'Corporations are people,' says every American politician

Out stumping on the campaign trail this week, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney committed the following "gaffe" when confronted by some liberal hecklers:

"Corporations are people, my friend. . . . Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people."

Like the spectacle of a moderately liberal New England governor campaigning as a true, red-blooded social conservative, Romney's remark is ludicrous and liberal pundits have rightly had a field day with it. Corporations, of course, most certainly are not people; they can't be imprisoned, for one. So yes, let's all enjoy a good chuckle at ol' Mitt's expense and hope he provides many more belly laughs in the coming months -- I have my fingers crossed for more impromptu mingling with minorities.

But here's the thing, and the reason I have "gaffe" in scare quotes: Does any national politician -- does any leading Democrat -- actually disagree with what Romney said? Not the rhetoric, which I think most would be wise enough to avoid, but the substance of what he was defending: corporate personhood.

Some would no doubt point to President Obama's denunciation at last year's State of the Union Address of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which held that corporations enjoy the same free speech rights as any other person. However, that response is something of a non-sequitur, as Obama's criticism was not of the root problem behind the decision about which I asked, corporate personhood, but of a narrow ruling that merely extended said legal status. And on strictly legal grounds -- which, full disclosure, I don't much care about -- it's hard to disagree with the court's ruling, which is merely the bizarre consequence of the even more bizarre and longstanding practice of the state bestowing the legal status of a person on an inanimate financial venture.

This isn't nitpicking. Conflating criticism of the Citizens United ruling with criticism of corporate personhood itself is like conflating criticism of a politician with sedition and treason. I mean, what's the fear, exactly: that, thanks to the Supreme Court, corporations are now going to corrupt Our Democracy by buying and selling politicians? I'll admit such an outcome is scary, but if we're going to be in the business of constructing doomsday scenarios, we ought to be sure they differ from the status quo.

The truth is, Romney's "gaffe" is much like Sarah Palin's remark in 2008 that, why yes, the U.S. would be legally obliged to attack Russia if it went to war with a member of NATO. Back then, every pundit and politician with a blog or a microphone went to town ridiculing Palin's ill-considered and risible remark, arguing it proved her unfitness for office, all the while obscuring a key fact: that what she said was indisputably true. Then as now, the real controversy ought not to have been the clumsy way something was stated, but the truth of what was said.

Criticize Romney and the Supreme Court all you want, the more troubling issue is that, legally speaking, corporations are people -- and that no one in establishment political circles sees a problem with that. This bipartisan embrace of the corporate state consequently causes problems for the 99.9 percent of us not likely to sit on any corporate boards for, while real-live people do indeed reap the benefit of corporate profits, corporate personhood and its attendant "limited liability" ensure they face almost none of the consequences of their bad, and often criminal, decisions.

For instance, while mere mortal, flesh-and-blood people would face serious prison time for paying right-wing death squads to execute labor activists, corporate executives who personally approved those very payments were able to conceal their identities and get away with a mere fine from the Justice Department, the cost of which was no doubt passed along to costumers and shareholders as a whole, rather than the actual perpetrators. Legally, the executives weren't responsible, some prick named "Chiquita" was.

Because blame for wrongdoing can be passed off on to another person -- another person who, again, can't go to jail -- corporate executives can get away with reckless behavior as a matter of course. The profit when such recklessness pays off is huge and, of course, theirs to keep. When it doesn't, as in the case of Goldman Sachs and the housing bubble and with BP and its destruction of the Gulf, the worst that happens is someone like Tony Hayward has to delay remodeling the kitchen in their 14th house by a few weeks while, in true American socialistic fashion, the rest of us chip in to pay for their mistakes. And every politician from Mitt Romney to Nancy Pelosi is fine with that, even if they disagree on how best to rationalize it to an angry public.

If you're laughing at Mitt Romney because, well, he's Mitt Romney: Fine. By all means. But if you're laughing at his remark under the impression his stance on corporations is fundamentally at odds with, say, Barack Obama, the laugh's on you.

The United States of British Petroleum

If you're anything like me, or if you've spent more than five minutes over the last decade glancing at the headlines, you're probably suffering from some form of outrage fatigue. Well, make room for one more thing to get mad about.

From Reuters:

Fishermen in Mississippi say they are angry that under the terms of BP's $20 billion oil spill fund, money they earn doing clean-up will be subtracted from their claim against the company.

The fishermen reacted after Kenneth Feinberg, the federal official in charge of administering the compensation fund, announced the decision at a town hall meeting in Biloxi on Friday.

Cast as a great victory against the heartless oil giant that caused the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico it turns out -- surprise! -- that the Obama administration was basically working to help limit BP's financial liability. No other excuse flies when the White House's own head of the fund, Ken Feinberg, is pronouncing that all those fishermen who have been busy cleaning up the same mess that destroyed their livelihood have been working for the very corporation that caused it have been doing so for free.

It doesn't help that Feinberg was a patronizing ass when he announced the dick move:

"[W]orkers can file a claim, but we will subtract the amount they are paid from BP from their claim. That is how it has to work . . . . Of course you can file a claim. You must file a claim, but you cannot get paid twice," Feinberg told the meeting.

Right -- the U.S. government reserves paying people twice for corporate agriculture.

Of course, when it comes to the Gulf we're not talking about paying people twice for the same thing, but rather reimbursing them for the ruin by corporate malfeasance and compensating them for their efforts to try and fix the damage -- two separate, distinct things, as far as BP's financial responsibility is concerned.

