Corporations Are Not Humans: Not Even Close ---Episode 61

                                 AGENDUM FOR CHANGE 

It's time to deal with specific measures to transform governance to reclaim our colonized political and economic spaces and restore the rights of the people. The aim is to limit the power and freedom of the largest corporations in order to restore democracy and the rights and freedoms of people and communities. This requires more than simple reforms. 

                 RECLAIMING OUR POLITICAL SPACES 

Political rights belong to the people, not to artificial business entities. The claim by corporations to to the same constitutional rights as natural-born person is a legal perversion without moral or legal foundation. As instruments of public policy, corporations should obey the laws decided by the citizenry, not write those laws. The corporate claim to First Amendment free speech protection , on which corporations base their right to lobby and carry out public campaigns on political issues, is particularly pernicious. By invoking this right, corporations achieve precisely what the Bill of Rights was intended to prevent : domination of public thought and discourse. 
   We must give high priority to legislative and judicial action aimed at establishing the legal principle that corporations are public bodies created by issuing a public charter to serve public needs and have only those privileges specifically extended to them by their charters or the law. These privileges are properly subject to withdrawal or revision at any time through popular referendum or legislative action. If a corporation persistently seeks to exceed the privileges granted by its charter --- such as consistently violating laws regarding toxic dumping --- it is the right and responsibility of citizens, acting through their government, to disband it by withdrawing its charter. It is the same as their right to abolish any public body that, in their judgment, no longer serves the public interest.

   Shareholders, managers, employees, consumers, and others have every right in their capacity as private citizens to express their political views for or against the corporate interest. They also have the right to form and fund not-for-profit organizations to advance any cause they choose to support in their private capacities using their personal funds. Corporations have no such natural right. They simply do not belong in people's political spaces.
   A first step toward removing corporations from the political 
sphere would be to eliminate all tax exemptions for corporate expenditures related to lobbying, public "education," public charities, or political organizations of any kind. The ultimate goal, however, is to prohibit the involvement of publicly traded corporations in any activity intended to influence the political process or to "educate" the public on issues of policy or the public interest. Furthermore, corporate officers should be prohibited by law from acting in their corporate capacities to solicit political contributions or political advocacy efforts from employees, suppliers, or customers. 
   The increasingly aggressive use by corporations of not-for-profit organizations as fictitious citizen fronts for corporate political lobbying highlights how thin the line is that separates corporate involvement in public education and charitable giving from overt political involvement. Even corporate giving to true public charities and the arts has become increasingly suspect. For example, when New York City proposed a sweeping smoking ban in public places in the fall of 1994, the Philip Morris Corporation made known to the city's many arts organizations it had funded that it expected their support in opposing the ban. 
   A publicly traded corporation will almost inevitably align its charitable giving with its own financial interests. There is little other basis on which it can justify allocating shareholder profits for charitable purposes. If corporations truly care about the communities in which they reside, then let them provide good, secure jobs and safe products, maintain a clean environment, obey the law, and pay their rightful share of taxes.  Let their managers, shareholders, and employees contribute to charitable and educational causes of their choice from their share of the corporation's distributed wages, salaries, and profits of the corporation.
   Similarly, any nonprofit organization in which 50 percent or more of the trustees are senior officers of corporations with more than $500 million in total assets should be ineligible for tax-exempt status on the presumption that it is a front organization operated to advance the corporate interest. When nonprofit organizations with corporate boards raise public monies, issue public statements, or make presentations to public bodies, they should be required to identify themselves as such. 

   Removing corporations from political participation is an essential step toward reclaiming our political spaces. It is not, however, sufficient. New York Times columnist Russell Baker all too accurately described the 1994 U.S. congressional elections as an auction, more of a bidding war to outspend opponents on negative campaign ads than a campaign of vision, issues, and competence. This trend has left American voters increasingly disillusioned with democracy and outraged at a government controlled by big-money interests. 
   Politics in America has been reduced to a system of legalized bribery. If democracy is to survive, reforms must get corporations and bribery out of politics. The ability to spend millions of dollars to saturate the electronic media, especially television,with negative messages about one's opponent has become a key to winning elections. So long as winning an election is excessively expensive and the only sources of adequate funding are powerful financial interests, policy will favor financial interests over the public interest. Setting term limits or voting incumbents out of office will accomplish very little.  Three deep and sweeping campaign reforms are necessary : 

1. Public elections should be publicly funded. Political action committees should be abolished, and corporations should be prohibited from making any kind of political contribution or using corporate resources to favor  any candidate or issue in a political campaign. 

2. Total campaign expenditures should be limited. Let candidates concentrate on competing to get their messages out as effectively as possible within a set spending limit ---a better measure of their ability to spend public funds responsibly. 

3. In return for their right to use public airways, television and radio stations should be required to provide exposure for candidates for public office on issues-oriented interview programs and debates on an equal-time basis. Informing the public about the views and qualifications of candidates for office is one of the most basic responsibilities of the news media in a democracy, and they should be held accountable for fulfilling it. 

   With their dominance of the mass media and their growing infiltration of the classroom, corporations increasingly control and shape our primary institutions of cultural reproduction, constantly reinforcing the values of consumerism and the basic doctrines of corporate libertarianism in an effort to align mainstream culture with the corporate interest.  To reclaim our colonized political spaces, we must reclaim our colonized cultural spaces. Three measures merit serious consideration : 

1. MEDIA ANTITRUST.  Special antitrust legislation for the media should establish that it is prima facie evidence of monopolistic intent for a single corporation to own more than one major public media outlet, whether a newspaper, radio station, TV station, or home cable service. Furthermore, the operation of a media outlet should be the primary business of the corporation that owns it. This would ensure that the outlet is not used primarily as a means to advance other corporate interests. No individual should be allowed to have a majority holding in more than one such media corporation. This would enhance the free-speech rights of the public by limiting the ability of a few powerful individuals and corporations to dominate access to the major means of public communication.

2. ADVERTISING.  In classical market economics, the role of business is to respond to market demand, not to create it. Tax deductions for advertising provide a public subsidy for hundreds of billions of dollars a year in corporate advertising aimed at enticing people to buy things that they neither want nor need and creating a consumer culture detrimental to the health of society and the planet. Advertising, other than purely informative advertising based on verifiable facts regarding the uses, specifications, and availability of a product, is not in the public interest. At a minimum, the costs should not be deductible as a business expense. In addition, as a pollution control measure, a public fee might be assessed on advertising in outdoor or other public spaces with the proceeds used to fund public-interest consumer education. Factual product information might be provided on demand through product directories, including on-demand directories that are accessible through computer services and interactive TV. 

3. SCHOOLS.  Schools should be declared advertising-free zones, administration of public schools should remain a public-sector function, and corporate-sponsored teaching modules should be banned from classroom use under the ban on in-school advertising. 

Reclaiming our political spaces goes hand in hand with reclaiming our economic spaces.