The Freakout Over "Chained CPI"

For years now, I've advocated increasing Social Security benefits -- by doubling or even tripling low-end benefits, 50% increase at the mid-range, maybe even a 25% increase at the top. This is not rocket science, it's basic consumer economics.

Social Security benefits are cripplingly low for many retirees as well as for many of those who would retire, except they can't afford to.

It's a ridiculous situation that any rational society would not have allowed to occur, especially not during the worst economic depression since the 1930's. A rational society would have pumped up retirement benefits promptly and would have made retirement possible for many more people at an earlier age. I've advocated 55 or 60 as the proper retirement age for full benefits, rather than 66 or 67 as is now the case, and of course, I advocated something like "Medicare for All" as opposed to the titanic insurance company and medical-industrial subsidy that is Obamacare.

Doing those things: substantially increasing SS benefit amounts, reducing the retirement age, and instituting single payer health care/Medicare for All would have made a huge difference in the course of the now-Permanent Recession and would have alleviated a lot of suffering.

Instead we get cuts and talk of more cuts to come.

This is insane.

Apparently the White House is really, really pushing to institute "Chained CPI" for calculating COLAs for all kinds of benefits, especially Social Security. The beauty part, according to those who have looked into it, is that Chained CPI also functions as a mid- and lower-class tax increase because it adjusts tax brackets ever so subtly, gradually forcing lower income people into higher tax brackets while leaving those already in the highest brackets where they are. Brilliant!

With the specter of raising Medicare eligibility age to 67, the impoverishment of ordinary working Americans is set to continue until Doomsday.

This is absurd.

There is now a full-blown freakout on the so-called 'left' over the Chained CPI proposal out of the White House, and all leftish internet effort is being marshaled to put a stop to it. Yes, well. Good luck with that. It's not that it is impossible to do; it's that it's the wrong crusade.

The effort should be focused on increasing benefits, lowering the retirement age and instituting single payer/Medicare for All.

All the Freakout does is try to maintain the status quo. It doesn't advance anything. It simply tries to keep things as they are for as long as possible.

I've made this criticism of Digby more than anyone, but the tendency on the so-called 'left' is almost universally to preserve the civilized status quo against the assaults by the barbarian 'right.' Typically, it fails. And the 'left' falls back to the next barricade until it, too, fails, and so, backwards we slide, constantly. The nation becomes more and more rightist because the rightists are the ones who keep pushing against the status quo, while the defenders of the status quo are the supposed 'left.'

Didn't anybody learn anything from the failure and fall of the Soviet Union? The tragedy of the Supreme Soviet making its last stand against Yeltsin's tanks was not that they were wrong. They weren't -- at least they wouldn't have been if things weren't so out of whack. The tragedy wasn't even that they failed. The tragedy was that they had nothing to offer beyond preserving the status quo, and they were incapable of recognizing that the status quo... sucked. (Well, it could have been worse, and it got worse, but that's another issue.)

So now the American 'left' uses all its energy to preserve what it can of the status quo and calls it "Victory!" -- and that's just crazy, especially as the status quo keeps moving rightwards. Preventing Chained CPI doesn't stop the impoverishment. It's not at all certain that Chained CPI can be stopped at this juncture. So if it is instituted, the impoverishment of the American People will be accelerated somewhat, but that impoverishment will take place anyway if the current COLA formula is maintained.

Do people realize that there were no COLA adjustments for two years during the darkest period of the Permanent Recession, despite the fact that the basic cost of living was skyrocketing at that time? Food, housing, utilities, medical prices etc. were all going up, some at double digit rates, and people on fixed incomes were being battered by these increases, but they were ignored by those calculating COLAs, one of the excuses being that beneficiaries had received a large COLA previously due to fuel cost increases, and since the cost of fuel was (temporarily) lower, they didn't need COLA increases to cover other rising costs.

Maintaining the current COLA formula, in other words, is effectively backsliding. Shifting to Chained CPI calculations accelerates the backsliding.

Neither is an improvement, neither stops the impoverishment of the People for the benefit of Our Betters.

