TT's Lost in Tokyo — by TokyoTom

As I have previously noted, renowed Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig is also seriously concerned about political corrpution and the Citizens United decision.

I recommend to readers his recent Washington Post op-ed, his related WaPo interview by Fred Hiatt and his August talk to TED Boston (which can be found here, though Lessig has yanked it because of an apparently spurious Lincoln quote about corporations).

In addition, as I think there is a role for libertarians to play in informing the discusssion, I copy here his September call for a non-partisan effort to reform Congress at Fix Congress First! (emphasis added): 

Where We Are, Where We’re Going

September 22, 2010

By: Lawrence Lessig

On Thursday, the House Committee on Administration will take a vote on the Fair Elections Now Act — the bill that we, along with many others, have been pushing for the past two years. The Committee will pass the bill. With a bit of luck, and a lot more pressure, the managers of the bill believe it could have the votes to pass the House as well. If they’re right, and if the Speaker allows the bill to come to the floor, then for the first time in a generation, the House will have ratified fundamental and effective campaign finance reform.

This optimism will surprise many of you. As I’ve travelled to talk about this issue, the overwhelming attitude of people who want better from our government is that our government is incapable of giving us better. The House ratifying Fair Elections would be the first, and best evidence, this skepticism might be wrong. It would also be a testament to the extraordinary work of organizations like Public Campaign and Common Cause (especially the campaign director, David Donnelly), as well as many others, including MoveOn, the Coffee Party, You Street (as in “not K Street”) and many of you. This victory would give American voters an idea worth fighting for. It would be a critical victory, at least if we can gather the final few votes needed in the House. (You can help in that by using our Whip Tool).

But we should recognize that this victory would also be just a first step. I don’t believe the Senate will pass this bill this session, which means the fight must begin again in January. So as we’ve been at this now for almost two years, I wanted to give you a sense of where we are and where we’re going. I also want to begin to share with you my own sense of how to get there.

This isn’t a short letter. But I hope you’ll take the time to read it. (Here’s a PDF if you want to print it). We all need to understand the kind of fight this will be. And after many sleepless nights thinking it through, I believe I have a sense of what victory will require.

Reform Movements, Past

The fight to win in the House has been a traditional legislative battle waged effectively and well. I joined this fight late, and I’ve been happy to help however I can. But the kudos here goes to those I’ve already mentioned. Fingers crossed, they will have done what the experts thought was impossible.

But as I’ve said many times before, we cannot rely upon this inside the beltway fight alone. The change that the Fair Elections Now Act would effect would change Washington fundamentally. There are too many inside DC who depend upon the system as it is — for their own wealth, and future. They are not about to permit this fundamental change, and they have not yet even begun the fight against it.

Instead, the battle to pass this reform will require something that none of us have seen in our lifetime — a broad based, cross-partisan, citizens movement that demands fundamental change in how our government works.

This movement must take aim at the core corruption that is our government. Not the corruption of bribery, or improper (as in illegal) influence. Instead, it must attack the in plain sight corruption of the current system of campaign finance. Our Congress has become dependent upon their Funders. Their attention is devoted to their Funders. And like a 5 year old watching his dad on his BlackBerry, we get that we’re no longer the most important souls in their lives. In a very precise sense of the term, this Congress has been corrupted by this competing dependency. We must change this.

The last best example of this sort of change is a movement that is as misunderstood as any in American history — the Progressive Movement. Most of us today think the “progressives” were liberals. No doubt many were. But as I described in a piece for the Huffington Post, Progressivism was actually a multiparty movement. It was a Republican, Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette, who took up the Progressive cause for the Right, by challenging a sitting Republican President, William Howard Taft. La Follette lost, but he inspired Republican Teddy Roosevelt to return from the wilderness to wage a third-party campaign against Taft. In that election of 1912, America had an extraordinarily broad range of ideologies to choose among: Eugene Debs ran as a Socialist, Taft ran as a “standpat” Republican, and two Progressives ran between these two extremes: TR, a former Republican, and Woodrow Wilson, a new kind of Democrat. Almost 70% of Americans voted for these two leading Progressives, with Wilson — the more conservative, small government, pro-liberty Progressive — beating Roosevelt by almost 15 points.

Of course, the Liberal Progressives of 1912 wanted different things of government from the Conservative Progressives. But despite these differences, they shared a common recogniti All Progressives believed that government had become corrupted. That with its appointed Senate, and enormously powerful corporate funding of elections, our democracy, they all believed, was no longer a democracy. The government had become dependent not, as Federalist No. 52 puts it, “upon the People alone.” Instead, it was the People who were left alone, as the government did what ever it could to curry favor with the richest and most powerful in society.

Progressives of all stripes wanted to restore that democracy — again, not because they all agreed upon a single platform for government action, but because they all believed that the platform of democracy had to be restored if we were to be true to the best ideals of the founders.

