The Purchase Of America
Congress, as presently constituted, will never act to remedy either the tax shelter- or the election law-voiding absurdities, each based upon the fictitious full "personhood" concept fully set forth in the Citizens United case. If the Democratic Party were ever to take over both houses again, each of these affronts/abominations upon democracy could perhaps be set aside.
Ever since the concept of corporations was first set upon paper, in the 17th century, they have been recognized as "fictions" created by law solely to limit shareholder/investor liability (with many obvious exceptions) and for the sole purpose of encouraging of economic expansion.
When the Bush/John Roberts Supreme Court went "off the rails" in Citizens United, all of a sudden a de facto license was given to use the fiction of corporate "personhood" -- akin to having the rights of a person -- to allow corporations and the shareholders controlling them avoid to paying billions and billions in taxes owed to the United States. Economic studies have confirmed that those monies are not developing new businesses and creating jobs. They are simply being placed in bank accounts and various investments ... and in overwhelming amounts simply passed on in inheritance for the newest iteration of "robber barons."
Also, and even more importantly, the same concept is being used by the Roberts Court (against all applicable legal precedent) to join monies from anonymous, disparate sources, without limitation on amount, for the sole purpose of enabling a very few uber-wealthy persons to purchase elections. That assures, of course, that there will, before very long at all, be a fully institutionalized, oligarchical control of the government of the United States that may be fully impossible to ever reverse.
The framers of the Constitution back in 1787 had intended that the word "people" actually mean "people" such as you and me, i.e., human beings. Money, it seems, does so much more than "buy" groceries; it is now being used to purchase an entire nation for the benefit of a very, very few.
Donald K. Switzer
Rogers
Commentary on 05/27/2014