The Corporate Weaponization of Government

“Abolishing corporate constitutional rights,” writes Coleridge, “shifts back from the judicial to the legislative arena the public ability to define corporate actions to ensure that the health, safety, and welfare of people, communities and the natural world are prioritized.” (Photo: Sean Gladwell / iStock via Getty Images)

Abolishing all corporate constitutional rights by enacting the We the People Amendment (HJR48), soon to be introduced again by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, is the only strategy to make corporations authentically democratically accountable.

GREG COLERIDGE

Feb 15, 2023 Common Dreams

A subcommittee of the full House Judiciary Committee held a hearing last week on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government.” Two panels discussed the “politicization of the FBI and DOJ and attacks on American civil liberties.” It rehashed old grievances about how Trump and others were treated by the two agencies over the last few years.

If exposing and ending “weaponization of the government” is the target, then the Judiciary Committee should take aim at the single biggest culprit: corporations. This investigation would be enlightening since the corporate “weaponization” or hijacking of the government has been so blatant, widespread and persistent for more than a century.

Most corporations in the U.S. were originally chartered or licenced at the state level by legislatures one-at-a-time. Corporate charters stipulated specific conditions to ensure that corporations served the common good. Charters were routinely revoked when corporations acted “ultra vires,” that is. beyond their defined authority. None of those conditions included bestowing inherent rights to corporations to dominate virtually every aspect of society and government as they do today.

Corporations have amassed enormous political and economic power by escaping state legislative authority and public accountability by “weaponizing” four sectors of government.

1. Corporations “weaponize” states against one another.

Corporate agents moved corporate charters from states that limited corporate independence to states with corporate friendly laws, thanks to the corruption of state legislators. Originally that was New Jersey. Today it’s Delaware, where over 60 percent of Fortune 500 firms are incorporated.

2. Corporations “weaponize” legislatures.

Corporate agents sought federal laws to preempt state laws and state laws to preempt local laws limiting corporate powers. The federal Sherman Antitrust Act, for example, was a tepid federal response to strong laws enacted in over 20 states to prevent corporate monopolies and, in some cases, calls for public ownership. The pro-corporate Senator John Sherman warned that Congress “must heed [the public’s] appeal or be ready for the socialist, the communist, and the nihilist.” Sherman is still used to preempt state laws. Meanwhile, local laws protecting residents from guns, fracking, minimum wage and many other local concerns passed by municipal councils have been preempted by state laws.

3. Corporations “weaponize” regulatory agencies.

Corporations supported the creation of “regulatory agencies” as many states sought public ownership over several types of companies – including utilities and transportation. These agencies regulated vs prohibited harms and insulated companies from direct legislative oversight and public pressure and mobilization. Moreover, companies advocate for the appointment by executives (i.e. Presidents and Governors) of corporate-friendly regulators.

4. Corporations “weaponize” the courts.

The ultimate escape of public control over corporations was granting “constitutional rights” to corporations. Though there’s no mention of corporate entities in the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court proclaimed over the course of a century that a corporation is a person with First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment protections – rights that go well beyond corporate First Amendment free speech “rights” to contribute money in elections. This makes public accountability impossible over corporate entities. Corporate constitutional rights are the impenetrable shield against efforts to assert human rights and the right to a livable world over never-intended “corporate rights.”

Abolishing all corporate constitutional rights by enacting the We the People Amendment (HJR48), soon to be introduced again by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, is the only strategy to make corporations authentically democratically accountable.

This requires building a people’s movement. Abolishing corporate constitutional rights shifts back from the judicial to the legislative arena the public ability to define corporate actions to ensure that the health, safety and welfare of people, communities and the natural world are prioritized. Ending all the other ways corporations have “weaponized government” to consolidate political and economic power becomes much easier once corporations are disarmed of all constitutional rights.

If Congress isn’t going to expose the corporate “weaponization of government,” then it’s up to us to not only do so, but to end it.

GREG COLERIDGE

Greg Coleridge is Co-Director of Move to Amend and former Director of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee.

