Teach-in on Corporate Personhood in Los Angeles

On its first anniversary, learn about the Supreme Court's disastrous Citizens United decision at this teach-in. It'll be held Saturday, January 22nd, from 1-3pm at The Peace Center, 8124 W. 3rd Street in Los Angeles. Sponsored by WILPF-Los Angeles (Women's International League for Peace & Freedom) and www.MoveToAmend.org. Free! Bring snacks to share, and for more info, contact Ann Powers at 323-255-1279

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Corporate Personhood, a History

What's corporate personhood? If corporations aren't mentioned in the Constitution, why do they have constitutional rights today? How does this affect city or county or state level democratically-enacted ordinances to protect public health, the environment, environmental justice, and other common goods? Here's part one of a two-part video series that answers your questions--from a presentation by Molly Morgan and Jan Edwards of WILPF.

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Map spotlights local resolutions against corporate personhood

Several organizations have passed or are currently working on anti-corporate personhood resolutions, some as part of local ordinances to protect water or other parts of the ecosystem or public health, others in support of a constitutional amendment limiting corporate access to personhood rights.

Find out where actions have been taken by checking out this map on the Move to Amend website. Thanks to Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County staffers for putting the info together.

Not on the map yet, but coming soon, are AfD-chapter sponsored resolutions in Mendocino and Monterey, California.

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Most Valuable Idea of 2010: Amend the Constitution

John Nichols at The Nation has posted a "Progressive Honor Roll" of the best ideas, activists and legislators of the year. His pick for Best Idea: amending the constitution to dismantle the rights granted to corporations through the Citizens United decision.

Read the full list online here.

Conservatives know the power of proposing constitutional amendments. Even when they don't succeed, amendment campaigns educate people about issues and get them engaged at the local, state and national levels. In recent years progressives have been cautious about the Constitution. But after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision freed corporations to use their immense resources to buy elections, two groups responded with aggressive challenges to the notion that businesses should enjoy the same rights as citizens. Free Speech for People, a campaign sponsored by Public Citizen, US PIRG, Voter Action, the Center for Corporate Policy and American Independent Business Alliance, seeks to counter the Court's move with "a constitutional amendment of our own that puts people ahead of corporations." (Representative Donna Edwards has introduced an amendment, with backing from outgoing Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers.) Another group, Move to Amend (with support from Progressive Democrats of America, the National Lawyers Guild and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, among others), proposes a broader "multi-year movement to amend the Constitution" that would use state legislative resolutions to force Congressional action on "democracy amendments" or schedule a constitutional convention. These campaigns are capturing the imaginations of activists. By year's end, Move to Amend had almost 100,000 signers.

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Humboldt Co. CA group honored for work on election transparency

Humboldt County Election Transparency Project pioneers Mitch Trachtenberg and Kevin Collins have been given the Award for Excellent Innovations in the Field of Election Transparency and Integrity from the Grace Institute for Election Integrity. The county registrar of voters, Carolyn Crnich, and two officials from neighboring Yolo County were also honored.

The Transparency Project passes every ballot cast in an election through an optical scanner after it's officially counted. Images of the ballots are then placed online along with open-source software created by Trachtenberg that allows viewers to sort and count the ballots as they see fit. Thanks to the project, election officials noticed a discrepancy in Humboldt County's vote count in the November 2008 election and ultimately discovered that almost 200 ballots disappeared from the county's final vote tally. The discovery ultimately led to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen's withdrawing the state's approval of the Premier Elections Solution system used during the election.

More info here!

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Robert Reich: Why the Obama Tax Deal Confirms the Republican Worldview

Reich is right on the money when he writes that power and privilege at the top--not elected officials but the power of the people who fund their campaigns--make it impossible to write tax and social policy that benefits the nation as a whole. But political bribery is a bipartisan problem. It's a rare industry that doesn't drop cash on both sides of the aisle, which is why we need to clean up the system, not just switch the players.

by Robert Reich. Posted June 30 on The Huffington Post

Apart from its extraordinary cost and regressive tilt, the tax deal negotiated between the president and the Republicans has another fatal flaw.

It confirms the Republican worldview.

Americans want to know what happened to the economy and how to fix it. At least Republicans have a story--the same one they've been flogging for thirty years. The bad economy is big government's fault and the solution is to shrink government.

Here's the real story. For three decades, an increasing share of the benefits of economic growth have gone to the top 1 percent. Thirty years ago, the top got 9 percent of total income. Now they take in almost a quarter. Meanwhile, the earnings of the typical worker have barely budged.

The vast middle class no longer has the purchasing power to keep the economy going. (The rich spend a much lower portion of their incomes.) The crisis was averted before now only because middle-class families found ways to keep spending more than they took in--by women going into paid work, by working longer hours, and finally by using their homes as collateral to borrow. But when the housing bubble burst, the game was up.

The solution is to reorganize the economy so the benefits of growth are more widely shared. Exempt the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes, and apply payroll taxes to incomes over $250,000. Extend Medicare to all. Extend the Earned Income Tax Credit all the way up through families earning $50,000. Make higher education free to families that now can't afford it. Rehire teachers. Repair and rebuild our infrastructure. Create a new WPA to put the unemployed back to work.

