There is an important movement afoot: Learn about impacts of that nasty Supreme Court Ruling - which unleashed excessive corporate power and meet the organizers of this grassroots campaign to change it.
MOVE to AMEND spokesperson, David Cobb, 2004 Green Party Presidential candidate, is touring the country raising awareness about corporate personhood, and building a movement to strengthen the Constitution. "We move to amend the Constitution to establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons."
South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard will be a guest speaker. Mayor Stoddard has led a community fight against FPL's strong arm tactics to push through new nuclear plants at Turkey Point, and high voltage transmission lines along U.S. 1. Be there:
Sunday, September 12, 7PM - 9PM - Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Miami
7701 SW 76th Ave, Miami, FL 33143
19 comments:
if it wasn't corporations it would be 527s and PACs. Good people organize. Learn how to run for office and win. Change the rules from the inside.
Love this. Go Stoddard.
Why the hell didn't the Tea Party take this on? The timing was right, with the Supreme Court decision. Perhaps it's because special interests are pulling the strings in TP initiatives? Wake up people!
OK, if money is not critical free speech, would it be constitutional for Congress to limit the amount of money the New York Times can spend on printing its daily edition to $1,000? No? Then tough titties. Limits on campaign expenditures are also unconstitutional for the same reason. Limiting how far speakers can spread their message by limiting their expenditures is an abridgement of free speech. Under the law, all speech is free speech; we don't favor one type of speech, or one type of speaker, or one side of an argument. And we shouldn't try to limit the size of their audience, because that limits the value and effectiveness of that speech. I don't always like to hear ads for Candidate X, or dog food Y, or feminine hygiene product Z, but I cannot limit their freedom of speech without jeopardizing the ability of my favorite candidate, company, non-profit to reach their target audience. Free speech is a bitch sometimes, but repression is worse.
Corporations are not people. Also their are campaign contribution limits for people. Why not then view a corporation as one person and limit their contribution to $2,000 same as one person?
Slate: Judge Stevens Dissent:
Watching as the Supreme Court turns a corporation into a real live boy.
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But you can plainly see the weariness in Stevens eyes and hear it in his voice today as he is forced to contend with a legal fiction that has come to life today, a sort of constitutional Frankenstein moment when corporate speech becomes even more compelling than the "voices of the real people" who will be drowned out. Even former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist once warned that treating corporate spending as the First Amendment equivalent of individual free speech is "to confuse metaphor with reality." Today that metaphor won a very real victory at the Supreme Court. And as a consequence some very real corporations are feeling very, very good.
I am thinking of transentitying myself and becoming a corporation, becoming the first transentity individual on the planet. I would move permanently on too the sunbiz website where I would do unspeakable evil.
Of course money is not in and of itself speech, but Money Talks and Bullshit Walks.
Limiting what people or corporations who are owned by evil droids with hedious beady red eyes and long boney nails with austrian accents is unconstitutional.
The Green Party? More like the watermelon party, green on the outside red on the inside.
Second blogger: imagine that a multi national corporation with a bunch of hostile stock holders from some country wants to decide who the next President is going to be. OK, now fill in the blanks....This is not rocket science...tough titties, my ass. Connect the dots! A corporation is not a person. Thomas Jefferson was not contemplating multi national corporations. Neither were the other guys. Imagine if the King of England were to step in in the 1800's to assist with the campaign. We would have had another war on the books. Come on!!!
"Why didn't the tea party take this on?" Seriously? Clearly you don't know the history of tea party "activism."
The tea party stuff first started with a bunch of phony grass roots groups bankrolled by Koch Industries to oppose any kind of carbon cap-and-trade system. Seeing it as a pretty effective tool toward that end, it was adopted by the health care insurance industry (including our Repub nominee for Governor) and became the tactic that became what everyone now equates with the tea party.
They ARE the industries that benefited immensely by the court decision. I don't imagine they'll be bankrolling angry mobs on this one.
"money is not free speech" - of course not, it cost money.
But as a famous author once pointed out about power and equality - "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
George Orwell said...
Understood on Tea Party reference. Read the whole post. I was being tongue in cheek. TP thing was hi-jacked by the puppeteers in the very beginning. I believe it's original genesis was more organic with that one woman - but anyway - the point is, most grass roots TP's don't realize that. For all the grass roots, they might as well be sheep grazing in the fields.