Full Bio >

Ohio Advocate Podcast

May 29th, 2022 Show

The Ohio Advocate

Matt and Justin give an update on the redistricting battle in Ohio, and discuss Starbucks unionization efforts, police surveillance networks, the fight to get marijuana legalization on the ballot this year, and issues with Youngstown’s water meters.

Kathleen Caffrey interviews Greg Coleridge from Move to Amend Ohio about their efforts to reduce the effect of money in politics, and their current fight to revoke FirstEnergy’s corporate charter.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/may-29th-2022-show/id1615298248?i=1000564411534

Greg Coleridge: Cultivating Peace with Justice in a Militarized World

May 20, 2022 Veteran activist Greg Coleridge speaks at Cleveland Peace Action’s 2022 Annual Meeting, on the challenges and opportunities for change in an interconnected world. A lively Q&A follows Greg’s talk, including ideas on Inspiring and sustaining our activist energies.

They Don’t Want You Looking Into This

Russell Brand comments on my Common Dreams article, War Is (Still) A Racket: Corporate Power and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Localizing Monetary Reform

Alliance for Just Money | June 16, 2021

https://www.monetaryalliance.org/localizing-monetary-reform/

By Greg Coleridge and Steven Norris

Organizing for any solution to a national problem presents multiple challenges, among them is to make the proposed solution relevant locally to people’s lives.

Bigger problems require proportionally bigger solutions, but those solutions can be difficult for individuals to relate to unless there are tangible ways presented to both understand the problem and solution and to take actions to bring change. 

Educating on our destructive monetary system and proposing ways to democratize it to benefit people, places and the planet certainly falls into this category of a big problem needing a big solution. But how to localize it? 

There are multiple strategies available to monetary reformers. One strategy is to study an approach of Move to Amend (MTA), a national group addressing the problems of big money corrupting elections and corporations increasingly dominating our lives by organizing to pass a Constitutional Amendment that would abolish the legal doctrines of “political money equals free speech” and corporate constitutional rights (i.e. “corporate personhood” for shorthand). 

Like authentic monetary reform, ending “money as speech” and corporate rule via a Constitutional Amendment is a massive national solution. It’s a challenge to connect the proposal to local individuals and public officials. It’s also tough to find local educational and organizing “hooks” to get people to not only think and talk about it, but to take meaningful action. 

Local ballot initiatives

MTA organizers in Ohio came up with the idea of organizing legal initiative petition campaigns to place on local ballots. Voters were asked whether they support Congress passing the proposed Amendment affirming that corporations do not have constitutional rights and money is not free speech, in the spirit of the national MTA We the People Amendment.

Anyone who’s ever been involved in local initiative petition campaigns knows that they are terrific ways to educate, organize and develop local leadership. Gathering signatures involved training petitioners, who were grounded in talking points and in how to approach individuals.  Soliciting signatures educated potential voters. Once the campaigns were successful in gaining ballot access, the campaign flips to educate the entire community to vote in favor of the initiative — which, in many cases, gained media attention and invitations to speak at voter education forums. 

While people-driven initiative campaigns at the local level on all kinds of issues are common, an additional feature of the Move to Amend initiatives was very unique in the 12 Ohio communities where the initiatives were enacted and became law.

That feature was the legal mandate that the local government (i.e. city or village) sponsor, publicize and have representatives at an annual or biennial public hearing where residents and, in some instances, others could testify on the impact of money in politics and corporate rule on their lives, community, state, nation or world. While details varied on several features, all 12 communities have been holding these public hearings — some since 2012. 

The public hearings have been significant in keeping the problems of money in elections and corporate rule, as well as the We the People Amendment, alive beyond the original local ballot campaign in several ways:

First, the public hearings provide an opportunity for local MTA organizers to recruit representatives from other groups working on solutions to problems that are thwarted by money spent in elections by special interests and corporate constitutional rights. This helps those representatives, whether physically in person or virtually together at the hearing, see the connections between their concerns and the need to pass the We the People Amendment.

