Recently I attended an annual event hosted by the League of Women Voters of Monroe County called the Legislative Breakfast, where one of the guests was my Pennsylvania State Legislator Rosemary Brown. Given my previous experience with Rosemary Brown, chronicled in my last blog (along with the bulk of the forum which focused mainly on the voter ID bill she voted for), when I got the opportunity to submit a written question I decided to ask about her stance on corporate personhood.
I wrote, "Do you believe corporations are people? Recently, local governments in Oakland, CA and NYC voted to declare that corporations are not people and pressure the US Congress to call a constitutional convention to overturn Citizens United, how would you vote if that came up in PA?" While the League didn't ask my question as part of their forum, perhaps because of the incidental conflation of local government with state government, I got to approach Rosemary after the event and ask her myself.
When the allotted time for the forum ended, I got in line to shake Rosemary Brown's hand and ask her my question. She smiled when she saw me and even called me something along the lines of "my voter ID friend" because she evidently remembered me from the last time I saw her when I had a lot of questions for her about her votes for PA's voter ID bill and amendments to it (again, see my last blog for details). My first question was simple: do you believe corporations are people? She said she didn't want to answer fully on-the-spot and that she would have to think about it, but that at first thought she leaned towards saying no, corporations are not people.
Under normal circumstances, I'm actually in favor of responses like that. I appreciate nuance and thoughtfulness, and people being honest enough to say they don't know something. That's rare enough in normal life; in politics, forget about it. But in this specific instance, it's inexcusable for one to be a politician in an era in which the Supreme Court recently ruled that corporations are people and not give the topic any thought without being prompted to do so by a constituent. That is either dishonesty or sloth at work. But her lack of thoughtfulness didn't end there.
Her answer to my question about the prospect of a constitutional convention to overturn Citizens United proved to be even greater cause for concern. Despite leaning towards the opinion that corporations are not people, Rosemary told me she would not be in favor of having a constitutional convention about it because the Founding Fathers got it right the first time with the Constitution so we shouldn't touch it, and also because people might have secret motives for such a convention that we should be wary of.
And yes, that was really her response. I started to say that they didn't have it quite perfect originally which is why the US Constitution had to be amended to do things like end slavery and give women the right to vote, but she just smiled and started shaking the next person's hand and talking to them.
I cannot lie, even after my previous encounter with Rosemary Brown, this still left me flabbergasted. Even getting past her questioning of the constitutional amendment process in general, what do people's motives have to do with it? It's not like simply by calling a constitutional convention any amendment could be passed on the slightest whim. She - a State Legislator - had to know that, right?
I had to know, so when she was done with the line of people waiting to talk with her, I approached her once more as she picked her things off the table she'd been sitting at during the forum. Keeping the tone of my voice as neutral as possible, I asked her if she knew constitutional amendments required 2/3 or 3/4 (I didn't know off the top of my head) of states to approve, so having the constitutional convention wouldn't be an opportunity for ne'er-do-wells to do anything they wanted to the constitution. She simply smiled, nodded, and walked away.
Looking back on it now, as I write this, I'm honestly surprised I wasn't angrier. Campaign finance reform is issue #1 because the money in politics prevents legitimate solutions for any other issues from presenting themselves - because bought and paid-for politicians stand in the way. And it's one thing for my State Legislator to give me the impression that I know more than she does on a crucial political issue, but this time she just sprinted towards the nearest exit rather than at least having the common decency to perfunctorily spout something generic her PA GOP overlords had programmed her to recite.
With the two-year anniversary of Citizens United fast approaching, We the People have found ways to fight back against corporate personhood not just at the local level as previously mentioned, but also from the state level with the Montana Supreme Court to the national level with the US Senate. We also have great grassroots campaigns like Wolf PAC, Get Money Out, and Amend 2012, and what looks to potentially be the new campaign finance reformer's (insert religious text of your choice) in Lawrence Lessig's new book, "Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress - and a Plan to Stop It."
We all know corporations aren't people. They don't love, they don't hate, and, as Dylan Ratigan recently quipped, they don't cheat on their spouses. The people who hold positions in corporations already have the same rights everyone else has - there is no justification for bestowing extra rights upon corporations as entities above and beyond those the people that comprise them already have. If corporations are people with all the same rights, wouldn't corporations getting to cast votes in elections or hold seats in Congress be the next logical step? But as my encounter with Rosemary Brown demonstrates, it's not enough to simply hold the belief that corporations aren't people, actions must be taken. This means utilizing every avenue the Founding Fathers saw fit to give us in order to reverse this morally perverse Supreme Court decision, up to and including a constitutional convention. Having elected officials who actually understand what a constitutional convention is and know how the Constitution gets amended would be yet another needed step in the right direction.
2:43 PM PT: Many thanks to Robobagpiper for this important clarification on what Citizens United does and does not say, with my apologies to readers for not being clearer in the first place:
"CU ultimately relied on the fact that the wording of the 1st Amendment protects speech, not speakers. The status of the speaker is completely unspecified. Other amendments specify the "right of the people to...", but the 1st doesn't. It simply and broadly specifies certain freedoms which may not be abridged without specifying who those freedoms belong to. The CU decision actually goes to lengths to describe the differences between corporate and real persons, and their rights."
3:32 PM PT: So I reread the whole blog and with Robobagpiper's facts taken into consideration, a couple spots don't work. The good news is, if you just mentally put the words "in terms of free speech rights," before the term "corporations are people," all the problems are solved, and all the points still work. Thanks again to Robobagpiper for informing me and all of us, I'm sure I'm not the first to make this mistake.
3:39 PM PT: It's already starting, I have a feeling I'm going to be catching this a lot now that I'm better informed:
Ana Marie Cox @anamariecox 16 Jan
RT @AmandaMarcotte: Romney is against Super PACs. You know, except when he support the "corporations are people" logic in Citizens United.
7:09 PM PT: This one is notable because it's actually from Amend 2012, one of the organizations I mentioned in the blog working to overturn Citizens United with a constitutional amendment, so one would presume they know what they're talking about:
Amend 2012 @Amend2012 11 Jan
On Jan. 21, 2010, #SCOTUS said corporations are people. On Jan. 18, 2012, we're saying #Amend2012 because only people are people!
Retweeted by Katrina vandenHeuvel
Note that it was re-tweeted by Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation, obviously one of the biggest and most respected progressive writers (another link in my blog also happens to be to one of her pieces). With all this, I'm not surprised I was misinformed.
Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 12:56 PM PT: Three more examples in the last 24 hours:
On The Young Turks on Current TV guest hosted by Brian Unger last night, Brian said the anniversary of Citizens United was the anniversary of the day "corporations became people."
On Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO last night, Senator Bernie Sanders said the reason Citizens United needs to be overturned is "corporations aren't people."
Just now on MSNBC, Martin Bashir flat-out said Citizens United said "corporations are people," and Jonathan Alter went along with it.
I find it curious that this meme has become so widespread given its apparent inaccuracy.