January 6, 2024 • 54 mins
It looks like The Trump Organization could be facing the corporate death penalty. Beowulf discusses Amazon, the FTC, and the history of the corporate death penalty. Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/01/08/its-time-bring-back-corporate-death-penalty
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(00:12):
Facebaum America. I'm bowl Franklin.Facebamamerica. Dot com is where you can
go to find out more information aboutthe show, to listen to past episodes,
to connect with us on social media, and ladies and gentlemen. I
have been remiss. It has beenfar too long since I have been here
(00:38):
to talk about actual current news.We've done interviews, and bits and pieces
have come in around the edges,and I've kept things going a couple of
times a week, but I havenot been here to talk to you directly,
(01:03):
and for that I apologize. Thereare times when I just have nothing
to say. You hear people,or see people in real life or on
social media talk about having no words. Sometimes that's literal. Maybe we've gotten
(01:29):
ourselves into the habit of having toreact to every little thing, or react
to the things that people online arereacting to, and at a certain point,
I'm just dulled by it. Idon't know what there is to say
(01:51):
about so many of the things thatare going on. I don't think that
anyone person can process at all.I don't think anyone person should try to
process at all. I don't thinkit's healthier good. You see things in
the news and you throw up yourhands and you say, what am I
(02:15):
gonna do about that? What thehell am I gonna do about all this
shit? And yes, there havebeen more judgments against Trump. And just
today we see Diane Feinstein, senatorfrom California, has passed away, and
(02:43):
we must acknowledge and mourn the passingof each one of us. John Dunne
was correct send not to ask forwhom the bell holds it tolls for thee
(03:04):
I wasn't a big fan of DianeFeinstein, but she was an important person,
and she was a trail breaking person, and that has to be acknowledged.
She shouldn't have been there the lastcouple of years in the Senate,
really, and we ought to figureout some way of making sure that those
(03:31):
of us, when we reach acertain age where we're not quite there,
aren't in positions of that kind ofresponsibility. It's not fair to the person,
it's not fair to the rest ofus. And so now Gavin Newsom
(03:54):
will appoint someone for the interim untilthe twenty twenty four election takes place.
It's a safe Democratic seat, wellsafe in the sense that Cavin Newfam will
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appoints very very moderate very very corporate, very very middle of the road person.
They're a place to die in Feinstein, and I suppose that's in keeping
with who she was. We don'thave to worry about a big revolutionary change
(04:36):
here, unfortunately. So that's what'sgoing on in the world. What did
fascinate me a little bit in termsof major news stories over the past few
weeks is the ruling against Donald Trumpin the state of New York, or
(04:56):
more specifically, the Trump Orization.It seems like the Trump Organization is going
to be likely to be dissolved inthe state of New York, where it's
based. It's one of the manyrulings against Trump. I'm not going to
go through all of them. I'mnot going to read the thirty five page
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ruling in this case, but I'llgo over the basics here because I want
to get into talking about what's referredto by this one story as the corporate
death penalty. I'm against the deathpenalty for people, but I am for
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the death penalty for corporations. Man, I don't know if you remember.
It's eleven years ago now, whenMitt Romney was running for president, he
said, corporation, there are peoplemy friend they're not. That's just a
(06:05):
way for rich people to make moremoney by creating legal phantoms to do their
bidding. But let's talk about TrumpTrump in New York. Experts are calling
it the corporate death penalty, andwhat happens next is uncharted territory. In
(06:34):
a stunning decision Tuesday, a Manhattanjudge found that Donald Trump committed widespread,
long standing, and ongoing fraud atthe Trump Organization and ordered what experts in
New York financial crimes say amounts tothe dissolution of this company. Now,
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we've known from reports from excellent journalistssuch as David K. Johnston and many
others that all sorts of illegal andunethical shenanigans were going on with the Trump
Organization. I mean, there wasan awful lot of smoke, and it
(07:24):
turns out there was fire legally onceit was processed, once all the delays
were pushed back, and there's stillgoing to be more delays, because if
you have enough money in this country, you can delay stuff almost indefinitely.
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But it's amazing, and it shouldn'tbe amazing that they're actually considering dissolving Trump's
company, the Trump Organization. Thepenalty awarded on behalf of New York's Attorney
General Leatitia James is so extreme.It's not extreme. It's not extreme to
(08:11):
dissolve the company, and it needsto be done more often, and it
used to be done more often.We'll get into this, but I love
the way that this article phrases it. It's through Yahoo News, but I
think it's originally from Insider or BusinessInsider or whatever affiliate organization happens to derive
(08:37):
from that set of companies. Butthe penalty is so extreme, it says
Trump may fight James and the judgefor years before anything actually happens. So
there's been a ruling here and itprobably won't happen because our legal system is
(08:58):
says grewed up. That again,this can be delayed for years in some
cases, in other cases decades,decades. You can delay justice. You
can do that in the United Statesof America, but not because it's so
extreme, because our justice system isfucked up. That's why the penalty is
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so rare. That the only previoustime it's been attempted on such a grand
scale, when James sought the corporatedeath penalty in her three year old ongoing
lawsuit against the NRA has failed.That's another incredibly corrupt organization in the National
(09:50):
Rifle Association. And we've seen thatthrough news reports, and we've seen that
through what has come through the legalproceedings that Letitia James initiated against it.
It's an extremely corrupt organization, onethat stands in opposition to the things which
(10:20):
the majority of the people in thestate of New York stand for, and
so they have every right to dissolveit, and they should dissolve it.
And the same as true of theTrump organization. The ruling by New York
Supreme Court Justice Arthur and Giron spendssome thirty five pages, again which I
(10:43):
will not read, describing Trump's fraudsand disassembling his lawyer's arguments. It yanks
the corporate charter in two short paragraphs. Yanks the corporate charter. You can
do that. You see, inorder to become a corporation, you have
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to get the permission of the peoplethrough the government, because they represent us.
And if you are engaging in activitieswhich we disapprove of as a people,
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if you're running contrary to things whichwe as a society have said are
okay, then you can't do businessanymore, and we'll yank that charter that
approval to do business. Business isnot the be all, in the end
all. It's amazing how we've gottenthis idea stuck in our heads that business
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is immovable and inevitable and invincible.It's not a big part of its power
is that it's worked very hard toproject a myth of invincibility, and yet
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somehow it keeps coming back to wethe people for money when it fucks up.
It's not invincible, and anytime wechoose to, we have a mind
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to that we focus on doing it, we can pull up the rug out
from under them. We've done itbefore, we can do it again,
and we should. The first paragraphorders the immediate cancelation of any certificates meaning
licenses that are held by Trump andhis two adult sons, the Trump Organization,
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and it's underlying LLCs. The secondparagraph orders that within ten days of
the data disorder, the parties aredirected to recommend the names of no more
than three potential independent receivers to managethe dissolution of the canceled LLCs. So
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the court is saying, we're goingto take this company apart because it's fraudulent.
Yeah, it's aren't you just tiredof saying it? Yeah? This
is wrong, this is correct,this is illegal, this is fraudulent.
But there's nothing we could do aboutit. Aren't you sick of that?
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Aren't you sick of that? Andthe actual execution of this again, as
the story indicates, maybe years awaybecause our system is that fucked up.
