Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became ""People"" -- and How You Can Fight Back

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Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Jun 14, 2010 - Business & Economics - 385 pages
Unequal taxes, unequal accountability for crime, unequal influence, unequal control of the media, unequal access to natural resources—corporations have gained these privileges and more by exploiting their legal status as persons. How did something so illogical and unjust become the law of the land?
Americans have been struggling with the role of corporations since before the birth of the republic. As Thom Hartmann shows, the Boston Tea Party was actually a protest against the British East India Company—the first modern corporation. Unequal Protection tells the astonishing story of how, after decades of sensible limits on corporate power, an offhand, off-the-record comment by a Supreme Court justice led to the Fourteenth Amendment—originally passed to grant basic rights to freed slaves—becoming the justification for granting corporations the same rights as human beings. And Hartmann proposes specific legal remedies that will finally put an end to the bizarre farce of corporate personhood.
This new edition has been thoroughly updated and features Hartmann's analysis of two recent Supreme Court cases, including Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which tossed out corporate campaign finance limits.
 

Contents

The Battle to Save Democracy
1
Corporations Take Over
13
From the Birth of American Democracy through the Birth of Corporate Personhood
55
Unequal Consequences
187
Restoring Personhood to People
285
Acknowledgments
331
Notes
334
Art Credits
353
Index
354
About the Author
374
Copyright

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About the author (2010)

Thom Hartmann is the nation’s leading progressive talk radio host, heard on over a hundred stations, as well as on XM and Sirius radio, and seen on live nationwide television via the Free Speech TV network. He is the bestselling author of eighteen books, including Threshold, Screwed, and Cracking the Code.

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