Taking back democracy

It’s time to reclaim government by the people, avowed Laird Monahan in a recent interview at The Journal, and it’s not too late to abolish the “strangle hold which powerful corporations currently hold on all three branches of our government.”

Just how America’s corporations became so influential in the governing of this country is an issue on which Monahan has done his homework. It’s taken him years and an evolution of disappointments to reach what he believes is the only solution: to abolish the status of “personhood” which corporations currently enjoy, and to balance the corporate manipulation of the American electorate process by forming a new Constitutional amendment.

By definition, a corporation is group regarded as individual by law, authorized to act as a single entity. The 17th-century Hudson Bay and East India companies are some of the oldest corporations in the world.

American corporations began making inroads immediately following the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, Monahan said, noting that founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton had immediate concerns about corporate political power. Legal conflicts and arguments began shortly after the Constitution was adopted, he said.

Corporations: Are they people?

“If corporations are recognized as ‘people,’ ‘We the People’ becomes diminished, by insinuation, to something less than human,” Monahan posted recently at www.lairdandrobin.org. “For human beings to be regarded as equals with corporations is a preposterous notion.”

“Personhood” as it pertains to corporations, was first used, questionably, in the 1886 U.S. Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, which dealt with taxation.

In what would otherwise have been a mundane matter, the case is notable because of a court reporter’s questionable transcription. The traditional summary of the Supreme Court’s opinion included the scribe’s interpretation that corporations should enjoy the same rights under the Fourteenth Amendment as did natural persons. But this determination was altogether absent in the final opinion issued by the justices.

So with that dubious proclamation, the statement became enshrined in U.S. history as the decided case at that point, Monahan told The Journal.

This means, he explained, that corporations enjoy all the rights bestowed on individuals by the first 10 amendments. This also means that the wealthiest of American corporations are funneling unlimited amounts of money to lawmakers who feel obligated to favor corporate agendas.

No longer for public good

“Let me say at the beginning, I think freedom of speech is one of our greatest achievements in democracy, and corporations are an essential part of our economy,” Monahan clarified.

“But corporations are creations of people. And originally, they were chartered with the obligation of existing for the public good. They existed to increase efficiency of production, investment. And with investment — innovation and discovery. Wonderful things came of that, originally.”

Monahan asserts that today’s corporations have outgrown their obligation of public interest. And, he says, the best correction for the problem of corporate dominance over government is the abolishment of corporations’ status as persons. “The opinion of the courts that corporations are legal persons is terribly wrong,” Monahan said.

About Laird Monahan

A 30-year merchant seaman who retired as second in command on the Mesabi Miner ore boat, the articulate Monahan is also a Vietnam veteran. He is the grandson of Koochiching pioneer doctors Robert and Elizabeth Monahan whose arrival in Borderland, along with Dr. Mary Ghostley, coincided with the 1907 arrival of the railroad.

Monahan, now of Chicago, describes himself as having been “a very poor scholar” in his youth but coming from “very good stock. I became everything I could become,” Monahan told The Journal.

He unflinchingly calls himself an “Orangeman,” the Monahans belonging to the order of the Protestant Irish. Mother Gene Ritchie Monahan was a New York educated artisan whose paintings graced the windows of her small Ranier residence for many years; and father George was technical writer in the electronics industry. Sister and Ranier summer resident JeanE Kelly of Chicago, and brother Robin of St. Paul, who is a cancer survivor, are both nurses. Robin, also a Vietnam veteran, most recently worked 10 years for the Wilderness Inquiry program.

The walk for democracy evolved from Laird Monahan’s disenchantment with a system which turns good people into bad politicians. “I have been so disappointed by the candidates I have voted for. I have been misled by campaign rhetoric time after time.” Monahan reveals that he has cast his election votes to the left, to the right, and independently.

He chooses his words judiciously before delivering them in a booming baritone. He is clearly dedicated to the task of illustrating the destruction which he believes corporations bring to America’s government. Earnestly, he said that the governing of America has shifted from a democracy to an oligarchy (a small group of people who control a nation for their own purposes).

