When Truth Is Suppressed Countries Die

Paul Craig Roberts
March 15, 2013

Over a decade during which the US economy was decimated by jobs offshoring, economists and other PR shills for offshoring corporations said that the US did not need the millions of lost manufacturing jobs and should be glad that the “dirty fingernail” jobs were gone.

America, we were told, was moving upscale. Our new role in the world economy was to innovate and develop the new products that the dirty fingernail economies would produce. The money was in the innovation, they said, not in the simple task of production.

As I consistently warned, the “high-wage service economy based on imagination and ingenuity” that Harvard professor and offshoring advocate Michael Porter promised us as our reward for giving up dirty fingernail jobs was a figment of Porter’s imagination.

Over the decade I repeated myself many times: “Innovation takes place where things are made. Innovation will move abroad with the manufacturing.”

This is not what corporations or their shills such as Porter wanted to hear. Corporations were boosting their profits by getting rid of their American employees and replacing them with lowly paid foreigners. Porter’s job was to reassure the sheeple so that no outcry would materialize against the greed that was hollowing out the US economy.

Now comes a study conducted by 20 MIT professors and their graduate students that concludes on the basis of the facts that “the loss of companies that can make things will end up in the loss of research than can invent them.”

http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/mit0305131.html

I am pleased to be vindicated by MIT. Of course, the professors are too late. The loss has already occurred. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if the MIT professors can be heard through the orchestrated disinformation.

Two years ago in 2011 a Nobel prize-winning economist, Michael Spence, confirmed my decade-old conclusion that the US economy no longer had the capability to create any jobs except low-wage domestic service jobs that do not produce tradable goods and services that can be exported to reduce the massive US trade deficit. Spence validated my argument that the “new economy” was the offshored economy. Spence concluded that the outlook for the US economy and US employment is dire. The US faces “a long-term structural challenge with respect to the quantity and quality of employment opportunities in the United States. A related set of challenges concerns the income distribution; almost all incremental employment has occurred in the non-tradable sector, which has experienced much slower growth in value added per employee. Because that number is highly correlated with income, it goes a long way to explain the stagnation of wages across large segments of the workforce.”

http://www.cfr.org/industrial-policy/evolving-structure-american-economy-employment-challenge/p24366

There has been no more public policy response to Spence’s conclusion than to my identical conclusion.

We have heard all our lives that ideas are the most powerful force and prevail over material interests. Perhaps this was once true, but that would have been in previous times when material interests did not control the media, the universities, and the publishing companies along with the government. Voices such as mine, that of a high US Treasury official, and that of Spence, a Nobel prize winner, cannot compete with the voices paid by Big Money. Today the bulk of the population knows nothing except the propaganda fed to them by the oligarchic interests. They sit in front of Fox News or CNN and ingest it all. Those who fancy themselves more sophisticated get the same dose of lies from the New York Times.

If those who speak truth cannot be bought off or shut up, they are ignored or demonized. Almost everything Americans need to know is off limits in public discussion. Anyone who broaches the truth becomes an “anti-American,” a “terrorist sympathizer,” a “commie-socialist,” a “conspiracy theorist,” an “anti-semite,” a “kook,” or some other name designed to scare Americans away from the message of truth.

The corrupt corporations, the corrupt media, and the corrupt US government have insulated the country from truth. The result will be a massive crash. A country built on lies is like a house built on sand:

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock [truth]. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand [lies].The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 7:24-27 (NIV)

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously the editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.

1% Wall Street sales tax solution

1% Wall Street sales tax solution to stablize US federal budget
Webster G. Tarpley
Tue Dec 4, 2012
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/12/04/276170/wall-street-tax-solution-to-us-budget/

In the midst of the current haggling over the US federal budget, the main fact is being ignored: the fiscal shortfall of the US government over decades is largely due to Wall Street’s rigging of the tax code so that the main money center banks pay little or nothing in the way of taxes.

