Thom starts with the East India Company of the 1500's and its "corporate" charter, and walks you through to today. Then he presents you with several sources and methods or starting a grass-roots movement to change the "Santa Clara" decision, which gave corporations personhood...excellent, excellent.

As is the case with all Thom Hartmann's books, a must read for all liberals.

Hartmann calls for a values based USA and less emphasis on big business in this book.He sets out to show how the way things are currently are inimical to economic growth of the ordinary folks of the USA. A must read.

Some other great books: "Fluctuating Life" by Jamaican-Canadian, author, teacher and poet, Joshua Spencer and "Quest for a Dream - A Life Committed to Progress" by Jamaican educator, author, social worker and entrepreneur, Joyce Buchanan.



Fluctuating Life

Quest for a Dream: A Life Committed to Progress

Let's Talk Africa and More

Hartmann calls for a values based USA and less emphasis on big business in this book.He sets out to show how the way things are currently are inimical to economic growth of the ordinary folks of the USA. A must read.

Some other great books:

Fluctuating Life

Quest for a Dream: A Life Committed to Progress

Let's Talk Africa and More

Interesting how some authors embrace undercutting corporate hegemony while drinking from the same polluted well. Hartmann has become a master of taking refuge under the banner of a populist message while at the same time enriching himself off of corporate cash via Air America, and other corporate endorsements. This guy is as dirty as George Bush, Dick Cheney, Harry Reed, and Hillary Clinton, to name a few. Hartmann and his Democratic friends use anger over the neo-conservative right to enrich themselves an advance a status quo agenda; they fear authentic change from outsiders like Nader and anyone like him. Why they find it necessary to mock authentic change agents says more about where their interest lies. It says more the power of money than it says about true transformational engagement.

Hartmann has consistently condemned independent candidates not sanctioned by him or his handlers in the Democratic Party. While he gives legitimacy to Bernie Sanders, he has the audacity to undercut other truly independent candidates like Nader. While Hartmann enriches himself along with his friends in the corrupt corporate duopoly, he nevertheless continues his advocacy of these entities. All of this comes at a steep price: the diminishment of the integrity of the earth, the poor, and disenfranchised poor who all takes egregious hits at the hands of this master of deception.

This book is an example of the power of hubris gone badly. People like Hartmann and the other power brokers running the global show hide behind populism while at the same time making back room deals in smoke filled rooms to insure their own power and status at the expense of the people they see as inferior. They sweep a few crumbs off the table then do every thing in their power to assure any truly marginal voice is forever silenced.

Thom Hartmann and his corporate friends are part of the problem. Follow his advice if you want more of the same.

I was actually in the process of writing a book about the same subject matter when I became aware of Mr. Hartmann's book. After reading this book I conclude that Mr. Hartmann beat me to it and has done a more thorough job than would have satisfied me. It is a very important matter and threatens to change our nation in fundamental ways. A shortcoming in Mr. Hartmann's book is the weakness of his proposed solutions. I have proposed to Mr. Hartmann actions which I think would be more effective in the long haul. I am searching for an existing organization having the sole goal of putting back in their place those corporations which are usurping the power given We the People by the Constitution. I'm too old to form a new orgnization and those I have learned of are not sufficiently focused.

I read this book and have been a Thom Hartman fan ever since.
He is brilliant and packed with knowledge.
Everyone needs to read this book!

Check out his radio show.

Going into the Freedom Portal (Free State) I had doubts about the morality, perhaps even the constitutionality, of corporations.

What, after all, is a corporation?

American Heritage says: "a) A body of persons granted a
charter legally recognizing them as a separate entity having
its own rights, privileges, and liabilities distinct from those
of its members. b) Such a body created for purposes of
government."

Now isn't the b) part of that definition interesting? At the very least we know corporations are creatures of the government and do not exist at common law.

Thomas Hartmann, a true modern lower-case democrat, writes that Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and several other Founders warned strenuously against monopoly corporations:

"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." --Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816

And from Andrew Jackson:

"Corporations have neither bodies to kick nor souls to damn."