It's part of what drives me nuts about what passes for the 'left' in this country.

Those who actually want to and try to make like better for the masses are dismissed as crackpots and worse, while those who are singlemindedly focused on preserving things as they are are hailed or condemned as some kind of 'leftist' heroes or villains (depending on ideological perspective), and the rightists claim the "center."

There's an uncompromising level of cruelty among Our Betters and an utter lack of empathy for the victims of their policies that could be highlighted much more -- and much better -- than it is. A real Left might do that, but given the lack of enthusiasm for using terms like "cruelty" to describe the policies being inflicted on the rest of us by those in power (for fear of offending?) it's going to be an ever lengthening row to hoe to enlighten the suffering and reverse the cruelties of the High and the Mighty.

Of course the entire political culture is complicit and both major political parties are deeply involved in demonizing and impoverishing the masses. There is no better solution from either party, merely a pendulum swing from bad to somewhat less bad. Nor is there is a chance of forcing "change" by either boycotting elections or voting third party. We've already seen how -- and how effectively -- authority and "interests" will interfere with any election that doesn't produce acceptable results. If you doubt just how far Our Betters will go, look to the astonishing replacement of elected prime ministers in Europe with compliant technocrats whenever the austerity interests declare it desirable.

We mustn't allow ourselves to be fooled into believing that elections will get us anywhere. They won't. They will not be allowed to.

Chained CPI may or may not be implemented. We the People will have no effective say in the matter. But by ensuring there is a complete freakout over it among the so-called 'left', Our Betters ensure that there is little effective opposition to their overall scheme. It works beautifully. For them.

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UPDATE: Young Ezra has cogitated the matter and decided not to get too worked up about Chained CPI, it's the whole damned thing that's too mingy as it is, and behold: increasing SS benefits and instituting a public option or Medicare for All actually -- wait for it -- benefits the economy.

Who. Duh. Thunk?

Maybe. Everyone knows Young Ezra is a complete and total tool of powerful interests (particularly in the White House, doesn't matter who's occupying said House) and he doesn't take stands or advocate policies on his ownself.  What he does is push whatever line his most recent Power Contact pitched to him. In this case, it appears there is someone at the White House who's had a dawning, a come to Jesus moment. A realization: the economic policy makers are going about everything backwards, no wonder it doesn't work! Ah ha! Yes, well.

Having the realization and doing anything about it are two different things. Ezra is just a vessel, much as Brooksie is; a great deal of their work in the media is designed to palliate the masses, quiet their grumblings, by declaring that this or that position that the People may (or may not) favor is being discussed by the High and the Mighty, who are considering every possible argument before inflicting a policy on the rest of us. You see. That is why they are called Our Betters.

I would go so far as to suggest that Young Ezra has had no dawning at all. He'll cheerfully put the notion out there that, say, maybe it would be cool to increase rather than shrink benefits and put in place a rational public health care system. There. It's been said.

Now let's get on with the screwage.

I am so cynical.

Capitulator!!! Destroyer!!!! LIAR!!!!!

Good God. The hysteric reporting is almost overwhelming.

Yes. Well. Apparently the Debt Crisis Crisis Deal is just about done, and assuming it gets through the House and the Senate in some form, it is likely the President will sign it, and the screwage of the People will recommence in earnest this time, as if the monumental spikes in poverty, hunger and homelessness aren't already payment enough from the People for the titanic economic catastrophe engineered by Their Betters.

Not tying what's already happened into what is to come has become one of the blogospheric conventions during the Crisis Crisis Negotiations, and it has been infuriating. It's not just insisting that "there could be cuts" -- without the least recognition that there already have been cuts, in some cases massive cuts -- to social programs, it is also the failure to tie the Crisis Crisis Negotiations to the post-modern style of Governing Contrary -- in almost all things -- to the People's Will and the Public Interest.

Instead, the Crisis Crisis Negotiations are, by convention, seen as independent of anything else, seemingly sui generis of Congress and the President, and by convention, these Negotiations have been deliberately whipped to a frenzy out of Nothing At All, and Everything Was Going Just Fine before the Crisis was made manifest Out of Nothing.

