The Perversion of our First Amendment

[Time for change]

The interpretation of the U.S. Constitution requires some amount of intelligence and logical thought. Our Founding Fathers purposely wrote it that way because they had the foresight to recognize that American society would change over time, so that a Constitution that was overly specific would soon outlive its usefulness. So it was with the Roe v. Wade decision. For example, as explained here:

State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy.

The 14th Amendment says nothing specifically about the right of women to make decisions affecting their own bodies, nor even about the right to privacy. But those rights are inferred from its “due process clause”:

Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

THE FREE SPEECH CLAUSE OF OUR 1ST AMENDMENT

Purpose

So it is with the First Amendment to our Constitution, including its free speech and free press clauses. The free speech clause of our First Amendment was never meant to be merely a meaningless abstract concept. Rather, it was meant for a specific purpose – which is best ascertained by reviewing and assessing the deliberations and statements of the Founding Fathers who wrote it.

Thomas Jefferson was the primary author of our First Amendment. He elaborated on the rationale for freedom of speech in his Second Inaugural Address, in which he said:

Freedom of discussion, unaided by power, is...sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth.

Jefferson also said with respect to freedom of speech and freedom of the press:

Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all avenues to truth. The most effective hitherto found is freedom of the press.

An assessment of these and other similar statements should make clear the primary purpose of the free speech and press clauses of our First Amendment: The discovery of truth. Our Founders believed that by prohibiting the government censoring of speech, Americans would thereby have the opportunity to be exposed to such a variety of opinions and ideas that they would have the opportunity to divine truth. Thus freedom of speech and press are necessary to produce an informed citizenry. And only an informed citizenry can maintain a representative government and a free society.

Therefore, any attempt to interpret the free speech and press clauses of our First Amendment must take account of its underlying purpose – the discovery of truth and an informed citizenry. Any attempt to interpret the First Amendment without reference to that underlying purpose is likely to result in a perversion of our First Amendment. And so it has.


Our First Amendment is not absolute

Like all other parts of our Constitution, our First Amendment is not absolute. For example, as most Americans are aware, our First Amendment doesn’t give us the right to shout “Fire!” in a move theatre, unless the speaker believes that a fire exists and poses a danger to those to whom he speaks. Doing so would endanger peoples’ lives and contribute nothing to the discovery of truth. Similarly, the right of citizens to sue those who libel them is testament to the fact that our freedom of speech is not absolute. Malicious libeling of one’s fellow citizens contributes nothing to the discovery of truth, and those who practice it should be held accountable for their actions.

If our government allowed a citizen to speak his opinion only when held in solitary confinement, that would be a perversion of our First Amendment because speech has no value unless others can hear it. Similarly, when the Bush Administration established “First Amendment Zones” for protesting against government actions, that was a perversion of our First Amendment. The purpose of the so-called “First Amendment Zones” was to limit the number of people who could hear the speech of the protesters. Thus, the purpose of the “First Amendment Zones” was the precise opposite of the purpose for which the free speech clause of our First Amendment was created.


PERVERSIONS OF THE FREE SPEECH CLAUSE OF OUR FIRST AMENDMENT

Several judicial decisions in recent decades have threatened to pervert the free speech clause of our First Amendment to the point of making it not only meaningless but obstructive of the rights of American citizens to access the truth and to live in a democratic and free society. These judicial errors include primarily: 1) The assertion that money is a form of “speech”; 2) the assertion that our First Amendment applies to the abstract entity that we call corporations, and 3) the failure to take into account the fact that the speech of some can sometimes drown out the speech of others. A rational interpretation of our First Amendment could have prevented these perversions.


Money as speech

Buckley v. Valeo
The 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision Buckley v. Valeo was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it recognized that there should be a limit to the First Amendment protection of campaign contributions. Specifically, if excessive campaign contributions could be seen to have corrupting influences on the behavior of our government, Congress should be allowed to put a limit on campaign contributions for that reason.

On the other hand the Buckley decision essentially said that money can be equated with speech, by saying that our First Amendment protects the right of candidates for public office and independent parties to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns in the form of “speech”. That decision is explained here:

The Court concurred in part with the appellants' claim, finding that the restrictions on political contributions and expenditures "necessarily reduced the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of the exploration, and the size of the audience reached. This is because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today's mass society requires the expenditure of money." The Court then determined that such restrictions on political speech could only be justified by an overriding governmental interest.

But the problem of equating money with speech is that some people have a lot more money than other people. Therefore, wealthy people, by virtue of the fact that they have orders of magnitude more money than poor people, also have orders of magnitude more access to “speech”.

Furthermore, it is well known that money contributed to political campaigns is translated into votes. Therefore, by allowing unlimited campaign contributions, the end result is that the wealthy have orders of magnitude more influence in elections (i.e. more votes) than other people. This makes a mockery of the principle of one person, one vote.

Randall v. Sorrell
A 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Randall v. Sorrell, went well beyond Buckley v. Valeo. That decision not only reiterated the principle of allowing unlimited political campaign expenditures by candidates for public office and third parties, but it also struck down a portion of a 2006 Vermont law that limited campaign contributions, thus making even more clear the equating of money and speech.

The equating of money with speech is an outrageous perversion of our First Amendment. Campaign contributions do not express opinions. The permitting of unlimited campaign contributions does not contribute one iota to the discovery of truth. Quite the contrary, when excessive, they are frequently used to “influence” (bribe would be a more accurate word) government officials to do the bidding of those who contribute money to them, to the detriment of the public interest. That in itself is an affront to the idea of the one-person-one-vote principle of representative government. Legislators, in the interest of those whom they are elected to serve, should have not only the right, but the obligation to create legislation that prohibits that kind of corruption.

Jeff Milchen explains the meaning and consequences of this type of perversion:

The justices told legislators and reform advocates, who possess first-hand experience of political corruption, that their concerns are merely theoretical…. The Court effectively prohibits states from leveling the political playing field between the wealthy citizens and everyone else…

The court clearly is interpreting the Constitution in a way that prevents representative democracy… With its ruling in Randall, the court is supporting the segregation of Americans into two distinct classes, just as it did when it twice supported blatantly discriminatory poll taxes that disenfranchised black citizens (and some poor whites) for nearly a century after the 15th Amendment officially enabled them to vote in 1870.

