Facing new challenge, Romney stakes out fresh position

There’s plenty of places to post this sort of mindless partisan drivel on the internet. Do you have to do it on Crooked Timber?

There’s plenty of places to waste your time making pointless complaints. Do you have to do it on Crooked Timber?

Whoever it is at the other end of your flightsuit link is right.
The obvious side-by-side comparison is here.
(Unfortunately, the only large format version of the photo I could find is hosted by Canadians, and is therefore inherently suspect.)

Corporations are spandrels!

I come to CT for Berube’ and Holbo, so preach it Prof.

C

It is said: “In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was Corporation.”

Honestly, I’m a little shocked that you forgot to affix the appropriate blind link to the phrase “Rick is on a roll.”

I can’t get on Romney’s case for this. It is a perfectly reasonable in context:

Romney explained that one way to fulfill promises on entitlement programs is to “raise taxes on people,” but before he could articulate his position on not raising taxes, someone interrupted.
“Corporations!” a protester shouted, apparently urging Romney to raise taxes on corporations that have benefited from loopholes in the tax code. “Corporations!”
“Corporations are people, my friend,” Romney said.
Some people in the front of the audience shouted, “No, they’re not!”
“Of course they are,” Romney said. “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”

It is the US supreme court that has the unreasonable beliefs about corporations being people:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

Not sure (my study of Roman law and such is pretty rudimentary), but I think that the earliest, or at least most widespread, corporations in a western tradition of law were concerned with making sure that, when a person died, he got buried properly. Let’s pool our funds for burying one another! Let’s get together for pot-luck suppers (with plenty of wine) as we mark the time till that moment — when we can have another supper together!
I dunno. This scenario (whether or not it’s correct) makes me fond of the notion of a corporation.
Just hit me. Does Romney’s Mormonism play in here? Talk about corporations around the dead!

My guess is that the concern about the thingification of persons and the personification of things has its roots in the outcry against dehumanization expressed in German Idealism (Kant, Hegel, Schiller, and Marx to the extent that he remained a German Idealist–see Bernard Yack, The Longing for Total Revolution). There seems to be a lot undercutting that nowadays–the philosophy of posthumanism, the anthropological rehabilitation of forms of animism (e.g. fauna, forests and rivers as persons), and the thing/actant studies of Latour and his followers.

The Social Security causes abortion thing sounds sufficiently Counterintuitive! that surely Slate or the New Republic could work up a supporting article from an, er, reputable economist.

LB@4: I think Romney’s more of a, “On the veldt there were no corporate taxes.” kind of guy.

As Volatire remarked, at times like this one must either laugh or hang oneself. Three cheers for Berube for making us laugh.

Yeah, today this week this decade was very much a “should I hang myself” kind of day week decade. So I wrote this post instead.

Berube, if you still want a chance at the Republican nomination, you’re gonna have to be a hell of a lot more sillier than this.

Receivership is murder!

Every filing of articles of incorporation is sacred.

This is probably not what Franklin meant when he said “We must all hang together or we will all hang separately.”

However, he might have appreciated the irony of “A republic, if you can keep it” being used ad nauseam by wingnuts hellbent on destroying said republic. Or perhaps he would have simply hanged himself separately.

What, is that some kind of Internet tradition?

Not that I’m aware of.

How about a 4 year ‘life time’ limit on Corporate Welfare, ie subsidies?

“Lizardbreath, the evolution of corporations is a theory that’s out there. It’s got some gaps in it. ”

No kidding. I mean does anyone really want to believe corporations were descended from limited partnerships? You might as well say people were descended from apes.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/08/25/2011-08-25_giant_rat_killed_by_pitchfork_in_marcy_houses_is_believed_to_be_.html

How to view this entrepreneurial rodent, which stands to inherit Brooklyn post- earthquake and hurricane? Sign of the apocalypse, neoliberal globalizer, or evidence that teh American Frontier is not yet closed? How intelligently designed are its pouches? I want answers, and all I have are questions.

a giant clusterf*ck.

When Corporations Have Sex.

If you want to go back to the Southern Pacific Railroad, shouldn’t he have said “Corporations are octupuses too”?

Wait, have we just been Carlcurled?

And how many corporations will Obama leave to die after his Katrina devastates buffets the east coast?

Prof. Berube,

Thank you for the kind words for my letter.

