For months now,
the state legislature of Delaware has been debating whether the town of
Seaford should be allowed to let corporations vote directly in elections.
Like literally, don't mean contributing to candidates, running ads, support.
No literally, the entity, the business entity would vote as if it was a person.
Somewhere, Mitt Romney is loving this, corporation are people,
it turns out potentially.
Well, we have an update.
The Delaware House of Representatives has now voted in favor of
the corporations allowing them to directly vote as if they were humans.
Now, that's not the end of it.
We do need to find out what the Delaware Senate is going to do, but
it is certainly not looking good.
The Republicans are pushing hard for this and
the Democrats seem to be perfectly willing to allow it to happen.
So if you haven't been following this, we're gonna catch you up a little bit.
In April, the town of Seaford amended its charter to give LLCs corporations trusts
or partnerships the right to vote in local elections.
Now, you probably have long thought of voting as a one person,
one vote sort of thing, but now it will be one person entity, one vote.
Someday- >> [LAUGH]
>> We'll be broadcasting,
20 years from now,
we'll be one person entity instance of Chat GPT that's allowed to vote.
You don't think they'll do it?
This is where they're at right now.
Under the proposal,
corporate entities must register as voters within CityHall and
include a list of their beneficial owners, city officials are then intended to
cross-check these lists with the resident voter rolls to prevent double voting.
So in theory, if this system works the way it's supposed to,
you would not have a corporation and the corporation's CEO both voting.
But if the CEO doesn't even live there,
effectively still gets to vote even though, again, it's not a person.
So anyway, look, that's an issue, philosophically, ideologically,
this seems like incredibly dangerous territory to be entering into.
But it's also substantively terrible territory to be entering into for
Seaford because it is a very small town.
Just 340 people there voted in the most recent elections on April 15.
The bill would potentially provide as many as 234 votes to
businesses in the community.
Which means that if it ever came down to the people versus the corporations,
the corporations would have an okay chance of winning out.
Anyway, the Delaware state legislature has taken up and
then removed the bill multiple times.
Yesterday, they actually voted against it and
then the Republicans pulled their Trump card.
They staged a walkout on Thursday night after blocking passage of Delaware's
proposed $1.4 billion capital budget.
That was an attempt to force the Democrats to now support this, and it worked.
The legislative session was about to end and so the Democrats either didn't
have much time or secretly don't have that big of a problem with it.
I don't know which is the case, but the end result is the same.
They've given their stamp of approval to this sort of thing.
But don't worry, I'm sure it will never spread to any other towns or
cities or states.
This will be where it ends.
>> Yeah, so
this is an excellent microcosm of the lunatic state of our politics in America.
So already in 17 different jurisdictions in Delaware LLCs can vote.
In one case, a guy voted for 31 different LLCs he had set up and himself,
I think he voted 32 times, and then that's why they had to put in another
provision going, well we do want corporations to run everything, but
this one makes us look a little awkward, right?
So we're gonna say we're gonna roll that back, you could only vote once for
a corporation.
Which then leads to a great question that one of our members asked on another day
that we covered this story, who gets to vote for the corporation?
Because the corporation is not actually a person.
I know they're saying, by law they're people and they're above people,
they're like gods now, right?
And they have all of our rights plus extra corporate rights.
But who is it?
Is it the secretary?
Is it the CEO?
The board?
Is it the board, the shareholders?
Is it the editor?
Who is it, [LAUGH right?
And so this is absurd.
It's totally, it's insanity.
But to John's point about, hey,
there's 234 corporations that in Seaford they could easily outvote the population
because the population is gonna be split on most votes anyway, right?
And the corporations just whatever's to their advantage, like, hey,
we're gonna pay zero taxes.
Hey, look at that, all 234 corporations agree, right?
And so they can outvote people.
So why would the politicians allow the corporations to control
who wins every election?
Because they're the same corrupt politicians that are proposing these laws.
That means they're already in corporate back pocket.
And so if they're servants of the corporate class, which they obviously are,
I mean they're passing these insane, certifiably insane, laws saying, yeah,
corporations are a human being and has constitutional rights.
