Gadfly....Corporations owe fiduciary duties to their shareholders, whose money they hold. They owe regulatory duties to the states that incorporate them, and to the feds if they're regulated at that level. They owe taxes.

That's pretty much the list. When you start telling them what they can do with their own money and property beyond that, you're taking private property, or simply enacting socialism.

I'd think all the people who freaked out over the Kelo decision would recognize that. Once you start deciding for other people what they can do with their money, it ain't America any more.

Now, what they choose to do as a matter of public or investor relations is another thing.....thus, the BP greenie commercials, and the other "feel good" campaigns by big corporations. If they're doing things that are perrceived as bad for the US, and they're owned mostly by Americans, that's not good for their market position.

But a board that deliberately pursued a policy of losing money for its shareholders because it thought it was benefitting the United States as a whole would be violating its duty and liable to suit.

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