All Hail Our Beloved Chinese Masters!

There's been plenty of back and forth about the recent Supreme Court decision permitting corporations to directly support or oppose candidates for political office. Some folks, mostly libertarians and conservatives, argue that preventing corporations from engaging in this sort of activity represents a violation of the First Amendment. If a business is prevented from supporting or opposing someone, and cannot run ads directly attacking or lauding that individual, then the rights of the owners and directors of that corporation are being violated.

Or so the argument goes.

Yesterday, while passing some time in good meaty political discussion with a church deacon, I realized that there was an element to this whole thing that I had not previously considered.

American corporations are not individuals, sure. They wield far more power and influence. But they are also increasingly not American. We do not live in an age when the interests of business play out on a local or national level. This is, as anyone who pays attention should have realized by now, the era of market globalization. For all of our jabbering about the importance of small business, business does not now exist on a primarily local level. It exists across national boundaries. Because of this, ownership of corporate entities in the United States does not stop at our borders. One does not have to be a citizen of this nation to own or govern an entity incorporated here. So what does that mean?

Let's for a moment imagine the 2012 race for the presidency of the United States of America. One candidate strongly favors pressing China more aggressively on their approach to human rights, and wants the United States to begin weaning itself from foreign oil. Following this last week's Supreme Court decision, there is no impediment to corporations that exist as subsidiaries of the Chinese government from throwing as much money as they want into attack ads against that candidate. There is nothing to prevent Aramco and Citgo from doing exactly the same thing.

Sure, nonprofits and associations can try to do the same. But they're drops in the bucket. Wealth is power, and an immense imbalance of power that has been created here. Sure, there have been periods in the history of the United States when business has been a governing power in the affairs of state. But the dynamics of the marketplace in the 1890s were still mostly national in scope, and the interests of the robber barons were at least tangentially linked to the interests of this nation. They were, at a bare minimum, citizens. In 2010, wealth is radically global...and the most powerful corporations no longer see their interests tied to those of this particular nation.

I'm not alone in noticing this. E.J. Dionne pitched out a very similar theme this morning. But most human beings only see what is right around them. We are compulsively parochial little critters. In a nation that is soon to be ruled not by citizens, but by the power of multinational corporations, that lack of a broader vision will bear predictable fruit. We have already allowed multinational corporations to strip this nation of it's productive capacity, which even our enemies recognized as our greatest strength. Now, they will dominate our political discourse.

But I hear that Octomom has a new bikini bod. That makes it all better.

The Supreme Court and The Sound of Elections To Come

Much political press has been given to the recent success of the Republican right wing, as "Tea Party" activists have wrested control of the GOP away from crazy namby pamby liberal RINO apologists like Karl Rove. Seriously. When the right wing's shouting heads are accusing Karl Rove of being inadequately Republican for having the audacity to note that a particular Tea Party candidate isn't well suited to the state she's running in, we've wandered into a very strange place.

While that whole sliding away into madness is certainly fascinating, I've been struck by something else more locally. In DC, Mayor Adrian Fenty has been ousted by DC Council Chair Vincent Gray in the primary. In part, this is Fenty's fault. He comes across as a serious SOB. He's not someone you like. But he's someone you can appreciate. He's a technocrat, a hard charging manager who suffers fools and the incompetent lightly, and he's made things notably and markedly better. He made a point of paring the bloated ranks of DC's governmental bureaucracy. In particular, he and his take-no-prisoners School Chancellor went after the outlandishly wretched DC school system, which spends more than $25,000 per year per pupil and yet still manages to have buildings falling apart.

In doing that, he made enemies, particularly in DC's teacher's union and the unions that represent the swollen ranks of DC's government workers. Vincent Gray has repeatedly and outspokenly spoken in defense of those poor teachers who were fired for the sole reason that they happened to be demonstrably crappy at their jobs. Unsurprisingly, Gray is the serious beneficiary of union support and endorsements.

But the union support for Gray manifested itself in a new way this primary season, and that augurs some interesting stuff in this next election cycle. I listen regularly to WTOP, an all news radio station that's the market leader for ratings here in the DC metro area. If you want to influence someone here, buying ad time on WTOP is the gold standard for broadcast media in Washington.

What I heard on WTOP, for the first time ever, were political ads. Yeah, we've all heard them before, but not like this. These were not ads run by the Gray campaign. They were ad buys funded entirely from the coffers of the unions Gray represents. The cash came not from shady organizations that were created as proxies, but was done openly and explicitly. We are the union. Vote for Gray.

