Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!news.quux.org!eternal-september.org!feeder2.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Lynn Wheeler Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: The joy of actual numbers, was Democracy Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2024 10:55:36 -1000 Organization: Wheeler&Wheeler Lines: 91 Message-ID: <87h68oyr3r.fsf@localhost> References: <199392d0-9628-8177-2f3b-35b23a721dd4@example.net> <086607f1-2283-f7fb-ddf9-ac4766b06530@example.net> <3RPUO.364883$v8v2.299927@fx18.iad> <6723f0c1@news.ausics.net> <7bd05232-fb70-d3c8-d89a-be9f63d85207@example.net> <483e3c29-b695-d91a-bab1-68264d17296f@example.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2024 21:55:42 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="1f9417782bdf7b454b5956d5cd73f4f2"; logging-data="563873"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+qAOouigjfljMmZTeoTjxEjLWB/KIfTbY=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Cancel-Lock: sha1:QGeIe41b6L1tAD+WVYrCyAhzFqI= sha1:y2IX5Nl6Kw4qH5hDKMjxGOjxcls= Xref: csiph.com alt.folklore.computers:228502 comp.os.linux.misc:60437 rbowman writes: > The link I posted about the California High Speed Rail project bears that > put. Even in the 19th century when most of the US rail infrastructure was > built corruption was the catch of the day. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr%C3%A9dit_Mobilier_scandal > > If you like dramas: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_on_Wheels_(TV_series) past "Railroaded" aritcle/book http://phys.org/news/2012-01-railroad-hyperbole-echoes-dot-com-frenzy.html and https://www.amazon.com/Railroaded-Transcontinentals-Making-America-ebook/dp/B0051GST1U pg77/pg1984-86: By the end of the summer of 1873 the western railroads had, within the span of two years, ended the Indian treaty system in the United States, brought down a Canadian government, and nearly paralyzed the U.S. Congress. The greatest blow remained to be delivered. The railroads were about to bring down the North American economy. pg510/loc10030-33: The result was not only unneeded railroads whose effects were as often bad as beneficial but also corruption of the markets and the government. The men who directed this capital were frequently not themselves capitalists. They were entrepreneurs who borrowed money or collected subsidies. These entrepreneurs did not invent the railroad, but they were inventing corporations, railroad systems, and new forms of competition. Those things yielded both personal wealth and social disasters pg515/loc10118-22: The need to invest capital and labor in large amounts to maintain and upgrade what had already been built was one debt owed to the past, but the second one was what Charles Francis Adams in his days as a reformer referred to as a tax on trade. All of the watered stock, money siphoned off into private pockets, waste, and fraud that characterized the building of the railroads created a corporate debt that had to be paid through higher rates and scrimping on service. A shipper in 1885 was still paying for the frauds of the 1860s. ... and railroads scamming the supreme court https://www.amazon.com/We-Corporations-American-Businesses-Rights-ebook/dp/B01M64LRDJ/ pgxiii/loc45-50: IN DECEMBER 1882, ROSCOE CONKLING, A FORMER SENATOR and close confidant of President Chester Arthur, appeared before the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States to argue that corporations like his client, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, were entitled to equal rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Although that provision of the Constitution said that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" or "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," Conkling insisted the amendment's drafters intended to cover business corporations too. pg36/loc726-28: On this issue, Hamiltonians were corporationalists--proponents of corporate enterprise who advocated for expansive constitutional rights for business. Jeffersonians, meanwhile, were populists--opponents of corporate power who sought to limit corporate rights in the name of the people. pg229/loc3667-68: IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, CORPORATIONS WON LIBERTY RIGHTS, SUCH AS FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND RELIGION, WITH THE HELP OF ORGANIZATIONS LIKE THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. False Profits: Reviving the Corporation's Public Purpose https://www.uclalawreview.org/false-profits-reviving-the-corporations-public-purpose/ I Origins of the Corporation. Although the corporate structure dates back as far as the Greek and Roman Empires, characteristics of the modern corporation began to appear in England in the mid-thirteenth century.[4] "Merchant guilds" were loose organizations of merchants "governed through a council somewhat akin to a board of directors," and organized to "achieve a common purpose"[5] that was public in nature. Indeed, merchant guilds registered with the state and were approved only if they were "serving national purposes."[6] ... however there has been significant pressure to give corporate charters to entities operating in self-interest ... followed by extending constitutional "people" rights to corporations. The supreme court was scammed into extending 14th amendment rights to corporations (with faux claims that was what the original authors had intended). https://www.amazon.com/We-Corporations-American-Businesses-Rights-ebook/dp/B01M64LRDJ/ pgxiv/loc74-78: Between 1868, when the amendment was ratified, and 1912, when a scholar set out to identify every Fourteenth Amendment case heard by the Supreme Court, the justices decided 28 cases dealing with the rights of African Americans--and an astonishing 312 cases dealing with the rights of corporations. -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970