If successful, state by state, it will prohibit political action of any kind, including donations in kind or in cash, by any "artificial entity" doing business in the state. Note: "Doing business" is not limited to those entities chartered by the state.
Some states (Delaware, among others) will not adopt the Plan. However, if a sufficient number (30? 35?) do, the effect will be dramatic nationwide.
That is great, and hopefully it succeeds in those states. But my guess is that the oligarchs will find a way around it. Money talks, walks, and rules. To make it work, we have to also reduced the inequality of wealth and income.
Same here, I live in the Pacific NW and the water is cold. I have deer that graze on my life, a family of fox and a family of raccoons,which I feed with table scraps and uneaten cat food., a hoot owl nests on the north side and ravens on the south (they get first dibs on the food I put out).
While the East, south and midwest swelter in heat, the outside temp is about 60 f.
It did not snow last winter, but when it has, only about twice and never more than three inches, which melts in three days..
A slice of heaven, one draw back, gas and electricity are expensive., but that is because I choose to live where I live.
Enjoy your life William. You came up the hard way and deserve the fruits of your labor. My comment about the water being warm was just an idiom. It is actually cold.
Thanks I certainly do enjoy my life. I never lose my temper, I never get angry, I don't punch walls, kick things, break things and think that those that do, have a serious mental problem.
I am admittedly a curmudgeon, but I am also generous, try to be kind and compassionate, but as opinionated as hell. I do not tolerate stupidity, foolishness, deceit and lies.
"Amen" to that. I am a born-and-raised native of CA. My husband was in the Air Force for 20 years, so I have lived all over. CA is home, and that is where I reside. I, too, am opinionated; funds are tight, but I sew, crochet, and loom plenty that gets donated. As long as my hands are busy, everything else is secondary. I live in a senior apartment complex and had no idea what a bunch of lazy, ignorant people seniors were until I moved here in 2016. These are apartments, and you need to be able to take care of yourself. Not all of them, there are 39 of us, and it's amazing. The worst are the Trumpers. Zero common sense.
As I gaze into my crystal ball, I don't like what I see as regards this country and the world is headed, I take solace from the fact that I am 87, diabetic and in remission from lung and brain cancer, going on 9 years, and every second left to live is a gift, but I won't have to suffer the consequences of the idiocy around me, at least not for long.
I do have descendants lots of them, grand, great and great great, and I don't envy what they will have to endure, but that is what humans do, they endure, they adjust, the compensate.
As the Billy Joel song goes, "I didn't start the fire"
I was born into a world not of my making, but I made my way through it anyway. Frankly I am fortunate and comfortable, because I made some good choices, also made a lot of bad ones, but the good outweighs the bad, and I muddled through.
Yes, you are opinionated, but your opinions have merit, because you have an uncanny knowledge of history. I think you prompted Daniel Solomon to stop posting on the newsletter. I would never challenge you, because I know I'd get hammered.
Very enlightening! Thank you. Solves some of the mystery as to how a person like Trump can be President of US; and why a Supreme Court which is supposed to defend the people is defending Trump and the Corporations instead.
Interesting thing about the wealth transfer: the Rand study estimated a transfer of $50 Trillion from the general economy into the pockets of the uber riche since 1975, where it remains sequestered today. But they also estimated that this transfer is ongoing, at a rate of about $2-2.5 Trillion per year. With the study published in 2018, and with evidence that the trickle-up has only increased in intensity, it is easy to conclude that the number today would be between 60 and 70 Trillion.
Note why I capitalize "Trillion". I dare you to try and fathom that number. That is $60 Million Million! Locked away in the accounts and investment portfolios - much of it held in overseas accounts - of about 50,000 lords and ladies - and most of THAT in the pockets of just a few hundred. And, while this is a world-wide phenomenon, it is much much more concentrated in the US. Even our potentially devastating national debt is "only" about $35 Trillion, most of it due to them, and owed by us.
Asking billionaires to give up a piddly 5% is like a begger on the street asking a passerby for a buck. But watch them scream to high heaven about their "property rights". Give me a break.
With this upside-down pyramid built on a single lie, Thom, I would think it would be very simple to make the whole corrupt structure collapse--by a single lawsuit that proves your point that a headnote carries no legal weight. From what you are saying, all of the cases citing Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific RR should be reversed where this case is the pivotal legal argument--right? Who would have standing to bring such a case? And why has no one done this to date?
I totally agree with you that we need to expand SCOTUS with some real democratic (small d) justices, I wonder, however, it the violation of judicial norms by citing as case law a decision that was never actually made by a court would collapse the fake / false system by itself? Are you suggesting that SCOTUS would currently override even this apparently very legitimate challenge?
Jefferson's prophetic quote--"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."--should stand alongside another unheeded line of advice from a founding father, this by Franklin, that we have a republic, "if we can keep it."
“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
The Brandeis quotation and your entire post make it clear we must jettison the compliant neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party and the compliant incremental “pragmatism” that has encouraged and enabled creeping oligarchy since he death of FDR. Their current hypocritical, vociferous efforts to undermine the Democratic Socialists of America serve the oligarchs and foster fascism, further erode democracy, and offer nothing of substance to excite voters. The DSA exists to foster government of, by, and for the people. Opposition to them is opposition to that.
If voters in the US were to suddenly start voting their own economic self-interest, the most powerful coalition would be a marriage of progressives and MAGA! Aaaaaaghhh!
How about a dollar for dollar tax on the amount billionaires spend on political campaigns? Power not the money is the issue, At least many of the Robber Barons of an earlier era became philanthropists, donating to civic improvements, much like Bill Gates today.
Many tax breaks are given on the presumption of an outcome, often jobs. Create to outcomes first, then provide the tax breaks.
That's all true, except that money is power is money. It isn't so much wealth per se that gives these potentates their power, it is the sheer SIZE of the wealth. Poor schmucks like us cannot afford to donate that much to politicians, because that takes food off our tables. For the uber riche, a million dollar donation is just money they find in their sofas. They simply overwhelm average Americans.
Thanks, I will share that link with Christopher Armitage, or you can. Chis posts about state solutions that bypass congress.
That Delaware would reject the Montana plan is not surprising, as you probably know being a Harmann fan, Delaware is little more than a place where corporatins are chartered because of their corporate favored Corporate chartering laws.
It started backwith J.D. Rockefeller advertising that he would move his copany to the state that had the most favorabl corporate charter law. Thus started the Charte Wars. NJ won and thus Standard Oil of NJ, but Delaware and Ohio looked learned, and their congress and governor passed even more favorable laws.
Delware is the home of over 600 corporations, most of them financial institutions. Joe Biden was known in the Senate as the Senator from Wall street, thus making him, the darling of the corporate Democratic Party, whose professionals, strategists and analysts and staff, slop at the donor trough,content with taking a 2/3'rds shae of slop as compared to the Republicans.
Which by the way is why the likes of James Carville was married to the right wing harridan Mary Matalin, and George Conway to Kellyanne Conway.
Nice gig, a family that is founded and enjoys a psh life stile, because they slop at the same trough, one side labeled Republican , the other side labeled Democrat
WE HAVE TO ANDURE, AND ALL AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS HAVE TO ENDURE, 30 MORE MONTHS OF "KING TRUMP".
BUT I DEEPLY BELIEVE THAT WHEN THOSE MONTHS ARE UP THERE WILL BE A BACKLASH AGAINST HIM, ALL HE HAS DONE AND ALL HE STANDS FOR. THAT WILL SWEEP IT ALL AWAY
AMERICA SURVIVED THE CIVIL WAR. AMERICA, WITH THE HELP OF ITS ALLIES, WON THE GREATEST AND MOST DESTRUCTIVE WAR IN ALL OF HISTORY, AND AMERICA WILL SURVIVE ONE OF THE GRAETEST THREAATS TO IT SINCE THE CIVIL WAR, TRUMP.
I honestly don't think tRump will last another 30 months. His health is deteriorating rapidly. I hope he stays alive until after the midterms. Unfortunately, the death of tRump will not be the death of tRumpism.
Take a hard look at the new law passed by Hawaii that says corporations cannot contribute to campaigns. Twenty-two other states are looking to do the same thing.
Thom, the mistake we made in 1826, long before 1886 and Reagan, was allowing for-profit corporations to come into existence. A community — of friends, a family, a tribe, a village, a nation — is when people voluntarily agree to give priority to the common good. That was the way of small town life from the Pilgrims to 1828. When you allow people who are instead giving priority to their self-interest, and making it legal to remain a citizen of the society, you have ended the priority being the common good of ALL the people. The result, in 2026, is 1% of the people control 90% of the wealth.
