Image Granny D,  http://www.loc.gov — Portions from an earlier post by Nan, and more

Snooty  talks with Poopy [poor folks]

“Why would you tell me to read a book about fucking poor people?” Ivanka once asked her friend, as reported by that former friend Lysandria Ohrstrom at <https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/ivanka-trump-was-my-best-friend-now-shes-maga-royalty> .

SNOOT:  Good question!

POOP:  I have a problem understanding your values.

SNOOT:  No news you’ve got problems.

POOP:  So you feel the same way as Ivanka?

SNOOT:  Reading about failures is for the birds.

POOP:  The poor are failures at…?

SNOOT:  Upward mobility; power; respect; belonging; the elite; money; prestige; status; fame…

POOP:  How about honesty?

SNOOT:  Honesty is for the gullible,  ignorant, and those who don’t know how to read the playbook.

POOP:  Honesty’s no good?

SNOOT:  They have to be protected from honesty; they might panic.

POOP:  Who are these poor people, anyway?

SNOOT:  Oh, you know–dropouts, addicts, gender-scramblers, blacks, refugees, the homeless,  convicts, dirt farmers–the undercrust in general.

POOP:  Are there no more good people?

SNOOT:  Oh sure–Warren Buffet, The Koch  brothers, the Waltons, Jeff Bezos, …I just read that one monied gentleman charges people $6500 to be airlifted out of Afghanistan.  You see, the poor can’t even pay for their own lives.  Who’d want to read about such losers?

POOP:  What about the “salt of the earth” folks?

SNOOT: Peons!  You know what to do with peons, don’t you?

POOP:  Don’t say it.

SNOOT: If we paid everybody a decent salary,  our corporations would fail, and they are the backbone of our economy..

POOP:  How did your corporations get so strong-armed?

SNOOT:  It’s a wonderful story. Let me tell you…. In 2009 SCOTUS heard arguments in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission and decided the lawsuit in 2010, to give corporations, Unions and other groups the right to pump as much money as they wanted into the political system.  It was a matter of freedom of speech–corporations could count as people, too,  since they’re made up of people, and they have more money than the  individual people, or any other group.  See how clever we can be?

POOP: Sounds clever, but not democratic.

SNOOT:  Of course it’s democratic!  Didn’t you hear what I just said?  Corporations are people, too, and have a lot more clout!

POOP: But isn’t that double counting?

SNOOT:  No prob.  It passed, that’s what counts.

POOP:  What Supreme Court members voted to do that?!

SNOOT:  Thought you’d never ask….The justices responsible for passage were

 Anthony M. Kennedy,  John G. Roberts Jr., Antonin Scalia, Samuel A. Alito, Jr. and Clarence Thomas.

POOP: That was 2010?  What was Granny D doing that year?

SNOOT:  Who?

POOP:  Thought you’d never ask…. Granny D turned 100 years old three days after the 2010 passage of the Citizens United ruling.  That is especially sad.

SNOOT:  How so?

POOP:  Between the ages of 88 and 90 she walked 3200 miles, from California to Washington D.C. for campaign finance reform.  Campaign financing was already a problem, even before Citizens United.

SNOOT:  Smatter of opinion.

POOP:  And she demonstrated at the nation’s capitol!

SNOOT:  Got arrested, I hope.

POOP:  According to Wikipedia, she  did get arrested, and testified that “Your Honor, to the business at hand: the old woman who stands before you was arrested for reading the Declaration of Independence in America’s Capitol Building. I did not raise my voice to do so and I blocked no hall. But if it is a crime to read the Declaration of Independence in our great hall, then I am guilty.[6]

The judge sentenced Granny D and her companions to time served and a $10 administrative fee.[6]

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Haddock#Arrest_at_the_Capitol>

SNOOT:  Oh.

The Citizens United decision argued that because corporations are simply associations of individuals, then corporations should have the same Constitutional rights as those people. But under the law corporations are more than just collections of individuals, as evidenced by the special privileges and rights they attain by incorporating—for example, The corporate legal structure makes a corporation liable for actions while shielding the actual humans behind the corporation and enables corporations to accumulate mass quantities of wealth. Although  Corporations are things entities distinct from the individuals comprising them. Additionally, corporate interests are often contrary to the interests of the general public.

From <https://americanpromise.net/2021/03/we-the-people-real-citizens-united-to-save-our-republic/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwvaeJBhCvARIsABgTDM5jGVZZLTrYTzxdJjLtUJP4PNPX6zEN4GX55Do83uH1E0A6EcQpalIaApQMEALw_wcB>  An amendment to the Constitution to reaffirm the promise of equal political representation for every American, not just the wealthiest among us. Legislative outcomes no longer represent the wishes of the majority of Americans, but rather serve the interests of the wealthy elite.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310, was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning the relationship between campaign finance and free speech. It was argued in 2009 and decided in 2010. Wikipedia

Date decided: January 21, 2010

Majority: Kennedy, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Alito; Thomas (all but Part IV); Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor (Part IV)

Argument: Oral argument

From <https://www.google.com/search?q=citizens+united+case&rlz=1C1SQJL_enUS879US879&oq=Citizens+United&aqs=chrome.7.69i59j0i433i512j0i512l8.28182j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8>

https://scholarworks.umb.edu/honors_theses/20/

Campaign Finance Reform in the United States in the Wake of Citizens United vs. FEC 2010

Kayla Junkins, University of Massachusetts Boston

From <https://scholarworks.umb.edu/honors_theses/20/>

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In a democracy, every eligible voter has one vote, and all matters of public policy are decided by majority rule.  Most democracies set some things aside as beyond the scope of majority rule, such as the Bill of Rights in the United States.  And many democracies have very undemocratic institutions in the middle of things — like our Senate, which gives the vote of a person from Delaware or Alaska about a hundred times more weight than the vote of someone from California.

Even in an impure democracy, a basic dynamic of politics is the search for votes.  Those who seek power — in state government, in Congress, or as President — have to get lots of votes.  And so people have a lot to say about how they’re governed, and that’s the basic idea of democracy.

Now you don’t need corporations to have your democracy undermined.  Anyone with a lot of money has ways of doing that.  Someone can use their money to buy or otherwise unduly influence the votes of the electorate.  And, in a representative democracy, they can also just bribe or otherwise unduly influence the elected officials.

How ever rich individuals are, corporations can be richer. Today, with huge multi-national corporations, the effect of a single entity like a corporation can exert an incomparable effect on  politics.

The Court held that corporations are persons, who have the right of free speech, and whose speech can take the form of money.  So they should be able to do things they’d previously been kept from doing – in particular, spending all they want on political campaigns.

From <https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/corporations-and-future-democracy>