Today, one political class is the overwhelming majority – we express our preferences with our votes or volunteer efforts. The other class consists of those wielding real power – the ability to finance the bulk of candidates' campaigns and effectively "set the menu" of candidates from which the rest of us may choose.

First Amendment protection of corporations

Our judiciary has also claimed that our First Amendment protects the speech of corporations – as in the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. The Federal Elections Commission:

The Court has recognized that the First Amendment applies to corporations… Political speech is indispensable to decision making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation.

Unlike some other privileges granted to corporations, protection of free “speech” granted to corporations is not dependent upon defining corporations as “persons”, since the First Amendment doesn’t mention that word. The First Amendment merely states that “Congress shall make no law…. abridging the freedom of speech.” Partly on this basis, some claim that our First Amendment protects the speech of corporations.

But that claim is just as absurd as the claim that money is a form of speech. A corporation is an abstract entity that is created by government, presumably to provide a public benefit. Given that it is created by the state, how can anyone seriously assert that it has “rights” in the sense that human beings have rights? Can anyone honestly believe that our Founders meant the protections of our First Amendment – or any other part of our Constitution – to apply to an abstract creation of the state?

Furthermore, the granting of free speech to corporations does not serve the discovery of truth. Corporations are not interested in discovering truth, and no reasonable person would make that claim. To the contrary, corporations are responsible to their investors to create profits, and they make every attempt to do so even when doing so means actively hiding the truth, through the use of disinformation campaigns or whatever means are available to them.

Corporations of course are composed of persons – most wealthy persons. They are granted numerous privileges and immunities by government. To provide them with additional protections that are normally reserved for human beings adds to their already considerable power – in the absence of corresponding accountability. Certainly the government that created a corporation in order to serve the public interest should have the right to withhold certain protections (normally reserved for human beings) if it believes that to do so is in the public interest – without the fear that our judiciary will over-rule it. Withholding such protections from corporations does not interfere with their human rights. Each individual human who is a member of a corporation retains the individual protections of our Constitution even when those protections are not granted to the corporation as a whole.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens commented upon the Citizens United decision that claimed that corporations are protected by our First Amendment:

Starting today, corporations with large war chests to deploy on electioneering may find democratically elected bodies becoming much more attuned to their interests… {This decisions}will undoubtedly cripple the ability of ordinary citizens, Congress, and the states to adopt even limited measures to protect against corporate domination of the electoral process… Their (corporate) interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. . .

Government complicity in favoring the speech of the wealthy

Another perversion of the free speech clause of our First Amendment occurs when government favors the speech of the wealthy over that of ordinary Americans. The corporate monopoly of our public airways constitutes a blatant example of that.

Background - The Federal Communications Act of 1934
The Federal Communications Act of 1934 replaced the Federal Radio Commission with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The philosophy behind the legislation was that the airways that enable communications via radio or television are public, and therefore they must serve the public’s purpose. This philosophy can be likened to the view that the air we breathe, the water we drink, the public roads that we travel on, and our national parks and forests must serve the needs of the public, and therefore private individuals or corporations may not use them for their own purposes at the expense of the public. The concept of “public airways” protects our right to free speech and freedom of the press, and consequently our need for the information required in a democracy.

In order to prevent the chaos that would exist in the absence of any federal regulations, the 1934 Act gave the FCC the responsibility for granting licenses to broadcasters to use the public airways, with the understanding that they were required to promote the “public interest”, a phrase that appeared 40 times in the legislation. The obligation to promote the public interest derived from the fact that the broadcasters received free federal licenses worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

The monopolization of speech by the wealthy
However, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, by relaxing the rules that prohibited monopoly control of telecommunications, led to the concentration of the national news media of the United States largely in the hands of a very few wealthy corporations, to an extent never before seen in our country. This, more than any other event, allowed the content of the news received by American citizens to be determined by a small number of very wealthy and powerful interests.

Because the vast majority of information that most Americans receive today is through the telecommunications industry, and because access to the megaphones that the telecommunications industry uses to communicate to the American people is very expensive, the wealthy have the ability to use those megaphones to a much greater extent than do ordinary American citizens. Consequently, wealthy persons, individually or through the corporations that they control, use their wealth to purchase air time on the previously “public airways” to get their message out – in the process precluding those with less money from doing the same.


CONCLUSION – THE PERVSION OF FREE SPEECH AND DEMOCRACY

Thus it is that the wealthy have the ability to drown out the speech of ordinary Americans and thereby exercise a disproportionate degree of influence over elections, thus perverting the democratic principle of one-person-one-vote.

By equating speech with money, wealthy interests are enabled tocontribute massive amounts of money to the campaigns of their chosen candidates, thus facilitating the election of those candidates and simultaneously making those candidates beholding to the desires of their wealthy campaign contributors. In a logical and honest world, this practice would be called by its real name – bribery. By claiming that the “speech” of the state-created abstract entities known as corporations is protected by our First Amendment right to freedom of speech, the wealthy elites who own and control those corporations are provided with the power that accompanies political speech in the absence of the accountability attached to the speech of ordinary Americans. And by allowing unlimited expenditures by candidates for public office or their supporters, wealthy interests are thereby granted access to the formerly public airways, which they utilize to advance their own interests at the expense of the public, who lack the financial resources to be heard over the megaphones accessible to the wealthy.

In order to restore a semblance of democracy, Congress periodically passes campaign finance reform legislation that limits the ability of wealthy interests to influence elections. But when our courts, through decisions such as Buckley v. Valeo, Randall v. Sorrell, or Citizens United v. The Federal Elections Commission, strike down this legislation as unconstitutional on the basis that it abridges our First Amendment right to free speech, the ultimate effect is that they allow the wealthy to continue to bribe public officials in pursuit of their own selfish interests and drown out the efforts of ordinary Americans to be heard. Thus is our First Amendment and democracy subverted in the interests of those with enough money to purchase the “speech” that they need to influence elections in accordance with their interests.

[msongs]

1. CA private elec company spends $40 million plus to eliminate competition re prop 16 AND

opponents spend little at all. PG&E loses but they will be back again and again til they outlast everyone with less money to spend on ads.

