May We Have Our Democracy Back, Please?
Just when you thought every piece of news you were going to come across today was bad, here’s a shining star for those of us who care about the quality of the democracy under which we live. Two-thirds of Americans oppose the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Citizens United vs. The U.S. Federal Election Commission, and numerous, powerful groups are fighting to overturn it.
The decision created an absolute right of corporate “speech” to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections, and corporate money poured into the 2010 elections in unprecedented amounts as a result. This is clearly contrary to our constitutional principles and to the American vision of self-government by free people. That vision cannot coexist with elections dominated by hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate electioneering money.
According to multiple polls, more than two-thirds of the American people, balanced across the political parties, reject the decision, asserting that We the People can decide our elections for ourselves. Now, a bipartisan group of leading law professors, former state attorneys general, former prosecutors, and prominent attorneys from across the country have signed a letter calling on Congress to consider a Constitutional amendment to overrule Citizens United and return elections and government to the people.
Godspeed.
Perhaps enough of us will wake up before Liberty is teminally fitted with a collar of gold.
As I see it, the issue of money’s dominance in politics has always been – and is now with an ever-increasing supremacy – at the fetid core of every single creeping malaise and malevolence of public policy, and of every restraint and preclusion of the triumph of the human spirit, throughout our government and across our society.
It’s truly this simple, folks – which to you want:
a) One Human, One Vote.
b) One Dollar, One Vote.
We cannot have both.