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A year from now, Americans will be caught in an unprecedented blizzard of campaign ads.
Most of this ad blizzard will not come from the candidates, but from ads secretly-funded by huge corporations. This is because a five-man cabal on the Supreme Court issued an edict that perverts nature itself. In a case titled Citizens United, the five decreed that – shazam! – lifeless corporate elites are henceforth “persons” with more electioneering rights than us real life persons. In a black-robed coup against our democracy, the Supremes ruled that a corporation’s money is “speech” and that CEOs may dump unlimited sums of it into their own ad campaigns to elect or defeat any candidates they choose.
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Of course, it’s a grotesque, Kafkaesque lie to say that Wal-Mart, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, and the rest are people with political rights equal to – much less superior to – human beings. As a friend of mine puts it: “A corporation is not a person until Texas executes one!”
The good news is that real citizens of our country are united against Citizens United. In a January Hart Research poll, 87 percent of Democrats, 82 percent of Independents, and even 68 percent of Republicans favor passing a Constitutional amendment to overule the Court’s bizarre decision and make clear that only people are people.
Sadly (though not surprisingly) our national elected officials – including Republicans, Democrats and tea partiers – are too hooked on corporate money to stand up for us… for America’s democracy. So, do we just have to surrender to the corporados? Of course not – we’re Americans!
Rebel! A new “We the People Campaign” is rallying grassroots folks to sign a “Declaration of Independence From Corporate Power.” To sign the declaration and join the action, go to .WeThePeopleCampaign.org.
“The Hightower Lowdown,” www.hightowerlowdown.com, October 2011.