But isn't it good to hear judgesay, yeah, this fucked up,
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and uh, we're gonna destroy thisthing. It's not invincible, it's not
We can take it apart. Wecan enact the corporate death penalty. The
people, through its representatives and governmentcan do that. Attorney General Letitia James
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has alleged that Trump exaggerated the worthof his assets, which we've known for
decades, to banks and ensures byas much as three point six billion dollars
in a single year. We knowTrump is a liar. We know Trump
and has come copanies are liars.We've known this and now it's just being
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asserted legally. In theory, thereceiver would continue to collect rents, pay
taxes, pay the bills, andthe company salaries until the assets are sold
off with Trump with the Trump organizationssold, beneficiary receiving what's left over after
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any debts and liabilities are met.Those debts may include a two hundred and
fifty million dollar judgment the Attorney Generalis seeking when the case goes to trial
next month. We'll see, we'llsee. It shouldn't take like the worst
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possible person, and there are toomany worse people than Trump. It shouldn't
take him to say, Okay,well, we got to do this.
There are a lot of companies thatshould be dissolved. There are a lot
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of companies that should be reorganized.It should be broken apart. I don't
know if you remember that far back. I'm not going to go into the
details, but once in the UnitedStates of America, all the telephone.
I know, young people hardly usetelephones anymore, but once we had telephones
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to communicate. I know, wecarry them around our pockets. But you
see, when I was a kid, and this is weird, and there's
a reason that it was weird.I had a massive we in our home
when I was growing up, Meand my mom and my dad, my
brother had this massive, clunky thingthat was our telephone. Must have weighed
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like what ten pounds or something likethat big clunky thing with push buttons on
it and a big massive thing thatyou put up through your head. Dis
comforting in a way, but itwas a big blunt object that could inflict
I'm sure all sorts of horrific trauma. I'm sure in many instances did.
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But anyway, you didn't own that. Back in the day, you did
not own your phone. That wasa possession of the phone company. That
the phone company owned, and ifthey cut off your phone service, or
you canceled your phone service for somereason, they took the phone back.
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They sobk somebody by and took thephone back. And if your phone stopped
working you needed a new phone,you would come buy your house and they
would take your old phone and theybring you a new one. That's how
it worked back then. This isnothing new or special to the people my
(18:12):
age and older in our audience,but for younger folks it might come as
something of a surprise. Anyway.The reason for that was because at and
T what Atlantic Telegraph and Telephone,I think one company owned almost all the
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phone service phone lines in the country, and it was a monopoly. And
eventually the government said, well,that's not right. This is a monopoly.
We got to break this up,and they did. They broke it
into regional Phone company in the earlynineteen eighties, and so there wasn't one
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phone company that owned everything anymore,open up, kind of a free for
all. The government can do that. It can destroy companies. It can
break up companies when it's not inthe public interest, if you can't own
your own phone, if they're chargingridiculous rates for long distance calls, which
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they used to. I mean,it's hard to remember now the technology has
advanced, But back in the day, it costs a lot of money to
call across the country around the world. Now it doesn't hardly cost anything,
at least anywhere in the country.Costs a lot less to call somewhere internationally
than it used to. It usedto cost a lot of money. You
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get big phone bills. Boy.Well, the government is looking into doing
something about another monopoly, one whichin this day and age we're more familiar
with, and that's Amazon dot Com. And when we come back in a
moment, we're going to talk aboutwhat's happening with that. I'm Babelfrocklin.
(20:22):
This is Facebam America. We shallreturn face Palm America. I'm Baywelfrocklin Facepalmamerica
dot com. So with the Trumporganization facing the corporate death penalty, the
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government is also looking askance at anothercompany that we know uses its power in
an unfair way. The government isaccusing Amazon of using its power to inflate
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prices, and we know that itdoes this. We know that it does
this. If you've been on Amazon, we know that it does this.
The Federal Trade Commission. In seventeenstate attorneys general have sued Amazon, alleging
the e commerce BMTH. The ecommerce BMF uses its position in the marketplace
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to inflate prices on other platforms,overcharged sellers in stifle competition, and it
does that and that is at leasttechnically against the law in the United States.
I understand that under the past,over the past generation or two,
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we've kind of made a elective decisionjust to ignore that and not enforce it
because we think monopolies are pretty good, and we've been we've gotten the message
so much from monopolies that monopolies aregood that we've just kind of nod our
heads and say, oh, you'resoa yeah, it's a good thing.
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Competition is good, but uh,not with Amazon, and not with Google,
not with a bunch of other stuff. I guess it's fine whatever,
charge me whatever you want to.It's I mean, we just kind of
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nod our heads and say that becausewe're blasted from all sides by messages that
say monopoly is good, corporate poweris supreme. Well, it's not true.
And slowly, slowly, the governmentis beginning on our behalf to respond
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to this. The lawsuit filed inUS District Court for the Western District of
Washington on Tuesday is Everything happened onTuesday is the result of a years long
investigation into Amazon's businesses and one ofthe most significant legal challenges brought against the
company in its nearly thirty year history. The FTC, again, the Federal
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Trade Commission, and States are askingthe court to issue a permanent injunction they
say would prohibit Amazon from engaging inits unlawful conduct and loosen its monopolistic control
to restore competition. We don't wantto, you see, they're even like
they're being very tepid here. Wejust want to loosen the monopolistic control.
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I know. These are the wordsof the Guardian, and this comes from
the Guardian dot com, the story, we just want to loosen your monopolis
to control a little bit. Easeback, ease back on the evil,
you know, bring the evil backto you know, eighty ninety percent that
much evil is okay, right,okay. The complaint sets forth detailed allegations,
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noting how Amazon is now exploiting itsmonopoly power to enrich itself while raising
prices and degrading service for the tensof millions of American families who shop on
its platform and the hundreds of thousandsof businesses that rely on Amazon to reach
them. The FTC chairperson Lena Kahansaid in a statement, the lawsuit is
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one of the biggest legal challenges thecompany has faced since its inception in nineteen
ninety four, but it did notcome as this the prize. The suit
comes after years of complaints that Amazonand other tech giants abused their dominance of
search, social media, and onlineretailing to become gate keepers of one of
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the most profitable aspects of the Internet, and the US government in recent years
has signaled an increasing willingness to challengethe company's hegemony. A little bit of
an increased willingness. They need toget going, though, they need to
drink some more cough. You know, I'm going to do the same things
stand by. Oh yes, I'mready to take on hegemony. Observers had
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wondered whether the FTC would seek aforced breakup of the retail giant like they
did with AT and T. TheBell Company, which is also dominant in
cloud computing and in the cloud man, has a growing presence in other sectors
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like groceries and healthcare. Well,we'll sell you anything, doesn't matter.
We're just here to make money.We're here to extract wealth. Give us
here wealth. In a briefing withreporters, con dodged questions of whether that
will happen because even though this isa shift, it's not that much of
(26:30):
a shift. The Biden administration mightbe taking a little bit different course here,
but as we've discussed before, wecould only expect so much of the
Biden administration. We know this.At this stage. The focus is more
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on liability, she said, saidLisa Khan, head of the FDC.
So they're not gonna go too far. They're probably not gonnassolve the company.
They're not gonna break up the company. Even though that might be deserved.
And let me be clear too,Amazon has made some important innovations. I
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mean, look, I subscribe toAmazon. I do. I'm not proud
of it, but I do.But look, they've created a situation in
which you can order something online.You can put something into a computer or
a phone and it gets there,gosh, two days, sometimes the next
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day, sometimes if you live ina big city, a few hours.
I mean, that's that's an amazingsystem that has not existed in the same
way before. But as a partof doing that that they've done it,
they screw over the people who sellyou the stuff, and primarily it's other
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people on their platform that are sellingyou the stuff. They screw the sellers
over, and they raise the priceson you anytime they want. And it's
far from true that Amazon is thebest price on something. You check something.
You know, most of the timewhen I check on Amazon, my
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local store if it's something that's available, and it isn't always will sell a
product at a lower price than Amazon. Amazon can up the prices anytime they
want, and they do it alot more often than they used to.
