The response to folks like Mitt Romney, when they glibly say "corporations are people" should be:

"A corporation is a person in the same sense that a flamethrower is a firefly."

Yes, I'm quoting myself again, and thanks for the book, Thom.

Of course, laughter and jeering at a town hall meeting works for liberals as well as conservatives. It would be nice if the corporate media would cover these things equally.

"Big Tobacco is demon from Hell." says Me-tea.

You don't really need to extend health benefits down to negative nine months of age; care for expectant mothers covers it.

Here is a bit of "insider" history --

Back in the day (circa 1960's), my mother was the personal, executive secretary to a man name Rhea Howard. Now Rhea inherited, and all of his life ran, the only newspaper in Wichita Falls, Texas. As a result, he was a very close friend of Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ would often drop by the paper and meet with Rhea. He came to know and called my mom by her first name, gave her flowers, candy, birthday gifts, etc. Often mom would sit in on and take notes of meetings that Rhea and LBJ had.

The first time that LBJ came by to see Rhea, after he left office, mom was privy to the REAL reason he quit. As you may know, LBJ's political career was, beginning in 1941, completely financed by Brown & Root. When George Brown died, about 1962, Brown & Root was taken over by Halliburton. As you may also know, Halliburton/Brown & Root was one of (if not the only/main) contractor for the Viet Nam war. They were making fortunes off building bases, roads, airstrips, etc. in Viet Nam.

When Halliburton bought Brown & Root, LBJ was part of the package and he didn't like it worth a damn because Halliburton had NO intention of stopping the extremely profitable war. So, as LBJ told Rhea on afternoon, "The only way I could git out from under those hogs was to just quit suckin' on their tit." He saw that the longer he stayed, the more money Halliburton would siphon off from his "Great Society" and he REALLY wanted to leave a legacy for the poor and disadvantaged.

Jeff Gannon is his name.

People still buy Twinkies - but I do agree that your suggestion might deter some folks.
Any chance of you posting a source? The list sure does include a bunch of ingredients.

Thanks

All they have to do is get this case before the United States Supreme Court or should I say the United States Supreme Corporation Court. In a reality based world the entire tobacco industry should've been liquidated, accounts frozen, CEO's prosecuted and all of the money turned over to BIG GOVERNMENT(protecting the people) to create a fund for the people that Big Tobacco knowingly poisoned, killed and made their product more addictive in the name of profits.

This is of course is not the reality based world we live in. This is a world where industries like the Big Tobacco can bark at the government and say we shouldn’t have to label or indicate that this product is unsafe or harmful. They’ll make the argument in court that their 1st amendment right of free speech is being violated by having to inform their (victims) customers that their product is deadly.

An industry that should no longer exist has the money, influence and the Supreme Court to insure their manufactured constitutional rights will be protected. While, the intend natural constitutional rights of the people they’ve poisoned, killed and profited from their rights will not be considered in the courts of the American “Justice” System set up to protect those very people that a industry like Big Tobacco has preyed upon.

Wrong isn’t a good enough word to describe the subversion of the American “Justice” system. We must as a country find our collective conscious or we’ll be doomed to collapse under the weight of our own divisiveness. Distracted by forces of deception completely unaware of the liberty being stripped from the citizenry and granted to the institutions of wealth and power through the same system set up to protect us from tyranny.

I think we should apply capitial punishment to the "persons" who are the tobacco corporations. After all, they kill people knowingly! That is murder one!

I think the images are those like we have had in Canada for many years: diseased tissue, pictures of terminal cancer victims whose disease was caused by cigarettes, people puffing cigs through their tracheotomies. Much more meaningful than a list of ingredients many people wouldn't comprehend and most won't bother to read.

James Bopp is the lawyer-author of Citizens United. He has supposedly nailed the constitutional argument agreed to by a Republican-heavy Supreme Court with at least two members being investigated for conflict-of-interest. The argument is that "corporations are people" and "money = speech" (obvious fantasies, one would think).

This convoluted reasoning takes two things that are foreign to each other (money and speech) and joins them. It reminds me of the changing of the meaning of language by the pigs in "Animal Farm." The language evolves to serve the pigs' agenda. The whole constitution of the farm is completely upended to serve the pigs rising to power. How appropriate is that to what is happening here. We now have a managed democracy and bought politicians.