Like the haughty nobility in France before the Revolution of 1789, the Wall Street banks are practically exempt from taxation, and the burden of paying for the government is shifted to the middle class. Anybody who is serious about reducing the power of Wall Street bankers in US politics must now mobilize to educate public opinion about the situation and its main remedy - the 1% Wall Street Sales Tax.

Wall Street banks are corporations, and US corporations are supposed to pay a federal corporate income tax of 35% on their profits.

Over recent decades, government revenue from the federal corporate income tax has been in sharp decline, as more and more companies learn the secrets of tax loopholes, offshore tax shelters, and other accounting tricks. Some of the most adept in dodging tax payments are the leading Wall Street institutions.

Some statistics on Wall Street’s amazing ability to evade taxation come from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and from Citizens for Tax Justice, a think tank supported by organized labor.

It turns out that Goldman Sachs, the classic zombie bank, paid just 1.1% tax on its total profits in 2008. This scandalous situation did not prevent Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s boss, from appearing on CBS television to demand draconian cuts in the meager entitlement payments received by the poor, the sick, and the old.

Goldman paid 1%, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo paid nothing.

Citigroup made out even better, paying 0% taxes on $4 billion in profits. In 2011, Bank of America also managed to pay 0% on 4.4 billion of its profits. Another leading bank which managed to avoid the federal corporate income tax altogether is Wells Fargo, which succeeded in paying nothing to the US Treasury in 2008, 2009, and 2010 (See Pat Garofalo, “30 Major Corporations Paid No Income Taxes in the Last Three Years, While Making $160 billion,” Think Progress, November 3, 2011).

Another spectacular example of Wall Street’s tax dodges is General Electric, which long ago ceased being an industrial corporation and became a hedge fund in drag, built around its financial arm, GE Capital.

GE racked up worldwide profits of $14.2 billion in 2010, but managed to avoid the federal corporate income tax completely. Instead, GE accountants were able to secure a $3.2 billion refund from the US Treasury. This happened even though GE was laying off 21,000 US workers and closing 20 US factories over the years 2007-2009.

And these results were typical of GE’s performance over the most recent decade: GE paid a 2.3% tax rate on profits during 2002-2011, and succeeded in paying zero federal corporate income tax in 2002, 2008, 2009, and 2010 (See Citizens for Tax Justice and Jake Tapper, “General Electric Paid No Federal Taxes in 2010,” ABC News, March 25, 2011).

The scandal is made even greater because GE boss Jeffrey Immelt was serving as Obama’s business liaison in his capacity as Chairman of the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Rapacious predators like Immelt apparently believe that good corporate citizenship starts with evading all taxes.

Wall Street pays no tax on its transactions

But these scandals, though outrageous, barely beginning to scratch the surface of the insane world of US tax law. US states collect sales taxes usually ranging from 6% to 12% on transactions involving merchandise, sometimes including even groceries. But when the Wall Street banks, hedge funds, and brokerage houses sell their stocks, bonds, derivatives, debt instruments, etc., they pay no sales tax whatsoever.

This outdated approach goes back to when the stock and bond markets were considered capital markets. But today, in the era of high frequency trading and flash trading in which one computer can carry out a million trades per second using algorithms, we are obviously dealing with a high-tech gambling casino that poses grave dangers to the public.

In short, the greatest single flow of untaxed money is the stocks, bonds, and derivatives which cross the exchanges in New York and Chicago, as well as the over-the-counter derivatives which are contracted behind the scenes. If sacrifices are required, this is obviously the place to start.

The obvious way to stabilize the US federal budget is to levy a sales tax on these financial market transactions. A sales tax will be paid immediately on every trade, without regard for the yearly profits and losses reported by smart accountants, making it much harder to cheat.

The US federal government collected a financial transaction tax of between 0.04% (0.0004) and 0.1% (0.001) between 1914 and 1966. Even today, the US government still collects the Section 31 fee, a microscopic tax of 0.0034% on stock transactions, which in 1998 produced $1.8 billion and financed the operations of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The State of New York currently has a small financial transaction tax on the books, but since the late 1970s the proceeds (estimated at about $25 billion per year) have been remitted to the bankers in response to their blackmail threats to move their operations out of state. In any case, there is no serious constitutional challenge to the legality of a Wall Street sales tax.

