Let’s figure out how to go about restoring Democracy. This is an idea that is catching on across the country. And, although Tea Party folks and Occupy people were the first I heard talking about this issue the discussion is now spreading into more moderate political discussions.
The Citizen’s United ruling is approaching its third anniversary. Grassroots organizing to overturn it has been slow, but definitely building. That decision expanded the First Amendment rights of corporations, again! Some opposed to the Citizen’s United decision are using the term “corporate personhood” to describe their feelings of disagreement with the Supreme Court. Others see it plainly as judicial activism.
The term: “corporate personhood”, according to Anthony Kramer’s article on Demos, “…tends to conflate two distinct legal concepts. He explains why we need to understand the difference between “legal personhood,” and “the notion that corporations have rights protected under the U.S. Constitution.” They can and should have some rights, but should it be an American principal that natural born persons and artificially created corporations are equal under the law? Is this where we are headed?
David Cobb, the founder of Movetoamend.org, is a spirited and passionate speaker on the topic of restoring Democracy clearly says he believes that we are now ruled by corporations. If the idea that “money is speech,” and that corporations have the same legal rights as natural born human beings we are all doomed to a life of economic slavery to those who own the corporations. Maybe some of us or most of us already are.
While pondering the argument that corporations are people, the ideas that corporations are made up of people appeared in my research repeatedly. There are two different things going on with this argument. One, is the truth that corporations can and do enter into contracts with natural born people, illustrating Kramer’s claim that corporation do have rights under U.S. law. Two, the idea that an artificial legal entity is energized by natural born people is not equivalent to the entity itself being a natural born person. The collective individuals do indeed have the right to vote individually, as it should be. But, if the corporation then had the right to "personhood," wouldn't the individuals be represented twice?
What most constitutionally aware American voters are saying is that only natural born people were considered to be citizens with unalienable right when the Constitutional framers were working out the details of that document.
The original purpose for a corporation was to address the idea that a service to people was missing and it could be addressed by a charter granted by a government. The Massachusetts Colony, for example, was a charter granted by the King of England for the purpose of creating profit for the share holders of the corporation as well as making it possible for the survival of the colonists. This is what corporations are about. They are not natural born people, so they do not have the right to vote…yet. The Supreme Court could do that in another instance of judicial activism. And yes, the Citizens United decision was an act of judicial activism.
The reaction to “the decision” is overwhelmingly non-partisan. Tea partiers object, Occupy people object, Republicans, Democrats and Greens object.
What has to be done to restore Democracy? There are currently three approaches being offered: abolishing “corporate personhood,” says Thom Hartman in: To Restore Democracy: First Abolish Corporate personhood, getting money out of politics, or doing both at the same time as proposed by Move to Amend.
Some will read this as an anti-corporate article, but I prefer to think of this as a pro-democracy discussion. Our Democracy is inching toward decline. If we do not remain vigilant the institutional entities outside of our power to vote will whittle away at our unalienable Constitutional Rights until we have them no more. Think about it: Move to Amend.
Read the proposed 28th Amendment here.
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