I bolded a few paragraphs below, the ones I took to be the main point of the article. It says the non-binding resolution (like we are asking for) is just liberal hand-wringing. Says we can do more. Also, says the real action is all at the local level.
AlterNet / By Tara Lohan
Vision: How Small, Mostly Conservative Towns Have Found the Trick to Defeating Corporations
As the Right pushes privatization as a solution to the economic collapse, one organization is teaching communities how to defeat corporations.
February 4, 2011 |
California's treasurer just announced that the state may need to begin issuing IOUs if the governor and legislature can't close the budget gap. And California's not the only place that's hurting. The Great Recession, hit not only businesses and individuals, but governments as well. The National Conference of State Legislatures estimated that 31 states are facing a combined shortfall for fiscal year 2011 of nearly $60 billion.
So, what's being done? "Cities and states across the nation are selling and leasing everything from airports to zoos -- a fire sale that could help plug budget holes now but worsen their financial woes over the long run," the Wall Street Journal reports. "California is looking to shed state office buildings. Milwaukee has proposed selling its water supply; in Chicago and New Haven, Conn., its parking meters. In Louisiana and Georgia, airports are up for grabs."
If this seems shocking, it shouldn't. For the past 30 years, there has been a deliberate effort to deregulate industry and to choke off federal support for public services and public spaces, paving the way for greater corporate control. The push to privatize is nothing new, it's just that our economic crisis is the latest opportunity. This fire sale is ignited during times of crisis -- what Naomi Klein referred to in The Shock Doctrine as "disaster capitalism," courtesy of Milton Friedman and his Chicago school disciples. "For more than three decades, Friedman and his powerful followers had been perfecting this very strategy," she wrote, "waiting for a major crisis, then selling off pieces of the state to private players while citizens were still reeling from the shock, then quickly making the 'reforms' permanent."
The goal is the same as it's been for decades: "The elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending," writes Klein. One of the places where this strategy can be most detrimental is the corporate takeover of public water sources and infrastructure, which is elemental to our survival.
But there's a glimmer of good news. Across the country, small, disparate groups of people are wising up and taking action to combat corporate control by using a new strategy. And these citizens are winning. One of the first rallying calls has been against the privatization of public water infrastructure and attempts by corporate water bottlers to pilfer spring water, as well. Communities are welcoming "Democracy Schools," run by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, into their towns, in an attempt to better understand the laws that protect corporations and the ways to defeat them.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
WPC- HJM 4005 introduced in House
H-1268.1 ______________________________
HOUSE JOINT MEMORIAL 4005
______________________________
State of Washington 62nd Legislature 2011 Regular Session
By Representatives Morris, Dickerson, Carlyle, Eddy, Hasegawa,
Fitzgibbon, Green, Moeller, Upthegrove, Orwall, Hunt, Reykdal,
Seaquist, Kagi, Ryu, Kenney, Frockt, Appleton, Moscoso, and Liias
Read first time 02/01/11. Referred to Committee on Judiciary.
1 TO THE HONORABLE BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, AND
2 TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE AND THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF
3 REPRESENTATIVES, AND TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
4 UNITED STATES, IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED:
5 We, your Memorialists, the Senate and House of Representatives of
6 the State of Washington, in legislative session assembled, respectfully
7 represent and petition as follows:
8 WHEREAS, Free and fair elections are essential to American
9 democracy and effective self-governance; and
10 WHEREAS, Individual persons are rightfully recognized as the human
11 beings who actually vote in elections; and
12 WHEREAS, Corporations are legal entities that governments create
13 and can exist in perpetuity and simultaneously in many nations; and
14 WHEREAS, They do not vote in elections and should not be
15 categorized as persons for purposes related to elections for public
16 office; and
17 WHEREAS, Corporations are not mentioned in the United States
18 Constitution as adopted, nor have Congress and the states recognized
19 corporations as legal persons in any subsequent federal constitutional
20 amendment; and
p. 1 HJM 4005
1 WHEREAS, During the 1885–1886 United States Supreme Court term, in
2 the midst of oral arguments leading to the decision Santa Clara vs.
3 Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394, Chief Justice Waite
4 stated that all the justices agreed that the Fourteenth Amendment's
5 prohibition on a state denying equal protection to a person applies to
6 a state's treatment of private corporations; and
7 WHEREAS, This brief but extraordinarily significant comment of
8 Chief Justice Waite sanctioned private corporations to sue municipal
9 and state governments for adopting laws that violate a corporation's
10 rights even when those laws serve to protect and defend the rights of
11 human persons; and
12 WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court has continued to adhere to
13 this legal position in its jurisprudence for over a century, and most
14 recently applied it in its decision Citizens United v. the Federal
15 Election Commission, 130 S.Ct. 876, that eliminated many restrictions,
16 including any total prohibition, on corporate spending in the electoral
17 process; and
18 WHEREAS, The Court in Citizens has created a new and unequal
19 playing field between human beings and corporations with respect to
20 campaign financing, negating over a century of precedent prohibiting
21 corporate contributions to federal election campaigns dating to the
22 Tillman Act of 1907; and
23 WHEREAS, The Citizens decision has forced candidates for political
24 office to divert attention from the interests and needs of their human
25 constituents in order to raise sufficient campaign funds for election;
26 and
27 WHEREAS, Corporations are not and have never been human beings and
28 therefore are rightfully subservient to human beings and the
29 governments that are their creators; and
30 WHEREAS, The profits and institutional survival of large
31 corporations are often in direct conflict with the essential needs and
32 rights of human beings; and
33 WHEREAS, Large corporations have used their so called rights to
34 successfully seek the judicial reversal of democratically enacted laws
35 passed at the municipal, state, and federal levels aimed at curbing
36 corporate abuse; and
37 WHEREAS, These judicial decisions have rendered democratically
HJM 4005 p. 2
1 elected governments ineffective in protecting their citizens against
2 corporate harm to the environment, health, workers, independent
3 business, and local and regional economies; and
4 WHEREAS, Large corporations own most of America's mass media and
5 employ those media to loudly express the corporate political agenda and
6 to convince Americans that the primary role of human beings is that of
7 consumers rather than sovereign citizens with democratic rights and
8 responsibilities; and
9 WHEREAS, The only way to reverse this intolerable societal reality
10 is to amend the United States Constitution to define persons as human
11 beings and not corporations;
