OWS and Corporations

I’m guessing that the OWS crowd doesn’t like the fact that corporations are viewed as people.  With free speech rights and the ability to donate to campaigns or to purchase advertising.

I wonder if they think those same rules should apply to OWS or not?

I’m guessing they think that the rules they want applied to corporations are not the rules that want applied to themselves.

9 responses to “OWS and Corporations

  1. I’ve always thought that viewing corporations as people is wrong, and there are many on the right who agree. OWS is not a person either. People are people, people have rights. Corporations and movements do not have the same rights, though the people who make them up do. Alas, the supreme court disagrees.

  2. Here is something that I have always thought was strange. In Michigan, real estate salespeople are required to pass the Brokers test if they want to operate their own real estate office. An office can also be operated by a corporation. In that case, the corporation needs to pass the Brokers test. How does a corporation take a test? Here is the way it works. The owner of the corporation sends in the paperwork to register for the test. On the test day, the owner of the corporation selects someone, anyone, to go and take the test. Where else in this world can we legally hire someone else to take OUR test?

  3. What about OWS protesters that are there gain favorable publicity for their corporate ventures?

    Example:
    Many sites show a picture of protester Gan Golan dressed as the “Master of Degree”.

    Link to image: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/27/8507854-students-with-private-debt-left-out-by-obama-plan

    Based upon the photograph shown on an Amazon.com biography page, Gan Golan appears to be a writer. One of his books is titled “The Adventures of Unemployed Man”. The bio page also claims that Gan Golan earned a full scholarship to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So where did he accumulate all the tuition debt that the “Master of Degree” picture implies?

    Link to Biography page: http://www.amazon.com/Gan-Golan/e/B004JBBVL8/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_2

    Is “Master of Degree” just a publicity stunt to sell books?

  4. No need to guess re OWS and Citizen’s United pino. I’d say the entire left and a good deal of the right object to the mere idea of ‘corporate personhood’. For profit corps, non profit corps, unions, religions – all of them should have to operate by different rules than citizens. They have every right to have a voice, to use it and to support issues and maybe candidates. But they should be required to do so under their own names, publicly, visiblly.

  5. I’ve always thought that viewing corporations as people is wrong,

    I’ve always thought that was the point of a corporation. To allow a group of people to do business as a “corporate person”. Thus, when ships went to sea, the owners of the company would form a corporation that would allow them to do business as a person.

    If the 4 of us wanted to pool our money and make a movie supporting Moe for President, I think that we should be able to do that. It’s hard for me to see a corporation as different.

    On the test day, the owner of the corporation selects someone, anyone, to go and take the test. Where else in this world can we legally hire someone else to take OUR test?

    Good point.

    What about OWS protesters that are there gain favorable publicity for their corporate ventures?

    Start investigating the fact that the cities around the country are letting OWS occupy for free while charging the Tea Party upwards of $10,000 for a single event.

    Ridiculous.

    But they should be required to do so under their own names, publicly, visiblly.

    I’m not sure what’cha mean?

    • [If the 4 of us wanted to pool our money and make a movie supporting Moe for President]

      Oh dear, does that mean I have to stand up straighter and get my hair done? 🙂

      As for ‘required to do so under their own names’:
      I’m referring to how the rules on transpareny were almost erased by Citizens’ United. Corps, unions, special interests etc can finance issue campaigns under other names like “Americans for Prosperity” or whatever, which they could of course do before Citizens, but now they can do it annonymously and not say who their contributors are.

      BP, say, can run a blizzard of ads supporting oil drilling in the Gulf before the election under some kind of psuedonymous name but they don’t have to publish info that htey actually are BP till after the election. Or somehting like that.

      • I’m referring to how the rules on transpareny were almost erased by Citizens’ United. Corps, unions, special interests etc can finance issue campaigns under other names

        I am much more willing to listen to that line of thinking when ALL special interest groups are included. This means the unions and ACORN and other non-sense.

      • pino – I think it applies to all ‘corporations’, for profit or non profit.

  6. All of this has to do with restrictions on Corporate political spending. Anti Corporate organizations have had that personhood. Unions and all kinds of 501cs are peoples. Now corporations are people too. Like the Sierra Club is a people .Shoot, even OWS is a people. A people who need deodorant .

    Henry, can unions take brokers tests ?

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