Do You Believe There's TOO Much Money in Politics?

If you do, you're not alone. Join with others all over the country in a movement to regain control of our government for us, the citizens. The movement is called Move to Amend and it includes hundreds of cities and states across the country that are telling their national elected representatives that they want change.

https://movetoamend.org/oh-mentor

The movement has two main goals:

* To abolish corporate personhood and

* Establish that money does not equal speech and can be regulated in political campaigns

What is Corporate Personhood?

Corporate Personhood refers to court created precedent that gives corporations constitutional rights intended solely for human beings. How did this happen?

U.S. law recognizes corporations as artificial persons for limited purposes to conduct business. After the American Revolution, people were wary of corporations seizing power. So people limited corporate power

through their state legislatures. As time passed, state legislatures, then courts, began to blur the distinction between real people and artificial persons.

The concept of corporate personhood was first introduced in 1886 through the U.S. Supreme Court, almost 100 years after the Constitution was ratified. The Founders never intended corporations to be able to claim constitutional rights.

Since 1886, courts have handed out more human rights to corporations. Armed with human rights and legal privileges, large corporations have amassed fantastic wealth and power, which has undermined our sovereign self-governance and created a democracy crisis.

Landmark Decisions:

Buckley v. Valeo, 1976

In Buckley v. Valeo, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that political money is equivalent to speech and thus, cannot be regulated. This ruling expanded the 1st Amendment’s protections to include financial contributions to candidates or political parties.

Citizens United v. FEC, 2010

In Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the wealthy elite against the interests of the American people. Corporations can now spend unlimited money to buy our elections. The Court has legalized corporate bribery of our elected officials.

Once again, the Court relied on the illegitimate doctrine of Corporate Personhood in order to justify this profoundly undemocratic decision. If you were already disgusted by the fact that over $8 billion dollars was spent in the 2012 election, the floodgates are now wide open!

There are many other Supreme Court decisions that have granted human rights to corporations dating back to 1886.

Corporate Personhood is not an inconsequential legal technicality. Literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of local, state and federal laws that attempt to protect our elections, safety and health, environment, and right to organize have been overturned as a result of this erroneous doctrine.

What can we do?

The citizens of Mentor can do what the citizens of cities and states all over the country have done: tell our city council that we want them to instruct our national political representatives to amend the Constitution of the United States to abolish corporate personhood and state that money does not equal speech, and therefore it can be regulated in political campaigns.

Mentor Move to Amend is a non-partisan group of Mentor citizens that has worked to get an initiative on the Mentor ballot in November. 1770 signatures were needed to get this on the ballot, and we collected 2296 signatures in this effort. 1916 of the signatures were verified by the Lake County Board of Elections to be valid.

This was a huge job! The signatures were submitted to the city in November. Now we need people who care that our democracy is being taken away from us to help us with the campaign to spread the word about what Move to Amend is, and most importantly to help us pass this initiative.

Please contact us at dlima@sbcglobal.net or f.hribar@roadrunner.com for more information on how you can help with this effort, as well as other volunteering opportunities. You can also get more information at the Move to Amend website:

https://movetoamend.org/oh-mentor