the right to overturn a law.

From 1789 until 1803 the supreme court did nothing but be a final appears court.

In 1803 in Marbury vs Madison, the court, with Madison's number one political enemy George Marshall as Chief justice.

Jefferson said that one branch of government, unelected and unresponsive to the people.... the republic is doomed.

For first 50 years supreme court never discussed constitutional issues. Now, constitutional issues are most of what the supreme court discusses.

Congress has the power to take the right away from the supreme court.

Must pass constitutional amendment that will undo what the court has done.

Corporations claiming
4th amendment right of privacy
5th amendment right to be silent and not incriminate themselves.
most egregious, they're using the 14th amendment-- building waste incenerator, hog farm, and they say you can't keep us out, that's discrimination.
COrporations are claming many different pieces of the bill of rights as theirs as persons. That's a big or bigger problem as the fact that they can screw with our elections.

Lessig and Ratigan are doing a good job getting out the word that money and corporations

Need to strip corporations of all their constitutional powers.
Corporations are not people and money is not speech.

Koch brothers
George soros.

Father Coughlin.

Best book on this topic is written by the Dean

You have nine kings in Wash DC who decide what the law of the land is.

Rob: SCOTUS appointed Bush president
They should ahve been impeached for that and congress had the power to impeach.

How many members of the Supreme court have engaged in impeachable offenses?
Clearly Scalia and Thomas. Roberts engaged in questionable behavior in Citizens United.

All five of them are Catholics... Thomas has used Kennedy's Catholicism to swing him.

Judicial review and judicial supremacy
Judicial review came out of marbury vs. madison-- justices can review constitutionality.
judicial supremacy says that they could undo laws-- that they have the final say.

Person who first turned me on to this was Phyllis Schaffly-- talking about Roe vs. Wade.
She once wrote a book on it.

This is not a partisan issue, it's an issue on the nature of our republic.


All three of them are part of the same fabric.
If people start waking up, they will force change.

The national security state and perpetual war are very profitable.
Members of congress are not so much being bought as being threatened.
I know a member of congress who had a lobbyist come in and tell him that his corporation could spend a million dollars in his district to destroy him or re-elect him. Which one would he prefer.

Christian right and corporate personhood--
corporate personhood includes churches, religious organizations.
Pat Robertson made a billion dollars just on his non-profit ministry. So I don't think they want to give up corporate personhood. They don't want to give up their ability to buy congressmen.

I gave the speech for the Unitarian Universalists annual convention on Corporate personhood. That's a church that gets  it. I would say that

Oddly, the unions don't like the idea of ending corporate personhood. But they're constrained by law, by the wagner act and Taft Hartley.
I think ending corporate personhhod, even though it would end the right of unions to participatie in politics, I think it work to the benefit of unions and the detriment of corporations.

If you're looking for advocates in the anti-corporate personhood you're not going to find them among anti abortion movement. You'll find them .

Movetoamend.org   put together by David Cobb, branches all over the country-- have successfully got on the ballots in Missoula MT and Colorado to ban corporate personhood, to be voted on in Tuesday by the Los Angeles City Council.
YOu can bring it to a town near you.

I'll believe a c orporation is a person when texas executes a corporation
when a corporate merger is prosecuted for bigamy.

Congress never passed a law relating to corporate personhood.

Grover Cleveland's 1887 state of the union address--  

Advice to people in the Occupy movement on corporate personhood.
Try to occupy city hall and get city hall to vote on an amendment.
Get the state legislature to ratify.
Next to last constitutional amendment was only six months from the time it was proposed until the time it was ratified-- because of the Viet nam war-- because of the song, Eve of Destruction-- lowering voting age to 18.


Things don't happen from the top down. They happen from the bottom up.

There's not much time left for democracy in this country if we don't do something. We need to get out there and get active. Without that, there's not much hope.
What Thom thinks of the Occupy movement.

What Thom thinks of Opednews.com