The AFL-CIO, European Trade Union Confederation, the International Metal Workers Federation (including the UAW), National Nurses United, and other labor organizations all support some version of the Wall Street Sales Tax, but usually at a very low rate, and without a clear demand that the proceeds be used to maintain and expand the in-country social safety net. There is a proposal for a Global Tobin Tax, and for a Robin Hood Tax - not a clever name. The G-20 has discussed a financial transaction tax, and the European Union is slowly implementing a tiny financial transaction tax.

The average American, who pays sales tax every day, often demands that Wall Street pay exactly the same sales tax (6% to 12%) on its transactions as the general public pays on purchases. This is an important political fact, which ought to encourage lawmakers to substantially increase the narrow scope and miniscule transaction tax rates contained in their proposals, especially in view of the inevitable resistance by reactionary princes of privilege.

The goal should be a 1% across-the-board Wall Street Sales Tax, paid by the seller, on stocks, bonds, and the notional value of derivatives. It also makes sense for the federal government to share half of the proceeds with the states, in order to support the key role of state and local governments in preserving the essentials of modern civilization.

While flash trading and high frequency trading have driven stock transactions up to unprecedented levels, the real mother lode of transactions is to be found in the area of derivatives. Futures, options, and indices and their various combinations are traded on public exchanges and can be easily tracked.

Over-the-counter derivatives, which take the form of private contracts between counterparties, are still a matter of guesswork because of the failure of the Dodd-Frank law to force the reporting of these trades.

The best remedy might be to specify in legislation that any over-the-counter derivatives contracts which have not paid the 1% Wall Street Sales Tax cannot be enforced in court, meaning that the losing counterparty would always be able to renege if the tax has not been paid.

World derivatives must currently be in excess of two quadrillion dollars in notional value. As these derivatives are bought and sold, some estimates put the resulting turnover in the range of six to seven quadrillion dollars. This suggests that revenues on the order of tens of trillions of dollars would be available from a 1% Wall Street Sales Tax.

At the same time, it should be clear that the presence of such a tax would cause many derivatives transactions and many high frequency trading operations to cease. Even so, we can be confident that a 1% levy can provide several trillion dollars in new tax revenue.

By contrast, competing proposals for a wealth tax may face prolonged constitutional challenges. They will require police state methods to carry out a census of taxable assets. In return for this effort, a 1% wealth tax cannot hope to exceed several hundred billion dollars of yearly revenue -- not the many trillions which the Wall Street sales tax can deliver.

A wealth tax does nothing to discourage speculation nor foster real production. Finally, a wealth tax provides an easy way for reactionary forces to pose as the defenders of the middle class, as seen through the eagerness of Bill O’Reilly of Fox News to invite wealth tax advocates on his show. The justifiable concern about the exorbitant size of certain family fortunes can be met by better enforcement of the Estate Tax.

In order to avoid an excessive burden on families and individuals who are buying and selling stocks to finance college education, retirement, or medical emergencies, it will be wise to establish a $1 million per person exclusion; only if securities trading goes over this threshold will the Wall Street Sales Tax be paid.

A society which taxes the sales of industrial manufacturing and agricultural products, but which establishes a tax exemption for speculation, derivatives, and financial services has tilted the playing field in favor of a parasitical casino economy of the type which has historically led to widespread immiseration and recurring financial panics.

The Wall Street Sales Tax will tend to reduce the social evil of speculation, while ending the tax subsidy to financial gambling at the expense of tangible, physical production. It will enhance the possibilities for rational investment choices. In the current season of debate about tax policy, the 1% Wall Street Sales Tax is the idea whose time has come.

A Petition to Support the Saving American Democracy Amendment

http://sanders.senate.gov/

Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed a constitutional amendment that would overturn the Supreme Court decision in a case called Citizens United vs. FEC.

The Saving American Democracy Amendment states that:

•Corporations are not persons with constitutional rights equal to real people.

