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Liberty City Network is documenting the R3volution. Based in Philadelphia, LCN reports on grassroots activists in the liberty movement in Philadelphia and beyond. With a focus on editorials, video coverage, audio podcasts, and timely commentary on current events, we bring you the story of expanding freedom.
On the Abolition of Corporate Personhood and the Occupy Movement
It all started with the last time people got interested in controlling the undue influence of monied interests in politics. After brush-fire rebellions lead by the likes of Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and Howard Dean rose and fell on a shared distrust of establishment politics through the 1990s into the millennium, concern over the corrupting influence of campaign finance lead to the 2002 passage of Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act.
The famed “Citizens United” case we hear so often about in the Occupy movement today was a landmark decision where the Supreme Court struck down a portion of McCain-Feingold on the basis that the First Amendment prohibits government from censoring political broadcasts in candidate elections when those broadcasts are funded by corporations or unions. The 5–4 decision originated in a dispute over whether the non-profit corporation Citizens United could air a film critical of Hillary Clinton, and whether the group could advertise the film in broadcast ads featuring Clinton's image, in apparent violation of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.
Despite what people like to believe or say, there’s nothing in the judgement about “corporations having the ability to spend unlimited money on buying politicians”, or even corporate person-hood, which was actually first established in 1819. Many in the Occupy movement are apparently lead to believe otherwise. This was a 1st Amendment case which overturned a law that would have, without explicitly stating, precluded nearly everyone except for people like Mitt Romney or Michael Bloomberg from spending money on campaign ads in the last few months before an election. The Supreme Court upheld the right of for-profit corporations, non-profit corporations, and unions to air ads critical of politicians, not just high net-worth individuals. This was a case about maintaining or contracting the 1st Amendment. The Court ruled to maintain existing 1st Amendment protections of political speech, regardless of how people organized themselves to broadcast it.
Unfortunately, and for whatever odd reason, the Occupy movement seems wholly unaware of the actual court case or what the issue at hand was, despite the actual text being freely available with anyone that is actually interested in reading it. It may serve them well to take up some time reading about it, Occupiers. This would be nothing but an odd and peculiar aspect of a dynamic and currently evolving political movement if it weren’t for the basis of the argument for why corporate person-hood should be banned.
BCRA is a federal enactment designed to restrict "big money" from unfairly influencing national politics by regulating "electioneering communications." [...] BCRA defines "electioneering communications" as any cable or satellite broadcast made within sixty days before a general election or thirty days before a primary election, and which "refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office[.]" 2 U.S.C. 434(f)(3)(A). Citizens concedes that its planned advertisements and VOD broadcast of The Movie fall within this definition of "electioneering communications," making them subject to three relevant restrictions under BCRA.
For whatever inexplicable reason, the Citizen’s United case has become a rallying cry for the abolition of corporate person-hood. In fact, Occupy Philadelphia nearly unanimously adopted a resolution tonight advocating a Constitutional Amendment doing so. Abolishing a 400 year old way of organizing and aggregating capital, along with its contractual obligations and legal standing, and replacing it with, from what I can tell -- nothing -- is quite a demand declaration.
If only there were some light to accompany the heat.
I should state I am no corporate or neo-conservative apologist. I am as mad as just about everyone else in this country with regards to both public and private finance over the past several years. I’m sick of the game being rigged, and I’m tired of incompetent leaders. That anger brought me to the first General Assemblies held at the Arch Street Methodist Church before the October 6th Occupy Philly began. But I think before deciding to completely reorganize society, we might want to consider a few things.
To begin with, no corporate person-hood means no contractual obligations between corporations or corporations and natural persons. A corporation would mean as much as a controlled substance in a contract once corporate person-hood were abolished. Let me explain: I can’t come up with a contract where we agree for you to buy from me a controlled substance. If we did draw up such a contract, and if you default on your obligation, I can not sue you in court. We’d be publicly admitting we were trafficking a controlled substance and immediately whatever agreements we had surrounding the illegal subject would be null and void. The same logic would apply once corporate person-hood were abolished.
