I'm watching Bill Moyers interview two economists who just wrote a book called "13 Bankers." The authors list six banks that own America. Literally. These six banks -- you know the ones, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, etc. -- went from assets equivalent to 20 percent of all American wealth in 1990 to 60 percent today. These two economists are telling Moyers that America now is clearly an "oligarchy," ruled by the rich. They tell how banks are spending a million a day fighting financial reform. And I'm sitting here wondering if there is anything at all we human beings can do to fight back against these gigantic monstrous corporations who are screwing us. And I began to think about the recent Supreme Court case, Citizens United v. FEC, which seemingly completed the oligarchical framework by giving corporations full rights to participate in our electoral system. So I began to think of a very simple Constitutional Amendment that could appeal to libertarians, Tea Baggers, progressives, even many conservatives. The amendment goes something like this:
Corporations are not human beings and have no citizen rights under the United States Constitution.
This would eliminate corporate free speech, corporate rights to participate in our elections, corporate rights to "due process" and all the other garbage that has entered into our jurisprudence and our elections, all beginning with a momentous footnote to an 1887 Supreme Court decision that slipped corporate "personhood" into our Constitutional governance.
Forgive the shortness of the diary, but I would very much like to know if you would vote for this, and if you think there are any large constituencies outside of corporate owners who would vote against this amendment, I would appreciate a note about who you think these people are.