Because they're monopoly. Then they canafford to do it now because more people
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will just plug into that and it'seasier. And this doesn't even mention the
fact that they just completely exploit theirworkers. They grind them into the dirt,
they make them work so hard,and they try to stop unions,
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and that's wrong. That's not evenaddressed here. That's not even part of
this. But it's another reason whyAmazon should be reconfigured. At the very
least. It's not to say thatthey haven't come up with some important things
and some important innovations, and haven'tin some limited ways, changed our lives
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for the better. But is thatworth having legions of people in warehouses like
working themselves to death, having deliverydrivers working themselves to death. Is it
worth screwing over the people who actuallysell the products? Is it working worth
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screwing over you, the consumer?I don't think so. I don't think
it's worth all that. In thelawsuit, the FTC does not argue Amazon
is a monopoly because of its size, but because it uses its position both
as an online seller and online marketplaceto deny meaningful competition. Is it not
what the free market is about?Competition? You got to compete, compete
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as far as Amazon is concerned.Amazon, the one hundred and twenty four
page complaint argues, is stifling competitionby imposing anti discounting measures that prohibit merchants
who sell products on Amazon from offeringlower prices elsewhere. They are not they
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are not the low price leader.In the complaint, the FTC accuses Amazon
of tactics such as anti discounting measuresthat penalize sellers offering their products for cheaper
and other online in marketplaces. Thefiling also notes that Amazon controls a vast
distribution network and alleges the company forcesthird party sellers to pay high fees for
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its fulfillment services with a little otheroption to comply. You will comply.
Now, there's most of the people. Most of the products that you see
on Amazon are not sold by Amazon. They're sold by people who work through
Amazon and use them as a mechanismto sell the product to you and deliver
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the product to you. And whatthey have to see is saying is that
because Amazon is almost the only gamein town, that it constitutes a monopoly,
that it uses that position to extractan unfare fairly high amount of money
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from the people who are selling andalso an unfair amount of money from the
people who are buying those products youand me. Amazon has hiked so steeply
the fees it charges sellers that itnow reportedly takes close to half of every
dollar from the typical seller that usesAmazon's fulfillment service. The complaine states that
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sounds like gangsterism. It sounds likegangsterism. The complaint also accuses Amazon of
requiring merchants to use the company's deliveryand fulfillment system in order to qualify for
Prime. It also charges that Amazonprioritizes the company's in house line of products
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over others, even if those productsare of better quality, even if those
other products are of better quality andservice. An increasing number of paid and
junk ads that you know, it'sthat when you go on Amazon, get
more ads, more junk, andit's pushing its own products to the front,
regardless of like how they're rated.Funny that not a free market worth
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more than one trillion, It's wortha trilli It's a trillion dollar company.
Ladies and died, worth more thana trillion dollars. Today Amazon controls eighty
two percent of the online retail market. That's a monopoly. That's a monopoly.
We're not supposed to have monopolies inthe United States of America. We're
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not supposed to We're supposed to havea free market. Right somebody controlling eighty
two percent of the market, that'snot free. That's a monopoly. According
to the complaint, that makes ita virtual necessity for merchants to sell their
products on the platform in order toreach most online customers. Break up Amazon,
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break it up, break it intolittle pieces. Don't allow them to
acquire every sector. Don't allow themto get into healthcare, don't allow them
to go to groceries. You know, it would be one thing if they
were like what they originally started as, which was selling books. But now
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they're gribbling up like every sector.Should they be allowed to do that?
No, they shouldn't. They shouldbe broken up. Or is it time
to bring back the corporate death penalty? Because again, this is something that
(34:44):
we used to do a lot inthe United States, And I am going
to bring you some of the historyof that by way of our friend Tom
Hartman, who has been on thisprogram before, and an article he wrote
a few years back. So standby. This is be Wolf Rockland.
I am here on face palm Americaand so are you back at a moment
(35:20):
Face Paul America. I'm bewolf Rockland. Facepaulmamerica dot com is where you can
find out more, listen to pastepisodes, connect with us on social media,
all that sort of good thing.So the Trump organization New York State,
they are trying to dissolve it thefts. He is at least filing
(35:45):
suit against Amazon. I don't thinkthey have the same goal in mind there,
but they're saying that Amazon's a monopolyand it's overcharging people, sellers and
buyers both. We weren't always ina situation where a company would dare to
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do that sort of thing, becausewe passed laws anti trust acts. I
think it was the Sherman Anti TrustAct back in the eighteen nineties, originally
designed to ac curb the power ofmonopolies such as railroads and states, and
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the federal government would pull charters forcompanies dissolve them all the time. It
was a regular thing, and Iwant to go into a little bit of
the history of that because we've forgottenit. We think that, you know,
once the company has made it big, once they've got the money to
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advertise, once they got their nameon the side of the building. Once,
once the CEO sends people into spaceor really high in the atmosphere,
that they're there for all time,and it's not true. And I harken
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back to some bits of an articlethat I'm going to read here by our
friend Tom Hartman. I grabbed itfrom a common Dreams dot org and the
title of it is It's time tobring back the corporate death penalty. And
it starts with a quote from USSupreme Court Justice Lewis Brandeis from nineteen thirty
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three and a descent he made ina case called Legott versus Lee. Here's
the quote. The prevalence of thecorporation in America has led men of this
generation to act at times as ifthe privilege of doing business in corporate form
were inherent in the citizen, andhas led them to accept the evils attendant
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upon the free and unrestricted use ofthe corporate mechanism, as if these evils
were the inescapable price of civilized life, and hence to be borne with resignation.
Throughout the greater part of our history, a different view prevailed, although
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the value of this instrumentality in commerceand industry was fully recognized in corporation,
for business was commonly denied, longafter it had been freely granted for religious,
educational, and charitable purposes. Itwas denied because of fear. Fear
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of encroachment upon the liberties and opportunitiesof the individual, Fear the subjection of
labor to capital, fear of monopoly, Fear that the absorption of capital by
corporations and their perpetual life might bringevils similar to those which attended Mortmaine immortality.
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There was a sense of some insidiousmenace inherent in large aggregations of capital,
particularly when held by corporations. Again, that's US Supreme Court Justice Lewis
Brandeis in his nineteen thirty three descentin Ligott versus Ly that applies supremely well
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to our current day fear of encroachmentupon the liberties and opportunities of the individual.
I certainly feel that. I mean, I grew up in a conservative
family, and I was worried aboutthe encroachment of government. And that doesn't
(39:58):
worry me anymore, except to theextent that government encroachment is an extension of
the encroachment of capital. The peoplewho serve massive corporations obsequiously are the ones
who really worry me, really worryme. Which is not to say that
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government in certain places, especially whereit involves the book bands or abortion bands,
isn't fearsome as well. But ultimatelyI feel that that's an extension of
the massive power of capital, alsobecause it functions to divide us and distract
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us, because in the end,it's all about the money. So to
Tom Hartman's article, it's time tobring back the corporate death penalty. While
the human death penalty has largely disappearedin the world and is fading in the
(41:17):
US a good thing, the corporatedeath penalty needs a revival. The corporate
death penalty, widespread in the nineteenthcentury, is a political and economic Darwinian
process that weeds bad actors out ofthe business ecosystem to make room for good
players. The process of revoking corporatecharters goes back to the very first years
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of the United States. After all, the only reasons states allow charter corporations
normal business corporations that can only becharted by a state, not the federal
government, is to serve the publicinterest. As the Wyoming Constitution of eighteen
eighty nine laid out quote, Allpowers and franchises of corporations are derived from
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the people and are granted by theiragent, the government for the public good
and general welfare, and the rightand duty of the state to control and
regulate them for these purposes is herebydeclared. The power, rights and privileges
of any and all corporations may beforfeited by wilful neglect or abuse thereof.