These conscientious men were worried about abuse of power. Early chartering of corporations in America reflects this concern, often imposing severe limitations--such as prohibiting corporations from owning other corporations and requiring annual renewal of the charters.

Many people do not realize the Boston Tea Party was a revolt against corporate privilege. Queen Elizabeth charted the East India Company (EIC) in 1600; into the 1700s it dominated trade by Britain with America. Tea became a huge import to America by the mid-1700s and EIC wanted all the business.

Several acts prohibited Americans from acquiring tea from other sources. In 1773, the Tea Act exempted EIC (of which the king was a stockholder), but not colonial merchants, from taxes to the crown. The tea partiers were telling the Crown and the EIC stick their cheap tea where the sun don't shine.

...

For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie
reviews, please visit my site [...]

Brian Wright
Copyright 2007

A call to all fair minded Americans, as well as citizens around the globe.
One of Thom Hartmann's BEST. A history lesson and a call to reclaim our humanity.

A call to all fair minded Americans, as well as citizens around the globe.
One of Thom Hartmann's BEST. A history lesson and a call to reclaim our humanity.

Disclaimer: I'm a bit more than half through the book - and ready to comment on it.

I read quite a few books on liberal politics. This one is on a very short 'best' list of them.

It hits its mark right on - just the right amounts of history, the scope of its message, the gritty details when needed, the pacing.

I began to learn new details on well-trodden ground early in the book - for example, who knew that the pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower in 1620 were hardly England beginning its presence in North America - that it was the Mayflower's third or fourth trip carrying over staff of the East India company since 1601 - it was a company presence, the religious visitors were an afterthought.

He does an outstanding job of explaining the dominant role of colonists' opposition to the East India company in our own resolution. It's important to understand these things when we look at how to respond to powerful corporations today.

He does an excellent, balanced expose of the history of the legal doctrine that corporations are entitled to equality with humans.

The ramifications are huge, as today we face a political system in which the influence of our citizens is dwarfed by that of the inhuman organizations - where the citizens are turned into consumers to be sold to and manipulated with well-funded marketing, rather than acting as the sovereigns necessary for a democracy to work well.

If we don't begin to do something now, the chances may begin to disappear to be able to. Even now, we have democracy's power to represent its people castrated by clauses in the so-called 'free trade' agreements which allow the corporations to get all kinds of laws nullified.

I highly recommend the book.

Disclaimer: I'm a bit more than half through the book - and ready to comment on it.

I read quite a few books on liberal politics. This one is on a very short 'best' list of them.

It hits its mark right on - just the right amounts of history, the scope of its message, the gritty details when needed, the pacing.

I began to learn new details on well-trodden ground early in the book - for example, who knew that the pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower in 1620 were hardly England beginning its presence in North America - that it was the Mayflower's third or fourth trip carrying over staff of the East India company since 1601 - it was a company presence, the religious visitors were an afterthought.

He does an outstanding job of explaining the dominant role of colonists' opposition to the East India company in our own resolution. It's important to understand these things when we look at how to respond to powerful corporations today.

He does an excellent, balanced expose of the history of the legal doctrine that corporations are entitled to equality with humans.

The ramifications are huge, as today we face a political system in which the influence of our citizens is dwarfed by that of the inhuman organizations - where the citizens are turned into consumers to be sold to and manipulated with well-funded marketing, rather than acting as the sovereigns necessary for a democracy to work well.

If we don't begin to do something now, the chances may begin to disappear to be able to. Even now, we have democracy's power to represent its people castrated by clauses in the so-called 'free trade' agreements which allow the corporations to get all kinds of laws nullified.

I highly recommend the book.

A very good evaluation how business dominates govenments, now and in the past. It illustrates how everyone must be vigilent if an individual is to be of any importance in any society. The informed reader will find the book somewhat redundant, because the author tends repeat examples after he has clearly made his point.

While some of the material here is not unique to Hartmann, it's the sort of thing you don't read out in the open.

