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

Sat Jan 7 12:14:14 PST 2012

One more little quibble and then I will shut up for today.  I just now realized that the economics of political campaigns, at least in was it (Iowa?) that we just witnessed where it is estimated that Super Pacs spent something like $200 per voter to get people to vote one way or the other, this just doesn't make economic sense anymore.  For $200 per voter, you could afford to send campaign workers paid $20 per hour from each of 10 campaigns to sit in each individual voter's living room for an hour and have a full on debate. This isn't about debates anymore.  It is about command and control.  We need to get people to use their remote controls to switch channels and get off watching Fox or ABC, etc and switch to their local Community Access tv station, which is listed on http://www.peacemovies.com/offhollywood.html  or do something simillar like at least watch some Ron Paul videos on Youtube.com or something.  Maybe even the Section 2 of MTA isn't
 really needed, if people would just wake up and spend some time researching how they want to vote based on resources other than their tvs.  Viewership of tv is way down anyway, and hardly represents the majority of voters anyway. Just a thought. We need to have a debate and a constitution that reflects 21st century realities and values, not stuff left over from what we could have had in the 19th century, if only...  I will go away now until at least Sunday afternoon, unless someone else picks up the discussion.

John Thielking

From: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>
To: Drew <rainbeaufriend at yahoo.com>; "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org> 
Sent: Saturday, January 7, 2012 9:48 AM
Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] ENDORSE MOVE TO AMEND RALLY & FORWARD

Will I stop talking about this here? Not likely. I have one more major anouncement scheduled for Sunday (or a little later) when Andrew will have released his proposal about organizing stockholders into voting blocks. After that I will probably pipe down for awhile.  I know of one other person who reads these comments of mine on this thread and shares my concerns, but isn't responding to the group.  If anything that one person is concerned about why there isn't a broader debate on here about this.  In my view, ultimately what we are dealing with here is a deeply ingrained American Exceptionalism.  It used to be called racism, when we were dealing with Whites' Exeptionalism towards Blacks.  It also rears it's ugly head when Occupy butts heads with the cops and most often Occupy is on the losing end. What I am proposing with this is that we get away from American Exceptionalism, where I or you have special rights but no one else does, and move
 towards a place where we add positive values to our discourse and to our constitution instead of taking away rights or priveledges from certain classes. As long as we are taking away rights from certain entities, we have no moral ground left to stand on when they come for us and wish to haul us away to a concentration camp.  They are just doing to us what we trained them to do.  We need to start training them to do something else and do it quick before we all "hang" either litterally or figuratively, together or separately.  I am guilty of this too.  If it weren't for my own Exceptionalism, I would have left out the parts of my amendment proposal in brackets.  So there you go. I did get one Occupy member (out of the two who were there yesterday) to look at my flier.  Her intial reaction was that my proposal does sound more fair than MTA's amendment and she will research it a bit more (looking at the original Santa Clara County court decision as
 well as Citizen's United) and get back to me.  So there you have it Drew.  You should be happy that I didn't throw my weight arround and block the endorsement of MTA or the rally in the first place and just let the rest go.  That's what is fair and democratic (er I mean Green), not asking me to shut up.  Thanks.

Sincerely,

John Thielking
From: Drew <rainbeaufriend at yahoo.com>
To: "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>; "rainbeaufriend at yahoo.com" <rainbeaufriend at yahoo.com> 
Sent: Saturday, January 7, 2012 1:08 AM
Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] ENDORSE MOVE TO AMEND RALLY & FORWARD

John, since I don't see other Greens sharing your concerns about Move To Amend I'm wondering if you'd be willing to discontinue this particular discussion on this particular email list so that we can focus on more consensually based Green Party topics?
Green is occupying the ballot!
Drew
Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android 
From: Drew <rainbeaufriend at yahoo.com>; 
To: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens org <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>; 
Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] ENDORSE MOVE TO AMEND RALLY & FORWARD 
Sent: Sat, Jan 7, 2012 9:00:44 AM 

By the way John, you'll recall we already endorsed the rally (at the December meeting), and in case you weren't aware we've already endorsed MTA the organization some months back.
And in case you weren't aware we've already endorsed MTA the organization some months back. And BTW I'm sorry but IMO small businesses aren't "people" as your Facebook page asserts any more than any other artificial entity is a person. That's just common sense.
That's why we endorsed the organization and the rally. Artificial entities have a chokehold on the planet right now and unless we end their oppression quickly, humynity and all higher life forms are severely endangered. 
Green is humyn and natural! 
Drew
Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android 
From: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>; 
To: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>; 
Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] ENDORSE MOVE TO AMEND RALLY & FORWARD 
Sent: Sat, Jan 7, 2012 6:33:25 AM 

 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.  _______________________________________________ sosfbay-discuss mailing listsosfbay-discuss at cagreens.orghttp://lists.cagreens.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sosfbay-discuss_______________________________________________sosfbay-discuss mailing listsosfbay-discuss at cagreens.orghttp://lists.cagreens.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sosfbay-discuss
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