Dr. Jan Halper-Hayes and the Bankrupt United States Corporation

I have been debating the corporation conspiracy theory for a couple of years

The clip made its way across America faster than a Clinton call for a hit against one of the crime-family’s former associates.

I have been debating the corporation conspiracy theory for a couple of years, and about the time it seemed like it was finally beginning to fizzle out of existence, except in the corners of a few well-meaning conspiracy theory groups, it began to gain speed again in recent months. Then Dr. Jan laid her bomb of a statement, and I have people who had never heard of it suddenly asking me about what she meant.

Along with the U.S. Corporation claim come a whole list of other fantastical theories that make one’s head spin. Wrapped up in the whole thing are theories about birth certificates, U.S. debt, the Bank of London, the Vatican, renegade copies of the U.S. Constitution, dark-room agreements not only in 1871, but as far back as 1801, shipments of gold being transported here and there, and executive orders which include one by Donald J. Trump that essentially returned the corporation back to a republic and will gain more effect if only he gets back into office.

Most of the people I have talked to regarding these theories are friends, countrymen, and allies in the Liberty Movement. I don’t want to necessarily call them “crack-pots,” because to be honest, they are not. They are Americans who realize there are some serious problems going on, and they are searching for answers. There’s nothing wrong with searching for causes to the problems, rather than taking blind swings at the symptoms. I get it. It’s frustrating. We want our country back.

As a historian and constitutionalist, along with being a stickler for having evidence to support any wild herrings that might inhabit any eager corridors of my constantly racing mind regarding the state of the United States foundation of liberty, I picked up on the flaws of the Corporation Theory argument out of the gate. First of all, the 1871 thing that Dr. Jan referred to wasn’t a treaty. It was a piece of legislation passed by the United States Congress for the purpose of turning Washington D.C., or at least the land-donut around the square that was originally created to be our seat of government, into a municipal corporation.

Corporation.

Corporations became the new version of what trusts used to be

Yes, the word appears in the Organic Act of 1871, so at first glance the folks that have bought into the U.S. Corporation theory think they have me stymied.

So, to start the conversation, let’s study the word that has everyone a-flutter. What did they mean in the Organic Act of 1871 when the word corporation first appeared on the pages of the legislation?

Corporation is a word that has been hammered into our psyche to be a bad thing. From the fat-cat plutocracy political cartoons during the turn of the twentieth century to the science fiction movies of today that all have the world ruled over by huge, malevolent corporations, we have been shown how evil these entities can be. Social media corporations, technology corporations, beer corporations, retail corporations, and international corporations who self-identify across the entire rainbow of the business spectrum have all confirmed what we already, pretty much thought. Big, bad, wealthy, price-setting, monopoly-seeking, society and culture manipulating corporations are evil. So, when we hear the word “corporation” used in a sentence with the federal government, the chance of collusion already makes our skin crawl. And, if the United States, itself, is indeed a corporation, that must really be a very bad thing.

I am not going to defend corporations, per se. I am definitely not a fan of huge corporations who use their wealth and might to shape the world in the palms of their intrusionary Dr. Evil hands. That said, I don’t mind corporations in the sense that they provide jobs, and innovation. It’s when they start colluding with government or try to artificially manipulate the free market that gets me all up in a bunch. However, having a knee-jerk reaction when we hear “United States” and “Corporation” in the same sentence shouldn’t have us suddenly jumping off of mental cliffs. We need to stop, and think, if only for a brief moment in time.

During the 1800s the United States had a problem with the rise of “trusts.” You’ve heard of the “trust-busters,” right? Teddy Roosevelt, the story goes, led the charge with his sword held high to end the evil trusts because they were basically using monopolies to control the markets, and set the prices at whatever number of decimals they desired. So, early in Teddy’s presidency, trusts went the way of the dinosaurs and the Whig Party, and disappeared. Except, they didn’t. What emerged were corporations, as we know them today. J. P. Morgan formed U.S. Steel on March 2, 1901 (incorporated on February 25, 1901), by financing the merger of Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel Company with Elbert H. Gary's Federal Steel Company and William Henry "Judge" Moore's National Steel Company for $492 million. Corporations became the new version of what trusts used to be.

