Corporate Constitutional “Rights” Harm Small Business

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/09



***SNIP

It was once suggested to me that because it is relatively inexpensive and easy to incorporate, Americans should just incorporate themselves individually—then we would all have the same rights and privileges as corporations. Interesting thought, but the fact is that even though small, incorporated businesses can technically claim Constitutional rights, the reality is that these small businesses are trumped by the treasuries of large multi-national corporations, which currently share the same rights and can afford long litigation.

Time and again, large corporations have gone to court to assert their rights over the rights of small businesses. In nearly every case, the Court has sided with the large corporations, most recently in American Express v. Italian Colors Restaurant. From The New York Times:

On June 20, the court again restricted class actions, in American Express v. Italian Colors Restaurant. The restaurant and other small businesses had brought a class-action suit accusing American Express of violating antitrust law in imposing excessive fees on merchants. The individual plaintiffs could have each recovered just $38,000 under the antitrust statute, but proving an antitrust violation would have cost exponentially more. Therefore, denying a class action meant that the suit could not realistically go forward. The result: a company can violate antitrust law yet immunize itself from liability through an arbitration clause.

Small businesses find themselves in the same position when it comes to our First Amendment “right” to participate in the electoral process. We simply do not have the funds to compete against the big boys. A body that should be protecting the interests of small businesses, the US Chamber of Commerce is overrun with the very same corporations who are exercising their personhood “rights” to slap down any business which challenges their policies, and frequently lobbies for laws and supports candidates who will support their corporate agenda.

[midnight]

1. I posted this article a couple of days ago about the money in the chamber.

http://shutthechamber.org/news/bagful-cash-how-us-chamber-commerce-orchestrated-corporate-takeover-government

[alc]

2. current laws need work

But we'd probably be worse off setting up a separate set of laws and separate court system for businesses. Keeping the existing system with some exceptions is certainly a better option that scraping the current system for businesses. Some of the possibilities
in a separate legal system for businesses include

* "jury of peers" would be other CEOs. They may even manage to require that judges be MBAs and CPAs and appellate judges have CE* experience.

* when a business wins a court case related to their "freedom of speech" or "freedom from illegal search and siezure" that would not be a precedence for us.

* they would fight very hard for the right to influence campaigns ($ or other assistance) and would eventually pass us. They can chip away at and extend corporate contribution limits with laws that are entirely separate from individual contribution limits.

* Loser pays triple legal costs and all court costs - (really persuade individuals and small businesses from suing big corporations.)

[Dustlawyer]

3. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce owns fake newspapers that they put outside jury assembly

rooms. Check out the Southeasttexasrecord.com. It was the 2nd or 3rd one they started. The 1st was in West Virginia. They write corp hack stories designed to influence trials that are about to start. This is how over-run our country has become with corporate influence. It is tantamount to jury tampering. For the 1st year they did not even sell ads until they realized it was a dead give away.

[blackspade]

4. It's past time to get money out of politics.

[starroute]

5. The Chamber was only taken over by corporate interests in 1997

That was when Thomas Donohue became its president and CEO and began to seek out major corporate donors and promote an agenda of deregulation. This coincided with two other significant events. One was the tobacco lawsuits, which made major industries very nervous and is why the Chamber has been particularly involved in judicial elections and so-called "tort reform." The other was a combination of scandals and Supreme Court decisions that made the Republican Party less able to look to wealthy foreign donors for campaign funding and more willing to depend on US corporations.

The result has been a kind of perfect storm of corporate interests, partisan politics, and unaccountable campaign cash.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/business/how-tom-donohue-transformed-the-us-chamber-of-commerce.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

That the head of the chamber would openly relish needling the president of the United States speaks to the wholesale transformation that this 101-year-old trade association has undergone on Mr. Donohue’s very aggressive watch.

Over the last 16 years, Mr. Donohue has used his considerable talent for fund-raising to build the once-struggling chamber into a free-enterprise research outfit, Supreme Court advocacy group and lobbying powerhouse. The chamber’s lobbying operation alone spent $136 million last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics; the next-biggest spender, the National Association of Realtors, spent less than a third of that. . . .

Yet, while increasing the group’s influence, Mr. Donohue has also plunged the business lobby into partisan politics. That move has infuriated many Democrats, made some local chambers uneasy and produced an embarrassing flop in the last Congressional elections. The chamber spent millions in an unsuccessful bid to wrest the Senate from Democrats; of 12 chamber-backed Republicans, nine lost.