āCorporations are people, my friend,ā Mitt Romney famously said in 2011 while running for president. The Supreme Court decided the previous year that corporations could give money to political campaigns, just like people, and in 2014, the high court gave corporations religious freedom to deny contraceptives to employees, thereby letting them behave just as badly as people. If you prick corporations, do they not bleed?
Actually no, they donāt. But as of now, they can get presidential pardons.
The notion that corporations are people did not originate with the Supreme Courtās notorious Citizens United decision in 2010. Way back in 1886, the high court ruled in Santa Clara County v. Union Pacific Railroad that corporations were covered by the Fourteenth Amendmentās guarantee of equal protection under the law. To be more precise, this question was addressed not in the decision (which resolved a local taxation dispute) but rather in a headnote that said the court ādoes not wish to hear argument on the questionā of whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to corporations because āwe are all of the opinion that it does.ā Somehow this non sequitur became legal precedent. āLater cases,ā wrote Stetson University law professor Clara Torres-Spelliscy in a 2014 analysis for the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice, āuncritically cited the headnote as if it had been part of the case.ā
You know what isnāt declining? Pardons for corporations. Trump has granted nine. These were never a thing before Trumpānot in the modern era, and possibly never. According to Bloombergās Ava Benny-Morrison, the nine pardons wiped out $200 million in financial penalties, āsome of which were destined for victims of wrongdoing.ā Frank Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri, told Bloomberg: āIn any previous era no president would touch this with a barge pole. Maybe individual cases with some compelling reason, but the systemic elimination of criminal liability of major financial crime would never have happened before, and it didnāt.ā
Half of the $200 million in wiped-out fines can be attributed to a single crypto company, BitMEX. The three co-founders of the company, a pioneer in crypto derivatives, all pleaded guilty in 2022 to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, which requires maintaining certain safeguards against money laundering. Each paid $10 million in fines. Then, in July 2024, BitMEX itself pleaded guilty to the same crime, and this past January the company was fined $100 million.
There are millions of people dying every year from lead poisoning. Not to mention the lead that was spread by air pollution doesnāt magically disappear. Perhaps this is what you mean by dropped off as in the environment is totally poisoned but we are poisoning it less in the US nowadays. I wonder if the millions of people affected would agree with youā¦ Oh yeah, they canāt because they are dead.
Your hand waving of the US development and proliferation of the petro chemical revolution is almost comical. It is the whole worldās fault! Sounds like exactly what US executives would say to absolve themselves of responsibility. No surprise here as you are ever the apologist. That is okay, I will criticize and you can apologize.
Knowing the US has off-shored much of its polluting industries is just another example of the complexity of this situation honestly. Sometimes it feels like this is a discussion with someone who has a couple pieces of the puzzle and then having them tell you what the whole puzzle looks like.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022199625000029
As for Agent Orange with the British.
āThe British applied a precursor formula that was in many ways identical to Agent Orange called Trioxone. It was mainly used along specific roadways and crop areas using trucks, ground sprayers, and occasional small-scale helicopter runs rather than sweeping mass aerial campaigns. Exact totals are poorly documented, but the volume was infinitesimally small compared to the millions of gallons dropped in Southeast Asia.ā
I also find your original sin argument misplaced. I keep mentioning the proliferation for a reason. Inventing it and proliferating it is definitely the sin though.
The fact that the US toppled tons of countries and killed millions of leftists is okay because ācold warā is some next level hand waving that yet again manages to surprise me. I suppose US sponsored torture was also okay because āterrorismā by your tortured logic. Or perhaps I may be micharacterizing your stance, but then you also display copious levels of US propaganda unironically which makes me doubt this stance is simply a statement rather than a judgement.
You seem to deny wage slavery and other common criticism of capitalism because, āthey are bargained forā. So you donāt have any argument other than it is just the way it is I guess. Why not take it from a mythological founding father who owned slaves and considered all men equal. The one that thought earning a wage made you dependent on your employer and ruined free elections. Strange, but wasnāt there just a shit ton of bosses threatening their workers that they need to vote for Trump or else!?
Later on you claim that everyone pollutes the fuck and dominates the planet because it is just human nature. Another round of apology for the crowd I guess. This is a consistent theme in your responses that is not really nuanced as you claim. Perhaps I am reading too much in, but I am getting a sinking feeling I am not.
Actually, Lincoln did not really free the slaves in any real sense. As I mentioned, share cropping was simply cheaper than regular slavery, often times more brutal, and most importantly was just slavery in another name. Lincoln himself did not even believe blacks were equal with whites until the end of his career.
Which segways nicely into your bullshit about liberty. There is a reason much of the world hates and criticizes liberals. As Lincoln himself demonstrated liberty equates to almost 200 years of free agency for racism. On a side note, for every bullshit founding fatherism and other pieces of US propaganda you crap out know there are many examples of why they stink so bad.
I find the part about the US supplying British against the Nazi as ignoring reality so hard it hurts. It was US industrialists that helped rebuild Germany after WWI. It was US companies that gave material support to the Nazi like IBM providing the computing power and logistics used in the final solution which was, of course, based off the genocide of the Native Americans.
This is how ignorant you act. You are going to praise the US that inspired and had its hands in the Holocaust becauseā¦ they helped both sides!? Excuse me while I go throw up.
Please tell me how I need to read some more, you sure act like a funny person donāt you. You canāt see the future because you canāt even objectively see what has or is happening.
I am glad we can both agree you are an apologist err I mean a person with a nuanced perspective. Setting cynicism aside, we both want a better future which is admirable. I do appreciate your position on this.