The Supreme Court ruled recently that corporations are people. Since political contributions are speech, according to an earlier ruling, the court ruled that corporations, being people, could not be deprived of their free speech rights under the first amendment and so are allowed to make direct political contributions. Well, that's just stupid but maybe it just seems that way to me because I'm not a lawyer.
But let's take it as it comes. BP is a corporation, so it's a person. Now, it's a foreign person but foreign persons are subject to US laws when they're in the US. BP killed 11 people when their oil rig exploded. They've broken many environmental laws (something like "littering with extreme prejudice"). They should go to jail. Not that fatuous CEO, or the Board of Directors, or any number of executives. They should be prosecuted too, of course. But if BP is a person, it should be subject to the penalties of person-hood. They should be completely deprived of their liberty to function as a person in society, just like any other person. They should be subjected to punitive detention in the (admittedly dim) hope of rehabilitation. They should be deprived of their civil liberties as a person for life. Most importantly, just like a person, they should be locked away from contact with any other people or, apparently, corporations.
If this cannot be accomplished, regardless of the egregious nature of their crimes, then BP is not, despite any ridiculous Supreme Court ruling to the contrary, a person, and by extension, neither is any other corporation.
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