The main thing that has to happen is to make it the law that for-profit corporations, and businesses and people, need to give priority to the common good like everyone else (moral behaavior)!!!! The second priority can still be maximizing the financial resturn to the shareholders, happiness of the employees, or anything else. It is the priority that determines everything else.
I am one of the founders of the first family on Earth of socially responsible mutual funds, the Calvert Social Funds. We naively thought if we asked companies to "care more" about the employees, community, and the enviornment...that would have companies do it — we failed to register that the priority determines everything else. We must end the naivete. Taxing the billionaires is a good thing, but it leaves it in the world of political footballs. We must deal with the fundamental problem: we cannot legalize anyone in a mature society giving priority to self-interest. It is immature...and will lead to where we are today. Terry Mollner
Billionaires are behind supporting vote interference because it promotes an oligarchic power grab.
Registered Voters Are Already Being Disenfranchised
Beau Bayh grandson of Birch Bayh of Senatorial fame is running for Indiana’s Secretary of State on the Democratic side of the ticket.
He reports that a registered Indiana voter prepared to vote in the Indiana primary and found that she was not eligible to vote(bit.ly/4p3UOLz). Charrie Stambaugh had been a U.S. citizen for nearly three decades and had cast a ballot in every election since she became eligible to vote. But this spring, after seeing a Facebook post encouraging people to check their voter registration status, she found her registration had been canceled. She was one of 1,625 registered voters targeted by Indiana Nazi Republican laws.
“I was not notified at any point that my registration had been revoked … I would not have known that had I not checked myself,” said Stambaugh, who thought it was unlikely other recent voters would randomly think to check their registrations without an election coming up
So a word to involved citizens. Check your voter registration and vote early so you can cure if there is a problem. Also notify and alert friends, neighbors, family, and relatives about the possible disenfranchisement of their ability to vote.
Thank you Thom for this excellent post. You've been speaking truth and educating us for decades. I so appreciate you and really look forward to reading your new book!!
Hi Thom! I discussed your discovery about the decision from the late 1800s underlying Citizens United with a dear friend who is an attorney who worked in the atty general’s office in TX for many years and is quite bright. She insists that a first year law student knows that a headnote doesn’t mean anything and carries no weight, only the words in the decision itself. So she completely doubts the veracity of what you are saying, that somehow this headnote was seen as the words of the decision itself, when clearly it was not. How could this have possibly happened? I’d love to be able to prove your point with her!
This is documented history now. A great deal of historical truth gets hidden by people in power who don't want you to know.
The court operated differently in those days. Justices rarely issued opinions or explanations of their decisions. They left summaries to the court clerk. If you read Thom's book, which he is providing free chapter by chapter, you'll see that a corrupt justice, Steven Field, was quoted saying that the SCOTUS did not take up the constitutional question that corporations are people "Because we all agree that they are". Which was not true, but then the clerk, Davis, wrote in the summary that they actually ruled that coporations are people under the 14th. The olicarchs had been pushing for that since the early days of the nation. After that, court rulings began to act on that basis, and it became law.
technically, the headnote in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad was not an official ruling on corporate personhood. In the American legal system, a headnote written by a court reporter carries no weight as a legal precedent. The actual, official ruling in that 1886 case was decided on a minor technicality regarding how California taxed railroad fences.
This makes me think your lawyer friend is a perpetrator of misinformation or maybe just an unwitting disseminator of legal misinformation. Then the question "how could this have possibly happened? Well, legal shenanigans never challenged by anyone.
Billionaires threaten to leave the state if they tax them, So let them, they don' pay any taxes anyway,.
The threat is idle, They live on the West Coast because of the weather and amenities,neither of which they will find in middle America.or the south
And why do they need all that money anyway, except for nefarious ends.
William:
You may have heard of the Montana Plan.
Check out https://transparentelection.org/
If successful, state by state, it will prohibit political action of any kind, including donations in kind or in cash, by any "artificial entity" doing business in the state. Note: "Doing business" is not limited to those entities chartered by the state.
