A must-read piece that is short yet packed with goodness over at Investor's Business Daily. Michael Leven and Richard Jackson remind us of the Democrat/Obama/Elizabeth Warren sneer at the idea of corporations being people, but quickly switch to the facts:
The idea that businesses are people isn't a new concept. Indeed, it's been around for almost two hundred years as a matter of law.
As far back as 1819, in Dartmouth College v Woodward, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized corporations as having the same rights as every other American citizen to enter into and enforce contracts secured under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Years later in a separate case, The Supreme Court returned to the corporate personhood well again, saying this:
"Under the designation of 'person' there is no doubt that a private corporation is included (in the Fourteenth Amendment). Such corporations are merely associations of individuals united for a special purpose and permitted to do business under a particular name and have a succession of members without dissolution."
But the concept of personhood for corporations isn't merely established law. It's common sense.
Who starts a corporation but people? Who started Apple and IBM and McDonald's and Domino's Pizza and Facebook but people? And who starts the local auto body shop and the local Italian restaurant and the local charitable organization or church but people?
Corporations hire people, and feed families, they do charity work and community service. Of course corporations are people.
So why did Warren say what she said?
Is it inexperience? Is it a lack of substantive contact with American business?
Or a deliberate attempt to somehow strip corporations of their humanity?
Any why didn't our president clear the air, and the record?