Just prior to my visit, the Concord Monitor published this opinion piece:
My Turn: N.H. Republicans want limits on political spending
By JOHN PUDNER
https://www.concordmonitor.com/Limiting-power-of-special-interests-25111255
I felt that Pudner did not accurately summarize the content of a majority of the municipal actions. Below is an unpublished submitted letter to the editor. Maybe it was because I was promoting the Concord program.
Oh well.
As a result, the mischaracterization will be believed as fact by those who read his piece. Omission (excluding facts) is just as harmful to the truth as commission (lying).
There is quite of bit of steering going on across the country to reframe town hall meeting actions, council resolutions and ballot initiatives that originally called for ending corporate personhood along with getting big money out of elections to ignore or downplay corporate personhood. Pudner’s piece, sadly, is just one example of this trend.
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To the Editor,
John Pudner presents a compelling case in his April 26 OpEd for the state legislature to pass a bill calling for a Constitutional Amendment to limit political spending and restricting political districts without partisan bias.
The problem is that his evidence at best cherry picks and at worst distorts historical reality.
While true that 82 New Hampshire municipalities have called in recent years for a constitutional amendment concerning political money in elections, it’s incorrect to portray at least a majority of those actions as exclusively addressing money in politics. By my count, 49 of the 82 municipal actions as summarized at http://united4thepeople.org/state-local/ declared that the very same constitutional amendment should also include that constitutional rights apply exclusively to people, not corporations, or similar wording to the effect that corporate constitutional rights (“corporate personhood” for short) should be abolished.
This includes the town of Bradford and several others referenced in Mr. Pudner’s opinion piece.
Many citizens of New Hampshire understand that the hijacking of our democracy/sovereignty transcends political elections to include the hijacking of Constitutional Amendments (including the 1st, 4th, 5th and 14th) and other provisions of our Constitution by corporate entities to overturn democratically enacted laws passed by municipalities and states over decades that protect people, places and the planet.
That’s why a once-generational Constitutional Amendment must address not only money in elections, but also corporate personhood.
I’ll present details of this proposal this Saturday, May 4 at 1 pm at Open Democracy, 4 Park St., in Concord.
Respectfully,
Greg Coleridge
Outreach Director, Move to Amend Coalition
http://MoveToAmend.org
(216) 255-2184 (cell – in Ohio)
(916) 318-8040 (office – in Sacramento, CA)
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