In the real world, let us suppose my father got his hand caught in a piece of machinery at work. And let us suppose that after he recovered and the lawsuit was settled, let us say he was awarded full salary to retire at an early age, along with a lump-sum award at what would have been his planned retirement age before the accident as compensation for the injury. If there is no longer corporate person-hood, then there is no longer corporate standing in court. If there is no longer corporate standing in court, there is no contractual obligation on the part of anyone, because the anyone, the corporation, wouldn’t exist. My father, in this case, would no longer receive any pension or any lump sum payment at retirement. And there would be nothing he could do about it. Because the corporation that owed him the money would no longer exist.
Let us suppose my father never had his hand injured. Let us suppose he had a company guaranteed pension that was invested in high-yield blue chip stocks with a long stable history of profitability. In this particular version of reality, my father would be dependent upon dividend payments and the slow liquidation of capital to fund his retirement, years after working four decades in a factory for a profitable company.
If there are no longer corporate persons, there can be no longer corporate assets. If there are no longer corporate assets, there can be no longer be stocks or dividends paid to stock holders. In fact, there’s be no stock holders because there would be no corporation that would have any sort of legal standing -- because a bunch of people decided we should abolish corporate person-hood in response to a Supreme Court case that they know nothing about besides what they’ve been told by ignorant people on TV and at rallies. The validity, and very existence of, every pension of every teacher’s union, machinist union, or auto-workers’ union would be called into question the moment the Amendment became law, all because of a slogan that no one bothered to think through.
Am I the only one who thinks this has the feel of a tragedy written by Kurt Vonnegut? Maybe its just me.
Anyway, what started as an attack on the 1st Amendment is now an attack on property rights and contract law. There is no simple legal remedy to the abolition of corporate person-hood and the decades of court cases which would follow. I can’t imagine anything but complete economic and societal chaos if the above sorts of scenarios played out in hundreds, or thousands, of possible permutations. Before the Occupy movement ties itself too hard to this idea, it may very well like to include some discussion with actual adults about just what it would be that everyone is wishing for. Maybe they should find some people who can get through all the big words in the Supreme Court ruling. I don’t know. Anyway, I, like most others, am not at all happy with a political system that seems to be engineered towards a permanent state of privitizing profits and socializing losses. I too would like to put an end to corporatism. But, before we vote for national suicide, let’s think put some thought into the implications of some of the ideas that are currently circulating.
Ask yourself, what comes next?
Today I had a conversation with a friend that lives in a nice single-family home across town. He lives in a neighborhood in the city that in a lot of ways resembles a suburban development. I imagine a lot of the residents of the neighborhood fancy themselves that way, enjoying the suburban benefits of a space for a pool, along with access to downtown and local highway on-ramps. The people of the community are involved in local concerns and take a great deal of pride in their little suburban enclave. They also have some pretty strong preferences for the type of people they want living in their neighborhood.
My friend told me how the local neighbors fought a property owner’s desire to obtain a license for his property that would allow the old, large, 19th century single town-home to be partitioned into two apartments. The property was certainly large enough, and there was nothing about the city or state’s currently existing housing standards that stood in the way of him doing this.
All he had to was make sure no one in the neighborhood complained and fouled up his permit application.
For starters, the situation was less than desirable for the property owner. His original plan was to buy the property, put some work into improving it, then sell it to a nice single family for a profit. It was not such a bad idea as there were already many people living on that street who were living in the very houses they currently dwelt in because someone else had the same idea some time before, probably in the years leading up to the end of the real estate boom. But this time it was different. Prices that never went down, in fact, did. The entrepreneur was now holding a property that he bought at a given cost, then added some value to it through his labor, and now due to no fault of his own, the market turned, and he was left holding a property he could not sell.
