I recall back in the day when the Dutch king & I made up the corporation thingee. The guys & I wanted the stuff that could be had at the ends of the Earth and we wanted the King to finance the venture. The King was a little short on revenue and couldn’t swing it, he wanted US to do it. Financing exploitation of the New World was a big deal; Building a large vessel or even several large vessels capable of carrying all the men, victuals & guns for a round trip to literally, the ends of the earth to bring back all the spices, goods, gold & silver our captains could wring out of the natives was going to be bigger than any one man wanted to gamble. If we could spread that expense in some kind of partnership, it would be worth it to divvy up the profits, but The French, English, Spaniards and Portuguese were hogging all the bounty and after all, we Dutchman wanted our cut, too. But partnerships under the existing law exposed partners to the debts of each other and that would be risky with a big number of partners, so no ventures & the King couldn’t get a cut. 10% of nothing is nothing Sending and expedition farther out to sea than any Dutchman had ever gone, where nasty natives might chop up the crew and eat them was bad enough, but talking on such an expense could break any single fortune, and God knows the King ain’t putting his ass on the line. It just made sense; Dutch Merchants should do it and the king could levy a 10% tax and all would be well in the Kingdom.
If we could spread that expense in some kind of partnership, it would be worth it to divvy up all the great profits.
So, long story short, Me & the King in 1602 created the corporation: the King would charter a new kind of business corpus; a legal body that stands alone dedicated to carry out an expedition to the New World and be owned by as many investors as necessary to fund it, each investor would only be liable for his percentage share of the amount of his investment. All the debts involved would be subtracted from all the profits and the King would tax this corpus. What was left over was to be shared by the investors in accordance with the share they funded. This new corpus would have an officer to be responsible for the treasury; a secretary for record keeping, correspondence, and reporting to the King; a Senior officer in charge of everything & everyone, and a assistant to the Senior officer in case The Man was out on a hunt. The Senior officer would hire a Capitan and crews and be elected by the share holders. All the officers, too, would only be liable for their interests in the corpus, not for the responsibilities of other officers or the share holders and all the business conducted by the corpus would be in accordance with Dutch Law & Custom. All these provisions & procedures would be in-corporated into this one, single entity. The guys said OK; we named it the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or United East India Company to you, and the rest is history. Love will find a way. So will greed.
And that brings us back to the realities of today’s corporations. None of the Officers, or Board of Directors, or owners of shares can be sued or be or be held liable for ordinary decisions or actions when conducting the business of the corporation in good faith. It is not a crime to make a bad business decision. This protection from liability has nothing to do with violation of civil or criminal laws, regulations, ordinances, etc. This is true of all of mankind’s endeavors. If you make bad spaghetti sauce it’s not against the law. If you steal a turkey, that’s stealing. If you steal a turkey having nothing to do with your job, then that’s a crime, but has nothing to do with your employment. Enron’s Officers were not held liable for poor management, but the Treasurer & President were found guilty of fraud. Enron’s Officers were not held liable for poor management, but the Treasurer & President were found guilty of fraud. The President and all the way down to every limousine driver is responsible to do his job, but if he drives too fast, over the speed limit, he’s liable to pay the penalty. The President has too many jobs to specify a list of things that he is responsible for, and a list of civil and criminal acts he may not do is unnecessary, because it’s the same as anyone else needs to obey. Just bad decisions are not illegal. The SCOTUS seems to be having a problem with this for no good reason. If the President or any Officer of the country, state, county, city, etc. breaks a law he is cited for breaking XXX Section, XXX Law, which reads, “Ya can’t Blah., blah, blah.” In at least two places, New York and DC the specific statute & law has not been cited because they can’t put their finger on exactly what they are convicting Trump of. THAT, ought to be against the law. And THAT is what SCOTUS should concern itself with.
As to whether Trump was COINCIDENTALLY acting in his own behalf: of course he was. If he acted to stop an American citizen in Syria from recruiting American citizens to enlist in ISIS as terrorists by ordering his death by the military, That’s unpleasant; he’s doing it without trying him in a court of law and convicting; the would-be recruited American terrorists wouldn’t bomb the White House killing the President, so he COINCIDENTALLY benefits himself, BUT, that’s the kinds of Commander-In-Chief orders that are an important part of his decision making authority. We thank him for his service.
𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 - Justice Sonia Sotomayor, appointed by Barack Obama, is now suggesting that a sitting president can order the assassination of their political opponent if they perceive them as corrupt. You can’t make this up… Justice Sotomayor asked, “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and orders the military to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” “That could well be an official act.” This comes just days after Rep. Bennie Thompson (D) of Mississippi proposed a bill that would strip Secret Service protection from President Trump. They are telling us exactly what their plans are.
