Dear Toro:
0. Note: I believe the Green Party is the most consistent advocate against corporate abuses, since both the Democratic and Republican Party candidates tend to depend on corporate financing of campaigns and are not in a position to go against those interests.
At most, they will target the corporate interests in opposition, but not their supporters.
1. Corporations are fine as long as there is proportionate responsibility. Otherwise, the right of personhood throws off the Constitutional checks and balances. This is too easily abused because the corporation can take advantage of exercising "individual civil rights" as a citizen while ALSO enjoying greater collective influence, authority and resources than an individual WITHOUT the checks and balances applied to Government by the Bill of Rights!
2. The solution I have proposed is for Corporations to agree to uphold Constitutional laws and ethics as government does, in order to have rights and freedoms under the same. In short, agreeing to respect equal representation, redress of grievances by due process, and protection of the laws for all people's interests affected under that jurisdiction. So this way, the law-abiding businesses are not adversely affected since they already respect these policies; only those whose intent is to abuse personhood to commit abuses or violations would be denied rights to incorporate. They would have to agree to accept financial costs for restitution or legal action for any such abuses or corruption committed.
(I also believe citizens should agree to uphold Constitutional laws and ethics in order
to invoke rights and freedoms under the same; i.e., you cannot abuse or breach the laws to violate equal protection of others while claiming the same, it has to be consistent.)
ethics-commission.net
3. One historic example of corporate abuses at taxpayers expense, illustrating the abuse of personhood to exercise unequal rights and freedom without adequate checks:
MAXXAM corporation (moved from CA to TX) used junk bonds from the S&L bailout to finance a hostile takeover of a family-owned company Pacific Lumber, in order to crash the company including liquidating the forest land by clearcutting and raiding pension funds.
Cost to taxpayers was estimated at $1.6 billion, plus MAXXAM got to keep the land bought at taxpayers' expense. The company policy was changed from sustainable logging of redwood trees (grown and harvested in 70 year cycles so there would always be more supply and more jobs) to CLEARCUTTING even the ancient oldgrowth forests that the previous owners preserved (redwood trees over 2,000 years old, and developed in an intricate rainforest ecosystem with wildlife species integrated in the river systems that were also destroyed, killing off mass populations of endangered species). Not only did the workers lose their jobs but also their pension funds; until MAXXAM went bankrupt, and after a court battle, the assets were transferred to the GAP company where the struggle to preserve the redwood forest ecosystem and wildlife continues, minus irreversible losses.
All that occurred "within the law" because of corporations having unequal resources and influence to act without proportional accountabilty (even with lawsuits where the unequal legal resources also make it an unfair battle at the expense of public interest and costs).
That case alone is enough to foster distrust of corporate abuses. There are more cases of corporate benefits off corrupt war contracts and financial bailouts at taxpayers' expense but without accountability to the public.