Pay for this by raising marginal income taxes on millionaires (under Eisenhower, the highest marginal rate was 91 percent, and the economy flourished). A millionaire marginal tax of 70 percent would eliminate the nation's future budget deficit. In addition, impose a small tax on all financial transactions (even a tiny one--one half of one percent--would bring in $200 billion a year, enough to rehire every teacher who's been laid off as well as provide universal preschool for all toddlers). Promote unions for low-wage workers.

But here's the obstacle. As income and wealth have risen to the top, so has political power. Money is being used to bribe politicians and fill the airwaves with misleading ads that block all of this.

The midterm elections offered dramatic evidence. NBC news reported shortly after Election Day, for example, that Crossroads GPS, one of the biggest Republican secret-money organizations, got "a substantial portion" of its loot from a group of extremely wealthy Wall Street hedge fund and private equity managers. Why would they sink so much money into the midterms? Because they've been so strongly opposed to a proposal by congressional Democrats to treat the earnings of hedge fund and private equity managers as ordinary income rather than capital gains (subject to only a 15 percent rate).

In other words, the problem isn't big government. It's power and privilege at the top.

So another part of the solution is to limit the impact of big money on politics. This requires, for example, publicly-financed campaigns, disclosure of all sources of political spending, and resurrection of the fairness doctrine for broadcasters.

It's the same power and privilege that got the Bush tax cuts in the first place, and claimed the lion's share of its benefits. The same power and privilege that got the estate tax phased out.

Get it? By agreeing to another round of massive tax cuts for the wealthy, the president confirms the Republican story. Cutting taxes on the rich while freezing discretionary spending (which he's also agreed to do) affirms that the underlying problem is big government, and the solution is to shrink government and expect the extra wealth at the top to trickle down to everyone else.

Obama's new tax compromise is not only bad economics; it's also disastrous from the standpoint of educating the public about what has happened and what needs to happen in the future. It reinforces the Republican story and makes mincemeat out of the truthful one Democrats should be telling.

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"If I Had a Trillion Dollars"

The American Friends Service Committee's program on Education and Advocacy for Iraq and Afghanistan writes:

We've reached the end of the submission phase for the If I Had a Trillion Dollars Youth Video Contest staged by AFSC and The National Priorities Project. The project engaged over 30 groups of youth (13 – 23 years old) from around the country. We received 46 videos identifying how the $1 Trillion spent on the wars could be better spent.

A panel of judges will be considering comments left on our YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/IHTDVideos). So, take a look and comment on the work, and encourage your networks to do the same. Simply forward this message.

Contest winners will go to Washington DC where public events and a congressional briefing will be organized to show the videos.

Background Information and Toolkit for the Contest here!

Thanks for taking a look and helping us spread the word. You will be inspired and impressed.

(Here's just one of the great videos submitted!)

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The only way to fight organized money is with organized people!

Here's an alert from Move to Amend...

The one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision to allow unfettered spending by corporations in our elections is little more than a month away, January 21, 2011. To mark this date, concerned citizens, like you, will take a stand in their communities from coast to coast and oppose corporate personhood and growing corporate power. Move to Amend and our allies will be leading the charge!

Citizens are uniting against the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision! Flesh and blood Americans will take to the streets to demonstrate our support for the rights of human beings and against “corporate constitutional rights.”

Will you join us? Click here to learn about ways you can help take a stand. From rallies and street theater to coalition building and education, there are ways for everyone to take action to oppose how the Court has expanded corporate “rights.”

Click here to get started and please forward a link to this post to your friends and family members who are concerned about rising corporate influence. Ask them to join this grassroots movement to amend the Constitution by signing the Motion to Amend, and ask them to join you for an urgent planning meeting to help mark the anniversary of the Court’s terrible decision.

Polls show that 80% of Americans oppose the decision, and it is critical to our democracy that we stand up and be counted on January 21. The time to start planning is now—can we count on you to help us? Please also share what activities you are planning to do in your hometown, state capital, or in the nation’s capital by sharing them.

Click here to check out Move to Amend’s planning guide and to take the next steps on the path to saving our democracy.

In solidarity,

Your friends at Move to Amend

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Democracy For Sale

Terrific video from the Monahan's entry into Washington DC--thank you to the Backbone Campaign for the visuals, videographer Barry Student/Electric Communications, AfD co-chair Nancy Price for permitting and last-minute bannermaking, and Laird and Robin Monahan for going beyond what all but a few have done in defense of democracy.

Heed the call to get active on the 21st--the first anniversary of the Citizens United decision--and stay active so that someday we're celebrating the anniversary of the passage of a Constitutional amendment ending corporate personhood and corporate usurpation of human constitutional rights. See the Move to Amend website for more details, and check out other Move to Amend videos online.

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How it is, from Bernie Sanders

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BP Sued in Ecuadorian Court For Violating Rights of Nature

Democracy Now! reports that a coalition of environmentalists have filed a groundbreaking lawsuit in Ecuador against the oil giant BP for violating Ecuador’s constitution which recognizes "the rights of Nature" across the globe. Plaintiffs include Nnimmo Bassey, the president of Friends of the Earth International and the Indian scientist Vandana Shiva.

"This morning we filed in the constitutional court of Ecuador this lawsuit defending the rights of nature in particular the right of the Gulf of Mexico and the sea which has been violated by the BP oil spill," Vandana Shiva said. "We see this as a test case of the rights of nature enshrined in the constitution of Ecuador—it’s about universal jurisdiction beyond the boundaries of Ecuador because nature has rights everywhere."

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