[GPSCC-chat] Fw: Amendment Name/Feedback
John Thielking
pagesincolor at yahoo.com
Thu Dec 8 19:06:56 PST 2011
Drew,
This is good information to have. It makes me think that we need to carefully plan how this amendment is going to be implimented if it passes. I'm concerned that without a set of laws already on the books defining the priveledges of corporations and small businesses we could have a dead zone/dark age of a few years duration following passage of this amendment where grand juries and judicial fishing expeditions for those entities without formal rights would rein supreme. I would propose adding to each section of the amendment the following:
Section 1: New laws and amendments to exisiting laws that are based on section 1 of this amendment may be voted on by the legislatures and signed into law no earlier than 8 years after this amendment is ratified. These laws and the modifications to those laws will have no effect until Section 1 of this amendment goes into full force and effect. Section 1 of this amendment goes into full force and effect 10 years after it is ratified.
Section 2: If this amendment is ratified less than 365 days before the first primary of the next election for Congress, as defined in the schedule of primaries that exists at the time of ratification, Section 2 of this amendment will go into full force and effect after the end of the next general election for Congress. Otherwise it will go into effect immediately upon ratification.
Section 3: Section 3 will go into effect immediately upon ratification.
With this language, I think it might not be necessary to have particular goals within the amendment limiting what priviledges can be given to corporations. If free and fair elections are given a 6-8 year head start, I think that the people will end up electing people who will legislate the right types of laws. What do you think?
John Thielking
From: Drew <rainbeaufriend at yahoo.com>
To: "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 8, 2011 11:12 AM
Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] Fw: Amendment Name/Feedback
Yes, you are correct John - in these countries corporations have a softer form of limited legal "personhood" and accompanying "rights" - just not "inalienable rights" that are riveted into a written constitution.
So we can see that its very doable to support small businesses and give them the same legal rights as mega corps without resorting to the ludicrous and dangerous situation we have in the U.S. due to our crazy lazy legal situation of directly confering naturally inherent and inalienable human rights to unnatural artificial entities. Yes John, we can do this much better and much more effectively and safely than we are now.
Green Power to The People, not corporations!
http://JillStein.org
Drew
Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android
From: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>;
To: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>;
Cc: Drew <rainbeaufriend at yahoo.com>; sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>;
Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] Fw: Amendment Name/Feedback
Sent: Thu, Dec 8, 2011 6:41:42 PM
I stand corrected. I guess we have a lot of disinformation to overcome to get this amendment passed. However, even in other countries like the UK where corporations are not fully vested persons, I would suspect that they have at least some rights. The proposed amendment gives them free speech rights for instance. My concern with the loss of equal protection is not trivial. I wrote a long response yesterday that details this but didn't send it since I figured that worrying about big corporations dominating the Internet is trivial compared to saving the planet. But in a nutshell, we are facing the prospect of big corps filing mere complaints of copyright infringement with no evidence or due process to have small Interent sites taken down. The bills in Congress on this are PROTECT IP and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). My concern within a concern about this has to do with unequal treatment under web site TOU's that prohibit ANY commercial use of the
information on the site, effectively barring "fair use" of snippets of info for commercial use. If equal protection were applied to this case, the TOU's would be rendered invalid on this point because two classes of entities are treated more favorably than adult small business owners: 1) minors who can not enter into binding contracts and 2) Big search engines such as Google who use snippets of info from ALL web sites without authorization for commercial use. Having corporations, small businesses and adults and minors all treated the same under equal protection would be usefull in cases like that. If corps have no inalienable rights then we may no longer have as strong an argument under equal protection that "Hey corps are getting ahead of us and why don't we have those rights too". In effect we could see an era where corps have more and better rights than us (possibly granted by the local company town where they are incorporated) and we would
be powerless to stop them. Maybe we need to add to the amendment that local laws can not supersede national laws when it comes to granting corporations priviledges. Local govts can be more strict, but not less strict than the national and state govts, or something like that.
