Corporate Campaign Spending

I recently recommened a comprehensive Constitutional amendment addressing the corruption of our elections.

The largest piece of it, largely inspired by an amendment drafted by Russell Simmons, had not been introduced in Congress . . .  until now.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich has just introduced HJRes100 which proposes this Constitutional Amendment:

There are many schemes now for undoing the doctrines under which corporations claim constitutional rights and bribery is deemed constitutionally protected "speech." Every single one of these schemes depends on a massive movement of public pressure all across the homeland formerly known as the United States of America. With such a movement, few of the schemes can fail. Without it, we're just building castles in the air. Nonetheless, the best scheme can best facilitate the organizing of the movement.

Here's why I will.

It's January 20th!

Don't take it from me.  Take it from the book being published today that will mainstream the movement to end corporate personhood: "Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do, And What You Can Do About It," by Jeff Clements with foreword by Bill Moyers.

Clements traces the development of the legal doctrine of corporate personhood back long before the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision two years ago this month, in particular to President Richard Nixon's appointment of Lewis Powell to the Supreme Court in 1972.  Led by Powell's radical new conception of corporate rights, Clements shows, the court began striking down laws that protected living breathing persons' rights in areas including the environment, tobacco, public health, food, drugs, financial regulation, and elections.

By Jeffrey Clements, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, AlterNet

The following is an excerpt of Jeffrey Clement's Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It.) Click here to order a copy.

Why are protesters occupying Wall Street? That's hard to answer, because it's a proudly leaderless movement, and process - real democracy in the form of General Assembly - comes before results. It's also hard to answer because the corporate media is mainly interested in "reporting" actions they can smear as violent or crazy.

So what's driving the participants to come - and stay? Kevin Gosztola is liveblogging for FireDogLake. He writes:

Occupy Wall Street... characterizes itself as the 99 percent who will no longer tolerate greed and corruption from the 1 percent

This wouldn't create clean elections. It's not public financing. It includes no ban on private financing. But it would permit such bans by Congress and by states. It bans non-citizens and foreign associations from funding U.S. elections. I wish it included mention of U.S. associations, or more to the point: corporations. But it's a good contribution.

Source: http://www.kurtschrader.com/amendment

Congressman Kurt Schrader has proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would give individual states and Congress the authority to limit the influence of special interests in our elections.

Here's the full text:

Article

By John Bonifaz

The US Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC is facing its first direct challenge in the courts.  A coalition that includes two national business networks and local Montana businesses recently joined the State of Montana in defense of its century-old ban on corporate money in elections.  Montana’s Corrupt Practices Act, which goes back to 1912, is under legal attack following the Supreme Court’s January 2010 decision in Citizens United, which equated corporations with people under the First Amendment and swept away longstanding precedent that had barred corporate expenditures in federal elections.  

Michigan governors aren't breaking entirely new ground in the ongoing U.S. collapse into fascism. Sure, they'll be able to overthrow local elected governments and install cronies and corporations to rule over Americans without the pretense of public servants mediating. But the president of the United States can already do that to the entire country. I wonder if anyone remembers these lines from Congressman Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment for George W. Bush:

Imagine if TV routinely looked like this.  The world would not look anything like it does.