From Truthdig
"The prevalence of the corporation in America has led men of this generation to act, at times, as if the privilege of doing business in corporate form were inherent in the citizen, and has led them to accept the evils attendant upon the free and unrestricted use of the corporate mechanism as if these evils were the inescapable price of civilized life, and, hence to be borne with resignation.
"Throughout the greater part of our history, a different view prevailed.
"Although the value of this instrumentality in commerce and industry was fully recognized, incorporation for business was commonly denied long after it had been freely granted for religious, educational, and charitable purposes.
"It was denied because of fear. Fear of encroachment upon the liberties and opportunities of the individual. Fear of the subjection of labor to capital. Fear of monopoly. Fear that the absorption of capital by corporations, and their perpetual life, might bring evils similar to those which attended mortmain [immortality]. There was a sense of some insidious menace inherent in large aggregations of capital, particularly when held by corporations."
~~U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1933 dissent in Liggett v. Lee
The good citizens of California have been wondering out loud who killed 86 of their citizens in the Camp Fire, along with dozens of other Californians over the years in other fires. Now both federal and state prosecutors are focusing on a likely suspect: Pacific Gas and Electric.
California's largest private, for-profit corporate utility appears to have killed a number of people over the years, in many cases because of negligence apparently prompted by a desire to jack up corporate profits.
As a corporation, they play by different rules than you or I.
Imagine you got a holiday package delivery gig, and decided to make more money by increasing the number of packages you can deliver in a day. The easiest way to accomplish this is by ignoring state and local regulations (speed limits) and drive like a maniac.
But what happens if, in your haste, you hit and kill a bunch of schoolkids in a crosswalk?
Particularly if you'd already been busted multiple times for felony reckless driving and had already killed other entire families driving badly on public streets...several different times in several different cities. And, on top of that, if you had lied to the police and the courts, saying that you'd been driving very, very carefully -- all while you tried to hide or destroy the evidence.
You'd spend many years in prison for those deaths and the cover-ups; in some states you may even face the death penalty.
Now consider what happens when a corporation behaves like that.
Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has already been nailed for "speeding" -- ignoring laws that require them to operate in a way that's safe -- and people have already died, on multiple occasions.
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