We the People (Americans), live together in a large house (America). Our families have lived together for many generations in this house, and each of us consider this house our home. Our ancestors (The Founding Fathers) who joined together to build the house we live in took great care in the planning and the construction of our house in order that it may stand against the test of time and always provide shelter for us, their progeny.
Our ancestors also planned against the possibility of our house falling into a state of disrepair by creating a firm set of house rules (Constitution/Bill of Rights) that all occupants of the house would adhere to. Unlike all the other houses of the time that were governed by a lone individual with absolute and hereditary power over all of their occupants, our ancestors chose to allow all of our home's occupants the liberty to live their lives as they wished, barring only those actions that infringed on another occupant 's self-same liberty.
Our ancestors who built our home with such care also included rules they drew up with similar care, a method for the members of the house to select a nominal leadership who would always ensure that the house was maintained and that no occupant of the house was abused by another.
Even before the construction of our house was completed, and before the house rules were posted, the occupants of our house were the envy of ALL the occupants of the other houses. Our ancestors went out from our house and improved the land that the house occupied and made it fruitful. Our people enjoyed a bountiful lifestyle that amazed the neighbors and created fear in their leaders, lest their own people desire equal treatment also.
In those early days, when the land was being made fruitful, a small group of our original residents planted some tiny chestnut tree saplings (predatory corporations). None of the other occupants of our house saw any reason to complain and the small trees added a pleasing accent to the home they all lived in. As time passed and the arborists (capitalists) fertilized and pruned their trees, our house became known by all as the house with the chestnut trees. When the tomatoes another group of house residents farmed in the front plot were stunted by a lack of sun light, the majority of our prior residents chose to keep the trees , and the tomato growers were forced to move to another part of our land in order to raise their plot. Our ancestors took pride in the effectiveness of our house rules in their ability to settle the dispute civilly. Every member of the household saw that the chestnut trees added to the physical beauty of the house and they also appreciated the added benefits they provided of shading the sun and blocking the wind.
After years of hard labor by all house members, our land was ready to burst into it's full potential of bounty. All had contributed their efforts, in endeavors they found self-fulfilling. The herdsmen tended live stock, farmers grew crops, butchers processed meat, tinkers made utensils to cook it in, tanners created leather, cobblers made shoes. Our people worked in harmony and ALL prospered.
That was when the chestnut trees started bearing fruit. The chestnuts were in demand by other households and their sale gave an income source to the household that was not shared equally. The arborists declared the outside profit was not covered by the house rules and was theirs to keep; they pointed out that each occupant of the house could have grown chestnuts but chose not to. They asked "Why should we not keep the product of our foresight ?"
Soon after the occupants of the house agreed that the house rules did not require that the arborists' income should be shared with all the occupants , the arborists were seen to live a little better than the rest of the people in the house. Some even deferred to them in general discourse about the home's governance.
As the chestnut trees grew larger and the crop of chestnuts increased, the status of the arborists grew in the household. Most members of the house became indebted to the arborists and some offered them blind allegiance so as to better their own status in the household. It was a natural progression for the arborists to come to control who would be elected leader of the house and how the other members would be directed by the leaders.
Some members of the house protested that they were not living the life of liberty the house rules guaranteed, that the chestnut trees had grown so large that they blocked all the sun from the house, and mold was growing on the house that had been built to resist the ravages of time. It was then that the majority of the occupants who were indebted to the arborists changed the house rules to allow the chestnut trees a vote in the general meetings of the occupants of the house, according to their contribution to the total wealth of the household. Those that protested surrendered to the majority's interpretation of the revered house rules. Many years have passed since those days when the group of arborists gained control of the lives and liberty of the people of the house, and the chestnut trees have grown huge. Our house is plagued by mold, moss grows and eats the roof of our house, and the damage is obvious to all who look at our once noble shelter. But those who protest have gained recruits and at the last election for house leaders an upset was given to the arborists.
