The driver did not appear to be particularly thrilled when he saw that his handiwork was being documented. To his misfortune, however, there were no officers of the law on hand to apprehend our Wandering Photographer on charges of infringing upon his privacy.

Our mischievous readers might like to visit robinhoodtax.org.uk to give their own opinion. When last we checked, “Yes” had 61,322 votes, while “No” had just 6,097.

So far as we have been able to determine, The Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy got the ball rolling by researching this problem starting in the early 1990s.

Here’s their Wikipedia entry.

A valuable timeline of the history of corporate personhood, based on the work of POCLAD, is here.

And for fighting back, let’s start with Reclaiming Democracy.org.

Comments are open — Readers are invited to suggest additions.

The Newbery Honor is quite a distinguished award. Rod, though, being the modest sort of guy he is, didn’t even mention it when he sent in his last review.

Interesting times. Just to stay in step, we’ll post this phone message we received a few months ago from a dissatisfied reader. It’s followed by our transcription, but we recommend listening, too. Otherwise you’ll miss the full flavor.

Yea I’ll talk to the machine after the beep.

Listen you liberal scumbag, you anti-American, pot-smokin’, Volvo-drivin’, [?] tree-huggin’ son of a bitches that are wrecking our patriotic America: we ought to kick your wussy ass.

Stop your global whining.

Shame on all of you.

Shame on all of you Commies and supporting advertisers.

How you can even cease to exist is beyond my imagination.

Thank God we don’t have your paper up here in my town.

Thank God I don’t live in your town.

Thank God your paper isn’t representative of the U.S. as a whole.

Whoever that was, thanks for calling. If you should happen to find this, maybe you could help us with that part we couldn’t transcribe. You have the number.

In the following press release, The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) responds lucidly and appropriately to the latest outrage from the Supreme Court. Building on essential work done by the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD), CELDF has been developing practical ways for communities to defend themselves against our corporate overlords.

Coming on the heels of Scott Brown’s election to the Senate and the resultant likely defeat of health care reform, perhaps this most-recent trampling of the rights of citizens will be that “bridge too far” for the corporatists. (Hey — what can we say? We’re optimists.)

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission – giving corporations the ability to spend money directly to influence federal elections under the Constitution’s First Amendment – was inevitable. It represents a logical expansion of corporate constitutional “rights” – which include the rights of persons which have been judicially conferred upon corporations. “Personhood” rights mean that corporations possess First Amendment rights to free speech, along with a litany of other rights that are secured to persons under the federal Bill of Rights.

The expansion of corporate rights and privileges under the law has been deliberate, beginning nearly two hundred years ago with the Dartmouth decision in which the Supreme Court ruled that private corporations have rights that municipal corporations – governments composed of “we the people” – did not.

The expansion of these rights and privileges occurred during the 1800s, throughout the 1900s, until today. For those who think that the way to stem this tide is to find the perfect lawsuit, we say, stop looking. It doesn’t exist, for there is no magic bullet.

Rather, in order to reverse decisions like Citizens United, the whole concept of corporate “rights” must be examined, and how corporations possessing “rights” interferes with the exercise of rights by people, communities, and nature. And, it’s not simply that corporations have “personhood” rights. It goes well beyond that.

Today’s structure of law gives corporations a spectrum of legal and constitutional rights which they routinely wield against people, communities, and nature. Corporations have more rights, for example, than the communities in which they seek to do business. They have rights which they use to lobby Congress, impact elections, to decide for us what we eat, whether mountaintops are blown off or not, whether there are fish in the oceans, and on and on. Coupling their wealth with constitutional and other legal rights guarantees that they write the laws which determine these things, along with defining the debate that leads to the adoption of the new laws.

Thus the context for understanding today’s decision is that we have a minority set of corporate interests, empowered by government, which wield their rights against a majority. It is the history of this nation. Whether with the Abolitionists, the Suffragists, the Civil Rights Movement – all found it necessary to build movements of people to drive rights into law – rights for slaves, rights for women, rights of African Americans – which necessarily meant eliminating rights for a minority such as the slaveholder. In the end, it is our constitutional structure of law that purposefully placed the rights of property and commerce over the rights of people, communities, and nature.

In some ways, the Citizens United ruling is merely part of a predetermined destiny set by a 1700’s constitutional structure which placed greater priority on the rights of property and commerce than on people and nature. Reversing Citizens United means reversing that constitutional legacy.

And today – those who recognize that we do not have democracy when corporations located thousands of miles away are making decisions about our community instead of us, who recognize that we cannot have sustainability so long as corporations are able to decide how clean our air is and our water is, who recognize that we’ll never have true health care reform so long as corporations have greater access to our elected representatives than the people who voted for them – to those people – today’s decision should be understood as just another brick in the wall, another step in a direction that will only continue unless and until a real movement for the rights of people, communities, and nature is built. That is the work we are doing. We hope you will join us.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is the only public interest law firm in the U.S. that has worked with municipalities to question whether corporate “rights” can coexist with the democratic rights of communities to local self-government.

Those communities have recognized that corporate rights and privileges are routinely wielded to override democratic decision making and undermine efforts to protect the environment and public health, local economies and local agriculture. Through the adoption of local, binding laws, these communities are pioneering a new structure of law which does not recognize the rights and privileges of corporations.

“Wikileaks has probably produced more scoops in its short life than The Washington Post has in the past 30 years.” — Rupert Wright, The National [Abu Dhabi]

Philosophical Reasons, why the most Ignorant MEN are generally most conceited.

