Thelma, your post has served well. Served well to clutter up the posts with so much babble I don't think even you know what you wrote. You appear to be attempting to poke fun at American citizens. Don't know what universe you call home but I can tell you there is no where in this universe I would rather live than in the USA. However that being said, this situation in Benton Harbor is probably at this point a one of kind ...in America that is. When something like this takes place we see it for what it is and what it could imply for the future and we are afforded the privelige to "out it" with our own voices and voices of people we love and trust like Rachael Maddow. There are always going to be born people who want to manipulate our society to their own selfish ends. Happily though we as citizens are able to expose them and pull them out by their roots. Some things have happened that are so insidious that we don't take notice right away. But make no mistake Americans are not stupid, brain washed nor intimidated to speak out once we collectively "get it".
Thank you Rachel for shedding light on this. Rachael knows the real heart of Americans. She is one of the bloodhounds we have to point out things we should know and make up our own (unbrainwashed) minds about.
There's a wide array of groups like Young Americans for Freedom where the indoctrination starts early. But it really starts in the home, where Webster's mommy and/or daddy were her role models. Often these families use their political connections to move their children up the rung, skipping the steps that "normal" people take. She's 28 and has a $90,000 salary working as a propagandist for Scott Walker. What's wrong with that picture"
Here's another one: Ciara Turns Matthews, a 2008 UNLV graduate who is communications director for Walker's campaign to fight off recall. Before that she worked for "Chicken Sue" Lowden and Sharron Angle in Nevada. Her media role models are Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
Our company BYO Recreation found here at <a href="http://www.byoplayground.com">www.byoplayground.com</a> has great health care options but costs continue to put pressure on our employees and our company to perform.
We need reform
As a lawyer I really appreciate the effort to parse through some of the nuances that must be dealt with here. My impression is that revoking corporate personhood goes too far and would have unintended consequences, besides creating a certain degree of judicial chaos. Corporate personhood is a very broad concept that underlies much more than just election spending and lobbying; for example, the "personhood" of corporations arguably enables them to hire employees, have contracts, sue and be sued.
On the other hand, the filing of Articles of Incorporation certainly creates a legal entity of some sort. So perhaps revocation of personhood would not affect the rights and powers of corporations to engage in ordinary business (see below re: the Bellotti case). But the language of the amendment needs to make clear that certain kinds of corporate activities are useful and preserved.
The lynchpin should be "the free speech rights of corporations." Under Citizens United, as well as Buckley v Valeo, corporations enjoy first amendment protection in their campaign spending and lobbying. The notion that spending money on political matters is protected speech should be the narrow target. By the way, the same restrictions on campaign spending and lobbying that pertains to corporations will have to apply to individuals as well; otherwise corporations will just have individuals do their dirty work for them. In this sense, revoking corporate personhood does not go far enough. Again, the focus should be "the spending of money on politics does not enjoy the protections of the first amendment." or "...does not enjoy the same level of protection as ordinary speech."
Justice White's dissent in the Bellotti case is fundamental to this discussion and should be read by everyone involved with this. He makes a distinction between a corporation's primary function and a corporation's lobbying/campaign spending as serving a purpose secondary to a corporation's mission.
States' rights must be considered. Corporations are creations of states, not the federal government. So the amendment needs to specify that state constitutions may not provide an end-around protection of corporate speech rights.
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