Cross-partisanship was thus the first feature of that Progressive Movement. Headlessness was a second. Though there were many important Progressive leaders, the Progressives had no single leader. Every Progressive group did their own work in their own field. None tried (for long at least) to claim the authority of the movement as a whole. Everyone recognized a common need to reform a corrupted government, and worked with astonishing public commitment to achieve that reform in addition to the particular policy objectives that their wing of the Movement wanted to push.

Finally, there was one more critical element to the Movement’s success: citizens. This was not ultimately a movement controlled by politicians. Of course, we remember the movement for its politicians. TR, and Wilson, and perhaps now that I’ve mentioned him, La Follette. But politicians were not the lifeblood of that movement. Citizens were. There were thousands of leaders in hundreds of fields, from women’s suffrage to the temperance movement, to labor reform, to judicial and electoral accountability. These citizens were the giants. Yet the overwhelming majority of these people never dreamed of running for office. They had been awoken from a slumber by the repeated and grotesque excesses of a corrupted government. And they worked hard to end that corruption, not to become famous senators, or president. But so that they could go back to their private life, and do the private things they wanted to do.

It was this cross-partisan, headless, citizens movement of passion that changed the American government at the turn of the last century. Not in perfect ways. In some cases, not even in smart ways. But the point to remember is that this change happened in the only way real change ever does: From the many, putting aside key differences, to focus the swarm upon the key problem in government: corruption.

Reform Movements, Today

As hard as this might be to believe — given the way most of us are oriented by party leaders who want to keep us loyal to the way things are now — each of these elements of the old Progressive movement is returning to American politics.

Start with passionate citizens: We have not in our lifetimes seen as angry and frustrated a citizenry as we now have. That anger sometimes expresses itself poorly, but we need to get beyond this critique. From the Tea Party to the Coffee Party to the millions of Americans who call themselves “Independents,” America is filled with citizens who are desperate to end the corruption that is our government. Many of these citizens thought they had their reform leader in 2008. All of them are now looking for the leaders who can deliver the reform that 2008 didn’t.

“Leaders,” not “leader.” The key here is the plural. We are used to movements in the style of Mussolini: charismatic leaders, like FDR, Kennedy, Reagan, who unite millions to a cause. But that’s not what’s happening here. No doubt there are leaders, but none who can pretend to speak for the full breadth of this movement. Indeed, my heroes are people like Mark Meckler, and Jenny  Beth Martin, who however much I disagree with them on policy substance, conceive of the movement they are trying to build (the Tea Party Movement) as a swarm, not an army; as headless, not the borg. This is the model of real reform. It is the model that our reform too must make successful.

And finally, cross-partisanship: The Tea Party Movement has been framed as right wing. Its most successful candidates are on the far right of the Republican Party (localized at least: Scott Brown is no Rand Paul, but he is the Right of Massachusetts). But the most significant and important part of the Tea Party Movement is the demand for fundamental change, not just a change in parties. And in this respect, they are no different from many of us on the Left. No doubt, we don’t have common ends. But we do have a common enemy. And we need to find a way to push a common movement that defeats this common enemy, through the peaceful mode of revolution given to us by our framers: Democracy.

In the next two years, I want Change Congress to help this Neo-Progressive movement. That may well not be the right name, given how misunderstood the term “progressive” now is, but it is the right idea. We need to build a community of citizens, each taking the initiative to teach a message to Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike: that regardless of your party, regardless of what you want government to do (or not do), the current system is the enemy. And regardless of what you want government to do (or not do), you won’t make progress to your ends until this system fundamentally changes.

This lesson won’t come from lectures by law professors. It won’t be taught by senators, or candidates for president. We will only spread it if we can get at first thousands, and then millions, to carry the word friend by friend. In house parties, over dinner, in Rotary Clubs, and in small meetings. We need to provide the tools, and build a platform to help spread the message. But the message here is not Read-Only. It is Read-Write. We must give citizens the resources to enter into this debate, and then encourage them to spread the message as broadly as they can.

This will make our work somewhat different from others in this movement. The standard form of digital advocacy today is clicktivism — finding ways to get people to react to messages, to push support (and of course, raise dollars) to one group and then another. The strategy is simple: Build a list of people who agree with you, and push their buttons so they click yours in return, and send you cash, and support.

We want to do something different. We want to build a conversation that engages a wider and wider community, focused on the single objective of fundamental reform. We want that community to spread the message. Not just our message, or my message, but their message, or at least a message remixed, hand-made, by them.

Here’s how are are going to do this.

We’re first going to build out more explicitly the cross-partisan character of Change Congress [now Fix Congress First]. Already our board has an extraordinary mix of talent. In the next 6 months, we will expand that mix more. All of these leaders are leaders in their own field. None of them intend to be leaders in government. Indeed, as I think about who to recruit to this list, the single question I ask myself is this: Can this person inspire others without others believing the inspiration is just the first step to their own political campaign?

