I Just Came from the Opening Session of Move to Amend's Portland Convergence - This is Important. [View all]

[dballance]

Last edited Sun May 5, 2013, 03:16 PM - Edit history (4)

Move to Amend (MTA) is an organization that formed to add a 28th amendment to the constitution to undo some of the damage the courts have done by treating corporations as if they were human beings. The goal is to build grass-roots support for the amendment because we all pretty much know our corporate-owned politicians won't be doing anything that might endanger their campaign contributions or those fact-finding and trade negotiation trips they take on corporate jets and get bank-rolled by corporations.

So it's simple. The amendment declares that artificial entities, such as corporations (C-Corps, LLC's, Non-Profits) or any legally created entities, have no rights under the Constitution. It also declares that money is not free speech. The idea is that the government needs to be pushed back on and that the government should be accountable to "We the People" as living, breathing humans and not beholding to immortal corporations. That ought to be something libertarians and even Tea Baggers could support. We the People in control rather than "big government" and faceless corporations.

Here's the text:

Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights]

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.

Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.

The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.

Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech]

Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.

Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.

The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

For more on MTA here's their site: https://movetoamend.org/

On Edit: The amendment would remove corporations, non-profits, and union's ability to claim they had free speech rights or equal protection rights and other rights that are considered to be rights of natural persons under the Constitution. It would not prohibit them from donating to candidates or causes or spending on same. It would simply put a stake in the ground to declare that rights extended to humans are not extended to artificial entities. Although the first ten amendments are commonly referred to as the "Bill of Rights" they are not separate and apart from the Constitution. They are amendments to the Constitution and, therefore, part of the Constitution. Nowhere in the text of the first ten amendments is such a legal document called the "Bill of Rights" mentioned or acknowledged to exist. That's because it doesn't exist in legal terms. The people who wrote those first ten amendments did not entitle them the "Bill of Rights." They proposed them as articles to amend the Constitution in order to clarify the original articles of the constitution and further restrict the powers of the government. You can read the preamble here: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html. To think of everything in the first 10 amendments as rights granted is not accurate. This confusion comes from the use of the term "Bill of Rights."

So it's perfectly fine to read the 1st Amendment and consider the freedom of speech clause a right that applies to individual humans while at the same time reading the freedom of the press clause to be a limit on the government's ability to suppress free information flow through the press. Just as it's perfectly fine to read the rest of the Constitution and believe that not all parts of it apply to every situation.

On Edit 2: I dont' know who said it but here's an applicable quote:
Democracy is not served by one party having a gazillion watt TV or radio station to broadcast their message (think FOX) while the opposing party has only a soapbox on the corner from which to broadcast theirs.