Those who have long protested the power of the chestnut trees are aware that the moss and mold, as damaging and unsightly as they are, are not the biggest problem. The chestnut trees have grown so large that their root structure has compromised the very foundation of the house that was planned and built with such care. The trees will soon destroy the strong base our house sits on. Nothing will save the people's shelter when it tumbles into the void created by removal of its foundation.
The majority of the residents of our house today have seen the obvious deterioration of our home's maintenance and they have witnessed the glibness of the arborists that allowed the downfall, They voted them from positions of leadership. Unfortunately, most of the residents of our house today are for the most part not aware of the depth of the damage or the acute crisis of the calamity our house faces if immediate remedies are not instituted.
Our newly elected leaders know. If they do not, they certainly have staff members who are perfectly aware of how the money and the power merge to create policy.
I am a tramp IBEW electrician. I have traveled around America for the last 31 years. I go to where the interesting job is going up.I usually like to work heavy industrial, new construction. I hire on to a project and start working myself out of a job. When the structure is finished I hit the road, and travel to the next project I am willing to work on. I read for entertainment. My reading lately is to expose the Globalist plan. I believe a very few men have pushed for the same goal for at least the last 1000 years.
They are not mentioned in our house rules (Constitution/Bill of Rights) and they have no place in our decision-making process.
They are indeed predatory, as they take, but they do not give back.
Our revolution was fought against just such chestnut trees. It wasn't King George we fought, but his corporation, the British East India Tea company, which, with its favorable tax exemptions was forcing all our small independent entrepreneurs out of business. And our next revolution won't be against President George, but against the corporations that installed him and which he and the rest of the corporate lackeys in Washington DC have given favorable treatment to at our expense.
If we want to restore the crumbling foundation of our democracy, we need to end corporate welfare, take away the charters of corporations that don't pay taxes or act responsibly, remove their "personhood" (neither corporations nor chestnut trees are people) and prohibit them from having any voice whatsoever in our leadership, assemblies, and decision-making. Their loyalties aren't to the democracy that made their existence possible, but solely to themselves. They are not good citizens and we cannot let them continue to destroy our foundation.
Thank you, Cliff, for an excellent call to arms. I don't think that Tom Paine himself could have done a better job.
--Mark
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Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Sunday, January 7, 2007 at 9:25:13 AM
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Thank you Mark, for getting the point I was trying to convey.
I do believe that removing the personhood from corporations is the blow that will slay our dragon. Hikes in the minimum wage, phony lobbying clean up bills, and ensuring baseball players are not using drugs will never kill the beast. Removing those Rights of Personhood would go a long way toward the goal.
Cliff
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cliff567 (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 165 comments)
on Sunday, January 7, 2007 at 10:03:10 AM
Great analogy Cliff. It describes our problem well. The killing the trees part threw me a bit. I believe that Corporate Personhood is the crux of our problem. It wants our government to aid their preditory practices globally while they attact our civil rights and assert a policy that is designed to enslave us.
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Sleeper (1 articles, 1 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 276 comments)
on Sunday, January 7, 2007 at 2:30:09 PM
Mark, it appears we're reading from the same playbook. We talked that way aboujt the American Revolution back in the 70s in the Peoples Bicentennial Commission. And we thought corporate global reach was bad then. If we only knew.
Attacking corporate personhood is one of the key things the left should be doing. A few local governments have passed laws annuling corporate personhood, thought they're untested. If you're not familiar with them, POCLAD (Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy), has information on the anti-personhood movement (http://www.poclad.org).
If you don't already do so, spread the word about POCLAD -- a good one-stop anti-corporate information and education center. (No, I'm not affiiliated with them.) We need to drag corporate personhood into as many discussions as possible....
by
Bill Peltz (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments)
on Sunday, January 7, 2007 at 6:57:12 PM
Our Hidden History of Corporations in the United States
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When American colonists declared independence from England in 1776, they also freed themselves from control by English corporations that extracted their wealth and dominated trade. After fighting a revolution to end this exploitation, our country's founders retained a healthy fear of corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society.