Second, while we continue to build the board, we will also strengthen the communities that it supports. Today, many of you associate the work of Change Congress with me. If we are successful, next year, the vast majority of Change Congress followers will not even recognize me among the many who are pushing this message. None of us, me especially, will try to claim control of this movement. All of us, and me especially, believe there is only a movement when there are many cells of strength each pushing in its own way. Remember: A swarm, not an army; headless, not the borg.

Third, as we multiply the parties, and multiply the leaders, we will push to spread tools that anyone can use to learn, spread, and teach the message. Through SlideShare, we will make available the assets anyone needs to craft this story in the shape that makes most sense to them. Through our video channels on Vimeo, YouTube, and Blip.tv, we will make available as many of the telling of these stories as possible, for you to use however you can to do the same with your friends. The mission here is shared. The responsibility is all of ours. And through the work of all of us, we will build a recognition of the kind of change that is needed here.

Justice Louis Brandeis, perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most misunderstood, Progressive of the last century, warned “the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people,” and demanded “that public discussion is a political duty.” When I first read that quote, it sent a chill down my spine. For of course: We, as a People, have become “inert.” We have not lived up to our “political duty.” We have instead allowed the professionals to take over our politics.

But we have a chance to do something here. It will take an enormous effort to teach and then persuade. We don’t have easy anger to tap into here. But as I’ve found as I’ve given more than a hundred talks over the past few years, there is real anger and real commitment to this issue once the issue is understood. Our role in this must be this ground campaign — building a large and powerful base that recognizes the peculiar corruption of this Congress, and how it must change.

Here’s how you can help:

1. Visit FixCongressFirst.org. Don’t simply sign up for the mailing list. Instead, read about the Fair Elections Now Act. Skim the blog to get a sense of the current conversations happening around election reform. Convince a friend, online or off, about the need for fair elections. If we can get one million people each to have a real conversation about corruption and campaign finance, we will have succeeded.
2. Do join the Fix Congress First mailing list if you’d like to stay informed. Better yet, tell us if you’d like to volunteer, and we’ll let you know when opportunities arise.
3. Visit the Fix Congress First whip tool to see which members of Congress haven’t yet supported the Fair Elections Now Act. Call your representative if he/she is not a supporter, or send your thanks if she/he is.
4. Use your networks. Spread the word. Take things into your own hands. Tell us how we can help you and how we can do better.

And since Robert Reich has invited readers to “send this post to your friends”, I’ve taken the liberty of cross-posting it below.

Before we start, let me remind my readers that I’ve done a fair bit commenting on what I regard as the profoundly mistaken and wrong-headed Citizens United decision. I post this not to aggravate, but to point to a possiblity of reaching a shared agreement on problems.

Here’s Reich (my emphasis and comments in brackets)

The Secret Big-Money Takeover of AmericaThursday, October 7, 2010

Not only is income and wealth in America more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years, but those hands are buying our democracy as never before – and they’re doing it behind closed doors.

I’ve commented previously on some recent comments by comedian-turned-Senator Al Franken regarding the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision on corporate funding of political speech.

I’ve just run into Franken’s remarks at the commencement of the Senate hearing on the confirmation of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Attorney General Elana Kagan

While I don’t agree with the Left’s legislative agenda, I share the view that corporations are a driving factor in the growth of our government, increasingly rancorous fights over controlling government and corporations, and increasing mutal mistrust among citizens. As a conservative lawyer, I also share a concern that the Supreme Court, both under liberal and conservative majorities, is playing too much of a legislative role, in which it cares more about a political agenda than the Constitution. Accordingly, I am sympathetic to Franken’s recent remarks, which I excerpt here (emphasis added):

Last year, I used my time during these hearings to highlight what I think is one of the most serious threats to our Constitution and to the rights it guarantees the American people: the activism of the Roberts Court.  

I noted that for years, conservatives running for the Senate have made it almost an article of faith that they won’t vote for activist judges who make law from the bench. And when asked to name a model justice, they would often cite Justice Thomas, who I noted has voted to overturn more federal laws than Justices Stevens and Breyer combined.  In recent cycles, they would name Chief Justice Roberts.

Well, I think we established very convincingly during the Sotomayor hearings that there is such a thing as judicial activism.  There is such a thing as legislating from the bench.  

And it is practiced repeatedly by the Roberts Court, where it has cut in only one direction: in favor of powerful corporate interests, and against the rights of individual Americans.  

In the next few days, I want to continue this conversation.  Because I think things have only gotten worse. …

Our state has banned all corporate spending on elections since 1988.

And yet in January, in Citizens United, the Roberts Court nullified our laws and turned back a century of federal law by allowing corporations to spend as much money as they want, whenever they want, in our elections.  Not just federal elections.  Duluth elections. Bemidji elections. Minnesota elections.

