The first thing I have to say is if Royal Dutch Petroleum wins this case I am immediately going to incorporate myself so I can get all of the benefits of being a person without any of the downsides.
Kiobel V. Royal Dutch Petroleum. This is a case that is now in front of the Supremely Corrupt Court. Here are the facts of the case. A dozen Nigerians claim that Royal Dutch and its two U.S, owned Shell subsidiaries worked with the Nigerian government to torture and kill anti-oil activists. Royal Dutch claims they can’t be sued for torture and murder because they are a corporation. The Second Court of Appeal agreed citing that no corporation has ever been held liable for human rights violations under international law. That is reserved for actual natural-born humans only.
Big business wants to have it both ways. They want to be treated as people when it suits them so they can buy our government and then they want to hide behind being a corporation when they get caught killing and torturing actual people.
This case is actually something I have been waiting to happen ever since the worst decision in the history of the Supremely Corrupt Court: The Citizens United decision.
Since the Court decided that corporations are people, and money is free speech in politics, I have been waiting to see if corporations were going to be held accountable for their actions, just like people are. A real person couldn’t get away with torture and killing for any reason. Why should a personhood corporation be able to do that? I would even take it a step farther and say the executives of the corporations and the board of directors should be held liable as the “personhood” in the corporation: They are the ones who actually give the corporation “personhood”. If a corporation is found to have committed murder, then the CEO and the board of directors get charged with that murder. That is only fair. You want to be a person? Then take everything that being a person is about – the good AND the bad.
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You are right to remember Teddy Roosevelt. He stood up against the same forces we are facing now and beat them back, albeit temporarily. They are more sophisticated now and seem to know how to manipulate people’s thinking in their favor.
I am told by a retired geology professor here that he, and every other college teacher at the time, noticed a sudden plummeting in the preparedness of the students coming to college in the mid-80′s. What had been difficult standard introductory courses in the major became, over a very short time, impossible for the students to handle. This was during the Reagan years and I sometimes wonder if there wasn’t a conspiracy to destroy American education at that time. What better way to make Republicans than by promoting ignorance? I am mostly joking here, but somedays it seems pretty plausible.
Many of us thought President Obama might be a second Teddy Roosevelt riding up in the nick of time to push back the tide of greed, but they may be too much for him.
I entirely agree. The important point, even if we could escape the absurdity of granting corporations constitutional personhood, is that regardless the governing board be held legally liable for the actions of all who work for them. Personally liable. I am still very very upset at how there was scarcely any liability assumed for the Gulf disaster. If we can’t hold people liable then the economy becomes entirely lawless.
Corporations have always gotten away with murder…literally. However today, they are so arrogant that they don’t even try to hide what they are doing. Or maybe it is the Internet that has exposed what they are up to.
What these greedy corporations and super-rich people are doing is giving themselves a bad reputation. At the end of this economic crisis, when we are finally out of the woods, corporations and rich people are going to have become sufficiently demonized, that it will take another 75 – 100 years before they are able to institute a governmental takeover like they have today.
This is not the first time that this has happened. However, it is the worst in my opinion. Our government was pretty much being run by corporations when Teddy Roosevelt became president. And here, 100 years later, our government is again being pretty much run by corporations.
Back in the 70s greed was considered to be a character flaw. Now it is praised and everyone wants to be rich.
I want our benevolent country back.