Only in American politics could we get wrong a question that any kindergartner could get right.
Show any 3-year-old a picture of a person and a picture of a skyscraper. Ask them “which one of these is a person?”
Of course the child will point to the picture of a person.
Show the same picture to our Supreme Court and a majority of justices don’t see a difference.
My God, that’s troubling.
Readers may recall the recent 5-4 decision by the High Court to overturn the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. In that astoundingly short-sighted decision, the court’s conservative bloc decided that corporations should not be limited in how much they contribute to political campaigns.
Neither are unions or even foreign businesses.
Congress — now more than ever — is for sale to the highest bidder.
When Americans of all political stripes bemoan the lack of the average person’s influence on our government, they should direct their ire at this decision.
This means that the billion-dollar investment firms that (or, since they’re people now, I might instead say “who”) drove our nation and the world to the brink of insolvency prior to massive taxpayer bailouts can dump all the campaign donations they like into the coffers of the lawmakers who signed off.
Just to say “thanks.”
Never mind those same lawmakers are presently taking up the issue of regulatory reform of that precise industry, with the vain hope of preventing another financial collapse.
How many millions will it take to buy senators’ votes to prevent banking reform? Ready to find out?
Imagine a federal government where every congressman is sent to Washington to vote solely in the best interests of his constituent businesses and not his actual constituents.
Logging companies will buy the Pacific northwest delegation and in return will see relaxed EPA restrictions on how many trees they can cut down.
The Midwest delegation will be owned lock, stock and barrel by agri-business firms in exchange for patsies at the Food and Drug Administration who relax those pesky e-coli inspections. Think those USDA farm subsidies are high now?
In the industrial northeast, the J.D. Cranes of the world will be buying up seats for relaxed air pollution standards and people like the citizens’ group Clean Air Coalition will be ignored because Crane’s millions will trump their medical problems.
Anyone here think I’m exaggerating?
Corporations aren’t people. They don’t exist by any moral code other than profits. That’s fine — we need an economy and corporations define it.
But you can’t slap the cuffs on a corporation and make it take a perp walk in front of the media. Because a corporation isn’t a person, it doesn’t share the feelings of guilt, remorse or obligation to do the right thing.
And while obviously every corporation is comprised of the people who run it, that hasn’t stopped the corruption of Enron or the greed of Wall Street from taking hold.
No, corporations are most certainly not people.
Even if there were elected representatives willing to stand up to the special interests and their money, they would be buried come November in an onslaught of commercials distorting their record and making them out to be the bad guy.
And what would the TV news care? Political advertising dollars would speak loudly and their parent corporations would no doubt have their own hand-picked candidates who will promise to lean on the FCC to let them buy even more stations and make monopolies of entire cities.
Newspapers, too, are mostly owned my major corporations, but print reporters tend to be an unruly bunch when leaned on by the business side of our operation. Still, with our capabilities ever-diminishing and our influence ever-waning in a literate-lite society, who will be there to point out all this stuff?
Republicans and Democrats tend to disagree on campaign finance reform. Democrats tend, as they usually do, to want more government oversight. Republicans, as they tend to do, argue in favor of a smaller government role and fewer restrictions.
But this isn’t a partisan issue anymore. At least it shouldn’t be.
Surely every person — Republican, Democrat or otherwise — can see that corporations aren’t people and treating them like they are will have dire consequences.
Surely we can agree, at the very least, that corporations aren’t people. Right?
Of course, that argument is predicated on the ever-dicey proposition that our lawmakers are roughly as intelligent as the average 3-year-old.
Eric DuVall is the managing editor
of the Tonawanda News.
His column appears Wednesdays
and Sundays. Contact him at eric.duvall@tonawanda-news.com.
