Producers of "Story of Stuff" bring us 'Citizens United' For Corporations Are People Too;how long before thinking libertarians rush out to bash Lefties and defend corporations?
On March 1, former Greenpeacer Annie Leornard and the makers of “The Story of Stuff” rolled out a new video: “The Story of Citizens United v. FEC”.
The new video addresses last year’s Citizens United v. FEC ruling by an activist ‘conservative’ Supreme Court that overthrew more than a half-century of federal election laws and held in effect that the Founding Fathers must have meant that the corporations they so despised (the property of shareholders and both creatures of government and beneficiaries of grants of limited shareholder liability and other government largess, e.g., the East India Tea Company) are “persons” for the purpose of “free speech” under the Fourth Amendment.
Yes, the new video is flawed too, but it still seems like an honest – though skewed – effort to make sense of corporations and their proper role in government.
Let me ask anyone who looks at the video to ask themselves: would there be a Left wing, pro-government agenda on the five topics the video lists – Good Jobs, Healthcare, Safe Products, Clean Air & Water, and Responsible Government – if government had not first started favoring elites by creating “legal entity” corporations whose purposed owners, the shareholders, were absolved by government for any liability whatsoever for damages caused by “corporate” acts? It seems to me that if we want the Left to back away from the fight with corporations over the wheel of government, we have to strike at the real root – the government enabled aspects of corporations that set them up as moral-hazard embodied zombies detached from personal responsibility and communities.
Can I look forward to an ‘insightful’ post by a deep Austrian thinker on this latest video to show up soon on the pages of LvMI? Expectation of disappointment Hope springs eternal!
More about The Story of Stuff Project and film funders here and here; their website indicates that they have a group on the WiserEarth global collaboration platform which I am learning of for the first time. LvMI supporters, participants and fans looking to expand the Austrian message might check out this facility to see if it has any good ideas on functionality (we, too, all want to “Discover, Connect, Share and Collaborate”, right?)
Here’s the video:
[View:http://www.youtube.com/storyofstuffproject:550:0]
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