Initially, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively to enable activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end.
The states also imposed conditions (some of which remain on the books, though unused) like these:
* Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
* Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
* Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
* Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
* Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
* Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.
For 100 years after the American Revolution, legislators maintained tight controlled the corporate chartering process. Because of widespread public opposition, early legislators granted very few corporate charters, and only after debate. Citizens governed corporations by detailing operating conditions not just in charters but also in state constitutions and state laws. Incorporated businesses were prohibited from taking any action that legislators did not specifically allow.
States also limited corporate charters to a set number of years. Unless a legislature renewed an expiring charter, the corporation was dissolved and its assets were divided among shareholders. Citizen authority clauses limited capitalization, debts, land holdings, and sometimes, even profits. They required a company's accounting books to be turned over to a legislature upon request. The power of large shareholders was limited by scaled voting, so that large and small investors had equal voting rights. Interlocking directorates were outlawed. Shareholders had the right to remove directors at will.
In Europe, charters protected directors and stockholders from liability for debts and harms caused by their corporations. American legislators explicitly rejected this corporate shield. The penalty for abuse or misuse of the charter was not a plea bargain and a fine, but dissolution of the corporation.
In 1819 the U.S. Supreme Court tried to strip states of this sovereign right by overruling a lower court's decision that allowed New Hampshire to revoke a charter granted to Dartmouth College by King George III. The Court claimed that since the charter contained no revocation clause, it could not be withdrawn. The Supreme Court's attack on state sovereignty outraged citizens. Laws were written or re-written and new state constitutional amendments passed to circumvent the Dartmouth ruling. Over several decades starting in 1844, nineteen states amended their constitutions to make corporate charters subject to alteration or revocation by their legislatures. As late as 1855 it seemed that the Supreme Court had gotten the people's message when in Dodge v. Woolsey it reaffirmed state's powers over "artificial bodies."
But the men running corporations pressed on. Contests over charter were battles to control labor, resources, community rights, and political sovereignty. More and more frequently, corporations were abusing their charters to become conglomerates and trusts. They converted the nation's resources and treasures into private fortunes, creating factory systems and company towns. Political power began flowing to absentee owners, rather than community-rooted enterprises.
The industrial age forced a nation of farmers to become wage earners, and they became fearful of unemployment--a new fear that corporations quickly learned to exploit. Company towns arose. and blacklists of labor organizers and workers who spoke up for their rights became common. When workers began to organize, industrialists and bankers hired private armies to keep them in line. They bought newspapers to paint businessmen as heroes and shape public opinion. Corporations bought state legislators, then announced legislators were corrupt and said that they used too much of the public's resources to scrutinize every charter application and corporate operation.
Government spending during the Civil War brought these corporations fantastic wealth. Corporate executives paid "borers" to infest Congress and state capitals, bribing elected and appointed officials alike. They pried loose an avalanche of government financial largesse. During this time, legislators were persuaded to give corporations limited liability, decreased citizen authority over them, and extended durations of charters. Attempts were made to keep strong charter laws in place, but with the courts applying legal doctrines that made protection of corporations and corporate property the center of constitutional law, citizen sovereignty was undermined. As corporations grew stronger, government and the courts became easier prey. They freely reinterpreted the U.S. Constitution and transformed common law doctrines.
One of the most severe blows to citizen authority arose out of the 1886 Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Though the court did not make a ruling on the question of "corporate personhood," thanks to misleading notes of a clerk, the decision subsequently was used as precedent to hold that a corporation was a "natural person."
From that point on, the 14th Amendment, enacted to protect rights of freed slaves, was used routinely to grant corporations constitutional "personhood." Justices have since struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws enacted to protect people from corporate harm based on this illegitimate premise. Armed with these "rights," corporations increased control over resources, jobs, commerce, politicians, even judges and the law.
A United States Congressional committee concluded in 1941, "The principal instrument of the concentration of economic power and wealth has been the corporate charter with unlimited power...."
