Monday, January 16, 2012

Freedom of Speech and Artificial Entities?

January 20, 2012 Occupy the Courts is having an event at the Federal District Courthouse in the city to protest The Citizens United decision. It has been one year since that decision was made by the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision changed the landscape of politics by giving corporations uncontrolled rights to freedom of speech and uncontrolled rights to the amount of money they could inject into political campaigns.

I have friends that are judges and justices. I do not hold them responsible for the decision made in Citizens United. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with big corporation in ruling that corporations had a right to free speech. I don’t think for one moment that the founding fathers ever envisioned that artificial entities would be given those rights.

Congress should pass a law, which clearly spells out the rights of artificial entities in this country. They should make it clear that constitutional rights only apply to living breathing human beings. After all we don’t give those same rights to cats and dogs in this country.

The voting public needs to make it clear to the one percent that foreign own corporations should not have a voice in our political process. We do not want to see capital going out of this country because the laws are weaken in favor of corporations. We want to see that capital reinvested in jobs here in this country rather than overseas. Until corporations are forced to reinvest their income in redeveloping old industries and creating new one our job market will not expand in the manner, which would create new jobs in this country.