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The police power of the state issupreme over all corporations as well as individuals.
Unquote. Hear that the power,rights and privileges of any and all
corporations may be forfeited by wilful neglector abuse thereof. If you're a company
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and you abuse the power, rightsand privileges then that you have, then
the government can take those privileges andpowers away. The government has the power
to do that. It's Wyoming ineighteen eighty nine, asserting that Tom Hartman
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continues, when a corporation does businessethically and legally, it serves its local
community, its employees, its customers, and its shareholders. For over a
century, American corporations were held tothis very reasonable standard. Beginning in seventeen
eighty four, Pennsylvania demanded the corporationsinclude a revocation clause in corporate charters that
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automatically dissolved them after a few decades, so they wouldn't grow so large or
so rich as to become a publicmenace. So many corporations have become a
public menace. They really really have. Amazon, I'm looking at you.
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It also authorized the state to dissolveany corporation that harmed the state or its
citizens, including customers and employees.It was pretty explicit quote, nor shall
any charter for the purposes aforesaid begranted for a longer time than twenty years.
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And every such charter shall contain aclause reserving to the Legislature the power
to alter, revoke, or inmullthe same whenever, in their opinion,
it may be injurious to the citizensof the Commonwealth. Article one, Section
twenty five. Any time, anytimeit's injurious to the citizens, we can
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take your certification as a corporation away, and you can't do business here.
As the United States grew, thefederal government passed laws requiring corporate death penalty
revocation clauses in the state corporate chartersof the insurance companies in eighteen oh nine
and banks in eighteen fourteen, andby the late eighteen eighties, every state
(45:08):
required them for all business corporations.From the founding of America to today,
governments routinely revoked corporate charters, forcingliquidation and sale of assets, although it's
been over a century since such effortshave focused on corporations large enough to have
(45:30):
amassed financial and thus political power,and maybe, in the case of the
Trump organization and in the case ofAmazon, were starting just barely, just
maybe to see that turnaround a littlebit. This article was written in twenty
nineteen. By the way, inthe nineteenth century, banks were shut down
(45:52):
for behaving in a financially unsound wayin Ohio, Mississippi, and in Pennsylvania,
and when corporations that ran turnpikes inNew York and Massachusetts didn't keep their
roads in repair, those states gavethe corporation the death sentence. In eighteen
(46:14):
twenty five, Pennsylvania passed laws makingit even easier for that state to revoke
alter or in all corporate charters whenever, in their opinion, the operation of
the corporation may be injurious to citizensof the community, and by the eighteen
seventies, nineteen states had gone throughthe long and tedious process of amending their
(46:37):
state constitutions expressly to give legislators thepower to terminate the existence of corporations that
originated in those states. In otherwords, corporations, you are unnoticed,
you fuck up, you fuck up, You're not going to do business in
(47:00):
our state. You screw people over, you commit fraud, You're gone,
You're done. What if that appliedto Twitter, slash x. What if
that applied to Amazon? What ifthat applied to Google and Facebook and Walmart.
(47:30):
What if we took what we knewto be the injurious behavior of those
companies and said, you've been doingthis for too long. Your right to
do business in this state, inthis country is removed. What if we
(47:52):
just seriously threatened to do that.Do you think things would change? I
think things might change. Presidents haveeven run for public office and won on
platforms including the revocation of corporate charters. One of the largest issues of the
(48:13):
election of eighteen thirty two was AndrewJackson's demand that the corporate power, or
rather the corporate charter, of theSecond Bank of the United States not be
renewed. Now obviously there there werea few problems with entry checks and for
a lot of different reasons. Buthe was an anti corporatist. Doesn't really
(48:40):
make up for you know what hedidn't name Americans and people of color.
However, this sort of thing wasonce done in the United States. Following
that lead states all over the nationbegan examining their banks and other corporations,
and in just the year eighteen thirtytwo, the state of Pennsylvania pulled the
(49:02):
corporate charters of ten corporations, sentencingthem to corporate death for operating contrary to
the public interest. President Grover Clevelandinvoked the mood of the times in his
eighteen eighty eight State of the Unionadrest when he said, as we view
(49:22):
the achievements of aggregated capital, wediscover the existence of trusts, combinations,
and monopolies while the citizen is strugglingfar in the rear, or is trampled
to death beneath an iron heel.God, he sounds like a socialist.
Corporations, which should be the carefullyrestrained creatures of the law, and the
(49:45):
servants of the people are fast becomingthe people's masters. Wow, what a
lefty eighteen eighty eight Grover Cleveland.Between the nineteen twenties and the nineteen eighty
all US states amended their constitutions orchanged their laws, unfortunately, to make
(50:06):
it easier for large corporations to dobusiness without having the answer to the citizens
of the state, without size limits, and with infinite lifespans. Today,
every state still has laws that allowit to impose the corporate death penalty.
It's just been decades since they've beenused against a large corporation. That soon
(50:30):
may change. Small companies are routinelyshut down by Secretaries of States, sometimes
for malfeasans, but mostly because theybecome inactive or fail to pay taxes.
So that sort of thing is doneall the time. Just not too big
companies. Is that because of somethinginnate about them that makes them better.
(50:55):
Now, it's just because they havemore power and more influence, and they've
taken over the governments. In manycases, corporations have successfully argued before the
Supreme Court that they should have FirstAmendment rights of free speech, Fourth Amendment
rights of privacy, Fifth Amendment protectionsagainst takings, and Fourteenth Amendment rights as
(51:22):
persons to equal protection with you andme under the law, among other rights
of personhood. It's long past timethat these persons, when they become egregious
and recidive as criminals, particularly whenthey repeatedly kill people, be treated the
same as human criminals. Remove themfrom society permanently. Now I differ a
(51:47):
little bit on that last point.I think he's kind of making a rhetorical
point Tom Hartman, and I understandwhat he's going for. But again,
I don't believe in the human deathpenalty, although it is imposed, and
it is hypocritical when we're imposing thedeath penalty on people but not big corporations
(52:12):
who do horrible things and are responsiblefor killing people. But corporations aren't people,
regardless of what the corporations and theSupreme Court say, and they shouldn't
be treated like people, and weshould be able to pull them out of
existence at any time if we thepeople say so. And that time has
(52:39):
come. It's definitely come with Trump, with Amazon and Walmart and so many
other big companies, I think theyreally need to be broken up. I
think that's the best solution. Butif it takes dissolution in order to make
(53:01):
sure that people don't get screwed over, that's fine with me. I'll put
a link to this article, inparticular in the show It's time to bring
back the Corporate death Penalty. Thelink will be in the show notes.