Second, the public hearings are a means to continually educate local MTA supporters and expose the larger community to both the problems and the solution promoted by MTA. The exposure is all the more effective if the hearings are publicized in the media beforehand and/or reported on afterwards.

Third, the hearings are a chance to directly educate local public officials who attend the hearings, who are both testified to and invited to testify themselves. After all, the public policy influence of money in elections and the preemption of local laws by corporate entities legislatively and in the courts are increasing realities to local elected officials. Besides, it’s a fact that some local public officials become state officials and some of those state officials become our U.S. Senators and Representatives — building a relationship with them now increases the chances they’ll become champions to our cause later. 

One more provision of the dozen MTA-driven ballot initiatives is worth noting. Following each public hearing, the municipality is required to summarize the testimony, send it to the appropriate federal and state elected officials and remind them that voters in their communities want the We the People Amendment to be passed. Sometimes, the summary is coupled with written copies of all the testimony presented. When the municipality hasn’t included the written testimony, local MTA organizers have sent it themselves to the relevant public officials. 

At a recent Cleveland Move to Amend public hearing, AFJM members John Howell, Steve Norris and Greg Coleridge (who’s also National Outreach Director for Move to Amend) spoke. You can view the public hearing held on Zoom this year here with the AFJM members speaking at 12:01, 50:41 and 62:59 respectively.

This is certainly not the only strategy to make a national call for monetary reform locally relevant. But it is one way to educate the community and public officials, outreach to local groups, develop local leadership grounded in the issue, recruit new supporters and attract media attention. Oh, and by the way, it also sends a recurring message to elected officials that the people of the community en masse support authentic fundamental change.

Connecting monetary reform to corporate constitutional rights

There’s a vicious symbiotic relationship between current laws on monetary policies and money in politics and corporate power. Economic power almost always translates into political power. 

Monetary policies that continue to enrich banking corporations that perpetually profit from the creation of money as debt and through subsidies and, when needed, bailouts, allow these financial entities to flex their political muscle through political campaign contributions (i.e. what some call “legalized bribery”).

Senator Dick Durbin stated in a moment of candor in 2009: “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” The Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) remains “far and away the largest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties”. This condition is a reflection of corporations both hijacking First Amendment “free speech” rights, which were intended exclusively for human beings, and the constitutional doctrine that “political money is free speech,” instead of what money actually is — property. 

The power of the financial industry is also a function in what they can shield — namely their internal financial affairs — from public scrutiny. Like many business corporations, their defense from being transparent hinges on the corporate hijacking of Fourth Amendment Constitutional privacy rights, which again were rights originally intended solely for human beings. This has emboldened in the case of banking entities to claim without independent verification the need for greater financial subsidies and other support lest these increasingly “too big to fail” institutions, in fact, fail and risk pulling the entire economy into an abyss. Yet another instance of their increased power to influence public policies.

It should be noted that original public charters creating banks in many states mandated that the bank’s books be open to periodic public inspection. This ensured that banking corporations remained publicly accountable and subordinate in power to the public. 

These current realities have created an outsized economic and political influence of financial corporations. In such a legal and political environment in which the fundamental constitutional ground rules are rigged to benefit the very rich and business corporations, there’s little chance of passage of monetary reform or, frankly, any solution that addresses fundamental change and/or reduces corporate power. 

It also, quite frankly, makes it enormously difficult to pass the We the People Amendment. That’s why it’s essential that AFJM continues to work on passing one or more laws creating authentic monetary change and other organizations working on their respective agendas to change laws or regulations creating more justice in all their forms. Yet, it’s critical to understand the limitation of working exclusively to improve any condition legally if constitutionally the rules are stacked against us, rules that can and have time and again preempted democratically passed laws benefiting workers, consumers, the environment and the natural world. 

It’s why AFJM and other groups need to devote some energy to changing the constitutional ground rules — to create a level political playing field where We the People can actually mean all the people working to pass authentic monetary change and create other laws and regulations to the benefit of all people and all living things.