Horseshit. Complete and utter horseshit.

Those who are able to make connections typically see the Debt Crisis Crisis Negotiations as an application of the Shock Doctrine to our peaceful and bountiful land, which is true enough, but by convention, it is widely thought that only NOW is the Shock Doctrine is being applied, whereas alert observers have seen a continuation of the Shock Doctrine through the entire economic catastrophe, with previous periodic applications of the Shock devices beginning well before the Collapse.

Enron, anyone?

And of course by convention, all responsibility for the Debt Crisis Crisis is put on the Shoulders of the Throne, occupied by the Capitulator in Chief, who simply gives away the store to those mean old nasty hostage takers, booooo! When he could have done something else.

Yes, he could have, but he didn't. And he said he wasn't going to do anything different. He said quite clearly what he wanted to do, and he laid out the parameters of an agreement on the Debt Crisis Crisis, and it was clear from the Get Go that the Deal, once it came, would be essentially what is being finalized now: the few High and the Mighty will not be assessed any more income taxes than they already pay; soon enough, those tax rates will be reduced. Government services, social programs, and income support provisions for the many will be cut, in some cases substantially, in order to reduce the Federal Budget's share of the economy to an arbitrary percentage set by... well, now, that's the question, isn't it?

Who is actually running this pop stand, anyway?

Focus.

Isn't it actually the same handful of International Financiers who have been cheerfully ordering the looting and trashing economies all over the Western World to satisfy the pecuniary interests of an even tinier handful of grossly bloated Global Oligarchs and Plutocrats?

This is not to absolve the Debt Crisis Crisis Negotiators of their own culpability. They have plenty of it. After all, they are supposed to represent the People, and they do not do so, they seem utterly incapable of doing so. But that has been their institutional failure for many a long year; it did not "suddenly" appear in consequence of the current backstage Deal Making. Not at all.

The post-modern ethos of Governing Contrary to the People's Will and the Public Interest goes back a long way in this country; it's just been sharpened to a fine point in the last ten or fifteen years or so. Which all by itself is quite a while.

So the fact that the negotiators of this Debt Crisis Crisis Deal have pretty much ignored the Public in their high minded contest of wills (ha) is simply par for the course. It is what they do. It is what they have done for a long, long wearying time.

Hello?

Another of the conventions of our post-modern age is to see everything in isolation. Each and every thing is just "starting" in other words, and any connection with anything else is tenuous at best and subject to endless nitpicking and dispute. The notion of "continuation" is all but absent. The connections, such as they are, become the focus of endless and typically circular Argument. What's actually going on is seen through a foggy lens indeed, and it is often ignored in pursuit of whatever is new and shiny -- and of course, the Argument.

So.

We're going to get screwed by Our Betters some more than we already have been, and this time it will be relatively mild at first, getting harsher and harsher as time wears on, until by the end of what looks like a ten year process, fading into a longer thirty year process, which in turn is faded into a 75 year process (these people think long term, don't they?) we won't recognize either our nation or the kind of productive economy we once knew. It's not coming back. Ever.

Our Betters have decided what they want done, entirely at our expense, and that is what will be. Period.

The Imperial Wars of Aggression will continue without surcease, possibly automated for convenience and requiring far fewer personnel than currently. The insolvent financial sector will continue to be propped up indefinitely. Unemployment will continue inordinately high, and quite likely is going to go considerably higher. Social Security will continue to be drained of resources, at a faster and faster clip, while benefits already earned will be expropriated for other purposes -- such as Imperial Wars of Aggression and propping up the insolvent financial sector. "Health Care Reform" will become a bad joke, as will "Democracy." Ha ha. Foreclosures and impoverishment will accelerate.

All of this and more was "written" well before the current Negotiations got under way. There has been no lack of telegraphing of Our Betters intentions here.