But for right now, that's aboutit. I'm gonna sit, I'm gonna
(53:22):
drink some more coffee, and ifyou would like to call us or message
us anytime, you can do thatat two zero two six five six six
two seven to one. That's Tuesavertwo six five six six two seven to
one. Thank you so much forlistening, thank you for being patient with
(53:45):
my absence, and until next time, enjoy the day. Facepalmamerica dot com
Facebaum America. I'm bowl Franklin.Facebamamerica. Dot com is where you can
go to find out more information aboutthe show, to listen to past episodes,
to connect with us on social media, and ladies and gentlemen. I
have been remiss. It has beenfar too long since I have been here
(00:38):
to talk about actual current news.We've done interviews, and bits and pieces
have come in around the edges,and I've kept things going a couple of
times a week, but I havenot been here to talk to you directly,
(01:03):
and for that I apologize. Thereare times when I just have nothing
to say. You hear people,or see people in real life or on
social media talk about having no words. Sometimes that's literal. Maybe we've gotten
(01:29):
ourselves into the habit of having toreact to every little thing, or react
to the things that people online arereacting to, and at a certain point,
I'm just dulled by it. Idon't know what there is to say
(01:51):
about so many of the things thatare going on. I don't think that
anyone person can process at all.I don't think anyone person should try to
process at all. I don't thinkit's healthier good. You see things in
the news and you throw up yourhands and you say, what am I
(02:15):
gonna do about that? What thehell am I gonna do about all this
shit? And yes, there havebeen more judgments against Trump. And just
today we see Diane Feinstein, senatorfrom California, has passed away, and
(02:43):
we must acknowledge and mourn the passingof each one of us. John Dunne
was correct send not to ask forwhom the bell holds it tolls for thee
(03:04):
I wasn't a big fan of DianeFeinstein, but she was an important person,
and she was a trail breaking person, and that has to be acknowledged.
She shouldn't have been there the lastcouple of years in the Senate,
really, and we ought to figureout some way of making sure that those
(03:31):
of us, when we reach acertain age where we're not quite there,
aren't in positions of that kind ofresponsibility. It's not fair to the person,
it's not fair to the rest ofus. And so now Gavin Newsom
(03:54):
will appoint someone for the interim untilthe twenty twenty four election takes place.
It's a safe Democratic seat, wellsafe in the sense that Cavin Newfam will
(04:14):
appoints very very moderate very very corporate, very very middle of the road person.
They're a place to die in Feinstein, and I suppose that's in keeping
with who she was. We don'thave to worry about a big revolutionary change
(04:36):
here, unfortunately. So that's what'sgoing on in the world. What did
fascinate me a little bit in termsof major news stories over the past few
weeks is the ruling against Donald Trumpin the state of New York, or
(04:56):
more specifically, the Trump Orization.It seems like the Trump Organization is going
to be likely to be dissolved inthe state of New York, where it's
based. It's one of the manyrulings against Trump. I'm not going to
go through all of them. I'mnot going to read the thirty five page
(05:20):
ruling in this case, but I'llgo over the basics here because I want
to get into talking about what's referredto by this one story as the corporate
death penalty. I'm against the deathpenalty for people, but I am for
(05:43):
the death penalty for corporations. Man, I don't know if you remember.
It's eleven years ago now, whenMitt Romney was running for president, he
said, corporation, there are peoplemy friend they're not. That's just a
(06:05):
way for rich people to make moremoney by creating legal phantoms to do their
bidding. But let's talk about TrumpTrump in New York. Experts are calling
it the corporate death penalty, andwhat happens next is uncharted territory. In
(06:34):
a stunning decision Tuesday, a Manhattanjudge found that Donald Trump committed widespread,
long standing, and ongoing fraud atthe Trump Organization and ordered what experts in
New York financial crimes say amounts tothe dissolution of this company. Now,
(06:57):
we've known from reports from excellent journalistssuch as David K. Johnston and many
others that all sorts of illegal andunethical shenanigans were going on with the Trump
Organization. I mean, there wasan awful lot of smoke, and it
(07:24):
turns out there was fire legally onceit was processed, once all the delays
were pushed back, and there's stillgoing to be more delays, because if
you have enough money in this country, you can delay stuff almost indefinitely.
(07:44):
But it's amazing, and it shouldn'tbe amazing that they're actually considering dissolving Trump's
company, the Trump Organization. Thepenalty awarded on behalf of New York's Attorney
General Leatitia James is so extreme.It's not extreme. It's not extreme to
(08:11):
dissolve the company, and it needsto be done more often, and it
used to be done more often.We'll get into this, but I love
the way that this article phrases it. It's through Yahoo News, but I
think it's originally from Insider or BusinessInsider or whatever affiliate organization happens to derive
(08:37):
from that set of companies. Butthe penalty is so extreme, it says
Trump may fight James and the judgefor years before anything actually happens. So
there's been a ruling here and itprobably won't happen because our legal system is
(08:58):
says grewed up. That again,this can be delayed for years in some
cases, in other cases decades,decades. You can delay justice. You
can do that in the United Statesof America, but not because it's so
extreme, because our justice system isfucked up. That's why the penalty is
(09:30):
so rare. That the only previoustime it's been attempted on such a grand
scale, when James sought the corporatedeath penalty in her three year old ongoing
lawsuit against the NRA has failed.That's another incredibly corrupt organization in the National
(09:50):
Rifle Association. And we've seen thatthrough news reports, and we've seen that
through what has come through the legalproceedings that Letitia James initiated against it.
It's an extremely corrupt organization, onethat stands in opposition to the things which
(10:20):
the majority of the people in thestate of New York stand for, and
so they have every right to dissolveit, and they should dissolve it.
And the same as true of theTrump organization. The ruling by New York
Supreme Court Justice Arthur and Giron spendssome thirty five pages, again which I
(10:43):
will not read, describing Trump's fraudsand disassembling his lawyer's arguments. It yanks
the corporate charter in two short paragraphs. Yanks the corporate charter. You can
do that. You see, inorder to become a corporation, you have
(11:05):
to get the permission of the peoplethrough the government, because they represent us.
And if you are engaging in activitieswhich we disapprove of as a people,
(11:30):
if you're running contrary to things whichwe as a society have said are
okay, then you can't do businessanymore, and we'll yank that charter that
approval to do business. Business isnot the be all, in the end
all. It's amazing how we've gottenthis idea stuck in our heads that business
(11:56):
is immovable and inevitable and invincible.It's not a big part of its power
is that it's worked very hard toproject a myth of invincibility, and yet
(12:20):
somehow it keeps coming back to wethe people for money when it fucks up.
It's not invincible, and anytime wechoose to, we have a mind
(12:41):
to that we focus on doing it, we can pull up the rug out
from under them. We've done itbefore, we can do it again,
and we should. The first paragraphorders the immediate cancelation of any certificates meaning
licenses that are held by Trump andhis two adult sons, the Trump Organization,
(13:05):
and it's underlying LLCs. The secondparagraph orders that within ten days of
the data disorder, the parties aredirected to recommend the names of no more
than three potential independent receivers to managethe dissolution of the canceled LLCs. So
(13:28):
the court is saying, we're goingto take this company apart because it's fraudulent.
Yeah, it's aren't you just tiredof saying it? Yeah? This
is wrong, this is correct,this is illegal, this is fraudulent.
But there's nothing we could do aboutit. Aren't you sick of that?
(13:50):
Aren't you sick of that? Andthe actual execution of this again, as
the story indicates, maybe years awaybecause our system is that fucked up.
But isn't it good to hear judgesay, yeah, this fucked up,
(14:11):
and uh, we're gonna destroy thisthing. It's not invincible, it's not
We can take it apart. Wecan enact the corporate death penalty. The
people, through its representatives and governmentcan do that. Attorney General Letitia James
(14:39):
has alleged that Trump exaggerated the worthof his assets, which we've known for
decades, to banks and ensures byas much as three point six billion dollars
in a single year. We knowTrump is a liar. We know Trump
and has come copanies are liars.We've known this and now it's just being
(15:05):
asserted legally. In theory, thereceiver would continue to collect rents, pay
taxes, pay the bills, andthe company salaries until the assets are sold
off with Trump with the Trump organizationssold, beneficiary receiving what's left over after
(15:28):
any debts and liabilities are met.Those debts may include a two hundred and
fifty million dollar judgment the Attorney Generalis seeking when the case goes to trial
next month. We'll see, we'llsee. It shouldn't take like the worst
(15:52):
possible person, and there are toomany worse people than Trump. It shouldn't
take him to say, Okay,well, we got to do this.
