What is happening to the American democracy?

Uncle Sam Needs You

Do you remember the movie Rollerball? The governments of the world had become passe and corporate monopolies had taken their place. There was the communications corporation, the energy corporation, the entertainment corporation, and so on. Well, hold on to your hats because it's just about here.

The Supreme Court's decision to allow unlimited spending on political campaigns should scare the hell out of you whether you are a flaming liberal or a ticked off teabagger. I would like to share a couple of imaginary future scenarios with you.

Novatek wants to do exploration for natural gas in protected American wilderness. So, exercising their "free speech" under the new Supreme Court decision they spend $100,000,000 on television advertising to elect their chosen candidates to serve as chairman on the House and Sentate Committees on Natural Resources. The ads are designed to link the candidates to more conservative positions on gas and oil. Sure enough, the people running against their candidates in both the primary and general elections cannot effectively campaign against this amount of moneIy and the selected candidates win and are beholding to Novatek. Well, they get legislation passed that allows them to go for the gas. The problem… Novatek is a Russian company and it now has Senators and Congressment bought and paid for to represent their interest instead of the American interest.

Terra Solar is seeking special legislation to give it an advantage in the new green technology market. They spend money on advertising to link particular politicans in key positions to green technology. Of course, most voters, but particularly moderate and libreral voters are in favor of more energy with no damage to the environment. Nobody would argue with that. Their candidates get elected. The problem… Terra Solar is in a strategic partnership with the Chinese.

America for Americans?

Are you getting the picture here? Let me spell it out.

• The voices of individual Americans will not be heard over the massive dollars corporations can spend on political ads.
• The corporations may be foreign corporations (it's easy to set up an American shell company).

Whether you are conservative, moderate, or liberal; far left or far right; atheist or born again Christian these two scenarios should scare the living daylights out of you.

The Root of The Problem

In a landmark decision in the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the Supreme Court established corporate rights under the 14th Amendment. It essentially gave the corporations the same citizenship rights as human beings… or did it? Read the following…

The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteeth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporation. We are all of the opinion that it does.

OK,  that seems to say that corporations have the same rights as natural persons under the Fourteeth Amendment. Now the interesting thing is that this actually appears in the headnote to the case written by J.C. Bancroft Davis, but does not appear in the text of the Supreme Court decision itself. J.C. Bancroft Davis was the Court Reporter and the former president of the Newburgh and New York Railway. Hmmm, perhaps a conflict of interest. Chief Justice Morrison Waite send a reply to a memorandum written by J.C. Bancroft Davis asking if his headnote was, in fact, correct. It said…

I think your memorandum in the California Railroad Tax cases express with sufficient accuracy what was said before the argument began. I leave it with you to determine whether anything need be said about it in the report inasmuch as we avoided meeting the consitutional question in the decision.

I have added the emphasis. Waite clearly responded that the court avoided the issue of corporate personhood, yet Davis included it. In fact the actual decision was that the state of California illegally included fences running beside the railroad tracks in its assessment of the total value of the railroad's property and that Santa Clara county could not collect taxes from Souther Pacific that it was not allowed to collect in the first place.

Is this unbelievable or what?

The Branches of the Problem

So, get the complete picture here

• Corporations are being allowed to squelch your individual voices
• Because they have citizenship rights of free speech
• Under the 14th Amendments rights in the 1886 Santa Clara County v. Souther Pacific Railroad case
• That were actually never given them by Supreme Court decision.

And that means that the people who are actively supporting this decision are either misguided free speech advocates or are servants of the corporate interests. That's it. I want to emphasize again that this is not a conservative v. liberal issue. The people who are trying to make it that are, frankly, trying to deceive you.

The interesting question is how this might link to the Bilberberg Group. We saw how back room deals are made in the Heathcare Reform debates. Perhaps it's time to stop attributing good motives to government officials and begin to attribute evil, self-serving motives to most. And the danger here is that as a country we are going to be played for suckers by people in foreign countries who understand that our weakness is the greed and self-interest of our politicians and media.

What Is To Be Learned?

If you want to make a better world and enjoy it, then you need to take personal responsibility for the world you want and make it that way. It's not for me to tell you what your world is supposed to be like. Just get to your core values, figure out what kind of world those core values requires, and take responsibility to make that world.

If you are concerned about this Supreme Court decision please go to savedemocracy.net.