There is a pattern here.  Each of these decisions was won with five votes.  And in each of these decisions, that bare majority used its power to help big business.

There’s another pattern here.  In each of these decisions, in every one, Justice John Paul Stevens led the dissent.

Now Justice Stevens is no firebrand liberal.  He was appointed to the Seventh Circuit by Richard Nixon.  And he was elevated to the Supreme Court by Gerald Ford.  By all accounts, he was considered a moderate.

And yet he didn’t hesitate to tell corporations that they aren’t a part of “‘We the People,’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.”  And he didn’t flinch when he told a President that “the Executive is bound to comply with the rule of law.” …

But before I turn it over to you, General Kagan, I want to talk a bit more about one of the decisions I mentioned.  I want to talk more about Citizens United.  

Now, you’ve heard a lot about this decision already today, but I want to come at it from a slightly different angle.

There is no doubt: the Roberts Court’s disregard for a century of federal law-and decades of the Supreme Court’s own rulings-is wrong.  It’s shocking.  And it’s torn a gaping hole in our election laws.  

So of course I’m worried about how Citizens United is going to change our elections.  

But I am more worried about how this decision is going to affect our communities-and our ability to run those communities without a permission slip from big business. ….

Along with the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Motor Vehicle Safety Act are three of the pillars of modern consumer safety and environmental laws.

But here’s something else they have in common.  They were all passed around 60 days before an election.

Do you think those laws would have stood a chance if Standard Oil and GM could have spent millions of dollars advertising against vulnerable congressmen, by name, in the last months before their elections?  I don’t.

So here’s my point, General Kagan:  Citizens United isn’t just about election law.  It isn’t just about campaign finance.  

It’s about seat belts.  It’s about clean air and clean water.  It’s about energy policy and the rights of workers and investors.  It’s about health care.  It’s about our ability to pass laws that protect the American people even if it hurts the corporate bottom line.  

As Justice Stevens said, it’s about our “need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government.”

I’m definitely not in favor of a passel of burdensome federal laws, which lessen our freedom, spur on further interventions and encourage further investments in backdoor lobbying. But I do think corporate statism, enabled and driven by special grants of limited liability, legal entity status and the like, is the chief root of our problems. To have saner and less corrupt government, we have to strike at the root, and emphatically insist that it is individuals that have Constitutional rights, not “corporations” representing investors and executives, all of whom have their own Constitutional rights.

Corporations are creatures of the states, and we should acknowledge that states have the ability and responsibility to limit their rights and privileges. In this regard, we should recognize the Citizens United decision as a further usurpation of states’ rights and erosion of our Constitutional federalist system.

I kinda liked this, so I’ve cribbed it from an earlier post, where it served as prologue and summary to recent comments by Sen. Al Franken about the conservative worship of corporations.

I refer to my earlier posts on (1) corporate “free speech”, campaign contributions and the recent Citizens United decision, and (2) grants by states of corporate status, especially so-called “limited liability” (zero liability, in fact) to shareholders. The latter has fuelled the growth of powerful corporations and of the growth of a powerful central federal government that purports to rein them in, and has led not only the predominance of corporations and the state, but to rampant manipulation, corruption, moral hazard and mismanagement on a scale that, on the heels of massive bailouts to our elites in the financial sector, now with BP’s so far unstoppable Gulf gusher, appears to have taken on Biblical proportions.

Quite obviously, the government cannot effectively manage common resources, but has itself – by unleashing limited liability machines that owe duties only to a weak shareholder class, and by disenfranchising fishermen and others who depend on such resources – encouraged the destruction of such resources and of local, vital communities of mutually responsible individuals. Our inept, grasping and feckless Government itself is not simply a massive “tragedy of the commons”, but the vehicle for massive Avatar-style theft.

If libertarians truly love freedom, it is time for them to start thinking about the frequently negative role that large corporations play, and to start voicing criticisms and suggesting effective ways to check abuses and to re-empower local communities. 

Or have libertarians, like Lew Rockwell, already exhausted up their ration of moral opprobrium, outrage and good ideas in condemning those stupid mankind-hating enviro-fascists who are fighting a losing battle with corporations and elites over the wheel of government?

1.  As prologue, I refer to my earlier posts on (1) corporate “free speech”, campaign contributions and the recent Citizens United decision, and (2) grants by states of corporate status, especially so-called “limited liability” (zero liability, in fact) to shareholders. The latter has fuelled the growth of powerful corporations and of the growth of a powerful central federal government that purports to rein them in, and has led not only the predominance of corporations and the state, but to rampant manipulation, corruption, moral hazard and mismanagement on a scale that, on the heels of massive bailouts to our elites in the financial sector, now with BP’s so far unstoppable Gulf gusher, appears to have taken on Biblical proportions.