Many U.S.-based corporations are now transnational, but the corrupted charter remains the legal basis for their existence. At ReclaimDemocracy.org, we believe citizens can reassert the convictions of our nation's founders who struggled successfully to free us from corporate rule in the past. These changes must occur at the most fundamental level -- the U.S. Constitution.
Thanks to our friends at the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD) for their permission to use excerpts of their research for this article.
Please visit our Corporate Personhood page for a huge library of articles exploring this topic more deeply. You might also be interested to read our proposed Constitutional Amendments to revoke illegitimate corporate power, erode the power of money over elections, and establish an affirmative constitutional right to vote.
by
Sleeper (1 articles, 1 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 276 comments)
on Sunday, January 14, 2007 at 5:13:40 PM
The Federal Reserve was not necessary to this story. This analogy was an attempt to show the shackles that have been placed on our Constitution, and the extreme jeopardy our long neglected Rights are facing.
The Federal Reserve is an artificial entity, designed and installed into our government. The Fed was designed as a TOOL by International Money Trusts, affiliated with the new corporatist of America, whose dominance the Money Trusts had quietly funded and advised.
Final planning of the Fed, and a strategy to lodge it into a position that would enable it to control America's collective wealth was agreed to at the Jeckle Island conference in 1903.
Corporate Person-Hood was granted to Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886 by Supreme Court Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite in a case of land use that was asserted by Santa Clara County, Ca.
The case did not contest a corporations standing as an artificial entity, nor did S.P.R.R. plead they had rights to citizenship. Chief Justice Waite arbitrarily stated before arguments began that, "we" accept the premise of the SPRR as a corporate citizen, and it's right to protection of the articles of the Constitution.
Ever since 1886, all courts have held that statement to be precedent. The Associate Justices were not consulted and no discussion was allowed for. Justice Waite died shortly after creating the most Valuable TOOL in the International Globalist tool box. Corporate Citizenship.
Little known is the fact that Morrison Waite graduated from Yale University and was a Skull & Bones man in 1837, five years after it's founding in 1832. Waite practiced corporate law in Ohio prior to taking up his civic duty on the Supreme Court.
Ohio was the home base of J.D.Rockefeller, E.H. Harriman, Herbert Walker, Samuel Bush, the Taft family, the Weyerhouser family and business leaders add infinium of the Robber Baron set.
The genetic links that ensured a Yale juniors acceptance to Skull & Bones, was the common link of the participants in the Jeckle Island conference. The same gene pools that created the Pilgrim's Society in 1901, the Council on Foreign Relations in 1922, the CIA in 1952, the Trilateral Commission in 1972, and on, and on.
A tightly linked, long term plan was in play when America was tricked into granting Corporate Person-hood. Of all the other fronts the International Money Trust can be attacked, the corrupt interpertation of the 14th amendment is their Achilles heel.
Without Person-Hood, corporations are back to artificial entities used as servants of the People's will, like Thomas Jefferson warned us to forever keep them chained lest they usurp our Liberty.
With Person-hood, corporations are the strongest, smartest, richest, most influential PERSONS of the land. Without a heart, they also are the most ruthless and remorseless.
PERSON-HOOD is the CHESTNUT TREE.
The Chestnut Tree MUST DIE
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cliff567 (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 165 comments)
on Sunday, January 7, 2007 at 11:45:37 PM
In 1920s- 1930s Russian Professor Chayanoff developed and prtomoted the idea of the society of the free cooperatives, the ' farmers paradise'. Chayanoff was a great scientist, a Rennessiance man. His teachings are translated into English.
In 1930s he was arrested and executed for 'terror plots against the Socialist state'. It tells you something. Corporations ( and Stalin's state was a Corporation) are merciless.
One of the followers of Chayanoff in the US (although he does not know that) is Wendell Berry.
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Mark Sashine (54 articles, 19 quicklinks, 252 diaries, 3605 comments)
on Sunday, January 7, 2007 at 10:12:14 AM
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