A year ago today, the Supreme Court issued its bizarre Citizens United decision, allowing unlimited corporate spending in elections as a form of “free speech” for the corporate “person.”...Excerpted from an article at AlterNet.
In Vermont, state senator Virginia Lyons earlier today presented an anti-corporate personhood resolution for passage in the Vermont legislature. The resolution, the first of its kind, proposes "an amendment to the United States Constitution ... which provides that corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States." Sources in the state house say it has a good chance of passing...
The resolution goes on to note that "large corporations own most of America's mass media and employ those media to loudly express the corporate political agenda and to convince Americans that the primary role of human beings is that of consumer rather than sovereign citizens with democratic rights and responsibilities."
Denouncing this situation as an "intolerable societal reality," the document concludes that the "only way" toward a solution is the amendment of the Constitution "to define persons as human beings.”...
There is a groundswell of support: 76 percent of Americans, according to a recent ABC News poll, said they opposed the Citizens United decision.
I will dance in the streets if corporations lose personhood! They should never have been given that kind of power. Next we need to outlaw lobbyists, then we might have democracy within reach.
ReplyDeleteYes, Santa, there is a Virginia!
ReplyDeleteGod bless Vermont. It's a brave but futile gesture, though; there's no way the corporation-persons will allow it.
ReplyDelete--Swift Loris
Respect to Vermont for fighting corporate statism.
ReplyDeleteYes please! This needs to go through before the 2012 election - after that, I expect all politicians will be bought and paid for, and it'd take something akin to a revolution to get rid of it.
ReplyDeleteI will also dance in the streets!
I, too, will dance in the streets if this is passed. Failing that, I will walk down the street whistling if corporations were treated like people. When they break the law, they are punished, including jail time. REAL jail time.
ReplyDeleteI suppose next they will tackle the
ReplyDelete"Union personhood".
Not only has that "union-person" flooded cash to (almost always) Dem candidates, sometimes it is against that "union-persons" will.