Support Get Money Out, even if you hate Marxist hippies
This blog is primarily about consumer advocacy and the single greatest blow that can ever be achieved against the corporations that screw over and steal from individual Americans is campaign finance reform. Everyone you need to know should support this Constitutional amendment blocking private interests from funding federal elections.
This is not a left/right issue. This is simply about whether you want to live in a country where elected officials answer to the people, or one where they answer to corporations. Signing a petition to get money out does not mean you hate business, or that you want to “Occupy Wall Street,” or that you believe in global warming. It just means you believe in democracy and in the ability of the American people to govern themselves.
Here is the problem: In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are “people” with the same rights as actual American citizens. They also declared that giving money to political candidates is a corporation’s version of “freedom of speech” and that placing any limits on campaign contributions would violate the Constitutional rights of a corporation.
We already have a problem in that our congressmen, senators, and presidents are beholden to whatever corporations funded their election campaign–not the actual people who voted for them. But NOW corporations can actually blackmail politicians. Wal-Mart, for instance, could demand that the president subsidize building more Wal-Marts with federal funds or they will give 10 billion dollars to whoever runs against him. This supreme court decisions effectively broke our democracy and replaced it with a new form of feudalism in which we are the peasants and the corporations (who are considered “people”) are our overlords.
There is no higher authority then the supreme court. They interpret the Constitution, so the only way out of this is a Constitutional amendment.
Right now, I don’t know anyone––liberal or conservative––who thinks this would be a bad idea. Politically savvy types will argue that passing a Constitutional amendment is extremely difficult if not impossible. But it has been done in the past. Prohibition was a Constitutional amendment, and it was for a much less urgent and important cause.
Now cynics will point out that Prohibition had a lot of unlikely allies behind it. Both the KKK and the NAACP supported prohibition. But why can’t we form such an alliance to get corporate money out of our elections? Right now both the KKK and the NAACP have to live with politicians that don’t really care about them. So do environmentalists, the Tea Party, and the NRA. It is in every one’s interest to create a country where their vote matters.
Sitting on the sidelines and pointing out the difficulty of updating the Constitution might make you feel smart, but it won’t save democracy and freedom. Martin Luther King called this problem, “the paralysis of analysis.”
If this amendment is passed, all of our other problems will get better because we could at least be assured that our government answered to the people. We wouldn’t have to be so paranoid about who are politicians were serving and why. Passing this amendment would be like blowing up the Death Star—the entire empire of evil would be undone. If you have ever been screwed over by Comcast, ASF, Bank of America, your credit card company, a debt collection agency—then you have a duty to yourself and your children to get everyone you know to sign this petition.
