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Dear John,
What’s the difference between you and a giant corporation like Amazon? According to the Supreme Court, nothing!
Never mind that, unlike us, corporations have limits to their liability; they can’t be imprisoned, and they can’t be executed. However, as collections of legal agreements, corporations can live forever, and they can spend virtually unlimited money to influence elections. We, on the other hand, cannot!
So how did corporations get turned into people? We can thank the Supreme Court.
Check out this week’s video to find out how corporations got turned into people with superhuman abilities to influence elections. And find out what we can do about it! Then hit the “Share” button and forward it to your friends!
So how did corporations come to be granted the same free speech rights under the Constitution that you and I have?
The story goes back to the Supreme Court’s response to reforms enacted in the wake of Watergate. In Buckley v. Valeo (1976), the Court held that campaign contribution spending limits were unconstitutional, as they constituted “direct and substantial restraints on the quantity of political speech.”
In other words, the Supreme Court decided money is speech.
Two years later, in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978), the majority opinion written by Justice Lewis Powell stated that political ads were “speech indispensable to decision-making in a democracy,” and this was “no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual.”
So the Court established that corporations are people.
These cases laid the groundwork for Citizens United (2010), when the door for corporate influence in politics was finally kicked wide open.
The Court’s conservative justices decided that any restrictions on political spending by corporations were unconstitutional. Not only were corporations people who could spend money on politics, but they had the right to drown our democracy in as much money as they wanted.
Ironically, while granting corporations greater power to influence elections, the Supreme Court has simultaneously been stripping actual people of their power to influence elections.
In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The result? Corporations have much more power in our democracy than most real people.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. The door to corporate influence can and must be shut again.
We need a president and Congress committed to getting big money out of politics. We must overturn Citizens United, and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Finally, we need a Supreme Court that will affirm that money is not speech and corporations are not people.
Check out our video to see how we can get big money out of politics, restore voting rights, and make sure our democracy answers to YOU, not corporations.
Thank you for working for the power of people over corporations.
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
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