[GPSCC-chat] ENDORSE MOVE TO AMEND RALLY & FORWARD

Fri Jan 6 22:33:25 PST 2012

 For some reason the discuss system reads a 69k file as having 95k, which is over the limit.  So I have pasted the contents of the .doc file below.

John Thielking

From: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>
To: "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org> 
Sent: Friday, January 6, 2012 10:27 PM
Subject: Re: ENDORSE MOVE TO AMEND RALLY & FORWARD

See the attached flier.

But Wait! Small Businesses Are People Too! (and deserve their currently existing, limited 4thamendment and 14thamendment protections) Or do they?

Occupy San Jose and Move To Amend currently have a feel good and no-specific-language-endorsed rally planned for Friday, Jan 20th from 12pm to 1:30PM at St James Park in downtown San Jose, CA to kick off their campaign to overturn the recent Supreme Court decision commonly referred to as Citizens United that allows Super PACS to spend unlimited amounts of corporate donated money on behalf of or against candidates for political office and for or against ballot measures. That part is fine. 

What I have a problem with is that without endorsing specific language for a constitutional amendment, their feel good rally will also be endorsing the idea of “abolishing corporate personhood”. Indeed, the rally itself is located across from the very courthouse where a decision was handed down in the late 1800's that was misquoted in the court records and haphazardly established that corporations are people under the constitution of the US, at least in a fairly limited sense. The problem arises when you examine the specific language of the proposed amendment to abolish corporate personhood and think carefully about how this might impact your life as a small business owner. If you run your business out of your house, will the cops be able to break into your house without a warrant and have that search stand up in court later if they were “only” searching for business related items? Can your property, of which only your LLC has title to, be taken
 arbitrarily without just compensation? These concerns are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to explaining the potential problems with the proposed amendment, which is listed in full below and which can be accessed in its current form by visiting: http://movetoamend.org/amendment 

Move to Amend 28th Amendment
Section 1 [A corporation is not a person and can be regulated]

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only. 

Artificial entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities, established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.

The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.

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 freedom of the press.

As an alternative to the MTA proposed amendment, I have come up with the following language, which in the spirit of the Occupy movement targets only the top 2% of corporations, which often pay fewer taxes than the bottom 98% of corporations, and which also issue stock to members of the public. Note that some people object to letting privately held corporations off the hook, so if you take out the parts [enclosed in brackets] the amendment language can be modified to make all corporations equally accountable to the people regardless of weather or not they issue stock to the public. Having additional responsibilities imposed, instead of taking rights away, is a better approach because responsibilities necessarily increase with the scale/size of the corporation being regulated and hence the very smallest businesses will escape from the additional burden of this amendment largely unscathed, while the excesses of the big boys will be effectively reigned in.
 Most importantly, the current 4th and 14th amendment protections and precedents established for businesses of all sizes under the current form of the US Constitution are not overturned by this amendment language. 

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' being held collectively and individually accountable to the people or against the requirements of their 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. 

Further discussion of these issues may be had be e-mailing John Thielking at pagesincolor at yahoo.comor by visiting John's Community Page on Facebook, titled: “Small Businesses Are People Too”.

John also has a second Community Page on Facebook called Peacemovies.com, that discusses where you can find reviews of the latest nonviolent movies in theaters and where you can find out how to legally stream non-Hollywood and mostly nonviolent content over the web for free. Or you can find out about this directly by visiting http://www.peacemovies.com/offhollywood.html.

Flier paid for by Peacemovies.com and distributed by a volunteer.
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