FirstEnergy should be put out of business

July 3, 2021

[click on article to enlargen]

FirstEnergy should be put out of business
Columbus Dispatch, July 3, 2021
USA Today Network
https://createrealdemocracy.wordpress.com/2021/07/07/first-energy-should-be-put-out-of-business/

It was long overdue that former speaker Larry Householder was expelled from the Ohio House following his indictment on charges he orchestrating the $60 million nuclear power bribery scheme.

The next step is for the House and the entire legislature to “expel” FirstEnergy corporation, FirstEnergy Service Company and Energy Harbor (formerly known as FirstEnergy Solutions) for their alleged roles in the bribery scheme.

This also goes for FirstEnergy for wielding political influence over decades in the Statehouse and across Ohio at the expense of consumers, the environment and democracy through legalized bribery – otherwise known as political campaign contributions.

Specifically, the corporate charters of one or more of the “First Energies” should be revoked, meaning these companies should be dissolved.

Corporate charters, or licenses, are issued by the state to allow incorporated entities to conduct business. They were originally issued one at a time by our state legislature with specific conditions to ensure these public legal creations would be publicly accountable. Corporate entities possessed only privileges, not rights.

The Ohio Legislature and Ohio Supreme Court in scores of instances dissolved corporations that acted “ultra virus” – or beyond the authority of their charter’s terms.

Electricity can be supplied publicly, as in many states, or by cooperatives rather than private business corporations.

FirstEnergy has lost its public privilege to exist.

Failure to prevent FirstEnergy from continuing operations ignores former Cleveland Mayor Tom Johnson who a century ago warned against monopolies that provide public services, “because if you do not own them they in turn will own you. They will rule your politics, corrupt your institutions and finally destroy your liberties.”

Of course, such an effort to protect the public from profound corporate abuses will be met with the claim that corporations have “constitutional rights.”

But corporations aren’t mentioned in the Constitution – corporate constitutional rights are Supreme Court inventions. The corporate hijacking of the First, Fourth, Fifth, and 14th Amendments, intended solely for human beings but undemocratically applied to corporations, have created massive harm to people, places and the planet.

We have been culturally conditioned to believe that we have no alternative. Corporations have and need basic statutory rights, which are created by legislatures. Their constitutional rights, however, must be abolished.

Enacting the We the People Amendment would shift the power to make corporate entities publicly accountable back from the judicial to the legislative arena – and by extension to the public.

We must democratically push back against the privatization/corporatization of public assets and services.

This includes the proposed “asset recycling” (i.e. the sale or lease of public assets to the private sector for new investments) contained in the proposed federal bipartisan infrastructure plan.

People must be in charge of our legal creations to make decisions affecting our lives. The time has still not arrived when the created is greater than the creator.

Greg Coleridge of Cleveland Heights is Outreach director of the national Move to Amend campaign. The organization aims to end so-called corporate personhood. Coleridge is author or “Citizens over Corporations: A Brief History of Democracy in Ohio and Challenges to Freedom in the Future.”

Testimony at Chagrin Falls Democracy Day

CHAGRIN FALLS DEMOCRACY DAY PUBLIC HEARING

Testimony of Greg Coleridge, Outreach Director, Move to Amend

March 4, 2021

Happy Democracy Day!

There is a growing movement in this country to create authentic democracy — for the very first time. The U.S. Constitution prevented all but white, male, property-owners from having inalienable rights. Women, people of color, indentured servants and others organized themselves into groups and powerful movements to change laws and pass Constitutional Amendments to gain basic rights. Those efforts continue. 

At the same time, there’s been and continues to be a parallel track by the super rich and corporate entities to create and expand their power and rights. Their goal is not just to acquire rights to protect themselves, but to have fundamental power over the rest of us and our communities — to govern, to rule,

The super rich and corporate entities have hijacked Constitutional Amendments. Political money has been defined by the Supreme Court as First Amendment-protected free speech. Many of the Bill of Rights and 14th Amendment, intended to apply solely to human persons, have been expanded to apply to corporate entities

The results have been devastating to people, places, the planet…and to democracy. 

