Robert Kennedy Jr.: 'We Have A Negligent Press In This Country'

Corporations and corporate wealth have been at the throat of
democracy since before the Civil War (Industrial
North/Agrarian South). They moved on to become "Robber
Barons", then the wage slavery of Sinclair Lewis, et al.
and the gross excesses that caused the Great Depression. Every
time their excesses destroy the American economy in the end.
This time it will be no different.

We will soon see the extreme pain that their currently
unlimited power and wealth will cause. The result will be an
overwhelming public revulsion and rejection of everything
"corporate" including the Republican Party and the
Corporate Democrats that cheer them on. 

A great way to stop them from doing it again is a
Constitutional Amendment specifically banning corporate
"personhood". Corporations are not people. They
have NO right to free speech. No right to donate to political
campaigns or candidates. None whatsoever. They have no right
to hire lobbyists. 

The amendment must also strip the corporations of their
current right to eternal life and its natural eternal
accumulation of wealth. Wealth is power and no matter what
"We the people" do to rule or regulate
corporations, if they are allowed eternal life and eternal
wealth they will eventually overwhelm any and all legal
restraints and we will find ourselves right back where we are
today. Corporations must "die" at some point. Their
assets redistributed. Their stockholders paid off in a
tax-free distribution.

I honor and cheer the entrepreneurs like Bill Gates who
created Microsoft, the Watson's who created IBM and look
forward to those whose miracle drugs, inventions and ideas
create the next super-Corporations. But neither they, nor the
next winners can be allowed to perpetrate that extreme wealth
for ever. Spreading it around gives thousands, if not
millions, of people their own chance to build their own
American Dream. 

Concentrating that wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer
people simply because their parents or grandparents made
billions undermines the very idea of personal success and
individual achievement. Put simply the inheritance tax needs
to be part of the Constitutional Amendment. Some kind of
indexed rate exempts the first $10 million. A sliding scale
then kicks in to make sure that excessive wealth does not
create an American Nobility while insuring that the progeny
of those who strike it rich live at the top of the economic
pie for those who do not blow it away.

Let us make America the capitalist's land of both equality
and equity.