The 1819 Dartmouth decision was an important, but incremental step toward corporations dominating our democratic government, but the 1886 Santa Clara County vs SPRR decision was an astronomical leap toward the end of popular democracy in the US because it essentially gave the same rights and protections of an individual to corporate entities with bottomless pockets. To me, this one wins hands down. What most Americans don’t realize is that the decisive evidence presented in the case by former Senator Conklin was fraudulent—based on lies per later testimony by Conklin’s private secretary and other evidence. Even so, the decision was never successfully challenged.
We, as Americans used to be much more sensitive to these things, even as an emerging democracy, experiencing the bare rudiments of self-determination. Our founding fathers new well the danger of banks and corporations to good government as demonstrated by Jefferson’s quote in the first post in this string. It’s true that the battle between individual rights and corporate dominance in America has been going on for some time, but that is no reason to surrender to it, as some peolpe in this string seem to have done. The increasingly disenfranchized American colonists of the 18th century certainly had more balls—and a lot more to lose than many of the more complacent posters here. I wonder if this was the mindset of the dispicable Tory of that era.
Someone here brought up the East India Company – possibly the most powerful corporation of its time. East India Company’s relation to the colonies inevitably brings to mind the TEA ACT of May, 1773 which touched off the infamous and (of late) grossly misunderstood Boston Tea Party a few months later, the details of which have either been misremembered or willfully spun by the people and press of this nation. But modern Americans are famous for being ignorant of their own history, so this is no surprise to the rest of the observing world. Therefore, allow me to remind those of you who still visit this thread of the situation in 1773.
The Tea Act, as enacted by the British Parliament, gave the East India Company (many of it’s most important stockholders were Parliamentarians) the EXCLUSIVE right to import tea duty-free into the American colonies—while all other importers would still pay tea duties. This was a blatant attempt to monopolize the tea market within Britain and her colonies by enabling the East India Company to sell their tea at heavily reduced prices, thereby driving smaller importers such as the family-owned New England shippers out of the American marketplace. In other words, this was a classic power play by a large corporation using its financial clout (in lieu of democratic mechanisms) to influence government to their benefit and would have been devastating to the many American importers whose businesses were dependent on the profitable tea trade which buoyed local economies from North Carolina to Maine.
Therefore, when three shiploads of East India Co. tea arrived in Boston Harbor in December, 1773, and protesters prevented the off-loading of the product as they had in three other colonies and demanded the tea be sent back to Britain, the Royal Governor refused. This caused the enraged protesters to toss the tea into the harbor, inciting military response which, among other instances, soon led to armed conflict, beginning in the same city in 1775 and an all out, eight-year revolutionary war beginning at Brooklyn Heights in August, 1776.
It seems incredible that a colony of predominantly agricultural people, most without formal education, could be so sensitive to the infringement of their rights to be free of such things as monopolies —and so willing to defend them. That is quite a sophisticated level of political awareness for a bunch of farmers and small merchants, especially when they were willing to put their lives on the line for such ideas. I wonder if today’s American citizen can measure up in any way to these people.
So, the Boston Tea Party was the result not of additional taxation, but of the REMOVAL of a tax burden to a large corporation while continuing to tax smaller businesses into non-existence, by law, giving unfair advantage to a large, multinational corporate entity. Passing the cost onto the consumer and driving American businesses out of the market exacerbated the progressive disenfranchisement citizens were experiencing from their representatives in Parliament. Taxation without representation? True, but the real problem was that any new taxes after the Stamp Act of 1765 had to be paid in pounds sterling which was rare and hard to get in the colonies, and not the more common colonial script —another stratagem to kill American business. Like Franklin later said, it wasn’t about taxation, it was about the devaluation and refusal of the Crown to accept colonial script. The Tea Act was the final brick in the wall.
So, today we have an arguably influential group of citizens who proudly call themselves the “Tea Party,” to highlight their anti-government, “revolutionary” stance on various political issues such as their perceived rise in exorbitant taxation without representation.
In their infinite ignorance, the modern “Tea Party” support and are supported by many corporations and corporate causes including congressmen who profess pro-corporate platforms, have accepted millions in corporate campaign funds and now are set to sell their votes to corporations in conflict with their duties as representatives of the people, just like the incumbents they replaced. However, this in perfectly in line with their platform which is a reaction to the professed Tea Party fear of a “government takeover” of the government itself (as in last year‘s pro-corporate insurance and pharmaceutical industries’ anti-National Health Care Bill best highlighted by their slogan to “Keep Government Out of My Medicare“)—in direct conflict with the spirit of the original Tea Party’s anti-corporate protests against dominance of their representatives in Parliament by corporations as clearly demonstrated by the protesters in Boston Harbor in 1773—today’s Tea Party’s namesakes.
Ironic, but not surprising in a country where nearly a third of the people are so devoid of general knowledge and their own history that they have come to believe that the political terms Democracy and Republic are mutually exclusive leading them to believe that they live in a Republic that was never meant to be a Democracy because Republics can’t be Democracies and vice-versa. Like the latest fad in willful ignorance, statements to this effect have become increasingly rampant all over the net in the past few years, including here on Fluther. This is very sad because it is so much easier to take something from someone if they are not aware they possess it, such as self-determination and a voice in their own government.
So, the the little-noticed and even less understood pro-corporate Supreme Court decision of last March should come as no surprise. Like taking candy from a baby.
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