As far as the corporate death penalty goes, Greg Palast in his latest book Vultures' Picnic (www.vulturespicnic.org) details what happened to a nuclear power plant building company that was sued into non-existence by Palast's exposing them for various counts of fraud and racketeering. This same company started up again under a new name and is now the leading contender for building the next generation of nuclear power plants. If we have a corporate death penalty, we should have stipulations that say that the corporate officers that had their business shut down can never again work in the same industry or work as regulators of said industry.
Palast has said that fraud is as much a part of the structure of a typical nuclear power plant as the concrete and steel. I sent Mothers For Peace info detailing Greg Palast's assertion that most backup generators at nuke plants are designed to fail. They are run by boat engines that are designed to be run at full power only after warming up for 30 minutes and they are turbocharged with aftermarket turbochargers to boost the power output so that fewer generators are needed to meet the power requirements. The testing of some of these generators in the 80's revealed that turning them to full power within 10 seconds of startup, as they are required to be run under emergency conditions, caused them to fail. Broken drive shafts were common. The Reagan admin leaned on the NRC at the time and made it look like the problem was solved, but according to Palast, the problem may not be solved to this day. Mothers For Peace had a minor concern recently
about the possiblity that the valves on the generators would have to be operated manually durring an emergency, but I don't think they were fully aware of my additional concerns. They are looking into this as we speak. I also sent them a link to an article from the LA Times that says that on Earth Day 1990 a rouge "environmental group" claimed responsibility for 4 separate incidents where power lines were taken down. In one instance, power to Santa Cruz, CA was shut down for 4 hours after a 100 foot transmission line tower leading from the Moss Landing power plant was toppled over by chiselling the bolts off at the base. See http://articles.latimes.com/1990-04-24/news/mn-326_1_santa-cruz-county
for more details. According to this article: http://www.pinknoiz.com/covert/judibomb.html
the accounts of these incidents were blown out of proportion during retelling of the story by the mainstream snooze and the story became the part that I seem to recall from the time that terrorists were bombing electrical transmission line towers. My concern here is that a terrorist armed litterally with box cutters (in this case metal chiselling tools) can still wreck havoc and cause a statewide disasater. All they need to do is topple a transmission line tower at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, forcing the plant offline and into using the backup generators for cooling that may likely promptly fail.
I'm not saying that my ideas and grasp of the facts are perfect. We will all need to learn a lot and be sure to stay vigilant even if this amendment passes. Thanks.
John Thielking
From: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>
To: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>
Cc: Drew <rainbeaufriend at yahoo.com>; "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 8, 2011 7:55 AM
Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] Fw: Amendment Name/Feedback
During the Move to Amend presentation Sept. 12, David Cobb, Attorney and founder of MTA, said that there are only two countries in the world where corporations are people: The other is Iraq (whose modern constitution was written while under occupation by the US military). I will here outline my understanding of the evolution of the concept of a corporation, based partly on what Cobb said and what my own study of political economy. Cobb said that in the early years after the founding of the US, corporations were created for a short period of time to raise money and perform a specific task. I don't know when that changed, but economists claim that the invention of the limited liability corporation was a major step in facilitating economic growth. There probably is something to that claim, but it seems to have been overblown. For the first half-century of US history, 1790-1849, the US averaged 1.2% per year growth in
average annual income (Gross Domestic Product per capita, inflation adjusted).[a] Since the latter half of the 19th century, the US has averaged closer to 2% per year, sometimes more, sometimes less. This included the period of the Robber Barons, Teddy Roosevelt's Trust Busting efforts, the disastrous Hoover years, and since. We need corporations, but they need to be secondary to natural persons in US law. Currently, multinationals are de facto above the law: Through massive disinformation campaigns, they have convinced roughly half of the US electorate that there is no substantive evidence that human activity has had anything to do with climate change, and that they should get tax rebates on taxes they don't pay while the US taxpayers subsidize wars for their benefit. This is not true for small, bankrupt corporations, wherein the tax liability of the owners of the bankrupt corporation can still have substantial personal liability for taxes
on negative income (according to someone I know how is experiencing that). Does this answer your question, John? Spencer p.s. There are procedures in US law for a corporate death penalty: It's called bankruptcy. In theory, that should be easier to obtain than a death penalty for a natural person, because the standard of proof in a civil case is the weight of the evidence as evaluated by a majority of the jury. That's obviously very different in two respects from the standard of proof in a criminal case, which requires (a) a unanimous determinate of guilt (b) beyond a reasonable doubt. Of course, even most bankrupt corporations can afford attorneys, which means that police and prosecutors are less likely to seek convictions of falsified evidence and coerced perjury. [a] Louis Johnston and Samuel H. Williamson, "What Was the U.S. GDP Then?" MeasuringWorth, 2011
(www.measuringworth.com/datasets/usgdp/result.php). On 12/7/2011 11:51 PM, John Thielking wrote:
Find me an example of another country that has no inalienable rights for corporations and that has not descended into complete legal chaos and I will go along with the current form of Move to Amend.
