Corporations

One of the reasons why Congress has been largely unable to make the American health care system more efficient and equitable is because of the stranglehold lobbyists for special interests have on the institution.

Whenever lawmakers consider any kind of meaningful reform, the proposed remedies inevitably create winners and losers. Physicians' incomes most likely will be affected in some way, as will the profits of all the other major players: the hospitals, the drug companies, the medical device manufacturers, and the insurers, just to name a few. The list is long, and the platoons of highly paid and well-connected lobbyists who represent their interests comprise a large private army that conquered Capitol Hill years ago.

An epic new book examines the crucial role press and media have played over time in perpetuating racist views in American culture. "News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the U.S. Media," by Juan Gonzalez and Joe Torres, examines Americans' chronic discontent with the media. The book reveals how racial segregation in the media has historically distorted the news and gives numerous examples of how publishers and broadcasters have actually encouraged violence towards minorities and ethnic groups through their coverage.

The authors, both seasoned journalists and researchers, note that over the decades Americans have expressed constant frustration with inaccurate news coverage, and the discontent is greatest among people of color, who feel denigrated and deeply misrepresented by the American media system.

The Center for Media and Democracy is asking Congress to reject a bill that could "open up everyone's cell phones, land lines, and business phone numbers, without their consent, to a flood of commercial, marketing and debt collection calls," according to a letter signed by the Center and a number of public interest groups. The Mobile International Call Act of 2011 amends the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a statute that regulates telemarketing and limits telephone solicitations and robo-calls. The bill purportedly makes sensible updates to the TCPA to allow consumers to be notified about fraud, appointment cancellations, drug recalls, late payments, and the like. However, other provisions of the bill would allow businesses to make pre-recorded robo-calls "for any commercial purpose that is not a solicitation." This applies to any consumer's cell phone, even for those that have placed themselves on the Do-Not-Call list. The bill also exempts modern automated predictive dialers from the TCPA, "permitting repetitive 'phantom' calls to cell phones doctor's offices, hospital rooms and pagers."

This is a guest post on Citizens United by Greg Colvin, who is a partner at the firm Adler & Colvin. It was originally published on OurFuture.org.

We've seen the signs and heard the chants: "Abolish Corporate Personhood!"

I'm very sympathetic to the cause of reducing the power of big business corporations to control our government, our economy, our consumer culture, our society, and our lives. We can't have democracy without a major shift of power into the hands of the people.

But would an amendment to remove all rights of corporations from the US Constitution accomplish that? Would there be unintended consequences?

There are two problems with a constitutional amendment that abolishes corporate personhood. One, it does too much, and two, it does too little.