Msongs

[TomCADem]

2. Absolutely Agree - But Glenn Greenwald Doesn't - Greenwald v. Lessig Debate

Greenwald has debated liberals like Dennis Kucinich and Professor Lessig (see youtube) on this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHr0wiobav4

I personally think that some civil libertarians are taking an overly dogmatic approach on this question. Heck, even if you were to embrace the original construction approach of conservatives, you would see that the one of the main reasons for the Revolutionary War was frustration with the Britain's efforts to protect the East Indies Company. It does not make sense that the colonists intended to accord free speech rights to artificial entities such as corporations.

[Time for change]

13. Absolutely

Jefferson in particular worried a great deal about the power of corporations, and warned us about them:

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff135362.html

[Jackpine Radical]

3. I always love the clarity of your writing and the depth of your analyses.

"What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed..."

[Time for change]

22. Thank you

[madfloridian]

4. I appreciate the depth and research of your posts.

Recommended.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. And as long as you happened by,

Thanks for your journal pieces too.

[Overseas]

5. Thanks for exposing the lies. Multinational corporations are not the same as John Q Public

Not by a long shot.

I really thought more would have been done to milk the xenophobia. I was hoping more would have been made of Ruth Bader Ginsberg's admonition about corporations with extensive foreign ownership being allowed to manipulate our national operations.

But when broadcast media trumpets are conglomerated into right wing multinational networks, we do have a problem. The same people who have pumped up the racism will ignore the implications of foreign ownership of corporations that seek to spend as Monster People, to dominate our political life.

Where's Dick Armey when you need him? Where are the xenophobes? Why don't they oppose the extension of American rights to foreign-owned conglomerates who don't even pay US taxes?

I'd love it if we could rally enough support for an amendment to add one word to give "natural" persons freedom of speech.

[Time for change]

33. I think that one of the problems with most xenophobes is that

their xenophobia applies only to the poor. Many of them have authoritarian tendencies which tend to make them act in subservient ways to the wealthy and powerful, no matter what country they come from.

[Overseas]

38. When the right wing sentiment is stoked and manufactured

to such a large degree, then it is fully prepared to push logical fallacies. Much as I may wish to say-- If you don't like foreigners, then surely you don't want to be dominated by foreign corporations-- the professional right wing PR guys can push the desperate people in another direction. Just as they pushed Medicare recipients to rail against government interference in healthcare.

Even when dear Rachel Maddow catches the crazed GOP leaders making bold direct contradictions of themselves in great video montages, they stay there on MSNBC and are passed around among us on the web.

We no longer have an open mass broadcast media interested in great stories like she furnishes. A more open media would have run with the exposure of The Family's influence in American politics, but only the clearly liberal broadcast shows covered it.

Justice Ginsberg asked about the dangers of foreign owned corporations being able to engage in unlimited spending on domestic political campaigns and yet that wasn't taken up into the broadcast media.

I tell everyone to go check out the Powell memo, and Alterman's "What Liberal Media?" about the concerted decades-long campaign to push our national discourse to the right, and yet I'm still so sad and frustrated about our media having been so largely conglomerated into right wing hands. And the fevered Right are still using the "play the ref" strategy of complaining about some mythical liberal media.

[Vattel]

7. Jefferson wrote the first amendment?

In what sense was Jefferson "the primary author of the first amendment?" Madison drafted the Bill of Rights and Congress modified his draft a bit.

[Time for change]

9. From "A Panoramic History of the First Amendment"

Jefferson, away in France, chastised his protege Madison for failing to include a bill of rights in the Constitution which should include, among others provisions, "freedom of the press." Madison, then a congressman, drafted a bill of rights, drawing heavily upon the Virginia Declaration of Rights that was the work primarily of anti-Federalist George Mason... Jefferson.... wrote to Madison, who had seen no need for a first amendment...

http://apollo3.com/~jameso/first5.html


Also, from this:

The roots of the First Amendment can be traced to a bill written by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) in 1777 and proposed to the Virginia Legislature in 1779... Jefferson was pleased with the constitution, but felt it was incomplete. He pushed for legislation that would guarantee individual rights...

http://www.religioustolerance.org/amend_1.htm


And:

Press history in the United States thus followed the same course as Britain, but at an even more accelerated pace. The concerns expressed by Milton, Locke, and Mill were passionately restated and amplified across the Atlantic by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and other influential revolutionary leaders. A free press was perceived by
the colonists as one of the "great bulwarks of liberty" in the new nation they were building... As Jefferson wrote in defense of both a free press and a free America: "No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, . . . the fact that man may be governed by reason and truth. OUT first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all avenues to truth."

http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/bitstream/1892/8098/1/b17589782.pdf

Both Jefferson and Madison deserve a lot of credit for our First Amendment.

[Dr Morbius]

8. Spedning money might equate to free speech if and only if

one person was able to speak a million times louder than everyone else.

Good article. There seems to be a disagreement between the right and the left about the "public airwaves;" I suspect conservatives don't believe they actually belong to the public.

[azul]

10. 80% of people think the decision to allow corporations free speech is wrong.

And want it fixed by congress. But will not take to the streets.

Congress and the president are paralyzed by fear of the corporate media's power to control the issue and will do nothing. The experiment of the US democratic republic is swirling around the bowl from the failure of its free press to watch out for and inform the public about corruption.

[Time for change]

35. I think you hit the nail on the head

Our elected representatives are paralyzed by fear that the corporate media will lambast the hell out of them if they cross certain lines. It is true -- the corporate media WILL and DOES lambast the hell out of those who cross those lines. But it has to be done. I think that once our elected representatives start doing that they just may be able to show the American people that the emporer (the corporate media) has no clothes.

[skepticscott]

11. There is so much wrong with this

that I hardly know where to begin, and don't believe it's worth my time in any event.

Just a couple of the more egregious perversions of fact and logic in your post:

These judicial errors include primarily: 1) The assertion that money is a form of “speech

An oft-repeated, but fundamentally flawed statement of the principle involved. No one has ever claimed that money IS speech, or any form of it. What has been said, and what is undeniable, is that the right and ability to raise and spend money is inexorably linked to the ability to disseminate political messages. The fact that you and others like you are so worried about he possible consequences if the Citizens United decision (which had NOTHING to do with campaign contributions, btw) shows that you know this instinctively. Since you are so concerned that removing limits on such things will result in an increase in political speech (or, more accurately, an increase in political speech that YOU don't like), then you must also acknowledge that imposing such limits will inevitably reduce the dissemination of political messages, the very form of speech that the First Amendment was intended to protect more than any other.