12 NOW, THEREFORE, Your Memorialists respectfully resolve:
13 That the General Assembly urges Congress to propose an amendment to
14 the United States Constitution for the states' consideration which
15 provides that corporations are not persons under the laws of the United
16 States or any of its jurisdictional subdivisions.
17 BE IT RESOLVED, That copies of this Memorial be immediately
18 transmitted to the Honorable Barack Obama, President of the United
19 States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the
20 House of Representatives, the President of the Senate and the Speaker
21 of the House of Representatives of each state's legislature of the
22 United States of America, and each member of Congress from the State of
23 Washington.
--- END ---
HOUSE JOINT MEMORIAL 4005
______________________________
State of Washington 62nd Legislature 2011 Regular Session
By Representatives Morris, Dickerson, Carlyle, Eddy, Hasegawa,
Fitzgibbon, Green, Moeller, Upthegrove, Orwall, Hunt, Reykdal,
Seaquist, Kagi, Ryu, Kenney, Frockt, Appleton, Moscoso, and Liias
Read first time 02/01/11. Referred to Committee on Judiciary.
1 TO THE HONORABLE BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, AND
2 TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE AND THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF
3 REPRESENTATIVES, AND TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
4 UNITED STATES, IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED:
5 We, your Memorialists, the Senate and House of Representatives of
6 the State of Washington, in legislative session assembled, respectfully
7 represent and petition as follows:
8 WHEREAS, Free and fair elections are essential to American
9 democracy and effective self-governance; and
10 WHEREAS, Individual persons are rightfully recognized as the human
11 beings who actually vote in elections; and
12 WHEREAS, Corporations are legal entities that governments create
13 and can exist in perpetuity and simultaneously in many nations; and
14 WHEREAS, They do not vote in elections and should not be
15 categorized as persons for purposes related to elections for public
16 office; and
17 WHEREAS, Corporations are not mentioned in the United States
18 Constitution as adopted, nor have Congress and the states recognized
19 corporations as legal persons in any subsequent federal constitutional
20 amendment; and
p. 1 HJM 4005
1 WHEREAS, During the 1885–1886 United States Supreme Court term, in
2 the midst of oral arguments leading to the decision Santa Clara vs.
3 Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394, Chief Justice Waite
4 stated that all the justices agreed that the Fourteenth Amendment's
5 prohibition on a state denying equal protection to a person applies to
6 a state's treatment of private corporations; and
7 WHEREAS, This brief but extraordinarily significant comment of
8 Chief Justice Waite sanctioned private corporations to sue municipal
9 and state governments for adopting laws that violate a corporation's
10 rights even when those laws serve to protect and defend the rights of
11 human persons; and
12 WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court has continued to adhere to
13 this legal position in its jurisprudence for over a century, and most
14 recently applied it in its decision Citizens United v. the Federal
15 Election Commission, 130 S.Ct. 876, that eliminated many restrictions,
16 including any total prohibition, on corporate spending in the electoral
17 process; and
18 WHEREAS, The Court in Citizens has created a new and unequal
19 playing field between human beings and corporations with respect to
20 campaign financing, negating over a century of precedent prohibiting
21 corporate contributions to federal election campaigns dating to the
22 Tillman Act of 1907; and
23 WHEREAS, The Citizens decision has forced candidates for political
24 office to divert attention from the interests and needs of their human
25 constituents in order to raise sufficient campaign funds for election;
26 and
27 WHEREAS, Corporations are not and have never been human beings and
28 therefore are rightfully subservient to human beings and the
29 governments that are their creators; and
30 WHEREAS, The profits and institutional survival of large
31 corporations are often in direct conflict with the essential needs and
32 rights of human beings; and
33 WHEREAS, Large corporations have used their so called rights to
34 successfully seek the judicial reversal of democratically enacted laws
35 passed at the municipal, state, and federal levels aimed at curbing
36 corporate abuse; and
37 WHEREAS, These judicial decisions have rendered democratically
HJM 4005 p. 2
1 elected governments ineffective in protecting their citizens against
2 corporate harm to the environment, health, workers, independent
3 business, and local and regional economies; and
4 WHEREAS, Large corporations own most of America's mass media and
5 employ those media to loudly express the corporate political agenda and
6 to convince Americans that the primary role of human beings is that of
7 consumers rather than sovereign citizens with democratic rights and
8 responsibilities; and
9 WHEREAS, The only way to reverse this intolerable societal reality
10 is to amend the United States Constitution to define persons as human
11 beings and not corporations;
12 NOW, THEREFORE, Your Memorialists respectfully resolve:
13 That the General Assembly urges Congress to propose an amendment to
14 the United States Constitution for the states' consideration which
15 provides that corporations are not persons under the laws of the United
16 States or any of its jurisdictional subdivisions.
17 BE IT RESOLVED, That copies of this Memorial be immediately
18 transmitted to the Honorable Barack Obama, President of the United
19 States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the
20 House of Representatives, the President of the Senate and the Speaker
21 of the House of Representatives of each state's legislature of the
22 United States of America, and each member of Congress from the State of
23 Washington.
--- END ---
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