Under the title “Legalized Bribery,” Think Progress reports today on the activities of the YG Network, “a secret-money outside political group run by former aides to House Republican Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA).”  Essentially, this nominally independent group rewards GOP pols who play ball with the house leadership. According to the Think Progress reporter, compliant legislators may be rewarded by “independent” expenditures on their behalf.

And guess which member of the House of Representatives was chosen to illustrate the efforts of the YG Network?  Take a look at the ad below and find out:

Indeed – that anemic sounding, good little girl voice belongs to none other than Vicky Hartzler. Of course, it is unlikely that Hartzler would ever defy the GOP leadership, even without such an incentive to continue to be as tractable as she has been – but the whole system whereby she rated this help is more than troubling. Think Progress quotes Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center to the effect that:

When you allow unlimited special interest money in politics, this type of behavior should be expected. Criticism is fair, but never the less, its predictable. This is the world that this Supreme Court majority has given us with the Citizens United decision. It’s troubling, but entirely predictable.

Even more troubling is the likelihood of conversations behind closed doors – threats of huge corporate-funded independent spending campaigns made [for those who don’t act in the corporation’s interest on a given piece of legislation]. And much of it, we will never hear about.

Nice bunch of folks Vicky pals around with. Is this the type of government Tea Partiers (i.e., “We the people”) who suppported Hartzler thought she’d represent – essentially a return to the bad old days of Tom DeLay and Roy Blunt handing out favors and strong-arming anyone in the ranks with enough gumption to stand up to them?  

By the way – if you’re interested in the substance of the ad, which refers to a 2.3% excise tax to be imposed on the sale of medical devices, which will be used to fund Obamacare, take a look at this analysis of the tax’s impacts prepared by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Of course, when we’re all saturated with “taxmegeddon” ads, who cares about facts.  

Kansas City’s Move To Amend group took part in the Brookside St. Patrick’s Day parade to promote their cause.

Corporations are NOT people

Move to Amend in Kansas City:

Kansas City Move to Amend is a nonpartisan association of Americans who were moved to take action against the Supreme Court’s disastrous ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Corporations may now spend unlimited amounts of their vast resources to campaign for or against candidates running for office. The threat to our democracy is real.

The ruling was largely based on two absurd precedents: that a corporation is a person and that money is equivalent to speech.

Democracy means that the People rule. But if corporations are free to hijack elections by tapping into their colossal treasuries to influence elections, democracy is impossible.

We, of KC Move To Amend, aspire to amend the US Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights….

There’s lots of speculation out there about the effect on the 2012 elections of all the money that the Citizens United Supreme Court decision has unleashed  – all the so-called issue ads paid for by big corporate stake-holders. Add to the corporate money, the fact that we know that negative ads work – we saw what several million dollars of televised trash-talk can accomplish a few weeks ago when the Romney greenback machine mowed down Newt Gingrich. Now add the final fillip – folks are free to lie themselves silly in these ads, and you end up with a situation where it’ll be difficult for anyone to withstand the big money boys who are out to buy them some gubment.

And guess what? The whole ugly shebang’s coming to a theatre near you. In fact, it’s already arrived. Last week the Chamber of Commerce debuted an attack ad aimed at Claire McCaskill:

As you noticed if you watched the video, the argument is simple, easy to digest and completely false:

Tell Claire McCaskill that Missouri doesn’t need government-run health care, we need jobs!

Obamacare will kill jobs. So why did Claire McCaskill cast a deciding vote for Obamacare in Washington, DC?

Missouri has overwhelmingly rejected government run healthcare. But McCaskill continues to support Obamacare.

Call Claire McCaskill and tell her Missouri doesn’t need government-run healthcare – 314-367-1364.

Fib number one is that Obamacare will “kill” jobs. This claim was debunked ages ago. It essentially rests on a creative misrepresentation of a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis in a report prepared by GOP House leadership over a year ago:

What follows is a story of how statistics get used and abused in Washington.

What CBO actually said is that the impact of the health care law on supply and demand for labor would be small. Most of it would come from people who no longer have to work, or can downshift to less demanding employment, because insurance will be available outside the job.

“The legislation, on net, will reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by a small amount – roughly half a percent – primarily by reducing the amount of labor that workers choose to supply,” budget office number crunchers said in a report from last year.

In fact, the Center for American Progress contends that repealing Obamacare will be the real job killer:

A successful repeal of health care reform would revert us back to the old system for financing and delivering health care and lead to substantial increases in total medical spending. The consequences of this spending increase would be far reaching. It would hurt family incomes, jobs, and economic growth.

