[GPSCC-chat] I Now Have 2 Community Pages On Facebook

Wed Jan 4 09:29:20 PST 2012

Below is the complete draft amendment that I am proposing.  Sections 2 is identical to and Section 3 is almost identical to the MTA amendment, located here: http://movetoamend.org/amendment

Section 1: Artificial entities [that sell shares of themselves and/or their 
subsidiaries to the public] shall be accountable to and serve the people in a manner to be determined by the people and/or by the federal, state or local legislatures. No part of the constitution can be used by artificial entities [that sell shares to the public] to argue against such entities' collective and individual accountabilities to the people and 
requirements of service to the people. In no event shall an artificial entity [that sells shares to the public] be exempt from disclosing information to the people that is mandated to be disclosed by legislation enacted by the people and/or the federal, state or local legislatures.

Section 2 [Money is not speech and can be regulated]
Federal, State and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own contributions and expenditures, for the purpose of influencing in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure. 

Federal, State and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.
 The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

Section 3 
Nothing contained in this amendment shall be construed to abridge the positive freedom of the press, though the freedom to not speak is limited by Section 1 and Section 2. 

Happy reading.

Sincerely,

John Thielking
From: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>
To: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>; Caroline Yacoub <carolineyacoub at att.net>; Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com> 
Cc: "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, January 4, 2012 8:17 AM
Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] I Now Have 2 Community Pages On Facebook

Spencer (and anyone else posting long comments to Facebook),

I did not see the long list of references that you claimed you posted to Facebook. I have found that the Facebook software often automatically deletes comments that are entirely copy and pasted from somewhere else, such as when you spell check a long essay in Word and then copy-paste it into the Facebook comments interface.  The workarround for this "feature" of Facebook is to paste your comment into the interface and then add a small amount of original typing before and after the pasted part of your comment. Then hit enter to cause your whole comment to post.  The format looks like this: "original typing, pasted content, original typing".  This appears to be a "feature" of Facebook that allows quoting someone within an original comment but excludes people who post the same spam posting over and over. I hope this helps.  Keep on plugging away at this.

Sincerely,

John Thielking

From: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>
To: Caroline Yacoub <carolineyacoub at att.net>; Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com> 
Cc: "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2012 11:14 PM
Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] I Now Have 2 Community Pages On Facebook

In discussing the proposed MTA amendment with my room mate we kind of concluded that big corps that sell stock are not people, but private companies should be given more rights, as they now have under the present system.  I've decided therefore to try to come up with amendment language that would target the top 2% of corps, namely those that sell stock.  This also goes along with a proposal that a person named Andrew suggested to me on the train going back from SLO to SJ after Xmas.  He mentioned to me that he is going to start a nonprofit that will organize small investor stockholders into voting blocks to present proposals at stockholder meetings. I'm waiting for Andrew to finish writing his proposal before discussing this too much further. 

My amendment language might say something like: "Artificial entities [that sell shares of themselves and/or their subsidiaries to the public] shall be accountable to and serve the people in a manner to be determined by the people and/or by the federal, state or local legislatures. No part of the constitution can be used by artificial entities [that sell shares to the public] to argue against such entities' collective responsibility to the people.  In no event shall an artificial entity [that sells shares to the public] be exempt from disclosing information to the people that is mandated to be disclosed by legislation enacted by the people and/or the federal, state or local legislatures." 

This last clause could be called the "label it clause"  to cover GMO's, chemical ingredients, etc as well as mandates of disclosures of news sources and funding sources for commercials.  The different uses of "people" and "public" are intentional and not interchangeable.  

If you want, you could even eliminate the "sell shares" parts and make it apply to all artificial entities without offending my sensibilities regarding the rights of small businesses. I have put the "sell shares" parts above in brackets to more clearly deliniate the possibilities here.  The need to be accountable would necessarily be much smaller for smaller businesses (except for those spewing lead emissions or something like that) and so the rights of small artificial entities would not be excessively trampled upon by using such language. 

Try that one on for size.  Thanks.

Sincerely,

John Thielking 

I will also post this to Facebook.
From: Caroline Yacoub <carolineyacoub at att.net>
To: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com> 
Cc: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>; "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2012 10:02 PM
Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] I Now Have 2 Community Pages On Facebook

It might keep them from buying Congress, but it can't keep them from buying the media.

