Forum Post: End Corporate Rule
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 6, 2011, 5:30 p.m. EST by IonU
(4)
from Stratford, CA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
One of AMERICA'S GREATEST STRENGTHS is a growing and powerful MIDDLE CLASS. They are NOT that at the moment. Middle class Americans are the hard working backbone of this country. They do not want hand outs, they want jobs and their self respect. There has been too much in the way of tax benefits that have been singularly directed toward the wealthy. And you cannot have a healthy society when the wealthy have greater access to political influence and often get extraordinary tax benefits. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. The Roberts Court has once again twisted the Constitution to benefit the wealthy and powerful while leaving ordinary Americans with a diminished voice Read the other headlines: “Supreme Court Removes Another Barrier to Corporate Ownership of Elections” This has put the final nail in the coffin. It’s one of the most insidious conflicts of interest in American politics. They’ve gone after our tax dollars. Our public services. Our jobs. Our schools. Our votes. Our future. Our freedoms. And the federal courts have helped them every step of the way.. The social class divide will be even wider. The wider the gap the more dangerous the society will get. End Corporate Rule.
Lobbyists BUY our politicians - on both sides. Nothing will change until lobbying OUR elected politicians is made illegal.
Campaign finance reform. NO - ZERO - NOTTA private campaign donations. ALL campaign monies must come from the government equally divided between candidates - taken from taxes. The Brits do it!!
When those 2 changes are made, the American people will once again begin to own their own government and not one second before.
30 years ago, the average CEO's salary was approximately 10 times that of the worker. Now it is 300 +. How did we get to there?
because WE chose to ignore it. And besides, I too might get a call one day to be invited to become a member of the inner circle. HA!
In my opinion, this must be the first item addressed.
Corporations have infected our government and political system. The Supreme Court rulings over the past 150 years have created a class of corporate super-citizens. This has created a vast gulf of inequality in our political system: those with the most money have the power and influence in our halls of government.
In the Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers were quite clear about equality:
"WE hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
We now have a system of government that does not create all equally. If this current form of government can no longer guarantee an equal status among all "persons", then it is every citizens right and duty to "alter or abolish it".
A corporation is not a person, and money is not speech. Until this is changed in our system, "we the people" do not have the power to change anything else.
“We must demonstrate, teach and preach until the very foundations of our nation shake.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.