Romney: corporations are people
Romney is getting a lot of flack for saying that corporations are people, but even liberal Greg Sargent is defending Romney—sort of, anyway A transcript of Romney’s remarks appears at Sargent’s WaPo blog.
And well, aren’t corporations people?
The whole thing reminds me most of this, though:
Yes, corporations are people — and once above small S corporations and one-erson LLCs, it is groups of people acting jointly. And just as there are all kinds of people, there are all kinds of corporations, including some real jerks and criminals. We have laws to set frameworks and punish individuals who use force, commit fraud, etc., we need analogous ones for corporations for the same reasons. The scope of corporations as their size increases and transparency decreases makes it more difficult but no less necessary.
This is the difference between a true liberal and a true conservative to me.
A conservative gets that a corporation cannot exist without the individuals (sometimes a group of individuals investing and making money)
To take away speech for these individuals is fundamentally unconstitutional.
To put the onus on the corporations to purchase the individuals health insurance takes away personal responsibility.
This country needs to understand personal responsibility if nothing else.
There is absolutely nothing a corporation can do without an individual deciding it.
It isn’t a monkey doing anything.
I’ve owned a c-corp. There is separation and therefore there is corporate taxes and the corporation issues a W-2 and there is personal taxes.
With an S-corp it all is accounted for in personal taxes.
Either way – the big government types continue to make thousands of pages of tax laws each year.
How does that help?
Liberals dream of a utopian world where a quaint boutique shop that harmed no plants or animals in its construction, run by a ponytail lawyer in sandals with socks who left the corporate grind because he cared about the planet, but now sews pairs of pants for just pennies more than the average person earns in 6 months.
If you like to see stunned/ outraged expressions, try this. Point out that the government is, in effect, a corporation: a legal entity comprising a group of natural persons who are considered to be acting as though they are one individual.
The usual response is that “the people” control the government (this said with a straight face) through voting. Of course, the people “control” corporations in similar fashion through granting or withholding their business.
The curious thing is that liberals decry corporations for having too much control, and decide that the solution is to give the ultimate corporation, the one with an army, police, and prisons, ultimate control.
To liberals, this seems to make perfect sense. Of course, they presume that someone of their views will run the government. It apparently never occurs to them that President Pat Buchanan might use all that power in a way that they wouldn’t like.
The question ought be are American politicians people — or are they the superintended pods they look, talk, and vote like?
453…452…451… days to go.this is harkening back to the law that treats companies as people in courts… ie… what allows them to give all that money to politicoes, and such…
the key differences is that there is not one corporate mind, and so, its not a person, its an agregate.
but if you cant see that a population is an agregate and only in symbolic mental usage does it exist at all…
then you cant see that a company has certain failings in this realm and as such should not stand equally in its actions as people do
one: its effectively immortal
two: its many minds not one mind so any exercise of one mind, denies the minds of the others
three: it allows those who speak for the mind of the company to have more than one vote or means over other people
a company is nothing but a contractual vehicle, and does not exist anywhere that is real… it is not the bricks, it is not the mortar… it can have thousands of offices, or none…
no.. all it is is a contractual vehicle to organize legal exchanges within its framework and which all inside agree… its purpose is to insure that external agents have power internal to it… otherwise it would not be necessary.
its made necessary by the fact that people do not stick to their agreements and so on… it is made necessary as there is a third party wanting their cuts and so wants to see their books… and so on with the rules that they have to comply with from those same people.
the larger point is that if you do not consider companies to be people, then companies as an entity have no right to petition the government and the road to fascism through that path would ONCE AGAIN be closed…
Artfldgr gets it (not to disparage the other posts, especially OB’s, sound and not ponderous, as always): It is the legal definition of a corporation that is the heart of the matter. Secondary is that corps are made of people, etc., etc.
My hat’s off to Mitt in this case.
Didn’t mean to leave you out, Neo; just hadn’t read your “Corporate personhood” link. Merci !
If unions are ‘people’ corporations are ‘people’. If the NYT or CNN can exercise 1st amendment rights, as corporations, then any other corporation has 1st amendment rights.
Free speech is not free. Everyone must pay for their own soapbox.
However, I am mystified by the ‘progressive’ anger over this issue. The biggest corporations are bedmates with the democratic party. Big corporations love big government and regulations. Think GE.