Who Should Hold the Power? : LA IMC

Corporations earn millions to billions of dollars per year and are not equal to normal individual citizens with regards to financial resources. In 1947 federal law was enacted to limit the amount corporations could spend on elections. As a result they were subjected to being on a level playing field in terms of spending with individual citizens. It must have been really difficult for them knowing how they could have easily dominated the conversations with regards to American politics but were hampered from doing so. Now their wishes, wants and agendas no longer need ride alongside those of their employees. No more do mere peons have equal footing and why should they? After all this is a country whose constitution is written for "we the people." In an 1886 Supreme Court ruling regarding a large Railroad company corporations were given the same protection under the 14th Amendment as individual citizens. Thus, corporations are legally people. Now some might see this as a form of affirmative action for corporations, but it isn't. Affirmative action only applies to actual biological human citizen's not non-human entities deemed by people by legal decisions. So though they are people they are not human nor living and breathing. The status only exists in ways that are beneficial to them (at least right now) and why not? There must have been taxpayer funded half a million dollar parties going off all around the country. Woo hoo! "Send a bottle of steak sauce to Justice Scalia!! It's not like it's our money!" Of course there is the opposite side to that coin. This means that those people who are not creations of legal precedent and actually exist as human beings are at a severe disadvantage. There are no individuals who can compete economically with the spending resources of corporate coffers. Professor of constitutional law at American University Washington College of Law, Jamie Raskin, put it this way in a recent NPR commentary, "Exxon's corporate profits were $85 billion, or more than 8,000 times as much (as what they were limited to by law when contributing to campaigns in 2008). If the company's CEO could freely write checks from the corporate treasury account to spend on partisan campaigns or to contribute directly to candidates for federal office, a decision to spend a modest 1 percent of those profits — $850 million — on political campaigns would have been more than five times what all corporate PACs in America raised to spend on congressional campaigns that year, which was $150 million." (base64:aHR0cDovL3d3dy5ucHIub3JnL3RlbXBsYXRlcy9zdG9yeS9zdG9yeS5waHA/c3RvcnlJZD0xMTI3MTQwNTIpJmx0Oy9wJmd0Ow0= Thus, the little guy now has no way to compete, in terms of getting his word out, with corporations. Now to be fair to the majority of Americans, both middle class and lower class, the truth is despite the rulings classifying corporations as people it's obvious to any two year old they are not. Again Jamie Raskin, " the founders did not mention the word "corporation" in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, and only a handful of corporations were even in existence at the time the Constitution was written." (base64:aHR0cDovL3d3dy5ucHIub3JnL3RlbXBsYXRlcy9zdG9yeS9zdG9yeS5waHA/c3RvcnlJZD0xMTI3MTQwNTIpIA== An article from The Nation dated September 16, 2009 entitled, "When Money Talks" states "One of the precedents under consideration, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990), is significant chiefly for its recognition that government has a 'compelling interest' in counteracting 'the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas'"(base64:aHR0cDovL3d3dy50aGVuYXRpb24uY29tL2RvYy8yMDA5MTAwNS9lZGl0b3JzKS4g In other words with the vast amounts of funding pouring into the election cycle the interests of a moneyed few will no longer be forced onto a level playing field, but will be able to trump the interests of the majority of Americans, close to pre-American revolution monarchy. Regarding the rulings on the case Justice Sotomayor said, "the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have. Judges 'created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons,' she said. 'There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics.' (base64:aHR0cDovL29ubGluZS53c2ouY29tL2FydGljbGUvU0IxMjUzMTQwODgyODU1MTc2NDMuaHRtbCkmbHQ7L3AmZ3Q7DQ== For the vast majority of Americans Republican, Independent, Democrat or other this was a huge defeat. Corporations will have even more power over the many than they already do. Over the last few decades years of rulings in favor of ordinary citizens over large moneyed interests have been slowly repealed and overturned. This leaves the interests of the majority of Americans ready to be trampled over and pressed into the ground in favor of those of non-human non-citizen fabrications of Supreme Court imagination descent who otherwise are not subject to the same laws as other "people" - the flesh and blood living and breathing sort that is. If ever there was a reminder to them change voted for in 2008 has by a hair's breath begun it is this. If this is not corruption of power personified I don't know what is. If the Supreme Court can deem these non-humans people what's next? Will AIG be running for executive office in 2012? All those workers who got out the grass roots voting in 2008 to start change need to fire up their engines now and hit the pavement and the internet. Change is still in it's infancy. Those elected to bring change should realize the sound of victory for the other side sounded loudly throughout the country on Friday September 18, 2009. It's time to show and prove you mean what you say, otherwise with or without us your days no doubt are numbered. To read about my inspiration for this article go to <a href="base64:aHR0cDovL3d3dy5sYXdzdWl0YWdhaW5zdHVjb25uLmNvbSZhbXA7cXVvdDsmZ3Q7d3d3Lmxhd3N1aXRhZ2FpbnN0dWNvbm4uY29tJmx0Oy9hJmd0Oy4mbHQ7L3AmZ3Q7DQ==