A corporation is an abstract entity that is created by government, presumably to provide a public benefit. Given that it is created by the state, how can anyone seriously assert that it has “rights” in the sense that human beings have rights? Can anyone honestly believe that our Founders meant the protections of our First Amendment – or any other part of our Constitution – to apply to an abstract creation of the state?

Are you serious claiming that the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures doesn't and shouldn't apply to corporations? Are you asserting that the FBI should be free to seize the records of Acorn or Greenpeace or any of hundreds of other organizations that you can think of any time they want, with no legal recourse for those organizations? Or are you saying that the constitutional right to form contracts only applies to individuals and not corporations? Good luck buying a house, renting an apartment, buying or renting a car, or doing any of a thousand other things that you take for granted without that right.

The rest of this is just long-winded cut-and-pasting, in an attempt to give intellectual weight by number of words to fundamentally incorrect premises. Consequentialism is a really rotten way to approach constitutional issues. Nowhere is it written that the decision most in line with the Constitution has to be the one with the most favorable (to you) social consequences.

[Time for change]

12. Your thinking is very narrow

With regard to the equating of money with speech: You apparently don't believe that striking down legislation on the basis that it limits campaign contributions (as in Randall v. Sorrell), and justifying this on the basis of "freedom of speech" is an act that equates money with speech. It doesn't matter if the written decision didn't specfically say that money is speech. The act speaks for itself. If you don't see that, I don't know what else to say.

You say that I am in favor of limiting "political speach that YOU don't like". I said no such thing. What I object to is allowing the wealthy to drown out the speech of ordinary Americans simply by virtue of the fact that they have the money to do so -- and especially using the public airways to do so. Congress saw a need to limit that kind of thing. Apparently you don't.

Yes, I am serious that rights accorded to individuals should not be automatically accorded to corporations -- as corporations -- unless federal or state legislatures decide that such rights should be accorded to them in the public interest. It is enough that our Constitutional protections apply individually to each member of a corporation. The human rights described in our Constitution should apply to human beings, not abstract entities of the state, and I see nothing in our Constitution to indicate otherwise.

[skepticscott]

14. I explained the relationship between money and speech

in my last post, and why it doesn't require saying that money and speech are the same thing (no one sane says they are, except to create a straw man) to show that they are inexorably linked, particularly in our current political culture, and that a restriction on one amounts to an abridgement of the other. If YOU don't understand that, then I don't know how to make it clearer. If they were not inseparable, (and you know quite well that they are), people wouldn't be in such an uproar about this.

And why are you so condescending as to presume that speech from one source will drown out speech from another (and where has the political advertising from "ordinary Americans" been coming from up until now)? Will it drown it out for YOU? Are you assuming that the majority of the electorate is less well-informed and more easily fooled by what you consider to be corporatist, right-wing propaganda than you? I suspect that if it were progressive political organizations that were being freed to spend a lot more money on political advertising, you wouldn't make a peep about it. The Constitution, however, doesn't make those kind of distinctions as to the source of speech; they have to be invented by people like you.

As far as Constitutional rights allegedly (by you) not adhering to corporations AT ALL, why don't you start by answering the specific questions I raised, re: the 4th Amendment and the right to contract? If you can't even do that, then your whole argument along that line pretty much goes down the toilet.

[Vattel]

17. I basically agree with you

on the connection between money and speech. But the issue of corporate rights puzzles me. A key question is whether collective or corporate rights are reducible to individual rights. If they are, then the next question would be whether laws that limit corporate speech (such as campaign finance laws) actually limit individual speech in ways that violate the first amendment. These are tricky issues.

[skepticscott]

18. One of the tricky questions is

how you distinguish "individual" speech from "corporate" speech, especially since most, if not all of the speech that is relevant here comes from groups of one sort of another, though they may or may not be "corporations" under the strict legal definition. There seems to be an underlying current of feeling among critics of the Citizens United decision that political advertising and advocacy coming from groups that they consider "grass roots" or "progressive" is in some way categorically different from that coming from for-profit corporations, as far as the Constitution is concerned. But Greenpeace and BP both have their political agendas, and the Constitution does not apply ideological litmus tests in deciding who should have restrictions on getting their political message out, and who shouldn't.

[Uncle Joe]

20. I see a major difference between a political advocacy group ie: Greenpeace and a for profit

corporation such as BP.

Some people working in for profit industries may not agree with the political point of view of their upper management but dare not raise their voices for fear of losing their livelihoods.

Indeed their labor serves to profit an ideology which they may otherwise be opposed to.

[skepticscott]

23. You may see it

but the Constitution doesn't, not with regard to whose speech is protected, unless your version is quite different than mine.

And do you suppose that people working for non-profits always agree 100% with every political position their employer takes? Hardly. Do they sometimes refrain from criticizing their employer publicly because they're afraid they might lose their jobs if they did? Of course.

So what was your point again?

[Uncle Joe]

41. Someone working for an issue advocacy group would almost certainly agree with the political position

of that advocacy group.

Someone working for a for profit corporation may only be doing so out of economic necessity, ie; coal miners in order to put dinner on the table may not have any choice but to work for the corporations which are destroying their mountains and health.

By giving oligarchs and mega-corporations unlimited ability to use their monetary resources to promote issue advocacy during election times, they De Facto inhibit the free speech rights of those individuals; with out financial mega horns and as I mentioned earlier even going so far as using the profit from the labor of those individuals against them.

In regards to inhibiting individual freedom of speech, these entities are not the same.

[skepticscott]

57. If you think that there can't be

violent disagreement within advocacy groups about policy and political positions, then you've obviously never worked with any. And not everyone who works for such a group is deeply involved with and committed to their political agenda. For some people, it's just a job they need, and they're neutral about the politics.

And why do people keep arguing that it isn't Constitutional for one side in a political debate to be more effective at getting their message out than the others? What rules or legislation would you propose to level the playing field to the point you think it should be, and exactly what is that point? The competition between private entities in the marketplace of ideas is not a First Amendment question, in case you missed it. The First Amendment says only that Congress may not abridge the freedom of speech, not that it has to take steps to ensure that everyone has an equal voice. The competition for people's attention and opinions is up to individual speakers.

[Uncle Joe]

63. The corporations control the corporate media,

the public airwaves.

