Override Citizens United with a Constitutional Amendment
The Florida Veterans for Common Sense (FLVCS) believes the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee, January 21, 2010, (CU), is a direct assault on our representative form of government and demands that Congress act to nullify its affect. CU created a legal fiction, a make believe, that corporations are “persons” in the political process and, incredibly, entitled to the same First Amendment rights as citizens, essentially ruling that money is speech. Predictably, CU has unleashed a flood of special interest money, including from foreign corporations that distort the political process by spending massive amounts of money on candidates or issues favorable to the corporations. Corporations can now dominate and overwhelm the political process with their enormous wealth…some call it pay to play.
A Founding Father, Thomas Paine, declared: “The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of rights. Every man has a right to one vote, and no more in the choice of representative. …The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected.”
In Dartmouth v. Woodward (1819), Chief Justice Marshall wrote: “A corporation is an arbitrary being, invisible, intangible and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the Charter of its creation confers on it.” In his dissent in CU, Supreme Court Justice Stevens rightly asserted: “Corporations have no conscience, no beliefs, no thoughts, no desires…they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.”
The ruling in CU tilts our democratic process in favor of corporations and away from the true basis of representative government, the power of the people for whom the Constitution was established.
A Constitutional Amendment and supporting legislation must be adopted to retain and protect the sacred right of the people to have a voice in the political process.