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Money in Politics
This is the first of two parts on Citizens United. In this article, I’ll explain what Citizens United is and how it affects our elections and government. In Part two, I’ll cover the actions to undermine Citizens United power over our elections.
In brief and unauthorized survey on the question: “How do we, the people, get our government back.” The response was unanimous. “Get the money out of politics.”
The 2016 elections awakened my civic side, which had chosen apathy for too many years. In my search for understanding about politics and money, On April 15, 2017, I wrote Money Silences the Voices of the American People: Corporate greed subverts democracy for the Good Men Project. It is a good primer on how money moves from corporations to politicians’ pockets. The limited number of donors and the Fort Knox scale of donations is mind-blowing. It is all possible because of Citizens United 2010.
Money Rules – People are Disposable
It is now 2018, the #Vote2018 elections are eight short months away. Big money, dark money, and Super PAC money are already pouring into off-year elections and special elections. The top 2% of this country are bound and determined to control our government which is supposed to function for the health and well-being of all Americans. Why? To wreck the laws that preserved clean water, clean air, wilderness spaces, public health – to name a few. Why? For the minuscule savings attached to the process that protect our environment and quality of life.
Citizens United asserts corporations are People
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), is a landmark U.S. constitutional law, campaign finance, and corporate law case dealing with regulation of political campaign spending by organizations.
Reclaim Democracy explains:
What is Citizens United? The short answer is it’s two different but related things: a Political Action Committee (PAC) in Washington, D.C., and a Supreme Court case about election spending in which the aforementioned PAC was the plaintiff. Both lie at the center of a debate over the role corporations play in society
Movement to Amend cites Supreme Court Justice Stevens, January 2010, minority dissent: “. . . corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.”
Reclaim Democracy: Problems with Citizens United Supreme Court Ruling
Beyond the legal objections, unlimited political spending by corporations and unions causes several problems:
- It prevents a “meritocracy of ideas.” Unlimited political spending allows ideas to dominate not by merit, but by their supporters’ ability to broadcast them.
- It has influence far beyond the ads it pays for. The more money a politician needs to compete for office, the more she must court the wealthy, leaving less time to govern and less contact with average citizens. Another consequence is that legislators’ lives get tied up with wealthy supporters in ways that have led to widespread corruption in both parties.
- The kind of unlimited political spending Citizens United allows (mostly on attack ads) creates a crude, counterproductive form of political dialogue, which breeds unthinking partisanship and oversimplified discussion via sound bytes. We need to create a culture in which thoughtful political discussion can flourish, but the unregulated flood of money that Citizens United unleashed makes it harder to do so.
- It gives large corporations anti-competitive advantages over small businesses.
One of the main instruments of this influence is the legal concept of “corporate personhood,” wherein corporations receive the same Constitutional protections as individuals. Corporations use these protections to claim the “right” to lie to the public, for example, or to influence elections in various ways. Corporations have lobbied for and received these protections for decades, despite our country’s founders intending no such thing. The Citizens United decision is just the latest in a long line of decisions granting Constitutional rights to corporations.
An important note: Citizens United isn’t technically an extension of corporate personhood. The Court majority didn’t say corporations have free speech rights because they’re people, but instead stated non-persons have free speech rights. If your toaster could talk, it would have those rights too.
Move to Amend — We The People Amendment
House Joint Resolution 48 introduced January 30, 2017
Click here for most up to date list of co-sponsors
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.
Additional References
I have chosen to identify and give you links to organizations that I accessed in this article. They are not the only ones. Here are a few more groups working to address illegitimatetamate corporate funding.
Coming: Part Two – Over-riding Citizens United
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