OK, so who is going to judge which corporation is evil? Who decides which corporation gets muzzled? If you say "all corporations" then you are also saying the New York Times, which is a corporation. The "Citizens United" Supreme Court case you now revile also struck down the same restrictions placed on unions and non-profit corporations. So now you want the AFL-CIO to get muzzled again, or the ACLU? And the case did NOTHING to remove the restrictions on foreign corporations or foreign persons from contributing to elections. Sheesh. Read the case before you spout off. Here is a link to Wikipedia to help explain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission
Yeah, tough titties indeed.
Don't be so smug. I read the opinion and the dissent. I agree with John Paul Steven's dissenting opinion.
Its not smugness to believe in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". As the syllabus (summary) explains, "Premised on mistrust of governmental power, the First Amendment stands against attempts to disfavor certain subjects or viewpoints or to distinguish among different speakers, which may be a means to control content. ... There is no basis for the proposition that, in the political speech context, the Government may impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers" [such as corporations or unions]. And remember, the case only struck down the 30-days-from-an-election ban on their political speech; there was no general ban on political speech by non-media organizations, nor a ban on corporations or unions speaking through a PAC. So its not the horror story many claim it is.
Money buys politics, money buys candidates that will actually get into office, so therefore money buys our leadership and money buys TRUTH (as it is interpreted from our "bought" leaders). Our leaders do not work for us any longer, they work for the corporations. Plain and simple. Running for office and WINNING takes $$$. Our system needs an overhaul and $$$ needs to be take out of it. What happened to the First Amendment, a TRUE citizen's government let by the people for the people by we the people?
I hope that those who felt compelled to comment here and argue positions on either side of the issue will attend the Move to Amend event and bring their opinions with them to listen as well as to share viewpoints. That is what it's all about, and you do have to step away from the computer every now and again.
For those participating & observing this blog...Wouldn't the REAL point be:
Finding out what David Cobb is talking about since he is right in the area today?
In case you missed the list of sponsors, this is bigger than any single party-this is an alliance for a REASON.
Cobb is supposed to be a dynamite speaker so I'm in!
Of course you could just sit on your bum & jabber about this endlessly right here.
Or you could go, be better informed about this & tomorrow talk it out right here.
The choice is yours...
To the TPer who keeps coming back - foreigners can purchase shares of stock in US corporations. US corporations often enjoy huge markets in foreign countries. These same corporations also have to deal with foreign governments when they are setting up shop overseas. Therefore, foreign influence can conceivably become a HUGE factor in their actions. Again, you are grazing, bleating, following...maybe not thinking it through?? As to unions, these organizations are run with votes from their members. Granted, the issues with unions are complex, but you are comparing apples and oranges here.
Yes, foreigners can buy stock in U.S. companies, just as foreigners can join U.S. unions, and foreigners can become members of U.S. non-profit corporations. Each of these entities is exposed to a variety of influences when deciding what political speech, if any, it will have, including speech on foreign policy and international trade. But that is true even if they have zero foreigners on board. Union policy is determined by its membership and board of directors, just as corporate policy is determined by its shareholders and board of directors.
The Federal Elections Commission (FEC) says in its regulations at 11 CFR 110.20: "A foreign national shall not direct, dictate, control, or directly or indirectly participate in the decision making process of any person, such as a corporation, labor organization, political committee, or political organization with regard to such person’s Federal or non-Federal election-related activities, such as decisions concerning the making of contributions, donations, expenditures, or disbursements in connection with elections for any Federal, State, or local office or decisions concerning the administration of a political committee."
So the prohibition on foreign influence is still law; untouched by the Supremes. How's that for grazing and bleating?
Ah, grazing and bleating, but in a Union, you get one vote per person where as one entity, investor of company can buy up thousands of shares of stock in these large corporations that we are discussing. With that interest, they can direct millions of dollars in these campaign advertisements.
True, unions can have foreigners as members, but they tend to be more nationals than anything. Unions are embedded in our soil, for workers here - not over there. They don't have unions in China, grazing and bleating one.
Even so, I agree that the Union issue is fuzzy. I will give you that. In the next breath, I will tell you that I don't like PACs either. But if Unions are fuzzy, corporations are downright wooly. It takes a scary thing to the next level or wrong. You cannot prevent foreign influence when your shareholders come from all over the world. How, exactly, would you do that, bleating one?
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