What has been odd, really odd, is that there has been general acquiescence by the proles and the near-proles throughout. Yes, there have been objections raised, but even in Wisconsin, scene of the most protracted demonstrations against the New Austerity Overlords this year, there was prior agreement by the workers' representatives to almost all the demands of their governmental employer for reduced pay and benefits. In other words, the workers had already acquiesced to the major economic demands and the struggle was over "rights." Further, that struggle was lost, utterly, and there is little sign that the current effort to recall a number of state senators will result in any fundamental restoration of the status quo ante or in the institution of any better public policies.

It's simply not in the cards. Our Betters are winning every battle in a rout, while Russ Feingold and his ilk consider their next move -- or whether to "move" at all.

The hysterical accusations being thrown around against Obama and all the other Negotiators of The People's Plunder remind me a lot of the hysteria and wild accusations being thrown around about President Clinton and his dalliances with various women. It was all just insane of course, but I came to the conclusion that the hysteria and the insanity was the point of the exercise. It served as a wonderful distraction while other -- far more important -- matters were dealt with, such as financial dereg and various new forms of warring on undisciplined nations and peoples and so forth.

Ah well, it isn't completely resolved. We must await events. Sometime today, perhaps? Or will there have to be one more round of the contest to play out?

On Death Squads, Wet Work, and the Expansion of Mercenary Recruitment and Armies

Donald Rumsfeld really seemed to be the one who kick-started the current Imperial fashion for blitzkrieg, death squads, and armies of mercenaries roaming the world, killing and destroying at will, insinuating themselves with established governments, overthrowing and replacing uncooperative ones, and generally making mincemeat of such old fashioned and quaint concepts as "law" and "Nuremberg" and "stability" and such.

As Condoleeezzzzaaa Rice put it, "It's the birth pangs of the new...." Well, she said the New Middle East, but it's really an overturning of and replacement of the previous world order with something else again, something nastier, far more brutal, and vastly uglier than any set of rules we've lived under since, oh, I don't know, the late 19th Century-early 20th.

It is a New Imperium, of course.

When I hear or read people say we are witness to the decline or the death of the American Empire, I have to laugh somewhat morbidly. No, that's not what we're witnessing I point out. What we've been seeing is the decline and death of the Republic.

The Empire is fine; the Republic is being extinguished before our very eyes. This is the course of governance we've been on since the installation of George W. Bush on the White House Throne, completely without basis in the Constitution and Law. It was a straight out usurpation by the Supreme Court under the guidance of rightist -- indeed fascist -- ideology through Scalia's influence and that of the Government's "sponsors."

That isn't you and me. That is a select group of mostly cranky and in some cases insane billionaires who have bought and paid for this government and believe they have the absolute right to direct it to their preferred purposes.

Which obviously include War, Empire, and unbridled predation on the whole wide world.

You and I are at best merely impediments.

At worst, we are nothing but parasites to be disposed of as quickly and efficiently as.... disease organisms.

As more and more Americans wake up to this reality, they simply don't know what to do about it -- if anything can be done about it.

We fret quite a bit about the seemingly endless string of Imperial wars of aggression our government has launched or been engaged in since the advent of the Busheviks on the Throne, but we tend to ignore or forget about the now almost routine employment of Death Squads in the form of JSOC and Navy SEALS (among others) -- hailed as Heroes of course for their recent liquidation of The Devil Himself (and some others) in Pakistan -- the continuing Wet Work of our dauntless drones and their long-distance pilots, and the employment and deployment of mercenaries, paramilitaries and quasi-governmental forces everywhere.

All of which has become Doctrine, as the Whole Wide World is the Battlefield, and all peoples are potential insurgents to be put down, or failing that to be engaged profitably and productively for both sides... forever.

Forever and a day.

The Imperial Wars of Aggression are actually punctuation marks in the ongoing -- forever -- campaign of global murder and destruction that has become The Way of Modern America. It's a bloody form of expansionism that's been a hallmark of The American Way from the beginning, but has now become global in extent. There is no limit to the sights set by our Imperial Overseers, no sense of constraint. When Everywhere is The Battlefield and All Peoples are potential Enemies, there is no end -- there can be no end -- to expansionism.

