Tag Archives: Corporations

National Law vs. Natural Laws: Addressing the Kim Davis question

As we follow a national conversation, changes that reflect a deeper shift in the way American law is perceived begin to surface

If we were really to live by natural law, there wouldn’t be any discussion about mining the Grand Canyon or giving away portions of it to multi-national mining operations. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

When Rowan County, KY clerk Kim Davis was arrested and jailed for contempt of court, a national conversation began. Some declared this was the beginning of the jailing of Christians. Others sided with the ruling from the Supreme Court that removed any restrictions for issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.

Somewhere in the midst of this, we heard Davis’ attorney argue that “natural law” had precedence over “national law” as the basis for the merits of her case. Applied here in a very narrow sense, we now must step back and bring to light what that would actually mean in a nation that, until now, has relied on a legislative system of establishing laws and a judicial system for examining the application of those laws in a civilized society.

Natural Law, used in the legal sense, is defined as:

The unwritten body of universal moral principles that underlie the ethical and legal norms by which human conduct is sometimes evaluated and governed. Natural law is often contrasted with positive     law, which consists of the written rules and regulations enacted by government.”

With this argument of “natural law” in mind, we have to go back to the basic principles laid out for humans when creation took place. Mankind was to be conservators of the earth; preserving, protecting and conserving earth and her resources for future generations. There could be no laws allowing for pollution of air, water or soil. There could be no laws that allowed for the extraction of natural gas, oil, coal, ore, and most precious minerals mined from the earth in the industrial age methods of stripping the earth of everything else in the process.

Natural law would not allow for corporations to be considered people too, in any court of law. Natural law would treat all people, the crowning achievement of the Maker’s creation, as equal without discrimination based on origins, choices or inherent forces. Natural law would remove all borders and fences, all status of “legal” versus “illegal” immigrant and instead react as citizens in the EU have done with the recent refugee crisis. They would treat these people as heroes and provide all basic needs as soon as possible.

Under “natural law,” there is no need for a USCIS (United States Citizenship & Immigration Services.  There is no need for war over oil, money or specific land masses. The list goes on.

When our Constitution was written, the founders knew what it was to have state-sponsored religion. They knew humans do not all think, believe or live the same. They knew this was a problem in England and sought to establish this grand experiment in democracy based on an establishment of “National Law” and a system whereby these laws are able to be examined and adjusted as society’s needs changed.

So the argument now of “National Law” as opposed to “natural law” falls flat on its face. It underscores what is really happening here: that when white Christian privileged people are offended, they will go to no limit to cherry-pick scripture for Bible verses to support their arguments. They will rally together for support and ignore the fact that they are trampling on the very Constitution and Bill of Rights that allows for their grandstanding.

If they believe their Bible, they would understand God punishes the sinner; not another individual. They would be horrified to know if their children disobeyed, they are to take them outside the city and stone them to death, if they are to act on Old Testament law.

In the long run, groups or individuals do not get to have their “laws” supersede the Supreme Court. If that were the case, not a single corporation could ever be brought to trial on any charge – ever, after being ruled to be “people” by the Supreme Court. They would simply say they were acting on their beliefs.

So here’s the question: Do you want to live where laws are clearly established so everyone knows and understands them, or do you believe, as those who support Kim Davis do, that we should live in a world where any individual’s interpretation of religious text has more merit than laws or courts?

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UK Doctors Warn TTIP Means Certain Death for Public Healthcare

Physicians say national health service faces lawsuits, bullying, and privatization under contentious trade pact

By Lauren McCauley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published June 23, 2015.

With TTIP negotiations set to continue in July, doctors in the United Kingdom have vowed to fight the deal. (Photo: Alex Proimos/cc/flickr)

With TTIP negotiations set to continue in July, doctors in the United Kingdom have vowed to fight the deal. (Photo: Alex Proimos/cc/flickr)

Doctors in the United Kingdom are warning that passage of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will mean certain death for the country’s public healthcare system, opening the door for privatization and lawsuits from the United States’ for-profit medical industry.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association (BMA) in Liverpool on Tuesday, Dr. Henry McKee of Belfast warned members that “if there is anything resembling an [National Health Service] by the time this treaty is in negotiation, it won’t survive this treaty.”

“The correct motion is to kill this treaty dead, not to tolerate it sneaking in and mugging us,” he added. Continue reading

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There Goes the Neighborhood

By respres (http://www.flickr.com/photos/respres/2539334956/) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

By respres [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

About 3 months ago, two properties adjacent to ours were put on the market.