>
>John Thielking
>From: Drew <rainbeaufriend at yahoo.com>
>To: "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, December 7, 2011 10:16 PM
>Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] Fw: Amendment Name/Feedback
>
>BP and Union Carbide would be examples of corporations, fully deserving of the corporate death penalty, who failed to ensure the protection of people and planet, before profit. Thumbs down.
>Occupy the White House!http://JillStein.org
>Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android
>From: Drew <rainbeaufriend at yahoo.com>;
>To: pagesincolor at yahoo.com <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>;
>Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] Fw: Amendment Name/Feedback
>Sent: Thu, Dec 8, 2011 6:09:00 AM
>
>John, in my opinion the lazy short cut that wrongly gave artificial entities "human" rights and equal protection in the first place *needs* to go away. Corporations are not people and this was always the wrong way for the U.S. to create the legal foundations for corporations.
>Instead corporate law needs to be reworked to make certain that corporations have three "bottom line" responsibilities : people and planet first, then (if a for profit) profit. If the corporation commits mass murder or destruction of the planet or rips off people the way the banks have, I'm all for the corporate death penalty. Oh and antitrust laws need to be actually enforced and the big monopolies like Micro$oft, AT&T (again), Monsanto, ADM, Lockheed, Halliburton, etc. must be broken up so that we have real competition, not just lip service.
>I have no worry that we are capable of creating good business law that protects the small businesses that are the economic engine of our economy without the unnatural and crazy albatross of corporate "personhood" around our necks.
>We need the Green New Deal!http://jillstein.org
>Drew
>Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android
>From: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>;
>To: Drew <rainbeaufriend at yahoo.com>; sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>;
>Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] Fw: Amendment Name/Feedback
>Sent: Thu, Dec 8, 2011 5:20:53 AM
>
>Another right that bites the dust is equal protection under the law for "artificial entities". That precident will do wonders to screw up business to business relationships and the unequal application of contract law, just for starters...You think the big business fish are eating the little business fish now, just wait...
>
>From: Drew <rainbeaufriend at yahoo.com>
>To: "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, December 7, 2011 4:07 PM
>Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] Fw: Amendment Name/Feedback
>
>John and all, I pasted the proposed language of the amendment below. As I see it the language clarifies that artificial entities (corporations) do not have any inherent rights under the constitution and can therefore be regulated freely by the federal and state governments. This is as opposed to human beings who have numerous rights (ie. human rights) at least some of which the constitution and its amendments recognizes and enumerates. This I believe is very much in alignment with the common sense expectation that most people have of our constitution and removes the ludicrous concept of corporations being artificial "persons" or of money = speech. John with all respect I am very pro small business but I'm just not seeing any problem with the language, and since it will/would take literally years to bring it to fruition anyway I don't see it as any kind of rush. Green New Deal Now! Dr. Jill Stein for President 2012http://jillstein.org Drew
>Amendment
>Section 1 [A corporation isnot a person and can be regulated]
>The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.
>Artificial entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities, established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.
>The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.
