the corporate pledge of allegiance

[xchrom]

http://www.nationofchange.org/corporate-pledge-allegiance-1320849763

De­spite what the Supreme Court and Mitt Rom­ney say, cor­po­ra­tions aren’t peo­ple. (I’ll be­lieve they are when Geor­gia and Texas start ex­e­cut­ing them.)

The Court thinks cor­po­ra­tions have First Amend­ment rights to spend as much as they want on pol­i­tics, and Rom­ney (and most of his fel­low Re­gres­sives) think they need lower taxes and fewer reg­u­la­tions in order to be com­pet­i­tive.

These po­si­tions are ab­surd on their face. By flood­ing our democ­racy with their share­hold­ers’ money, big cor­po­ra­tions are vi­o­lat­ing their share­hold­ers’ First Amend­ment rights be­cause share­hold­ers aren’t con­sulted. They’re si­mul­ta­ne­ously sup­press­ing the First Amend­ment rights of the rest of us be­cause, given how much money they’re throw­ing around, we don’t have enough money to be heard.

And they’re in­di­rectly giv­ing non-Amer­i­cans (that is, all their for­eign own­ers, in­vestors, and ex­ec­u­tives) a say in how Amer­i­cans are gov­erned. Par­don me for being old-fash­ioned but I didn’t think for­eign money was sup­posed to be fun­neled into Amer­i­can elec­tions.