•Corporations are subject to regulation by the people.

•Corporations may not make campaign contributions.

•Congress and states have the power to regulate campaign finances.

Humor Break: Are Corporations People?

Humor Break: Corporations

From TomTheDancingBug.com

Awesome Quotes: Ron Paul

“Obviously they’re not. People are individuals, they’re not groups and they’re not companies. Individuals have rights, they’re not collective. You can’t duck that. So individuals should be responsible for corporations, but they shouldn’t be a new creature, so to speak. Rights and obligations should be always back to the individual.”
Ron Paul on Mitt Romney's claim that "corporations are people"

Mitt Romney: "Corporations are people"

From WaPo:

Romney’s appearance at the fair’s soapbox grew unusually testy when a few angry people heckled the Republican presidential candidate over his declaration not to raise taxes. They urged the campaign front-runner to increase taxes on the wealthy to help fund such entitlement programs as Social Security and Medicare.

Romney explained that one way to fulfill promises on entitlement programs is to “raise taxes on people,” but before he could articulate his position on not raising taxes, someone interrupted.

“Corporations!” a protester shouted, apparently urging Romney to raise taxes on corporations that have benefited from loopholes in the tax code. “Corporations!”

“Corporations are people, my friend,” Romney said...

Mitt Romney says ‘corporations are people’ at Iowa State Fair
Philip Rucker
August 11, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romney-says-corporations-are-people/2011/08/11/gIQABwZ38I_story.html

12 Corporations Made $173 Billion And A Negative Income Tax Rate

During The Great Recession, 12 Major Corporations Made $173 Billion In Profits And Had A Negative Income Tax Rate
Zaid Jilani
Jun 1, 2011
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/01/232686/12-major-corporations-taxes

All around the country, conservative lawmakers continue to cut services and investments in Main Street America, claiming that these steps are necessary to close budget deficits. At the same time, major corporations and wealthy individuals continue to benefit from special tax breaks and loopholes that allow them to get away with paying little to nothing in taxes.

Today, Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) released a new report chronicling the tax rates of some of the nation’s major corporations. CTJ looked at a sample of a dozen major corporations and analyzed both their profits and their effective federal corporate income tax rates between 2008 and 2010.

CTJ found that from 2008 to 2010, these major corporations earned $173 billion in profits put together. Yet these major corporations paid an average federal corporate income tax rate during this period of -1.5 percent, meaning they actually got money back from the Treasury in the form of tax benefits.

Americans would certainly find it unfair that companies raking in billions in profits are getting away with paying so little in taxes or in some cases actually getting a net tax benefit. As ThinkProgress economy editor Pat Garofalo writes, as of yet, both major parties have not been able to put together a vision of corporate tax reform that would actually raise net revenues to really tackle deficits without unduly harming Main Street. He concludes that “failing to raise additional corporate tax revenue will simply shift more of the deficit reduction burden onto a middle-class already battered by the Great Recession.”

Corporations don't have 'personal privacy' rights, Supreme Court rules

AT&T had fought the release of FCC documents based on a law that shields records which might result in an invasion of privacy. An appellate court sided with AT&T, but the Supreme Court did not. March 02, 2011
David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/02/business/la-fi-court-corporations-20110302

Corporations do not have a right to "personal privacy," the Supreme Court ruled unanimously, at least when it comes to the Freedom of Information Act and the release of documents held by the government.

Last year's ruling giving companies a free-speech right to spend money on campaign ads prompted liberal critics to say the court's conservatives were biased in favor of corporate rights.

While not alluding to the criticism, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took a scalpel to a corporate-rights claim from AT&T Inc. that its "personal privacy" deserves to be protected. The ordinary meaning of "personal" does not refer to an impersonal company, he said.

"We do not usually speak of personal characteristics, personal effects, personal correspondence, personal influence or personal tragedy as referring to corporations or other artificial entities," he wrote. "In fact, we often use the word 'personal' to mean precisely the opposite of business-related: We speak of personal expenses and business expenses, personal life and work life, personal opinion and a company's view."