What Bopp did was to manage to put together a package of legalese that supposedly sounds like it is in sync with the constitution. How can that be? There must be a way to prove that this is nonsense.

I hope this will go all the way up to the US Supreme Court. I would like to see them deluge with such corporation lawsuits to see how the SCOTUS will handle the Frankenstein monster mess that they created.. Would the corporate-Friendly Chief Justice refuse to review the lawsuit brought to him by a big tobacco company?.

1. yes, make cigarette companies list their ingredients like other products we consume must have.

2. stop subsidies for tobacco growing

3. make these carcinogens illegal to make and sell

A picture of dying lung cancer patients should be on every package. My father died at age 52 from smoking non-filter Lucky Strikes for 40 years. Suffocating slowly to death is not an easy death!! It is horrifying to watch the suffering.

By definition, companies are NOT people. DUH. Can a company undergo chemotherapy? I think not. Nuff said.

Corporations are People, only because the John Birch Society has done a make-over -- They have a specific goal and roadmap, to remake American in the image of that John Birch Society --

The John Birch Society Redeaux- Where is the investigation, the movie, the reporting? The most responsive and positive communications I get when discussing political affairs includes: 1. Making the link between Koch, each of their 501 think tanks and the John Birch Society, redeaux.2. Since 1970s, there has been a frontal assault by these Birchers who abandoned their racist society, to impose their agenda, by co-opting the: COURTS, CONGRESS and the EXECUTIVE REGULATORY BRANCHES of government.3. Since the 1970s they have vetted judges to make sure their Executives (Bush) picked their Judicial choices, Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, and now we have Citizens United.4. Alec is a shadow government, that is road mapping their take-over of State and Federal seats of power, setting agendas, writing legislation, all under the guise of a 501.5. Koch started the tea party, and funds anything that strengthens their hand at electing congressmen who will not regulate against them, saving them billions of dollars.6. During Bush, these interests controlled the Executive Regulatory Branch of government, and we saw failure after failure: Mine Safety, Off shore drilling, FDA breaches, salmonella in food, SEC and Banking - Madoff and the Bank Failures, Intelligence, and the list goes on, to the point that we are so far in debt and must join the Birch coalition and cut social services, or raise taxes.7. They have neutered Obama, a man who wants them to like him, and be invited to their party, and have stolen his voice for American, as we become a fascist state, that they control and manipulate.8. Their goal among many spewed by the John Birch Society is to have the US gov't collect taxes, to pay to them, and maintain all infrastructure to enable them to make money and attract investment, as they play their global economic game to win, as in the movie "trading places".

If corporations are people, wouldn't merging be people eating people, commonly known as canibalism, which is against the law?

If corporations are people, shouldn't those conservatives who are opposed to same sex marriage be against corporate mergers unless they can medically determine the sex of the corporations involved?

If corporations are people, isn't it against the law for a corporations to merge if one or more of the corporations are under a state's legal age of consent?

If corporations are people, isn't it against the law in most states if there is more than two people involved in joining in that relationship?

"To conquer, first divide!"

The sad part about forums like this, is that it illustrates democracy and the effects of opinion entitlement and is interesting standard if you believe that one is entitled to "ignorance".....which can be supported by the citation of the First Article of the Bill of Rights, which allows belief in any faith based fantasy you choose, but also notes in Article 6, that the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the land....and where "seperation of church and state" resides. The claim that the united States is a christian nation, and/or possibly any other type of mythology.....can not be supported, since "no religious test" can be imposed to hold any public office. To reason intelligently, if the united States were intended to be associated with any mythology, then a test verifying allegiance to that mythology would be mandatory, would it not? ( rhetorical )

Which brings us to tobacco and government, or rather government involvement with tobacco.....which involves the FDA, and something that happenned a while back in some of the several states, called the tobacco settlement......whose monies were designated for "specific purposes" and which raises a number of questions........

1.) Where did this money go?

and second......

2.) Why haven't all the additives been banned by the FDA? This being somewhat of a no-brainer given THIS issue.........in fact one wonders why the tobacco companies aren't doing this voluntarilly since it would seem to me that production costs would go down?

