'Bargain' with business is a sellout

REPRESENTATIVE BARNEY Frank is busy giving away the store before the new Congress is even sworn in ("Rep. Frank offers business a 'grand bargain', " Page A1, Nov. 19). His "grand bargain" with "corporate America" is actually a sellout. Instead of trading a reduction in regulations and support for free-trade deals for "businesses agreeing to greater wage increases and job benefits for workers," Frank would do well to study early US history.

For the first several generations, the corporate form was subordinate to a public process through state-issued and enforced charters. Corporations were instructed in what they could and couldn't do, and shareholders were liable for harms. There was no bargaining between the people's representatives and this legal fiction until the Supreme Court granted corporations the status of a legal person under the 14th Amendment.

How disheartening that Frank plans to use his newly won chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee for business as usual. Dare we hope for better from other newly empowered Democrats?

MARY ZEPERNICK
South Yarmouth

The writer administers the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy.