Corporations are People Too

If indeed corporations are people as the supreme court would have us believe, shouldn’t they also be held to the rule of law, pay taxes and fulfill their communitarian role in society. Instead we have American corporations, benefitting from government protectionism and historically low tax rates, that relocate their corporate offices offshore to avoid taxes and build factories in third world countries to avoid US government regulations such as health and safety, minimum wage, right to organize and other basic human rights that we take for granted.

In a well publicized sham a few months ago, the US government embarrassed the Swiss government into revealing US holders of numbered Swiss bank accounts. Well now that corporations are people too, why are we not forcing those US corporations with fancy, and albeit empty offices in the Cayman Islands and other tax free havens to pay their fair share of taxes as American corporations.

Along these lines, the five Supreme Court judges who just gave our democracy away to corporate control, did not even specify in their ruling that a corporation had to be an American corporation to influence US elections. So these former US corporations who have created bogus operations in places like the Cayman Island to avoid paying taxes, now have carte blanche to use the money they save in taxes to influence US elections. But as bad as that may seem, this ruling opens the way for any foreigh corporation to exert undue influence in any US election. So all the billions that we send to countries like China and Saudi Arabia may finally come back to the US – in the form of influence peddling. Of course we all know that is already going on but now it will be legal and above board.

One not too absurd scenario that this could lead too, as far out as it seems, is that Al Qaeda can constitute itself as a legal corporation, using a phony front, like so many illegal operations already do, and use its resources to influence US elections rather than spending their money on guns and bombs. Wouldn’t that be ironic, Al Qaeda wins through legal means following the play book set forth by the US Supreme Court.

If you want to see how this decision can play itself out, we can look at a less phantasmagorical example. In fact we have to look no further than the recent Senate election in Massachusetts. Currently, there is no actual limit on corporate spending in federal elections, only that corporations can’t give directly. So to get around this, corporations have been donating millions to front organizations, without limit, to influence elections. One such recipient of this corporate largesse has been the US Chamber of Commerce. Each year, the Chamber accepts millions from US corporations and places so-called issues ads in races across the country.

In the last weeks of the very short special election in Massachusetts, the US Chamber of Commerce spent $1 million supporting Scott Brown. Before this onslaught of ads funded by corporations through the Chamber, polls showed Brown trailing Martha Coakley by about fifteen points. Once the ads fueled by this largesse hit the airwaves and the web, Brown started gaining in the polls and Coakley’s lead began to shrink. The final vote gave Brown a five-point lead, winning 52% to 47%. Perhaps the most successful intrusion of corporate influence since the now infamous Harry and Louise ads that helped to defeat the Clinton attempt at health care reform.

Is it a coincidence that both Coakleys’ defeat and the Supreme court decision opening the corporate floodgates to infuence elections and legislation occurred in the same week? And is it a coincidence that these two events also happened in the same week that President Obama released his plans to reguate banks? Perhaps the message to Mr. Obama and the public here is that if you try to regulate financial institutions so that they do not cause another financial meltdown, they will have their representatives on the court ensure that they can continue in their profligate ways without regard to the collateral damage caused. Another example f the pernicious influence of unlimited corporate funds. Now your vote is worthless, and don't let anybody suggest differently.