dballance
dballance's JournalEnding Corporate Personhood and Money as Free Speech - Move to Amend.
I just started an internship with Move to Amend
Move to Amend has two important goals 1) End corporate personhood and 2) End money as free speech. Both corporate personhood and money as free speech came out of court decisions - namely Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United. Therefore, the only way to overturn those decisions and wrestle power away from corporations and other big-money interests now is with a constitutional amendment.
What is corporate Personhood?
There are two conceptions of "corporate personhood". The first simply bestows upon corporations the ability to engage in many legal actions (e.g. enter into contracts, sue, be sued, etc). This is widely accepted and we do not object to this.
However, "corporate personhood" also commonly refers to the Supreme Court-created precedent of corporations enjoying constitutional rights that were intended solely for human beings. We believe this form of "corporate personhood" corrupts our Constitution and must be corrected by amending the Constitution. Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution ever mention corporations. But thanks to decades of rulings by Justices who molded the law to favor elite interests, corporations today are granted so-called "rights" that empower them to deny citizens the right to full self-governance.
For example, the Supreme Court has:
** prohibited routine inspections of corporate property without a warrant or prior permission, even though scheduling such visits may permit a company to hide threats to public health and safety. Marshall v Barlow's, 1978
** struck down state laws requiring companies to disclose product origins (International Dairy v. Amnestoy), thus creating “negative free speech rights” for corporations and preventing us from knowing what’s in our food.
** prohibited citizens wanting to defend their local businesses and community from corporate chains encroachment from enacting progressive taxes on chain stores. (Liggett v. Lee, 1933)
** struck down state laws restricting corporate spending on ballot initiatives and referenda, enabling corporations to block citizen action through what, theoretically, is the purest form of democracy. (First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti).
The notorious 1886 case of [link:http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=118&invol=394Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad] is just one in a long series of Supreme Court cases that entrenched "corporate personhood" in law. Justices since have struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws enacted to protect people from corporate harm based on this illegitimate premise. Armed with these "rights," corporations wield ever-increasing control over jobs, natural assets, politicians, even judges and the law.
Move to Amend believe corporations are not persons and possess only the privileges citizens and their elected representatives willfully grant them. Our Amendment will reverse the Court’s invention of "corporate personhood" and limit corporations to their proper role: doing business.
Money as Free Speech
I think everyone here on DU is probably familiar with the Citizens United vs the FEC decision by the Supreme Court. The simple summary of Citizens United decision is that it granted corporations the ability to use money as free speech. It removed spending limits in campaigns. The result is, corporations with their vast and deep pockets can use money as speech to drown out the speech of regular, real, human people.
We saw the rise of the super pacs and all those dubious 401(c)4 non-profits during the last election after the Citizens United decision. The result is we had a presidential election in which over a billion dollars was spent on candidates and campaigns. Either directly or indirectly.
Until we wrest away control of our government from the hands of the large corporations and big money interests we will continue to get more ALEC-written laws like the FL Stand Your Ground law or US Chamber of Commerce written laws concerning minimum wages and worker rights (mostly lack of rights). We'll get more of ALEC and US Chamber of Commerce bought and paid for politicians on every level from local and state to the federal level passing laws favorable to them. We'll get more Right to Work (work more for less pay and benefits) states.
You can start out by simply signing Move to Amend's petition that states simply "We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights." Sign Petition
I'm very committed to this work. If you have questions or would like to become involved here are some links.
Suggested Amendment Text
Move to Amend home page
Move to Amend FAQs
Recommended Reading
Ending Corporate Personhood and Money as Free Speech - Move to Amend.
I just started an internship with Move to Amend
Move to Amend has two important goals 1) End corporate personhood and 2) End money as free speech. Both corporate personhood and money as free speech came out of court decisions - namely Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United. Therefore, the only way to overturn those decisions and wrestle power away from corporations and other big-money interests now is with a constitutional amendment.
What is corporate Personhood?
There are two conceptions of "corporate personhood". The first simply bestows upon corporations the ability to engage in many legal actions (e.g. enter into contracts, sue, be sued, etc). This is widely accepted and we do not object to this.
However, "corporate personhood" also commonly refers to the Supreme Court-created precedent of corporations enjoying constitutional rights that were intended solely for human beings. We believe this form of "corporate personhood" corrupts our Constitution and must be corrected by amending the Constitution. Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution ever mention corporations. But thanks to decades of rulings by Justices who molded the law to favor elite interests, corporations today are granted so-called "rights" that empower them to deny citizens the right to full self-governance.
For example, the Supreme Court has:
** prohibited routine inspections of corporate property without a warrant or prior permission, even though scheduling such visits may permit a company to hide threats to public health and safety. Marshall v Barlow's, 1978
** struck down state laws requiring companies to disclose product origins (International Dairy v. Amnestoy), thus creating “negative free speech rights” for corporations and preventing us from knowing what’s in our food.
** prohibited citizens wanting to defend their local businesses and community from corporate chains encroachment from enacting progressive taxes on chain stores. (Liggett v. Lee, 1933)
** struck down state laws restricting corporate spending on ballot initiatives and referenda, enabling corporations to block citizen action through what, theoretically, is the purest form of democracy. (First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti).
The notorious 1886 case of [link:http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=118&invol=394Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad] is just one in a long series of Supreme Court cases that entrenched "corporate personhood" in law. Justices since have struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws enacted to protect people from corporate harm based on this illegitimate premise. Armed with these "rights," corporations wield ever-increasing control over jobs, natural assets, politicians, even judges and the law.
