INTERVIEW David Cobb is the national program director for Democracy Unlimited and the spokesperson for the Move to Amend campaign, an effort to limit corporate money in politics by amending the Constitution. Cobb has run for attorney general of Texas, and in 2004, he was the Green Party’s nominee for president. Grant Reeher (GR): Can you summarize the problems that Move to Amend is trying to remedy?
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David Cobb (DC): The first (is) the idea that money equals speech. This idea was created by the Supreme Court in 1976 in an infamous case called Buckley v. Valeo that says that money is an expression of political speech and therefore can only be restricted in very narrow ways. It is worth pointing out, Grant, that before that decision in almost every state, including in New York state, it was a felony to use corporate money to even influence elections. You see how low we have sunk. The second problem is the court-created idea that a corporation must be treated as if it is a person with constitutional rights. We have constitutional rights because we are living, breathing, human beings. Those rights are inherent and inalienable to us. A corporation can only be created by the state chartering process. We at Move to Amend agree that corporations should exist, we agree that they should continue to be chartered. We don’t think they have inherent and inalienable rights. If you or one of our listeners right now goes into court and claims that a constitutional right is being violated, what they are saying is that some law – local, state or federal law – is infringing upon their ability to exercise their citizenship. And if that ever happens, then the court is the appropriate place to step in and say the political process is illegitimate, because it is infringing upon human being’s rights. If a corporation, an artificial entity, can claim that they are a person with constitutional rights, it means corporate lawyers could go into court and argue that – environmental protection laws, work or safety laws, public health laws, campaign finance laws – if a corporate lawyer can argue to overturn a law attempting to restrict the conduct of a corporation, it means we, the people, are no longer in charge of our own government. GR: What are the changes that Move to Amend is trying to make? DC: Artificial entities do not have inherent and inalienable rights and therefore are subject to the political process. The second component is that money is not political speech and, therefore, local, state and federal representatives have the authority to make campaign finance laws. These are principles. (Specific) campaign finance laws are political questions, work and environmental protection laws or the lack of them are political questions. Political questions are supposed to be resolved in the political process. When the Supreme Court turns a political question into a Constitutional question, they just turned We the People, the sovereign citizens, from active participants into mere spectators where we have to sit in the
06.25.14 - 07.01.14 | syracusenewtimes.com
sidelines while they tell us what we are allowed to do. And that is the reason that Move to Amend is able to bring together principled conservatives, principled liberals and moderates alike and actually be part of a movement which says, ‘we may disagree on political issues, but on the principle of the constitutional republican form of government, we are in agreement.’ And that is an exciting thing to be part of. GR: What is your progress? DC: Move to Amend began with 12 people in the living room in 2010. Today, we have 348,000 people actively participating. We have over 120 local affiliates. In addition to that, we have helped 600 communities pass resolutions in support of our effort: city councils, county boards of supervisors actually voting on the issue. We helped 16 states pass resolutions in support of the constitutional amendment. We have put this issue on the ballot in 200 communities. And we haven’t lost yet. We have won in San Francisco, in Boston, in Madison, Wis. You know where else we have won? Utah, Texas, rural Wisconsin. GR: Oftentimes, constitutional amendments follow on big events in American history that change the political conversation in dramatic ways. Is there an event that you can imagine that would push this kind of thing through that hasn’t happened yet? DC: I think it has already happened. It’s called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. We already knew that things were bad in this country. There were billions of dollars being spent, but the floodgates have been opened by Citizens United v. FEC. They pushed it even further with McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. GR: Let’s say that you are successful in getting this amendment passed. How then will change occur? Will the states and the Congress have to pass legislation that limits corporate money in politics, when it seems to be helping them stay in office? DC: Remember that it is not going to be like one day we don’t have the amendment the next day we do, it’s not like turning on a light switch and a dark room lights up, because amending the Constitution requires a powerful shift in the body politic. It means not only has two-thirds of Congress agreed to propose it, it means that three-quarters of the state legislatures have agreed to ratify it. You realize the substantive shift that that means. You are going to already see local and state and federal legislation that is being drafted.