Is Money Speech? Do Corporations Need Human Rights? Amend The Constitution!!!
2010-01-21 21:44:03
Keith Olbermann on on “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKZKETizybw
With an excellent origin of corporate personhood and some sober predictions.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, The Ruling:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf
http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission
http://www.scotusblog.com/2010/01/citizens-united-v-fec-opinion/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZS.html
http://topics.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/08-205
Sign-up With These Drives For An Amendment To Overturn This Ruling:
Liberty Tree’s effort to amend the constitution to protect human speech.
http://www.movetoamend.org/we-corporations
Move To Amend – Facebook Page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Move-To-Amend/423436625530?ref=ts
The two following petitions are identical:
Public Citizen’s petition, and a link to easily send your opinion to Congress:
http://action.citizen.org/t/10315/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=2190#Petition & http://www.citizen.org/
After Downing Street’s effort to amend the constitution to protect human speech,
http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/
and social media:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=52265396400
http://www.youtube.com/afterdowningstreet
http://twitter.com/afterdowningst
Pages to send your objection on this to Congress:
http://www.wispirg.org/action/democracy/citizens-united?id4=es
http://salsa.mydccc.org/o/30019/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4&tag=redirect
http://pol.moveon.org/fairelectionsnow/?r_by=18673-7407359-tvmnT2x&rc=comment_paste
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/fairelections/
One Million Strong for the Separation of Corporation and State – Facebook Page
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=43811311612
More info and history about corporate personhood:
http://www.movetoamend.org/learn-more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate
Thom Hartmann. Eloquent and articulate via books and radio in very helpful well-researched detail:
http://www.thomhartmann.com/2001/12/31/to-restore-democracy-first-abolish-corporate-personhood/
Liberty Tree
http://www.libertytreefdr.org/
Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County (DUHC):
http://www.duhc.org/
Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD):
http://www.poclad.org/
WILPF’s excellent packet:
http://www.corporatepersonhood.com/
Great place to read of successful local fights so far, and HOW THEY DID IT,
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund:
http://www.celdf.org/
For example, the Town of Halifax VA, the 10th municipality in the US to
prohibit corporate rights from being used to override the rights of human
and natural communities:
http://www.celdf.org/Default.aspx?tabid=504
A movie asks, if human, what is the personality type of the typical corporation?
http://www.thecorporation.com/
An excellent annotated list of links to sites working against corporate personhood – Zot Lynn Szurgot
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=279729610824
“I hope we shall… crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
~ Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Logan. November 12, 1816
Wall Street Journal Poll – 74.4% Against (Jan. 23)
http://online.wsj.com/community/groups/question-day-229/topics/do-you-agree-supreme-courts
How We Can Trump the Supreme Court and End Corporate Domination of Government – Rich Whitney
http://www.whitneyforgov.org/joomla/index.php
The Supreme Court decision further weakens our democracy – Ralph Nader
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Supreme-Court-decision-by-Ralph-Nader-100122-424.html
Corporate Personhood Should Be Banned, Once and For All
Outrageous SCOTUS Decision Should Reignite Most Necessary of Debates – Ralph Nader
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/statement-of-ralph-nader-on-supreme-court-decision-in-citizens-united-v-federal-election-commission/
0r @ http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/21-10
A Supreme Victory for Special Interests – John Dean
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_supreme_victory_for_special_interests_20100121/
Manchurian Candidates: – http://www.gregpalast.com/ also @
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/manchurian-candidates-supreme-court-allows-china-and-others-unlimited-spending-in-us-elections-by-greg-palast/
CALL FOR IMMEDIATE ARREST OF 5 SUPREME COURT JUSTICES FOR TREASON – Gordon Duff
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/01/22/call-for-immediate-arrest-of-5-supreme-court-justices-for-treason/
“Their ruling has made it legal for foreign controlled corporations to flush unlimited money into our bloated political system”
The Big Question: Will corporate money change campaigns? – Sydelle Moore, Brooke Wylie and Drew Wheatley
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/judicial/77279-the-big-question-is-the-supreme-court-right-on-campaign-finance
Comments on Supreme Court’s Decision Killing Campaign Finance Reform – “Granny D”
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/49472