The public opposes tax breaks for the super rich, bank bailouts and subsidies for fossil fuel corporations while at same time supports reasonable gun control, sustainable energy, healthy food, affordable and comprehensive health care, better education, living wages and sweeping pandemic relief that helps people and provides Paycheck Protection Program funding exclusively to small businesses, not mega corporations. Yet, political influence by large corporations prevents these and many other popular programs from being enacted. The source of this corporate political influence was the Supreme Court invention of so-called First Amendment corporate free speech rights to spend or invest money in elections.

But the political influence of corporations transcends money in politics. 

Communities and states have sought unsuccessfully to demand that harmful ingredients or chemicals, like Monsanto’s glyphosate, be labeled on commercial packaging in the name of food safety. Courts have said such laws violate a corporation’s First Amendment right not to speak. 

States have created many regulations to protect workers, the environment and consumers requiring surprise inspection of businesses. Such inspections have been overturned in court as violations of a corporation’s Fourth Amendment search and seizure rights.

There’s a movement to protect the environment from cataclysmic climate destruction by leaving oil and coal in the ground. But the right to protect the planet if such laws were passed could be challenged, as similar efforts have in the past, in court as a violation of corporate Fifth Amendment taking rights — meaning corporations would have to be compensated for tens of trillions of dollars of lost corporate profits. 

Local communities, just like Chagrin Falls, that prides itself on small businesses are unable to provide special benefits that are not equally offered to out-of-town chain stores. To do so would be, as has been decided multiple times in court, unconstitutionally “discriminatory” against chain stores under the Fourteenth Amendment (which was enacted to protect freed slaves) — yet another amendment corporations have hijacked to expand their rights at the expense of the rights of people and communities.

Corporations don’t need constitutional rights to conduct business. Laws passed by legislative bodies created all the tools they need.

We will never, ever have authentic political democracy unless we end the twin constitutional doctrines of political money equaling free speech and corporate rights. Money is property, not speech. Only people are persons, not artificial legal entities like corporate entities. 

Chagrin Falls voters understood this when voting 2:1 in 2014 for a ballot initiative supporting these changes — one of 705 communities that have taken a stand nationally along with more than 600 organizations in support of Move to Amend’s We the People Amendment. 

Thanks to Chagrin Falls voters for being part of this broadening and deepening democracy movement. 

Thank you.

Testimony at Brecksville “Democracy Day” public hearing

BRECKSVILLE “DEMOCRACY DAY” TESTIMONY

February 23, 2021

Greg Coleridge | Outreach Director, National Move to Amend Coalition

Happy Democracy Day!

Democracy is founded on the premise that the People are the source of all power.

‘We the People’ created corporations as tools to serve us, not themselves. As sovereigns we can regulate and restrict corporations as we see fit. The Supreme Court’s invention of constitutional rights for corporations has turned this fundamental principle on its head.

For the first century-plus of our history, corporations were strictly controlled and had no constitutional rights. Corporations couldn’t even exist unless state legislation—called charters—created them.

Statutes created corporations to give them the powers needed to conduct business for the peoples’ benefit. Logic dictates that corporations have only those rights granted them by statute. Statutes cannot create constitutional rights.

Corporations do not need constitutional rights to conduct business. Logically, an entity created to serve people should not have the same constitutional rights as those people it is supposed to serve.

Corporations aren’t mentioned in the Constitution. So the framers didn’t think they should have constitutional rights. But, starting with the 1819 Dartmouth case, the Supreme Court inserted corporations into the Constitution and progressively invented rights for corporations, anointing them with many of the same constitutional rights as natural persons like you and me.

Logic, history or law does not support the corporate constitutional rights doctrine created by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has never explained why artificial entities like corporations should have the same constitutional rights as natural persons when corporations do not need constitutional rights to do business and have special advantages that individual persons do not have, e.g. perpetual life and limited liability.

This court-invented constitutional doctrine has allowed corporations to abuse and harm the human beings they are supposed to serve. In addition to using their so-called free speech rights under the First Amendment to buy politicians, corporations have used other constitutional rights such as the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to undemocratically impose pollution, water contamination, environmental destruction, harm to workers and other assaults on unwilling local communities and individuals.

Increasingly, state legislatures and even municipal governments – such as Mayors and City Councils – have seen their police powers to protect the health, safety and welfare of their residents erode as corporate entities have successfully overturned locally passed ordinances on any number of consumer, economic, worker or environmental concerns by preemption or by going to court claiming that those laws “discriminate” under the 14^th Amendment or are an infringement of trade under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.

Hundreds of such laws have been invalidated across the country over decades, creating a chilling effect on local officials since increasingly corporate rights trump local rights. Given this trend, one might reasonably ask why local governments should even exist if their only purpose may at some point be limited to determine stop sign placements, floral arrangements in planters on main street or the date of next summer’s apple festival. Decisions of real importance are increasingly hijacked. Increasing corporate constitutional rights decreases the need and taxpayer expense for mayors, councilpersons and local governments everywhere – including in Brecksville. The authority of local public officials – not to mention we the People in general — are under fundamental assault.

This is why passage of a 28^th Constitutional Amendment, the We the People Amendment (HJR 48), is so important, which will end all never-intended, inalienable constitutional rights for corporate entities (corporate personhood) and the equally bizarre constitutional doctrine that political money in elections is equal to free speech —both doctrines of which were expanded in the 2010 Citizens United decision

We wouldn’t be here this evening if not for the tireless efforts of Brecksville residents to place the issue of ending big money in politics and corporate rule on the ballot in 2012 and to create this annual public hearing — as well as for Brecksville voters to pass this initiative – one of 705 communities across the country that have take a stand.

Thank you Brecksville citizens for being part of this growing transparitsan democracy movement.

End Corporate Rule. Legalize Democracy. Move to Amend.

January 1, 2021 TagsVolume 265 | No. 8 CategoriesThe Alleged News® by The Alleged Editor

Groups Call for More Democratic Constitution on Anniversary of Bill of Rights Ratification

On the anniversary of the 1791 ratification of the Bill of Rights, two pro-democracy human rights groups, Democracy Unlimited and Move to Amend, are calling for mass public participation to envision a more just and democratic U.S. Constitution. Toward a People’s Constitution is a website [http://www.PeoplesConstitution.US] launched last week to provide an inclusive and participatory arena for a respectful, vigorous and strategic discussion to create an authentic people’s constitution.

The effort is based on the growing realization that many of the current major crises our nation is facing—inadequacy of providing basic human needs, the contested 2020 election, corporate rule, climate and ecological destruction, declining public trust in government, growing illegitimacy of the Supreme Court and lack of basic rights still for women, people of color, the LGTBQ community and others—all are rooted in a flawed Constitution and multiple judicial decisions.

“It’s time for people to engage with one another to envision a constitution that goes way beyond the original Bill of Rights, the first 10 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution affirming basic political and religious rights to individuals in the new United States of America, and beyond the other 17 Amendments added since,” stated Jessica Munger, Program Director of Move to Amend. “A more just and democratic constitution must go even farther than the call of President Roosevelt for a Second Bill of Rights at the end of WW II to provide the rights to housing, income, food, health care and other basic human needs to also include rights to authentic political, racial and gender equality and rights that protect our natural world from ecological collapse,” said Munger.

Toward a People’s Constitution seeks to dispel the dominant cultural mindset that the Constitution is comparable to a sacred text and considered, for the most part, indisputable and beyond the right of We the People to seriously examine.

The project will include ongoing speakers and panels, share information from past and present efforts in the U.S. and around the world on constitutional renewal, and invite and engage participants to share and discuss ideas and proposals for ways to make the Constitution more relevant, to democratically, justly and sustainably address the systemic problems of our nation and world.