Repealing health reform would:

— Increase medical spending by $125 billion by the end of this decade and add nearly $2,000 annually to family insurance premiums

— Destroy 250,000 to 400,000 jobs annually over the next decade

— Reduce the share of workers who start new businesses, move to new jobs, or otherwise invest in themselves and the economy

The second, implicit, fib is that Obamacare is “government run health care.”  It is, sadly, no such thing. It’s no more than an effort to impose some accountability on a deeply flawed and unnecessarily expensive private system of health care delivery, while ensuring that most Americans have some type of access to good health care. Less than 20% of Missourians voted in the 2010 election in which the anti-Obamacare Proposition C was “overwhelmingly” endorsed. We’ll see just what happens when, as will be the case in 2012, the rest of us go out to the polls.

I would, though, echo one sentiment expressed in the Chamber’s terse little ad. Do, by all means, call Claire McCaskill – and thank her for standing firm and voting for the Affordable Care Act. No matter how she waffles and bobs and weaves in order to deflect political sticks and stones, that vote should be something that she can always point to and feel proud of what she did in Washington.  

Dana Milbank’s article two days ago, “Mormon Prophecy Behind Glenn Beck’s Message“, talks about some coded language Beck’s been using–supposedly a prophetic prediction made by the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith.

From Milbank,

“The phrase is often attributed to the Prophet Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon Church. Smith is believed to have said in 1840 that when the Constitution hangs by a thread, elders of the Mormon Church will step in — on the proverbial white horse — to save the country.”

“When the Constitution of the United States hangs, as it were, upon a single thread, they will have to call for the ‘Mormon’ Elders to save it from utter destruction; and they will step forth and do it,” Brigham Young, Smith’s successor as head of the church, wrote in 1855.”

Hanging by a thread. Sounds like the sign of the times in so many ways. We all know profit-driven ‘news-entertainment’ is dominated by fear and sensationalism, so we should expect an abundance of apocalyptic story telling from pundits like Beck. But even after disregarding the truth-warping profit motive, there is still ample evidence to heed this ‘constitution hanging by a thread’ notion. Accordingly, the people are restless.

In a recent poll by People for the American Way, 95% of those surveyed believe corporations spend money on politics to buy influence and elect people favorable to their financial interests. Further, 85% of voters say that corporations have too much influence over the political system today, while 93% say that average citizens have too little influence.

This is not the “government of the people” the Founders and Framers envisioned–well, not really.

The Founders actually did envision the current state of the nation. They could foresee an intractable situation befalling the Republic in which undue influence and corruption would become so entrenched into our political institutions, that elections–or any actions taken by the Federal Government–would be incapable of correcting America’s biggest problems. Sound familiar?

What the designers of our constitution foresaw was the distinct possibility that the same kind of centralized tyrannical power they had just opposed and defeated (the British Crown and Parliament) could potentially materialize over time in the new nation. They unanimously agreed to incorporate a switch that could be flipped in the future to convene a group of citizen delegates charged with addressing what was broken.

That switch is called an “Article V Convention”, and contrary to popular myth, it is not a self-destruct button. An Article V Convention allows citizen delegates to produce a roster of ideas for each state to consider to approve as a US Constitutional Amendment. There are sufficient protections built-in to prevent any kooky, radically partisan, or extreme ideas from surviving the two-step nomination and ratification process. If you believe in the brilliance of the Founders, you cannot presume to think that they would have been so idiotic as to put a poison pill right in the heart of the constitution.

The convention clause was seen by the Framers as a necessary check-and-balance, and has the potential to reboot the Federal laptop that’s been locked-up and frozen for years. While banging on the keys may seem like it’s working (elections), if you really want to get something done, Article V is the reset switch.

Why an Article V Convention cannot runaway and throw out the Constitution

Two-thirds of the convention must vote to approve a suggested fix–and then a super-super majority of 75% of the state legislatures must independently vote to ratify each amendment. This 75% threshold is an exceedingly difficult task which allows for only the most robust and transpartisan ideas to survive the process and become law. Solutions delivered from the states to our nation via an amendatory convention occurs beyond the purview of Congress, outside of Washington DC. It’s a viable way for everyday citizens to say, “enough is enough”–and then have that actually mean something. The point is, elections and electeds may be unwilling or incapable of steering our ship of state away from the dangers of corruption spiraling our nation out of control–and this is precisely the reason for Article V’s existence.  