Many of the problems we face, as a nation, are due to a rather strange phenomenon which ultimately resides in a mythological concept: "enlightened self interest". This reality does not exist and is a rare trait among individuals, who can be relied upon to act in their "perceived self interest" which shares no connection to anything close to a reasoned and intelligent solution.

Why? Because "solving problems" puts the "problem solver" out of business....and since our approach to this via education is also a mythology whereby one pays for certification in order to participate with increased degrees of specialisation.......this certainly self defeating. Consider that the two elite professions, that of medicine and law, result in a "license to practice".....mainly on YOU. ( the paying VICTIM )

Consider the so called health care debate, which has nothing to do with "health care", but which carried the argument that a certain class of people were being denied it, and because of this a certain pertcentage of people were dying......but the stark facts are these.......being exposed to "health care" represents the largest number of preventable deaths in the united States, so more of them would actually DIE, from it, then do now, for lack of it. In the late 70's iatrogenic stats for hospitals were that 1 in 5 caught something they didn't have and one in 30 of those died, which made your odds of getting out alive at 149 to 1. Recently the first stat was reported at 1 in 3, and another study pegs the deaths at at between 700,00 to 900,000 deaths per year.....and these deaths are for something other than what they were there to be treated for.

"Do not ask for whom the bell tolls..................."

Re. Corporations are people. The argument is flawed on a couple of grounds. First; it fails on the grounds of equality, i.e. if a=b, then b=a. That means that if corporations are people, then people are corporations and people should have the same rights as corporations --- such as being able to shelter income overseas. Second; Seton Motley made the argument to Thom that people form corporations, as if the personhood of the people who establish corporations is transferred to the person itself. That contention is somewhat along the same line as the argument that Romney made when he said that the money a corporation receives goes to people, therefore corporations are people. If you want to make the Romney argument, then when a corporation causes damage, injury, death, etc.; then by the same token that the money the corporation makes goes to people, why doesn't the punishment against the corporation also pass on to those who run the corporation, why aren't those people, fined, given life without parole, or even the death penalty? Dan, San Diego.

And you call the officers of cigarette corporations sociopaths! Corpses left rotting in the sun. You are a psychopath. Get help.

Ok MaryMary, you're right: I went too far. Sorry. I was totally out of line. In other words, I'm not a psychopath because I am capable of accepting criticism and capable of admitting it when I'm wrong. So, when was the last time the cigarette industry was honest about what they do to people for a living? Or do you feel it's best to only criticize people who criticize the cigarette industry? Speaking of which, do you work for the cigarette industry?

The way things are now, the people who run the cigarette industry get manicures to keep their hands looking nice and clean, and they eat in restaurants where the linen tablecloths are clean, and their cars are clean, their houses and lawns look so neat and nice. And yet in spite of all this "cleanliness," the stench of their pretense, the stench of the millions of deaths they are directly responsible for, the stench of the bribes they have given to congress to keep their poisonous products legal, the pain of the families of the people those corporate executives have killed... I guess I was just thinking it would be a bit of reality therapy if those sociopaths were forced to look at the dead bodies of their victims.

But you're right, it would be totally unfair for those sociopaths to have to look at what they have done. The families of the dead should just suck it up and deal with it, and the sociopaths should just keep on reaping billions of dollars in profits and have no consequences whatsoever.

Cigarettes killed my mother. She tried to quit, but those corporate sociopaths have spent millions of dollars making cigarettes so addictive that it's actually easier to quit heroin than to quit smoking cigarettes. My mother could not quit. So, she got horribly sick and then she died. It took a long time for her to waste away and die. I remember the sound of her coughing every morning, trying to get enough air into her lungs so she could get out of bed. I remember her sunken cheeks. I remember her falling down the stairs when she lost her balance because of the side-effects of the medications they put her on. But most of all, I remember how her mind and her personality went south because of the medications her doctors gave her. The corporate sociopaths who did that to my mother, do not have any of these memories of her, because they never met my mother. Killing my mother was simply a business decision for them: they wanted her money, and they killed her to get it. They don't care that she had a family. They don't care that before they nade her sick, she played the piano. All they care about is that before they killed her, they got her money.

