So many problems we face today are denied resolution as long as Citizens United stands, and corporate money is allowed to influence the outcome of elections.

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Moral Low Ground| Leave a comment

by Brett Wilkins

“Of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.”

It’s been one year since the US Supreme Court decidedthat corporations are people and money is free speech. The disastrous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission rulingdestroyed over a century of restrictions on corporate influence of our nation’s electoral process, accelerating the already alarming corporate takeover of American politics. The consequences of Citizens United were almost immediately felt in the form of a $290,000,000 special interest spending orgy in the 2010 midterm elections. Much of this money represented foreign corporate interests, and it played a significant role in the conservative resurgence that saw Republicans re-gain control of the House of Representatives.

Justice John Paul Stevens’ stirring dissenting opinion argued that “the Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation. It will undoubtedly cripple the ability of ordinary citizens, Congress, and the states to adopt even limited measures to protect against corporate domination of the electoral process.” Stevens also wrote: “Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.”

Senator Lyons.

In that spirit, Vermont state senator Virginia Lyons has introduced an anti-corporate personhood resolution in the state legislature. JRS 11 is a “joint resolution urging the United States Congress to propose an amendment to the United States Constitution for the states’ consideration which provides that corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States or any of its jurisdictional subdivisions.” 

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