Bill Moyers and Renewable Energy
I don’t want to appear as if I don’t have a life outside of 2GreenEnergy, but each Friday night, I try to watch Bill Moyers’ Journal on PBS. Occasionally the content directly or indirectly affects the renewable energy debate, and last night was a good example. Two extremely senior constitutional attorneys took on a question that one of the two will be arguing in front of the US Supreme Court this week: does the right to free speech guaranteed under the First Amendment (including the right to exert pressure over the electoral process) extend to corporations?
Of course, this issue is central to the growing debate over where our democracy is headed and whether, as some say, it’s been abrogated so many times and so thoroughly that we no longer have a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word. As a citizen concerned that ordinary people are losing too much power to corporate giants, my immediate reaction was to favor restricting the rights of corporations to influence the political process in their own favor. Yes, there are campaign contribution limits, but the corporations, with their extensive legal support, exploit the many loopholes in the form of political action committees, etc. And, as someone pointed out on tonight’s show, the ultimate work-around is for the corporation simply to run a political campaign at its own expense, to elect representatives known to favor its positions. At first glance, this seemed to work against the ideals of our society — if only the idea of one person, one vote.
Yet I must say that I was swayed by the first speaker, whose claim was that the First Amendment does not identify who does and who does not have the right to free speech. He freely acknowledged that free speech isn’t free at all, that wealthy people can own television networks and newspaper chains, and thus enjoy hundreds – or probably millions — of times more “free speech” than you or I could possibly dream of affording. But we don’t restrict rich people’s freedom; and by extension, the fact that a corporation is big or wealthy does not mean that it must not communicate.
I must say that I was flummoxed on this issue and, as a fair-minded guy, I was about to give up hope and turn on Jeopardy! when the second speaker came on. But I’m happy to report that at the end, I think he won the day. He pointed out that corporations, defined under law as “fictitious persons” are given enormous power to achieve their one and only goal: to make a profit. Human beings, i.e., voters, are not fictitious, but real people. Unlike these fictitious persons, we get sick, we die, we are given no special powers outside of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and we have a multitude of interests: familial, religious, social, etc. If we now grant corporations, who have by force of law unnatural profit-making powers the right to communicate without restriction about matters of their one concern (profit), they will use that profit to exert extreme pressure on the political process — potentially at the expense of human voters.
He went on to point out that ExxonMobil made $85 billion last year, and, if left unrestricted, could ensure the election of only those who would work against global warming mitigation. He also mentioned that the coal and nuclear lobbies, funded similarly, could make it impossible for these industries ever to be brought down — even by fair competition from renewables. This, for what it’s worth, is *exactly* what is happening now as I see it.
It will certainly be interesting to see on what side the Supreme Court comes down.
In any case, for those readers who may be new, this blog follows three different courses within the issues that surround renewable energy: the scientific, business, and political/philosophical issues. I argue that anyone serious about pursuing a clean energy business needs to have a solid understanding of all three “legs of the stool,” so to speak. And to that end, I’ve recently begun working on bringing on contributing authors to augment each of these three discussion threads. If any of you wish to make such contributions, please contact me.
I like your “three legs of the stool” analogy re the scientific, business, and political/philosophical issues fundamental to green energy as it emphasizes that technical/scientific advances are only one part of the solution to our planet’s energy needs.
Hi Craig,
This is my commentary constructed also for distribution elswhere, which incorporates a number of your observations and viewpoints that I share.
I hope everyone will feel welcomed to provide feedback…
A Corporate State?
A Citizen’s Comments on a Debate Between Floyd Abrams and Trevor Potter Featured on Bill Moyers’ Journal
Mr. Floyd Abrams, “an ardent and vocal defender of free speech who’s argued many landmark First Amendment cases before the Supreme Court,” persistently equates corporations and unions, and he equates both of these creatures of law with natural persons. However, at the very least, it may be noted that unions are specifically constructed to advocate on behalf of natural persons against the cruelties of corporate greed, while corporations commonly try to crush unions.
