"American constitutional law is, in many ways, grounded in British common law... there are two types of "persons": "natural persons," like you and me, and "artificial persons," which include governments, churches , and for-profit corporations... necessary so that the law could reach them. ...Knowing this, most laws having to do with just human beings used the phrase "natural persons"... The Fourteenth Amendment, however, does not draw any distinction... and twenty years later, corporate lawyers would seize upon that... uch sweeping ramifications never occurred to Thaddeus Stevens or his colleagues who drafted the... Amendment. ...But fate and time and the conspiracies of great wealth and power often have a way of turning common sense and logic on its head..."

“Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It, Hartmann talks about his book in a video at Fora TV.”

“Thanks to a century and a half of truly bizarre Supreme Court decisions ... today's new corporate "person" is... endowed with many of the rights and protections of human beings. The modern corporation... can live forever, doesn't fear prison, and can't be executed if found guilty... It can cut off parts of itself and turn them into new "persons", can change its identity in a day, and can have simultaneous residences in many different nations. ...Nonetheless, today a corporation gets many of the constitutional protections America's founders gave humans ...”

“If something isn't done about the climate/carbon crisis, people... today might be living in the last generation to experience a stable atmosphere, and thus a stable form of governance, for any foreseeable future. ...ecause our Constitution doesn't mention the rights of nature , the Earth's biosphere is getting short shrift of our legal system...”

“For people who are freaked out about Trump and freaked out about the world... and everything else, meditation is like a really, really good thing. It's a way for us to kind of ground ourselves.”

“Given how reactive hard right snowflakes have gotten in response to a few truth-based jokes from Michelle Wolf, and that Mick Mulvaney has confessed to running a pay-for-play operation out of his congressional office, and Trump is daily breaking the Constitution’s emoluments clause, now might be a really good time to examine the origins and nature of the whole right-wing business/government model known as “fascism.”

“Various video clips at BigPicture.tv Hartmann speaking on various topics.”