This isn't about competition between private entities in the marketplace of ideas, this is about competition in the public sphere of debate, if your message has any merit to the publics' best interests why be afraid of a more level playing field?

Eliminating any restrictions on spending by corporations allowed on issue advocacy during elections in the finite publics' airwaves will insure there is no competition.

This is a 21st century version of a poll tax or requirement for land ownership in order to vote, allowing the most wealthy institutions to saturate the airwaves with their message and thereby drowning out competing messages, not based on the merits but from the benefit of wealth. When choices allowed in to the public sphere of thought are restricted or distorted, the same will take place in regards to the vote.

The point of everything I just posted is at odds with your "The competition for people's attention and opinions is up to individual speakers." there is no competition, it becomes a restricted monopoly in regards to debate for public consumption, you tow the corporate line or you don't get heard whether your ideas are superior to the publics' best interests or not.

And yes there are differences in issue advocacy groups in regards to tactics or strategy but the overall ideology is consistent, you will not find many if any supporters of fossil fuel drilling working for Moveon or Greenpeace, the same can be said in reverse for conservative advocacy groups.

[defendandprotect]

45. The Constitution isn't about corporations any more than it's about capital . . .

which the Founders feared -- !!

Shareholders and employees have no control over corporations -- only government does.


No one supposes that anyone working for Greenpeace needs to agree "100%" with every

political position they make -- however, neither is Greenpeace "too big to fail"

or likely to seek bail outs which will bankrupt our Treasury.

Nor is Greenpeace likely to be a risk for our citizens or government in befouling the

earth with pollution.


Usually there is a link between the political interests of employees of non-profits

and its contributors. If those political interests change, I imagine both employees

and contributors withdraw.

[Vattel]

25. I'm inclined to agree with the Citiznes United decision.

What I find galling about that decision, though, is that while most of our Constitutional rights have been gutted because the Court, contrary to original understanding, has been willing to adopt a "balancing approach" that weighs the strength of the government's interest in invading a Constitutional right against the seriousness of the invasion, suddenly in cases like Heller and Citizens United, a more absolutist approach is being adopted. I say, give us absolutism across the board.

[defendandprotect]

44. Individual vs group speech is clear . . .

Issue groups are also clear vs corporations which seek profit from control of our

nation's natural resources and abuse of our environment -- i.e., exploitation of nature.

And of course, the profit incentive is corruptive.


And this takes any mystery out of your question . . .

But Greenpeace and BP both have their political agendas, and the Constitution does not apply ideological litmus tests in deciding who should have restrictions on getting their political message out, and who shouldn't.

Greenpeace is generally supported by the public in the interests of preserving nature and

ending pollution.

BP is a private corporation dependent upon controlling and exploiting natural resources for

profit. That's pretty much of a "litmus test" right there -- !!

Additionally, BP is a corporation which is supervised by government, under government regulation

in public service -- and should be prevented from doing harm to nature and the public.

[skepticscott]

53. You're making distinctions that are

in line with your own ideology, and while I may even agree with them, such distinctions do not appear in the Constitution. Only by the most tortured of interpretations could you twist out of the First Amendment that Congress may not limit the political speech of organizations "supported by the public in the interests of preserving nature and ending pollution" but may limit the speech of "private corporation dependent upon controlling and exploiting natural resources for profit".

[defendandprotect]

61. Where does it say in the Constitution that corporations are "persons" ...???

Government has always had control over corporations -- that's why they were REGULATED --

and should be highly REGULATED again!!

Organizations which work on environmental issues are subject to work rules and safety

regs, etal, and are NOT going to be a concern for the nation in any way a corporation

will be -- i.e., bail outs, pollution, flooding the Gulf with oil -- little things like that!

And while we're at it, we should also be NATIONALIZING the oil industry --

certainly an industry "too big to be permitted to fail" considering the horrific consequences!

Corporations don't exactly spout "truth we need."

What corporations spout is advertising and/or propaganda.

[Time for change]

19. What part of this don't you agree with?

1. The wealthy have the capacity to have their speech heard by orders of magnitude more people than ordinary Americans, by virtue of their wealth.

2. That capacity translates to a huge influence over who gets elected to public office and what legislation is supported by those who hold public office.

3. In order to limit the influence of money in politics, Congress has passed campaign finance laws to limit the amount of money that people or corporations can spend in political campaigns.

4. Our USSC has placed substantial limits on the ability of Congress to do that.


I did answer your question about the 4th amendment. In order to answer it more specifically I would have to know more details about the specifics of the situation you refer to.

[skepticscott]

24. Why do you refuse to answer direct questions?

Here they are again:

Why do you presume that speech from one source will drown out speech from another (and where has the political advertising from "ordinary Americans" been coming from up until now)?

Will it drown it out for YOU?

Are you assuming that the majority of the electorate is less well-informed and more easily fooled by what you consider to be corporatist, right-wing propaganda than you?


As far as the Fourth Amendment, no you didn't really answer my question, but let's try again. Here's what you said in the OP:

Can anyone honestly believe that our Founders meant the protections of our First Amendment – or any other part of our Constitution – to apply to an abstract creation of the state?

Ok..say you're working for Planned Parenthood (Incorporated as an "abstract entity of the state", btw). The FBI comes to the local office that you direct and tells you that they are there to seize your files as part of a criminal investigation. Do you ask for their warrant? When they say, this is a corporation, and its papers and effects are not protected from search and seizure by the Fourth Amendment, so we can take whatever we want without a warrant, how do you respond?

And would you be squawking if the political message of Planned Parenthood was drowning out that of Right to Life, because they had managed to raise a lot more money for a referendum to add an amendment restricting abortion to a state or federal constitution? Or if the political message of a peace group was overwhelming that of the military industrial complex? Somehow, I doubt it.

And please, if you're just going to do more ducking and dodging of simple, direct questions about your position, don't waste my time.

[Time for change]

26. I can't believe you don't know the answer to those questions

When one person's speech reaches orders of magnitude more people than another's, the latter person's speech is drowned out because far less people hear it.

I don't have to make any assumptions about the electorate. It is a known fact that money in the form of political contributions or paid advertisements has a huge influence on elections. That is fact, not assumption.

