copyright paul kane 2007 all rights reserved
Thom Hartmann talks a lot about corporations, about the way devious means were used to give them full citizenship rights in this country, even though they are obviously NOT human beings, a fact which is crucial, because they have none of the limitations that human beings have.
From Screwed:
But Nike isn’t a person – it’s a corporation. Corporations are nonliving, nonbreathing, legal fictions. They feel no pain. They don’t need clean water to drink, fresh air to breathe, or healthy food to consume. They can’t be put in prison. They can change their identity or appearance in a day, change their citizenship in an hour, and sever parts of themselves ot create entirely new entities. They can live forever. Some have compared corporations to robots in that they are human creations that can outlive individual humans, performing their assigned tasks forever.
Nike was asking the courts to declare that this artificial construct – the corporation – had the rights of a person like you or me. Why would it want such rights? Not to be a better citizen of the USA!
Hoffman could have added that Corporations often have unlimited resources and influence by comparison with even the richest individuals and certainly in comparison with most individuals.
http://www.thomhartmann.com/screwed/author.htm