The vanity of the human heart is the most incurable of all moral distempers. The reason is, because every man must be his own physician, and self tenderness will not permit the use of CAUSTICS, which are as necessary to the cure of such deep rooted ulcers of the mind, as of the body: In both cases much pain must be endured: but that of the mind is most intense, because of its greater sensibility. Besides, self examination is a nauseous draught, that the squeamish stomach of self conceit will not digest; and yet it is the only preparative which can purge off the ill humours of the soul, and qualify it for the reception of healing applications; or, to change the allusion, self conceit is the dropsy* of the mind, generated by ignorance, and bloated by laziness. After the purgation before hinted, nothing can cure it radically, but constant exercise in the MINES of knowledge, which, like the most precious ore, lies deepest in the recesses of nature.

Moreover, self complaisance is delighted with the contemplation of our real or imaginary perfections, rather than to search for blemishes; and, as it is more apt to turn the magnifying lens to others faults; so, it views our own, with the other end of the perspective, which diminishes, and sets them at a vast distance. Yet it must be confessed, that self complaisannce is a natural instinct. It is the gift of God, bestowed upon man, to render his passage thro’ life, the more delectable: It is therefore like all our passions and affections, of admirable use, while under the guidance of right reason; but like other things of the most delicate nature, grows most nauseous by being corrupted. From that instinct however, men are better satisfied with their share of understanding, than with any other of the bounties of heaven; the reason is, because the short line of a little genius, cannot fathom the depths of more profound understandings; and therefore is not able to draw them into comparison: but the meanest capacity can compare the external gifts of nature, or fortune, (as mechanicks do their wares, by weight or measure) and determine the exact difference. Whence arise envyings, strife, and all the acts of malevolence which agitate a degenerate world.

To be humbly contented with those mental talents, which God has given us, is a self complaisance right, and good, but to fancy them incapable of improvemement by culture, is a gross error; and to over rate them without a comparison to those of other men, is a blunder in computation; a criminal vacuity, and the point now under consideration.

It is a common remark founded upon universal experience, and agreed by all men, that the most ignorant are generally most conceited. The fact is so notorious, that none of our moralists, so far as I can recollect, have thought it worth their pains to enquire into the causes of so common an absurdity: And yet perhaps such an enquiry, may conduce more to reform the conceited, than all the sarcasms of wit or satyr [satire]; or at least it may prove that the conceited deserve more of our pity; or less of that contempt and hatred, which is over paid to that sect of microscopic Philosophers, by the ill natured world.

But it is necessary to premise, that in all metaphysical subjects like this, we are forced to the use of figurative expressions, taken from the body, or its actions, in order to describe the faculties, or operations of the mind, for want of other words to convey our meaning. Thus strength is ascribed to the judgment, quickness to wit or perception, capaciousness to the memory, &c. Indeed it is the greater or less vigour of those faculties, that determines the different degrees of genius among Men; particularly with respect to the perceptive faculty of the mind; that being (if I may be allowed the expression) the predominant power of a bright genius; before which the map of nature lies open, as it were in one view, in its full extent, magnificence, and harmony. Thence perception draws a vast fund of ideas in their natural arrangements: and then judgment easily distinguishes all their relations, and can set a just estimate upon every thing in the way of comparison; from whence the greatest part of human knowledge results. Or to express my meaning more concisely; perception, or apprehension is the purveyor of all our ideas, and, after making the collection, disposes them in their natural arrangement, before the seat of judgment. That compares, classes, and deposits them in the store house of memory; from thence to draw them forth, as fit occasions require; and then applies them properly, to all the uses of life, whether sensative [] or moral. These conjunctive acts of a quick apprehension and judgment, we call properly good sense, as a conformity of action to their determinations is prudence, or morality.

The weakness therof of this perceptive faculty, is the primary cause of ignorance: for how can the judgment compare or estimate things, or actions, of which the mind has not any apprehension? As their perception is the eye of the understanding, whenever it is weak, dim, or short sighted, it is incapable of distinguishing any other objects, but such as are very near it; and those, being within the sphere of its short focus are magnified beyond their natural dimensions, as is the case of the purblind bodily eyes. Hence it is, that the mind which discerns only the few objects within its narrow sphere, must necessarily be ignorant of that immensity of things in the vast circuit of creation, which are beyond its reach. What is this, but an exact description of real ignorance? But then, as the purblind faculty of perception is framed, like the bodily eyes of that sort to magnify all ob [a missing line of text] on mountains, which is the cause of vanity.

But as contrarieties are best illustrated by each other, let us now consider the man of genius, whose perceptive faculty like the best organized eyes of [the] human body, discerns all objects distinctly, whether near or far off, in their natural colours, magnitudes, and arrangements. The mind thus fraught with innumerable ideas, has a large fund of the materials of knowledge; which is still capable of farther extension into the vast fields of science, by the help of the perspective glass of ANALOGY, in the hand of judgment. But after all the excursions of the brightest genius into the interminable expanse of knowledge, he will be convinced by the prospect, that the many regions he has travelled over, are but a span in comparison of what lie beyond them; and be as ready to utter this humbling confession, as the wise Socrates was, that all he knows is, that comparatively speaking, he knows nothing. These are the natural causes, why the most ignorant men are generally most conceited, and consequently, obstinate; as, on the contrary, the most knowing are the most humble, and therefore least positive.

* Dropsy — swelling of the soft tissues due to the accumulation of excess water.

Our thanks to the Portsmouth Athenæum, from whose original copy we derived this text.

This past fortnight, though, something seems to have gone awry. In the past two days we’ve received three e-mails from subscribers whose copies had apparently been mangled in the sorting machinery.

We’d like to encourage anyone else whose paper arrived too ripped to read to let us know. Send your digital communique to editors [at] nhgazette [dot] com. We’ll send out replacements.

Our thanks to Bill P. in Honolulu for sending this image documenting the damage.