Jefferson and corporations

With the recent Supreme Corp rulings selling our democracy to the highest bidder, and regressives generally supporting this as something the Founders wanted, let's take a look at what they actually thought in this regard. From this source we learn that America was in fact founded on revolting from England's imposition of corporations on the people. The Boston Tea Party was to protest the East India Company. When corporations were formed here they had a limited life span, could only deal in one product, and it was illegal for them to make political contributions. Now they are 'people' and can buy elections.

Here's what Jefferson thought of corporations:


"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

"I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

"Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good."

See the article for more info and quotes from Lincoln, Cleveland, Roosevelt.

More Jefferson quotes from this source:

"The end of democracy and the defeat of the American revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of the lending institutions and moneyed incorporations."

"Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual."

"Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." 

- See more at: http://www.thomhartmann.com/users/godot/blog/2010/07/jefferson-quotes#sthash.r2kHhqEh.dpuf