My Decision 2012: Corporate Personhood

Corporatocracy & Corporate Personhood

To most people, there is an obvious difference between a corporation and a person. A corporation is a business whose primary goal is to turn a profit. A person is a flesh and blood, sentient being like you and I. As Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) put it at the DNC Convention, “People have hearts, they have kids, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die, and that matters.” Very few people will confuse one for the other. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, does NOT see the difference. In the midst of the GOP primaries, he went on-record during a rally saying to an attendee, “Corporations are people my friend.” I don’t want a president who is so unintelligent that he does not know the difference between a corporation and a person.

Luckily, President Obama does see the difference between the two. In fact, during the State of the Union address that followed the Supreme Court’s affirmation of corporate personhood (via the Citizens United decision), President Obama rebuked those Supreme Court justices (the five that supported corporate personhood) to their faces, in front of Congress, and in front of a watching nation. Undoing corporate personhood is very important because of the consequences that can ensue. Some of those consequences have already shown themselves.

Sheldon Adelson

The problem with corporate personhood and the Citizens United decision is that they allow corporations to give excessive amounts of money towards political aims. In essence, it allows corporations to buy elections. We are already seeing the consequences of this today, a mere few years after Citizens United. We have seen billionaires, most notably the infamous Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, pledging hundreds of millions of dollars towards a single election cycle. Adelson recently pledged $500,000 to a single House candidate.

With that kind of money going into political campaigns from a select few donors, especially given that much of it will go towards negative ads and misinformation on either side, how can one call our system of government a democracy? The amount of money put forth by the few will drown out the voices of the many. The road to getting rid of this corrupt system of campaign finance will be a long and uncertain one. One thing is crystal clear, that road will not and can not begin with a Romney presidency.

My friends, corporations are NOT people. Romney does not understand that simple fact, but President Obama does.