A Blog Posting by Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, from November 6, 2016.
This year CELDF’s community rights organizing has exposed the pustule-pocked rump of corporate America like never before. The marriage of corporate and state power that Mussolini called “fascism,” we refer to simply as “the corporate state.” And it has erupted like a nasty case of acne pretty much everywhere across the land.
State and federal courts regularly protect the immature “gimme gimme” demands of corporate greediness against the adults in the room who exercise local democratic law-making for the protection of inalienable rights. It happens every day, like clockwork, because community rights are violated each time bureaucrats issue state or federal permits to a corporation in order to “legalize” their harmful and destructive behavior.
To protect the narcissistic interests of wealth against the ethically and morally legitimate interests of people and the natural environment, the courts have had to adopt a level of social immaturity that is breathtakingly quaint. To pull it off, they plug their ears and close their eyes while intoning “lalalalalalalalala” when confronted with arguments advanced by CELDF attorneys. Our lawyers make the case that a Right of Local Community Self-Government and the Rights of Nature are inalienable and deserve legal protection. However, these and other community rights are routinely denied a hearing by the courts.
In order to make these rights irrelevant and ignore the consent of the governed, state legislatures and the federal congress, hell-bent on coddling their whiny juvenile industrialist, go the extra mile to cheat democracy by enacting laws that forbid local legislation that would protect these inalienable rights. When communities snub such illegitimate state and federal laws by adopting local laws that do protect community rights, the courts rely on their hackneyed “cause it’s the law” arguments to enforce state and federal supremacy over municipalities rather than considering testimony about why such local measures are necessary in the absence of other legal protections. In doing so, the courts refuse to acknowledge the existence of these fundamental rights, opting instead to enforce procedure, preemption, and patronizing sophistry. …
To read the entire Blog, click HERE.