Note: this encore column by the late Billy Lloyd Hults was first published in January of 2003.
Once there were no corporations. Corporations were originally created by kings granting charters to friends who could exploit the resources of the kingdom. Thus the East India Company, the Hudson Bay Company and millions more over the centuries, chartered by kings, dictators, and the sovereign people of this democracy.
We have watched as corporations gained control of our democratically elected government. We watched as they gained control of our free press. We are watching them gain control over the military and the schools. And no, it is not just about the money. We must remember that the Democratic, Republican, and several “third” parties are all incorporated as non-profit corporations. It is about the power. Writers like Orwell, Vonnegut, and Heller have warned us, but to no avail.
During the First Age of the Moguls and the Robber Barons corporations were given the rights of citizens in a democracy, including the protection of their property by the military, the use of the infrastructure including the transportation systems, the courts, water systems, energy systems and the education system. They were given no responsibility to work for the common good. In many cases they were not even required to pay taxes to support that system that allowed them to do business. In many cases they were not held responsible for the damage they caused to the common good.
We can’t go to war against corporations. They own the guns. They own the oil. They own the natural resources of the planet. Government and the people are dependent upon them, but they are independent.
The power of corporations has been demonstrated countless times. ITT’s financing the overthrow of the democratically elected Allende government in Chile. The use of US military to protect the Occidental oil pipeline in South America. The Army could not wage war without the support of Brown & Root and other defense contractors. Coke and Pepsi own exclusive rights to sell their products in High Schools. Marriott Hotels are bankrolling High Schools that will offer service industry courses. There are police cars with ads on the sides.
Endless lobbying and propaganda is meant to convince the government and the people that what is good for the corporation is good for democracy. It becomes like M&M Enterprises in Catch 22. Multi-national corporations not only determine our foreign policy, but out environmental policy and control our economy.
We can’t call ourselves children of our founding fathers and mothers and allow property rights to outweigh human rights. Property and people are two different things. In the Dred Scott case the Supreme Court declared that people were property. That decision was overturned. The Supreme Court now has declared that money is speech, protected by the First Amendment.
The only reason we the people have not changed this situation is because we too have formed corporations. Non-profit and for-profit corporations are the norm in America. Everyone has one, some people are one, and we all deal with them. Pogo summed it up: “We have seen the enemy and he is us.”
If such concepts as Democratic Capitalism, Fair Trade, and Corporate Responsibility are not laughed at and considered oxymoronic, we have a chance. If people can revoke the charters of corporations that break our laws, we have a chance. We, the customers of the corporations, the stock holders of corporations, the victims of corporations, and the CEO’s of corporations must demand responsibility be taken for the behavior of our corporations. Otherwise, I fear for my planet, my nation, my state, and my village.
There is an idea that we should have a 28th Amendment to the Constitution that a corporation is not a person and money is not speech. I would vote for that.
It might interest readers to know where this post came from.
Nine years ago Jennifer and I sat around the kitchen table with Billy and several other friends, brainstorming ways we might do our local part to support a grassroots media uprising. I had been writing Sunday columns for a mid-sized mainstream newspaper. Billy had just shelved his ink edition of the Upper Left Edge. We were looking for a new project.
Billy wrote this piece for a local newsletter we published, which some trick of fate provoked us to call the Cannon Beach Citizen. We only printed one issue. Soon afterwards I fell back in line with my habit of writing columns for mainstream newspapers, one of which resurrected the name of the Cannon Beach Citizen for several years before selling it to their competitor and effectively killing it off.
Old habits are hard to break. Yet when I re-visit Billy’s words, and think back on that kitchen conversation, I’m reminded why friends and I are now pouring volunteer energy into upperleftedge.com.
Billy could write. What a pleasure to see his words strung together again. I can almost hear his voice saying those things, although he never spoke at length, if I recall. He displayed a cryptic persona when I saw him at ‘vespers’.
Thanks Watt. You are keeping his spirit alive for us in the best way possible.
It would please Billy very much, I think, that the idea of that 28th amendment is alive and well today. He’d probably be part of the Occupy movement too, I’d guess.
It was a pleasure to read such a prophetic column. I never knew Billy Hults, but I wish I had. When he said the corporation is not a person, and money is not speech, he was referring to Buckley V. Valeo (1976), wherein the wealthy Senator James Buckley (brother of conservative public intellectual William Buckley) had faced limits on the amount of personal funds he could put in his campaign. He sued, it went to the Supreme Court, and in Buckley V. Valeo, a much less conservative court than the present one, building on the precedent of corporate personhood, took the novel step of declaring money in campaigns the equivalent of free speech. That gave birth to K Street, the nickname for the mammoth corporate lobbies that have made their abode on the street in Washington since the Buckley case and destroyed the old one person/one vote concept that was the bedrock of our system and is enshrined in the Supreme Court decision, Baker V. Carr. Buckley also set the stage for the far more corrosive Citizens United case of 2010. Indeed, we need to pass the 28th Amendment ending corporate personhood, just as Billy said.