From: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>
To: Caroline Yacoub <carolineyacoub at att.net>
Cc: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>; "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
Sent: Tue, January 3, 2012 9:48:38 PM
Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] I Now Have 2 Community Pages On Facebook

On 1/3/2012 9:40 PM, Caroline Yacoub wrote: 
So Spencer, you don't really believe that the amendment, as it now stands, would hurt small business? I don't have much expertise in the business world, but I can't read it and feel sure about that.

      I think the net impact will more likely be positive.  Major corporations today provide the money that elect the politicians, who then spend a substantial portion of their time trying to enact verbiage written by lobbyists for their major contributors.  This would not work if a critical mass of the electorate paid directly for serious investigative journalism that would tell them in more detail how this works and would make it clearer to the electorate which candidates would actually legislate in the interest of the bottom 99%.  The business model of the commercial media is selling behavior change in their audience to advertisers.  The 1% does not what the public to know exactly the many ways in which they get welfare, and they can retaliate against honestly liberal media.  They know they do not need to feed the mouth that bites them.  

      I'd be surprised if passing that amendment would have an immediate, dramatic effect.  However, it would make it more difficult for the 1% to buy congress and continue the current massive transfers of wealth from the 99% to the 1%.  

      Spencer 

Caroline
>
>
>
>From: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>
>To: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>
>Cc: "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
>Sent: Tue, January 3, 2012 9:33:32 PM
>Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] I Now Have 2 Community Pages On Facebook
>
>Hi, John, et al.:  
>
>
>       It is in the best short term interest of the venal 1% to claim that repealing corporate personhood would hurt small business.  I don't know if that is what is happening, but I would expect that Citizens United and similar organizations would be paying people to write messages on Facebook with claims like, ""SOPA would deprive small businesses (ie web sites) of their property (their domain names and access to their sites) without due process".  Big money in politics today is often spent (a) doing focus groups to find out what kinds of arguments against it resonate with people, (b) following that with sample surveys to pick the strongest of several likely candidates, then (c) circulating that message in a variety of ways, often concealing the source.  
>
>
>      The concerns about SOPA and NDAA are real, but I the primary impact on small business I see from repeal of corporate personhood is that it would deprive the 1% of certain tools they now use to increase their wealth and power at the expense of small businesses.  
>
>
>      (more on your Facebook page citing research that social mobility is lower in the US, where the power of corporations has grown substantially over the past 125 years, than in much of Europe, which reportedly does not have corporate personhood.)  
>
>
>      Spencer Graves
>
>
>On 1/3/2012 8:44 AM, John Thielking wrote: 
>Folks,
>>
>>I now have two community pages on Facebook which may be of interest to you.  Check them out if you like/if you have time.
>>Thanks.
>>
>>Sincerely,
>>
>>John Thielking
>>
>>Small Businesses Are People TooA prime example of the contradictions within the movement and the need to think over carefully the MTA Section 1 is the case of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). SOPA would deprive small businesses (ie web sites) of their property (their domain names and access to their sites) without due process (big businesses could merely petition a judge claiming violations of copyright and the sites would be shut down for a minimum of 5 days before a hearing could be held to present evidence). Some in the Occupy movement are busy protesting this unconstitutional move by Congress, while at the same time pushing for passage of MTA Section 1 which would make their claims of unconstitutionality of SOPA moot. So which is it? Do you support rights for small businesses or don't you?
>>
>>
>>And 
>>
>>Peacemovies.com
>>The final post for 2011: Go to www.peacemovies.com/offhollywood.html for a quick peek at the possibilities of legally streaming content for "free" that is often of higher quality, more original and almost always less violent than the typical Hollywood fare. If you like what you just streamed, please donate generously to the site that provided the content. Thanks.
>>Peacemovies.com: The Off-Hollywood Pagewww.peacemovies.com
>>non-violent movies, family entertainment
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 
>>
>>_______________________________________________
sosfbay-discuss mailing list sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org http://lists.cagreens.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sosfbay-discuss
>

-- 
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567
web: www.structuremonitoring.com 

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