Abrams recognizes that 90% of corporations have no shareholders. This, however, is due to the fact that most corporate charters remain in private hands and are not traded publicly. He skirts around the direct admission of his belief that corporations have, or should have, the same rights that we Americans have as a birthright. He states that the immense wealth of corporations directly influencing elections does constitute an advantage, but not an unfair advantage, over individuals. He takes the position that the person who heads a corporation should have the right to use its treasury to sway elections without regard for the political opinions held by its shareholders or employees. Abrams’ conclusion is that in order to limit undue corporate political influence our nation must restrict corporate size not “corporate speech”.
Taking a line from the testimony of his opponents before the Supreme Court on this case, Abrams posits that, because a corporate-funded movie was banned during a political campaign, perhaps corporate-funded books may also be banned, even though no book ever has been banned on that basis in the history of the US. He asserts that because porn is allowed under free speech, therefore this means that so must campaign propaganda bought by corporate treasuries also be permitted. Yet, as ethically compromised as the adult industry may be judged by some to be, we will never see x-rated productions that smear or extol political figures entering into the mainstream media. In fact, should our nation grant political personhood to corporate entities, it would amplify the legal power of those already prosperous “smut peddlers”.
He also speculates that, since 28 states already allow unlimited political contributions by corporations – and since, in his judgment, no excess corporate influence has ever been observed in these states – this proved that giving corporations free political rein with their treasuries would have no adverse impact on election results. It is his prediction that corporations will not risk “public wrath” by fighting a popular candidate or officeholder. He must then either ignore or dismiss the manifest reality that, in our current system, money ultimately spotlights what the public will know and believe about every person in politics from the first instance. Abrams also failed to mention what Trevor Potter later makes clear in his own response: that corporate spending in those 28 states – like California – is most often hidden through the use of front-groups with cunningly innocuous-sounding names like Committee for a Better California, thereby avoiding the scrutiny of most average shareholders and of the public. When asked by Bill Moyers if he believed the authors of our Constitution intended corporations to enjoy the Right of Free Speech, Abrams’ highly revealing reply was, “I don’t know.”
Mr. Trevor Potter, political attorney and former counsel to the presidential campaigns of John McCain, notes that the case now before the Supreme Court is only about corporate money, not about union money, and that if our democratic republic loses the case, corporations will be loosed upon the campaign trail while unions will still be bound. He makes the point that our law has never allowed a corporation to vote, and he correctly observes that it is a creature of the state that is granted a special status limiting its members’ liability for the consequences of its behavior (and, to a great extent, insulating the heads, owners and employees from any real punishment for the corporation’s wrongdoing).
Potter also highlights the fact that the artificial corporate structure was created for purposes of economy and commerce, not for political purposes. He notes that corporations were designed under law for one purpose, and for one purpose only: making money – often accumulating enormous sums of money – and, accordingly, we’ve continually observed that they are guided by their very nature to seek to eliminate and prevent both competition and regulation of any kind.
He recognizes that, as “fictitious persons” (how corporations are classified in law), corporate constructs aren’t imbued with the various moral, ethical, social, spiritual, familial or environmental concerns that all humans possess intrinsically (nor can a corporation be jailed for even the most egregious of offenses). Potter points out the fact that while humans – “natural persons” under law – can speak and vote, and possess all their endowed and inalienable rights, as well as those conferred upon them by law as due citizens, yet corporations have a very different status that is only economic in character and was never intended to make them political creatures. He argues that courts have never granted full First Amendment rights to corporate entities, and that it’s backward reasoning to give corporations political rights, and then try to restrict their size when our nation is trying to compete in a global market. Multinational and foreign corporations, Potter adroitly observes, may then argue for their own ability to exercise unfettered political persuasion as well.
Potter notes that under current law Exxon-Mobil already has a Political Action Committee to which shareholders and employees gave $900,000 of their own money, just within the last election cycle, in order to influence politicians and voters on the corporation’s behalf. Exxon-Mobil’s profits last year alone, Potter remarks, were $85 billion.
The potential reality remaining unstated in the debate between Potter and Abrams is that, if it’s allowed to directly place its corporate treasury money into the pockets of its chosen candidates and directly fund hatchet men against its opponents, Exxon-Mobil could flood the political sphere surrounding its interests every year with less than 1% of its profits (that multiplies by a thousand times the sum its people had donated in an entire election cycle) – and the company wouldn’t even feel it. Also not satisfactorily discussed in this debate is the corporate world’s very long and very woeful track record in terms of ethics and corruption whenever there’s cash to be made or saved. For profit’s sake, everything is justified.
