In the latest installment from The Story of Stuff project, Annie Leonard yesterday published her new short film along with a Yes! magazine article on 'people power' in which she notes that 85 percent of us now feel that corporations have too much influence in our democracy.
Thank god we have the stats to prove we are NOT alone! And good on you, Annie. For taking on the big guys. Perfect timing. Perfect pitch.
In a sidebar co-written with Allison Cook 5 Ways You Can Fight Citizens United, Leonard suggests joining local and national organizations, hosting house parties, watching her movie, and Signing the Public Citizen’s petition (download petition from link) calling for a Constitutional Amendment clarifying that free speech is for people, not corporations.
Background:
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Docket No. 08-205 In a Jan 21, 2010, 5-4 decision
Holding: Political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and the government may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates in elections. While corporations or unions may not give money directly to campaigns, they may seek to persuade the voting public through other means, including ads, especially where these ads were not broadcast.
Judgment: REVERSED, 5-4, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy on January 21, 2010. in a 5-4 decision with an opinion written by Justice Kennedy. Justice Stevens dissented, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor.
White House Pushes Back Against Chief Justice's Criticism: Citizens United Decision Was 'Troubling'
It all started during the State of the Union, when Obama said the high court made the wrong decision in the Citizens United case (and Justice Samuel Alito mouthed 'Not true'). Yesterday Roberts told a group of University of Alabama law students he found the whole incident "very troubling" and said the annual speech to Congress had "degenerated to a political pep rally."
(snip)
At the State of the Union, Obama broke with tradition and directly went after the decision, issued earlier this year and allowing corporations to get involved in elections. Congress is attempting to put together a legislative fix.
"With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections," Obama said from the House floor, as the majority of the Supreme Court justices sat right below him in the chamber.
Speaking with the law students, Roberts challenged Obama's statement from that night.
"I'm not sure why we're there," Roberts said. "[T]here is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum. The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court -- according the requirements of protocol -- has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling."
Bill at the Bat
Leonard wasn't the only big gun to come out swinging with acumen and savvy against the fetid post-Citizens federal atmosphere. Always calm, cool and collected (and impervious to the latest flatulations of faux commie-crusader Glenn O' Beckster, who's recently trying to target 350.org with his oh-so-predictably fraudulent, nearsighted vitriolic swine waste) Bill McKibben took on the US Chamber of Horrors in an uncanningly synchronistic article: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Darkens the Skies and Our Democracy
"Call it money pollution," Bill McKibben wrote yesterday. "The torrents of cash now pouring unchecked into our political system cloud judgment and obscure science. Money pollution matters as much as or more than the other kind of dirt. That money is the single biggest reason that, as the planet swelters through the warmest years in the history of civilization, we have yet to take any real action as a nation on global warming."
The Chamber which poured nearly $33 million into the 2010 midterms, has announced its intention to spend even more in 2012.
"That, of course, is its right," says McKibben, "especially now that the Supreme Court, in its Citizens United ruling, opened the floodgates for corporate speech (as in “money talks”).
What's become clear is that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an organization formed in 1912, more than a century after the first local chamber came into being, is anything but a benign umbrella for American small businesses. Quite the opposite: it's a hard-edged ideological shop. It was Glenn Beck, after all, who said of the chamber that “they are us,” and urged his viewers to send them money. (Beck personally contributed $10,000 of the $32 million he earned in 2009.) The chamber's chief lobbyist even called in to offer his personal thanks. It shouldn't have come as a great surprise: Beck's Fox News parent, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, had given its own million-dollar donation to the chamber.
Thanks to the Supreme Court and its Citizens United decision, there's no way to keep the chamber and others from running their shadowy election-time campaigns. As long as monster companies are pumping money into their coffers, it's “free speech” all the way and they'll simply keep on with their dodgy operations.
All this, mind you, on the day when Avaaz' petition To Rupert Murdoch and the British tabloid press has over 100,000 sigs in less than 24 hours, under the rallying call for the media monster to "Stop spreading fear and trying to manipulate how people vote. We cast our votes for democracy, for a responsible and reforming parliament, and a better politics. The outcome of our elections should be decided by us, the voters of the UK, not by you." Sign the petition NOW.
Now folks, kick back and watch the movie: The Story of Citizens United v. FEC.
Then get off your duff and pick up those boxing gloves!
Enough already!