Unequal protection
Subtitle: how corporations became "people"--and how you can fight back
By: by Thom Hartmann
Edition: 2nd ed., rev. and expanded.
Series: A BK currents book
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler
Published: 2010
Place of publication: San Francisco
Language: eng
Number of pages: 376
ISBN-13: 9781605095592
Subjects: Human rights; Corporations; Industrial policy; Corporation law; History; Business and politics
Description: Synopsis: Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights. Was the Boston Tea Party the first WTO-style protest against transnational corporations? Did Supreme Court sell out America's citizens in the nineteenth century, with consequences lasting to this day? Is there a way for American citizens to recover democracy of, by, and for the people? Thom Hartmann takes on these most difficult questions and tells a startling story that will forever change your understanding of American history. He begins by uncovering an original eyewitness account of the Boston Tea Party and demonstrates that it was provoked not by "taxation without representation" as is commonly suggested but by the specific actions of the East India Company, which represented the commercial interests of the British elite.^

Hartmann then describes the history of the Fourteenth Amendment created at the end of the Civil War to grant basic rights to freed slaves and how it has been used by lawyers representing corporate interests to extend additional rights to businesses far more frequently than to freed slaves. Prior to 1886, corporations were referred to in U S law as "artificial persons" but in 1886, after a series of cases brought by lawyers representing the expanding railroad interests, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were "persons" and entitled to the same rights granted to people under the Bill of Rights. Since this ruling, America has lost the legal structures that allowed for people to control corporate behavior. As a result, the largest transnational corporations fill a role today that has historically been filled by kings. They control most of the world's wealth and exert power over the lives of most of the world's citizens.^

Their CEOs are unapproachable and live lives of nearly unimaginable wealth and luxury. They've become the rudder that steers the ship of much human experience, and they're steering it by their prime value-growth and profit and any expense-a value that has become destructive for life on Earth. This new feudalism was not what our Founders-Federalists and Democratic Republicans alike-envisioned for America. It's time for "we, the people" to take back our lives. Hartmann proposes specific legal remedies that could truly save the world from political, economic, and ecological disaster.
Notes: Previous ed.: Emmaus, Pa. : Rodale, 2002.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 334-352) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction. The battle to save democracy; title: Pt. I, Corporations take over. The deciding moment? ; The corporate conquest of America; title: Pt. II, From the birth of American democracy through the birth of corporate personhood. Banding together for the common good ; The Boston tea party revealed ; Jefferson versus the corporate aristocracy ; The early role of corporations in America ; The people's masters ; Corporations go global ; The court takes the presidency ; Protecting corporate liars ; Corporate control of politics; title: Pt. III, Unequal consequences. Unequal uses for the Bill of rights ; Unequal regulation ; Unequal protection from risk ; Unequal taxes ; Unequal responsibility for crime ; Unequal privacy ; Unequal citizenship and access to the commons ; Unequal wealth ; Unequal trade ; Unequal media ; Unequal influence; title: Pt. IV, Restoring personhood to people. Capitalists and Americans speak out for community ; End corporate personhood ; A new entrepreneurial boom ; A democratic marketplace ; Restoring government of, by, and for the people.