Examples? Here are just a few from news stories that largely escaped mainstream attention in recent decades:
Ocean-Spray was reportedly caught “cross-hauling” (using trucking contractors who were filling up trailer containers with highly toxic chemicals and hauling them in one direction, and then filling the very same containers with juice ingredients to haul in the other direction – with merely a quick soap-and-warm-water rinse in between loads)…
A whistleblower revealed that Beechnut was selling colored sugar-water labeled as apple juice for our infant children…
A coal-mining firm in Tennessee had apparently figured it was cheaper to pay the EPA fines than to properly contain its vast pool of accumulated sludge – the predictable impact was hideously disastrous…
Evidence shows that our importers show little concern about the lead in the Chinese toys that they sell to our children…
Texaco chose to use antiquated and lethally polluting processes and practices within the headlands of the globe’s largest river, thereby decimating wide swaths of virgin wilderness and poisoning thousands of local people – and then, just like Union Carbide and so many other firms, it simply sold its local assets and walked away.
Those mythical but fanatically publicized Obama “death-panels” have instead long existed in head offices of medical insurance firms – in the ghastly and ethereal shape of care denial strategies and coverage cancellation practices…
Not a single one of these organizations have ever had their charters revoked for their callous and willful assaults upon innocent life. Yet now our nation’s highest court is seriously considering allowing soulless creatures like these to simply buy our democratic republic out of hand, and out from under our feet.
An article in the September issue of Hightower’s Lowdown (edited by former Texas Secretary of Agriculture Jim Hightower) perceptively notes that the vast sums in America’s corporate treasuries do not belong to the heads of the corporations, and are therefore not theirs to pump into politicians’ palms. This publication also reminds us that, for about seventy years after our nation was founded, each corporation was granted its charter – on pain of dissolution for any violation – under the following criteria: To maintain and adhere to a genuine purpose of public benefit; To limit itself to its original business concern, abstain from purchasing other corporations, and amass only a specified maximum of wealth; To exist for a nominal term of 20 years before applying to the legislature for renewal; To deal equitably with trading partners and competition. And – pointedly – these companies were prohibited from lobbying, and from influencing any political campaigns. Our best founders were as wary of the power of corporations as they were of military ascendancy.
Additionally, Hightower’s Lowdown recalls the little-known fact that these fraudulent corporate attempts to demand the rights of persons under law all hearken back to a completely unauthorized entry in the summary of a single Supreme Court case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886. A certain Mr. J.C. Bancroft Davis, a court reporter employed by a private publisher of legal documents, made a legally baseless assertion when he errantly opened his summary with the unfounded statement, ”The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment…” (Back in 1868, the 14th Amendment had granted former slaves equal protection under the law.) Although the railroad lawyers had attempted to persuade the court to create legal personhood for corporations, the justices resolutely excluded any such verdict on the subject by the court. Neither has any declaration by Congress ever established or recognized any merit to any firm’s claim to possess the legal rights of “natural persons”.
Yet it’s now in our nation’s history – after the slow subversion of our once robust economy from one that fashions worthy products and develops widespread prosperity, to one that finagles worthless paper and discards our people as waste…
After repeated grave insults and numerous radical onslaughts that have been leveled against our cherished Bill of Rights in the wake of that cruel and criminal tragedy we all suffered on September 11th 2001…
After the defrauding of our United States into two invasions and two occupations, and the saddling of our grandchildren with $3 trillion in resulting losses (not to mention the dead, and the physically and psychologically maimed, on all sides – or the little-remembered $2.3 trillion Donald Rumsfeld reported on September 10th was already “lost” by the Pentagon)…
After the blind and grasping excesses and the wayward arrogance of the Bush/Cheney White House, and its collusion with the GOP-dominated Congress to spend our short-lived Federal Surplus into a record-shattering Federal Debt…
After Mr. Bush’s fiscal helmsman, Mr. Hank Paulson, accomplished his well-timed knee-jerk draining of $12 trillion plus out of our tax-paid treasury and hastily pouring it into the sucking vaults of our nation’s most avaricious banksters…
After the remarkably parallel courses that have been charted thus far by the so-called “socialist” Obama administration…
After the refusal by HMO/Pharma-bankrolled public servants both Red and Blue to seriously consider, or even discuss, the internationally long-proven and economically rewarding national single-payer healthcare that the majority of doctors, nurses and the American People desperately want and need, and which our greatest global competitors already enjoy…
It is at this very moment that the slim GOP-appointed majority of SCOTUS justices may choose to elevate an obscure court reporter’s aberrant fantasy, and unleash corporate treasuries to even more directly manipulate elections.