Yeah, sure.
That guy is already 100% corrupt and he thinks, hey,
if my corporate donors that just bribed me now can vote,
they don't even need, like we can cut out the middleman.
>> Yeah. >> Democracy is dead.
I rule forever cuz I'm already serving them.
And it's not just Republicans.
So Republicans do this, and by the way, hey, if you're a Republican out there and
you thought you were with the populist party and the Democrats were the elitist,
well, jokes on you.
The Republicans are 10,000 times more corrupt and
the Democrats are plenty corrupt.
I'm getting to them, okay?
But the Republicans are like no, we serve corporate America.
Corporations, we love you, take our rights.
Take our rights and we don't want them.
[SOUND] The rich win again, yes.
That's who Republican politicians are, period.
Look at them.
They're like [SOUND] you're not gonna let corporations vote.
How dare you?
Then average American might win.
We don't want the average American winning.
We're walking out, we're in raids.
So what do the loser Democrats do?
Because they're corrupt too.
It's good cop, bad cop.
They're just playing a game on you, right?
The Democrats could put together a press conference and
say these Republicans show their faces, give their names ago,
think that corporations are people and should outvote you, should outvote you.
Do you know how many people think that corporations are actual people that
should be able to outvote you, even if you take it to Republican voters?
And here there's a giant distinction between Republican politicians and
Republican voters.
If you take it to the Republican voters, go, hey,
you wanna give away your vote to a company that's kicking your ass and
taking your wages and taking away your dignity and respect?
They're gonna go, no, that's stupid.
I don't want that.
The Democratic voters hate it and don't want it at all, but look at that.
The Democratic politicians, instead of fighting back on an issue where they'd
have about 90% approval, like, there was nothing we could do, they walked out.
I mean what could we do?
Fight back?
[LAUGH] I guess we had to surrender to the same donors.
[LAUGH] We're the good cops, though.
We're the good cops.
It passed the Delaware House, not the Alabama House.
>> Yeah. >> Delaware is theoretically a blue state.
>> Yeah. >> Yeah, I think that's partly why it's so
concerning.
But also, like if churches are gonna be voting in secular governmental elections,
are they gonna be paying taxes too?
Are the corporations gonna be paying the taxes that they're already supposed to be
paying and maybe aren't paying?
This takes us one step closer to the United States of America Incorporated.
Everyday Americans are struggling for representation in our government and
we are being fought at every turn.
I live in Texas.
I know all about this, whether that's through gerrymandering and
redistricting or more stringent voter ID laws or more stringent ballot
application processes or less access to polling locations.
Meanwhile, these companies are all about to get an official voice in
our government.
Hopefully, it doesn't spread beyond Delaware, but
I think we can all see the writing in the wall as far as that's concerned.
And by the way, we're already out here trying to assert our humanity against AIs.
Things are rough out here for human beings.
>> Yep.
>> Corporations are not people.
They're run by people, and those people are already voting in elections.
So I don't understand why they would get double representation in this way.
This is just another example of moneyed interests having unfair advantages in
what's supposed to be a Democratic society.
This is akin to buying votes and it opens up the door for a lot of corruption,
potentially, even to foreign intervention in our local elections.
>> Yeah, look, I don't understand why they would get double votes, but
I also don't understand why they get double donations.
Why they get double speech in so far as money as speech.
I agree with you, by the way, that they would not win an argument where they're
like, do you wanna give your right away to a corporation?
Which is why they don't engage in that argument.
They instead say, hey, look there's a trans field hockey player, go get them.
>> Yeah. >> And then you don't actually have that
conversation.
I will also say, if one person, one vote can become one person, one entity,
one vote, and we theoretically live in a representative democracy,
a republic where your elected leaders are supposed to be
reflective representative of the voter base.
Well, in Seaford the voting base very soon will be like 40% corporations.
So how far of a leap is it to say that their representation should reflect that?
Why can't you run a corporation as the candidate?
I mean it sounds crazy, but
I also never thought they'd give Nestle the ability to vote in a direct election.