The first house was a foreclosure, currently owned by Fannie Mac. We expect this property to be on the market quite some time, as it has not been updated since the original owner bought it in the early 1960s. We have nicknamed it the squirrel condo, as the 15-foot rotted facia along the roof line has been chewed by the little tree rats, and they have gained access to the attic. We also call it a beehive, as the siding is so damaged and rotten that bees have infested all accessible areas and chase any lawn mower away from their protected territory.

The first time a contractor came to mow this property after it was listed, they damaged our lawn with an eighteen foot arc that cut through our sod and destroyed our lawn up to a foot and a half over the property boundary. We estimate the actual value of this home to be about half the listed price, and pray any potential buyer has the wisdom to have an independent inspector check it over before signing a purchase agreement. We have reported the roof line to the city environmental officer, who is supposed to enforce codes that would require repair.

The other property, an identical house to ours without some of the add-ons this house received, just sold. I met my new neighbors today. Continue reading

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As Bills Advance, Will Grassroots Resistance Finally Overcome Fast Track Push?

Grassroots and labor groups to hold week of action calling on Democratic lawmakers to block secretive trade pact

Under fast track, 'fast' is little more than a euphemism for 'avoid the public, and benefit the fortunate few,' warns Ohio State law professor Margot Kaminski. (Photo: Backbone Campaign/cc/flickr)

Under fast track, ‘fast’ is little more than a euphemism for ‘avoid the public, and benefit the fortunate few,’ warns Ohio State law professor Margot Kaminski. (Photo: Backbone Campaign/cc/flickr)

Written by Lauren McCauley, staff writer for CommonDreams, published April 14, 2015.

Signaling that loud grassroots resistance may be working, congressional Democrats are failing to get behind the White House’s push for unilateral authority over the secretive 12-nation trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), according to news reports on Tuesday.

At issue is whether the House will approve a pending bill that would grant President Barack Obama ‘Fast Track’ trade promotion authority, which would allow the White House to bypass Congress and seal the deal on the controversial TPP. Continue reading

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Who Are They Supposed To Represent?

One of the worst kept, and at the same time best kept, secrets in Washington over the last few years has been the negotiations over the Trans Pacific Partnership, commonly referred to as TPP. If you’ve been following what we discuss, the TPP should be very familiar to you by now; it’s one of our favorite subjects to write about.

Trade Ministers from TPP meeting in Vladivostok. Photo by East Asia and Pacific Media Hub U.S. Department of State [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Trade Ministers from TPP meeting in Vladivostok. Photo by East Asia and Pacific Media Hub U.S. Department of State [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

We’ve discussed ad nauseum the secrecy that the Obama administration has enshrouded the negotiations with. However, on Monday The Huffington Post ran a story that puts all the other attempts at hiding the details of the TPP from the public to shame. It goes like this: Continue reading

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TTIP: the next phase of the austerity agenda

A recent report by the Austrian Foundation for Development Research has critically assessed many of the claims about the supposed benefits of TTIP, finding them to be flawed, unrealistic and ideologically biased. Here we speak with the foundation’s director, Werner Raza.

Demonstration against TTIP in Madrid. Demotix/Marcos del Mazo.

Most of the impact assessments on TTIP commissioned by the various European member states and by the European Commission describe the signing of the EU-US trade deal as an ‘economic El Dorado’ that will bring about more growth, more exports and more employment, and will almost single-handedly drag Europe out of the crisis.

Continue reading

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The TPP and its constitutional discontents

By occupostal for Occupy World Writes

The Trans Pacific Partnership has been called “NAFTA on steroids” and a threat to national sovereignty re  U.S. trade relationships with countries in the Asian Pacific region. Not just our sovereignty is at stake, but that of all participating nations, since the TPP’s design grants, in effect, legal dominion to transnational corporations wherever law relates to economic growth and development interests, regardless of whichever member nation they conveniently call home base. National and local law and regulation inimical to the provisions of this economic treaty may be subject to coercion, via punitive monetary judgments against their nations when corporations based elsewhere stand to lose profits. This could incentivize change to or nullification of such laws–consumer, labor, environmental protections, you name it–as well as create other negative impacts on their peoples. In a world now ruled by thinking conditioned by capital, hardly anything but “the pursuit of happiness” can avoid being monetized—so the TPP’s regime casts a wide net by design, and could cast a wider and deeper shadow on the lives of every participating country’s citizens. 