The decision means the Federal Communications Commission may release documents that were compiled during an investigation in 2004 over whether AT&T had overcharged schools and libraries for use of the Internet. The company paid a $500,000 settlement.

When some of its competitors sought release of the documents through the Freedom of Information Act, AT&T objected. It cited an exception in the law that shields law enforcement records which might result in an "unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

AT&T won a ruling based on that provision from the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. Its judges noted one part of the law defines "person" to include not just an individual but also a "partnership, association or corporation."

Then U.S. Solicitor Gen. Elena Kagan appealed the issue to the Supreme Court. She said the Freedom of Information Act had never been interpreted to protect the "personal privacy" of companies.

All the justices agreed in FCC v. AT&T, with the exception of Kagan, who did not participate. "We trust that AT&T will not take it personally," Roberts said in a parting comment.

david.savage@latimes.com

Nationalize BP and Other Criminal Corporations

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/20-10

Thursday, May 20, 2010 by Ted Rall
Nationalize BP and Other Criminal Corporations
by Ted Rall

The Supreme Court says that corporations have the same rights as individuals. When they misbehave, shouldn't they face consequences as serious as those imposed upon an individual?

It goes without saying that a person who commits a crime ought to face punishment proportional to the offense. Large and midsize corporations, which employ thousands of employees, have far vaster reach and power than even the wealthiest ordinary citizens. So their crimes can be breathtaking in scope. The 1984 industrial catastrophe at a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India killed 15,000 people. An additional 200,000 have since suffered serious injuries. Compared to the boards of directors of Union Carbide and Dow Chemical, which bought the company in 2001, Ted Bundy was small potatoes.

Unlike small-time serial killers, however, corporations get away with murder. For at least a year, management of the Toyota auto company knew that brakes in millions of its cars might fail. A 2009 ABC News investigation found that at least 16 people had died. "Safety analysts found an estimated 2000 cases in which owners of Toyota cars including Camry, Prius and Lexus, reported that their cars surged without warning up to speeds of 100 miles per hour," reported the network. Yet Toyota did nothing. Instead they blamed their customers, saying they were resting their floormats on the gas pedals.

On May 18th, Toyota finally faced the wrath of the federal government. Its "punishment": a paltry $16.5 million fine, not one cent of which went to the victims or their families. The fine, which amounted to a ridiculous 5.5 percent of its 2009 profit, went into the U.S. Treasury's general fund--in other words, to kill Afghans and Iraqis.

Available to Congress and the President is a far more appropriate punishment: nationalization without compensation. Toyota's American operations ought to be seized and operated by the federal government. The top officials of the parent company in Japan, whose willful negligence murdered at least 16 American citizens, ought to be extradited and face trial in U.S. federal court.

Extreme? Expropriating private property is commonplace--when the target is Joe and Jane Sixpack. Just ask hundreds of homeowners of New London, Connecticut. When the city destroyed an entire neighborhood to build a luxury office development, the U.S. Supreme Court backed them up, radically expanding the concept of eminent domain. Unlike a lot of evil corporations, those homeowners didn't do anything wrong.
The U.S. government has not only the right but the duty to take over criminal corporations.

A 5.5 percent fine is a slap on the wrist. Nationalizing a company, on the other hand, protects the public interest. Hitting corporations in the balance sheet is a genuine deterrent to the managers of other companies contemplating lawless behavior. It brings in significant cash assets that can be used to compensate the victims of the company's criminal activities.

Nationalization can also serve the interest of public safety. The mine explosion that left at least 25 coal miners dead in West Virginia earlier this year left members of the public feeling helpless and frustrated at the slow and inept rescue attempt by Massey Energy, the site's owner and operator. Setting aside the obvious argument that natural resources ought to be exploited for the benefit of the American people rather than private businesspeople, the rescue operation would have benefited from the involvement of top experts at such government agencies as the Army Corps of Engineers.

