The Old Enemies - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com

The Old Enemies - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com: "Much of the difficulty the US has in reining in corporate influence on public policy relates to the absurd notion of corporate personhood. The idea that a corporation is a person was a useful and probably necessary legal fiction that allows, among other things that corporations can be sued in civil courts. The 'activist' courts however have used corporate personhood to extend other rights to corporations carrying it so far that a recent Supreme Court ruling recognizes that corporate entities have First Amendment rights, making it possible to buy elections outright. This is insanity as James Howard Kunstler observed after the ruling '... the fundamental character of corporations is sociopathic, insofar as their only express allegiance is to their shareholders, meaning they are devoid of any sense of the public interest, meaning they are unfit to participate in electoral politics.'"