Unless it is brought to an end by an outside force, rather like the British Empire ground to a halt and then went into precipitous reverse thanks to the Outside Force of two world wars as well as the determination of their subject peoples to be free of British control and the determination of their domestic population not to be further exploited to pay for their Betters' overseas adventures.

That's the thing. Any Imperial expansion is ultimately paid for by both the exploitation of colonial and the domestic populations.

The relentless campaign of the Rs to substantially reduce the standard of living of most Americans has as its primary objective paying for the Cause of Empire -- after all, the "defense and security" budget increases, doubles and redoubles, while the People's Budget is incrementally squeezed and reduced under current plans. There is no limit to the amount of treasure that can and will be devoted to the Cause of Empire, but strict limits must be imposed on the People's well-being to pay for it. Simple.

It happens under every Imperial regime.

The exploitation of the colonial peoples is even worse, of course, and they pay for the Imperial Adventure not only in treasure and dignity but in their own and their children's blood. Endless rivers of it.

Erik Prince, after all, has set up a new bloody shop in Abu Dhabi and is forming his mercenary Colombian and South African troopers into a force capable of countering the supposed expansionism of the Other Devil, Iran.

The Government of the United States is on an Imperial path and can't seem to get off. The People are on a very different path and can't seem to influence the Government sufficiently to force it to change course.

The Government is hardly even bothering to sell its path to the People any more; it simply imposes its Will, and the People be Damned. It's shocking but hardly unusual.

And of course The Shock is the mechanism through which domestic rule by the Imperial faction is to be maintained. It works.

We are left to ponder what can be done about this state of affairs. Or rather if anything should be done about it. We rail and fuss about it and we ignore it and try to get on with our lives under diminished circumstances, but Americans don't rise up in any large-scale and sustained manner, and except for a tiny fringe minority, there is no general call to "Restore the Republic."

To his credit, Obama from his Throne has actually tried to restore the Congress to its rightful position of authority under the Constitution, but the results have been mixed at best. For one thing, the Throne is not about to relinquish its authority to conduct its various forms of bloody diplomacy as it sees fit. On the other hand, Congress has shown neither a propensity nor an ability to utilize its authority (whether inherent or granted from On High) for positive -- or shall we say "progressive" -- ends. This is the continuing flaw in representative democracies. The Government and the People grow farther and farther apart and as their interests diverge, the ability of the People to interfere with the Government's desires is extinguished. The forms of representative self-government may remain in place, but the reality is that Government is transformed into an Autocracy, and it follows its own path, not that of the People.

That's basically what happened to Rome all those centuries ago. Thanks to the efforts of Augustus, the forms of the Republic remained in place for centuries after they ceased having a serious function. Nevertheless, elections continued uninterrupted, the Senate still met and debated, and many of the political positions of the Republic were maintained, even as they were either irrelevated or they were absorbed into the Imperial orbit.

As far as the People were concerned, it didn't really matter. Their situation did not improve no matter what happened in the cloisters and the palaces of the Empire, and for some, no doubt, the advent and invasions of the Barbarian Hordes from the East were less unwelcome than we might imagine. At least it was something different, and who knew, it might just be "better."

That's the path we're on. Whether We the People can actually influence it -- let alone change it -- or not is still in dispute.

If Our Rulers have any say in the matter, we won't.

More Solidarity Rallies

http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/index.html

Saturday at Noon, at every capitol and city hall. Enter your zip code for a rally near you. Game on, m-effers.

Never thought I'd live to see the day

Really.

It's impossible not to be moved -- for me anyway -- by this "labor unrest" phase of American History. The People are getting some of their spirit back, some of their strength, some of their soul. It's an amazing and thrilling sight, it's wonderful to be part of it if only on the fringe and periphery.

Yes, something like this has happened before. Many times. But not recently. Not recently enough. Sustained and determined protest is what wins the day against the murderous plutocrats and oligarchs who rule us. And that, the sustained and determined protest, hasn't happened for a long time.













