Category: Democracy Amendments

Public Forum recorded Sept 8, 2009, in Northampton, MA, on pending case, upholding restrictions on corporate political campagin expenditures and implications/potential implications for concept of “corporate personhood.” Part 1 features Jeffrey Clements, attorney who filed an Amicus brief representing five citizens groups arguing against expanding corporate First Amendment Rights.   Photo by spatuletail / Shutterstock.com
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John Bonifaz’s opening remarks during the public forum held Sept. 8, 2009, in Northampton. Strategy of constitutional amendment. Photo by spatuletail / Shutterstock.com
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The Court’s action dramatically dilutes the vote and the voice of every American who does not control a large corporate treasury. The decision unleashes billions of dollars in corporate money to dominate legislatures and elections.

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What will the People’s Rights Amendment say and what will it do? The People’s Rights Amendment will overrule the Citizens United v. FEC case and return the First Amendment to its longstanding purpose as a guarantee of the fullest rights of a free people and the press. The People’s Rights Amendment will overrule the fabrication
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No. The People’s Rights Amendment applies to corporate entities and has no application to voluntary associations and does not change constitutionally protected freedom of association. People are always free to associate with others to promote their speech or engage in political activity.

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No. The People’s Rights Amendment will preserve and protect free speech for everyone. Eliminating corporate money in politics or eliminating the ability of corporations to strike down laws that executives of a corporation may think limit corporate marketing campaigns will not effect the speech rights of a single person.

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Citizens United is the extreme result of a focused political effort in the past two or three decades to transform the First Amendment into a tool for corporations to avoid regulation and oversight by the American people. Before 1976, there was no such thing as protected “commercial speech” under the First Amendment. For the first two centuries of the American republic, corporations did not have First Amendment rights to limit the reach of democratically enacted regulations. And states and Congress could regulate or prevent corporate contributions and expenditures in elections.

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No. Citizens United v. FEC would never have been decided this way in any other era of the Court in our history. The five self-described conservatives on the current Court have cast aside a century of federal restrictions on corporate money in politics, and two centuries of First Amendment jurisprudence. The notion that a corporation has First Amendment rights to “speech” and political activity is contrary to the history, words, spirit and intent of the First Amendment and American self-government.

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See Bellotti v. First National Bank of Boston, 435 U.S. 765 (1978) (invalidating Massachusetts restriction on corporate expenditures to influence voter referenda not related to corporate purpose); FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U.S. 449 (2007) (as applied to issue advocacy advertisements of non-profit corporation, federal corporate expenditure restriction held to violate First Amendment); Thompson v. Western States Med. Ctr., 535 U.S. 357 (2002) (federal restriction on advertising of compounded drugs invalidated); Lorillard v. Reilly, 533 U.S.
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A sharply divided Supreme Court decided that the American people are powerless to stop corporations from using corporate funds to influence state and federal elections. The 5-4 decision ruled that the restrictions on corporate expenditures in elections contained in the federal Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (known as BCRA or “McCain-Feingold”) violated the First Amendment protections of free speech.

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