[This is a statement in support of a Resolution to end corporate personhood and end money as being protected free speech. A group of us put the statement together to bring the issue before our municipal governments in our state of NM. I am posting it here in case people might find it useful for bringing the issue before their municipalities as well. Plagiarism is the highest form of productivity - an expression I plagiarized from a friend. :-) ]
Statement in support of a Constitutional Amendment to end corporate personhood, and to end money as protected free speech.
Oct 15, 2013
We are members of the Occupy Los Lunas group. We meet every Sunday at 10am at River Park in Los Lunas. Please come and visit with us.
Occupy Los Lunas by Gene
We are petitioning you to pass a resolution in support of a Constitutional Amendment to help eliminate money from corrupting politics. We need grass roots and local legislative action, because the US Congress and the Supreme Court is unwilling to address the problem, primarily because they are themselves dependent on this system of legalized bribery.
We understand that local politicians are not part of the problem in Washington DC, but, like voting, the more who speak out, especially governmental bodies, the better. To be successful, we need participation from across the country and across the entire political spectrum. Over three hundred municipalities around the country have passed a similar resolution, including the Taos County Commissioners and the Santa Fe City Council.
Those who think that this issue does not affect them are profoundly wrong. What happens in Washington DC and on Wall Street affects you personally and directly. If you buy groceries, or gas for your car, then the resulting inflation and depressing of wages is costing you money. If you just got out of college and can't find a job, it's affecting you. If you have investments or a retirement plan, then it's costing you money. If you are a local official, then your job is more difficult because of the shrinking economy and the resulting increase in poverty among your constituents and thus your tax base.
Over the past three decades or more, under the leadership of both parties, our country has been redistributing wealth from the middle class to the wealthy through tax policy, the decline of traditional pension funding, the loss of social services, soaring educational costs, and a long list of other factors. Given the power of today's super rich to change elections and government policy through massive, campaign-changing donations and corporate media propaganda, we can no longer claim to have a functioning democracy.
We are rapidly degenerating into a nation of nobility and serfs through the collapse of the middle class. We're becoming more and more like a banana republic, in which a tiny minority of the super rich control everything to suit themselves, while the great mass of the population struggles to avoid poverty.
Even more terrifying is that foreign governments can secretly buy politicians and potentially control our foreign policy for their own benefit. We no longer have to be defeated militarily to be taken over by a foreign power.
You can't have an honest dialog with someone who is being bribed, and right now bribery works. In the rare instances when corporations get caught and fined, the fine usually amounts to much less than the profit made as a result of their bribery, so bribery is merely part of a profitable business plan.
Laws alone will not solve the problem because common sense laws would likely be overturned by the Supreme Court as evidenced most recently by their disastrous "Citizens United" decision. We must overrule the Supreme Court with a Constitutional Amendment to establish the following:
1) That money used for political campaigns is not protected free speech, so Congress may regulate it.
2) That Corporations are not people, may not participate in the political process, and do not have the right to Constitutional free speech. This law would also return corporations to the limited rights prescribed for them from the founding of our country until the tragic 1886 "Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad" Supreme Court decision. The disastrous 2010 Citizen's United decision was merely icing on the plutocratic cake.
The bottom line is that there are two issues concerning the Resolution before you:
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