>Section 2 [Money is not speech and can be regulated]
>Federal, State and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own contributions and expenditures, for the purpose of influencing in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.
>Federal, State and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.
>The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.
>Section 3
>Nothing contained in this amendment shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.
>From: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>
>>To: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>; Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>
>>Cc: "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
>>Sent: Wednesday, December 7, 2011 2:42 PM
>>Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] Fw: Amendment Name/Feedback
>>
>>Spencer,
>>
>>I also agree with you about the media. I'm not sure what to do about it, except that I find very little to object to in the second and third parts of the latest version of the amendment. The only problem I can see with regulating money as not being speech durring an election is to be clear when money is being used as speech when you are not influencing an election. If we screw up the interpretation of that part of the amendment in some major way, it won't be the end of the world in quite the same way as screwing up the first part of the amendment. Whatever we do, we need to be able to mobilize major portions of society to stand up for their rights, no matter what the constitution says. Wheather it is apathy or just spending too much time working x number of jobs per person, many people just don't take the time to do this. Too often a major "victory", such as the election of a "black, progressive president" is followed by an era of defeat,
where we actually lose ground now that most people have gone back to sleep. I don't have an easy answer to how to keep that from happening.
>>
>>Sincerely,
>>
>>John Thielking
>>From: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>
>>To: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>
>>Cc: "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
>>Sent: Wednesday, December 7, 2011 1:41 PM
>>Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] Fw: Amendment Name/Feedback
>>
>>Spencer,
>>
>>I had a simillar discussion on Facebook and one person thought my comments were totally irrelevant and nonsensical straw man arguments. This is one of my responses to Richard (and now to you):
>>
>>Another reason why I want to think this over before signing on to endorse any specific language: Let's say it did actually work the way that Richard is suggesting in that individual 5th amendment rights were preserved while requiring any member of a business organization to testify against the business while being given immunity from prosecution for their own crimes committed while at that business. This would end up mandating the same form of testimony that is given before grand jurries and that the Committee To Stop FBI repression is working so hard to stop (people involved with small non-profits or activist groups being made to testify against their friends in front of a grand jury). I need to think about the implications of that form of govt for a long time, and research to see if any other country has simillar laws and what the consequences of having those laws were, before I would agree to such an amendment.
>>
>>Sincerely,
>>
>>John Thielking
>>From: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>
>>To: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>
>>Cc: "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
>>Sent: Wednesday, December 7, 2011 12:52 PM
>>Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] Fw: Amendment Name/Feedback
>>
>>Hi, John: I don't see the same problem you do. The promoters of the current corrupt system are highly motivated to kill any move that will honestly limit their power. I'm not an attorney, but I don't see how the current language would strip anyone of their powers and rights as "natural persons". This amendment would not affect the rights of sole proprietors. It's possible that filing a fictitious name statement could create an artificial entity, but I doubt it. Would this remove the "natural person" rights from an actor who uses a stage name? I doubt it: They are still "natural persons", "their houses, papers, and effects" are still theirs and therefore should still be subject to protection under the Fourth Amendment -- unless the said property belonged to a corporation they created, registered in the Bahamas as a tax dodge. Then they would be prohibited from using the extra money they made by tax avoidance from
influencing elections unduly. In fact, I believe it would increase the rights of "natural persons" by giving the government the right to regulate the activities of "artificial entities". Our current system is one dollar, one vote. This amendment would make it easier for citizens to change this. Actually, I think the "Move to Ammend" is a secondary issue: For me the number one problem is the media. For example, one study of found that the US public spends on average $1,645 per person more for health care than our counterparts in other developed countries, and we get less for it in terms of a lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, etc. This amounts to roughly 4% of GDP. In other words, 4 cents of every dollar you get pays for denying insurance claims to people, medications that cost you far more than they should, newer, more expensive and less effective medications than those otherwise available, and paying
doctors more than their counterparts elsewhere. We could solve these problems if the media didn't have a conflict of interest in perpetuating all these corrupt practices. This 4 percent is only the tip of the iceberg. If you add corruption in the finance and defense industries, we probably pay on average between $4,000 and $10,000 per person per year for the "free" broadcasting and the substantial portion of the print media that is paid by advertising. Spencer On 12/7/2011 11:14 AM, John Thielking wrote:
>>No disrespect to those who are working hard to circulate the current paper form of this amendment which I also characterize below, but we really need to slow down the process of putting forward and endorsing specific amendment language, lest we end up in the dark ages with fewer rights for those who actually do something or anything involved with the functioning of a corporation than we originally intended. For the complete amendment language that I am referring to see http://www.movetoamend.org and look for the amendment link. Thanks.