For one, the issue of corporate dominance is just accepted by many, and the agenda is pretty open in terms of power relations. However, years and years of narrow private interests have also shaped society and bred an incredible cynicism that allows so many to carry on with the institutional behavior that is ultimately shaping the world. So yes, it's pretty obvious--incredible corporate power is going to destroy a lot of people, while enriching others.

The background is explored, including of course, the 14th amendment, giving artificial, legal entities the power of people. The founding fathers make their appearance and their worst nightmares--basically the USA of today--are affirmed as their vision was sold out long ago.

As for human rights, one hopes the world allows for some lucky folks here and there to be paid attention to in between the important business of getting rich.

Certainly sobering, it's the kind of book that will bewilder some, or simply be dismissed as oversimplying the magic of corporate power, which couldn't possibly be doing irreparable harm to the planet and its pathetic, multiplying masses of useless human capital when it's making so much money.

Free market? Maybe one day.

Unequal Protection provides a thorough historical review of the effects of U.S. corporations being treated as persons since the late 1800s. Its proposal to end corporate personhood is well thought out, but the effects of such a reform are not likely to be as far reaching as envisioned and hoped for by the author.

By focusing on the "legal personhood" of corporations, Hartmann loads a Frankensteinian abhorrence into the term that distracts from more pressing concerns.

Following his advice and eliminating corporate personhood--Hartmann's theoretical silver bullet--might actually increase the protection for corporations by reducing the capacity to tax or sue them.

Hartmann attributes meanings to cases long since altered, abandoned, or circumscribed. Take "due process" - a key theme. In the 19th century, corps were indeed afforded "substantive due process." In the 1930s, one application of the notion was rejected (thus permitting the New Deal--after much of it had been tossed out by the Court). In the 1950s/60s, substantive due process became a doctrine for civil rights. Yet Hartmann's hostile treatment focuses on 19th century cases, challenges the civil rights amendments themselves as corporate ploys, and his suggestion that corporations "benefit" from anti-discrimination laws and due process could thus set back the cause of civil rights for minorities and women and advantage corporations in the process.

Corporations should be subjected to the same scrutiny as any other human creation, neither idolized nor demonized. Unfortunately, Hartmann's approach detracts from such an effort and is best avoided as a false guide.

Prior to the first century no court applied constitutional rights for corporations. In 1886, Santa Clara County verses Pacific Railroad, in a head note explain the case the author implied that "corporations were persons" as a reason for the court administering a 25 dollar fine to the corporation. The foundation for "personhood" gave rise too a constitutional claim of equal protection of the law for corporations. Using this precedence, Corporations were quick to fight for constitutional protections for 1. Free speech (1st amendment) 2. privacy protection (10th amendment) 3. Freedom from search and seizure (fourth amendment) 4. double jeopardy (5th amendment) 5. Self-incrimination (5th amendment) 6. and anti-discriminations (14th amendment). It seem corporations had done the impossible, they had received the same scrutiny or equal protection as race. Over the century, the vast number of 14th amendment cases has been equal protection claims against anti-discrimination policies for corporations. Corporations have established civil liberties and constitutional rights protected by law.

So why not let the corporation vote? One could argue, in a republican form of government a small governing body holds representation of power and decision-making; so, why not let corporations vote? Corporations represent the wealth, resources, and jobs of America. Further one may observe that the vested interests of the corporation could be represented, if they were given a vote. So why have corporation not been given the power to vote?

If corporations received the same protection as a person the democratic process would be destroyed. Apparently the founding fathers did not want to give corporations this level of power over the people, so no constitutional provision or implication was made to give corporations an elective vote for selection of a candidate or local law. Do corporation remain powerless or silent on this issue of voting constraint?

Corporations vote with money. In an election year politicians receive tens of millions of dollars to their party, which in my opinion is a loophole. Political campaigns were designed too be limited in the contribution amounts to safeguard against buying an election.

