Things like this happen because in the late 19th century (not that long ago, actually) we allowed corporations to argue that they—the corporations—were people, entitled to all the same rights as real people. This was a major change from centuries of belief that anything resembling a corporation was an artificial entity created by governments of kings or states and entitled only to the rights specifically granted to it by the king or state which created it.

Even so, it wasn’t until the 1970s that corporations successfully convinced the Supreme Court that they were entitled to all the protections the Bill of Rights affords. Now, corporations, by virtue of money, power and size (all things, by the way, that the Founding Fathers feared, and all reasons why they refused to allow corporations to exist without very specific rules-driven charters—which rules were finally overturned in the late 1800s) have more power than actual, real human beings. As one writer put it, “They’ve stolen the fourteenth amendment.”

It’s time to stop this. Corporations are not people. And we, the people, need to convince our legislatures to quit treating them as such.

More on this in the future; it’s one of the (many) things I’m staying up late nights to read law review articles on. 😉

The most important thing to remember and to convince legislatures of: Corporations are not—I repeat, not—persons!