Corporate Charters

 

Here's a question you may have never before considered:  How does a corporation come into being?  Here's how:

A corporation comes into being because a group of investors, having decided to incorporate, asks a State for a (corporate) charter.  When the State issues that charter, the corporation springs into existence.  The corporation is a creature of the State that issued the charter.

People (and courts) sometimes treat corporations as if they were persons; they are considered 'artificial persons', 'artificial' meaning 'created'.  Because of this, they are often considered to have all the powers and rights of real persons, but this is not logically defensible.  A real person is the biological output of other real persons and can participate in producing other real persons, all without the intervention of the State.  None of that is true for artificial persons like corporations.  Corporations cannot create other corporations without the approval of the State;  they are, in this respect, sterile like mules.

Because a corporation is a creature of the State, it has only the attributes acquired by heredity from its parent.  That is, it can have only those powers that were endowed to the State by the State's creators, viz.: the people of the State.  Conversely, any powers that were withheld from the State by the people cannot have been passed on to the corporation.

A wide variety of powers were withheld from the States and from the federal government that, via Congress, creates new states.  Most of us are familiar with the Bill of Rights — which probably should have been called 'The Bill of Prohibitions' since it mostly lists things the federal government (and, by extension, States) are forbidden to do;  things like:  interfere with the free expression of peoples' opinions,  discriminate among customers based on their exercise of rights retained by real people,  &c.

So, if a State is forbidden to discriminate among its customers (i.e.: citizens), how can a corporation, a creature of that State, have such a power?  If a State is forbidden to block the free exercise of expression by its citizens, how can a corporation, a creature of that State, have such a power?  The answer is that a corporation cannot and does not have any such power.  Doing such acts is a violation of the corporate charter.  The proper remedy for a corporation that violates its charter is for the State to withdraw the charter, killing the corporation.

Adios, FaceBook, Inc.

Adios, Twitter, Inc.

Adios, MasterCard, Inc.

There are plenty of others waiting to feast on your carcasses.  There are lots of companies anxious to take up any slack your absence creates.  You will not be missed.

 

 

Timing Is Everything

 

There's a fresh new piece of anti-gun legislation being groomed for its prime-time appearance before a largely Democratic Congress.  It's called H.R.127 and it has all the elements of a gun-grabber's wet dream:

• universal background checks,
   
• psych evaluations on entire households,
   
• a ban on vast categories of heretofore-otherwise-lawful weapons,
   
• HUGE taxes and fees required for mere possession of what's left,
   
• mandatory periodic training,
   
• a publicly-accessible database of all gun owners (and their inventory?),
   
• and increases in the budget, authority, and power of the most corrupt of all corrupt federal bureaus and agencies, the Bureau of Alchohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

Totally unconstitutional, of course, but when has that ever stopped Congress?  Why is it unconstitutional, you ask?  Stop me if I get any of this wrong...

Rule #1 of 'jurisprudence' world-wide is that later law trumps earlier law.  A law passed today can be repealed by a law passed tomorrow.  That's so straight-forward it almost doesn't rate putting it down on paper.  Then

1. The fundamental axiom of the American System is that 'rights' are an endowment from God or Nature or some other metaphysical entity that is outside of and above government and, in fact, pre-exists government.
    
2. Governments do not have rights;  they have powers and authorities granted to them by we the people, from whom all such power originates ('the consent of the governed').
    
3. The vehicle for granting such powers and authorities is The U.S.Constitution.  The Constitution was ratified and came into force in 1789.
    
4. The Second Amendment, concerning the right of the people to keep and bear arms, was ratified in 1791, two years after the Constitution.
    
5. In 1934, and then again in 1968, Congress passed gun control laws, justifying them as part of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce.
    
6. Both of these acts should be considered unconstitutional because the power to regulate interstate commerce was granted in Article I of the Constitution in 1789.  If those powers ever included authority over firearms and other weapons, that authority was revoked in 1791 with the passage of the Second Amendment.  Timing is everything when it comes to 'constitutionality'.
    
7. That 'fresh new piece of anti-gun legislation' being prepped in the House suffers from the same disability.

But the worst part of H.R.127 isn't that it's unconstitutional.  The worst part is that it will be impossible to comply with.  The monstrous cost of attempting to comply will price most poor or minority families out of the market or, alternatively, send millions of them to prison.  Clearly, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) either hasn't given this much thought or simply doesn't care that she has codified a brand new poll tax on many of her constituents.

The former marks her as more stupid than Maxine Watters;  the latter as more cruel than Bull Connor.

Keep up the evil work, Sheila.