The magnitude of financial difference between corporate donations and people donations is staggering. Persons give hundreds or thousands of dollars too politicians, whereas, corporations give millions to politicians. This allows corporations too buy favorable legislation manipulation. However, the people still have the power too elect their government officials and this fundamental power gives the people the ability too prevent government representatives from being completely controlled by the corporations. If the elected official performs contrary to the people opinion they have the right the next election to select a different representative. The people have the power to select their representatives. The representatives have the obligation to listen to the interest for the people. The representatives are too account for good and moral decisions, while in office. It is the job of the people are too voice their concern, as poor legislation becomes law.
However, once in office, special interest lobbying applies pressure too government representatives for support to their viewpoints. These viewpoints may not be confined to America. Since, corporations are global entities and represent global interests, corporations can own more than one corporation; corporations often campaign for inter-continental interests in their campaign for rights, interests, and support with the government representatives. These corporations can span multiple countries, whereas, a citizen must reside in one country. The fact that corporations can represent viewpoints for various countries and receive legal and political recognition, as a person in this country seems grants foreigners a new level of leverage with the American political process.

If corporations have constitutional rights, do they have responsibilities to other citizens? Corporations have migrated from state privileges to constitutional rights. Corporations are expected to act like good citizens: pay taxes, obey the laws, keep the environment clean, and pay a living. Citizens are expected to operate under moral constraints, whereas, corporations are expected to make money. A corporation is not expected to operate on moral constraints. What that means is the corporation may apply force since no moral guardian stands in the way from them achieving their goal of profits. If no legal constraint exists, the corporation plows forward to make money without consideration of any moral constraint. For example, the liberal media corporations claim the right to freedom of expression. This means the corporation is free to sell media with high levels of sexual content, violence, and degrading morality. The impact can span generations. The selling of produce can span many decades because a corporation exists in perpetuity.

The produce is subject to taxation, protection under copyright law, and free commerce between states and other nations. Laws and regulations force the media companies too have movie content rated. Since companies have similar protections as persons, the first amendment rights extend too the corporation.
The first amendment includes prohibitions against the government from censoring speech and freedom of expression and this gives the corporation a tremendous liberty to sponsor lascivious and immoral content in movies.