The investor had no interest in becoming a landlord. And the neighbors had no interest in introducing renters to the neighborhood. Events beyond the control of both the property owner and the neighborhood sort of clouded that set of choices for everyone. So, sometimes, when you can’t do the best thing, you do the next best thing. The home would be turned into apartments, he decided. Besides, maybe it wasn’t all that bad. Given the number of people these days who can’t obtain mortgages or who have also made mistakes of their own in real estate, maybe a rental property is just what the renter and his future tenants needed -- a little something until the larger economy sorted itself out and everyone could get back to buying and selling single family homes again.
Instead, the community effectively blocked the investors permit through their local city councilman. They seemingly got their way. They used the power of local government to change the path of their little street in a very big town. They calculated, now that this gentleman couldn’t rent the property, he’d be forced to sell to a nice new family. Just like theirs’. Or so they thought.
If only people, before deciding what other people should do or not do with their property, asked themselves -- what comes next?
What came next were vandals. You see, the man had already exhausted the idea of selling the unit at a profit. He could not sell at a loss and still remain solvent. And he couldn’t rent the property, thanks to the neighborhood’s attempt at economic management. So the property went vacant. And, soon enough, came the jukies and criminal fringe. They first stole all the metal fixtures, then the copper piping. Once the plumbing was gone, the property flooded. And in the course of 48 hours, with water running full blast on each floor, the property lost 90% of its value.
My friend told me this story without apology or regret, even though he had been one of the leading voices against the interests of the property owner across the street. It wasn’t even a consideration. The investor told him, in a conversation, that my friend helped render the asset useless. My friend blamed the investor for buying too high and for speculating. Maybe the blame can be shared. Maybe not. Either way, which was once a bad situation is now a tragedy. And, instead of some renters across the street living from my friend, his wife, and three kids, there is a playground for prostitutes, addicts, and people who like to set abandoned buildings on fire.
The net-net in this is that the investor will be wiped out eventually. Even after insurance fixes the damages, he still will have a property he can’t derive income from, which will be a target for the next group of looters. And, if you know anything about urban blight, he’ll eventually give up, stop making any attempt to redeem any value in the home, and walk away from it -- assuming he hasn’t done so already.
There was a time I spent driving around North Philadelphia, taking pictures of abandoned homes and blighted city blocks. I suppose it was part of my photography hobby. It fascinated me -- that all of this great architecture, all these places across Philadelphia that were once worth so much were worth so little. Once, my wife looked at a block consisting of almost entirely abandoned buildings. She asked me, “how did it all come to this.” I suppose I could have given an opinion about urban decline, or demographic changes, or economics, or even some grand philosophy of history.
I said, "each property probably has its own story."
What comes next?
(1) Marine vs. (30) NYPD Cops
United States Marine Corps. Sgt. Shamar Thomas from Roosevelt, NY went toe to toe with the New York Police Department. An activist in the Occupy Wall Street movement, Thomas voiced his opinions of the NYPD police brutality that had and has been plaguing the #OWS movement.
Thomas is a 24-year-old Marine Veteran (2 tours in Iraq), he currently plays amateur football and is in college.
Thomas comes from a long line of people who sacrifice for their country: Mother, Army Veteran (Iraq), Step father, Army, active duty (Afghanistan), Grand father, Air Force veteran (Vietnam), Great Grand Father Navy veteran (World War II).
Mr. Auctioneer
Community Members block auctions in Brooklyn court; 9 activists arrested.
Date: October 13, 2011
Calling on the judicial system to institute an immediate moratorium on all foreclosures until a fair system of home loans is put into place, a group of New York City housing justice advocates disrupted the auction of several foreclosed Brooklyn properties in Civil Court on Thursday afternoon through music and song. The group, called Organizing for Occupation (O4O), was protesting what it views as a system designed to benefit financial lending institutions at the expense of homeowners and low-income communities. Although the New York judiciary instituted mandatory pre-foreclosure settlement conferences in 2009, O4O claims that these conferences do nothing to protect the rights of homeowners to remain in their homes. "No lender, be it Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank or Chase, has any intention of settling by means other than a foreclosure auction or another predatory modification," says Karen Gargamelli, a housing attorney and spokesperson for O4O. "These auctions displace our neighbors and destabilize our neighborhoods. We need a stronger system for dealing with foreclosures, one that holds banks accountable for making bad loans and then speculating on them as 'securitized instruments'." And until the Legislature passes more protective laws, O4O is calling on the courts to hold all foreclosure auctions, and encouraging New Yorkers to raise their own voices in the courts to stall these auctions through concerted direct action such as Thursday's disruption.