Those sociopaths could make money producing food, clothing, houses, or other consumer goods. They could make money providing services that people need. But no. Those sociopaths choose to make money killing people. Millions of long, slow, lingering, extremely painful, extremely expensive deaths. But I'm a psychopath for fantasizing- for joking about those sociopaths having to look at some of the many millions of people they have killed. I'm sorry if my fantasy/joke upset you. The sociopaths who killed my mother are not sorry. Do you see the difference?

Republicans substitute repetition for debate. No logic required, just repeat those talking points, and keep them short and accusatory or fear-mongering. You are free to keep repeating your claim that I need help.

"The craziness" of my statement? So it's uncontrovertible evidence of psychosis on my part, that I feel it would be fair for people who are responsible for the deaths of millions of people, to face the reality of what they have done? I don't think that very many psychiatrists would agree with you on that point. In fact, I know two mental health professionals, whose job it is to determine when people are a threat to themselves or other people and to order those people to be placed in mental institutions; and these mental health professionals tell me that my statements could not possibly be construed as evidence of serious mental illness. (You know, in Russia, China, and other totalitarian countries, one of the ways they deal with people who state uncomfortable truths, is to accuse them of being mentally ill and confine them to mental institutions.) Admittedly, my idea of dumping their victims' dead bodies on their doorsteps, is extreme. And in point of fact I wouldn't do it. AS I SAID, it was a fantasy, a joke. And my awareness of the fact that it is a fantasy, is both legally and psychiatrically what separates me from people who would act out such an idea. Another thing that republicans do, is to not hear the opposing side's reasoning. No logic required, just keep repeating those talking points and you're certain to hypnotize some of the people. But not all the people and not all the time.

Let's talk about "a better world." According to Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, Hebrew, and Muslim scriptures, one of the things that happens when people die, BEFORE they go to "a better world," is that they are faced with what they did in their life. Are you saying that it is generically "crazy" for all of those scriptures to state that people have to face what they have done to others in order to pass certain points in their process of spiritual growth? Or are you saying that it's specifically "crazy" for me to joke that people who murder other people for money, should be faced with the results of their actions?

One of the things that honest practitioners of the above-cited spiritual paths do, is to fast-track their spiritual growth process by here and now facing what they have done and resolving it, healing themselves before they die. My fantasy, admittedly based at least partly in what those sociopaths did to my mother, was for the cigarette industry executives to be "fast-tracked," karmicly speaking, thereby getting a jump on the afterlife and thereby preventing them from murdering more people. And in point of fact- although it's certainly not my job to do it- if cigarette industry executives were forced to face the murders they are responsible for, and forced to face the emotional sequelae in the lives of their victims' families and friends, statistically speaking it is likely that some of them would begin to engage in what psychiatrist Scott Peck called genuine suffering. Peck said that avoiding genuine suffering causes neurotic suffering, the difference being that genuine suffering creates healing, while neurotic suffering is simply a repetition, over and over, of the same suffering, with no healing. (Which reminds me of republicans, with their eternal wars on this, that, and the other thing, and cigarette industry executives, with their murders- over decade upon decade- of so many millions of people.) Psychiatrist Carl Jung said, "Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering." The people who run the cigarette industry have, for a very long time, avoided the suffering inherent in their chosen career of murdering people for money. Physically speaking they live in gated communities, but more importantly, they live in emotional isolation from the people they harm. And based on my 13 years of psychotherapy and from closely observing the people around me going through cycles and evolutions and healings in their lives, I feel comfortable saying that it's not only statistically likely that some of the corporate sociopaths would truly reform if faced with the reality of what they have done, it is certain.

You say that you detest people who smoke. So you would have detested my mother, even though she never did anything to you or to anyone you know? Why would you say that to someone whose mother died from smoking? Is that some aspect of the "better world" you mentioned?

In conclusion, I would like to quote Opus the penguin: "PPHGSTHP!"

Let's put a label on republicans, that says, "I can't tell the difference between eating lemons and smoking cigarettes."

You're not preaching to the choir here, son. Maybe you should go to Ann Coulter's website and try to to help her convince people that nuclear waste is the breakfast of champions. And here are some more slogans you could promote: loss of freedom is freedom, war is the only way to get to peace, everyone hates us because God loves us and He doesn't love them, God wants us to kill foreigners, the Ten Commandments only apply when I am trying to force you to believe exactly as I believe but the Ten Commandments do not apply when it comes to imprisoning, torturing, and killing innocent people.