Quite obviously, the government cannot effectively manage common resources, but has itself – by unleashing limited liability machines that owe duties only to a weak shareholder class, and by disenfranchising fishermen and others who depend on such resources – encouraged the destruction of such resources and of local, vital communities of mutually responsible individuals. Our inept, grasping and feckless Government itself is not simply a massive “tragedy of the commons”, but the vehicle for massive Avatar-style theft.

2. Enough of the pitch; now for the wind-up.  Senator Al Franken spoke last week at  the liberal-leaning American Constitution Society’s annual convention in DC. While I generally disagree with Dem’s legislative and judicial policy agenda, I think he had a few fair points. I excerpt from a June 18 report in Mother Jones: Al Franken Takes On The Supreme Court (my emphasis):

Franken offered up his unique blend of political criticism and comic delivery in a speech that sounded an awful lot like a rallying cry for Congress to push back against the Supreme Court’s pro-business decisionmaking. He honed in on the conservative Federalist Society and bashed the Roberts court for its overreach in cases like Citizens United, where the court answered questions it wasn’t even asked. “I mean, I don’t speak Latin. But unless stare decisis means ‘overturn stuff,’ then maybe it’s time for conservatives to stop calling other people ‘dangerous radicals,'” he said.

Conservatives, Franken said, have “distorted our constitutional discourse to make it sound like the Court’s rulings don’t matter to ordinary people, but only to the undeserving riff-raff at the margins of society. So unless you want to get a late-term abortion, burn a flag in the town square, or get federal funding for your pornographic artwork, you really don’t need to worry about what the Supreme Court is up to.” Much of Franken’s speech concerned the real people whose lives are indeed affected by the court’s decisions, including Jaime Leigh Jones, the KBR employee who was allegedly gang-raped by her co-workers in Iraq and whose case Franken has championed.

One of the themes of Franken’s speech was the way conservative legal activists have changed the way they talk about the law to disguise what their real agenda is. “Do they want to undercut abortion and immigration and Miranda rights? Sure. But those are just cherries on the sundae. What conservative legal activists are really interested in is this question: What individual rights are so basic and so important that they should be protected above a corporation’s right to profit? And their preferred answer is: None of them. Zero.”

3.  Franken naturally overlooks how destructive the liberal, big government agenda has been and continues to be. But I think he has put his finger on something important here.

If libertarians truly love freedom, it is time for them to start thinking about the frequently negative role that large corporations play, and to start voicing criticisms and suggesting effective ways to check abuses and to re-empower local communities. 

Or have libertarians, like Lew Rockwell, already exhausted up their ration of moral opprobrium, outrage and good ideas in condemning those stupid mankind-hating enviro-fascists who are fighting a losing battle with corporations and elites over the wheel of government?

Well, one may well argue that, if BP were a person, it would be “a career criminal”, but surely not all corporations behave in a criminal matter.

Nevertheless, I think we all recognize that although corporations are owned, managed and staffed by real people, the incentives that people in such organizations face and their consequent collective behavior – what we call the behavior of “the corporation” – may differ quite markedly from those of ordinary, living and breathing humans who live in communities, and from people in groups that do not have limited liability (a feature that underlies the pervasive and increasingly enormous and costly  “moral hazard” problems that our society now confronts), unlimited life and purposes, other favors granted by the state, which have less political power, and for which the “principal-agent problem” is less severe.

So does it make any sense to treat “corporations” under the law – or for purposes of discussions on LvMI pages – as if they have the same rights as real persons?

Allow me to refer to a post I did in wake of the recent Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court : Speech and Sociopaths: Does it make sense to collapse, for Constitutional and legal purposes, the distinctions between human beings and corporate “persons”?

My other posts on the Citizens United decision are here.

No, I didn’t write this press release (but I did add emphasis!). I note my related posts are here.

DATE: January 21, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Jeff Milchen, American Independent Business Alliance
406-582-1255  

INDEPENDENT BUSINESS ADVOCATES AND PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS CONDEMN SUPREME COURT’S RULING ON CORPORATE MONEY IN ELECTIONS

CALL FOR CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO OVERTURN COURT DECISION

BOZEMAN, MT – A coalition of public interest organizations and
independent business advocates condemned today’s ruling by the US
Supreme Court allowing unlimited corporate money in US elections, and
announced that it is launching a campaign to amend the United States
Constitution to overturn the ruling.

The coalition
includes the public interests groups Voter Action, Public Citizen, and
the Center for Corporate Policy, as well as the American Independent
Business Alliance (AMIBA). They contend the Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC
poses a serious and direct threat to democracy and to fair market
competition. Immediately following the Court’s ruling, the groups
unveiled a new website – FreeSpeechforPeople.org – devoted to this campaign.