We the People have endured too much to be silent, sacrificed too long to be still, and suffered far too much of this opulent corruption at the expense of our prosperity, our jobs, our homes, our health – our lives. When will we summon the courage and the righteous indignation and the outrage to say… forcefully, decisively, and continuously…?
“WE’RE MAD AS HELL, AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!”
Here are a few cogient quotes I included to help frame the issue:
A GOOD JUDICIARY LENDS MUCH TO THE DIGNITY OF A STATE AND THE HAPPINESS OF THE PEOPLE. A BAD JUDICIARY INVOLVED IN PARTY BUSINESS IS THE GREATEST CURSE THAT CAN BEFALL A COUNTRY. – ANDREW JACKSON
AIR WATER AND LAND ARE NOT THE ‘FREE GOOD’ OUR SOCIETY ONCE BELIEVED. THEY MUST BE REDEFINED AS ASSETS, SO THAT THEY CAN BE EFFICIENTLY AND APPROPRIATELY ALLOCATED. – FRANK POPOFF, FORMER CEO, DOW CHEMICAL
I AM NOT FOR A RETURN OF THAT DEFINITION OF LIBERTY UNDER WHICH FOR MANY YEARS A FREE PEOPLE WERE BEING GRADUALLY REGIMENTED INTO THE SERVICE OF THE PRIVILEGED FEW. – FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
TO CONSIDER THE JUDGES AS THE ULTIMATE ARBITERS OF ALL CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS, A VERY DANGEROUS DOCTRINE INDEED, AND ONE WHICH WOULD PLACE US UNDER THE DESPOTISM OF AN OLIGARCHY. – THOMAS JEFFERSON
AS A RESULT OF THE WAR, CORPORATIONS HAVE BEEN ENTHRONED AND AN ERA OF CORRUPTION IN HIGH PLACES WILL RESULT, AND THE MONEY POWER OF THE COUNTRY WILL ENDEAVOR TO PROLONG ITS REIGN – UNTIL ALL WEALTH IS AGGREGATED IN A FEW HANDS AND THE REPUBLIC IS DESTROYED. – ABE LINCOLN
WE MAY NEVER KNOW WITH COMPLETE CERTAINTY THE IDENTITY OF THE WINNER OF THIS ELECTION, THE IDENTITY OF THE LOSER IS PERFECTLY CLEAR. IT IS THIS NATION’S CONFIDENCE IN THE SUPREME COURT AS AN IMPARTIAL GUARDIAN OF THE RULE OF LAW. — U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS, DISSENTING, BUSH V. GORE, 2000
I KNOW OF NO SAFE DEPOSITORY OF THE ULTIMATE POWERS OF THE SOCIETY BUT THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES, AND IF WE THINK THEM NOT ENLIGHTIENED ENOUGH TO EXERCISE THEIR CONTROL WITH A WHOLESOME DISCRETION, THE REMEDY IS NOT TO TAKE IT FROM THEM, BUT TO INFORM THEIR DISCRETION. – THOMAS JEFFERSON
THE FEDERAL SUPREME COURT WAS AT FIRST CONSIDERED AS THE MOST HARMLESS AND HELPLESS OF ALL [GOVERNMENTAL] ORGANS. BUT THE POWER OF DECLARING WHAT THE LAW IS – BY SAPPING AND MINING THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION, SLYLY AND WITHOUT ALARM – CAN DO WHAT OPEN FORCE WOULD NOT DARE TO ATTEMPT. – THOMAS JEFFERSON