The idea of a people’s intervention to a Federal Government addicted to spending and power is gaining traction

A group formed in 2007, Friends of Article V Convention (FOAVC.org), investigated the Congressional record to answer the question: how many times have the states applied for an Article V Convention?

Unbelievably, at the time there was no central repository containing these convention requests–no collated record maintained by Congress. The procedure laid out in Article V commands Congress to call a convention to propose amendments when two-thirds of the states apply. No other requirements are needed. Some scholars think that the applications must contain a same-subject amendment, or be sent at the same time. This interpretation creates restrictions out of thin air. To artificially add non-existing stipulations to an amendment is called “construction“–which in this case–has been repudiated by multiple Supreme Court rulings.

What the Friends discovered, is that there have been hundreds of applications submitted from all fifty states; and per the constitution, only 34 states need apply to trigger the non-discretionary call for an Article V Convention.

Is Congress purposefully not calling the convention because they view it as a threat to their power?

It’s certainly possible. Congress has sat on its hands and feigned to ignore the applications issue for at least a hundred years.

Professor Christopher Trudeau and some others from Cooley Law felt that the legal doctrine of “Laches” may apply, which is “based on the maxim that equity aids the vigilant and not those who procrastinate regarding their rights; neglect to assert a right or claim (the people demanding that Congress call an Article V Convention) that, together with lapse of time and other circumstances, prejudices an adverse party.” The argument is, since the first call was supposed to have happened in the early 1900s, we can’t use an accumulation standard for those older applications. The reality is, however, that there have been hundreds of applications since 1960 alone, which should trigger the call. Because there isn’t any precedent in regard to the nation’s first Article V Convention, the doctrine of Laches here is by no means established.

The inherent power of the people resides in the convention

Retired Michigan Supreme Court Justice, Judge Thomas Brennan, in his pivotal article, “Return to Philadelphia (1982)” paints a passionate depiction of the infinite well from which springs the authority of the people, embodied in the convention.

“A convention is the last bastion of public sovereignty. It is perhaps the sole remaining device by which the people of the states can act together as the people of the United States; not as citizens or subjects of a supreme national government, but as the sovereign ultimate political authority from which springs the consent of the governed and the constitutional legitimacy of all public institutions and officers.”

Judge Brennan and Cooley Law school, the largest law school in the nation, recently sponsored a symposium entitled, “Article V Empowers The People of All the States.” Speakers included co-founders of FOAVC, active and retired Federal judges, constitutional scholars, and law professors, each presenting their case to the eager ears of an audience chiefly made up of law students; aspiring lawyers.  

Bill Walker, a FOAVC co-founder, spoke about his lawsuit against Congress for failing to call a convention. Walker vs. Members of Congress went through the courts on appeal to the Supreme Court, where it was denied certiorari. It was denied because the Supreme Court only agrees to see a very small percentage of cases that request review. The lower court’s ruling was upheld with the court essentially standing aside due to the political question doctrine. The judges did not feel it prudent to coerce Congress to call a convention, even though the constitutionally required number of Article V applications had been submitted by the states.  

In his presentation at the symposium Walker stated,

1. A convention call is peremptory (ie without debate).

2. There are sufficient applications already on record to cause a convention call.

3. A convention call is based on a simple numeric count of applying states with no other terms or conditions such as recessions, same subject, contemporaneous and so forth.

4. By refusing to obey the Constitution and so advocating the same in a public forum, the members of Congress violated their oaths of office and other federal criminal laws.

“The Solicitor General of the United States acting in both his official capacity and as official attorney of record for all members of Congress, after consultation required by federal law with those members, formally and officially waived response to my brief. Thus, he formally and officially acknowledged what I had stated in my brief was and is correct as to fact and law. This is what I mean when I state the only group I’ve been able to persuade is the United States government as this is the only official government act on the convention call in United States history.”

Judge James L. Ryan, a Senior Circuit Judge for the United States Sixth Circuit of Appeals, was asked at the symposium if he felt Congress was obligated to issue the call based on the evidence presented of the required number of convention applications having been submitted. He replied he didn’t have enough information to make an informed decision. If Judge Ryan, in public, had supported the idea that Congress was avoiding their constitutional obligations, as a sitting Federal Judge, he would be tying his hands to have to continue to investigate the issue to further determine the legal and potential criminal ramifications of Congress violating their of oaths of office by disregarding a clear constitutional directive. Many established lawyers, judges, politicians, are reticent to rock the boat; but this goes to the heart of our problems, doesn’t it?