Although still not finalized, the U.S. means to “fast track” this treaty through its Congress so that acceptance is yea or nay, with little reflection and no amendment possible. Given the massive influence of money on politicians, fast track authority introduces a disaster in the making. At this very moment fast track legislation’s prospects have been dealt a setback blow … but it’s far from a dead prospect. 

In this country, only the President, his U.S. Trade Representative, and invited corporate stakeholders have been players in the treaty negotiations. Widespread alarm over the TPP’s negative effects extends to dismay over the near inability to de-fang it if it passes into law. Under our Constitution’s supremacy clause (Article 6, clause 2), treaties are co-equal “law of the land,” even though they are not laws in the usual sense of those passed by Congress and which must conform to the Constitution in all respects. The status of a treaty leaves open the possibility that it could prove—by intention or by unintended effects—to subvert Constitutional rights and roles for governing entities. What happens then has never been legally judged in a definitive way that would apply to a treaty case so comprehensive in impact as to raise the thought of compromised sovereignty. And that’s what we have in the TPP.

Our Constitution gives our executive branch President the power to negotiate treaties for the country. Fast track would reduce the legislative branch Congress’s review and approval of any treaty to a nominal role–rather than the more substantive one suggested by “He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties” (Article 2, Section 2); let alone—since this is an international trade agreement in the form of a treaty–the specific power of the whole Congress to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations” (Article 1, Section 8).

Given this perspective, it may seem surprising that in the historical creation and implementation of fast track authority legislation, it has never apparently been challenged as unconstitutional. (At best, elected political leaders have called the process “undemocratic”–just listen to their talking heads at this very moment in time.) Fast track is the most obvious weak link in any legal defense of what our executive and legislative branches have done to short-circuit their responsible job performance on behalf of their own people, and to instead skate by to the tune of undue corporate influence.

As I suggested above, Constitutional conflict as regards the TPP treaty itself is another, unsettled matter. But if one follows the “spirit” of the Constitution—and not just the “letter” of what it says regarding the status of treaties—it’s more than reasonable to conclude bad job performance here again. Among the “supreme law of the land,” certainly the Constitution should be the first among equals… or, to adapt the George Orwell of Animal Farm: All supreme law is equal, but some supreme law is more equal than others. 

In Federalist No. 64, John Jay put the dilemma bluntly. In partial answer to the question “…if they make disadvantageous treaties, how are we to get rid of those treaties?,” he answered: “As to corruption, the case is not supposable. He must either have been very unfortunate in his intercourse with the world, or possess a heart very susceptible of such impressions, who can think it probable that the President and two thirds of the Senate will ever be capable of such unworthy conduct. The idea is too gross and too invidious to be entertained. But in such a case, if it should ever happenthe treaty so obtained from us would, like all other fraudulent contracts, be null and void by the law of nations.

We’ve come a long way since John Jay’s day and what was inconceivably gross and invidious then can now be entertained as our norm. The U.S. Supreme Court has seen to that by sanctioning corporations as persons, and unlimited and unidentified application of money as speech, in Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission (2010). Soon the wealthiest “natural” persons may join corporate ranks courtesy of McCutcheon v. FEC (decision pending).

Jay’s judgment that a fraudulent contract should be legally null and void might be realized through a legal challenge that establishes where and how such super-treaties as the TPP rank with respect to the Constitution.

But an important alternative strategy is to challenge such a treaty locally, by creating “TPP-Free Zones” that would deny its authority, one municipality at a time. This is grassroots or micro-level thinking that can have positive impact should the trend grow successfully. And it becomes a direct embodiment of Jay’s calling out of fraud—by the collective will of the people that the fraud most affects, rather than by the hoped-for largesse of their representatives who either benefit from the fraud or remain too unaffected personally by it to modify or repeal the treaty themselves. 

In the final analysis, we need to remain ready to push against the TPP at both the macro- and micro-levels. Because it won’t go away until the nature and purpose of corporations is modified to serve the common human good, not simply profit for the select few. Don’t hold your breath on that goal being entertained, even by our governments, any time soon.

For more background on the TPP, see our previous article, TPP – Why You MUST Care, and links to Expose the TPP and Flush the TPP!. You can also read this analysis of fast track trade authority by Public Citizen. 

           

 (Click image to read) 

 Infographic that describes the digital rights implications of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. CC-BY-3.0  Anonymous assigned to the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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