In 2009 the Upper Big Branch mine received 450 safety violations. Massey Energy paid the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration less than $1 million total. That's less than one percent of its annual profits. That's roughly $2,000 per violation.

If you get caught speeding in Virginia, you'll pay more than what Massey Energy pays for deliberately risking the lives of its employees.

British Petroleum is spending $6 million a day on its response to the explosion at its Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. But that's a drop in the bucket next to the cost that will be borne by the people of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. The disaster is spilling the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez wreck into the Gulf every four days--and it's been three weeks. Thousands of fishermen will be ruined. The tourism industry, already in trouble due to the economic collapse, will be devastated. The full extent of the ecological damage--dead animals and aquatic plants, huge dead zones devoid of oxygen--won't be understood for years.

BP failed to ensure that a "blowout preventer" at the Deepwater Horizon would work in the event of an emergency. But their real crime was drilling for oil 5,000 feet down in the first place.

Here again, it's easy to see how nationalization might help. Rather than wait for the clueless execs at BP to come up with a solution, a BP seized by the federal government (its American operations, anyway) would come under the jurisdiction of an organization that could assign experts from NOAA and the U.S. Navy, among other agencies, to stop the leak. After the leak is plugged, the publicly-owned former BP's profits would help defray the costs of the cleanup and extend benefits to fisherman and other victims.

Imagine the possibilities. What if Too Big to Fail had been turned into Too Big to Resist?

As a nationalized asset Citibank, which received $306 billion in bailouts, would be worth $152 trillion to taxpayers. Goldman Sachs got $15 billion; they're worth $70 trillion. Sell them off and no one would ever pay college tuition again. Or to see a doctor. Or we could give everyone a 50 percent tax cut. We're a rich country--the problem is that out-of-control corporations are hogging the wealth.

Businessmen charter corporations for the express purpose of avoiding individual legal liability. Isn't it high time we started holding criminal businessmen accountable?

© 2010 Ted Rall

Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.

Are corporations really persons?

Tom Degan's Daily Rant
Goshen, NY
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com

Are corporations really persons?

Do corporations think?

Do corporations weep?

Do corporations fall in love?

Do corporations grieve when a loved one dies as a result of a lack of adequate health care?

Do corporations have loved ones?

Are corporations even capable of loving?

Do corporations sometimes lose sleep at night worrying about disease, violence, destruction, and the suffering of their fellow human beings?

Do corporations feel your pain?

Can a corporation run for public office?

Is a corporation capable of having a sense of humor? Is it capable of laughing at itself? (EXAMPLE: "So these two corporations walk into a bar....")

If a corporation ever committed an unspeakable crime against the American people, could IT be sent to federal prison? (Note the operative word here: "It")

Has a corporation ever walked into a voting booth and cast a ballot for the candidate of its choice?

We all know that corporations have made an ocean of cash throughout our history by profiting on the unspeakable tragedy of war. But has a corporation ever given its life for its country?

Is a corporation capable of raising a child?

Does a corporation have a conscience? Does it feel remorse after it has done something really bad?

Has a corporation ever been killed in an accident as the result of a design flaw in the automobile it was driving?

Has a corporation ever written a novel or a dramatic play or a song that inspired millions?

Has a corporation ever risked its life by climbing a ladder to save a child from a burning house?

Has a corporation ever won an Oscar? Or an Emmy? Or a Tony? Or the Nobel Peace Prize? Or a Polk or Peabody Award? Or the Pulitzer Prize in Biography?

Has a corporation ever performed Schubert's Ave Maria?

Has a corporation ever been shot and killed by someone who was using an illegal and unregistered gun?

Has a corporation ever paused to reflect upon the simple beauty of an autumn sunset or a brilliant winter moon rising on the horizon?

If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a noise if there are no corporations there to hear it?

Should corporations kiss on the first date?