What it boils down to: Dignity.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/23/948858/-Dr-King-Died-Fighting-For-The-Right-To-Collectively-Bargain

In Real News

From The Real News Network

This story is really the central issue throughout the Western world. "Billionaires for Social Insecurity" as the folks over at Campaign for America's Future put it.

In the United States, right now, as we speak, millions of Americans are being forced into poverty by the demands of the banksters and looters of Wall Street and Our Ruling Class -- some of whom are featured in the videos above. Vampires like Alan Greenspan, Bob Rubin, and of course the Devil Himself, Peter G. Peterson.

Millions of Americans are being forced out of work, and many of them will never hold a job again. They won't pay into Social Security, and even without the Billionaires' ministrations, their benefits, if they receive any at all, will be substantially lower than if they were able to keep working. Millions are forced into bankruptcy every year, but in many cases they still have to pay off their credit card debts, which, thanks to Joe Biden's "bankruptcy reform act" is a protected form of debt which can be collected essentially in perpetuity.

And here we see our Billionaires quite openly conspiring to cut Social Security and Medicare further for one very simple reason: they don't want to have to pay taxes to make up for the shortfalls in the funds that have resulted from their various forms of corporate and finance sector welfare and their astonishing levels of tax cuts over the years.

In essence, they are openly refusing to be taxed, and they are daring anybody to do anything about it. They will, however, be delighted to consider taxing the lower orders sufficiently to pay for their ever expanding need for wars of aggression.

It's not just happening in Washington, it's happening all over the Western world -- and in many other places as well.

The recently announced bailout of the EuroZone is a plan to pay off the EuroCreditors at 100% of loan value, at the full expense of the People of Europe. They will suffer, as the billionaires think they should, for being profligate and complacent. The banksters who are demanding payment -- extortion, really -- will lose nothing, in fact they will be rewarded for their efforts to loot the treasuries of all of Europe.

And while all this and more is going on, we see continuing focus on Elena Kagan and her inadequacy.

It's sad, really. There are some people on the left-er side of the alternative media who are actually paying attention to this robbery in plain sight. Digby has been covering it extensively for years; it -- like the proliferation of Tasers in this country -- is her own private bailiwick. The mainstream media will only cover it to the extent that they are able to reinforce the faulty premises that underlie the crusade to cut already minimal benefits for millions. Most of the mainstream media is fully behind the Peterson crusade, and they cannot imagine that anyone would disagree.

But the sad thing is that much of the alternative media seems to agree with the deficit scolds and can't figure out that maybe the Petersons and the other billionaires who are pushing this line are wrong. Even if they did figure it out, they wouldn't know what to do about it.

The fact that the Obama White House and Congress apparently agree with Peterson, and practically the entire ruling class of Europe agrees as well -- in the face, of course, of having their own credit restricted -- is a tough nut to crack for many people who might otherwise be bold. The fact that the masses in Europe, but not here, are informed enough about the fraud, the pillage, and the sleight of hand that's being performed to rise up and protest is a hopeful sign.

But there is still no organized resistance.

We have fallen far down the cliff-face; many have already reached the bottom.

What will it take for Americans to say, "Enough!"

Black Letter of the Law

And the problem of False Equivalence.

Today I posted some things over at Glenn's Place that touched on some interesting parallel actions in Supreme Court rulings.

On May 10, 1886, for example, the Court handed down the Yick Wo v Hopkins (that Glenn referred to in his post today) which extended 14th Amendment protection to non-citizens, such as Yick Wo himself. That same day, they also handed down the infamous Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad ruling that extended 14th Amendment protection to corporations such as the Southern Pacific Railroad in its headnote, though that was not what the Court actually ruled in its decision on the case under review. That ruling essentially upheld lower court rulings that SPRR property in Santa Clara and Fresno Counties had been improperly assessed.