Some states (Delaware, among others) will not adopt the Plan. However, if a sufficient number (30? 35?) do, the effect will be dramatic nationwide.
\Vince S
That is great, and hopefully it succeeds in those states. But my guess is that the oligarchs will find a way around it. Money talks, walks, and rules. To make it work, we have to also reduced the inequality of wealth and income.
I live on the west coast and the weather and the amenities are great. The water is warm and I wouldn't live anywhere else.
Same here, I live in the Pacific NW and the water is cold. I have deer that graze on my life, a family of fox and a family of raccoons,which I feed with table scraps and uneaten cat food., a hoot owl nests on the north side and ravens on the south (they get first dibs on the food I put out).
While the East, south and midwest swelter in heat, the outside temp is about 60 f.
It did not snow last winter, but when it has, only about twice and never more than three inches, which melts in three days..
A slice of heaven, one draw back, gas and electricity are expensive., but that is because I choose to live where I live.
Enjoy your life William. You came up the hard way and deserve the fruits of your labor. My comment about the water being warm was just an idiom. It is actually cold.
Thanks I certainly do enjoy my life. I never lose my temper, I never get angry, I don't punch walls, kick things, break things and think that those that do, have a serious mental problem.
I am admittedly a curmudgeon, but I am also generous, try to be kind and compassionate, but as opinionated as hell. I do not tolerate stupidity, foolishness, deceit and lies.
"Amen" to that. I am a born-and-raised native of CA. My husband was in the Air Force for 20 years, so I have lived all over. CA is home, and that is where I reside. I, too, am opinionated; funds are tight, but I sew, crochet, and loom plenty that gets donated. As long as my hands are busy, everything else is secondary. I live in a senior apartment complex and had no idea what a bunch of lazy, ignorant people seniors were until I moved here in 2016. These are apartments, and you need to be able to take care of yourself. Not all of them, there are 39 of us, and it's amazing. The worst are the Trumpers. Zero common sense.
Trumpers are there own worst enemies.
As I gaze into my crystal ball, I don't like what I see as regards this country and the world is headed, I take solace from the fact that I am 87, diabetic and in remission from lung and brain cancer, going on 9 years, and every second left to live is a gift, but I won't have to suffer the consequences of the idiocy around me, at least not for long.
I do have descendants lots of them, grand, great and great great, and I don't envy what they will have to endure, but that is what humans do, they endure, they adjust, the compensate.
As the Billy Joel song goes, "I didn't start the fire"
I was born into a world not of my making, but I made my way through it anyway. Frankly I am fortunate and comfortable, because I made some good choices, also made a lot of bad ones, but the good outweighs the bad, and I muddled through.
Yes, you are opinionated, but your opinions have merit, because you have an uncanny knowledge of history. I think you prompted Daniel Solomon to stop posting on the newsletter. I would never challenge you, because I know I'd get hammered.
Very enlightening! Thank you. Solves some of the mystery as to how a person like Trump can be President of US; and why a Supreme Court which is supposed to defend the people is defending Trump and the Corporations instead.
Interesting thing about the wealth transfer: the Rand study estimated a transfer of $50 Trillion from the general economy into the pockets of the uber riche since 1975, where it remains sequestered today. But they also estimated that this transfer is ongoing, at a rate of about $2-2.5 Trillion per year. With the study published in 2018, and with evidence that the trickle-up has only increased in intensity, it is easy to conclude that the number today would be between 60 and 70 Trillion.
Note why I capitalize "Trillion". I dare you to try and fathom that number. That is $60 Million Million! Locked away in the accounts and investment portfolios - much of it held in overseas accounts - of about 50,000 lords and ladies - and most of THAT in the pockets of just a few hundred. And, while this is a world-wide phenomenon, it is much much more concentrated in the US. Even our potentially devastating national debt is "only" about $35 Trillion, most of it due to them, and owed by us.
Asking billionaires to give up a piddly 5% is like a begger on the street asking a passerby for a buck. But watch them scream to high heaven about their "property rights". Give me a break.
With this upside-down pyramid built on a single lie, Thom, I would think it would be very simple to make the whole corrupt structure collapse--by a single lawsuit that proves your point that a headnote carries no legal weight. From what you are saying, all of the cases citing Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific RR should be reversed where this case is the pivotal legal argument--right? Who would have standing to bring such a case? And why has no one done this to date?