“The Supreme Court has leaped into unabashed activism on behalf of
corporate power,” said Jeff Milchen, co-founder of the American
Independent Business Alliance. “Some reports have wrongly suggested the
Roberts Court is ‘pro-business,'” said Milchen, “but overturning these
precedents is radically anti-business when viewed from the perspective
of America’s six million or so independent businesses.“

“Independent business owners often face a decidedly uneven playing
field when competing against major corporations due, in part, to tax loopholes, subsidies, federal handouts
and preferential treatment bestowed by politicians,” added Milchen.
“Opening electoral contests to direct corporate campaign spending
further undermines fair market competition and recklessly endangers
democracy.”

AMIBA is a
non-profit network of 70 communities across the U.S. that have formed
local Independent Business Alliances to help local independent
businesses compete successfully and prevent major chains from driving
out local businesses.

“Free speech rights are for people,
not corporations,” says John Bonifaz, Voter Action’s legal director.
“In wrongly assigning First Amendment protections to corporations, the
Supreme Court has now unleashed a torrent of corporate money in our
political process unmatched by any campaign expenditure totals in US
history. This campaign to amend the Constitution will seek to restore
the First Amendment to its original purpose.”

The public
interest groups say that, since the late 1970s, a divided Supreme Court
has transformed the First Amendment into a powerful tool for
corporations seeking to evade democratic control and sidestep sound
public welfare measures. For the first two centuries of the American
republic, the groups argue, corporations did not have First Amendment
rights to limit the reach of democratically-enacted regulations.

“Today’s ruling, reversing longstanding precedent which prohibits
corporate expenditures in elections, now requires a constitutional
amendment response to protect our democracy,” says Jeffrey Clements,
general counsel to Free Speech for People.

Jennifer Rockne, AMIBA’s director, added “Even before the banking meltdown, ninety percent
of Americans thought large corporations have been granted too much
power. It’s a remarkable moment for the Court to re-invent the
Constitution to expand corporations’ influence and a slap in the face
to America’s independent business owners.”

In support of
their new campaign, the groups point to prior amendments to the US
Constitution which were enacted to correct egregiously wrong decisions
of the US Supreme Court directly impacting the democratic process,
including the 15th Amendment prohibiting discrimination in voting based
on race and the 19th Amendment, prohibiting discrimination in voting
based on gender.

“The Court has invented the idea that
corporations have First Amendment rights to influence election outcomes
out of whole cloth,” says Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen.
“There is surely no originalist interpretation to support this outcome,
since the Court created the rights only in recent decades. Nor can the
outcome be justified in light of the underlying purpose and spirit of
the First Amendment. Corporations are state-created entities, not real
people. Corporate spending on elections defeats rather than advances
the democratic thrust of the First Amendment.”

Milchen
believes the effort will succeed, but makes no predications on a
timeline. “This will be a sustained campaign that will ultimately unite
the vast majority of Americans who recognize the Bill of Rights is for
human beings, not corporations,” said Milchen. “We have no illusions
about the size of the task we are undertaking, but five Justices have
effectively outlawed the republican form of government promised by our
Constitution. We will be as patient as necessary to succeed.”

For more information on the constitutional amendment campaign, see freespeechforpeople.org .

-30-

Related articles and websites:

Brenda Wright, Director of Demos and co-author of the amicus brief we submitted for this case, on the decision http://www.acslaw.org/node/15160

Not all business sided with the Court ruling:
http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/node/34

I reported two weeks ago that a PR firm, Murray Hill, Inc., had embraced the recent decision by the conservative, non-activist majority of the Supreme Court which resoundingly affirmed that the Founding Fathers had granted First Amendment rights to corporate “persons” by embarking on a campaign to be elected to Congress in Maryland.

It has been heart-warming to hear that Murray Hill has been finding much interest, not only from the public and press, but from other companies as well, and so  on February 15 – George Washington’s Birthday – Murray Hill announced its first agreement to franchise this portion of its business model to another company, which has decided to run for a Congressional seat in Virginia.

According to Murray Hill’s press release (emphasis added), speaking through designated human, Eric
Hensal and Campaign Manager William Klein:

Combating prejudice and bias against corporate persons is one of the
primary motivations behind Murray Hill Inc.’s run for office.

“Anti-corporate
bigotry has no place in our great democracy,” Murray Hill Inc. says.
“Our forefathers lived and died for the inalienable rights of every
person, human and corporate, to pursue life (or its corporate
equivalent), liberty and the pursuit of happiness (or profit).”

The
first corporation to enter into a franchise agreement with Murray Hill
Inc. is Computer Umbrella Inc. of Sterling Virginia,  which my sleuthing shows is partnered with Microsoft, Dell, HP and Netgear Powershift. Jonathan StewartJonathan Stewart, a US Army veteran who founded Computer Umbrella, is Designated Human for the firm and is charting its run for U.S. Congress in Virginia’s 10th District. Says Stewart,

“We
are proud to embrace the Murray Hill Inc. Brand. From
steel to silicon, it’s America’s entrepreneurs who find and exploit the
new markets. The democracy market in Washington DC today looks like
Silicon Valley 30 years ago. CUI wants to position itself as early
leader in this emerging market along with Murray Hill Inc.”