Another FOAVC co-founder, Joel Hirschhorn, unpacked several reasons why Congress has gotten away with not obeying the constitution,

“Apparently, a combination of political corruption and public ignorance has allowed Congress to get away with this. Even among the millions of Americans that proudly declare their loyal allegiance to the Constitution, there is no recognition that unless they demand that Congress obey Article V, they are constitutional hypocrites. Congress has no right to unilaterally decide that it can ignore and disobey a part of the Constitution.”

The arguments against a convention have been fielded, and the simple fact remains, the corrupting influences currently in power have everything to lose from a convention–while everyday Americans have everything to gain. As it is, if we allow for the teeter-totter of mainstream politics to continue to have its sway, we will have essentially conceded defeat. All the bailouts, unfavorable court rulings and corporate/political sell-outs point to one trajectory–they indicate, that indeed, the coup may be complete–we may have lost control of our country.  

But concerned citizens are bucking up, joining new initiatives, and sending the message that it’s time for the people to stage an intervention before its too late. An online effort called Convention USA, launched by Justice Brennan, is described as, “…an interactive, virtual convention for proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States.” Term limits, balanced budget amendment, secure the vote–common sense ideas that in D.C. are usually always DOA.

A mock convention chaired by Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig and Republican political advisor Mark McKinnon was recently staged at a “Coffee Party” meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. Hundreds of delegates took to reviewing ideas that were brought to the table through a town hall meeting format. Professor Lessig has been mobilizing support for an amendment convention in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling which sanctioned unfettered corporate electioneering and relied heavily on the legal fiction of “corporate personhood”. As legal persons in the Citizens United ruling, corporations can support or oppose any candidates with unrestricted political contributions. Recently, after Citizens United, the Chamber of Commerce has been accused of funneling foreign contributions into US elections-clearly a violation of the basic principles of national security. With many major corporations being multi-national conglomerates, it is not entirely clear how foreign influence will be kept from muscling under the radar into our body politic, if we don’t seriously regulate the level at which corporations can buyout our democracy.

Lessig’s “Call A Convention” website makes the pronouncement,

“Democracy in America is stalled. From the Right and Left, citizens are increasingly coming to recognize that our democracy does not work as our Framers intended.”

Things are happening, people are waking up to the fact that extraordinary times require extraordinary measures. If you’re in search of truly transpartisan solutions, and are not satisfied with electoral politics, check out this time-capsule gift from the Founders: the amendatory convention enshrined in Article V, an idea whose time has come–and whose design was scrupulously intended for present circumstance.

The Mormon prophecy Glenn Beck has been consciously or unconsciously sounding, predates Joseph Smith, because the Founders saw it as well. They laid out a specific plan to deal with the catastrophic nature of a collapsing Republic. It would be good to see pundits, progressive, conservative, libertarian, take up the cause to spread awareness of this tool. An Article V Convention will be a rebirth of civic engagement and a means to reinvigorate our democracy–let the people drive the bus out of the ditch.

The Senate failed to act on the Disclose Act in late September. This act would have closed loopholes created by the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision that permit tax exempt 501(c)(6) “issue” oriented organizations to funnel money into political advertising without disclosing the source of the funds. The legislation passed in the House last June thanks to the Democrats and two Republicans. Predictably, neither of those two Republicans were from Missouri.

All the GOP members of the Missouri delegation voted against it except for Roy Blunt who skipped the vote, but his spokesperson had earlier stated that he was “pleased” about the Citizens United decision, so we can probably infer how he would have voted. (Am I wrong that old Roy has avoided voting on just about everything since he began campaigning for the Senate? In hopes of depriving the opposition of any possible ammunition perhaps?)

In a post earlier today, I discussed the situation that lack of disclosure requirements have created in Missouri’s political race. On the Rachel Maddow show last night, her guest, Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Scott Thomas, very explicitly clarified the nature of the danger posed by our current situation in regard to disclosure:

If you deplore this lack of transparency, just remember which Missouri politicians want to retain it. It’s not too difficult to figure out why.

That First Amendment will make you crazy. It’s like we have a choice between protecting free speech (down with dictators!) or keeping corporate money from buying elections for the wealthy (down with the oligarchy!). But censoring corporate speech without weakening the First Amendment is nigh onto impossible, according to William Freivogel.

