Read Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It for Free Online
Authors: Jeffrey D. Clements, Bill Moyers
people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions.” 7 Even President Martin Van Buren, hardly a radical, warned of “the already overgrown influence of corporate authorities.” 8
That first Earth Day in 1970 again awakened our government to the necessity of restoring the balance of corporate power and public interest, of those who control powerful corporations and the rest of Americans. With a Republican president in the White House and bipartisan support in Congress, the extent of reform that quickly followed in the months and a few short years after the first Earth Day remains astonishing:
First Environmental Protection Agency
Clean Water Act
Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments
Clean Air Act Extension
Toxic Substances Control Act
Safe Drinking Water Act
Wilderness Act
Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act
Endangered Species Act
Marine Mammal Protection Act
Resource Recovery Act
First fuel economy standards for motor vehicles
These 1970s reforms were long overdue. For a time, they worked extraordinarily well and made a profound difference in the quality of life of the vast majority of Americans. No longer could dumping untreated sewage and toxic waste in our waters be considered a standard business practice; no longer could corporations walk away from hazardous waste and chemical sites; more wilderness areas preserved more of our birthright and that of future Americans; new laws rejected the industry view that we just had to live with the discharge of brain- and organ-damaging lead from millions of cars and the spread of lead paint in every building in the land; access to clean, safe water was assured for far more Americans; and so much more.
The market did not do this. We did this by acting as citizens in a republic.
As with every time in American history, of course, the 1970s were racked with crisis and challenge. Yet the American people worked the levers of democracy, and the government responded. It actually seemed as if some connection existed between those levers—voting, organizing, debating, petitioning, marching—and our government’s conduct.
Environmental protection was not all. We often remember the strife and problems of the late 1960s and early 1970s but think of the progress in race and gender equality; ending the Vietnam War; real wage growth for average Americans; global leadership in trade and commerce and manufacturing; steady, comprehensive, creative, and effective resistance across the globe to dictatorial communism; public accountability when the president broke the law; more open government and better congressional oversight; manageable debt and budgets in Washington and the states; employee rights and safety; and a constitutional amendment to enfranchise millions of Americans from eighteento twenty years old. The people demanded change; our government delivered change.
The biggest corporations on the planet, however, did not celebrate the responsive democracy that followed Earth Day. Instead, they organized to fund a sustained program to take political power and rights for themselves and away from average Americans. With
Citizens United,
we may see the end game of this project, but it has been years in the making.
1971: Lewis Powell and the
“Activist-Minded Supreme Court”
In 1971, Lewis Powell, a mild-mannered, courtly, and shrewd corporate lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, soon to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court, wrote a memorandum to his client, the United States Chamber of Commerce. He outlined a critique and a plan that changed America. 9
Lewis Powell, like the
Citizens United
dissenter Justice John Paul Stevens, was a decorated World War II veteran who returned to his hometown to build a most respected corporate law practice. By all accounts, Powell was a
That first Earth Day in 1970 again awakened our government to the necessity of restoring the balance of corporate power and public interest, of those who control powerful corporations and the rest of Americans. With a Republican president in the White House and bipartisan support in Congress, the extent of reform that quickly followed in the months and a few short years after the first Earth Day remains astonishing:
First Environmental Protection Agency
Clean Water Act
Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments
Clean Air Act Extension
Toxic Substances Control Act
Safe Drinking Water Act
Wilderness Act
Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act
Endangered Species Act
Marine Mammal Protection Act
Resource Recovery Act
First fuel economy standards for motor vehicles
These 1970s reforms were long overdue. For a time, they worked extraordinarily well and made a profound difference in the quality of life of the vast majority of Americans. No longer could dumping untreated sewage and toxic waste in our waters be considered a standard business practice; no longer could corporations walk away from hazardous waste and chemical sites; more wilderness areas preserved more of our birthright and that of future Americans; new laws rejected the industry view that we just had to live with the discharge of brain- and organ-damaging lead from millions of cars and the spread of lead paint in every building in the land; access to clean, safe water was assured for far more Americans; and so much more.
The market did not do this. We did this by acting as citizens in a republic.
As with every time in American history, of course, the 1970s were racked with crisis and challenge. Yet the American people worked the levers of democracy, and the government responded. It actually seemed as if some connection existed between those levers—voting, organizing, debating, petitioning, marching—and our government’s conduct.
Environmental protection was not all. We often remember the strife and problems of the late 1960s and early 1970s but think of the progress in race and gender equality; ending the Vietnam War; real wage growth for average Americans; global leadership in trade and commerce and manufacturing; steady, comprehensive, creative, and effective resistance across the globe to dictatorial communism; public accountability when the president broke the law; more open government and better congressional oversight; manageable debt and budgets in Washington and the states; employee rights and safety; and a constitutional amendment to enfranchise millions of Americans from eighteento twenty years old. The people demanded change; our government delivered change.
The biggest corporations on the planet, however, did not celebrate the responsive democracy that followed Earth Day. Instead, they organized to fund a sustained program to take political power and rights for themselves and away from average Americans. With
Citizens United,
we may see the end game of this project, but it has been years in the making.
1971: Lewis Powell and the
“Activist-Minded Supreme Court”
In 1971, Lewis Powell, a mild-mannered, courtly, and shrewd corporate lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, soon to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court, wrote a memorandum to his client, the United States Chamber of Commerce. He outlined a critique and a plan that changed America. 9
Lewis Powell, like the
Citizens United
dissenter Justice John Paul Stevens, was a decorated World War II veteran who returned to his hometown to build a most respected corporate law practice. By all accounts, Powell was a
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