Produced by O4O and Housingisahumanright.org.
Irene, Aftermath
The writer's criticism of the local media is not just a criticism of the local network affiliates, his criticism is applicable to TV as a medium in general. At any rate, I've been a weather junkie ever since I got cable television in my house as a kid.
And I gotta tell ya, I've never seen anything this over-hyped as this recent weather event. Yeah, I know, people died and we should be happy it wasn't worse. And, out of my concern for the future, that is precisely why I am being so critical of the local media. If our safety is something they are so overwhelmingly concerned about, then perhaps not degrading their credibility would be a great place to start when it comes to communicating danger to the public. (Remind me why I need these middlemen?)
Any amateur weather geek can tell you, absent some special condition like a once in a hundred year mass of cold air from Canada colliding with a once in a hundred year hurricane during a once in a hundred year hot streak with moisture being drawn up from the Gulf of Mexico via a once in a hundred year hyperactive jet stream, then the rain totals they were talking about were completely unrealistic.
They seriously blew this and they blew it for ratings. It is a slow time of year -- Congress is out of session, the President is on Cape Cod, baseball is dragging through the dog days, football hasn't started, and school is almost ready to start. The local media needed the ad revenue in an economy that is sinking quickly. And fear sells. It was a perfect situation.
The Origin of the Current Business Cycle
The primary problem with fiat currency and fractional reserve banking, and the crux of our current world crisis, is that money creation is subject to the inevitable future of any exponential function: geometric decay.
Because there can be no economic growth without new money, and because there can be no new money without new debt, all economic systems operating on the basis of a fiat fractional reserve banking system are eventually stuck in a situation where it becomes mathematically impossible to pay off ever-larger quantities of debt associated with new money creation. At the beginning of the sub-prime crisis, when aggregate production, along with loose lending standards, no longer supported ever-increasing debt loads required to support an expanding economy, economic activity contracted, confidence plunged, and markets began to panic.
In the wake of the 2008 crisis, private debt was shifted, without knowledge of risk or value, to the public balance sheet to save the banking system, mostly through questionable political arrangements. That debt, combined with larger and getting larger public debts, turned a banking crisis in the private sector into a sovereign debt crisis in the public sector that we are now experiencing.
We stupid, ignorant, racist, fanatic, radical, anti-government extremists who are bought and sold by the Koch brothers and other rich folks without our knowledge or consent, who frequently engage in goat sacrifices and worship a foul God, fought against this, as the general feeling was that this sort of so-called bail-out would put our entire system of our democratic government at risk.
Let me repeat that, we fought against this because shifting these liabilities would put our democratic system of government at risk.
Progressives/Liberals laughed at us and supported the bankers. And then they called us racists, those deep thinkers did.
And here we are.
In summary, there's a reason why the average life expectancy of a fiat currency is 27 years. Ours is 40 years old this month.
That's why we have a business cycle. That why we have a ridiculous Ginni Coefficient. And that's why Keynesian stimuli only suppresses imbalances, all of which eventually manifest themselves in periodic and, eventually terminal, crisis associated with the inevitable destruction of a mathematically unsustainable monetary system that we are part of.
In summary, you gotta borrow money to make new money but nobody is producing the interest required for repayment when money is created. That's on you. But its illegal for you to print money. So guess who wins in all this? Pro-tip: not you.
Five years after the start of the current world crisis, through claims of "who could have possibly known", despite public protestations and warnings, we are faced with two choices: deflationary collapse, if government and the Fed does nothing, or, hyper-inflationary collapse, if the government does what most governments do when faced with this situation: debauch the currency.
Either which way, we're clearly fucked.