This has not happened in prior elections, not in my lifetime. It's a direct result of a recent Supreme Court decision in which the conservative wing of the court ruled that corporations...and, by extension, unions and any other private interest... had the same right to openly support political candidates as individuals.

I haven't seen it yet on the national stage, but I can't imagine that 2010 will look quite like 2008. We've already seen NewsCorp, the corporate parent of FoxNews, funnel over $1,000,000 to the Republican governors association. As corporations and unions seek to defend their profits and their interests, I can expect that we'll see more and more of this.

The Faith of Corporate "Persons"

Corporations are people.

Increasingly, this seems to be where our jurisprudence is headed, and that's gotten a bump in the last week.  Hobby Lobby, a chain of stores selling arts and crafts, has been resisting mandates to provide emergency contraception/IUD coverage in its health care plan, on the grounds that it violates its religious freedom.  

Not the freedom of its owners, mind you.  Its religious freedom as a corporation.

According to the Hobby Lobby wiki, its operating principles involve "...honoring the Lord in a manner consistent with Biblical principles."

Whether or not one can make any meaningful case against interuterine devices from Biblical principles is another post for another time.

What struck me hardest about this issue was a quote from Appeals Court Judge Tim Tymkovich, writing in the opinion that affirmed Hobby Lobby's right to deny coverage:

"We see no reason the Supreme Court would recognize constitutional protection for a corporation's political expression but not its religious expression."

Obviously, this references Citizens United, the recent SCOTUS decision that affirmed constitutional protections for corporations as persons.  But as "persons of faith?"

Here, I'll admit to being a bit baffled.  Corporations, as faithful "persons?"  As religious "people?"

Can a corporation be baptized, or stand accountable before God as you or I stand before God?  Does TitleMax sneak into the back pew, and weep quietly when you preach about God's judgment on those who prey on the poor?  I don't think so.

And yet, as I think this, I consider other possibilities.  Like, say, that the Bible does make space for some degree of corporate and collective judgment. Lord knows Israel messes up collectively on repeated occasions throughout the Tanakh, and is judged for it.  I am also aware...particularly as a pastor...that groups do have their own peculiar form of spirituality.  Churches have their own characters, their internal zeitgeist, as do many other collective institutions.  And they can certainly worship together, and pray, and sing.

Then on the other hand, really?  A person?  If a board of directors or CEO decides to sell or dissolve or close a corporation, do we protect its integrity as a person, or do we view it as an object that can be sold or destroyed with no moral hazard?

And if a corporation commits a crime of negligence or predation, do we collectively punish it and all of those who participate in it?  We do not.  The LLC corporate structure exists primarily as a construct to avoid liability.  If so, how can it reflect moral agency?  How can it have a "soul?"

Ultimately, corporations are a human legal construct.  They have no reality outside of that which we give them.  They are not aware.  They are not sentient.  They are not made in the image of God.  They are objects of our own creation.

And when we confer personhood to an object made with our own hands, and allow that object to have power over us, standing as if it were another soul in our midst?  The Bible does have a word for that.

Powers, Principalities and Alito

After getting a heads-up on this from another spear-oriented blog I regularly read, I've been recently watching chunklets of a rather interesting documentary on corporations, which is accurately if unimaginatively titled: "The Corporation." It's faskinating schtuff, and draws from perspectives from both within and outside the business community. It's worth a watch.

It's particularly intriguing given the recent Supreme Court decision to permit corporations to act as if they had the same rights as citizens of our democratic republic...up to and including direct action to effect an election. One of the more striking segments (which you can watch above) discusses the dynamics of these corporations. The question is asked: What kind of person is a corporation? Among the answers:

• They are "immortal persons," meaning they can exist forever.
• They are constituted for the purpose of shielding human beings from culpability for their actions towards other human beings.
• They exist for the purpose of providing profit for themselves.
• They have no soul.
• They cannot be held personally accountable for their actions.
  

Reflecting on this, I encounter two things. First, a slight shiver as I think about the ground that such "persons" stand upon morally and spiritually. One wonders how Jesus would respond to such a "person," and whether that response would involve a herd of pigs and a cliff.

Second, I wonder how these "persons" relate to the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. Are they the governed? Is government instituted among them, and does it require their consent for it's just powers? Are they...men? Meaning, you know, people?

They do not live. Liberty means nothing to them. They cannot know happiness. And these entities will be influencing and guiding our nation?

I've said it once, and I'll say it again, these are interesting times in which we live.