With regard to Planned Parenthood, are they a corporation? What support are they given by the state? The answer to those questions would help me to answer yours. Furthermore, if you're talking about a criminal investigation, then that applies to individuals within the corporation, not the corporation itself. As such, all individuals working for the corporation should have 4th Amendment rights, as individuals, not as a corporation.

[skepticscott]

28. I told you that Planned Parenthood was incorporated

and you could have checked it easily yourself, so it sounds like you're just trying to deflect the question. And I didn't say in my example that Planned Parenthood or any individual in it was being investigated, only that the FBI was demanding the files as part of an investigation of someone. So please, no more ducking and dodging...answer the question of what you would do in that situation, based on the position you took in the OP. Your contention that corporations should enjoy no constitutional rights or protections is central to your OP, so I'd like to see if you really believe it.

And while you're at it, please answer the other questions you ducked:

Would you be taking the same position if the political message of Planned Parenthood was drowning out that of Right to Life, because they had managed to raise a lot more money for a referendum to add an amendment restricting abortion to a state or federal constitution? Or if the political message of a peace group was overwhelming that of the military industrial complex?

And thank you for making my point (again) that restricting money for political advertisements restricts speech. You seem to be seeing the inexorable connection between the two much more clearly than you admitted in your OP.

[Time for change]

30. Now you're changing your words

In post 24 you referred to it as a criminal investigation. Now you call it simply an investigation. I believe that a criminal investigation must be directed against individual persons, not corporatations. Corporations don't go to prison. Only people go to prison. If a person is being investigated in a criminal investigation and has the potential of having to go to prison, then of course that person has the right to 4th Amendment protections, as well as any other protections described in our Constitution.

On the other hand, if Planned Parenthood, as a corporation, is believed by Congress to present a danger to the public that necessitates a warrantless search, then I believe that Congress has a right to pass a law that allows that to occur, as long as it doesn't interfere with the individual rights of the human beings within the corporation.

And yes, I would take the same position no matter what the message was. My objection is to some people having the right to influence elections and the actions of public officials through money. That corrupts the political process and destroys our democracy. That is why Congress passes campaign finance reform legislation.

Now, why don't you answer my questions from post # 19.

[skepticscott]

31. My example is a criminal investigation

and it still is. Stop trying to deflect the question with straw men. In my scenario, the FBI is seeking evidence in a criminal investigation of an individual, not Planned Parenthood or anyone employed by them, as I already stated. Planned Parenthood does not present an imminent danger...the FBI comes to the office you run, without a warrant, and demands that you turn over ALL of your files, records, and other property, because they wish to search through them as potential evidence. What do you do? Do you comply, or do you refuse? If you refuse, on what basis?

What exactly is the proper balance of spending between competing voices in a political debate? Should Congress pass laws that say no one engaging in political advertising or advocacy of any kind is allowed to spend one dime more than anyone else participating in the debate? Should one side be allowed to spend no more than 10% above what the other spends? 20%? What if there are multiple voices that want to be heard? Should they all be limited by what the poorest voice can spend? Show it be mandated in law that NO voice, NO point of view can be "drowned out"? You really haven't thought about any of this, have you?

And when you say that you object to "some people" having the right to influence elections through money, it's very hard to take you seriously. You've tried to influence elections through money or other things of value, I'll wager. Are you accusing yourself of corrupting the political process and destroying our democracy? Or were you proud of your support for whatever? At what level does giving or spending money to promote or support political candidates or causes go from good to evil? If you can't answer these questions, then you have no business meddling with the First Amendment.

[Time for change]

32. I've made it quite clear what I'd do

Individuals are protected by the 4th Amendment whether they belong to a corporation or not. How many times do I have to say that?

Now why don't you answer my questions -- This is the third time I'm asking.

[skepticscott]

36. And how many times do I have to say

that the files I'm talking about are NOT the property of any individual, they belong to a corporation, and that the person being investigated has NO expectation of privacy in them? You have not answered the question as it was asked, you've deflected it to a different version that is less damaging to your position. And you STILL have not answered my question about whether the Constitutional right to form contracts only applies to individuals, or to corporations as well. Are corporations not protected by the Constitutional provisions regarding taxes and duties on interstate commerce?

Since you apparently don't have the intellectual courage to respond to simple and direct questions that go to the heart of the position you staked out in your OP, it's pretty hard to see why I should waste time discussing this with you further. The question of whether corporations do or do not have any Constitutional rights whatsoever is absolutely central to your argument, and since you seem unable or unwilling to defend your claim that they do not, the rest of your argument and your questions are pretty much a waste of time.

[Time for change]

39. I don't believe that corporations have any Constitutional protections

They are creations of the state, and as such they have only those protections that the state chooses to give them. Therefore, the answer to your question would depend upon what federal, state or local laws govern that situation. The rights of the corporation are not a Constitutional issue, though the protection of individuals within the corporation are.

For someone who refuses to answer any of MY questions, you certainly are adamant that every straw man detail of each of your questions be addressed.

[defendandprotect]

50. Again . . . a corporation can't write e-mail, nor contracts, nor suggest criminal activity...

ONLY actual persons involved with corporations can do that --

therefore, the corporation is NOT protected --

but the rights of a human being are protected --

as Time for Change has been telling you over 10 different posts!

[skepticscott]

55. You don't even understand what a corporation is, do you?

The actions of a corporation cannot be completely broken down to the actions of individuals within it. That's one of the main reasons why you form corporations in the first place. When you sign a contract to rent a car from Hertz, you are forming a contract with the corporation, not with the individual lawyers who drew up the standard form you sign, or with the individual agent at the counter who hands the form to you, and the right to form that contract and not have its obligations impeded also (as should be obvious) rests with the corporation. And if the contract is violated, you sue the corporation, not the guy who waited on you. Sheesh.

[defendandprotect]

59. Corporation has lost its original identity . . . . which was service to the nation -- or fold ....

You don't even understand what a corporation is, do you?

What I also understand is that "corporation" is often a way for individuals to escape

accountability -- and an excellent way to get ahold of OPM without being accountable to

them.


The actions of a corporation cannot be completely broken down to the actions of individuals within it. That's one of the main reasons why you form corporations in the first place.

"Completely" is a strange claim . . . when we know that corporations are inanimate, not live,

and unable to perform any action of any kind, whatsoever. Therefore, anything that happens

within the corporation is the action of a human being/s.