But not only is the administration's move unjust, it's simply counterproductive and destined to slow recovery efforts -- why risk your health cleaning up the Gulf when you can get paid the same amount sitting at home watching Terminator? And in light of the public mood towards BP, it's also likely to provoke a good deal of grandstanding from across the political spectrum. If there's a significant outcry, I wouldn't be surprised if the White House somehow found a way to reverse its decision, or explain away Feinberg's comments as an unfortunate mix-up, a miscommunication. And it's not hard to see why: the administration's current stance is akin to letting an arsonist burn a house down and then charge the victim for the cost of rebuilding it -- except you'll never really be able to rebuild the Gulf.

Put another way: it's f*cked. It's also a great example of the State swooping in to protect an influential, major corporation under the auspices of punishing it -- great theater, really -- in this instance crafting a compromise settlement that appears aimed at being just enough to quell popular calls for tarring-and-feathering those British, yacht-racing bastards, without actually forcing Tony Hayward to give up any of his private floating islands.

(Cross-posted at AlterNet)

BP and the federal government: 'unlikely partners'?

President Obama determinedly trying to remember what it feels like to care.

"I’m absolutely confident BP will be able to meet its obligations to the Gulf Coast and to the American people," President Obama proclaimed following his meeting with the oil giant's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg. "BP is a strong and viable company and it is in all our interests that it remains so."

Blah, blah, blah, boilerplate, talking point -- wait, hold on, what the hell did he just say? It's in "all our interests" that BP continue to prosper and thrive even after it just caused the worst environmental disaster in US history? Sorry, but I don't think the average American ought to much care about the future of a multinational corporation that declined to spend the 10 hours it would have taken to cement and stabilize the deepwater well that eventually exploded and killed 11 people, all because the potential loss in profit meant CEO Tony Hayward would have had to wait two more weeks to remodel his third kitchen (in his fourteenth house). Under the "free market" that we certainly do not have but to which Obama occasionally pledges his allegiance, companies that do Very Bad Things should -- and this is obviously just in theory -- have Very Bad Things happen to them in return. Bankruptcy, maybe, with the company's assets divided up amongst the victims of its malfeasance.

Obama apparently doesn't feel the need to elaborate, though, on why it's in "our" interest that BP continue to be BP; on why, like AIG, it also is "too big to fail." Like the rest of the Washington political establishment, he appears to take for granted that it's necessary and just. BP is a major corporation -- one of the 10 biggest in the world -- with quarterly earnings to die for (not funny), ergo it should always remain that way. Too many people with too much money need it to be that way. As the failure of Lehman Brothers showed, no company that was ever once profitable and influential should be allowed to fall by the wayside, lest by upsetting the status quo our golfing buddies be forced the indignity of sending their little Johnny to public school along with the rest of the dirty, nose-picking proles, or so the thinking probably goes; when elites justify policy decisions by pointing to the need for "stability," remember they're likely thinking in terms of them and their friends' social status.

A silly question, though: were you or I the subject of an ongoing investigation for possible criminal wrongdoing in the deaths of nearly a dozen people, countless wildlife and the livelihoods of many Gulf coast residents, ya think the president would be declaring how important it is for everyone that we, the accused, continue to be as "strong and viable" as we were before the alleged crime? To ask is to . . .

And that silly question brings me to the silliest headline/lede of the month, courtesy, as one might expect, The Washington Post. "It was a marriage of necessity, awkward from the start," the paper's Joel Achenbach says of the relationship between oil giant BP and the Obama administration in the wake of the worsening ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The headline? "Oil spill makes unlikely partners of BP and the federal government".

To say the partnership between BP and the federal government is "unlikely" is about as naive a thing as one could write; it's like remarking how "surprising" or "disappointing" it is that Obama hasn't rolled back the power of the presidency since becoming . . . president. The Defense Department, the single largest energy user in the US with a carbon footprint greater than many countries, purchases the majority of its oil and gas from BP. The deepwater rig that exploded and is now leaking as much as 60,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf per day was leased by BP from the federal government, which decided on the behalf of us -- thanks guys! -- that it was in the national interest that the company be able to drill in public waters for private gain. And let's not forget that in 1953 the Eisenhower administration actually helped overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran because the uppity bastards decided it maybe wasn't such a good idea to grant a company run by a foreign government -- BP, then known as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company -- a monopoly over the country's oil resources (commies!).

The piece also undercuts its own premise: that the relationship between BP and the Obama administration has been shaky and Odd Couple-esque. As an anecdote noted in the article shows, the two appear in fact to be getting along like old friends, even coordinating their PR and taking a shot for the other when need be:

The company knows that the White House needs to score political points. For example, according to the Wall Street Journal, officials in Alabama wanted BP to pay for sand barriers to protect beaches. BP was willing go to do so but also saw the advantage in letting the White House appear to be ordering BP to do it against the company's will. Hayward was quoted as saying, "Let the White House have the victory of announcing it, but it's the right thing for us to do."

You almost get the sense that the verdict's already been decided -- BP's here to stay, folks, and there ain't nothing no criminal investigation can do about it -- and that, like with regulatory oversight of the oil industry, the response to the spill from the both the government and the corporation (an increasingly artificial distinction) has had a lot more to do with show, with theatrics, than anything else. Like it has more to do with preventing the masses from grabbing their pitchforks than holding corporate power accountable. Silly, I know.