Author Topic: Bernie Sanders on the choice: let Citizens United stand or have a functioning democracy
AzureTyger 
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Subject: Bernie Sanders on the choice: let Citizens United stand or have a functioning democracy
If you are concerned about the collapse of the middle class, you should be concerned about how American campaigns are financed. If you wonder why the United States is the only country in the industrialized world not to have a national health care program, if you're asking why we pay the highest price in the world for prescription drugs, or why we spend more money on the military than the rest of the world combined, you are talking about campaign finance. You are talking about the unbelievable power that big-money interests have over every legislative decision.

An already horrendous situation was made much worse two years ago this month when the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission that multinational corporations have a constitutional right to spend whatever they want to influence election outcomes. A bare 5-4 majority lowered the floodgates on unchecked, unlimited, unaccountable corporate cash in political campaigns. Corporations were equated with people. A century of laws regulating business spending on elections were upended. In one fell swoop, five justices fantasized for corporations a right never conceived by the founders whose preamble to our Constitution begins with the words, "We the people...


http://sanders.senate.gov/petition/?uid=f1c2660f-54b9-4193-86a4-ec2c39342c6c

Fat chance of getting such a Constitutional amendment past the army of happily enthralled right wing serfs that make up half our country, but we should try.

 

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Taliesihne 
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Subject: Bernie Sanders on the choice: let Citizens United stand or have a functioning democracy
He was awesome last night applause

 

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Aerlinthian 
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Subject: Bernie Sanders on the choice: let Citizens United stand or have a functioning democracy
AzureTyger posted:
Fat chance of getting such a Constitutional amendment past the army of happily enthralled right wing serfs that make up half our country, but we should try.
You had a good post up to that point and then you because dishonest, which even a casual look at a site like Opensecrets.org will expose.

 

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AzureTyger 
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Subject: Bernie Sanders on the choice: let Citizens United stand or have a functioning democracy
Aerlinthian posted:
AzureTyger posted:
Fat chance of getting such a Constitutional amendment past the army of happily enthralled right wing serfs that make up half our country, but we should try.
You had a good post up to that point and then you because dishonest, which even a casual look at a site like Opensecrets.org will expose.


Way more liberals and democrats amongst the population would vote for such an amendment. The Koch-Murdoch-RWN noise machine would release a few talking points equating corporate rights with individual freedom and conservatives would line right up against it.

 

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Aerlinthian 
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Subject: Bernie Sanders on the choice: let Citizens United stand or have a functioning democracy
This is a long time corporatist/fascist government. It didn't get that way without both parties, pretending otherwise really doesn't help your credibility. If you want to troll, that is cool and all, but the better thing to do if you're serious about the issue is to coalition build and to do that, you will need to not turn off potential coalition partners right away via partisan rhetoric.

In principle most Americans agree that there is way too much corporate influence on politics. The problem however is that when you get to specifics, very often people want to retain some corporatist pork that favors them while they in the same breath castigate someone else for that persons special pork.

If we honestly can't figure out that all the corporatist pork is bad then we are doomed to walk this path to collapse.

 

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__Bonk__ 
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Subject: Bernie Sanders on the choice: let Citizens United stand or have a functioning democracy
Many VN mods are zionists!

grin

 

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