There are a lot of companies thatshould be dissolved. There are a lot
(16:12):
of companies that should be reorganized.It should be broken apart. I don't
know if you remember that far back. I'm not going to go into the
details, but once in the UnitedStates of America, all the telephone.
I know, young people hardly usetelephones anymore, but once we had telephones
(16:36):
to communicate. I know, wecarry them around our pockets. But you
see, when I was a kid, and this is weird, and there's
a reason that it was weird.I had a massive we in our home
when I was growing up, Meand my mom and my dad, my
brother had this massive, clunky thingthat was our telephone. Must have weighed
(17:00):
like what ten pounds or something likethat big clunky thing with push buttons on
it and a big massive thing thatyou put up through your head. Dis
comforting in a way, but itwas a big blunt object that could inflict
I'm sure all sorts of horrific trauma. I'm sure in many instances did.
(17:26):
But anyway, you didn't own that. Back in the day, you did
not own your phone. That wasa possession of the phone company. That
the phone company owned, and ifthey cut off your phone service, or
you canceled your phone service for somereason, they took the phone back.
(17:49):
They sobk somebody by and took thephone back. And if your phone stopped
working you needed a new phone,you would come buy your house and they
would take your old phone and theybring you a new one. That's how
it worked back then. This isnothing new or special to the people my
(18:12):
age and older in our audience,but for younger folks it might come as
something of a surprise. Anyway.The reason for that was because at and
T what Atlantic Telegraph and Telephone,I think one company owned almost all the
(18:38):
phone service phone lines in the country, and it was a monopoly. And
eventually the government said, well,that's not right. This is a monopoly.
We got to break this up,and they did. They broke it
into regional Phone company in the earlynineteen eighties, and so there wasn't one
(19:07):
phone company that owned everything anymore,open up, kind of a free for
all. The government can do that. It can destroy companies. It can
break up companies when it's not inthe public interest, if you can't own
your own phone, if they're chargingridiculous rates for long distance calls, which
(19:33):
they used to. I mean,it's hard to remember now the technology has
advanced, But back in the day, it costs a lot of money to
call across the country around the world. Now it doesn't hardly cost anything,
at least anywhere in the country.Costs a lot less to call somewhere internationally
than it used to. It usedto cost a lot of money. You
(19:56):
get big phone bills. Boy.Well, the government is looking into doing
something about another monopoly, one whichin this day and age we're more familiar
with, and that's Amazon dot Com. And when we come back in a
moment, we're going to talk aboutwhat's happening with that. I'm Babelfrocklin.
(20:22):
This is Facebam America. We shallreturn face Palm America. I'm Baywelfrocklin Facepalmamerica
dot com. So with the Trumporganization facing the corporate death penalty, the
(20:48):
government is also looking askance at anothercompany that we know uses its power in
an unfair way. The government isaccusing Amazon of using its power to inflate
(21:10):
prices, and we know that itdoes this. We know that it does
this. If you've been on Amazon, we know that it does this.
The Federal Trade Commission. In seventeenstate attorneys general have sued Amazon, alleging
the e commerce BMTH. The ecommerce BMF uses its position in the marketplace
(21:34):
to inflate prices on other platforms,overcharged sellers in stifle competition, and it
does that and that is at leasttechnically against the law in the United States.
I understand that under the past,over the past generation or two,
(21:57):
we've kind of made a elective decisionjust to ignore that and not enforce it
because we think monopolies are pretty good, and we've been we've gotten the message
so much from monopolies that monopolies aregood that we've just kind of nod our
heads and say, oh, you'resoa yeah, it's a good thing.
(22:19):
Competition is good, but uh,not with Amazon, and not with Google,
not with a bunch of other stuff. I guess it's fine whatever,
charge me whatever you want to.It's I mean, we just kind of
(22:40):
nod our heads and say that becausewe're blasted from all sides by messages that
say monopoly is good, corporate poweris supreme. Well, it's not true.
And slowly, slowly, the governmentis beginning on our behalf to respond
(23:07):
to this. The lawsuit filed inUS District Court for the Western District of
Washington on Tuesday is Everything happened onTuesday is the result of a years long
investigation into Amazon's businesses and one ofthe most significant legal challenges brought against the
company in its nearly thirty year history. The FTC, again, the Federal
(23:33):
Trade Commission, and States are askingthe court to issue a permanent injunction they
say would prohibit Amazon from engaging inits unlawful conduct and loosen its monopolistic control
to restore competition. We don't wantto, you see, they're even like
they're being very tepid here. Wejust want to loosen the monopolistic control.
(23:59):
I know. These are the wordsof the Guardian, and this comes from
the Guardian dot com, the story, we just want to loosen your monopolis
to control a little bit. Easeback, ease back on the evil,
you know, bring the evil backto you know, eighty ninety percent that
much evil is okay, right,okay. The complaint sets forth detailed allegations,
(24:25):
noting how Amazon is now exploiting itsmonopoly power to enrich itself while raising
prices and degrading service for the tensof millions of American families who shop on
its platform and the hundreds of thousandsof businesses that rely on Amazon to reach
them. The FTC chairperson Lena Kahansaid in a statement, the lawsuit is
(24:49):
one of the biggest legal challenges thecompany has faced since its inception in nineteen
ninety four, but it did notcome as this the prize. The suit
comes after years of complaints that Amazonand other tech giants abused their dominance of
search, social media, and onlineretailing to become gate keepers of one of
(25:14):
the most profitable aspects of the Internet, and the US government in recent years
has signaled an increasing willingness to challengethe company's hegemony. A little bit of
an increased willingness. They need toget going, though, they need to
drink some more cough. You know, I'm going to do the same things
stand by. Oh yes, I'mready to take on hegemony. Observers had
(25:44):
wondered whether the FTC would seek aforced breakup of the retail giant like they
did with AT and T. TheBell Company, which is also dominant in
cloud computing and in the cloud man, has a growing presence in other sectors
(26:07):
like groceries and healthcare. Well,we'll sell you anything, doesn't matter.
We're just here to make money.We're here to extract wealth. Give us
here wealth. In a briefing withreporters, con dodged questions of whether that
will happen because even though this isa shift, it's not that much of
(26:30):
a shift. The Biden administration mightbe taking a little bit different course here,
but as we've discussed before, wecould only expect so much of the
Biden administration. We know this.At this stage. The focus is more
(26:52):
on liability, she said, saidLisa Khan, head of the FDC.
So they're not gonna go too far. They're probably not gonnassolve the company.
They're not gonna break up the company. Even though that might be deserved.
And let me be clear too,Amazon has made some important innovations. I
(27:18):
mean, look, I subscribe toAmazon. I do. I'm not proud
of it, but I do.But look, they've created a situation in
which you can order something online.You can put something into a computer or
a phone and it gets there,gosh, two days, sometimes the next
(27:42):
day, sometimes if you live ina big city, a few hours.
I mean, that's that's an amazingsystem that has not existed in the same
way before. But as a partof doing that that they've done it,
they screw over the people who sellyou the stuff, and primarily it's other
(28:06):
people on their platform that are sellingyou the stuff. They screw the sellers
over, and they raise the priceson you anytime they want. And it's
far from true that Amazon is thebest price on something. You check something.
You know, most of the timewhen I check on Amazon, my
(28:27):
local store if it's something that's available, and it isn't always will sell a
product at a lower price than Amazon. Amazon can up the prices anytime they
want, and they do it alot more often than they used to.