>>>
>>>John Thielking
>>>----- Forwarded Message -----
>>>Sent: Tuesday, December 6, 2011 10:38 PM
>>>Subject: Fw: Amendment Name/Feedback
>>>
>>>Dear LA City Council:
>>>
>>>This is the message I sent to Move To Amend in response to your passage of a resolution supporting specific amendment language to deprive corporations of personhood. See below to see why I think this resolution is premature at best and a bad idea at worst. Thank you.
>>>
>>>Sincerely,
>>>
>>>John Thielking
>>>San Jose, CA
>>>----- Forwarded Message -----
>>>From: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>
>>>To: "info at movetoamend.org" <info at movetoamend.org>
>>>Sent: Tuesday, December 6, 2011 8:21 PM
>>>Subject: Amendment Name/Feedback
>>>
>>>I'm a longtime supporter and member of the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party in CA, and I support and occasionally participate in the Occupy movement, but I am also a small business owner (www.peacemovies.com) and I think that the first part of the latest version of your amendment leaves 99% of business owners out in the cold when it comes to their civil rights in a vain attempt to attack the rights of the 1% which have grown to be more important in our current society than the rights of the 99%.
>>>
>>>The following statement was posted as a comment on Facebook as a response to an article posted about the LA City Council passing a resolution supporting the specific amendment language currently on your web site:
>>>
>>>Actually, not so fast. This latest amendment would possibly classify sole proprietors operating under a ficticious business name as "non-persons". Also, small corporations are often formed for various reasons other than evading liability and the operators of these businesses would also be "non-persons". You want to see an Ayn Rand style of revolt from the real job creators (small businesses employ most of the people in the US), just try passing this amendment as written. This particular version of the Move To Amend amendment was probably created less than one month ago (there is another, much worse version still in circulation on some paper petitions). I suspect that the founding fathers had many months if not years of deliberation before they tried to put forth any specific form of the constitution.* They were fully aware of the implications of corporate power even at that early date. Jefferson badmouthed corporations and the banking system
I think, for instance. If they left out an amendment that strips all people involved with the functioning of a corporation of their civil rights, they must have had a good reason. If you think this amendment won't strip PEOPLE as opposed to paper entities of their rights, who do you think runs the paper entities. Who will have to give incriminating evidence against their will and have their life's work seized without a warrant? The mainframe computer that issues the payroll checks? We can't start thinking of jobs as handouts and SETTLE for working for "the man" who may now be our slave under this amendment, but who still has the power to determine our financial future. If you want to form co-ops and SHARE responsibility and culpability when you create your financial future, fine go right ahead and do THAT. But don't come crying home to your sugardaddy boss and ask him or her to "give you a job" while you screw him or her over with an amendment like
this.
>>>
>>>That is all for now.
>>>
>>>Sincerely,
>>>
>>>John Thielking
>>>San Jose, CA*Actually the founding fathers had a Constitutional Convention from May 25, 1787 to September 17, 1787 (116 days). The Bill Of Rights was introduced 2 years later and was based on the Virginia Declaration Of Rights which was adopted in 1776. So James Madison had 2 years to come up with the US Bill Of Rights after the Constitutional Convention. And the ideas contained in the Virginia Declaration percolated for some 13 years. And were based in part on the British Bill of Rights, adopted 100 years earlier.
>>>
>>>
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--
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph: 408-655-4567
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