A damning video of Perry (given his penchant for dressing up, perhaps it shows him in lace or leather?) would be a sweet end to his all ‘Muriken campaign — funny how many real ‘Murikens come from the lands of secession. Given what W got away with, however, I hope the video’s owner checks the kearning before they put it out.

As I’m ignorant of all internet traditions, could someone clue me in to what a “Carlcurled” is?

[Chortles while indulging in celebratory terrorist fist jabs]

What kind of a roll is Rick on? Given his political stances, I’d expect it to be a Kaiser roll, but, without a link, there’s no way to tell.

If it’s a smoked link, then it should definitely be a long roll.

Corporations may be people, but they are not headed to the Celestial Kingdom until they have been wedded to at least three Nephite maidens, and given issue by each.

“Heroes didn’t fight and die at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and the Wilderness so that people* could be bought and sold in a public marketplace.”

True now, but is it true under Perry’s interpretation of the constitution? After Nixon’s southern strategy, the Dixiecrats were largely incorporated into the modern Republican party. Would such a pro-segregationist party really oppose a transaction that sooo clearly benefits everyone involved? Where else would corporations get food, clothing, a steady job and the kind of moral education fit for a child-like mentality that sees the world as arranged for its own good?

“I believe you were here for the very invention of the form!”

Thank you for the clarification. As long as it does not entail the risk of disemvoweling (Twas horrible to behold!) I am willing to share credit for the origin of this tradition.

So Maiden Lane was sort of a late term abortion?

“Well, it’s been argued that corporations are inherently psychopaths … but I’m not sure that it justifies buying and selling them.”

The point about the buying and selling of our corporate persons was made in the context of Rick Perry’s states’ rights reading (what’s now become known as the strong 10th amendment interpretation) of the U.S. constitution. Now, if that take on the constitution is nationally accepted, so that the states of the former CSA can choose to reintroduce slavery, the arguments against the trafficking in corporate persons lose much of their force as markets for our corporate citizens wouldn’t be legally distinguishable from the reopened markets for our citizens of color.

It is in that context that your point needs to be re-imagined. With a strong reading of the 10th amendment, is there, in fact, any justification for the national government to restrain the trade in corporate persons within a state because they are mentally unstable? For, as long as the trade remains within local markets, is not the regulation of the quality of the goods a concern of the state and local governments? Even then, given the widely known psychic deficiency of corporate citizens, and in the interest of avoiding unnecessary, nanny-state like intrusion into the private affairs of this nation’s Christian people, the need for statutes is debatable. After all, is this not the kind of issue that is best sorted out by the wisdom of the market?

In the craven and reactionary recesses of my mind, I might say there are, but that is only because the personality disorder that I was socialized into fails to defer first to the consumer’s benefit and the salutary effects of greasing the palms of the job-creating producers.

Several weeks ago, I made the simplistic suggestion that our current economic malaise is the direct consequence of the US decision to invade Iraq. I also suggested that had George Bush leveled with the American public about the real cost of the invasion (three trillion plus), a plurality of Americans might well have decided to simply start using nukes in the Middle East. I also stressed my ignorance of economics, not out of any particular desire to be candid, but rather to emphasize the fact that any reasonably intelligent individual had to understand that shipping half the US army half-way around the world would cost considerably more than Cheney and company were ready to admit.

I just now read a review http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz142/English of Joseph Stiglitz’s Three Trillion Dollar War. I have not, of course, read the book. Who ever does?

It seems clear, however, that Stiglitz agrees that the economic crisis is the real price of an invasion many Americans were convinced would be almost free. My question several weeks ago, and again now, is whether Bush will be regarded as a “great president” for misrepresenting the true costs of an invasion of Iraq to the American people. We know that Bush was elected as more of an isolationist than an interventionist. My own belief is that a large number of Americans on both sides of the aisle would have been quite pleased to see several Middle Eastern or North African capitals go up in smoke post 9/11. But perhaps I’m not putting enough stock in the morality of American liberals. I’ll allow that sensible folks in such a discussion would rightly point out that the “real costs” of nuking Tripoli or Islamabad might be much higher than three trillion. I’m still persuaded, however, that many Americans would have opted from using US WMD against brown people in any target-rich environment.

Will historians credit Bush and Cheney for steering Americans away from such a discussion?