Corprate America

I am concerned about a recent Supreme Court case and its potential impact upon our country and the world in which we live. The case is expected to redefine the role of corporations in financing federal campaigns. The case's outcome will determine corporations' ability to make political contributions to specific candidates in an election. It hinges on the assertion that corporations have First Amendment rights. If the law regulating such corporate donations were overturned, the effect on sort of the role money would play in politics, in our national life, and the ability to control that money would be forever changed.


As it stands now corporate money is illegal in federal elections, but the two major parties were hooked on it. In 1999 and 2000, they raised nearly half a billion dollars from corporations, unions and the wealthy. This is so-called “soft money”. Among the companies supplying soft money to the parties was Enron. One thing Enron lobbied for and got was financial deregulation. Last June, when the House of Representatives passed a bill which included money for airplanes the Air Force hadn't asked for. "The House just awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in the form of no-bid contracts, to companies whose executives and their lobbyists turned around and contributed tens of thousands of dollars to members of Congress who secured those no-bid contracts," says Republican Rep. Jeff Flake.

The Supreme Court’s ruling could change everything. “The way that the Supreme Court has been interpreting campaign finance law could well lead us into a spiral, where we end up with a deregulated campaign finance system," says Rick Hasen, who teaches campaign finance and ethics at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. That would be a political system unlike any we've seen before.

This is why we need to pass the 28th Amendment to the Constitution: Separation of Corporation and State. Which states: “This amendment affirms that constitutional rights extend only to human persons. Corporations, partnerships, and other organizational entities are not human persons and, therefore, are not entitled to constitutional protections."

The recent financial bailouts and record CEO bonuses marks a new height of American corporate corruption and influence over our federal government—corporations find more protection under the law than American citizens, health and safety regulations are stripped away to serve profits ahead of people, politicians serve only their corporate backers, and our environment is falling victim to the lustful greed of this disaster capitalism.



How did it come to this? In 1886 corporations were given the same protection under the law that we're given as individual citizens. The 28th Amendment would strip corporations of their "personhood" and allow the US citizenry to re-assume its place as the most powerful force in our democracy.

As Ultimate Civics states musch better that I can “Our democracy is founded on the premise that "We, the People" are the ultimate check and balance on our three branches of government. Yet for over 100 years the U.S. Supreme Court has been steadily granting “corporate persons” more and more of the rights of natural persons in addition to their taxation and limited liability privileges. The net effect of these court decisions is literally destroying our democracy – and the planet. We cannot have a functional democracy and achieve a sustainable future when our political and economic systems are driven by huge corporations seeking to maximize short-term profits at the expense of social and environmental wealth.”

As Eugene Jarecki (maker of http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/) put it “With the enormous costs of elections and the need for members of Congress to bring home jobs, the most important people for any politician are not you and me, but those whose companies write big checks and generate employment. Neither party is exempt from this. Democrats and Republicans alike face obscene electoral costs and constituents who want results. And this is where industry gains the troubling foothold that Eisenhower warned against. The problem is systemic. So how can we fix it?”

And the problem is through out our poltical system infecting both parties like a terminal virus, and that is what it is. Our country is in danger of becoming so corrupt that it can no longer function. It is already losing its ability to effectivly govern and protect the populace. We can not keep our food system safe, because of the food industry fighting against any and every piece of legislation that would regulate them to protect us the people that our government is suppose to represent. The fact the the USDA does not have to power to shut down a food processing plant when E. coli or Salmonella is detected starts to tell you just how little our politicians are concerned with our safety. Why are will building more roads when we can not afford the up keep on the ones we have now, is it because of corprate contributions and pork fatting the poltical coffers of our representiatives?

I leave you with the words of Bill Moyers “Something’s not right here. One year after the great collapse of our financial system, Wall Street is back on top while our politicians dither. As for health care reform, you’re about to be forced to buy insurance from companies whose stock is soaring, and that’s just dandy with the White House.


Truth is, our capitol’s being looted, republicans are acting like the town rowdies, the sheriff is firing blanks, and powerful Democrats in Congress are in cahoots with the gang that’s pulling the heist. This is not capitalism at work. It’s capital. Raw money, mounds of it, buying politicians and policy as if they were futures on the hog market.”