Philavore

Imagine the following hypothetical - There are two persons. They reside in the same state. Perhaps even the same city. They may even be neighbors. And if they were neighbors, person B would have a slightly larger house because person B has slightly more money.

Financial considerations aside, these two persons are by and large equal in every regard. Or at least so says the Constitution.

Each of these two persons happens to be an avid participant in the political process. Each regularly lobbies their Congress person. Each has a habit of speaking out upon the issues of the day. And each contributes generously to the causes and politicians with whom each sympathizes.

In other words, both are model citizens.

However, being the residents of the same state, both must abide by the laws passed by their state legislature. And being committed to the rule of law, both of our hypothetical persons do. They even abide by a recently-enacted law that absolves from personal liability any person who wears a veil and agrees to pay a recurring fee to maintain a registration of that veil with the state.

Having slightly less money than person B and a slightly more photogenic face, person A never takes advantage of the recently-enacted law. Being able to buy a wardrobe that accommodates the wearing a veil as well as pay the fee to register her veil with the state, person B does. As a result, person B is able to enjoy the benefits of this new law by going about her daily activities, including her numerous political engagements, without having to bear the burden of personal liability.

Until one day, person B gets slightly worked up about a certain politician. After a night of heavy drinking, she comes to believe that that politician is stealing from the state's treasury to pay for his mistress's renovations to her recently purchased home that was sold to her by some state entity for the princely sum of $1.

Being an active citizen, person B has a blog and before her buzz fades, she has published a missive enumerating each of the certain politician's faults. Moments later Google's spider scans her blog's feed and republishes it across countless other websites. Some even more famous blogger picks up the story. By the next morning it is on Huffington Post.

By the time person B rouses herself from her hangover, she is watching some newscaster introduce footage of the certain now red-faced politician vowing to restore his reputation by finding the person who published the pernicious lies and sue that person for every cent that person may be worth.

Shortly after the press conference, the politician rings up his attorney, who happens to be you, and demands advice. Facing imminent election, he explains that his political career is hopelessly ruined. During the last twelve hours, he's lost 55 points in the polls. Angrily, he states that he has proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that person B's statements are recklessly untrue.

Having written the law that granted person B an exemption from personal liability, the politician is particularly frantic about how he has no recourse against person B's reckless lies. He goes on and on about how he knows how much person B is worth in her personal capacity and how fairness demands that person B make him whole.

Knowing the publicity the case will garner and the benefit it will be to your future legal career, you agree to represent the politician. After consoling him, you persuade him to hang up the phone by promising him that you need the time to draft a memo to him summarizing your theory of his case specifically addressing how person B may be held personally liable for her actions.

Knowing that the person B has a bang up accountant, you assign your summer associate the job of writing the section on piercing B's veil.

Your memo must address other legal theories.

Or so says Jack Wagner, PA's auditor general.

A little over a year ago, I came to pretty much the same conclusion.

Putting the shenanigans in the context of home mortgages (thinking the experience folks have with home mortgages would make the whole "swaption" thing a little easier to comprehend), I wrote the following:

In the words of the homeowner analogy, the homeowner (aka, the school board) is basically placing a bet with her local neighborhood bookie that a couple years down the road the market interest rate is going to be lower than whatever rate she is presently paying. In exchange for placing this bet, the bookie pays the homeowner an upfront payment and agrees to cover a certain portion of her monthly mortgage payments. However, if whenever this bet comes due interest rates don't come down, the bookie gets paid back all the money he put out plus a penalty.

Just replace "homeowner" with "school district" and you get the drift. And in this bet, there is no way for the bookie, aka the "banker," to lose money cause turned around and took the other side of the same bet from AIG. No matter how things turn out, the bookie gets his.

Duh.

"When you drink local, you drink fresh--but you also support the local economy. I’ll break it down for you: When you drink a Joe Coffee Porter from Philadelphia Brewing Co. you’re not only showing some love for a local business, you’re supporting a business that’s outsourcing their graphic design to a local artist. That same artist probably walks an extra block to go to an independent café instead of Starbucks.

From the NYTimes:

"What these belated anti-Communists fail to realize is that the image they provide of their society comes uncannily close to the most abused traditional leftist image of capitalism: a society in which formal democracy merely conceals the reign of a wealthy minority. In other words, the newly born anti-Communists don’t get that what they are denouncing as perverted pseudo-capitalism simply is capitalism."

Finally got around to listening to the MP3 of the Radio Times from 9-16-09. It's full of great stuff.

For instance, Simon Johnson had the following to say in response to Dale from Kenneth Square:

"What we cannot handle is the top 10, 13, 15 banks. That's where we choke right now. That's what has to be fixed. And the only way to fix them is to do the Teddy Roosevelt strategy - break 'em up.

In anticipation of an upcoming event I plan to attend on the future of journalism, I am working on an op-ed on that distinguishes between the press in its modern corporate form and the press as originally envisioned by the founders. Along those lines, I came along a piece in the Nation celebrating the life of William Safire.

John Nicols observed that more often than not he and Safire disagreed on core issues stating "It's like that with former Nixon speechwriters and Nation scribes." However, the thrust of Nicols piece describes their agreement on the issue of corporate consolidation in the media.

Admittedly, my inner Wittgenstein would like to play language games to show why Justice Kennedy's statement that "Corporations have knowledge" is an entirely nonsensical existential condition as a matter of pure logic. But, for the time being, I think I'll stick to more prosaic matters - the tax implications of granting corporations a Constitutional right to make campaign contributions.

Well at least one justice seems to get the underlying hypocrisy of the so-called "originalists" who plan to use Citizens United v. FEC to extend constitutional rights to corporations through judicial fiat.

From the transcript of yesterday's oral arguments in Citizens United v. FEC, Justice Sotomayor made the following observation:

"Because what you are suggesting is that the courts who created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons, and there could be an argument made that that was the Court's error to start with, not Austin or McConnell, but the fact that the Court imbued a creature of State law with human characteristics."

What a breath of fresh air!

It's nice to see acknowledgment from a member of the Court that no act of Congress or any other legislative body ever conferred upon corporations First Amendment rights, let alone any other right under the Constitution.

Today, I managed to infect the pages of the Daily News with my ideas.

Here's a sample:

The case before the court arises from the distribution before the 2008 primary season of the film "Hillary: The Movie." Citizens United, creator of the film, sought to enjoin the enforcement of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, one of several statutes that prevent the use of corporate funds to influence a federal election. Led by Republican appointees, the Supreme Court may very well strike down the law, including the corporate restriction.

Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Antonin Scalia and the other Republican appointees are proponents of originalism. They argue that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the original intent of the Founding Fathers. But the Founders did not vest corporations with rights under the Constitution. Therein lies the hypocrisy of conservative judicial ideology.

The drafters of the Constitution perceived the unchecked power of corporations to be a danger to American democracy. Expressing his strong distrust of corporate power, Thomas Jefferson stated his hope to "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations." Sharing Jefferson's disdain, James Madison described corporations as "at best a necessary evil only."

To read the full Op-Ed, buy a copy of the Daily News.

For more of my thoughts, click read more.

From Deadspin discussing the resale of sports tickets:

"Someone obviously figured out that stock brokers are simply street hustlers in better suits and that maybe giant corporations that sell $8 beers need a new revenue stream to rape their customers with. Everybody wins! Except you!"

[Emphasis Added]