June 10
1932 – Speech by Louis McFadden (R-Pa), Chair of the U.S. House Banking and Currency Committee on the Floor of Congress
“The Federal Reserve (Banks) are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen…What is needed here is a return to the Constitution of the United States. We need to have a complete divorce of Bank and State. The old struggle that was fought out here in Jackson’s day must be fought over again… The Federal Reserve Act should be repealed and the Federal Reserve Banks, having violated their charters, should be liquidated immediately.”
1933 – Birth of F. Lee Bailey, famous American criminal defense attorney
“Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn’t even get out of committee.”
2020 – Iowa Quietly Passes its Third Ag-Gag Bill After Constitutional Challenges
“Iowa isn’t alone in using legislation to criminalize animal rights activism and whistleblowing. For more than a decade, the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization that links industry lobbyists with state lawmakers, has promoted a model ag-gag bill. More than two dozen states have introduced versions of the bill, and in half a dozen states, they remain law.”
June 11
1880 – Birth of Jeannette Rankin, first Congresswoman in the United States
“Establish democracy at home, based on human rights as superior to property rights!”
1923 – Kentucky Finance Corporation v. Paramount Auto Exchange Corporation [262 U.S. 544, 550]
U.S. Supreme Court declares, “a state has no more power to deny to corporations the equal protection of the law than it has to individual citizens.”
1961 – Death of Milwaukee Mayor Daniel Horn, on the fraud of creating electric regulatory commissions
“No shrewder piece of political humbuggery and downright fraud has ever been placed upon the statute books. It’s supposed to be legislation for the people. In fact, it’s legislation for the power oligarchy.”
2018 – Supreme Court, in 5–4 Decision, Allows States to Purge Voters for Their Failure to Vote
“In a 5–4 decision handed down Monday morning, the Supreme Court ruled that states may purge voters from the rolls due to their failure to cast a ballot. The ruling will disproportionately disenfranchise minorities and veterans as well as low-income and disabled people. Because of this decision, it is now likely that thousands of Americans will show up to the polls in 2018 hoping to cast a ballot—only to be told that they have been purged from the rolls because they skipped the past few elections. It is a nightmare scenario for voting-rights advocates that may affect the outcome of many future elections as well as the 2018 midterm elections in Ohio.”
2020 – “Let’s explore what fascism is about” – posted letter to editor
“To summarize, fascism is the blending of corporate power with authoritarian powers of the state to accomplish mutually beneficial ends of a political elite and large, powerful corporations. This is important to understanding governance in the U.S. today.”
June 12
1953 – Birth of Dale Schultz, 32-year Republican state legislator in Wisconsin and former state Senate Majority Leader
In 2013, before retiring rather than facing a primary challenger backed by Americans for Prosperity, he said:
“When some think tank comes up with the legislation and tells you not to fool with it, why are you even a legislator anymore? You just sit there and take votes and you’re kind of a feudal serf for folks with a lot of money.”
1972 – Death of Saul Alinsky, community organizer
“America’s corporations are a spiritual slum, and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society.” Rules for Radicals, p. 183
1982 – Massive anti-war march in New York City
One million people from around world converge on NYC and UN; demand end to arms, race and nuclear disarmament.
June 13
1866 – States ratify 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting former slaves citizenship, “due process” and “equal protection of the laws”
After the Amendment’s adoption by Congress, Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax spoke in favor of Section 1: “I will tell you why I love it. It is because it is the Declaration of Independence placed immutably and forever in the Constitution.”
Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 2459 (1866).
2022 – “Elephant in the Room: Meltdown have brought progressive groups to a standstill at a critical moment in world history” posted article
“And then, sometime in the summer, the forward momentum stalled, and many of the progressive gains lapsed or were reversed. Instead of fueling a groundswell of public support to reinvigorate the party’s ambitious agenda, most of the foundation-backed organizations that make up the backbone of the party’s ideological infrastructure were still spending their time locked in virtual retreats, Slack wars, and healing sessions, grappling with tensions over hierarchy, patriarchy, race, gender, and power.”
June 14
2010 — Publication of revised edition “Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People” – And How You Can Fight Back” by Thom Hartman
A seminal work. “Unequal taxes, unequal accountability for crime, unequal influence, unequal control of the media, unequal access to natural resources—corporations have gained these privileges and more by exploiting their legal status as persons. How did something so illogical and unjust become the law of the land?”
Weekly installments of the book was published at truthout.org, beginning at http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/331:unequal-protection-how-corporations-became-people-and-how-you-can-fight-back
2011 – Wales, NY, Adopts Community Rights Ordinance
The Ordinance (No.3-2011) was enacted as a local law under NYS Municipal Home Rule Act, which recognizes broad police powers under the statute. The Ordinance establishes a Bill of Rights for Wales’s residents and “recognizes and secures certain civil and political rights of the residents of the Town of Wales to govern themselves and protect themselves from harm to their persons, property and environment.”
