Charles ll understood Corporations

[Nick at Noon]

The President needs to tell the Corporations what Charles ll told them 345 years ago. Contrary to what they think, they are not superior to the State. Nor are they the masters of the American citizens.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/KnowEnemy_ITT.html


...In 1664, the owners of the Massachusetts Bay Company protested when Charles II tried to investigate their company's operations. The Crown responded, "The King did not grant away his sovereignty over you when he made you a corporation.... When his majesty gave you authority over such subjects as live within your jurisdiction, he made them not your subjects, nor you their supreme authority."...

[midnight]

1. Some how I think this need to be part of a case against the

communications co. for acting as if they have supreme jurisdication to spy on us. The banks for using us as scapegoats for their illigal actions, the rule of safty that has comprimised our rule of law. We can't even fly the skies because they are so unfriendly. Most people have sucked it up, and tolerate being x-rayed and fondled, and detained on tar macs for hours as if prisoners or personal property of the airliner. Some real big shifts in our way of doing business need to swing the other direction.

[cobalt1999]

2. So did Theodore Roosevelt

It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing business under corporate form ... they shall do so under absolutely truthful representations ... Great corporations exist only because they were created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.
– Theodore Roosevelt, December 3, 1901, State of the Union message to Congress

The men of wealth who today are trying to prevent the regulation and control of their business in the interest of the public by the proper government authorities will not succeed, in my judgment, in checking the progress of the movement. But if they did succeed they would find that they had sown the wind and would surely reap the whirlwind, for they would ultimately provoke the violent excesses which accompany a reform coming by convulsion instead of by steady and natural growth.
– Theodore Roosevelt

Those who oppose all reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.
– Theodore Roosevelt

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.
– Theodore Roosevelt

We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.
– Theodore Roosevelt

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Of course it took a little matter in 1692 to have the Crown really stomp down

The clergy had whipped the citizenry into a frenzy, and, starting with the old and weak, they had arrested, tortured, and prosecuted people, and swayed juries who were ready to acquit to condemn on their say-so. The clergy's next step was to accuse the Governor's wife--and that is where the Crown stepped in and stopped the madness. You wonder how this is related to corporations? Remember that Winthrop and the others who incorporated were Puritans, and their plan was to create a theocracy as best they could.

The message is this: government must always control corporations and look to their true motivations. Oh, and another message--theocracies inevitably feed on their own after a time.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Exactly, exactly, exactly! And democracy makes the PEOPLE the sovereign. WE are the sovereign

rulers of this land. What WE say, goes. The corporations, no matter how big they are, nor how powerful they think they are, are subject to us. The power that they have acquired--for instance, living forever and thus acquiring vast lands and wealth, and using it against us--is undemocratic, wrong, illegal, a profound violation of our democratic system. And we do have the power--potential, at this point, but real--to pull their corporate charters, dismantle them and seize their assets for the common good, to bust their monopolies and/or to strongly regulate them in our interest.

They know this. Why do you think they monopolized all 'news' media, and went even further, recently, and grabbed direct control over our election system, with the fast-tracking of electronic voting, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls? We are potentially the most progressive force on earth, not only because of our deep beliefs about democracy and equality, but also because we live at the vortex of global corporate power and are the only people who possess the direct (albeit latent) power to destroy or curtail the U.S.-based global corporate predators who oppress us and others. The Chavez government in Venezuela can push Exxon Mobil out of their country, by asserting Venezuela's sovereignty and demanding a better deal for Venezuelans, but they cannot stop this monster-corp from plotting against them, from using our government against them, and from continuing to pressure them with financial and covert operations. Only WE can slay this dragon.

Charles II is my favorite king of England. As kings go, he was a populist. He reopened the theaters, after the long nightmare of Cromwell puritanism. He understood that the theatre--language, drama, art--were the heart and soul of the English people. He was a partyer himself--he loved women, wit and fun. He was certainly the funniest king of England, always ready with an hilarious quip. He was also the first scientist-king, founder of the Royal Society to promote scientific discovery. I am a democrat with a small d. Why do I like this king? Because his restoration returned the notion, to England, of THE PEOPLE as the ultimate power to choose their ruler, who stands in lieu of them. Without the notion of sovereignty, dogs in a "dog eat dog" world rule--the banksters, the monopolists, privateers--and oppress and exploit the common people. The king is not only chosen by the people, he or she is the defender of the people, against the nobles and money powers who think only of themselves, and not of the good of the entire country.

And we inherited that notion as the sovereignty of the people. Only here, we don't just choose the king, we are the king. This is the very basis of our democracy.

But what has happened is that we have allowed the banksters, the monopolists, the privateers, to usurp our sovereignty. The corporations now rein much like the Church in the middle ages--and will be as difficult to overcome. Let us hope it doesn't take a thousand years. I don't think it will. And we don't have that kind of time, considering the state of our planetary ecosystem. The World Wildlife Fund gives us 50 years, at present levels of pollution and consumption--50 years to the death of the planet. So we must--we simply MUST--curtail the global corporate predators who are driving this planetary decline.

Where I would start is with the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines.

[DemBones DemBones]

5. Charles II also walked around in London; he wasn't

afraid to go among his people, an admirable quality. And is there another king for whom a breed of dog is named? I love movies about him with the pack of little spaniels running at his heels or reclining in his bed or on his lap. Maybe we can get a good thread going about his sex life. . . (See Henry VIII thread.)

[ChazII]

10. He and his brother James

also worked the water lines during the great fire. And how could anyone forget Charles' Protestant Whore (her words, not mine) Nell?

[Alcibiades]

6. Corporations should be limited because they have no

natural limits. Human beings have limits, chief among them the fact that we all eventually die. If you set up a system wherein some of the players are immortal, then in the space of a few generations they will end up owning everything.

[Nick at Noon]

8. I like what Obama told them

I just wish he would say it louder and more often:

Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees — and, by extension, to themselves.

“These are complicated companies,” one CEO said. Offered another: “We’re competing for talent on an international market.”

But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”

“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/20871.html

[JohnyCanuck]

7. Video Documentary "The Corporation"

Synopsis

Among the 40 interview subjects are CEOs and top-level executives from a range of industries: oil, pharmaceutical, computer, tire, manufacturing, public relations, branding, advertising and undercover marketing; in addition, a Nobel-prize winning economist, the first management guru, a corporate spy, and a range of academics, critics, historians and thinkers are also interviewed.

A LEGAL "PERSON"

In the mid-1800s the corporation emerged as a legal "person." Imbued with a "personality" of pure self-interest, the next 100 years saw the corporation's rise to dominance. The corporation created unprecedented wealth but at what cost? The remorseless rationale of "externalities" (as Milton Friedman explains, the unintended consequences of a transaction between two parties on a third) is responsible for countless cases of illness, death, poverty, pollution, exploitation and lies.

THE PATHOLOGY OF COMMERCE: CASE HISTORIES

To assess the "personality" of the corporate "person," a checklist is employed, using diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social "personality": it is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. Four case studies, drawn from a universe of corporate activity, clearly demonstrate harm to workers, human health, animals and the biosphere. Concluding this point-by-point analysis, a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a "psychopath."

http://thecorporation.com/index.cfm?page_id=312

You can watch the documentary on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y&feature=PlayList&p=FA50FBC214A6CE87&index=0&playnext=1

[DemBones DemBones]

9. Kick for the evening crowd. . .

:kick:

[UTUSN]

11. It ain't that the B.F.E.E. doesn't KNOW history. They don't want anybody ELSE to know it!1 n/t