Opinion/Streetalk

This ModeRn WoRLd by tom tomorrow

Fix Citizens United What’s your summer reading?

The fact that the presidential election has already begun in earnest is a little sick. The Iowa caucuses aren’t until February of next year. The long lead up, though, presents opportunities for regular people—lots of us—to actually have an impact on some of the issues that will define candidates and our country’s future.

There is one issue, though, that we think the vast majority of citizens feel one way, while Congress— despite its responsibility to achieve the will of the American people—has shown a willingness to subvert that will and American democracy. We wrote about it tangentially last week in our story “Caucus tactics,” which outlined the way casinos will use their money to influence the 2016 elections.

The issue we’re talking about is the decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court back in 2010 called Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission. That’s the case in which the court held that the government could not restrict election expenditures by corporations, essentially saying that money is speech, and therefore protected by the First Amendment. (We actually agree that money is speech. That’s not our problem with the decision.) This is also the case where the Court bestowed corporations with “personhood,” with many of the same rights as human beings.

Members of Congress have sat on their hands these five years past claiming the only way to overcome this heinous bench legislation is with a constitutional amendment—an almost impossible hurdle. It’s a “straw man” argument, and it’s made because members of Congress are the primary beneficiaries of the hundreds of millions of dollars that have poured into elections from corporations.

But corporations are not people. For one, they are immortal, and giving them the ability to influence elections forever undermines the natural growth of a democracy. For example, the cultural view of slavery changed over the course of a single human lifetime in this country. Secondly, corporations often have more money than almost any individual could ever hope to attain. The disgusting rule enables America to become the actual oligarchy-by-corporation Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson wrote against, instead of just the de facto oligarchy that can be overcome by sustained grassroots efforts.

But the Supreme Court has specifically enabled Congress to make laws to prevent certain types of speech from undermining the law, and the way to attack Citizens United is not to attempt to undermine the First Amendment aspect of money being speech, but instead to make it clear in law that corporations are not people, and as non-persons, they have no legal expectations of First Amendment rights.

Both the major parties have proponents of the idea of breaking the hold that corporate money has taken on American elections, politicians and government. We must ask candidates how they expect to change the Supreme Court’s anti-democratic ruling, and then vote with this issue at the top of our minds. Until corporate influence can be removed from our democratic process, our country will continue to stumble on issues like climate change, health care and financial regulation. Ω

Asked at Sundance Books, 121 California Ave.

Bernice Ferrall

Retiree I’m going to read To Kill A Mockingbird and Larry McMurtry’s The Last Kind Words Saloon. I haven’t read one of his books for a long time.

Darrin Freeman

Counselor Dempsey in Nevada. I’m a boxing historian. I used to fight professionally myself.

Jeff Welsh

Labor representative My summer reading at the moment is mostly international economics. I am knee-deep in reviews of international financial matters. A lot of things coming out about the Greek debt burden, that kind of thing. I’m usually a novel person, but all non-fiction at the moment.

Dan Earl

Bookseller I’m going to read Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, a sci-fi book. I read a couple of his others, and they are wonderful. There’s some good, hard science in there, and they’re intriguing story lines as well.

Rebecca Shadowitz

Math tutor I’m reading Americanah [by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]. … It’s about a Nigerian woman who was raped in Nigeria, moved to America, and then moved back.