I was alerted to this breaking news by becoming a fan of Murray Hill’s Facebook page, Murray Hill Inc. for Congress. The Facebook page briefly describes Murray Hill’s purpose as follows:

Until now, corporations influenced politics with high-paid lobbyists
and backroom deals. But today, thanks the supreme court, corporations
have all the rights the founding fathers meant for us.

That’s why Murray Hill Inc. is running for congress.

Here is more background on Murray Hill’s objectives, from their initial press release (emphasis added):

“Until now,” Murray Hill Inc. said in a statement, “corporate
interests had to rely on campaign contributions and influence peddling
to achieve their goals in Washington. But thanks to an enlightened
Supreme Court, now we can eliminate the middle-man and run for office
ourselves.”

Murray Hill Inc. is believed to be
the first “corporate person” to exercise its constitutional right to
run for office. As Supreme Court observer Lyle Denniston wrote in his SCOTUSblog, “If anything, the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
conferred new dignity on corporate “persons,” treating them — under the
First Amendment free-speech clause — as the equal of human beings.”

Murray
Hill Inc. agrees. “The strength of America,” Murray Hill Inc. says, “is
in the boardrooms, country clubs and Lear jets of America’s great
corporations. We’re saying to Wal-Mart, AIG and Pfizer, if not you,
who? If not now, when?”

Murray Hill Inc. plans
on spending “top dollar” to protect its investment. “It’s our
democracy,” Murray Hill Inc. says, “We bought it, we paid for it, and
we’re going to keep it.”

Murray Hill Inc., a
diversifying corporation in the Washington, D.C. area, has long held an
interest in politics and sees corporate candidacy as an emerging new
market.

The campaign’s designated human, Eric
Hensal, will help the corporation conform to antiquated “human only”
procedures and sign the necessary voter registration and candidacy
paperwork. Hensal is excited by this new opportunity. “We want to get
in on the ground floor of the democracy market before the whole store
is bought by China.”

Murray Hill Inc. plans on
filing to run in the Republican primary in Maryland’s 8th Congressional
District. Campaign Manager William Klein promises an aggressive,
historic campaign that “puts people second” or even third.

“The
business of America is business, as we all know,” Klein says. “But now,
it’s the business of democracy too.” Klein plans to use automated
robo-calls, “Astroturf” lobbying and computer-generated avatars to get
out the vote.

I encourage all other supporters of the role of corporations in our great democracy to join me in supporting these exciting developments!

Those of you working in corporations might encourage your own firms to get in on the ground floor of the opportunity to cut out the middleman and to “own its own vote” (votes, if subsidiaries run in other districts) in Congress.

The rest of us can follow along with campaign developments here at the following social media sites, and by buying Murrray Hill Inc. for Congress goods:

For those of you who might have missed it, here is Murray Hill’s kick-off video:

[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHRKkXtxDRA&feature=player_embedded:550:0]

[Here’s the title I preferred but was apparently too long. Dang. “WSJ reveals itself as another stupid MSM #CorpSpeak organ, uninterested in Constitutional or representative government, and perversely, as an ally with Dems in engendering a oppressive, arbitrary, corrupt & broken federal government”]

I’m referring to the remarkably thick-headed, crudely pro-corporate and anti-Democrat opinion piece by the WSJ’s opinion page deputy editor Daniel Henninger on February 11, “The Scalia v. Stevens Smackdown In President Obama’s view, corporations are anathema“.

Henninger is long on how the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission “sent liberaldom screaming into the streets“, on Scalia’s supposed “smackdown” of the very vehement disagreement by Justice Stevens for the minority, and painting a broad strokes picture of an Obama administration and liberal minority that is profoundly “out of synch” with the “basic world view” of a majority citizens working in the private economy (in which corporations play the central role) and who are close to “a tipping point over the scale and role of government”..

I agree with most of Henninger’s criticisms about the Obama administration, but otherwise his editorial is shockingly uninsightful, uncritical, uninformed and uninterested on a number of key points, e.g.,

– in understanding the real nature of the dispute within the Supreme regarding important issues of Constitutional interpretation (such as the manner in which the “conservative” majority abandoned any pretence of an “originalist” interpretation of the First Amendment),

– in examining the breath-takingly radical and anti-democratic departure made by the majority from prior decisions – including decisions by the not-so-liberal Rehnquist – in overturning a statutory framework established by the legislated branch of the federal government (and state governments) over a period of centuries,

– in examining the many ramifications of this decision on related inalienable First Amendment rights that corporations have been endowed with via this decision, such as rights that other “persons “- us humans – have to speak anonymously, to not speak truthfully, and to run for office;

– in examining key federalism issues, particularly the role and authority of states in establishing corporations and granting them powers, and how the majority has concluded that the First Amendment now dictates that it is the Supreme Court, and not the states, that determine what rights to speak that these creatures of the states, 

– in understanding how profoundly different corporations are different from humans, as well as from more traditional associations, such as partnerships.