Move to Amend believe corporations are not persons and possess only the privileges citizens and their elected representatives willfully grant them. Our Amendment will reverse the Court’s invention of "corporate personhood" and limit corporations to their proper role: doing business.
Money as Free Speech
I think everyone here on DU is probably familiar with the Citizens United vs the FEC decision by the Supreme Court. The simple summary of Citizens United decision is that it granted corporations the ability to use money as free speech. It removed spending limits in campaigns. The result is, corporations with their vast and deep pockets can use money as speech to drown out the speech of regular, real, human people.
We saw the rise of the super pacs and all those dubious 401(c)4 non-profits during the last election after the Citizens United decision. The result is we had a presidential election in which over a billion dollars was spent on candidates and campaigns. Either directly or indirectly.
Until we wrest away control of our government from the hands of the large corporations and big money interests we will continue to get more ALEC-written laws like the FL Stand Your Ground law or US Chamber of Commerce written laws concerning minimum wages and worker rights (mostly lack of rights). We'll get more of ALEC and US Chamber of Commerce bought and paid for politicians on every level from local and state to the federal level passing laws favorable to them. We'll get more Right to Work (work more for less pay and benefits) states.
You can start out by simply signing Move to Amend's petition that states simply "We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights." Sign Petition
I'm very committed to this work. If you have questions or would like to become involved here are some links.
Suggested Amendment Text
Move to Amend home page
Move to Amend FAQs
Recommended Reading
Shark attack claims Brazilian teen's life. Talk about super unlucky
From CNN:
As lifeguards approached to pull a drowning Brazilian teenager from the water, she suffered a second, fatal misfortune -- a shark attack.
Bruni Gobbi, 18, and a cousin were on the verge of drowning at Boa Viagem beach in the northeastern Brazil city of Recife on Monday, according to the local government's social defense secretariat.
Lifeguards responded immediately to try to save them, and in the midst of the rescue, a shark attacked Gobbi's left leg, the secretariat said.
Rescuers managed to move her to shore, and then to a hospital, but she died later that night, CNN affiliate Globo TV reported.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/23/world/americas/brazil-shark-attack/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
I hear Russia, Bolivia, Argentina, and Nicaragua R offering Zimmy Asylum
Okay, so I couldn't resist making the joke. He'd be wise to get his sorry not guilty but not innocent ass out of the country for a while.
Fox Blames President Obama for Zimmerman Verdict
Well that didn't take long. I think I threw up in my mouth watching Geraldo going on and on about poor Zimmy and how it was a political prosecution. The whole crew is delighted Zimmy got off.
If anyone thought that Geraldo Rivera wasn't done saying offensive things about the murder of Trayvon Martin now that the jury has found George Zimmerman not guilty, they would be sadly mistaken.
Rivera has already gone on record blaming Martin for his own death by "dressing like a wannabe gangster" and wearing a hoodie. And as we discussed here, he was blaming the Rev. Al Sharpton for using "race politics" to force the prosecution to bring a weak case against Zimmerman. Whether the case was weak, or Florida's laws are just really horrible, or whether the prosecution just did a bad job or not will be a point of contention and debate for some time to come, I'm sure.
What's utterly ridiculous is where Fox's Geraldo and his fellow host Jeanine Pirro went next, which is to of course blame President Obama for this mess as well, because he dared to weigh in on the case when he said that if he had a son, he'd look like Trayvon. He politicized the case! He forced them to take it up when it was obvious that Zimmerman wasn't guilty! Sorry, but no, President Obama did not force them to take up this case. Public pressure did along with the media attention the case received. And no one demanded that Zimmerman be found guilty. Just that he had his day in court.
more at link (video): http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/fox-blames-president-obama-zimmerman-verdi
The feds are not going to touch the Zimmerman situation
A jury acquitted because they felt he acted in self defense. That means they felt no hate crime was committed.
The feds are not going to try to make a hate crimes case on top of that.
For the record, I was hoping for at least manslaughter.
If you think the NSA/CIA/FBI are Scary, Have you ever used Ancestry.com?
I've been using Ancestry.com to put together my family tree. It's very scary how easily they come up with records on people and link them all together.
Then, of course, I'm only helping them out by building my family tree. Linking people together -especially the older records with simple name variants for the same person.
Thanks for this month's photo contest - HDR
I was a bit pissy when I first saw the contest about HDR because I'd never played with that sort of thing in my camera and software. I didn't even know it existed.
Then when I went about researching HDR and followed up by dragging my tri-pod out and getting exposures I was really happy I had to learn something new.
Anyone know of a "reliable" fire & water-proof safe for media?
Like most people these days I archive my photos/videos and my docs etc. on DVD (soon to be Blu-Ray).
Is there a fire safe out there that actually works? I checked consumer's reports and just did general google. This one from SentrySafe http://www.amazon.com/SentrySafe-QA0110-Fire-Safe-Waterproof-Storage/dp/B001F7HPMS keeps popping up.
Other background. I've tried the online backups - too slow given my connection speed. Yes, I'm kind of just thinking about stashing my backups at a friend's house in return for doing the same for them. That's off-site storage but a pain to maintain.
I was listening to NPR this morning. They had a photographer on as their guest.
It was fun to listen to NPR. Yeps, I'm such a liberal lefty.
It was fun to listen to a professional photographer. He admitted that luck had a lot to do with his great pictures.
I take tons of photos and I hope one of them will be special. I hope luck will grant me a time and place for a great picture. 
Profile Information
Name: DaveGender: Male
Hometown: Gallatin, TN
Home country: USA
Current location: Portland, OR
Member since: Mon Nov 6, 2006, 03:59 PM
Number of posts: 5,756
