Teddy Roosevelt Was Right: Ban ALL Corporate Contributions

[babylonsister]

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/519991/teddy_roosevelt_was_right_ban_all_corporate_contributions

Teddy Roosevelt Was Right: Ban ALL Corporate Contributions
posted by John Nichols on 01/22/2010 @ 01:23am

snip//


It may be that the United States Constitution will need to be amended in order to restore to the Teddy Roosevelt principle:

"All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law," said Roosevelt in the first years of the 20th century, when he was also proposing public financing of federal election.

The court's ruling in the case of Citizens United v. FEC is a game-changer that, in the words of Feingold says corporations "can just open their treasuries (and) completely buy up all the television time, and drown out everyone else's voices."

There's a small measure of nuance in the ruling.

In their 5-4 decision, the majority maintained restrictions on direct donations by corporations to candidates and political parties.

But corporations – with their immense resources and their immense desire to influence the political and governing processes – will be able to spend as freely as their like (on television commercials and other forms of communication) to secure the election results they seek.

It's a recipe for democratic disaster, as wealth and power will define the debate that sets the parameters of our politics.

Says Senator Charles Schumer, D-New York: "The Supreme Court just predetermined the winners of next November's elections. It won't be Republicans. It won't be Democrats. It will be corporate America."

snip//

That stranglehold on real democracy may, in the view of these activists, only be broken by a constitutional amendment, and democracy and clean government campaigners are proposing just that – with some suggesting the traditional route of having Congress propose an amendment, while others imagine asking legislatures across the country to call a constitutional convention to develop an amendment.

Graves and others are backing a Move to Amend campaign, which debuted a website for activists moments after the court ruling came down.

The Move to Amend coalition declares:

On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions. The Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, the people rule.

We Move to Amend.

We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:

1. Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.

2. Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.

3. Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments.

Within hours of the decision, more than 3,500 Americans had signed on as backers of this particular initiative.

Whatever the specific route, and whatever the specific language (Graves suggests: "No corporation shall be considered to be a person who is permitted to raise or spend money on federal, state, or local elections of any kind"), the goal of any amendment strategy should be to enshrine in the Constitution of this land the fundamental democratic principle proposed more than a century ago by a Republican president, Teddy Roosevelt: "All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law."

[ixion]

1. exactly... this is just as serious as the separation of Church and State

we really need a separation of the Corporation and the State

[FarPoint]

3. Please, lets tax Churches now!

I'm sick of the fundies with the tax break gift.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. More from TR:

" For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protections to property, and we must make that promise good But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation. The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being.

There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done. We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs."

[Historic NY]

4. Teddy wasn't a true Repuke...he was Bull moose.

[Vidar]

5. K&R.

[Sherman A1]

6. Thanks for posting

A great catch! TR was right on this and many other things.