June 15
1215 – Magna Carta signed
Widely considered as the foundational document of modern democracy, the Magna Carta was signed by King John of England in 1215 under pressure by noble barons who feared losing their lands based on the whims of the sovereign. It also established other individual rights, including the right to a trial by one’s peers.
1836 – Charter (license) of Second National Bank of the United State
s repealed
This was the third quasi national bank of the former British colonies — following the Bank of North America (1781-1785, chartered by the Continental Congress) and Bank of the United States (1791-1811, chartered by the US Congress). While called a “national” bank, it was not public but actually a commercial/corporate bank with the power to issue money directly. Early on, it issued a huge amount of money (more than 20 times its reserves) as loans that led to financial speculation and large corporate profits. A year later, it stopped issuing loans, resulting in a severe contraction of the money supply. This led to massive bankruptcies and the Panic of 1819. When President Andrew Jackson threatened to repeal its charter, the Bank’s leaders used their power to restrict money circulation to cause another depression. Despite Bank President Nicolas Biddle’s effort to have its charter renewed, President Jackson opposed renewal, saying, “The immense capital and peculiar privileges bestowed upon it enabled it to exercise despotic sway over the other banks in every part of the country…and it openly claimed for itself the power of regulating the currency throughout the United States.”
The bank charter was, in fact, repealed – resulting in its dissolution.
1917 – Congressional passage of the Espionage Act
The law made it a crime to interfere with military operations or recruitment, prevent military insubordination and to prevent support of U.S. enemies during wartime. The result has been restrictions of free speech over the decades to question government policies. Those who have been charged under the Act include Eugene V. Debs, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.
1934 – “The Public Influence of the Bar” address by Supreme Court Justice Harlan Stone calling out the American Bar Association
“’Steadily the best skill and capacity of the profession has been drawn into the exacting and highly specialized service of business and finance. At its best the changed system has brought to the command of the business world loyalty and superb proficiency and technical skill. At its worst it has made the learned profession of an earlier day the obsequious servant of business, and tainted it with the morals and manners of the market place in its most anti-social manifestations.’ Justice Stone described the plight of the country as a ‘sorely stricken social order” with the Bar doing much to serve business but “…so little to make law more readily available as an instrument of justice for the common man (sic).’”
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1331738?seq=1
2021 — “Duty To Warn: The Lie Of Corporate Personhood” posted online by Gary Kohls, M.D.
“Our Supposed “Law and Order” Society Severely Punishes Human Rapists and Plunderers, but Slaps the Wrists of Their Corporate Counterparts…
“Antisocial/sociopathic Personality Disorder: Linking Human and Corporate Criminals…
“Corporations Meet the Definition of Antisocial/sociopathic Personality Disordered Entities…
“What Should Be Done with Corporate Plunderers?…
“Shouldn’t Antidemocratic, Authoritarian Corporations Be Considered “Guilty Until Proven Innocent”?…
“I like that notion. Who knows how many lives would be saved if that were done?…
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO2106/S00174/duty-to-warn-the-lie-of-corporate-personhood.htm
June 16
1723 – Birth of Adam Smith, author of “Wealth of Nations,” who critiqued corporations
In his famous work written in 1776, Wealth of Nations, Smith criticized corporations for their effect in curtailing “natural liberty.” According to David Korton, “Smith saw corporations, as much as governments, as instruments for suppressing the competitive forces of the market, and his condemnation of them was uncompromising. He makes specific mention of corporations twelve times in his classic thesis, and not once does he attribute any favorable quality to them. Typical is his observation: ‘It is to prevent this reduction of price, and consequently of wages and profit, by restraining that free competition which would most certainly occasion it, that all corporations, and the greater part of corporation laws, have been established.’”
David C. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, Kumarian Press, 1995. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Korten/RiseCorpPower_WCRW.html
1938 – Temporary National Economics Committee is established
The TNEC held hearings on the concentration of economic power, including monopolies. Their final report “Investigation of Concentration of Economic Power” stated: “the principal instrument of the concentration of economic power and wealth has been the corporate charter with unlimited power.” Not just economic power, but political power.
2016 – North Dakotans soundly reject corporate farming measure
“North Dakotans on Tuesday soundly rejected a law enacted last year that changed decades of family-farming rules in the state by allowing corporations to own and operate dairy and hog farms.
Some 75 percent of North Dakotans who went to the ballot box voted to repeal Senate Bill 2351, according to preliminary results posted on a state website.” http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northdakota-farming-idUSKCN0Z10DU
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