Filter by:

Filter by published date

Tiburcio Parrott sitting holding cane

Birth of the Corporate Person

The defining of corporations as legal “persons” entitled to Fourteenth Amendment rights got a leg up from the fight over a California anti-Chinese immigrant law.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
partner

The Big Business Campaign That Has Shaped 40 Years of GOP Rhetoric

The philosophy that drives the GOP's attacks on government and how it has fueled some of our biggest problems.
Oil refinery

How Polluting Industries Mobilized to Block Climate Action

Since its inception, the IPCC itself has been the target of corporate obstructionism.
Trump and his cabinet sitting around a conference table.
partner

Why the Power Elite Continues to Dominate American Politics

Presidents of both parties stock their Cabinets with corporate leaders.

Company Men

The 200-year legal struggle that led to Citizens United and gave corporations the rights of people.
Huey Long

How ‘the Kingfish’ Turned Corporations into People

Seventy-five years before Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruled that newspapers were entitled to First Amendment protections.
Cartoon silhouettes of elongated business people in suits

Business as Usual: The Long History of Corporate Personhood

The mass defection of CEOs of some of the nation’s most powerful corporations from President Trump’s now-defunct Manufacturing Jobs Initiative.
Political cartoon depicting Standard Oil as an octopus.

When Did Americans Stop Being Antimonopoly?

Columbia professor Richard R. John explains the history of U.S. monopolies and why antimonopoly should not be conflated with antitrust.

When Big Oil Was "The Great Vampire Squid" Wrapped Around America

Robert Engler's award-winning 1955 investigation into the oil industry.
View of mountains on the horizon

Who Owns the Mountains?

Hurricane Helene has revived urgent questions about the politics of land — and tourism — in Appalachia.
Donald Trump

Donald Trump Would Be Weaker the Second Time Around

Donald Trump wants the ideology of William McKinley and Gilded Age Republicanism, but with a totally different social base. It won’t work.
A computer, business documents, envelope, and a broadcast tower.

How Tech Giants Make History

AT&T’s early leaders used PR to sway public opinion, casting their monopoly as a public service and obscuring its political roots.
Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates speak during the 'Gates Foundation' press conference at the Annual Meeting 2009 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 30, 2009" by Remy Steinegger.

Philanthropy’s Power Brokers

An in-depth reckoning with the Gates Foundation as a discrete actor is long overdue.
General president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Sean O'Brien speaks during the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 15, 2024.

A Return to Gompers

Sean O’Brien’s speech at the RNC may represent a return to nonpartisan realpolitik for unions. But does that reflect labor's strength or its decline?
Charred ruins of Lahaina following the fire.

After Wildfires Destroyed Lahaina, the Battle to Restore an Ancient Ecosystem Will Shape Its Future.

A wetland restoration project is bringing hope to Maui residents who want to honor Lahaina’s history and return water to the town after last year’s fires.
Banner showing the logo of Chiquita.

Chiquita Must Pay for Its Crimes in Latin America

70 years since President Árbenz was ousted for standing up to Chiquita, the firm might finally be held to account for its ties to a far-right paramilitary group in Colombia.
Engraving of the Battle of Lexington After Alonzo Chappel: American colonists and British soldiers exchange fire at the Battle of Lexington, the first skirmish in the US War of Independence.

Taking Up the American Revolution’s Egalitarian Legacy

Despite its failures and limitations, the American Revolution unleashed popular aspirations to throw off tyranny of all kinds.
Collage of Stop Cop City protestors and Coca Cola products.

No Atlanta Way

Stop Cop City meets the establishment.
Scale with hundred-dollar bills weighing down one side.

Markets and the Law

Neoliberalism isn’t just a set of economic precepts—it’s also an architecture of laws passed to reinforce those precepts. Those laws must be changed.
An 1863 illustration from “Le Monde illustré” of formerly enslaved people celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation.

What If Reconstruction Didn’t End Till 1920?

Historian Manisha Sinha argues that the Second Republic lasted decades longer than most histories state and achieved wider gains.
Soy plantation fields.

Hating the Heartland

Do Americans in rural places really “marinate in a sense of loss and perpetual disappointment”?
Uncle Sam sleeping on the job, avoiding looking at x-rays of damaged lungs.

Asbestos Is Finally Banned in the U.S. Here’s Why It Took So Long.

The carcinogenic effects of asbestos have been known for decades. We should have banned it long ago.
Starbucks workers on strike.

The Paradox of the American Labor Movement

It’s a great time to be in a union—but a terrible time to try to start a new one.
A hand reaches for stacks of coins and bills, superimposed on photos of factory smokestacks.

Profit, Power, and Purpose

The greatest challenge presented by modern corporations, small as well as large, involves purpose.
Milton Friedman in front of a graph.

The Myth of the Friedman Doctrine

Friedman's viewpoint went far deeper and has been more lasting than the politics of 1970.
Wikimedia Foundation servers.

Dead Links

Maintaining the internet data of dead people.
Eugene V Debs speaking at a rally, c1912-18. Photo courtesy the Library of Congress.

For Socialism and Freedom: The Life of Eugene Debs

How Eugene V. Debs turned American republicanism against the chiefs of capitalism – and became a true crusader for freedom.
Cover of "The Corporation in the Nineteenth-Century American Imagination" featuring a dragon with its tentacles entrapping people.

Between The Many and The One

Stephanie Mueller´s book sheds light on the percieved death of liberalism and the fear of corporations.
A family listening to radio in the 1930s.
partner

Today's Media Landscape Took Root a Century Ago

Decisions made now could shape the next 100 years.
The Northern Pacific Railway.

How One Robber Baron's Gamble on Railroads Brought Down His Bank

In 1873, greed, speculation and overinvestment in railroads sparked a financial crisis that sank the U.S. into more than five years of misery.

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person