Supporting the Bollocks of Corporate "Free Speech Rights"

Warnings like this are essential. Besides, no smoker is having a gun placed to his head and being forced to read them!


The recent decision of a federal judge to block a U.S. government plan that requires graphic warnings on cigarette packages, is a travesty. According to this misguided and foolish judge (WSJ today, p. A6), Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the "government was violating the free speech rights" of the Tobacco companies "by requiring them to display the images of diseased lungs and a body on an autopsy table".

Are you effing kidding me? "Violating their free speech rights"? THEY are commercial artifacts! They have no free speech rights! Hence, there are no constitutional grounds on which this rests, and never mind the spurious past rulings, such as the 1886 Santa Clara U.S. Surpeme court farce which first found for "corporate personhood" or the 2009 'Citizens United' ruling that allowed for "unlimited infusion of cash into political campaigns" to be treated as "free speech"..

ALL of these rulings are outright abominations, that in effect elevate corporations to super-citizen level, which means the rest of us as flesh and blood citizens must become vassals or slaves.

Consider: Unlike the normal fleshly person-citizen, these legal artifacts are able to live forever, or as close to that sublime state as de-regulating laws allow. They can live in multiple places at once (branch offices), and even transmogrify themselves via mergers, etc. or 'amputate' themselves into smaller companies bearing the same overall identity, and run by a single interlocking directorate.

These 'corporate persons' were (over time) also able to access a host of special rights and privileges - not afforded ordinary flesh and blood citizens. These included: special tax-write offs, government and state subsidies, as well as deductions.

They also use special tax gimmicks, and often the gov't abets these, for example, by not demanding that the profits repatriated from overseas operations are taxed. Meanwhile, while the on-paper tax rate is 35% the actual amount paid by the typical corporation is 12 1/2 percent according to a recent report in TIME (Feb. 20, p. 16).

Part of the reason for this aberration is that Uncle Sam himself "has allowed companies the right to write off 100% of the purchase price of new equipment in 2010 and 2011". This was done to theoretically "spur investment and create jobs". One wonders then how come these companies are still sitting on almost $1.5 trillion while job growth barely ekes in at 240,000 a month or barely double the population replacement level.

Whatever the reason, the engineered corporate tax avoidance has had a dunning effect on our society along with the top 1% escaping their own fair tax assessments. According to TIME, corporations in toto now account for only 9% of the nation's tax bill compared to 40% in 1943. That means citizens are now left to make up that difference, and the ones who are happen to be in the lower quintiles of income - even as the upper 5% have seen their wealth soar.

Corporate tax perks are even more deleterious to our civil society because the money saved from not paying taxes is used to mount specious lobbying efforts, or pay for toxic super PAC political ads, or devise blatantly wrong legal cases....such as those which the Tobacco companies have used to make this federal judge believe there is a "substantial likelihood of winning any case".

Thus, the untaxed corporate money goes to enhance corporate privilege even as it adds another specious veneer to "corporate speech" rights at the expense of the rest of us.

According to this same Judge Leon, the proposed labels (ibid.):

"go beyond purely factual and uncontroversial disclosure"

And:

"The graphic images are designed to neither protect the consumer from confusion or deception, nor to increase consumer awareness of smoking risks, rather they were crafted to effect a stronge emotional response calculated to provoke the viewer to quit or never start smoking."

Of course, the good Judge misses several key points in this faux ruling:

1) No smoker is forced to read any warning! A "consumer" can just purchase his death pack, light up and smoke to his heart's or lung's content and never glance at the warning no matter how garish. No one is putting a .44 magnum to his cranium to force eyeballs to the warning label!

What the Judge is asserting is that people are no more than automatons - even more chattel than the corps believe. If they pick up a pack of cigs, their willpower is overcome and they must focus on the colorful warning just like droog Alex was forced to watch - with eyelids pinned open - the parade of horrors during his special treatments in the flick 'Clockwork Orange'. They have no choice, they MUST read the labels and warnings and start crying and yelping: "Oh ....ooooh....I dare not buy that or this will happen to moi!"

Bollocks!

2) The Judge disses over 3 decades of firm medical support for the variety -severity of diseases that occur to lungs from smoking. If he were to see actual autopsy images of diseased lungs he might not be so cavalier.

3) Obviously, given a 2.5 sq. inch space one cannot produce a reasoned tract with statistics to support the label! (Can you see the eyes closing?) Thus, the only alternative is a much abbreviated, high- impact message ....but what's the big deal?

Such messages are all over our TV's at the behest of corporations! From the latest drug sex aids like Cialis to ....you name it! If those bear intrinsic "high emotional content" then why can't the government use its own forms to offset corporate influence toward a negative end?

4) Legal precedents already established in Europe have no issue with such warnings and have also been successful especially in reducing the smoking -disease rates of the young! But of course, in an established corporatocracy like ours, the citizen has few protections and rights. Thus, even as Europeans protect their citizens with "emotive" warnings allowed on tobacco products, they also protect citizens' rights to privacy - hence prohibit trading on their personal information such as bank accounts, social security numbers and other invasions which are somehow allowed in the US of A.

Why allowed? Obviously because we are vassals to a corporate oligarchy that feels they can do whatever the hell they wish.

Just one question for the Judge:

Will you then stand for Obama's Affordable Health Plan, now that you've approved millions of new lung diseased citizens who likely won't be able to get insurance to treate their lung cancers, COPD and emphesema anyplace else?

If not, and you issue a ruling against the "Nanny state" you are nothing but a flat out hypocrite.