Corporations do not have the right to privacy which is granted to individual persons. There is no law which grants corporations the right to deny public inspection of voting machines, the sole purpose of which is for public use. First and foremost, there is need of correction.
It is obvious to anyone with an objective viewpoint such as to be had in countries with uncontrolled news, that there has been a takeover in our government's national and foreign policies. How did this come about? We have to look back into history for the answer.
Our history books tell us we fought the American Revolution against King George III and England. They hardly tell us why. Each of the colonies was a corporation chartered by the king, with the right to govern. These colonial governing corporations forced unfair rules on the colonists. Trading conditions imposed by subsidiary corporations like The Massachusetts Bay Company, the East India Company and The Virginia Corporation were additional burdens. These faceless entities collected taxes and duties at will. The colonial complaint was "taxation without representation", no voice or control of their own affairs. Revolution was the popular recourse.
The Continental Congress was convened due to the acute general awareness of the harmful effects wrought by governance thru the corporations. Our Constitution was composed and finalized by the "Bill of Rights", the first ten amendments. Jefferson and Madison proposed an eleventh amendment. However, their concern was satisfied by leaving it up to all states to include a specified law for the control of corporations. The proposed law provided that to get a charter, corporations had to:
● have a public purpose such as education, infrastructure etc.
● have an approved kind of business, could not buy other corporations, and were limited in the amount of capital they could amass.
● observe charter term limits of 15 or 20 years, requiring renewal.
● deal fairly and responsibly with individuals or small businesses.
● not be involved in political activities or lobbying.
Lincoln closed his Gettysburg Address with the urgent hope in 1863, that our "government of the people, by the people, for the people" would not perish from the Earth. A year later he wrote to friend prophetically: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong their reign by working upon the predjudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic (Democracy) is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety than ever before, even in the midst of war."
The "robber barons" of the next forty-plus years chipped away at state charter limitations. (e.g.) - Cornelius Vanderbilt: "What do I care about the law? H'aint I got the power?"
In 1886 an obscure case, Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad, came before the Supreme Court, presided over by Chief Justice Morrison Waite, a former railroad lawyer. Southern Pacific wanted to settle a tax dispute and other rights under the new Fourteenth Amendment. Waite ruled in favor of the railroad on the tax matter but made no mention of any other issue in court or in his judgment.
Unfortunately, court reporter J.C.Bancroft Davis (a former railroad official) wrote the headnote to the decision in his report to a publisher. (A headnote has no legal standing.) In it he put his personal conjecture of the court proceedings as follows: "The defendant corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which forbids a state to deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law." In checking on his published conclusion, Davis later asked Judge Waite if he had been correct in saying the Court had ruled on corporate personhood. Waite responded: "We avoided meeting the Constitutional questions."
In 2002, Nike Inc. was defeated in the California Supreme Court in spite of their backing of much of corporate America in the case of Nike vs. Kasky. Nike claimed that commercial distortions were political speech with the rights of persons. The U.S.Supreme Court decided not to hear the case further. Chief Justice William Rehnquist was heard to say he doubts that corporations can be persons under the Constitution.
Some cases in the past apparently have been decided on the precedent of the erroneous headnote and should be reversed, giving us back our civil right to a meaningful vote by over-riding the unadjudicated claim to personal privacy used to prevent impartial inspection of the public function of touch screen voting machines of corporations Diebold-ES&S, Ivotronic, and Sequoia. A claim which has also been used to avoid inspection of corporate records or operations of polluters, factories, meat packers, etc., and which has favored giant corporations over small town businesses and governments.
The predominant need of our present dilemma is for Democratic members of Congress to propose bills having the original intent of the Nation's founders in mind and rein in the usurping power of the self-serving controllers and their followers. Let them know you understand their game.
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February 3, 2003 http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org © Copyright 2/3/06 by Arthur Ebbets. Permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this credit is attached and the title remains unchanged. Arthur is 84 years old and was a Naval Officer and flight instructor during World War II.