That is not to say the word “corporation” was not used prior to that date as a word for large businesses. The East India Company, way back during the colonial days when the world was ruled by European Empires, was a corporation, or at least sometimes it was called such. But, the limited liability version we see today with all of the massive international corporations that have risen since the 1901 version of U.S. Steel with their foundations and legal protections wasn’t what East India Company was. Today’s version of a corporation, the one that makes our skin crawl when we hear the term, didn’t truly emerge until 1901 when U.S. Steel played their game with the legal system.

Organic Act of 1871

Which brings us back to the Organic Act of 1871, of which Dr. Jan essentially referred to in her shocking phrase about the “bankrupt United States Corporation.” The version of the word corporation which appears in the Organic Act of 1871 is not the same as the one we know today. Let’s remember, 1871 appeared in history before 1901, so that version of the word corporation isn’t defined in the same way as the U.S. Steel version, nor the version that gets us all up in arms, today. So, what did the word mean, and why did corporation appear in the Organic Act of 1871, in the first place?

As I stated early on in this article, the purpose was to create the land-donut federal city that now exists surrounding the original, constitutionally created, 10-mile square that is the seat of government in the United States. In the beginning, as per Article I, Section 8, of the United States Constitution, Washington D.C. was created to be the seat of government, and possesses no permanent population. 

Congress was given the task to run the federal district, and sometime during the John Adams’ presidency the District of Columbia became the capital of the United States of America. When John Adams lost the presidency to Thomas Jefferson in 1800, and the big-government, Hamiltonian, Federalist Party lost both Houses of Congress to Jefferson’s republican allies, the lefties of that era knew exactly what they needed to do. They packed the entire federal court system, essentially doubling the size of the federal court system by adding circuit courts, district courts, and dividing Washington D.C. into two counties, which would also need federal judges to run them. Jefferson quipped regarding the dastardly political move, “The principal [leaders of the political opposition] have retreated into the judiciary as a stronghold, the tenure of which renders it difficult to dislodge them.” The new counties were referred to as corporations, meaning, political entities dependent upon a larger political entity. 

On page 14 of Brion McClanahan’s book, How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America, the author wrote, “The states, Hamilton declared, were ‘not necessary for any of the great purposes of commerce, revenue, or agriculture.’ Hamilton recognized that ‘subordinate authorities…would be necessary,’ but he called them ‘corporations for local purposes.’ This reduction of the states to mere ‘corporations for local purposes’ and his version of the ‘supremacy clause’ were constitutional machinations that had lasting effects and would rear their ugly heads later in American history, but at that time, Hamilton knew they would never be accepted.” In short, Hamilton believed the sovereignty of the States would interfere with the great ambitions he had for the United States becoming the next great empire, and consolidating all political power under the wings of the federal government. 

He believed the States should be nothing more than provinces under the great command of the federal government, hence, why he called them “corporations.” Based on the Organic Act of 1801, Hamilton’s ravings during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and the definitions in the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary of America’s version of the English Language, we realize that when the word corporation was used to describe the new federal city of Washington D.C. in the Organic Act of 1871 the presence of the word was not to make Washington D.C. a “U.S. Steel kind of corporation”, or a corporation like the ones that haunt us today, but to incorporate the new federal lands ceded by Virginia and Maryland for the purpose of creating residential areas in Washington D.C. around the square seat of government as a “municipal corporation,” meaning a new political entity with some local provincial powers, but dependent upon the larger congressional powers that had originally been afforded over the district way back in 1787 when Article I, Section 8 was written.

Corporation doesn’t necessarily mean corporation in the manner it is being presented by the corporation theory that Dr. Jan Halper-Hayes

So, corporation doesn’t necessarily mean corporation in the manner it is being presented by the corporation theory that Dr. Jan Halper-Hayes referred to that has America jumping to conclusions.

It has been argued to me, however, that the USA Corporation appears on Dun & Bradstreet, a global database of over 240 million companies. Surely, that should convince me that the United States is a corporation. I handed that one off to my good friend Alan Myers, co-host of Constitution Radio with me on KMET 1490-AM on Saturdays, 1:00 to 3:00 pm Pacific Time on Saturdays. He researched it and told me that the USA Corporation listed on Dun & Bradstreet is a telecommunications company that so happens to call itself a name that makes people think the worst.

“Well,” the person debating me about this might cry out, “What about the United States Corporation registered in Florida in 1925?”

A gentleman named Jordan Sather did the research on that one, and published his findings in an article he wrote on Substack on August 8, 2023. In his article, “Is the United States a Corporation? Dissecting the Organic Act of 1871 and 650 planes bringing back Vatican gold,” he explains, “…United States Corporation being incorporated in Florida in 1925…[is] just the personal business of a dude named Samuel Wood. He wanted to run a real estate business in Florida and called it the United States Corporation.”