How is it that corporations have come to exert so much power and influence over our everyday lives, to have rights and privileges unavailable to individuals, to take so much from, and return so little to, the general wealth both of this country and the rest of the world?
Thom Hartmann traces the history of corporations from their Elizabethian inception in the East India Company to the present; he describes in some detail the changes in the relationship among corporations, their governmental patrons and their societal prey. Historically corporations were granted charters by governments subject to their being monitored, controlled and mandated to provide for the general good in exchange for specific commissions and concessions. In America's early history, this principle was understood and effectively implemented to control the excesses of corporate behavior. Then in 1886, the US Supreme Court ruled on arguments in the case of Santa Clara County[CA] v Southern Pacific Railway. A clerical misstatement in the court reporter's notes, separate and distinct from the formal decision, led to the interpretation that the Bill of Rights was intended to apply to corporations, not just individual human beings. Although Jefferson had cautioned specifically against the power of corporations unrestrained, thenceforth their lawyers have succeeded in prizing successively greater concessions from and precedences over the rights of individuals.
Acceptance of corporations as 'persons', entitled to the same rights and restrictions as human beings, has come to be capriciously applied. Corporations buy, sell, trade, dismember, even kill other corporations - the corporate equivalent of slavery - without being held accountable as they would if corporations were human beings. There are other glaring inconsistencies in the logic of corporate 'personhood' but our law is governed more by precedent, than by logic, or common sense. Once entrenched and established, no matter how egregiously erroneous, the tradition of corporate personhood would take an act of Congress, or an amendment to the Constitution, to rectify the mistake.
There are a number of fallacies in the assignment of 'person' status to fictitious, fictional entities such as corporations. A principal function of good government is to level the playing field between the weak and powerful, to protect the weak from the predatory ravages of the strong. Although all 'men' are presumed equal, in rights if not in innate abilities, corporations are clearly, intrinsically, manifestly vastly more powerful than any one man or small group of men. As Hartmann shows, this difference in power is important yet our present governance fails utterly to protect the populace from the ravages of corporate rapacity and indifference to the plights of its victims.
Although the purpose of government is to provide for the general good, while minimizing harm to the weak and minority interests, the purpose of corporations is to accumulate wealth for its management and stockholders without regard to the source of that wealth. The wealth of a few individuals is not coincident with the general good. Nor are the managers and stockholders of a concern, a tiny subset of the general populace, coincident with the general population. Thus the purposes of good government in general do not coincide, indeed are often at odds, with the purposes of any given corporation.
Further, the activities of corporations in the aggregate - concentrating and focussing wealth for their individual stockholders by taking it from the general population - does not result in general good for the population. The myth that entities acting in unrestrained pursuit of their self-interests somehow produce the greater general good is amply disproven by the history of the American experiment. Rather the general wealth and good is redistributed, concentrated and focused to the benefit of the most powerful and the detriment of the least. Left to themselves, corporations parasitize the general population, suck the wealth out of it for corporate gain while often degrading the environment and denuding the resources employed to accumulate that gain. Corporatism results not in shared wellbeing for the general population but concentrated and focussed wellbeing for a few in a sea of general deprivation.
In other chapters, Hartmann describes the effect of Free Trade and the supranational World Trade Organization: to ravage national economies for the benefit of Corporations, to degrade the wellbeing of the middle class and workers in developed countries, only minimally to improve that of those in developing countries, while enriching the beneficiaries of corporations. Wealth and wellbeing are transferred from those who need it, to those who have it already.
Mussolini defined fascism as the merger of state and corporate power. It appears that America, indeed the entire planet, is well on its way to becoming a fascist state. Ruled by corporations, our 'elected' leaders and representatives are beholden and accountable principally to the interests of their various corporate contributors, only secondarily to the public. It is perhaps ironic that Hartmann, a self-confessed 'founder and former CEO of seven corporations that have generated over a quarter billion dollars in revenue', concludes this fascinating book with proposed grass-roots intiatives to unravel the tangled skein of corporate dominance. He offers no alternatives to the corporate model for the management of production and the distribution of wealth and wellbeing. Rather he advocates the return of effective control and regulation of corporations to the people, making them less the victims of corporations and more their overseers and regulators; and he and offers model actions to be pursued at the local level. But the present processes of government from legislatures to the courts are seemingly similarly enthralled to business interests intent on maximizing profit, not the general welfare. Whether or to what extent anything can be done to reverse this state of affairs is unclear. Readers will be provoked to wonder whether there are other means of advancing the general good and wellbeing than increasing the disparity in both for the general populations. Rather than a definitive solution to the problem of corporatism, this book provides a clear, readable and provocative depiction of the extent of that overwhelming problem.
...

The story that Hartmann tells is one that everyone should know, but nobody does: how the corporation came to have the power it now has as an institution in the United States. Normally, when activists or the general public confront the sheer, imposing bulk of the corporatocracy, we get diagnoses of greed and corruption, with antidotes of regulation or resignation. But what Hartmann uncovers is the very specific LEGAL history of how corporations came into being in their modern incarnation. There are a handful of pivotal Supreme Court decisions that laid the tracks for the freight trains of abuse and audacity that then rolled on through, and all over regular citizens.

This is a very important insight. Since the corporation's power is fairly narrowly and legally based, it can be undone as well. The notion that we can regulate big companies into being good "corporate citizens" is nonsense if we don't withdraw the legal basis of their recognized rights. Constitutional protections should be for natural citizens only, period. We should be able to hold corporations to whatever standards we want, since they are simply artificial profit-machines with no inherent legal standing vis-a-vis the rights of natural citizens.

As always, Hartmann's writing is engaging, precise, and exciting. Buy this book!!

I have some doubts that "danielclark" actually read the book before he summarily passed judgement on it. A careful reading of the actual book reveals a highly balanced perspective on business and the corporate world. The author is not antibusiness or marxist, but rather classically conservative in that he advocates for corporate power being subordinate to the needs and rights of the people. A reviwer should know what he's reviewing, or else his thoughts on a particular work are utterly worthless.

Response to that Moron "danieleclark"

Get an education!

Our political system isn't a true Capitalistic-Democracy. If we have a welfare sytem, social security, subsidies for people attending college and running farms, etc, it all points to a form of socialism. Let's face it, our society can't be built on one econimic model, hence we are a socio-democracy.

I consider Thom Hartmann to be a thoughtful, intelligent man. He continues to impress many (including me) with his broad knowledge of many issues. He has written books on a variety of subjects including spirituality, behavioral disorders (or lack thereof), environmental science, and now the corporate dominance of the faultless biosphere we all reside in.

I believe Thom is tackling the subject of globalization and corporate tyranny because he feels his heartstrings being pulled in that direction. I assume he believes corporate dominance and the direct connection it has to the destruction of our natural resource base is probably the most urgent and most serious problem the world faces. I commend him for trying his best to educate himself and inform the largely naive public about this veiled, yet very worrisome, threat.

The book is divided into 4 separate parts, yet there are only three major divisions one will notice in the book:

>A general outline of how corporations usurped power from the individual

>The problems a corporate-dominant world poses

>Alternatives visions and solutions

The historical overview, although very informative, can be a very laborious read at certain points. I think Thom took up far too much pagespace outlining the history of the corporate rise to dominance in America - about 160 pages are used to articulate it. Many will probably find parts of the overview to be quite boring and unnecessary. For instance:

"In 1788, Jefferson wrote aobut his concerns (regarding corporations) to several people. In a letter to Mr. A. Donald, on February 7, he defined the items that should be in a bill of right."

"ON February 12, 1788 Jefferson wrote to Mr. Dumas about his pleasure that the U.S. Constitution was about to be ratified, but also expressed concerns about what was missing from the Constitution"

"By midsummer of 1788, things were moving along and Jefferson was helping his close friend James Madison write the Bill of Rights."

"The following year, on March 13, he wrote to Francis Hopkinson about continuing objection to monopolies."

Does it surprise anybody or help illuminate the present-day debacle that is corporate domination by telling us over and over again that Thomas Jefferson wrote letters and had various conversations showing he was against corporate monopolies. I would hope most people would have a basic understanding of the Revolutionary mindset of the late 18th century in America if they are reading this book.

I found very little appealing about most of the historical overview. The nature of consolidated power versus individual rights has been a perpetual once since the dawn of civilization. Understanding a nearly transparent film of history doesn't allow the uninformed reader to have a true grasp on the nature of the problem or a sagacity of thought from a more timeless perspective. I wouldn't expect most people to agree that a 200 year historical outline is as short-sighted as I see it, so please, feel free to reject my criticism as it only reflects my personal tastes.

The book immediately begins to deliver where Thom mercifully lays to rest the bland, and mostly obvious, timeline of American corporate dominance. Where Thom begins to deconstruct the modern inequalities John Edwards would describe as "separate Americas", he begins to shine. He draws on his own common-sense with demonstrates sagacity, along with powerful thinkers and economists of our time including David Korten, Joseph Stiglitz, George Soros and even takes a line from the Iroquois Constitution to demonstrate how the actions of today can be of ill-effect to generations down the road.

Yes, there is plenty of recycled, fairly obvious rehashings in this 360 page book, so I won't recommend it to all of you (as I did in a previous review of this same book).

If you are salivating for a revolutionary book which will put a spark under your activist heinie, this book is certainly not for you. If you are looking for a broad, well-researched yet independent-minded tome on globalization and corporate-dominance supported by facts and not necessarily by flair, this book will probably be of interest to you. It reads much like a textbook throughout and is brought forth in a very controlled manner. Other books on this subject sometimes let the reader feel the passionate indignation and frustration of the author - which I enjoy. This book most certainly does not.