Massachusetts’ Towns Are Taking Citizens United Down

In 2010 the Supreme Court of the United States literally gave corporations and unions a right only to be held by natural person. In this ruling of Citizens United v. FEC, corporations can spend as much money as they want on so-called independent expenditures. This means a corporation or union can flood our airwaves with commercials on talk radio, the Internet, and television with a message of support or opposition to candidate for public office as long as there are no direct contributions to the candidate or campaign. Ruling that corporations and unions have free speech equates them to people, natural people, with God given rights. A corporation is created by the State through corporate charters, not by God. You can read the entire historical background in “Unequal Protection” How corporations became people – by Thom Hartmann.
Now after this ruling, small towns in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are fighting back. A total of 8 towns have adopted resolutions calling for a Constitutional amendment to negate this heinous ruling. A town on Cape Cod, near the late Senator Edward Kennedy’s home, Provincetown led the charge on April 4th, 2011 to take our elections back. This action was followed by Truro and Wellfleet on April 26th, 2011. All three towns called for the same thing,
“A constitutional amendment to restore the First Amendment and fair elections to the people.”
Copies of these resolutions will be heading to the State Capitol in Boston for Governor Deval Patrick, state representatives, and state senators representing these towns as well as U.S. Representatives, and Senators John Kerry and Scott Brown. A copy of the resolutions will also be sent to President Barack Obama.
Other towns that voted and passed similar resolutions were Great Barrington (May 2), Brewster and Dennis (May 3), Chatham and Orleans (May 9), and Williamstown will vote on May 17th.
http://www.politicususa.com/en/massachusetts-citizens-united

Cape Cod Rocks :woohoo: :applause: :woohoo: :applause:

This is not to say I agree with either proposition. Corporations are not people and have no place in our elections.

about unions, should they be able to spend money in elections?

OF course not. What about churches, should they be taking taxpayer money, when all they do is spread hatred and fear of an invisible man?

Go back and tell your buddies how you were horribly mistreated here.

Worker's unions are not the same thing as corporations. They are operated differently, they are financed differently, and their goals are radically different, not to mention the fact that they spend about a tenth the money on elections that corporations do.

of natural citizens (workers) with "God given rights" whose goal it is to protect themselves from corporate abuse and retain basic human rights. A corporation exists to create profit. That is generally it's only goal, and it will murder, plunder and destroy anything or anyone to obtain more profit. The goals of the corporation are at odds with the well being of all natural citizens and the planet as a whole.

IMHO, developing First Amendment law may have taken a wrong turn or two a ways back, in that the court seemed to elevate other considerations above its main PURPOSE.

To my mind, the main purpose had to be to protect the right of everyone -- including the non-powerful -- to communicate to other members of the general PUBLIC, to give everyone the benefit of facts and ideas that might be relevant to decisions affecting anyone. There should of course be first amendment rights to various degrees and for various purposes in all kinds of settings; but the key factor is the ability of EVERYONE to speak and be heard in a PUBLIC square, a free press, or the like.

Should the rich have more right to speak and be heard than the poor? No. But that is the effect, when there are no limits on campaign financing. The market quickly prices the poor out of any ability to reach the public.

Also, there's something wrong when the S. Ct. holds there can be no limit on corporate or right-wingers' rights to pester you in private places by telephoning you or protesting against you in your own home or residential neighborhood, but forcing disclosure of the source of corporate or rich people's donations somehow violates their 1st Amdt. or privacy rights. Again, the purpose of the First Amendment was to protect the right of everyone to communicate to the general public, not to harass particular individuals who are not public figures.

There IS a connection between speech, the right to organize, and money. I think that people who agree on certain issues should be able to organize to pool their resources to communicate their views more effectively. This, without more, infringes no one else's rights of expression.

The practical realities of balancing all these considerations may require compromising some or all of them under certain circumstances. But it seems to me a much fairer and more effective balance could be struck.

We could start by recognizing that even if money isn't speech, it has the power to buy the opportunity to be heard, and protect the right of the poor and middle class people to be heard as much as the rich. This could be accomplished by imposing a spending limit per person at an amount affordable even by the poor. Each individual could be allowed to spend that same amount however they saw fit, whether by pooling it and letting a union or corporation or the like channel it, or not. The government could also provide more governmental support (out of tax revenues) for campaign financing, and/or mandate more free broadcast or cable airtime and/or internet facilities for campaign communications, or some combination of the foregoing. (In other words, regardless of whether corps. or other organizations were considered "people" for other purposes, individuals acting through an organization would be prevented from spending more per person than they could if they were contributing individually.)

Another problem is that the rich are BUYING all the "public squares." They own almost all the traditional media worldwide, and they're on the brink of clinching their lock on the internet (and they're even buying up state-developed and -owned buildings and other properties!) I personally believe we need some critical public "places" or "commons"-type facilities to be owned by the people in common; but if we're going to allow corporations or private individuals or organizations to own commons-type facilities, Bill of Rights-type requirements should apply to them; and that does not seem to be happening enough.

I'm sure there are all kinds of flaws in the foregoing reflections, but still, I believe the distinction between speech in public fora vs. more private places has been under-appreciated, and also that it simply doesn't work to let the rich buy up all the access to be heard by other members of the public.

Another difference between corporations and unions: if my union leaders choose to support candidates or causes I don't I can disagree with them & even vote them out of office. If I disagree with Rick Scott's or David Koch's choices they will simply fire me.

Some of my favorite places, too. The drive across the lower Cape seems interminable, but once you hit that last roundabout and start heading north towards P-Town, there's no better feeling.

The outer most- just at that rotary Coakley took Brown. I'm lucky to live in Truro.
Good, smart peeps.

:dem:

Support human beings.

The k and the r.

Rights are not given by god. He always misreads that part of the Declaration.

--imm

All of us should be doing more to fight the laws at a local or state level that limit us and give the corporations control of everything. They can't be all over the country fighting all the local governments.

Sit in during band breaks at Duck Creeke on Friday nights, too.

I've been going there every year since the mid 1980s, and from Central Europe, it's not exactly next door.

But it IS worth the trip. The air, the water, but also the PEOPLE. My kind of people. My family's, too. My
girls have grown up with summers in Wellfleet, Truro and P-town as staples of the existence since birth.

None of us were born there, but we continue to go back like salmon swimming upstream to get to their stream
of spawning. That these tiny communities with such free-thinking people would be the origin of such an action
doesn't surprise me in the slightest.