Because they're monopoly. Then they canafford to do it now because more people
(28:49):
will just plug into that and it'seasier. And this doesn't even mention the
fact that they just completely exploit theirworkers. They grind them into the dirt,
they make them work so hard,and they try to stop unions,
(29:12):
and that's wrong. That's not evenaddressed here. That's not even part of
this. But it's another reason whyAmazon should be reconfigured. At the very
least. It's not to say thatthey haven't come up with some important things
and some important innovations, and haven'tin some limited ways, changed our lives
(29:36):
for the better. But is thatworth having legions of people in warehouses like
working themselves to death, having deliverydrivers working themselves to death. Is it
worth screwing over the people who actuallysell the products? Is it working worth
(29:59):
screwing over you, the consumer?I don't think so. I don't think
it's worth all that. In thelawsuit, the FTC does not argue Amazon
is a monopoly because of its size, but because it uses its position both
as an online seller and online marketplaceto deny meaningful competition. Is it not
what the free market is about?Competition? You got to compete, compete
(30:23):
as far as Amazon is concerned.Amazon, the one hundred and twenty four
page complaint argues, is stifling competitionby imposing anti discounting measures that prohibit merchants
who sell products on Amazon from offeringlower prices elsewhere. They are not they
(30:45):
are not the low price leader.In the complaint, the FTC accuses Amazon
of tactics such as anti discounting measuresthat penalize sellers offering their products for cheaper
and other online in marketplaces. Thefiling also notes that Amazon controls a vast
distribution network and alleges the company forcesthird party sellers to pay high fees for
(31:11):
its fulfillment services with a little otheroption to comply. You will comply.
Now, there's most of the people. Most of the products that you see
on Amazon are not sold by Amazon. They're sold by people who work through
Amazon and use them as a mechanismto sell the product to you and deliver
(31:37):
the product to you. And whatthey have to see is saying is that
because Amazon is almost the only gamein town, that it constitutes a monopoly,
that it uses that position to extractan unfare fairly high amount of money
(32:01):
from the people who are selling andalso an unfair amount of money from the
people who are buying those products youand me. Amazon has hiked so steeply
the fees it charges sellers that itnow reportedly takes close to half of every
dollar from the typical seller that usesAmazon's fulfillment service. The complaine states that
(32:27):
sounds like gangsterism. It sounds likegangsterism. The complaint also accuses Amazon of
requiring merchants to use the company's deliveryand fulfillment system in order to qualify for
Prime. It also charges that Amazonprioritizes the company's in house line of products
(32:47):
over others, even if those productsare of better quality, even if those
other products are of better quality andservice. An increasing number of paid and
junk ads that you know, it'sthat when you go on Amazon, get
more ads, more junk, andit's pushing its own products to the front,
regardless of like how they're rated.Funny that not a free market worth
(33:15):
more than one trillion, It's wortha trilli It's a trillion dollar company.
Ladies and died, worth more thana trillion dollars. Today Amazon controls eighty
two percent of the online retail market. That's a monopoly. That's a monopoly.
We're not supposed to have monopolies inthe United States of America. We're
(33:37):
not supposed to We're supposed to havea free market. Right somebody controlling eighty
two percent of the market, that'snot free. That's a monopoly. According
to the complaint, that makes ita virtual necessity for merchants to sell their
products on the platform in order toreach most online customers. Break up Amazon,
(34:02):
break it up, break it intolittle pieces. Don't allow them to
acquire every sector. Don't allow themto get into healthcare, don't allow them
to go to groceries. You know, it would be one thing if they
were like what they originally started as, which was selling books. But now
(34:23):
they're gribbling up like every sector.Should they be allowed to do that?
No, they shouldn't. They shouldbe broken up. Or is it time
to bring back the corporate death penalty? Because again, this is something that
(34:44):
we used to do a lot inthe United States, And I am going
to bring you some of the historyof that by way of our friend Tom
Hartman, who has been on thisprogram before, and an article he wrote
a few years back. So standby. This is be Wolf Rockland.
I am here on face palm Americaand so are you back at a moment
(35:20):
Face Paul America. I'm bewolf Rockland. Facepaulmamerica dot com is where you can
find out more, listen to pastepisodes, connect with us on social media,
all that sort of good thing.So the Trump organization New York State,
they are trying to dissolve it thefts. He is at least filing
(35:45):
suit against Amazon. I don't thinkthey have the same goal in mind there,
but they're saying that Amazon's a monopolyand it's overcharging people, sellers and
buyers both. We weren't always ina situation where a company would dare to
(36:09):
do that sort of thing, becausewe passed laws anti trust acts. I
think it was the Sherman Anti TrustAct back in the eighteen nineties, originally
designed to ac curb the power ofmonopolies such as railroads and states, and
(36:31):
the federal government would pull charters forcompanies dissolve them all the time. It
was a regular thing, and Iwant to go into a little bit of
the history of that because we've forgottenit. We think that, you know,
once the company has made it big, once they've got the money to
(36:53):
advertise, once they got their nameon the side of the building. Once,
once the CEO sends people into spaceor really high in the atmosphere,
that they're there for all time,and it's not true. And I harken
(37:13):
back to some bits of an articlethat I'm going to read here by our
friend Tom Hartman. I grabbed itfrom a common Dreams dot org and the
title of it is It's time tobring back the corporate death penalty. And
it starts with a quote from USSupreme Court Justice Lewis Brandeis from nineteen thirty
(37:37):
three and a descent he made ina case called Legott versus Lee. Here's
the quote. The prevalence of thecorporation in America has led men of this
generation to act at times as ifthe privilege of doing business in corporate form
were inherent in the citizen, andhas led them to accept the evils attendant
(38:02):
upon the free and unrestricted use ofthe corporate mechanism, as if these evils
were the inescapable price of civilized life, and hence to be borne with resignation.
Throughout the greater part of our history, a different view prevailed, although
(38:22):
the value of this instrumentality in commerceand industry was fully recognized in corporation,
for business was commonly denied, longafter it had been freely granted for religious,
educational, and charitable purposes. Itwas denied because of fear. Fear
(38:44):
of encroachment upon the liberties and opportunitiesof the individual, Fear the subjection of
labor to capital, fear of monopoly, Fear that the absorption of capital by
corporations and their perpetual life might bringevils similar to those which attended Mortmaine immortality.
(39:12):
There was a sense of some insidiousmenace inherent in large aggregations of capital,
particularly when held by corporations. Again, that's US Supreme Court Justice Lewis
Brandeis in his nineteen thirty three descentin Ligott versus Ly that applies supremely well
(39:35):
to our current day fear of encroachmentupon the liberties and opportunities of the individual.
I certainly feel that. I mean, I grew up in a conservative
family, and I was worried aboutthe encroachment of government. And that doesn't
(39:58):
worry me anymore, except to theextent that government encroachment is an extension of
the encroachment of capital. The peoplewho serve massive corporations obsequiously are the ones
who really worry me, really worryme. Which is not to say that
(40:27):
government in certain places, especially whereit involves the book bands or abortion bands,
isn't fearsome as well. But ultimatelyI feel that that's an extension of
the massive power of capital, alsobecause it functions to divide us and distract
(40:54):
us, because in the end,it's all about the money. So to
Tom Hartman's article, it's time tobring back the corporate death penalty. While
the human death penalty has largely disappearedin the world and is fading in the
(41:17):
US a good thing, the corporatedeath penalty needs a revival. The corporate
death penalty, widespread in the nineteenthcentury, is a political and economic Darwinian
process that weeds bad actors out ofthe business ecosystem to make room for good
players. The process of revoking corporatecharters goes back to the very first years
(41:42):
of the United States. After all, the only reasons states allow charter corporations
normal business corporations that can only becharted by a state, not the federal
government, is to serve the publicinterest. As the Wyoming Constitution of eighteen
eighty nine laid out quote, Allpowers and franchises of corporations are derived from
(42:07):
the people and are granted by theiragent, the government for the public good
and general welfare, and the rightand duty of the state to control and
regulate them for these purposes is herebydeclared. The power, rights and privileges
of any and all corporations may beforfeited by wilful neglect or abuse thereof.
