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Ivan W.
Parkins |
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To order Dr. Parkins book, Perspectives For
American Society Contact
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2009, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
requires permission of the author
and can be obtained by contacting,
info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
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About Ivan W. Parkins: Dr. Parkins is a retired professor of
Political Science from Central Michigan University. He received his PhD from the University of
Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval officer
during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama.
He is a recent widower with three daughters, 3 grand children and 2
great grand children. Dr. Parkins has
written extensively, having authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column
for many years. |
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Front Page |
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Editors Note: Dr.
Parkins’s Grandson, Breton W. Hinkle, passed away unexpectedly on Feb. 14,
2009. He leaves his wife Jen, parents
Ray and Susan Hinkle, sister, Gretchen Hinkle, Richard and Kathy Bourque,
Father and Mother in law, brother in laws Kevin and Brian and sister in law,
Kelly. He was a graduate of Michigan
State University. Bret was a United
States Marine and had faithfully served his country with honor and
distinction. He will be terribly
missed by family and friends. He was loved by all who knew him. He was
buried with military honors in Holland, MI. See Bret’s life story at
http://www.lifestorynet.com/memories/45526/ |
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AN IMPORTANT FREEDOM Or Non-Profit vs. Profit Corporations By Ivan W. Parkins
Most Americans today are unaware that the legally created freedom to
incorporate a for-profit enterprise is largely a product of Jacksonian
Democracy (late 1820s-1840). Incorporation
permits a few people to create an organization having some of the legal
identity and rights of a person. A
major advantage is that those who invest in the organization will then be
responsible only to the extent of their investment, i.e. not be individually
liable for all that the organization does.
Blackstone lamented that the corporations had neither souls to be
damned nor bodies to be kicked. He,
like Adam Smith, of Wealth of Nations
fame, wrote in a period when profitable business was not the usual purpose
cited to justify incorporation. Those
corporations that existed-- Professor E. Merrick Dodd wrote that he had found
evidence of 310 in the United States in 1800--were largely for public or
eleemosynary purposes. They were
created individually by acts of legislative bodies. Historically, they had been cities,
universities, etc. In the early United
States they included increasing numbers of banks, toll bridges and roads, and
other often profitable enterprises, but were still created individually to
serve an alleged public need.
Persuading a legislative body to incorporate your particular
enterprise usually required special influence, often bribery. Jacksonian Democrats regarded that as a
major injustice, even as a form of theft.
But, once in power, they found that the most practical solution was to
make the incorporation privilege a right of everybody. General incorporation laws were enacted,
permitting any small group who met minimal qualifications and paid a small
fee to incorporate their own enterprise.
That greatly facilitated raising capital for larger businesses. The practice spread rapidly, here and in
Europe.
Railroads were our first great industrial corporations. Often they were corruptly managed. Substantial portions of our western lands were
given to the railroads by the federal government as subsidies for their
construction. In spite of such
matters, the railroads probably did as much as any other factor to facilitate
rapid settlement, widespread homestead ownership, and general prosperity. By
the late nineteenth century America was beginning to legislate seriously
against monopolistic and other abuses of corporate enterprise. Various forms of government intervention
spread rapidly with WWI, the Great Depression/ New Deal, and WWII.
Since WWII the older, nonprofit, types of corporate endeavor have
become more significant, especially in American politics. Universities, foundations, public interest
organizations, research institutes, etc. have multiplied and grown
rapidly. The larger universities rival
some federal departments in their largely taxpayer funded budgets and their
technical resources. Yet, public
attitudes and laws usually treat these non-profit corporations very
differently than incorporated business ventures, especially where their
political activities are concerned. Why
should the freedoms of “non-profit” corporations be
greatly different than those of “for-profit”
counterparts? Are not both legitimate
means by which people, of different talents and ambitions, contribute to the
welfare of society? Government now
subsidizes heavily and allows almost unlimited freedoms to those corporate
organizations that supply our information while, at the same time, it taxes
heavily and regulates severely the corporate organizations that provide for
our material needs and desires. I.W.Parkins 042009 |
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THE
CONSTITUTION: REGARDING POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY By Ivan W. Parkins We, the People of the United States, are …”the
primary control on the government,” according to THE FEDERALIST, No. 51. How to exercise that control in practice is
more complicated!
Article I, Section 1, of the Constitution vests all legislative powers
in a Congress. Section 2 provides for
the House of Representatives, “to be chosen every second year.” That much is clear. Even though THE FEDERALIST, No.52, adds of
Representatives that . . . “it is particularly essential that…” they …”have
an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people,”…real
world conditions interfere.
Population growth, the volume of national business, and the actual
effects of partisan and electoral politics often confuse the public more than
they enable it. We do need some major
changes.
There were, originally, about 34,000 people in the United States per
Representative. Over half were no more
than sixteen years old, many were women, and a considerable minority were
slaves. Those qualified as voters, to
whom the Representative actually needed to answer, averaged around 3000 to
4000. In the House the Representative
would face about 100 colleagues—when travel conditions enabled them all to
get there.
Now, we have increased House membership to 435, and congressional
districts average about 700,000 residents, most of whom can vote and
more than 200,000 of whom often do.
