Letter to the Editor: Dickensian Politics

Dear Editor,

In response to John Rehill's article on corporate welfare:

As Dickens mocked government by naming one branch the Circumlocution Department, because things went round and round but never came out the other end, so corporate welfare and Congress are intimately tied together to go round and round in a rapacious and obvious back scratching exercise, where Congress votes for subsidies to the companies that then provide campaign donations to help the elected officials get back in office to continue the cycle.

Since this benefits both parties in the extreme, when we the public call our elected officials on the waste involved in corporate welfare, our elected officials merely roll their eyes and ignore us.

One way to subdue this would be to overturn Citizen's United with an amendment to the Constitution that makes if very clear that forming a corporation is no more than getting a license to do business, and the terms of that license can limit the corporation in any way the government sees fit, and that corporations do not have any of the "rights" of individuals, but only the rights granted them under the terms of their registration. 

Those rights, under the law, can be withdrawn and the corporation can be unincorporated if the corporation fails to abide by its contractual obligations stated in the license.

Eric West
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