Citizens United....

[osodecanela]

MoveOn.org is currently petitioning state legislatures around the country in support of a new amendment to the Constitution specifying that corporations are not individuals. This may be a long shot, but the damage done to our current system by the Supreme Court's decision of January last must be remedied. By declaring that corporations are individuals with rights of free speech, the Supreme Court furthered the placing of our elected officials even deeper into the deep pockets of big business. The result will be fascism on a new scale. It has a ready helped to reshape the House and likely it is only a matter of time before the Senate follows suit.

I urge each of you reading this who're American citizens to sign the MoveOn petition & to do what I did earlier today; write directly to your own state senator and assembly person. Below is a snippet from my e-mail, to Wes Chesbro, my state assemblyman.

"The Citizens United decision will devastate our current political system, granting undue political influence to corporations. Please, do what you can as a legislator to protect our rights, so that Lincoln's words, "...a government of the people, by the people shall not perish from the earth," are not just beautiful words from a stirring speech, but our reality as Americans. As American citizens and, as voters, we need representatives to respond to the needs of their constituents, not Cargill, to mothers and fathers and not Monsanto, to the general electorate, not General Electric. If the Citizens United decision continues to stand unchecked and unchallenged, it will not be long before the will of Coca-Cola and Koch Industries bears more weight in Washington, than the will of the people of California, Kentucky and the Carolinas."

Comments

[barbarian-rat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reminder. I signed just now.

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

So how exactly does this "corporations are individuals with rights of free speech" work?

[osodecanela.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, it means that most of the spending limits on what corporations could be spent to influence political campaigns has now gone out the window. It meant that this past election cycle, 3 corporations based outside of California were able to spend a huge amount of funds to try and overturn a California environmental statute. First, they paid people to circulate petitions to get a measure on the ballot using our initiative process (something sadly legal here). Then they advertised heavily on both TV and radio, as well as in the print media on how the current environmental protections were killing jobs, something that people take note of given the rate of unemployment is nearing double digits in California. (The measure failed thank the Gods.)

It meant that many conservative candidates around the country were able to raise enormous amounts of money from very deep corporate pockets, which many have been a factor in the very conservative swing to the House of Representatives. Case in point was the massive funding of the congressional campaign of a very conservative political unknown in Oregon, by one single New York company specializing in derivative trading on Wall Street. Turns out the congressman they were trying to unseat was a Liberal Democrat very popular in his district, who had been influential in trying to reform some of the excesses on Wall Street that were in part responsible for the recent banking crisis in this country. Fortunately, they were unsuccessful in that contest, but there are other races which undoubtedly have been swung. The change seats in Congress this past November was the biggest change this country has seen in over 6 decades.

[philbutrin.livejournal.com]

they've already got my signature on the petition. citizens united is probably the most appalling case of judicial activism in many years, and i believe it offers a serious threat to american democracy.

the republican party motto really should be "Business Before People".