Freivogel, a former editor at the Post-Dispatch whose particular beat was the Supreme Court, now heads the journalism department at SIU. Speaking at West County Dems last Monday, he emphasized that he sees no way to accomplish both goals. His reservations have a lot to be said for them. Consider that it wasn’t just the NRA that supported the High Court’s ruling in Citizens United wherein the McCain/Feingold law banning corporate ads before an election was deemed to violate the First Amendment. The ACLU also supported the position that such censorship was unconstitutional. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, warned that banning such speech would mean censoring Sierra Club ads sixty days before an election that disapprove of a congressman voting for logging in the national forest; preventing the NRA from publishing a book urging the public to vote for the challenger because the incumbent favors handgun bans; and forcing the ACLU to take down from its website a page telling the public to vote for a candidate in light of his defense of free speech. All these are classic examples of government censorship.

Keep in mind, though, that four justices thought such censorship was necessary. John Paul Stevens, writing for the minority, noted that allowing corporations free rein to speak will further undermine the integrity of elections. He expressed concern about the doctrine that corporations are people and about the likelihood of foreign corporations affecting our elections.

Freivogel can appreciate Stevens’ objections. Having come of age during the Watergate era and having seen the abuses of money in politics, he wanted campaign finance reform. But now he thinks:

“There’s no way to write a campaign finance law that is going to effectively restrict money abuses in politics and is also going to be consistent with the First Amendment. McCain-Feingold is an attempt to do it. In some ways, if you think about it, McCain-Feingold had some very good provisions, but its provisions made certain kinds of electioneering ads in the time period coming to an election illegal. That’s an incredible exercise of government power. It is making illegal political speech at the very time that it’s most important, the time right before an election. In some ways, it makes the First Amendment not make sense. Why would the First Amendment make it illegal to have certain kinds of political speech by the ACLU or the NRA or NARAL right before an election and still protect pornography and flag burning. It’s a little bit hard to make that argument.

So, as I say, as I saw then the development of soft money that made the Watergate reforms ineffective and saw the problems of that McCain-Feingold law, I basically have come to the conclusion that you can’t make the law that’s going to both protect the honesty of the electoral process and also protect people’s right to join together in groups and to make their views known in the days right before an election.

The only leeway Freivogel would grant in this dilemma about censorship is that he wishes the Court had made a distinction between non-profits and for-profit corporations. That way, Missouri Votes Conservation could air ads about how much money Blunt takes from Big Oil and how necessary cap and trade is. And, to be fair, the NRA could recommend voting against candidates who endorse handgun bans. But Exxon–with its motives of greed and its disregard for the future of the planet–could … shut. up. Ooh, that sounds good, right? But aside from the fact that SCOTUS didn’t make that non-profit/for-profit distinction for  us and that creating it is not a legislative option–it wouldn’t solve anything anyway. Exxon, trust me, would not be silenced for more than a nanosecond, because that’s how long it would take the oil Goliath to get one of its cronies to incorporate a non-profit front group to accept a few million bucks and film ads that lie about climate change.

No. Sorry. Corporations, even the ones we approve of, cannot be players if we’re going to have honest elections. If we want to shut up Wells Fargo and Blue Cross/Blue Shield in campaigns, we also have to silence MoveOn. It’s an all or nothing game. At least on that much, the Supremes writing the majority opinion in Citizens United had it right.

If it’s all or nothing, Freivogel speaks for letting all corporations participate and opines that this latest decision won’t really change the current scene all that much anyway. He doubts that Wal-Mart would want to offend half its customers by blatantly taking money from its own treasury to fund TV ads–especially if, as looks likely, we pass a law requiring that the CEO say at the end of the ad: “I’m so-and-so, CEO of such-and-such, and I approve this ad.”

Freivogel’s attitude, though, overlooks the damage that the “corporate personhood” judicial precedents over the last 150 years or more have already done. They have led to an electoral situation where health insurers spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying against health care reform. And I doubt if Exxon gives a hoot about offending its customers. It knows that the occasional attempted boycotts of its gas stations in the last few years have been abysmally unsuccessful–laughable, in fact. Furthermore, we can’t get effective financial reform because so many congressmen are in the pockets of banking industry contributors. Thus, while it may be true that most corporations would not want to offend their customers with ads in their own names, the control corporations have over our elections threatens our democracy. The power they exert has made them what William Rivers Pitt calls “Super-citizens” and has in effect turned individuals into second class citizens.

So, yes. If it came down to it, I’d be willing to censor everything SEIU and VoteVets want to put on the airwaves if we could also be spared the lies and distortions of Swiftboaters funded by wealthy corporations. Let’s leave the talking to the individuals running for office or those voting, and let’s eliminate corporate funding from that speech. To do anything less subverts free speech rather than protecting it. The purpose of the First Amendment was to make sure that anybody who wanted to plunk a soapbox down in the town square and rant on about taxes or justice for the poor could have his say. But if a corporation erects a stage five feet away from him and installs seven monster amps, that individual’s right to be heard, even though he’s still standing there shouting, has just been obliterated.

