A Petition to Sign if Willing

[Alysyrose]

Yesterday, the Supreme Court announced a disastrous rollback of campaign finance laws. Their 5-4 decision gives corporations free rein to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections.

As The New York Times put it, this "opens the floodgates" for corporate money.1

It's a horrible decision. But we can undo some of the damage if Congress passes public financing of elections, which would give progressives and populists who don't have industry backing the ability to compete.

There is already a public financing bill, the Fair Elections Now Act, with significant, bipartisan support.2 Congress, which right now desperately needs to show that it's on the side of the voters instead of corporate interests, should rush to pass it.

Will you sign our petition urging Congress to make sure our democracy represents the people, not corporations? Clicking here will add your name to this critical petition:

 

http://pol.moveon.org/fairelectionsnow/o.pl?id=18673-4544544-E6_TZIx&t=3

The petition says: "Congress must act now to make sure voters—not corporations—have control of our elections. Pass public financing to make our elections fair." 

Corporations are already running roughshod over our democracy—just look at the health care fight. But now it's actually going to get far worse.

With this Court decision, Big Insurance could spend as much as they want to support Joe Lieberman in his efforts to keep watering down health care reform. And ExxonMobil or BP can spend millions to elect candidates who oppose clean energy. It's a disastrous decision with a disastrous outcome.

Fixing the problem of corporate money in politics is a long-term fight—and public financing is the best first step. With the Fair Elections Now legislation, candidates could get off the corporate fundraising treadmill and raise enough from small donors to be seriously competitive. If this bill passes, 95% of House members would get the same or more money than they spent in 2008—and they'd still be able to raise small contributions beyond that.3

The Fair Elections Now Act is being spearheaded by Democrat John Larson and Republican Walter Jones in the House. And it's already won the support of a wide range of good-government groups who want to see Congress doing the work of the people.

This is our best chance ever to advance the cause of public financing for fair elections. The idea's been proven in numerous states. And with this Supreme Court decision, members of Congress are getting nervous about having to compete against a wave of corporate cash. Change is now possible.

Can you sign our petition today urging Congress to pass public financing? Clicking here will add your name:

http://pol.moveon.org/fairelectionsnow/o.pl?id=18673-4544544-E6_TZIx&t=4

Thank you for all you do.

–Kat, Daniel, Stephen, Wes, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. "Justices Overturn Key Campaign Limits," The New York Times, January 21, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86098&id=18673-4544544-E6_TZIx&t=5

"Lobbyists Get Potent Weapon in Campaign Finance Ruling," The New York Times, January 21, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86104&id=18673-4544544-E6_TZIx&t=6

2. "Fair Elections Are the Answer to Citizens United," The Huffington Post, January 11, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86099&id=18673-4544544-E6_TZIx&t=7

3. Common Cause analysis of Federal Election Commission filings from 2008

[daathvader]

Thank you for bringing this to my attention.  As if the lobbyists and corporate shills didn't already have enough pull up on the hill    The US is quickly turning into the United Corporations of America.  Pretty soon we'll be seeing bills proposed by the Representative from McDonalds.

Here's another article I found speculating on some of the peripheral consequences that would go along with this ruling:

SCOTUS Decision Allows Foreign Influence of U.S. Elections

That’s the warning coming today from the folks at the Center for Public Integrity, who caution that the recent High Court decision empowering corporations to spend unlimited sums on federal election ads could also have the unintended consequence of ending the ban on foreigners buying influence over U.S. elections. Some foreign companies, the authors write, are owned by foreign governments and also have U.S. subsidiaries. The result?

    One prominent example is CITGO Petroleum Company — once the American-born Cities Services Company, but purchased in 1990 by the Venezuelan government-owned Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. The Citizens United ruling could conceivably allow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has sharply criticized both of the past two U.S. presidents, to spend government funds to defeat an American political candidate, just by having CITGO buy TV ads bashing his target.

And it’s not just CPI that’s concerned about that possibility.

    In his dissent in Citizens United, Justice John Paul Stevens cautioned that the decision “would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans.”

And here we were worried that the biggest threats to American democracy, post-decision, were AT&T and Goldman Sachs.

[ZazzyE]

The daily show covered it best: it's fair!  You're free to incorporate and accumulate ungodly amounts of wealth, then you can contribute to the discussion.

The thing they didn't mention?  Depending on your view, that might be historically accurate - why else would "we the people" originally consist of white men who own 40+acres of land?  Sure, those were the few who could afford to educate themselves, but they didn't all do it.  That's why we the have electoral college....  But at least then, it was still people who corrupted the system, and not some corporate leech made of money-fags.

Now that every dipstick with an opposeable thumb has a blog, those money-fags want to regulate *that*.  Deregulate our markets, but keep them plebeians away!!!  That's our ticket to free speech - political, religious, or otherwise - viral-networking, free (or almost free), *people run* websites.  With Napster, the central site was shut down.  With Bittorrent, however, two new heads spawn when regulators even look at a previous popular site.  We are evolving, and they can't keep up.