[GPSCC-chat] Fw: Letter to the Wash. Post: Response to Sessions column on the Supreme Ct & federal power

[Caroline Yacoub]

Well said.
Caroline

--- On Sun, 5/16/10, shane que hee <squehee at ucla.edu> wrote:


From: shane que hee <squehee at ucla.edu>
Subject: Letter to the Wash. Post: Response to Sessions column on the Supreme Ct & federal power
To: 
Date: Sunday, May 16, 2010, 3:21 PM



From: Scott McLarty <scottmclarty at yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, 16 May 2010 14:41:30 -0700 (PDT)
Subject:  Letter to the Wash. Post: Response to Sessions column on the Supreme Ct & federal power



Response to "Americans look for Supreme Court to restrain federal power, not expand it," by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Al.) in The Washington Post, May 7, 2010 ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/06/AR2010050605016.html )

To the Editor,

Sen. Jeff Sessions ("Americans look for Supreme Court to restrain federal power, not expand it," May 7) believes that the Citizens United ruling corrected government overreach when it asserted that the First Amendment's 'freedom of speech' guarantee allows corporations to run ads on behalf of candidates without legal limits.

The real problem with the Supreme Court's ruling has to do with the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. The original intent of the amendment was to protect blacks after the abolition of slavery. In 1886, the Court's Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad decision extended 14th Amendment coverage to corporations, recognizing them as "persons" under the US Constitution. With the enactment of Jim Crow laws at the time, constitutional rights were in effect transferred from African Americans to corporations.

Corporations are not human. They are legal constructions. Corporate "personhood" created a species of powerful supercitizen that enjoys most of the rights of humans and few of the liabilities.

The Citizens United ruling, by affirming corporate personhood and opening the floodgate on corporate ads for candidates, brings us to the brink of a paradigm in which government exists to serve the demands of big business instead of the interests of We The People.

Progressives and Greens, taking the truly conservative position, favor restoring the requirement that corporations serve the public good and risk dissolution if they violate their charters or break the law. If Sen. Sessions were a genuine conservative, he would advocate a return to the status of corporations before corporate personhood began to erode our democracy.

Scott McLarty
Washington, DC

NB: I am national media coordinator for the Green Party of the United States (http://www.gp.org)
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