So I don't know,
maybe some point they will cut out the middleman not only of the voter, but
also of the politicians that they buy and they'll just take the spots themselves.
>> John, the brilliant point.
Yasmin, also brilliant point.
So I'm looking forward to President ExxonMobil.
>> [LAUGH] >> That should be fun for everybody.
And Timothy Pulleyam also with an excellent point,
he's a member of ours on YouTube and we love doing the show with our members, so
hit the join button below, said time to start a bunch of LLCs, ding ding ding.
There we go.
I wish TYT had more resource cuz I would literally organize two things for
you guys.
I would organize you guys all setting up LLCs in Delaware, okay?
And that's not that hard a thing to do and put them in Seaford and
let's have a thousand progressive LLCs.
>> [LAUGH] >> And by the way,
you don't have to live there.
That's part of the magic of these rules.
So the guys with the LLCs, they don't even live in Delaware.
They live in like, they can live in ten buck two, It doesn't matter, right?
So wherever you are, you can set up an LLC in Delaware and be like, okay,
now I'm voting.
And look at that, we have 1000 progressive LLCs.
What are you gonna do now?
>> Nice.
>> What are you gonna do?
What, I thought corporations were people, my friend, okay?
>> [LAUGH] >> And secondly,
Yasmin's point about churches.
Yeah, these guys are insane.
They have churches voting.
Who votes as the church?
Is it a parishioner?
Is it the deacon?
Is it a pastor?
By the way, is it an imam?
Wait a minute.
If churches are human beings, are mosques human beings?
How about we set up 1,000 mosques in seashore Delaware?
Why not?
Now everybody's voting.
How about couches?
I'm gonna send my couch to vote in
Delaware- >> [LAUGH]
>> Because as long as we're
making up stuff.
You know what, guys, pull up the picture.
I think these are the next folks who should control Delaware's elections, okay?
So go ahead, put them up.
>> [LAUGH] >> There they are.
>> Puppet.
[LAUGH] >> Okay,
squishmallows- >> [LAUGH]
>> Are now citizens and can vote.
Who votes for them?
I don't know. Who votes for a company?
Who votes for a church?
Same person that's gonna vote for the Squishmallow, all right?
>> [LAUGH] >> And it is what it is, okay?
Hey, as long as we're in- >> [CROSSTALK]
>> Alice in Wonderland and
you guys are making up crap, okay, let's do it.
>> Hashtag squish the vote.
>> [LAUGH] >> Ridiculous.
>> That's catchy, I like that.
>> Yeah.
My God. >> Yeah.
>> The world we live in.
>> Okay, I'm not playing.
If they keep this up, we're gonna go set up thousands of corporations and mosques.
>> Yeah.
And I guarantee here's one thing that'll turn people around right away..
A couple of mosques voting- >> Yeah.
>> And put that on Fox News and all of a sudden they're like, what is this?
We didn't expect this.
We thought only Christians got to vote twice, okay?
>> [LAUGH] >> Okay, all of a sudden,
get your ass in line now.
People are people.
Human beings are human beings.
Not corporations or churches or, however,
else you wanna rig an election because you hate democracy.
By the way, chapter four of my book is all about this.
How corporations slowly took over our government.
We live under corporate goddamn rule, and they took over the Republican Party.
And most importantly, also the Democratic Party.
tyt.com/justice to preorder the book.
Nice.
>> And see how we got into this crazy world to begin with.
And chapter five explains it Because the media is the matrix,
the most important corporate machine that goes no, I don't see anything wrong.
Corporations voting?
But I don't think that's a big issue.
I think that's normal.
Corporations giving millions of dollars to politicians, that's not a bribe.
They're just talking to them.
Where did that money wind up?
Wound up in ads at my company.
[LAUGH] Did it?
Am I the biggest benefactor of corruption?
Is that why I don't see it at all?
And I think corporations and squishmellows should be allowed to vote.
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] I guess I'm the matrix, right?
That's American mainstream media for your corporate media.
That's chapter five.