I'll revoke corporate charters

Various persons have asked me whether as Texas Attorney General I will apply a "three strikes and you're out" policy to corporations such as is applied to human beings, meaning whether I'll take action to revoke a corporation's charter if it receives three criminal convictions.

Article 4, Section 22 of the Texas Constitution lays upon the Texas Attorney General the duty to monitor the activities of private corporations and to pursue judicial forfeiture of their charters upon sufficient cause. This is talking about civil action, not criminal prosecution. The burden of proof the Attorney General has to meet in civil actions is less than the burden of proof in criminal prosecutions - proof beyond a reasonable doubt is not required. Thus the Constitution does not require conviction of crimes for the Attorney General to pursue charter revocation; rather, the legal requirement is "sufficient cause."

Government belongs to the people and the Attorney General is the people's lawyer. Thus any corporation's convictions of multiple criminal offenses would clearly be sufficient cause for me as Attorney General to undertake charter revocation action. After all, the United States Supreme Court declared 120 years ago that corporations are persons under the 14th Amendment. Thus the receipt of multiple criminal convictions should entitle the people to treat corporations the same way the people treat human beings who receive multiple criminal convictions.

More importantly, when I'm Attorney General my duty to the people under the Texas Constitution will not allow me to set an arbitrary minimum threshold of misconduct, such as three criminal convictions, to trigger charter revocation action. Although the corporate government that runs the show today doesn't realize it, corporations are holders of public trust. They operate under charters issued by the State granting them the privilege of corporate existence. Even one violation of the public trust - which need not necessarily be a criminal offense - may lead me to find sufficient cause to seek charter revocation under the Constitution if the corporation's conduct represents a continuing danger to the public trust.

David Van Os
Democratic Candidate
For Texas Attorney General 2006
www.vanosfortexasag.com

But what's to prevent the Secretary of State from reinstating them with only a slap on the wrist?

a simple matter of good wordsmithing.

David's having a party this weekend in Austin with Jim Hightower. You're invited.

http://www.vanosfortexasag.com/events/dec3.shtml

There was a good discussion this morning here about the "11th Amendment" for the original Bill of Rights..The whole concept of "corporate personhood" is screwy.

However, are there practical implications to be concerned about?

For example, if you revoke the charter of a corporation in Texas, will that mean a lot of people could potentially lose their jobs?

Over and over, corporations get away with bloody murder by threatening job loss. Corporate America used the threat of job loss throughout the 1980s and 1990s to get unions to negotiate takaways and givebacks, then the companies closed the plants anyway after a year or two of getting more work for less pay. As a union lawyer I have seen the heartbreak of plant closure up close way too many times. I have worked closely in union halls with union leaders and workers facing the bitter choice between loss of jobs and continuation for a temporary respite with lower pay. I have swallowed the bitter pill, more times than I care to count, of negotiating concessionary agreements in the hope of saving a workplace, only to see the workplace shut down anyway. I have seen workers taken in by more lies about, "if you give us these concessions we guarantee you this plant won't shut down," than I care to think about. I have been on the receiving end myself of more lies of that nature from management negotiators than I care to think about. In considering the grave step of seeking charter revocation, I will take community economic impact into account, but I will not give in to corporate blackmail using Texas working people as pawns.

In any event, in cases where I feel compelled to pursue charter revocation, my objective will never be to shut a workplace down and cease production. It will be to come up with a solution through the dissolution process that takes the charter away from the people who abused the public trust, and places the enterprise into other hands that will run the business without abusing the privilege of corporate organization.

I pretty much agree with you on all points.

I especially like the part about finding a way to keep the workplace operating.

Also once corporations see that this can happen, perhaps they won't be so careless with the public trust any more.

Good luck in your campaign!

Government is for the people, not to protect corrupt corporations that impose their cut throat profiteering at the expense of the common good. A corporation should not have more protection than the people. But that's exactly what we have now. We have a class of protection for corporations that is monopolistic. The only way corporations will act like good citizens, is if they can truly be regulated. They should be held accountable and be shut down for corrupt behavior. They are not above the law.

Thank you David!

sonia

revoking corporate charters is the one perfectly legal and VERY powerful way to wrest power back so that corporations serve the people instead of the other way around.

best of luck slaying those dragons!

With it we can beat back the tide of Fascism. Thank you.

In case anyone hasn't seen this DU link on the greatest page. This is exactly why you have to rein in corporate control of the government. People do forget how corporations were involved in the rise of the fascist governments in Germany and Italy. Go read this article and get a refresher course. And then fight like hell with David for TX Attorney General.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=greatest_threads



Sonia

More people need to see this...

...to become Texas’ next Attorney General, it occurs to me that you are not a man who takes what he says lightly. One of the first things that struck me is your ability to put into plain words what I, and I believe many other Texans have known for a long time. That our state government has been taken over by people who don’t share our values about right and wrong - and that we will have to fight to take it back.

What you have written above and below resonates with me and I think it may with others as well. Since your post today has made it to the Greatest page, I’ve taken the liberty to take some of your writings out of context and use them to further the discussions you have started here on the Texas forum. What you are doing is a “Texas Thing” but may also have implications and value for others who are trying to take back their own state governments. Thank God you're from Texas!



The prospect of taking on such a powerful adversary is daunting. How do you go about changing peoples attitudes who are discouraged? How do you energize the electorate to get out and vote to take back their state and constitutional rights? How do you go about ridding the government of corruption and special interest cronyism? A big part of the answer, I believe, lies in the following:



Lastly, although this will be a daunting task, I feel it can be accomplished if enough people believe in and are willing to fight for it. The office you seek as Attorney General has been given special powers to make this possible. As you stated so eloquently in your post today, “Government belongs to the people and the Attorney General is the people's lawyer.” I think you are right and I think it is high time we did something about it!