On December 18, 1944, the Court ruled in Korematsu v United States that Executive Order 9066 which ordered the removal of persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast was Constitutional. On the same day, the Court ruled in Ex Parte Endo that the Government could not continue to hold American citizens (such as the rounded up Japanese Americans in the camps established as a result of the execution of Executive Order 9066) once the Government itself conceded their "loyalty" -- which the Government had done. Consequently, beginning January 2, 1945, the internees were allowed to go home if they could, and the camps prepared to shut down. This occurred while World War II still raged in Europe and the Pacific, and FDR was very much still alive.

I also posted the entire text of the 14th Amendment and the holdings in Yick Wo v Hopkins and Santa Clara v Southern Pacific as they related to the 14th Amendment.

The point Glenn was making in his post is that the Constitution applies to citizens as well as non-citizens -- ie: all "persons" under the jurisdiction and/or authority of the United States of America, as declared by the Court in Yick Wo. The point I was making was that the Court was in an expansive mood that day and was extending 14th Amendment protection, perhaps inadvertently, to corporations (ie: fictional "persons") as well as aliens.

In like manner, the Court, feeling expansive, ruled in favor of the Government in Korematsu and against continued holding of "loyal" American citizens in Endo, in effect releasing the internees.

These expansive acts are forms of balance that the Court once engaged in fairly regularly, but which it appears to have avoided for quite a while. My argument is not that there are equivalences here but is instead that these important rulings should not be considered in isolation. They have a context, and that context is often missing in the discussion of them. Part of that context is an effort by the Court to find some kind of balance between competing interests. Ie: at least the perception of Justice.

In that light, it is of some interest that at the time Yick Wo was decided, Chinese immigrants were barred from citizenship. Yet the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, by the clear black letter of the law, applied to "any person within its jurisdiction," without the caveat that that "person" had to be a "citizen." Discrimination by race under the law or in the application of the law (in this case a San Francisco ordinance) was therefore clearly unconstitutional, and so the Court ruled.

Of course they would rule ten years later in Plessey v Ferguson that "separate but equal" accommodations were Constitutional... so you never know.

However, extending 14th Amendment protections to corporations, as they did in Santa Clara, seems quite a stretch, for it presumes that the status of corporate "persons" is identical at law to that of "natural persons." But that status had never previously been established, and in fact it had been previously denied, deliberately and with substantial consideration.

Corporations are not "persons" in the sense that the term is used in the Constitution. "Persons," "People," and "Citizens" are used in the Constitution to refer to "natual persons," ie: human beings.

Corporations are artificial creatures chartered by the State ostensibly on behalf of the People. Rights and privileges of corporations are purely a function of their charters and the People's governments which approve their charters, not of the Constitution.

Rights and privileges of natural persons ultimately derive from their status as human beings; the Constitution protects those rights and privileges against excess Government intrusion. Corporations are creatures of their charters as approved by the Government; they have no existence whatsoever outside that which has been provided them by charter and Government.

It's a false equivalence to assert that corporations are entitled by the Constitution to the same protections of the 14th Amendment as "natural persons."

Corporations have no Constitutional protection at all. A plain reading of the black letter of the law would lead one to believe that the Court erred in extending 14th Amendment protection to corporations. Correcting such an error will not be easy, but it's not impossible.

One approach, which I favor, is to avoid the false "either/or" alternatives. It is false to assert that corporations either have full protection of the 14th Amendment as a function of their "personhood" or they have "no rights at all."

As creatures of their charters and the approval of the Government, they have such rights and privileges as the People shall determine, not the rights and protections guaranteed to the People by the Constitution.

This is not a hard concept except to those who would make it hard.

Corporate "personhood" is now deeply ingrained in law, and it is said to be difficult at this point to dis-"person" corporations without overturning a huge body of law concerning corporations. Yes, it is inconvenient and potentially costly, but it is not impossible.

The point is to restore corporate rights and privileges to those which can be determined by the People, through their elected bodies and statute law, not the Constitution.

In fact, "personhood" may (or may not) be sustained by the People, but it should be up to them, not an offhanded comment by a justice who then rules on something else entirely.