(42:29):
The police power of the state issupreme over all corporations as well as individuals.
Unquote. Hear that the power,rights and privileges of any and all
corporations may be forfeited by wilful neglector abuse thereof. If you're a company
(42:53):
and you abuse the power, rightsand privileges then that you have, then
the government can take those privileges andpowers away. The government has the power
to do that. It's Wyoming ineighteen eighty nine, asserting that Tom Hartman
(43:14):
continues, when a corporation does businessethically and legally, it serves its local
community, its employees, its customers, and its shareholders. For over a
century, American corporations were held tothis very reasonable standard. Beginning in seventeen
eighty four, Pennsylvania demanded the corporationsinclude a revocation clause in corporate charters that
(43:37):
automatically dissolved them after a few decades, so they wouldn't grow so large or
so rich as to become a publicmenace. So many corporations have become a
public menace. They really really have. Amazon, I'm looking at you.
(43:58):
It also authorized the state to dissolveany corporation that harmed the state or its
citizens, including customers and employees.It was pretty explicit quote, nor shall
any charter for the purposes aforesaid begranted for a longer time than twenty years.
(44:19):
And every such charter shall contain aclause reserving to the Legislature the power
to alter, revoke, or inmullthe same whenever, in their opinion,
it may be injurious to the citizensof the Commonwealth. Article one, Section
twenty five. Any time, anytimeit's injurious to the citizens, we can
(44:44):
take your certification as a corporation away, and you can't do business here.
As the United States grew, thefederal government passed laws requiring corporate death penalty
revocation clauses in the state corporate chartersof the insurance companies in eighteen oh nine
and banks in eighteen fourteen, andby the late eighteen eighties, every state
(45:08):
required them for all business corporations.From the founding of America to today,
governments routinely revoked corporate charters, forcingliquidation and sale of assets, although it's
been over a century since such effortshave focused on corporations large enough to have
(45:30):
amassed financial and thus political power,and maybe, in the case of the
Trump organization and in the case ofAmazon, were starting just barely, just
maybe to see that turnaround a littlebit. This article was written in twenty
nineteen. By the way, inthe nineteenth century, banks were shut down
(45:52):
for behaving in a financially unsound wayin Ohio, Mississippi, and in Pennsylvania,
and when corporations that ran turnpikes inNew York and Massachusetts didn't keep their
roads in repair, those states gavethe corporation the death sentence. In eighteen
(46:14):
twenty five, Pennsylvania passed laws makingit even easier for that state to revoke
alter or in all corporate charters whenever, in their opinion, the operation of
the corporation may be injurious to citizensof the community, and by the eighteen
seventies, nineteen states had gone throughthe long and tedious process of amending their
(46:37):
state constitutions expressly to give legislators thepower to terminate the existence of corporations that
originated in those states. In otherwords, corporations, you are unnoticed,
you fuck up, you fuck up, You're not going to do business in
(47:00):
our state. You screw people over, you commit fraud, You're gone,
You're done. What if that appliedto Twitter, slash x. What if
that applied to Amazon? What ifthat applied to Google and Facebook and Walmart.
(47:30):
What if we took what we knewto be the injurious behavior of those
companies and said, you've been doingthis for too long. Your right to
do business in this state, inthis country is removed. What if we
(47:52):
just seriously threatened to do that.Do you think things would change? I
think things might change. Presidents haveeven run for public office and won on
platforms including the revocation of corporate charters. One of the largest issues of the
(48:13):
election of eighteen thirty two was AndrewJackson's demand that the corporate power, or
rather the corporate charter, of theSecond Bank of the United States not be
renewed. Now obviously there there werea few problems with entry checks and for
a lot of different reasons. Buthe was an anti corporatist. Doesn't really
(48:40):
make up for you know what hedidn't name Americans and people of color.
However, this sort of thing wasonce done in the United States. Following
that lead states all over the nationbegan examining their banks and other corporations,
and in just the year eighteen thirtytwo, the state of Pennsylvania pulled the
(49:02):
corporate charters of ten corporations, sentencingthem to corporate death for operating contrary to
the public interest. President Grover Clevelandinvoked the mood of the times in his
eighteen eighty eight State of the Unionadrest when he said, as we view
(49:22):
the achievements of aggregated capital, wediscover the existence of trusts, combinations,
and monopolies while the citizen is strugglingfar in the rear, or is trampled
to death beneath an iron heel.God, he sounds like a socialist.
Corporations, which should be the carefullyrestrained creatures of the law, and the
(49:45):
servants of the people are fast becomingthe people's masters. Wow, what a
lefty eighteen eighty eight Grover Cleveland.Between the nineteen twenties and the nineteen eighty
all US states amended their constitutions orchanged their laws, unfortunately, to make
(50:06):
it easier for large corporations to dobusiness without having the answer to the citizens
of the state, without size limits, and with infinite lifespans. Today,
every state still has laws that allowit to impose the corporate death penalty.
It's just been decades since they've beenused against a large corporation. That soon
(50:30):
may change. Small companies are routinelyshut down by Secretaries of States, sometimes
for malfeasans, but mostly because theybecome inactive or fail to pay taxes.
So that sort of thing is doneall the time. Just not too big
companies. Is that because of somethinginnate about them that makes them better.
(50:55):
Now, it's just because they havemore power and more influence, and they've
taken over the governments. In manycases, corporations have successfully argued before the
Supreme Court that they should have FirstAmendment rights of free speech, Fourth Amendment
rights of privacy, Fifth Amendment protectionsagainst takings, and Fourteenth Amendment rights as
(51:22):
persons to equal protection with you andme under the law, among other rights
of personhood. It's long past timethat these persons, when they become egregious
and recidive as criminals, particularly whenthey repeatedly kill people, be treated the
same as human criminals. Remove themfrom society permanently. Now I differ a
(51:47):
little bit on that last point.I think he's kind of making a rhetorical
point Tom Hartman, and I understandwhat he's going for. But again,
I don't believe in the human deathpenalty, although it is imposed, and
it is hypocritical when we're imposing thedeath penalty on people but not big corporations
(52:12):
who do horrible things and are responsiblefor killing people. But corporations aren't people,
regardless of what the corporations and theSupreme Court say, and they shouldn't
be treated like people, and weshould be able to pull them out of
existence at any time if we thepeople say so. And that time has
(52:39):
come. It's definitely come with Trump, with Amazon and Walmart and so many
other big companies, I think theyreally need to be broken up. I
think that's the best solution. Butif it takes dissolution in order to make
(53:01):
sure that people don't get screwed over, that's fine with me. I'll put
a link to this article, inparticular in the show It's time to bring
back the Corporate death Penalty. Thelink will be in the show notes.
But for right now, that's aboutit. I'm gonna sit, I'm gonna
(53:22):
drink some more coffee, and ifyou would like to call us or message
us anytime, you can do thatat two zero two six five six six
two seven to one. That's Tuesavertwo six five six six two seven to
one. Thank you so much forlistening, thank you for being patient with
(53:45):
my absence, and until next time, enjoy the day. Facepalmamerica dot com
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