I’m guessing that Freivogel would object to that analogy, because he mentioned how important it is for people to be able to gather in groups and make themselves heard. That’s what corporate ads do, and that’s what lobbyists funded by corporate PACs do. Such an attitude would put Freivogel squarely in the camp of the justices who ruled, in Buckley v. Vallejo, that money equals speech. But it doesn’t. Hundred dollar bills don’t have mouths. People have mouths. And hands to vote with. The right of corporations to advertise in elections needs to be curbed if we’re going to preserve not only the heart of the First Amendment but our democracy. To be a purist by including corporations in the mix is to subvert the intent of the Amendment’s authors.

So. To the obvious question. What are we to do? The most practical step–one that would only obliquely curb corporate spending–is to support the bill in Congress that would promote public funding of elections. The Fair Elections Now Act is gaining traction because of the Citizens United decision. It has 138 co-sponsors in the House. Lacy Clay is one of them. Russ Carnahan and Emanuel Cleaver are not. Not yet. Nor is Ike Skelton, of course. There are even three Republicans among the co-sponsors. In the Senate, there are eleven co-sponsors in all. Claire McCaskill is not one of them, but I still recall hearing her bemoan, in the summer of 2006, how much time candidates have to waste dialing for dollars. She might not be too hard to convince on this one.

The bill would set up an opt in situation. Once a candidate collected a given amount of small dollar donations–no more than $100 in a year from any one person–enough to prove that he’s got a reasonable amount of support, he could opt to receive public funds and forgo any contributions over $100. Of course, his opponent might not opt in, but his refusal of public money in order to go after big corporate contributions might then become a major campaign issue.

Last summer, I went to a major league baseball game and was shocked to see the manager of the opposing team hand the ump $5,000 before the game began. Okay, that’s a lie. But the point is that the baseball commission has more sense than our Federal Elections Commission. Flagrant bribery is illegal in baseball. The only way to squelch such blatant bribery in elections is by making public funds available and by making it politically risky to opt for accepting large campaign contributions.

William Freivogel denigrated the idea of public campaign financing on the grounds that many citizens would object to seeing their tax dollars fund the opposition. His question was, how would you feel if you knew that Dick Cheney was getting your money in a run for office? Let me see now. If Dick Cheney opted into a public campaign finance system, I’d feel–aside from shock that he would decline big business’s cash–I’d feel … delight, knowing that if he were forced to do all his own lie telling, he’d be at a tremendous disadvantage. A level playing field makes it harder for Republicans to succeed.

But to return to the issue of getting corporate money out of elections altogether, I would support Donna Edwards’ proposed Constitutional amendment “permitting Congress and the States to regulate the expenditure of funds by corporations engaging in political speech”. If that were ever passed, it would make the whole opt in or stay out question moot and greatly improve the chance of honest elections.

Here again, Freivogel would object by warning that changing the First Amendment could be a slippery slope. Next thing you know, we’ll be considering amendments to ban flag burning and allow official prayers in public schools. As he pointed out, the First Amendment is generally a liberal icon, one we might not want to mess with. Consider, though, how daunting it is to amend the Constitution. Doing so requires approval of 3/4 of the state legislatures. That’s a bar few proposals can hurdle. It’s a bar high enough to eliminate an idea like allowing state sponsored prayer in schools. But if any idea has the oomph to clear that bar, it would be getting corporate money out of our elections. As Freivogel pointed out, 66-80 percent of those polled favored eliminating corporate money in elections.

Aside from the slippery slope warning, though, Freivogel would argue that Edwards’ amendment negates the First Amendment by abridging free speech. Maybe so, but I figure that we can have a literal interpretation of the First Amendment only if we don’t mind seeing democracy slide down the tubes. We need to be asking ourselves, “What would Thomas Jefferson do?” He thought we would need a new Constitutional convention every couple of decades; in lieu of that, I think he’d at least approve of a little practical fudging on the First Amendment.  Another of our forebears, Andrew Jackson, saw the beginnings of this problem developing and had this advice:

Unless you become more watchful in your States and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of Government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations.

— Andrew Jackson, farewell address, 04 March 1837

photo of the capitol from behind the columns of the Supreme Court Building courtesy of American Spirit Images