Great idea, but we have to expand the SCOTUS and the whole national judiciary to accomplish it.
I totally agree with you that we need to expand SCOTUS with some real democratic (small d) justices, I wonder, however, it the violation of judicial norms by citing as case law a decision that was never actually made by a court would collapse the fake / false system by itself? Are you suggesting that SCOTUS would currently override even this apparently very legitimate challenge?
Jefferson's prophetic quote--"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."--should stand alongside another unheeded line of advice from a founding father, this by Franklin, that we have a republic, "if we can keep it."
Great contribution. Can we get a compilation of similar quotes from other founders and patriotic heroes?
“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
The Brandeis quotation and your entire post make it clear we must jettison the compliant neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party and the compliant incremental “pragmatism” that has encouraged and enabled creeping oligarchy since he death of FDR. Their current hypocritical, vociferous efforts to undermine the Democratic Socialists of America serve the oligarchs and foster fascism, further erode democracy, and offer nothing of substance to excite voters. The DSA exists to foster government of, by, and for the people. Opposition to them is opposition to that.
If voters in the US were to suddenly start voting their own economic self-interest, the most powerful coalition would be a marriage of progressives and MAGA! Aaaaaaghhh!
Since MAGATS thrive on their victimhood, it’d help if they understood who’s victimizing them.
How about a dollar for dollar tax on the amount billionaires spend on political campaigns? Power not the money is the issue, At least many of the Robber Barons of an earlier era became philanthropists, donating to civic improvements, much like Bill Gates today.
Many tax breaks are given on the presumption of an outcome, often jobs. Create to outcomes first, then provide the tax breaks.
That's all true, except that money is power is money. It isn't so much wealth per se that gives these potentates their power, it is the sheer SIZE of the wealth. Poor schmucks like us cannot afford to donate that much to politicians, because that takes food off our tables. For the uber riche, a million dollar donation is just money they find in their sofas. They simply overwhelm average Americans.
Thanks, I will share that link with Christopher Armitage, or you can. Chis posts about state solutions that bypass congress.
That Delaware would reject the Montana plan is not surprising, as you probably know being a Harmann fan, Delaware is little more than a place where corporatins are chartered because of their corporate favored Corporate chartering laws.
It started backwith J.D. Rockefeller advertising that he would move his copany to the state that had the most favorabl corporate charter law. Thus started the Charte Wars. NJ won and thus Standard Oil of NJ, but Delaware and Ohio looked learned, and their congress and governor passed even more favorable laws.
Delware is the home of over 600 corporations, most of them financial institutions. Joe Biden was known in the Senate as the Senator from Wall street, thus making him, the darling of the corporate Democratic Party, whose professionals, strategists and analysts and staff, slop at the donor trough,content with taking a 2/3'rds shae of slop as compared to the Republicans.
Which by the way is why the likes of James Carville was married to the right wing harridan Mary Matalin, and George Conway to Kellyanne Conway.
Nice gig, a family that is founded and enjoys a psh life stile, because they slop at the same trough, one side labeled Republican , the other side labeled Democrat
WE HAVE TO ANDURE, AND ALL AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS HAVE TO ENDURE, 30 MORE MONTHS OF "KING TRUMP".
BUT I DEEPLY BELIEVE THAT WHEN THOSE MONTHS ARE UP THERE WILL BE A BACKLASH AGAINST HIM, ALL HE HAS DONE AND ALL HE STANDS FOR. THAT WILL SWEEP IT ALL AWAY
AMERICA SURVIVED THE CIVIL WAR. AMERICA, WITH THE HELP OF ITS ALLIES, WON THE GREATEST AND MOST DESTRUCTIVE WAR IN ALL OF HISTORY, AND AMERICA WILL SURVIVE ONE OF THE GRAETEST THREAATS TO IT SINCE THE CIVIL WAR, TRUMP.
I honestly don't think tRump will last another 30 months. His health is deteriorating rapidly. I hope he stays alive until after the midterms. Unfortunately, the death of tRump will not be the death of tRumpism.
Take a hard look at the new law passed by Hawaii that says corporations cannot contribute to campaigns. Twenty-two other states are looking to do the same thing.
