If a corporation is a person, that comes with responsibilities, as well as rights. Our current system gives them all the rights with none of the responsibilities. If I knowingly dumped a substance into the food supply that killed lots of people, I’d be (rightly) charged with murder, and possibly domestic terrorism. A corporation does it? Nothing. Lawsuits. Fines (maybe).

Heck, does the ruling even have any limitations on where corporations are established? I’m pretty sure non-citizens in the US have First Amendment rights as well, because the Amendment doesn’t really cover the right – it covers the creation of laws that abridge rights. So, there’s no problem with any non-US corporation getting into the party, right?

1. It’s ironic that the purpose of asset forfeiture is that criminals don’t get to use their ill-gotten gains for their own good. I have no problem with that. However, the irony here is that means that Tenaha should have their ill-gotten gains taken from them – this shouldn’t even be problem.

2. In most cases I believe that rogue DAs, police officers, and judges *should* have to pay for their own defense and *should* be liable individually. In this case, though, I think Tehana should share responsibility. It’s not just this DA that was corrupt; in fact the entire criminal justice system there from the police to the DA’s office to the courts were in on this little scam, and as such the people there *should* pay. She wasn’t a rogue acting outside her official capacity. To the contrary, she was part of a criminal organization acting in place of their government, apparently with the sanction of the people living there. The fact that their Baptist “church” had accepted $10,000 of the filthy lucre tells me that this community was aware of what was going on and, at best, complicit.

so… after they chuckled about the ‘joke’, they told him not to do ‘that one’ again. we’ve repeatedly seen minor offenses like this prosecuted as a federal crime when an individual makes a ‘joke’.

But if you ask why corporate status, itself a grant of privilege by government, exists in the first place…

There is a problem, but not the one you think. Elected officials provide the public with (give or take) the government they want. However, the public is incapable of reconciling that (1) they are getting what they want with (2) what they’re getting isn’t very good. As a defense measure, the public convinces itself that the process is rigged by special interests, corporate money, backroom dealing, Jews… whatever it is today.

Because this is a way for the public to absolve itself of moral and intellectual responsibility for its choices, it is a very dangerous thing.

What about corporations that are partly owned by foreign interests? Is it simply enough that the company be incorporated in the US or traded in the US?

Russell has been left “high and dry,” her attorney says.

“She’ll have to pay for her defense out of her own resources, which are limited,” said Tom Henson, Russell’s attorney.

Dunno about you, but my heart bleeds for her.

Yeah but even poor people today have TVs and telephones so everything is peachy, right?

“She’ll have to pay for her defense out of her own resources, which are limited,” said Tom Henson, Russell’s attorney. “This whole thing has kind of fallen into a never-never land.
“She feels very strongly that she has done nothing wrong and she’s not liable, and neither are the other defendants. They had good cause for whatever they did,” Henson added.

Something tells me these DAs don’t accept these arguments from the people they prosecute. Why should we accept such things from them?

[PS: The taxpayers should pay for her defence -- she's being sued in her official capacity -- but using the asset forfeiture fund itself makes no sense]

That said, I’m not sure what you all are crowing about. It’s not as though a victory for corporate influence in our political system is a victory for individual liberty.

The Community Reinvestment Act, Evaluated