Tag: Citizen’s United

Oct 15 2012

Sunday Train: Is Big Oil Striking Back against the California Bullet Train vote?

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

cross-posted from Voices on the Square

One of the biggest difficulties in the fight for sustainable energy independence is that Big Oil and Big Coal, the entrenched vested interests against our nation’s long term economic survival, have ample resources and ample practice in playing the long game. They have, over decades, built up a network of propaganda mills (Heritage, Cato, Reason), pro-corporate legislative cookie cutter factories (ALEC) and have invested heavily in buying large number of legislatures at both the state and federal level.

So we should not expect victories to come without an effort to strike back coming from Big Oil or Big Coal. It appear that this effort may be underway in California, following Big Oil’s big loss when the California State Legislature approved the California State funding to match the Federal Funding of the HSR Initial Construction Segment.

Aug 09 2012

What to Do When Liberal SCOTUS Justices Think Corporations are People Too

Cross posted in Orange and Voices on the Square

I don’t know what to do. This is pretty daunting and I think half of the Democratic electorate still thinks that most of the dissenting 4 Liberal SCOTUS Justices voted against Citizen’s United because they reject corporate person-hood. They didn’t yet somehow we’re all pretending they did using it as a rallying cry in this election. I have to wonder why.

After all, Corporate person-hood is the basis as to why our so called Representative Democracy is bought and a sham, really. It started with how the 14th amendment to free African American slaves passed after the Civil War was used for this pernicious purpose as documented in The Corporation.

Our fake Representative democracy has been bought for quite some time even before Citizen’s United made things worse. In Glenn Greenwald’s piece about the Chick Fil-A controversy he gave us an important reminder too often overlooked in this campaign and overall talk of swinging the Roberts Court back.

Free speech and donations

Leave aside the fact that all 9 justices of the Supreme Court – from the most liberal to the most conservative – believe, and in Citizens United said, that corporations have free speech rights under the First Amendment, and that restrictions on how they spend their money for political advocacy can violate the First Amendment’s free speech clause.