Why, there's no limit to the nonsense you could promote, so come on, get to it!

So now, rather than saying you are disgusted by people who smoke, you say that you are sorry for my mother's death. That's kind of you, isn't it?

I get your point: you are offering up the old republican "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" argument, the one they always trot out when they are trying to excuse hyper wealthy people stealing money from the middle class and the poor. Free Market Rules, dude! Well, I'll tell you something about the "Free Market:" it's only a free market if you own it. Everyone else has to pay. And pay. Milton Freedman and the other "economists" who blather about that crap have never been on the shit end of the "free market" stick that they like to wave around. Or if they have been on it, they decided that rather than trying to make things better for the middle class and the poor, they would join and help the wealthy thieves.

And about my mother: it's always the fault of the addict, isn't it? It is never the fault of the corporate executives who hire chemists, medical doctors, and psychologists, to do clinical trials that help them determine what chemicals to put into cigarettes and how to genetically engineer tobacco so that cigarettes are more addictive than heroin. In Asia and third world countries, cigarette makers give cigarettes away for free, to get people hooked. And they specifically target children. You know, just like illegal drug dealers do: "Here, have some of this cocaine. Hey, no charge, I'll just give you some out of th kindness of my heart." But then, when the person gets addicted, the dealer says, "Sorry, but now that you are addicted, it's not free anymore. It's going to cost you." And it does cost them.

The only difference between cigarette manufacturers and illegal drug dealers is that cigarette manufacturers are smarter: they pass out massive amounts of money every year (which only amounts to a small percentage of their incredibly huge profits), to fund propaganda programs, (such as the program that is almost undoubtedly paying you to make ridiculously insupportable posts on Thom's web site), bribe congress to keep cigarettes legal, and pay millions of dollars every year to lawyers to defend themselves against the lawsuits that inevitably come up when you sell poisonous products that, if used according to the manufacturer's directions, kill about a third of the people who use those products.

Don't be coy. I think you're a republican because you debate like one. If it has feathers like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. And I have to tell you, I didn't get any aerobic exercise jumping to that particular conclusion.

You're right that most of the time I spent in psychotherapy was wasted, and you are also right that I should get most of my money back. And you know why most of that money was wasted? Because many of the psychologists and psychiatrists out there are like you: all talking points and no substance. All smoke and mirrors. All fertilizer and no food. I often found myself forced to leave therapists because their mental problems were preventing them from helping me deal with mine. In fact, some of them actively tried to impair my healing process. You know, sort of like republicans saying, "All we want to do is help America," when if you look at republican voting records over the past 30 years it's quite clear that they have been selling America to the wealthy, tricking the middle class and the poor out of lots of their money and outright stealing most of the rest of their money. And when the results of their crimes become obvious in terms of the breakdown of economic viability in black, latino, and now even white communities, the republicans blame the victims.

You know, I'm glad you brought up the subject of mental health, because you could find out all about corporate executives and other republicans by reading psychiatrist Scott Peck's seminal book, "Children of The Lie." In that book, Peck reveals why corporate executives and other republicans tell the huge lies that destroy people, families, and economies, and why they blame all of their destructive actions on other people. The therapists I had to leave must have been republicans, because they take shameless advantage of the most helpless people in our society: people with mental illnesses. They get rich, and their patients stay sick. You know, like Nurse Ratchet in "One Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest," who, when she succeeded in undermining the mental health of her patients, would put that smug, tight little smile on her face, and you could just tell it wasn't her smile, it was the smile of her neurosis.

Look, MaryMary, I understand you posting silliness on Thom's blog if it's the only job you could find, because everyone needs to eat and pay the rent. But if this is in fact the only job you could find, you might consider which group of people it is who have reduced America to this sad state of affairs. I'll give you a hint: it's the republicans-the very people who are paying you to help the cigarette corporations kill more people and the bankers steal the rest of everyone's money. And what exactly is it that makes you think they're not going to want the rest of your money? And if you get your way and they win, who exactly do you think will defend your rights?

Ok, now you can repeat your talking point that I need help. But if you would like this conversation to continue, you're going to have to do better than that.

I have accomplished what I wanted to accomplish: people who read our exchange have enough information from you and enough from me, so they can decide for themselves. Goodbye and good luck.