Health Care Reform and the case currently under review by the Supreme Court.
The case under current review by the US Supreme Court, in a rare revisitation of a case already decided, concerns the First Amendment rights of corporate entities to speak for or against candidates in federal elections.
The connection between this case and the reform of the US health care system is the concept of corporate personhood.
Early in the 20th century, corporate entities were awarded civil rights under US law previously only acknowledged to human persons. As far as I am concerned, this is the primary and fundamental mistake from which all major ills of 21st century America directly derive.
By according the right to participate in public debate and influence the electoral process to entities which, by their very nature, cannot conceive of either morality or the common good, we have handed control of virtually every aspect of our national public life to "persons" who have no interest but that of their own performance in the next quarterly stock report. This is a recipe for disaster, and the vitriolic tone of current public debate, fostered by mass media solely interested in stirring up "controversy" because it benefits their own bottom lines, is only a taste of what we are heading for.
In order to maintain balance and civility in our public spheres, we must hold PERSONALLY responsible the persons who run corporate entities for the anti-social, destructive and frankly pathological behaviors of those entities in ways that individual shareholders no longer can due to an environment dominated by massive institutional stockholders and funds. In this environment, individual shareholders rarely have any idea what companies they own parts of, and have literally no influence or interest in the activities of those companies other than ever-increasing profits and stock values.
Our current health care reform effort was begun at the White House by a concerted effort to bring corporate interests into the fold so they would not stand as obstructionist forces against reform. This was done by massive and unacceptable concessions to the interests of an industry which has obscenely enriched its senior officers at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of American citizens.
Since we live in a society founded on principles of civility and the rule of law, we cannot simply treat these persons and entities as justice would demand, so we must undertake for the public good to amend the mistakes of our past and severely curtail the rights we previously assigned to corporate entities.
In this spirit, I call upon the members of the United States Supreme Court to rule not only against a broad interpretation of the First Amendment rights of corporations, but against even a narrow interpretation of those rights. At stake is a precedent which has stood for about 70 years, limiting the rights of corporations to influence federal elections, and the court seems inclined to undermine that precedent. I call upon the court to strengthen that precedent, and to the extent possible within acceptable jurisprudence, to restrict the rights of corporate entities to make any attempts to influence public policy or the electoral process without full, complete and timely disclosure to the public of the exact nature and intent of the effort and the exact source(s) of the funding behind it.
Discuss.
The connection between this case and the reform of the US health care system is the concept of corporate personhood.
Early in the 20th century, corporate entities were awarded civil rights under US law previously only acknowledged to human persons. As far as I am concerned, this is the primary and fundamental mistake from which all major ills of 21st century America directly derive.
By according the right to participate in public debate and influence the electoral process to entities which, by their very nature, cannot conceive of either morality or the common good, we have handed control of virtually every aspect of our national public life to "persons" who have no interest but that of their own performance in the next quarterly stock report. This is a recipe for disaster, and the vitriolic tone of current public debate, fostered by mass media solely interested in stirring up "controversy" because it benefits their own bottom lines, is only a taste of what we are heading for.
In order to maintain balance and civility in our public spheres, we must hold PERSONALLY responsible the persons who run corporate entities for the anti-social, destructive and frankly pathological behaviors of those entities in ways that individual shareholders no longer can due to an environment dominated by massive institutional stockholders and funds. In this environment, individual shareholders rarely have any idea what companies they own parts of, and have literally no influence or interest in the activities of those companies other than ever-increasing profits and stock values.
Our current health care reform effort was begun at the White House by a concerted effort to bring corporate interests into the fold so they would not stand as obstructionist forces against reform. This was done by massive and unacceptable concessions to the interests of an industry which has obscenely enriched its senior officers at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of American citizens.
Since we live in a society founded on principles of civility and the rule of law, we cannot simply treat these persons and entities as justice would demand, so we must undertake for the public good to amend the mistakes of our past and severely curtail the rights we previously assigned to corporate entities.
In this spirit, I call upon the members of the United States Supreme Court to rule not only against a broad interpretation of the First Amendment rights of corporations, but against even a narrow interpretation of those rights. At stake is a precedent which has stood for about 70 years, limiting the rights of corporations to influence federal elections, and the court seems inclined to undermine that precedent. I call upon the court to strengthen that precedent, and to the extent possible within acceptable jurisprudence, to restrict the rights of corporate entities to make any attempts to influence public policy or the electoral process without full, complete and timely disclosure to the public of the exact nature and intent of the effort and the exact source(s) of the funding behind it.
Discuss.