http://www.truthout.org/doris-granny-d-haddock-response-supreme-court56272
Justices Block Key Part of Campaign Law – Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/21/us/AP-US-Supreme-Court-Campaign-Finance.html
NY Times Editorial – The Court’s Blow to Democracy
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/opinion/22fri1.html
Justices, 5-4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit – Adam Liptak
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22scotus.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Lobbyists Get Potent Weapon in Campaign Ruling – DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22donate.html?sudsredirect=true
Fair Elections Are the Answer to Citizens United – Nick Nyhart
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-nyhart/fair-elections-is-the-ans_b_418594.html
Supreme Court Rolls Back Campaign Finance Restrictions – Arthur Delaney
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/21/supreme-court-rolls-back_n_431227.html
What does the “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission” ruling mean for New Yorkers? – Evan Johnson
http://www.examiner.com/x-34784-NY-Public-Policy-Examiner~y2010m1d23-What-does-the-Citizens-United-v-Federal-Election-Commission-ruling-mean-for-New-Yorkers
This has been a long time coming, we have for far too long been beholden to the misreporting of a court recorder on this very important issue. The 14th amendment was intended to apply to humans, such rights never were intended to be applied to corporations.
These immortal social machines must be seen as potential monsters which are inherently dangerous to humans’ rights, not seen as humans with rights. The insistence by recent courts that money is speech is similarly spurious, transparently insane, and extremely dangerous to living beings. We must move beyond both of these travesties if we are to have a world where complex living beings have a chance to survive for purposes that do not serve profits.
Ultimately money and corporations are abstractions of the human social order and they should not have obtained the domination of life on Earth that they already have. By whatever means necessary we must defend the ability of life to continue evolution beyond the reign of imaginary machines.
These imaginary constructs will become increasingly embodied in robot and computer intelligence and thus more independent of beings that have life as we have known it to date. We are in a time when we must choose whether the machines are to become more human means of fulfillment for the living or if life itself is to become a mere cog in the machine.
Defining human rights as money, and as belonging to corporations, is a recipe for nothing but continued acceleration of the rates of extinction of species and changing of climate, which have already begun to make the lives of many humans precarious, and will continue to get more and more unsustainable in terms of large mammal specie’s survival. We are already losing species at the rate of several hundred a day. Humans need other species, and we need species to have rights, much more than we need corporations to have rights.
“Today the business once transacted by individuals in every community is in the control of corporations, and many of the men who once conducted an independent business are gathered into the organization, and all personal identity, and all individualities lost. Each man has become a mere cog in one of the wheels of a complicated mechanism. It is the business of the corporations to get money. It exacts but one thing of its employees: Obedience to orders. It cares not about their relations to the community, the church, society, or the family. It wants full hours and faithful service, and when they die, wear out or are discharged, it quickly replaces them with new material.
The corporation is a machine for making money, but it reduces men to the insignificance of mere numerical figures, as certainly as the private ranks of the regular army.”
~ Fighting Bob La Follette, speech on the Dangers Threatening Representative Government, Mineral Point, Wisconsin, July 4, 1897
As though we must always eternally be at war against each other to win forth on the glorious field of money for all that matters is accumulating abstract measures of wealth amongst those who already can not even begin to spend it all without dictating the lives of many others.
Care2.com article with poll
http://www.care2.com/causes/civil-rights/blog/corporations-are-people-too-goodbye-campaign-finance-reform/
Another Care2 article
http://www.care2.com/causes/politics/blog/unrestricted-corporate-influence-cant-be-allowed/
Stephen Colbert on the upcoming decision in Sept 2009
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/249057/september-15-2009/citizens-united-v–federal-election-commission—jeffrey-toobin
Congressman Grayson’s petition:
http://salsa.mydccc.org/o/30019/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4&tag=redirect
Keith Olbermann Interviews Alan Grayson About The Supreme Court Case of Citizens United vs. FEC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z_UCyOyRU8&NR=1
Want legislation written by and for humans?
Vote with the party that takes no corporate money and
is committed to an amendment abolishing corporate personhood; see http://gp.org
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