When you sign a contract to rent a car from Hertz, you are forming a contract with the corporation, not with the individual lawyers who drew up the standard form you sign, or with the individual agent at the counter who hands the form to you, and the right to form that contract and not have its obligations impeded also (as should be obvious) rests with the corporation. And if the contract is violated, you sue the corporation, not the guy who waited on you. Sheesh.
Understanding is a three-edged sword: Your side, their side, and the truth.

There is no "contract" which hasn't been worked out by live human beings.

There is no corporation which is a lawyer --

There is no corporation which is a agent --

And, if anyone sues a corporation, live people appear.

There will be no photographic mock up of a corporate building sitting in court --

there will be human beings.

Therefore, I'll simply repeat what I said in the beginning ...

What I also understand is that "corporation" is often a way for individuals to escape

accountability -- and an excellent way to get ahold of OPM without being accountable to

them.

[defendandprotect]

49. The obvious position for the nation is to BAR corporations from any participation whatsoever in ...

our elections -- period!

[skepticscott]

56. The (partial) solution would be

to publicly fund all federal elections, but only provide public funding to candidates who refuse to accept campaign contributions. There would have to be hurdles in place to keep non-serious candidates from deep-dishing at the public trough, among other things, but it could probably be done in a way that would pass constitutional muster. That would still leave the problem of outside advocacy, but it would be a heck of a lot better than what we have now.

[defendandprotect]

60. We don't have a (partial) problem with corporatism ... we have a full blown problem...

In order to end corporatism - fascism -- we need to bar corporations from any

participation in elections, whatsoever.

We do need campaign financing, but it has to occur where the public has the say so --

not a trough --

Public has to say how elections are run -- how long -- who -- where -- when --

Our elections should be 6 months tops --

We should use all of our public education facilities for local stuff --

County probably wouldn't be too much more complicated but you'd have to have C-span

coverage of events -- and we should certainly have more of that! Especially at the

State level.

[defendandprotect]

48. Re corporations . . . there is a difference between "no rights" and rights accorded to them...

in respect of individuals involved and due process of criminal law --

That does not mean that Bill of Rights is being applied directly

to the artificial entity -- i.e., the corporation.

Corporations are inanimate - they cannot direct their own actions or behavior --

they are robots who will pollute or destroy nature when directed to do so --

but they are directed by individuals who must be held responsible for all the actions

of a corporation. And when corporations behave against the interests of our government,

our citizens, our nation -- then they should be folded.

[defendandprotect]

47. Who can compete with ExxonMobil-oil industry spending 10's of billions over

decades to lie to and misinform the public re Global Warming over a half century --

and doing it on the Op-Ed pages of the NY Times for decades -- !!


For every dollar corporations spend bribing Congress . . . the AFL-CIO spends 1/10th of a penny!


And to add to the fancy, you are suggesting that anyone could speak more loudly than the MIC?


Now -- if you want to claim that isn't overwhelming odds then you are simply being

disingenuous.



Re the creation of corporations by government -- they are an artificial entity --

not persons. That's where the conversation ends.


Let's also be clear that The Fairness in Broadcasting Act was also overturned by the right

wing/corporatist interests. Therefore, polarizing the nation.

Should an "anti-abortion" position have more airspace than public support warrants?

Should Planned Parenthood and family planning have less exposure and support than the

public support of it warrants?

And would you be squawking if the political message of Planned Parenthood was drowning out that of Right to Life, because they had managed to raise a lot more money for a referendum to add an amendment restricting abortion to a state or federal constitution? Or if the political message of a peace group was overwhelming that of the military industrial complex? Somehow, I doubt it.

Trust the entire nation would be celebrating if the MIC were no longer being funded.

Who do you suggest might have the money to to "overwhelm" the MIC?


Additionally, the idea of referenda has also become a tool of those who are backed by organizations

with great wealth -- i.e., CHURCH --

Want to overturn the Drug War -- ??

How much money might be needed to combat that industry which has corrupted our police enforcement,

Customs, government and elected officials -- not to mention our courts -- and a rapidly growing

prison industry, largely based on incarcerating non-violent drug users of color.


Referenda may serve some purpose in expediency, but should only be permitted to EXPAND citizen

freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights.



What we are actually dealing with is 50 years of right wing political violence --

and stolen elections -- resulting in the criminal corruption of our "people's" government ---

including the Supreme Court!



----

For anyone interested in the Royal Academy of Science comments re ExxonMobil propaganda ...



LINK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/20/oilan...


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/20/oilan...
use of their funds to influence our elections.

[defendandprotect]

46. And, frankly, we have long recognized campaign contributions as BRIBERY . . .

[Uncle Joe]

16. The Citizens United decision had everthing to do with issue advocacy during election season.

To believe issue advocacy isn't attached to political consequence takes a tremendous leap of faith.

Those entities; whether oligarch or mega-corporation with the money will have the megaphones to drown out opposing messages from those people or organizations with less resources.

If the fossil fuel industry saturates the airwaves with commercial propaganda disputing the hard science of global warming climate change, the truth if you believe the overwhelming scientific evidence becomes distorted or ignored.

The De Facto effect is the "inhibiting of free speech," the proverbial "tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it."

Not being satisfied with monopolizing the traditional corporate media, they now take aim at killing Net Neutrality, because the Internet poses a growing challenge to this information trust.

[skepticscott]

29. Of course it did

When did I ever say that it didn't? What I said was that the political or social consequences of a Supreme Court decision should not take precedence over its legal merits.

[Time for change]

40. Perhaps you forgot our Constitution says that government is supposed to promote the general welfare

Therefore, it is quite appropriate that court decisions take into account the political and social consequences of their decisions. Even our current radical right wing USSC recognizes that. That is why they felt compelled to offer the unsubstantiated and ridiculous assertion in Citizens United that "independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”, and that “The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.”

[skepticscott]

58. Leaving aside the rather obvious point

that the mention of "general welfare" is not in the Constitution proper and has no actual force of law, it's rather silly to argue that it should override the specific provisions that ARE in the Constitution.

Certainly it would be in the interest of "general welfare" to have Congress ban any kind of speech saying that one race is inferior to another, rather than to allow groups like the KKK and Aryan Nations to spew hatred and racism, right? So why don't we? Because the language and intent of the specific free speech clause of the First Amendment override any non-specific notion of "general welfare", just as they do in this case.