Another false equivalence that enters the discussion is that between Government on the one hand and corporations on the other. sysprog asked, for example, whether I thought it was desirable to "leash and regulate" governments as well as corporations. Simply put, they are not the same, and there should be no confusion and no equivalence between them. The premise of the question is wrong. Government is instituted by the People to protect the Constitution and the rights therein. Corporations are created by charter (of their shareholders/members) and approved by Government to produce a profit for their shareholders or a public good in the case of nonprofit corporations.

sysprog followed with more questions based on false premises: should corporations be subject to criminal and civil liability like natural persons or should only natural persons be subject to them? Should corporations be subject to due process? Am I arguing that corporations have no rights at all?

No, I'm arguing that corporations should have such rights and privileges as are determined by the People to be in the People's interests.

Corporations are created by their charters under the authority and regulation of the Government as the People see fit. There is no inherent or Constitutional protection for them. But that does not mean corporations necessarily have no rights.

It's simple. And this was not at all difficult to fathom prior to 1886 and the headnoted provision of 14th Amendment protections to corporations.

Black letter of the law, people.

Black letter of the law.

Three Little Words

Cato-bots, Federalists, Corporatists of all stripes, Libertarians, Propertarians, and Randians almost universally praise the Citizens United decision in such identical terms it looks like a really pimply circle jerk. The celebrations over the Liberation of Corporations from the Oppression they have been under since the first Progressive campaign finance restriction laws were passed a century ago -- and well before that, given the frequency of prohibitions on Corporate participation in campaigns and elections that were commonplace in America from the Founding on -- all praise the Court for their adherence to the First Amendment and the Constitution...

In the process, they forget those those three little words that start the document they regard as Holy Writ:

We the People

I know, it's hard, really, really hard for these Sanctifiers to comprehend the simple truth in front of their faces: the document they revere (or say they do), flawed as it is, was written not as an abstract exercise in Nation Creation, but as a foundation and framework for The People to work out their common interest and welfare.

The Sanctifiers deny that. The People aren't even involved, in their view, in the process of "working out" their "common interest" and "welfare." Except for the Preamble, the Constitution is the completion of that "working out." Since the Preamble is not Sacred Text but merely Prologue, what it says about the function of the document under consideration is simply extraneous. The Text itself is the the Whole of the Law. Everything else is Commentary. And often is Deep in Error.

It is up to the Sacred Priesthood, annointed, to determine with absolute certainty and clarity what is and is not allowed by Holy Writ, and to declare bans and anathema on any who dissent.

That Priesthood is not, by the way, the Supreme Court. How could it be? There is nothing in the Constitution that establishes the Supreme Court as the arbiter and determiner of what the Law is. They took that role on themselves, but they are not the Sacred Priesthood. How could they be? They err.

Inerrancy is found only among the Annointed Ones of the Federalist Society, the Cato Institute and from time to time among the higher ranks of Libertarians, Propertarians and Randians. Everyone else is rabble to be dismissed, and who may consider themselves lucky in the process.

I have said that I find Glenn's stand on the Citizens United ruling to be "contemptible," even though I agree with him on many issues. The problem has been from the beginning that he -- like most Cato-bots, Federalist apparatchiks, and so forth -- approaches the issue in the abstract, and uses only what he regards as valid textural reading and interpretation of the First Amendment to declare campaign finance laws that restrict the "free speech rights" of corporations to be Unconstitutional.

In other words, the Black Letter of the Law -- as Glenn reads it -- is the only thing that matters; no consideration of consequences or the People's common interest can enter into the equation.

Given what the Court had to do to get to where they wanted to be, which is to say the Liberation of Corporations from their Oppression, I would call the whole thing a farce.

A Dumb Show designed to entertain, not enlighten.

On the other hand, unless the People for whom this Constitution was supposed to function take more active control of their mutual welfare and common interest, the only rational conclusion is "We're Doomed!"

We welcome our Generous Corporate Overlords and offer our apologies for ever doubting their Kind Intentions. We will be Good Servants, loyal, trustworthy and honest, pure in thought and compliant in deed.

That's what the Corporate Constitution specifies, isn't it?