“If corporations are covered by the First Amendment Freedom of Speech clause,” he said, “they can spend unlimited amounts of money in our legal process. There are more lobbyists, 10 to one or more, than legislators in Washington.”

The majority of U.S. corporations make $1 billion or less annually, while about a dozen make hundreds of billions. “Certainly enough to control a country,” said Monahan. He noted that if a corporation making $600 million annually spent just 1 percent for lobbying in the electorate process; that would be more than the total spent in the 2008 election which was the most expensive in history.

“The resulting problem is that corporations dictate who runs for office, and who gets elected, by the force of the power of money,” he continued, noting the inevitable intimidation that pushes those officials to vote in favor, or against the issues that would benefit the corporation.

“The problem then being that legislators are beholden to corporations for their own election,” Monahan said. “There is absolutely a conflict of interest. They have stolen our representatives and we do not have a voice anymore.”

Impetus to make a difference

A less-familiar paragraph of the Declaration of Independence inspires Monahan to seek a Constitutional amendment in which voters could take personhood away from corporations. The paragraph: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it ...”

This is a monumental challenge — all things considered.

On Jan. 21 of this year, a divided (5-4) Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections (see Citizens United v. Federal Elections Committee).

The court’s majority in this case felt that the decision was a vindication of the First Amendment’s basic free speech principle. The dissenting justices said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace corrupts democracy. Dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens said that “the majority had committed a grave error.”

The New York Times said the ruling represented “a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences.” The opinion does not disturb the bans on direct contributions to candidates, but the two sides disagreed about whether independent expenditures came close to amounting to the same thing.

Pres. Barack Obama called the ruling “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”

The news on Jan. 21 nearly brought Monahan to his knees, he said. “I almost came to tears. Shortly after that, I just got angry. … I’m not going to lie down and take it anymore.”

Non-political mission

Only reticently does Monahan cite the latest health reform bill as legislation which “appears to be one for the people,” but in reality is another score for corporations. He points out that while “health care for everyone is a wonderful thing, it’s the people who will pay a third party through the nose” to get that health care. “And being obligated to buy into an insurance program is not health care,” he said. “The insurance companies are walking off with the cake.”

Monahan said he hates enumerating political issues because they absolutely are not the reason for the brothers’ walk across the country. “This (walk) is not about health care; this is not about teachers’ salaries; this is not about tax reform, the war in Iraq or climate change,” he said fervently. “This is about getting back democracy from the oligarchy that it’s become.”

The solution ultimately rests in publicly funded elections, Monahan said, noting that it might complicate a viable three-party system, “but our two-party system is broken. We have to do what we can do.”

Monahan acknowledges that corporations are run by people. “They are a part of our economy and need protections, too,” he said. “After corporate personhood is abolished, they can get the protection they need through legislation. But they do need an avenue to protect them from the tyranny of the majority. I can understand that.”

Walking across America

The Monahans recently drove to California to begin the journey. An email to the Journal Thursday found them in Eureka at the home of David Cobb, the 2004 Green Party presidential candidate. Cobb’s publicity experience will guide them, and the pair already have radio interviews and a possible TV appearance on their schedule.

“We will be going to San Francisco on Saturday to attend a reception and send-off by the Move On organization,” said the email, “and start our walk Sunday morning from the NW corner of Golden Gate Park after dipping our toes in a very cold Pacific Ocean.”

Crossing Golden Gate Bridge, the journey will trace the rural U.S. Route 50 through Nevada and Utah, and much of the way. The final destination at the Lincoln Memorial is expected about Oct. 22. Monahan says he has no clear expectations of that culmination, but enjoys the fantasy of leading 100,000 people across the Arlington Memorial Bridge.

“I would hope the politicians that back this would stand up,” he said. “If we can galvanize people who vote, to vote for candidates who will promise their loyalty to human constituents — to us — unequivocally, then over the next two to three elections, we can elect enough legislators to vote for a Constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood — and give America back to its people.”