Back to Con Law 101 and try again.

[defendandprotect]

62. A government "of, by and for the people" . . . that's pretty clear ....

Meanwhile, we have corporate crap like this going on --

Within former controls over corporations -- which should be reinstated --

any corporation behaving in such a manner would be folded ...

The EPA, meanwhile, remains silent on this whole issue. Remember: It is the EPA that ordered BP to stop using its selected brand of chemical dispersant, but BP utterly ignored the EPA and continues to dump that very same chemical into the Gulf of Mexico right now

Needless to say, no building, no elevator, no rooftop, no telephone makes decisions like this --

people do. And people have to remain completely accountable for corporate actions, as any other

individual -- uncorporatised -- would be accountable.

[defendandprotect]

43. Teddy Roosevelt . . . "We have to bar corporations from any involvement in our elections" --

and that's the basic wisdom that we should be following --

And while you rather disingenuously claim that . . .

No one has ever claimed that money IS speech, or any form of it.

You go on to confirm that very reality . . .

What has been said, and what is undeniable, is that the right and ability to raise and spend money is inexorably linked to the ability to disseminate political messages.

"money is inexorably linked to political messages"

Whether corporations run our "free press" --

Or whether they have the power of life or death over our environment/nature --

Whether they decide our elections by bribing and pre-owning candidates --

Whether corporations completely control our economy and bankrupt our Treasury --

Whether corporate principals will go to jail --

These are all questions for the public and a people's government to decide --

and not a corrupted SC in the service of corporate interests.


A corporation is an abstract entity that is created by government, presumably to provide a public benefit. Given that it is created by the state, how can anyone seriously assert that it has “rights” in the sense that human beings have rights? Can anyone honestly believe that our Founders meant the protections of our First Amendment – or any other part of our Constitution – to apply to an abstract creation of the state?

What this says is that corporations exist in accordance with government approval, supervision and

regulations -- not as free entities.

Corporations are seeking the ability not only to influence our government but to control and

define what government is and what government will do -- in corporatism's own interests.

[OnyxCollie]

15. K&R. nt

[Richard Steele]

21. K&R

[eppur_se_muova]

27. This needs to be tatooed on Scalia's ass.

Verbatim.

[JonLP24]

34. Good post. Just one problem.

The fire quote originates from Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr who stated "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater...." in a ruling that made it illegal to distribute fliers opposing the draft for World War II. His (as well as the court's) decision was later overturned.

[defendandprotect]

51. Obviously Holmes made a poor analogy --

Shouting "FIRE" when there is none would be just as

egregious as NOT shouting "FIRE" when there is one!!

But given the actual case . . .

in a ruling that made it illegal to distribute fliers opposing the draft for World War II.
His (as well as the court's) decision was later overturned.

it was correctly overturned.

But we should remember that in WWI similar arrests, prosecutions took place -- even deportations.

And that in order to combat the public's fierce outcry against the war and political uprisings

against it, the US government put 75,000 propagandists on the streets to speak for the merits

of the war!




:)

[xchrom]

37. kicking for the very interesting conversation here - thank you. nt

[defendandprotect]

42. Thanks for the continuing effort to inform DU'ers . . .

Did actually read it --



Unlike some other privileges granted to corporations, protection of free “speech” granted to corporations is not dependent upon defining corporations as “persons”, since the First Amendment doesn’t mention that word. The First Amendment merely states that “Congress shall make no law…. abridging the freedom of speech.” Partly on this basis, some claim that our First Amendment protects the speech of corporations.

Needless to say monopoly "press" is an abridgment of the First Amendment --

And since money is not evenly distributed among the public -- as free speech is intended to be --

then free speech based on any ability to PAY for it is also abridgment of the First Amendment.

Money also impacts negatively notions of "one person/one vote" -- and corporations can't vote!



But that claim is just as absurd as the claim that money is a form of speech. A corporation is an abstract entity that is created by government, presumably to provide a public benefit. Given that it is created by the state, how can anyone seriously assert that it has “rights” in the sense that human beings have rights? Can anyone honestly believe that our Founders meant the protections of our First Amendment – or any other part of our Constitution – to apply to an abstract creation of the state?

True -- above all our Supreme Court is aware that corporations are artificial entities, as

artificial as the dollar bill. That corporations don't breathe, don't need nutrition nor

sunshine, nor medical care, housing nor clothing.

Therefore, IMO, what we are confirming is the corruption of our Supreme Court, just as our

people's government has been corrupted by corporate money.

If corporations can bribe and pre-own candidates, certainly they can bribe and pre-own

court appointees.

And, sadly, we are often taught in our schools that the Supreme Court is not political.


Furthermore, the granting of free speech to corporations does not serve the discovery of truth. Corporations are not interested in discovering truth, and no reasonable person would make that claim. To the contrary, corporations are responsible to their investors to create profits, and they make every attempt to do so even when doing so means actively hiding the truth, through the use of disinformation campaigns or whatever means are available to them.

There is also the issue of speech as organized propagandizing of the public -- and Global Warming

is one example of that where the public has been deceived and great harm done to our ability to

respond over the last 50 years.

The Royal Academy of Science is on record re ExxonMobil and billions spent by oil industry

on propaganda campaigns to deceive the public.

I also find an interesting parallel here with CHURCH influence over government and Separation

of Church & State where we certainly would recognize that we could not permit CHURCH any similar

use of money in our elections.






* Royal Academy of Science comments from 2006 --

LINK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/20/oilandpetrol.business


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/20/oilandpetrol.business
use of their funds to influence our elections.

[Kievan Rus]

52. Only the rich have rights anymore

[rasputin1952]

54. Kind of sums it up right there...

slowly but surely, our Constitutional Protections have been given away.

The thing abut this is that a vigilant society, a vibrant nation cannot have their Rights and Privileges taken from them...we have to give them up, as we did when bush was president and we stood by while the "Patriot Act" was tossed at us, most people accepted it, and when added to other aspects of losing our nation to thieves and shills, we have given up other Rights and Privileges. We, the citizens of this nation are as much to fault as the power of money or small groups of capitalists with a larger voice because of the power of the pocketbook.

We are complicit in the degradation of our nation, there was a time when we would not allow to happen what has happened recently...I wonder if we will continue down this path, and for how long we will allow ourselves to be bilked and forced into shame before we once again rise and act against these powers?