Supreme Court Okays Corporations Buying Elections
June 6, 2012 7:45 am MAUI TODAY, Maui Yesterdays Tweet |
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HAWAIIAN WORD OF THE DAY — Kalaikaiaola: Ecology
PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY— Kamapim: Develop
HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY — “The dust rises on the whirlwind.”
HAOLE SAYING OF THE DAY — “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” (FDR)
TODAY: Corporations Are Not People, Mittwits. The partisan, privileged, plutocrats making up the majority of US Supreme Court justices are a band of robed criminals. They are perjurers who lied under oath to get confirmed to their lifetime appointments by the US Senate. Their unprecedented rollback of court precedent after precedent, demonstrates their arrogance for the Constitution. Yet Chief Justice Roberts led the majority faction in the Citizens United case, supporting the precedent first established in the 1886 “Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad” court decision establishing corporate personhood.
The Roberts Court assured the outcome of yesterday’s Wisconsin Recall Election. As someone tweeted, “The people have spoken and they are both named Koch.” Governor Scott Walker was able retain his office only because he raised TEN TIMES AS MUCH MONEY as his Democratic opponent, 75% of which came from out of state, often secret “donors.” These crimes against democracy will only metastasize by this Fall’s election, which will occur shortly after the Roberts Court declares most or all of president Obama’s Health Care plan unconstitutional, at the behest of their corporate masters. (Lest we forget, their decision will not affect their own government-provided health care.)
Justice William O. Douglas wrote in 1949, “the Santa Clara case becomes one of the most momentous of all our decisions. [...] Corporations were now armed with constitutional prerogatives.” Corporations so armed with the prerogatives of personhood, acting in their own best interests to maximize profits, will determine the outcome of elections from now on by simply buying them. They have their own corporate raider, Mitt Romney, running for the presidency, already bought and paid for. They will fund him with so much secret cash, that the word “election” will no longer be applicable. Let’s just call these corporate investments what they are – Bribes.
The irony is that the 1886 case was intended to benefit weak and powerless individuals, not corporations. In his dissent in the 1938 case o”Connecticut General Life Insurance Company v. Johnson,” Justice Hugo Black wrote, “in 1886, this Court in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, decided for the first time that the word ‘person’ in the amendment did in some instances include corporations. [...] The history of the amendment proves that the people were told that its purpose was to protect weak and helpless human beings and were NOT told that it was intended to remove corporations in any fashion from the control of state governments. [...] The language of the amendment itself does not support the theory that it was passed for the benefit of corporations.”
If corporations are people, they should be tried and executed for their criminal acts. That goes double for the criminal Supreme Court justices, because their prime directive is not to maximize profits, but to uphold the US Constitution, American democracy and the integrity of the electoral process. They are criminally negligent in doing so.
HAWAII EVENTS ON THIS DAY – June 6th
- 1890: The Pacific Commercial Advertiser takes note of a grand ball given by King Kalakaua at ‘Iolani Palace the previous Monday evening. The paper reports it’s one of the largest balls given at the palace and is “charming in the extreme.”
- 1891: Queen Lili’uokalani returns from her tour of the Islands. The queen and her party arrive back in Honolulu on the steamer Claudine. A Fire Department torch-light parade accompanies the queen on the route to the palace.
- 1924: A British naval squadron led by the battle cruiser Hood arrives in Honolulu Harbor.
- 1934: Fire breaks out in one of the cargo holds of the Dollar liner President Lincoln, which is bound for Honolulu out of Los Angeles. None of the 172 passengers on board is injured.
- 1957: The wing tanks from a Hawai’i Air National Guard F-86 fall off while the jet is streaking over the city at 20,000 feet. The tanks land in Papakolea. No one is hurt and the only damage is to a clothesline.
- 1958: Hawaii’s costly 128-day sugar strike is settled and 13,000 workers return to their jobs by June 9. The terms include an unprecedented three-year contract and significant wage gains. Agreement on the contract is reached based on Gov. William F. Quinn’s proposal for ending the strike.
- 1979: The Federal Aviation Administration grounds all DC-10s because of engine mount defects. At the time, DC-10s are used for an estimated 30 percent of all scheduled flights between Hawai’i and the Mainland.
- 2010: The EPA Orders Maui County to Test Isle Waters - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the Maui County to conduct water sampling and testing off West Maui, saying two studies found “substantial evidence” that waste water injected into the ground was seeping out of submarine springs off Kaanapali. More >
WORLD EVENTS ON THIS DAY – June 6th
- 1844: The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) is founded in London
- 1932: The U.S. Federal gas tax is enacted
- 1933: The first drive-in theater opens (in Camden New Jersey)
- 1944: D-DAY – Allied forces storm the beaches of Normandy, FRA
- 1967: The “Six Day War” begins between Israel and its Arab neighbors
- 1977: The U.S. Supreme Court tosses out state automatic death penalty laws
- 1988: George Bush I makes a campaign promise to support reparations for WW II Japanese-American internees (promise broken as of May 1989)
- 1985: Authorities in Brazil exhume a body later identified as that of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who conducted medical experiments on inmates at Auschwitz
- 1989: Burial services were held for Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
- 2005: MORE SUPREME NONSENSE – The Supreme Court rules 6-to-3 that people who smoke marijuana because their doctors recommend it to ease pain can be prosecuted for violating federal drug laws.
BORN ON THIS DAY – June 6th
- 1755: Nathan Hale, hanged patriot
- 1875: Thomas Mann, novelist
- 1935: Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet’s Lamaistic Buddhists
- 1949: Richard Lewis, comedian/acto
- 1951: Dwight Twilley, country singer
- 1955: Sandra Bernhard, comedian/actress
- 1956: Bjorn Borg, tennis champ
- 1963: Eric Cantor, politician
- 1968: Paul Giamatti, actor
- 1973: Natalie Morales, broadcast journalist
- 1974: Sonya Walger, actress (“Lost”)
- 1976: Lukas Hass, actor
DIED ON THIS DAY – June 6th
- 1799: Patrick Henry, American revolutionary (b. 1736)
- 1832: Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher (b. 1748)
- 1891: John A. Macdonald, 1st Prime Minister of Canada (b. 1815)
- 1941: Louis Chevrolet, American automotive pioneer (b. 1878)
- 1968: Robert F. Kennedy, 64th United States Attorney General & former U.S. Senator from New York (b. 1925)
- 1968: Randolph Churchill, son of Winston Churchill (b. 1911)
- 1976: J. Paul Getty, American industrialist (b. 1892)
- 1991: Stan Getz, American musician (b. 1927)
- 2005: Anne Bancroft, American actress (b. 1931)
- 2006: Billy Preston, American musician (b. 1946)
- 2006: Hilton Ruiz, Puerto Rican jazz pianist (b. 1952)
- 2006: Arnold Newman, American photographer (b. 1918)
- 2009: Jim Owens, American college football head coach (b. 1927)
- 2010: Marvin Isley, American musician The Isley Brothers (b. 1953)
- 2010: Khaled Saeed, victim of Egyptian Police Brutality; Figure of the Egyptian Revolution on January 25, 2011