The project will also build upon the several People’s Movement Assemblies organized by participants of both sponsoring groups over the years, including a recent Peoples Movement Assembly where more than 100 people collectively discussed and envisioned what a currently relevant constitution might contain.

This process is open to all individuals and organizational representatives who feel that self-governing people should take charge of their conditions. For more information and to join this process, go to http://www.PeoplesConstitution.US.

Greg Coleridge (he/him), Outreach Director, Move to Amend Coalition, MoveToAmend.org; (216) 255-2184 (cell – in Ohio); (916) 318-8040 (office – in Sacramento, Calif.)

End Corporate Rule. Legalize Democracy. Move to Amend.

[Note: We would only add this—while this newspaper enjoys, and will never relinquish, its freedom to indulge in friviloty and foolishness, at heart we are deadly serious; never more so than on this topic. Careful readers may have noted recently a tendency of ours to explore a topic, excoriate its inherent idiocy, then conclude by noting that such a result is inevitable under the terms of our Constitution. It is heartening to see that someone is tackling this taboo topic head-on. – The Ed.]

End Corporate Rule. Legalize Democracy. Move to Amend.

Toledo “Democracy Day” Testimony

October 21, 2020

Greg Coleridge | Outreach Director, National Move to Amend Coalition

Happy Democracy Day!

We wouldn’t be here this afternoon if not for the tireless efforts of Toledo and other nearby residents to place the issue of ending big money in politics and corporate rule on the ballot and to create this annual public hearing — as well as for Toledo voters to pass this initiative.

Much of today’s testimony focuses on the many harms of the legalization of big money spent/invested in elections by the super rich and corporate entities claiming First Amendment free speech rights to spend or invest money in elections.  This includes harms to authentic self governance and to our environment here in Ohio from the legalized bribery, if not actual bribery, of those connected to First Energy corporation, if not the polluting corporation itself, in influencing public policy away from renewable energy to bailing out their polluting and dangerous fossil fuel and nuclear plants.

But we should not ignore other disasters to people, communities and the planet caused by other court-invented constitutonal rights of corporations, which must be included when we talk about ending all corporate constitutional rights.

A few examples

States that have tried to compel the listing of bovine growth hormones on products or list certain chemicals that they feel are cancer causing have been rejected by courts as violations of corporate First Amendment rights “not to speak.”

Public regulatory agencies which have tried to protect the health, safety and welfare of workers, consumers and the environment through inspections of corporate factories and other facilities have been rejected by courts as violations of corporate Fourth Amendment “search and seizure” rights.

Public regulatory agencies that have passed laws protecting the public from corporate mining and other plundering of the land without compensation have been rejected by courts as violations of corporate Fifth Amendment “takings” rights.

Just as a reminder, the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments are part of the Bill of Rights — meant to apply exclusively to human persons. Corporations aren’t mentioned in the Constitution.

Finally, among others, are efforts by local communities which value local businesses. Communities and states that have tried to give preferential treatment to local businesses over chain stores have been overruled by courts as violations of corporate Fourteenth Amendment “equal protection” rights — as discriminatory. You may recall that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to apply exclusively to freed black slaves.

These examples merely summarize the breadth and depth of the corporate hijacking of authentic self-governance for more than a century — way beyond, way beyond mere corporate political First Amendment free speech rights.

I invite you to learn more about the full extent of corporate constitutional rights at https://www.movetoamend.org/corporate-constitutional-rights

That’s why enacting the We the People Amendment (HJR 48), co-sponsored by Rep. Marcy Kaptur, is so important. It would end both the constitutional doctrines that money spent in elections is free speech and that corporate entities possess unalienable constitutional rights.

I invite Toledo Councilpersons to encourage colleagues in other communities, at the very least, to pass a resolution calling on Congress to enact the We the People Amendment to join the 680 other communities, including 25 in Ohio, that have already taken action, if not to place a measure directly on the ballot for local voter consideration.

Once again, Happy Democracy Day.

Thank you.