Representatives can barely recognize all of their colleagues, even
though the House is in session much of every year. The number of minutes in a year are
literally too few for the Representative to devote one minute to each
constituent.
Meanwhile the volume of national business has increased far beyond the
ability of Congress to keep up with all of it. The Constitution vests all legislative
powers in Congress, but it has long since become necessary for Congress to
delegate to administrations and to independent agencies of government
portions of the legislative authority.
Thus the thousands of pages of statutes that issue from Congress
annually are accompanied by an even larger volume of legally enforceable
administrative rules.
Also, the peoples’ Representatives, to whom the Constitution assigns
two-year terms, so that they will change frequently with public opinions and
political conditions, have found or made ways of getting reelected to such an
extent that many of them are now among the longest serving elected officials
in our country. If
we are to actually have popular sovereignty, the present House of
Representatives is a very poor vehicle for that.
See Disassemble the House I.W.Parkins
041909 |
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THE SUPREME COURT AND POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY By Ivan W. Parkins
Should the Supreme Court of the United States adhere strictly to an
originalist interpretation of the Constitution, or may the Court adapt
constitutional language to historical trends? If
one compares closely what was probably the greatest Supreme Court decision of
the twentieth century, Brown v. Board of Education, cited in some arguments
for a more “liberal” approach, I believe that he will see that the Warren
Court’s holding differed little from Justice Brown’s holding in 1896
regarding the Constitution. Brown said
that the Constitution, Fourteenth Amendment, requires “absolutely equal
treatment” of the races in public facilities.
The difference between the two was not on the constitutional language
but on what, in fact, is equal treatment.
The old decision was that separate facilities could be equal; the
newer decision is that they are not equal. Even if the words of law are seen
to be unchanging, the facts to which they apply may change. The
growth and mobility of our population and industry have certainly
changed. John Marshall’s original
holding in Gibbons v. Ogden that “commerce among the states” meant that
commerce that affects more states than one seems logical enough. But, facts are certainly changing when
mortgages that are issued by private banks under state laws become “toxic”
and disruptive to national and world-wide finance. Actually, many of those mortgages were
granted by banks under federal pressure to extend credit to previously
unqualified applicants. The
Supreme Court’s great decisions on racial equality (1950s) and on equal
legislative districting (a few years later) did represent some extensions of
its authority. However,
these decisions were also major advances in popular sovereignty, advances
that Congresses had, for decades, failed to make. And they soon received
the approval of most of the public. In
those cases, I believe that the Court honored the most basic of our
constitutional principals, popular sovereignty.
There is good historical ground for believing that major Supreme Court
decisions of the period prior to World War II, when they conflicted sharply
with actions of the elective branches, were soon overcome by popular
politics. Apparently, that is now less
true. One of the baldest evidences of more
recent thinking is the statement of the late Justice Thurgood Marshall that
he was only doing what the people would do if they knew what he knew. I
remarked to my class in Constitutional Law at the time that the reasoning was
remarkably similar to some by Fuhrer Adolph Hitler.
Increasingly, we are faced with “entitlements” that alter the capacity
of newly elected Congresses to make new policies
and also with judicial references to foreign political entities as
authoritative. Such things are good
reasons to fear that an articulate minority of Americans, strongly entrenched
in the information media and some times successful in elections, will work
with the Judiciary to limit the effectiveness of our Constitution’s most
fundamental principal. That principal
is popular sovereignty. I.W. Parkins 041909 |
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A reprint of a column Mt. Pleasant Buyer’s Guide 6/1/81 . . . . . We
regulate economic competition (partly) because inequalities of wealth seem to
make that competition unfair. Is
access to the mass media of verbal expression distributed more equitably than
access to the commercial and banking resources of the nation? Most of us have less to do with interest
rates than David Rockefeller; we also have less influence upon the news than
Walter Cronkite. My
main point is that there are many and significant similarities between both
the theories and the practical problems involved in economic and in verbal
laissez faire. One can make a strong
case that both theories are essentially sound and have, on the whole, served
well. One can criticize both for the monopolies, dishonest behavior, and
inequalities among competitors which corrupt them in practice. It may seem
less evident, but it is not unreasonable to contend that both forms of
laissez faire suffer from flaws which make it desirable that alternatives be
adopted.
Regarding economic and verbal laissez faire: the one position which is
most difficult to support, least consistent and least reasonable, is that one
form is grossly inadequate and the other incomparably superior to any
alternative. That is precisely the
view taken by America’s intellectual and legal establishments. It is reason enough for the rest of us to
doubt the capacity of those establishments to lead us. . . . . . Not long after doing the
above, I attempted a much longer and more scholarly effort. Several submissions to legal journals
produced no encouragement. I sent it
to a very small publication, COGITATIONS ON
LAW AND GOVERNMENT.
From the editor of that I received acknowledgement of my “very fine work” and
my “essay submission” along with an expectation that they would publish the
“superbly written piece.” It was published, but as
correspondence, and it was both rearranged and cut. The editor also took equal space to
denounce it. Sometimes it does not pay
to think outside the established boxes! |
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The
Fundamental Principle of
Popular Sovereignty The following articles address that constitutional principle through our
legislature and it’s interpretation by
the Supreme Court. |