Could a corporation resolve to dedicate its life to being an artist? Or a musician? Or an opera singer? Or a Catholic priest? Or a Doctor? Or a Dentist? Or a sheet metal worker? Or a gourmet chef? Or a short-order cook? Or a magician? Or a nurse? Or a trapeze artist? Or an author? Or an editor? Or a Thrift Shop owner? Or a EMT worker? Or a book binder? Or a Hardware Store clerk? Or a funeral director? Or a sanitation worker? Or an actor? Or a comedian? Or a glass blower? Or a chamber maid? Or a film director? Or a newspaper reporter? Or a deep sea fisherman? Or a farmer? Or a piano tuner? Or a jeweler? Or a janitor? Or a nun? Or a Trappist Monk? Or a poet? Or a pilgrim? Or a bar tender? Or a used car salesman? Or a brick layer? Or a mayor? Or a soothsayer? Or a Hall-of-Fame football player? Or a soldier? Or a sailor? Or a butcher? Or a baker? Or a candlestick maker?

Could a corporation choose to opt out of all the above and merely become a bum? Living life on the road, hopping freight trains and roasting mickeys in the woods?

I realize that this is pure theological speculation on my part but the question is just screaming to be posed: When corporations die, do they go to Heaven?

Our lives - yours and mine - have more worth than any goddamned corporation. To say that the Supreme Court made a awful decision on Thursday is an understatement. Not only is it an obscene ruling, it is an insult to our humanity.

How Corporations Became People

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/25575

Seminal Watercooler – How Corporations Became People
Jim Moss
Thursday January 21, 2010

As we begin to digest the unbelievable Supreme Court decision from earlier today, it might be helpful to remember how this whole idea that corporations are entitled to the same rights as individuals began:

1886, in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a private corporation is a person and entitled to the legal rights and protections the Constitutions affords to any person. According to the official case record, Supreme Court Justice Morrison Remick Waite simply pronounced before the beginning of arguement in the case:

"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does."

The court reporter duly entered that into the summary record of the Court’s findings. Thus it was that a two-sentence assertion by a single judge elevated corporations to the status of persons under the law, prepared the way for the rise of global corporate rule, and thereby changed the course of history.

In the 22nd century, do you think people will look back on today’s Supreme Court ruling with the same distaste that we look back at this one from 1886? Does granting corporations the right to spend freely on political ads also have the potential to change history?

CEO pay fell just 0.08 percent in 2008

http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/09/despite-turmoil-ceo-pay-fell-just-008-percent-in-2008/

Despite turmoil, CEO pay fell just 0.08 percent in 2008
Thursday, September 24th, 2009

WASHINGTON — Chief executives at US corporations largely maintained their salaries and benefits during the economic and market turmoil of 2008, a survey by a shareholder rights group showed Thursday.

The Corporate Library said its survey of 2,700 publicly traded firms showed median annual compensation for chief executive officers declined by 0.08 percent in 2008.

This indicates "that the link between CEO pay and firm performance remains very weak," said a report from the organization.

"While these findings are historic, in that we have never seen a decline in CEO compensation since we began this series of surveys in 2002, if there were ever an argument that pay is fatally divorced from performance then this is surely it," Paul Hodgson, co-author of the report.

"This minimal decline has to be set against the dramatic downturn in the US equity markets in 2008 when the S&P 500 index fell by more than 37 percent. In this context one might expect CEO compensation to decline, but surely by more 0.08 percent."

The report found some 75 percent of CEOs included in the study received a base salary increase in 2008, up from 73 percent in 2007.

Using a different measure, the survey found total realized compensation was down 6.38 percent. This includes the value realized on vesting of shares, options, pensions and deferred compensation.

"CEOs have had many years of benefiting from the whole of the upside of a bull market," said Hodgson.

"But the whole of the downside of the bear market has been severely mitigated by discretionary bonuses, repriced stock options, mega grants of stock and options, negotiating generous new employment agreements, guaranteed bonuses, and 'retention' awards.

"Paraphrasing the words of Mark Twain, rumors of the death of CEO pay have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, far from falling on its face -- like the economy did -- it has barely stumbled in its steady climb."

The report comes with Congress and the White House increasingly scrutinizing CEO pay and the Group of 20 examining the question of bonuses and packages for the banking sector.