January 1, 2010, will go down in history as the day that the Supreme Court of The United States (SCOTUS) made the worst First Amendment decision ever. The Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission (FEC) asserted that corporations and unions had the right to contribute unlimited funds to political candidates. This was based upon a decision by a majority of justices that restricting these organizational contributions denied corporate and union organizations protected speech under the First Amendment.
The latest version of the Oxford Dictionary online provides an alternate definition for the term prostitution: The unworthy or corrupt use of one’s talents for personal or financial gain. The Citizens United decision has enabled many, many members of Congress to regularly prostitute their selves by passing laws highly favorable to the wishes of their Super PAC donors. In exchange for these obscene acts of prostitution, these members of Congress get to maintain their seats while ignoring the known wishes of the people that elected them.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/prostitution
There is a movement to organize the states to call a Constitutional Convention to get Citizens United. It will take 34 states to amend the constitution and 38 states to ratify the amendment. Since members of SCOTUS have expressed concerns about a state ratified Constitutional amendment as a bad precedent, they should revisit the verdict reached in Citizens United and reverse their own decision. If you are holding your breath until this happens, you can breathe now.
Democratic Senators from New Mexico, Tom Udall, and Martin Heinrich, have proposed an amendment to have Congress overturn Citizens United. It is beyond unlikely that Congress is going to eliminate the ability of corporations or other organizations to buy favorable legislation that is opposed by the majority of voters in the United States. The influence of these “contributions” by Super PAC funds is overwhelming and makes a farce to call our government a democracy.
It is useful to investigate the definition of PACs, and a Super PAC regarding contribution limits, disbursements, and use of funds. YouTube has provided access to answers to all of these issues. This is titled Forming a Political Action Committee and is provided by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
In today’s political environment in Congress, there are very few areas of bipartisanship. The PACs are definitely an area whose existence is supported by nearly everyone. Not many are turning down milk from the cash cow PAC contributions. There are ways to skirt the restrictions established by the FEC, with the second largest source, and the most abused PAC being the Leadership PACs.
60 Minutes did a segment in October 2013 that was narrated by Steve Kroft. The title of the segment is “Washington’s Open Secret – Profitable PACs” and it runs for 14:10 minutes without any commercials. The segment explains how Congress has been molesting campaign contributions for personal gain following the Citizens United decision.
The segment focuses on some of the major abuses and abusers. The current investigations regarding campaign activities make this video useful in understanding some of the major issues in recent political campaigns. The bipartisan participation would be laudable if the incidents weren’t such abuses of those that contributed to what they thought were legitimate uses of their money.
Somehow, we need to help Congress, a group of states, or SCOTUS to overturn Citizens United. The US touts itself as an example of democracy to the whole world and uses this as a justification for global interference in other sovereign countries way of running their countries. This is a total farce. Congress has done nothing to reform campaign financing abuses, and will only consider some of the proposed bills if citizens make it a huge issue. Do that. Here is the link that will get you direct contact with your two senators and your representatives. Type in your ZIP code, state and the name of the member of Congress.
https://contactingcongress.org/
WAKE UP! STAND UP! SPEAK OUT! VOTE!!!
© Copyright 2018
Rev. Jim Hetzer
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