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Corporations Are Not People, Money is Not Speech: Repealing Corporate Personhood Throughout America

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 In Boulder, CO “Measure 2H” is a call for reclaiming democracy from the corrupting effects of corporate control.
It's a show of support for the Move to Amend initiative, which wants to change the U.S. Constitution so that it overrides the Supreme Courts Citizens United decision that essentially granted personhood to corporations. The January 2010 ruling, which said that the First Amendment prohibits limits on corporate funding of political broadcasts in candidate elections, was criticized for equating money with free speech and giving companies carte blanche to outspend the competition on ads for their favored candidates. Opponents said that the city council should be focusing instead on local matters in its own jurisdiction, and that stripping corporations of rights would hurt the economy.

Berkeley’s mayor and City Council called for amending US & CA constitutions to declare corporations are not entitled to the rights of persons and that corporate money is not free speech and to request that other communities take a similar stand (April 2010).

On a related note, an experiment by Digital Democracy led to repealing corporate personhood as the top idea expressed as of the writing of the article.

Also see:

Event: Nov 9 – Nation-wide House Parties to Plan for the Two-Year Anniversary of Citizens United

Video: Hartmann – Have corporations overplayed their hand & a backlash is now underway?

Democracy is for People

MovetoAmend.org

GetMoneyOut.com

FreeSpeechforPeople.org

Animation: Story of Citizens United vs. FEC

Wolf-PAC

Constitutional Convention online idea + feedback collection(Lessig)

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Event: 8-10 June NYC Strategies for a New Economy

03 Economy, Academia, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics
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Upcoming Event:

June 8-10, 2012
Conference:  Strategies for a New Economy
Bard College, on the Hudson River, New York
Registration open in January of 2012
Themes for Conference Tracks
Each Track will have seven associated workshops
1.  Modeling the New Economy: Shared Prosperity within Planetary Limits
2.  Measuring Well Being: Alternative Indicators of Wealth and Progress
3.  Banking and Financing a New Economy: Scale, Criteria, Innovation
4.  Re-building Local Economies:  Engines for Resilience
5.  Re-imagining Ownership: Coops, Stakeholders, Corporate Structure
6. Transforming Money: Structuring, Issuing, and Valuing New Mediums of Exchange
7.  Sharing the Commons: Identifying, Allocating, and Restoring
8.  Messaging a New Economy: Education, Media, Public Campaigns
9.  Forging Justice for All: Economic Security, Equity, and Jobs in the New Economy
10. Empowered Youth: Mandating a New Economy
11. Responsive Government for a New Economy: Politics as if People and Planet Mattered
 12. Moving Beyond Consumerism: Plenitude, Sufficiency, and Mindful Consumption
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Reference: The Privatization [Corruption] of Democracy – Honoring & Documenting the Work of Eva Waskell

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Censorship & Denial of Access, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Country/Regional, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Information Technology, Intelligence (Public), Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
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Gordon Cook

I am honored that Eva Waskell has entrusted me to present The Privatization of Our Democracy, a work that I regard as her Profile in Courage. For 25 years she has labored to correct what is possibly the most significant public policy failure of the computer age—the privatization of vote counting carried out under the rationale that computers are simply automatic calculators that can tabulate votes more cost effectively than old analogue machines. I have known her for 19 of those years.

. . . . . .

People think they know that something is wrong with the way elections are conducted in this country.  They are correct. There is. But readers only now will get access to a full history of the abuse of public trust by the elected politicians of the United States of America. That’s a large claim to make, but see for yourself.

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I believe that there are multiple publications here in what Eva has to say. The scholarly monograph. An Elections for Dummies paperback. A paperback of humorous tabby cat photos where the kitties are running elections.  Eva is a national treasure and I am proud to be able to use the Internet to make her story known. Fortunately, there are many, many public spirited citizens left.

Full Report (PDF 160 Pages)

Cook Report Home

Table of Contents and Selected Quotes Below the Line –

A SPECTACULAR Piece of Work

Continue reading “Reference: The Privatization [Corruption] of Democracy – Honoring & Documenting the Work of Eva Waskell”

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Reference: The 99% Declaration

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“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” -Thomas Jefferson

The 99% Declaration

WHEREAS THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION PROVIDES THAT:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

BE IT RESOLVED THAT:

WE, THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in order to form a more perfect Union, by, for and of the PEOPLE, shall elect and convene a NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY beginning on July 4, 2012 in the City Of Philadelphia.

 

Full declaration below the line. 

There is no assurance this is actually supported by any General Assembly.
Continue reading “Reference: The 99% Declaration”

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Koko: What If Government Were Like an iPod?

Advanced Cyber/IO, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process
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Koko

What If Government Were More Like an iPod?

Dilbert's Scott Adams on bringing democracy out of the age of wax candles and into the age of touch screens

Scott Adams

Wall Street Journal, 5 November 2011

If Congress had a 9% approval rating while George Washington was still alive, he would have shoved his wooden dentures in his mouth, assembled a militia and marched on the Capitol. The nation's founders weren't big fans of dysfunctional governments. I'll bet we could solve our energy problem by connecting a generator to John Adams's corpse, which I assume is spinning in its grave.

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I've heard people say the United States no longer has the caliber of intellectual giants that authored the Declaration of Independence, defeated a superior British military, crafted the Constitution and built a robot butler that would eventually run away and change its name to Mitt Romney. But that's OK, because individuals are not the primary vehicles for genius. When it comes to the larger matters of civilization, group intelligence is more important than individual genius. To put it another way: Do you know who is smarter than the entire senior class at MIT? Answer: no one.

Today, thanks to the Internet, we can summon the collective intelligence of millions.

Read full article.

Tip of the Hat to Damien Morton via IndieGoGo.

Phi Beta Iota:  Mr. Adams provides a very thoughtful overview of the possibilities, while avoiding any mention of the corruption that is pervasive in today's top-down elite control “rule by secrecy” environment.  The Electoral Reform Act of 2012 is intended to eradicate corruption, assure transparency, restore the Republic, and make direct democracy such as Mr. Adams envisions a reality before 2016.  The next President should be of, by, and for We  the People, tested in the fires of the Occupy Wall Street kiln.

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Venessa Miemis: Geoffry West on Math of Cities

Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Movies, Policies, Threats
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Venessa Miemis

Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities — that wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects of a city can be deduced from a single number: the city's population.

In this mind-bending talk from TEDGlobal he shows how it works and how similar laws hold for organisms and corporations.

TED Page with Video