– in examining the way that corporations, by virtue of the profoundly un-libertarian grant of limited liability exended by the states to corporate shareholders leads to a shifting of uncompensated damages and risks to third parties, and has fuelled both the vast expansion of the size, scope and powers of corporations, but also the role and size of the opportunisticfederal government, which has continued to aggrandize power to itself at the expense of the states, in significant part on the basis that citizens were demanding that government step in to check the abuses of corporations (and that corporations preferred a central and more easily manipulable legislator/regulator); and

– in examining the political and ideological battle between left and right to control the media corporations and conglomerates that had held a privileged position inseeking to sway voters at election time.

I post in haste, and so will have to revisit this post to flesh out my remarks, but I hope that the reader will  see that, while professing to offer insights, Hennninger and the WSJ have done us all a disservice.

Without delving too far into the decision here, clearly it undermines further the authority of the states, while handicapping the power of Congress to limit corporate spending intended expressly for the purpose of influencing government policy. This can lead only to further rent-seeking by large corporations seeking advance from government rather than relying on their own prowess in the marketplace, and to increasing corruption in a Congress and administrative government that are already broken and, indeed, profoundly mistrusted by us living, breathing “persons”.

Like the Roberts Supreme Court, the WSJ has show itself to be interested not it principle, but in policy. Sadly, a lack of principle goes a long, long, long way.

[For readers who aren’t aware of them, here are my preceding posts on corporate “free speech”]

Lessig doesn’ expressly say it, but we also need to rein in the “self-evident”, “unalienable rights” of all corporations

Actually, the last quip in the title are my words, not Lessig’s.

Last week, I noted Harvard law prof Lawrence Lessig’s earlier rebuttal to Glenn Greenwald regarding the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United to overthrow centuries of American law and jurisprudence on the rights of corporations and to enshrine corporations – legal fictions created by states and with powers very severely restricted at the time the Constitution was negotiated and ratified by Americans who had recently rebelled against British company-structured colonies and monopolies – as entitled to “speech” under the Bill of Rights on the same basis as men, and made the following observation:

As an aside, other, non-corporation forms of property that had real human bodies – such as slaves – were clearly NOT afforded Constitutional rights of any sort at the time of the Revolution/Bill of Rights; freed slaves as they became citizens and non-citizen Chinese coolies received Constitutional protection ONLY when the Fourteenth Amendment was expressly adopted to extend “privileges and immunities” to citizens and “due process” and “equal protection” to “persons”.

It was this reference to “persons” that smart/prevaricating lawyers for extremely influential railroad corporations were able to persuade a sympathetic Supreme Court – in unargued dicta by a Justice and recorded in headnotes by a Court’s Reporter who were both former railroad lawyers – to the effect that either (i) the 14th Amendment-adopting states had all intended to mean that it would be the federal government, and not the states creating corporations or giving them permission to do business in-state, who would determine whether domestic or out-of-state corporations received “equal” protection of state laws as did citizens or (ii) that such was the hidden purpose of some railroad-friendly drafters of the Amendment, and that such hidden purpose should govern in interpreting the Amendment.

Is there any surprise that most of the subsequent 14th amendment case law is about how monied corporations vigorously pursued and advanced their interests, while blacks and foreign residents continued to get short shrift (“separate but equal”) from unconcerned federal judges?

Now, the thoughtful and highly regarded  Lawrence Lessig has written a must-read article in The Nation; “How to Get Our Democracy Back; If You Want Change, You Have to Change Congress” (February 3; February 22 print edition).

I won’t reprise the essay here — I have a few comments on what I see as serious shortcomings and blind spots in Lessig’s analysis, but the draft of these grows long (like my aside above) – rent-seeking; corporations; religion; limited liability; Constitution, speech, states, federalism – so I will post them separately.

Lessig’s article is a key starting point and long enough, though I will advise/remind the curious reader of my preceding posts on  corporate “free speech”..

In calling for amendments to the Constitution, Lessig joins others that have come to the same conclusion years ago, such as “whacko”, snivelling local communities/enviro-commie fascists (snark!) seeking to control the impacts of large multinational corporations on local communities and resources, and some state-righters seeking to breathe some meaning back into the Tenth Amendment and the moribound body of federalism. More on this later.

Those who want to get further stirred up might want to give another listen to the new music video Anthem of what our Founding Fathers said to King George:  It’s Too Late to Apologize.