Thom, the mistake we made in 1826, long before 1886 and Reagan, was allowing for-profit corporations to come into existence. A community — of friends, a family, a tribe, a village, a nation — is when people voluntarily agree to give priority to the common good. That was the way of small town life from the Pilgrims to 1828. When you allow people who are instead giving priority to their self-interest, and making it legal to remain a citizen of the society, you have ended the priority being the common good of ALL the people. The result, in 2026, is 1% of the people control 90% of the wealth.
The main thing that has to happen is to make it the law that for-profit corporations, and businesses and people, need to give priority to the common good like everyone else (moral behaavior)!!!! The second priority can still be maximizing the financial resturn to the shareholders, happiness of the employees, or anything else. It is the priority that determines everything else.
I am one of the founders of the first family on Earth of socially responsible mutual funds, the Calvert Social Funds. We naively thought if we asked companies to "care more" about the employees, community, and the enviornment...that would have companies do it — we failed to register that the priority determines everything else. We must end the naivete. Taxing the billionaires is a good thing, but it leaves it in the world of political footballs. We must deal with the fundamental problem: we cannot legalize anyone in a mature society giving priority to self-interest. It is immature...and will lead to where we are today. Terry Mollner
Billionaires are behind supporting vote interference because it promotes an oligarchic power grab.
Registered Voters Are Already Being Disenfranchised
Beau Bayh grandson of Birch Bayh of Senatorial fame is running for Indiana’s Secretary of State on the Democratic side of the ticket.
He reports that a registered Indiana voter prepared to vote in the Indiana primary and found that she was not eligible to vote(bit.ly/4p3UOLz). Charrie Stambaugh had been a U.S. citizen for nearly three decades and had cast a ballot in every election since she became eligible to vote. But this spring, after seeing a Facebook post encouraging people to check their voter registration status, she found her registration had been canceled. She was one of 1,625 registered voters targeted by Indiana Nazi Republican laws.
“I was not notified at any point that my registration had been revoked … I would not have known that had I not checked myself,” said Stambaugh, who thought it was unlikely other recent voters would randomly think to check their registrations without an election coming up
So a word to involved citizens. Check your voter registration and vote early so you can cure if there is a problem. Also notify and alert friends, neighbors, family, and relatives about the possible disenfranchisement of their ability to vote.
Thank you Thom for this excellent post. You've been speaking truth and educating us for decades. I so appreciate you and really look forward to reading your new book!!
My copy will arrive on Saturday! I am so looking forward to it.
Bother! Now I have to wait until Thursday for the book to arrive. But I shall wait because I really want to read it.
Hi Thom! I discussed your discovery about the decision from the late 1800s underlying Citizens United with a dear friend who is an attorney who worked in the atty general’s office in TX for many years and is quite bright. She insists that a first year law student knows that a headnote doesn’t mean anything and carries no weight, only the words in the decision itself. So she completely doubts the veracity of what you are saying, that somehow this headnote was seen as the words of the decision itself, when clearly it was not. How could this have possibly happened? I’d love to be able to prove your point with her!
This is documented history now. A great deal of historical truth gets hidden by people in power who don't want you to know.
The court operated differently in those days. Justices rarely issued opinions or explanations of their decisions. They left summaries to the court clerk. If you read Thom's book, which he is providing free chapter by chapter, you'll see that a corrupt justice, Steven Field, was quoted saying that the SCOTUS did not take up the constitutional question that corporations are people "Because we all agree that they are". Which was not true, but then the clerk, Davis, wrote in the summary that they actually ruled that coporations are people under the 14th. The olicarchs had been pushing for that since the early days of the nation. After that, court rulings began to act on that basis, and it became law.
This is what I looked up under AI google:
technically, the headnote in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad was not an official ruling on corporate personhood. In the American legal system, a headnote written by a court reporter carries no weight as a legal precedent. The actual, official ruling in that 1886 case was decided on a minor technicality regarding how California taxed railroad fences.
This makes me think your lawyer friend is a perpetrator of misinformation or maybe just an unwitting disseminator of legal misinformation. Then the question "how could this have possibly happened? Well, legal shenanigans never challenged by anyone.
Nancy:
Nothing could be simpler!
Refer your friend to Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific RR, 118 U.S. 394 (1886).
She can read it for herself.
\Vince S
Excellent information; thank you!