Suggested for Corporate Personhood..difficult one to do clearly...
END CORPORATE PERSONHOOD
Corporate Personhood is a difficult and complex subject to understand. But understanding it is critical to solving the problems of our Democracy.
It basically means we have granted for-profit corporations the same sacred Human Rights and Constitutional Rights that our founding fathers created for us when our nation was born. They have abused those rights to achieve an unprecedented and unhealthy access to our political process and our nation’s laws.
WHY IS GRANTING HUMAN RIGHTS TO CORPORATIONS BAD?
Corporations are not human beings. They do not have a set of values other than commercial values. They also do not die, and so can accumulate vast amounts of wealth and power. They are un-Democratic in nature. They are not governed by the principal of one shareholder - one vote, but rather by the principle of one share - one vote, meaning that the largest shareholders control the decisions. When their vast wealth and influence is given free reign in Washington, we allow an un-Democratic force to govern our Democracy.
When we have large global corporations controlling legislation in Washington, we may not even know who’s interests are being served. Are the Shareholders citizens of the United States, or are they sovereign wealth funds of foreign nations, or groups of foreign investors?
WHY CAN’T WE PASS LAWS PREVENTING CORPORATE INFLUENCE IN WASHINGTON?
There are two answers to that question.
Common sense tells us that politicians will not bite the hand that feeds them. If their largest donors and supporters are corporations, they will not pass laws restricting their access.
More importantly, in January, 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in a very important case called CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION. This case challenged the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. That law barred all corporations and unions from broadcasting “electioneering communications†within
60 days of a general election.
In this decision, the Supreme Court decided that corporations have the same First Amendment rights as people, and may spend unlimited amounts of money on political speech.
But this ruling could not have happened with anther Supreme Court case dating back to 1886. In the 1886 case Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific, the Supreme Court, in a questionable ruling, ruled hat the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause(originally written to grant human rights to freed slaves) guarantees constitutional protections to corporations in addition to natural persons.
Any laws passed to restrict corporations access to the political process will be appealed by corporate lawyers until they are thrown out by the courts based on these Supreme Court decisions. Therefore, the only avenue left to remove their unhealthy influence, is to pass a Constitutional Amendment that removes constitutional rights form corporations and grants them only to real people.