Dr. Jan didn’t just call the United States a corporation, but remember she also remarked that it is a bankrupt corporation. According to the folks I have talked to regarding the corporation theory, we either owe the Bank of London our sovereignty, or the Vatican, due to our bankrupt corporation status. “What debt?” I asked.

The first response I got was debt owed to the Bank of London regarding the Revolutionary War. Our war debt continued to haunt us so badly that we really never left the British Empire, I was told, and we continue to be a subordinate part of the British Empire to this day. Except, it’s impossible for us to still owe Britain any debt, if there ever was any, associated with the Revolutionary War, or the War of 1812, for that matter. In January of 1835, President Andrew Jackson completely paid off the national debt. Granted, it began to grow again only a month later, but if in 1835 Jackson wiped out all of our debt, that would include any debt from the Revolutionary War, as well.

A different conspiracy theorist friend of mine told me the debt owed to Britain by the federal government actually came from the War Between the States (The American Civil War for those of you who believe the false academic tale we are told by the public educators, but that’s a topic for another time). According to that theory, in order to help the Union defeat the Confederacy the federal government borrowed a huge amount of money from the British banks, and the debt was so steep it bankrupted the United States and forced us under the ruling thumb of the British Bankers, British Royalty, and somehow the Vatican.

As with the rest of the Bankrupt United States Corporation thing

The problem with that theory is that too many facts say otherwise. First of all, the federal government didn’t borrow any money from Britain for the war effort against the Confederate States of America. Britain supported the Confederacy, and was giving the South support, not the Union. In the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, as a punishment for the European countries that aided the Confederacy, the debt to them was made “illegal and void.” Then, after the war was over, with the use of five arbitrators from other countries, as punishment for the damage they caused for supporting the confederates, Britain was ordered to pay the United States Government $15,500,000 in damages. In short, the United States was not indebted to the British for the war, it was the other way around. Great Britain had to pay the United States federal government for their role as an ally of the Confederacy.

Finally, I am told we are owned by the Vatican, or we were before “Trump made us a republic, again.”

I am supposed to believe that a country that is so Protestant that even as late as the 1960s we were freaking out over President Kennedy being Catholic, but we sold out to the Vatican decades, or a century, before? Not likely.

“But,” my conspiracy theorist friends say to me, “it happened with the Treaty of Verona.”

The Treaty of Verona is said to have been agreed upon in 1822 for the purpose of destroying America’s democracy (never mind that the Constitution established a federal republic, not a democracy). There was, indeed, a meeting of European Powers in 1822 in Verona, a province in Italy, but the United States was not a part of their discussions. It turns out the “Unholy Alliance” conspiracy theory surrounding the 1822 meeting in Verona is not a new one. I even found an article in the January, 1923, Georgetown Law Journal, Volume XI, Number 2, proclaiming the whole conspiracy theory regarding Europe trying to subjugate America with that meeting is nothing more than a fraud. One source, one I can’t find anymore, told me a few years ago that the Treaty of Verona’s popularity popped up among conspiracy theorists as far back as the mid-1800s, when a newspaper made wild claims about it in the hopes of selling more newspapers.

Dr. Jan, and all of those of you out there clinging to the edge of the cliff with the corporation theory

As with the rest of the Bankrupt United States Corporation thing, the problem with the Vatican owning us, or holding our gold, theory is a lack of valid evidence that reaches deeper than a blogpost by a person who swears up and down the whole thing is true.

In the end, the reality is that the United States is not a “corporation,” nor is it bankrupt and under the oppressive rule of Britain, the Bank of London, nor the Vatican. Oh, and your birth certificate is not an employee document that can be sold, either. I have a friend in the financial industry who pays attention to the Bloomberg Terminal, and he has yet to find a market for birth certificates. If they were being bought and sold somewhere, he’d know about it.

Even if the whole bankrupt corporation thing was true, how would believing in it lead us back to being the federal republic the Constitution designed the United States to be, in the first place? Dr. Jan, and all of those of you out there clinging to the edge of the cliff with the corporation theory, please do me a favor – Come back to us, leave the edge of the cliff alone, and let’s join forces in getting our republic back, rather than chasing after false narratives that do nothing more than occupy us in a manner that is not involved in the fight to restore our republic. We need you in the fight.