Hey fizzy, The Supreme's "Citizens United" put the final nail in the coffin, We the People are toast! clo
In part:
TM: Obama's first two years have made it clear that in the current system all presidential contenders ultimately represent their funders, and, given Citizens United, that will only get worse.
DCJ: Citizens United is an unbelievably important decision. I have research assistants gathering everything they can about the nature of corporations at the time of the Founders. Justices Scalia and Thomas in particular argue that their view of the Constitution is based on the original intent of the framers, not some amorphous modern idea, right?
TM: Exactly.
DCJ: Under Citizens United, we have granted political rights to corporations, which are not natural entities. In 1977, Justice Rehnquist -- not exactly a raging liberal -- in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, wrote that it was one thing to grant property rights to corporations in order to protect their property. This is what the Supreme Court did without hearing in the Santa Clara case in 1886 that created personhood for corporations.
But he warned, you don't want to do this for political rights, because those belong exclusively to natural persons, i.e. human beings.
At the beginning of the republic, corporations were very tightly controlled: they could exist for a limited period of time to fulfill a specific purpose; they operated often only in a single state and were tightly regulated in every way.
Today they can do anything they want to do, anywhere in the world. Citizens United is to the expansion of corporate power what the Big Bang was to the creation of the universe -- it is the whole universe.
TM: The corporation existed at the pleasure of the sovereign in England, and, of course, in the U.S., the sovereign is "we the people."
http://www.alternet.org/economy/150673/how_you_can_have_a_billion-dollar_salary_in_america_and_pay_no_taxes?page=entire
DO SOMETHING!
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