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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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fargle's right, corporations aren't people, therefore, they shouldn't have to pay taxes

Then it would be reasonable to forbid them to use our highways, airports, police services and fire departments. Let them provide their own infrastructure and municipal services.

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California is the prime example of what happens to a state burdened with public sector union contracts.

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ORIGINAL: subrob1967

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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fargle's right, corporations aren't people, therefore, they shouldn't have to pay taxes

Then it would be reasonable to forbid them to use our highways, airports, police services and fire departments. Let them provide their own infrastructure and municipal services.

A corporation is just an empty shell without the TAX PAYING people employed by the corporation working in the shell, or directing the business. You're argument is moot.

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ORIGINAL: subrob1967

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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fargle's right, corporations aren't people, therefore, they shouldn't have to pay taxes

Then it would be reasonable to forbid them to use our highways, airports, police services and fire departments. Let them provide their own infrastructure and municipal services.

A corporation is just an empty shell without the TAX PAYING people employed by the corporation working in the shell, or directing the business. You're argument is moot.

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ORIGINAL: subspaceseven

Because they have bought our political system, and to quote Willard "corporations are people my friend"

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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California is the prime example of what happens to a state burdened with public sector union contracts.

California is the prime example of what happens to a state burdened with governance by referendum.

People on the one hand support programs and services, but on the other hand oppose funding them. Through the referendum process, they force decisions on the legislature that make no sense--for example, forced overtime in a hiring freeze at tremendously higher wages. Governance is choices and compromise, and referendums create a fantasy that can't be done, and then asks government to do it. It's a mess, and only going to get worse.

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ORIGINAL: subrob1967

A corporation is just an empty shell without the TAX PAYING people employed by the corporation working in the shell, or directing the business. You're argument is moot.

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Thomas Jefferson Feared an Aristocracy of Corporations
John Nichols on July 4, 2010 - 5:50 PM ET

Thomas Jefferson's name gets thrown around quite a bit these days by the Tea Partisans, which is a good thing.

A populist movement of the right or the left that neglected Jefferson, the most radical of the first presidents, would be a sorry affair indeed.

Jefferson's distrust of concentrated and consolidated power was such that he left a legacy for any and every dissenter against the state.

But Jefferson did not stop there.

He was, as well, a relentless critic of the monopolizing of economic power by banks, corporations and those who put their faith in what the third president referred to as "the selfish spirit of commerce (that) knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.

Jefferson might not have wanted a lot of government, but he wanted enough government to assert the sovereignty of citizens over corporations. To his view, nothing was more important to the health of the republic.

In the early years of the 19th century, as banks and corporations began to flex their political muscles, he announced that: “I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

There are those who would have us believe that the founders intended for corporations to control our elections – and, tragically, five of these Tories sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, where they recently ruled that the nation’s biggest businesses may spend whatever they like to buy the results that best serve their bottom lines.

The better angels among the founders would be aghast.

The framers of the American experiment were imperfect men, to be sure. Few were so radical, or so far ahead of their times, as Tom Paine, the wisest of their number. But like Paine, Jefferson was a proud revolutionary against the old order of inherited monarchy, state churches, empires and the authority of the few over the fate of the many.

We know this to be true of Jefferson because, as July 4, 1826 approached, he was invited to appear in Washington for a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Age and infirmity prevented Jefferson from attending the event. But he sent a message -- his last political statement -- which read:

“May (July 4) be to the world, what I believe it will be -- to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all -- the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form (of government) which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”

So, yes, by all means, let us look to the original intent of the founders this July 4. But let us recognize what they actually said and meant about the danger posed by an “aristocracy of corporations” and the danger of allowing CEOs to ride roughshod over the democratic promise of the American experiment.

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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ORIGINAL: subrob1967

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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fargle's right, corporations aren't people, therefore, they shouldn't have to pay taxes

Then it would be reasonable to forbid them to use our highways, airports, police services and fire departments. Let them provide their own infrastructure and municipal services.

A corporation is just an empty shell without the TAX PAYING people employed by the corporation working in the shell, or directing the business. You're argument is moot.

No, it's not. It's a legal entity. It can purchase, employ, sell, and be sued. And according to the Supreme Court now, a person, in addition to the people it already employs.

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better a clusterfuck by the ones affected by it than a clusterfuck by KINGS and the BARONS as we have in other states WITH NO REMEDY.

at least CA can work out the bugs toward remedy

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ORIGINAL: Real0ne

Rob is correct, how can you disagree with that?

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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ORIGINAL: Real0ne

Rob is correct, how can you disagree with that?

He disagrees by definition. I could set up a corporation for tax purposes that employs no one at all and produces nothing.

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

Nonsense. These taxes are already paid at the corporate level, and again when the goods/services they produce are sold. Why would it be reasonable to tax them a third time, when securities are simply transference of ownership of production/financial obligation, not sales of new goods?

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ORIGINAL: subrob1967

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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fargle's right, corporations aren't people, therefore, they shouldn't have to pay taxes

Then it would be reasonable to forbid them to use our highways, airports, police services and fire departments. Let them provide their own infrastructure and municipal services.

A corporation is just an empty shell without the TAX PAYING people employed by the corporation working in the shell, or directing the business. You're argument is moot.