Anyone seen Kevin Hart's stand up? If not you should….right now!!!
Ok so, since its Tuesday I'm going to tell it like it is!!! The past few weeks I have been posting about our government being taken over by corporations and you may ask yourself well how did I get here? Wait…that's the Talking Heads…BUT you should be asking yourself, how did WE get here?
Well, let me tell you a little story. In 2010, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote let Citizens United win over the Federal Election Commission. Citizens United is a lobbying group that wanted to air a broadcast about Hillary Clinton, but since they are a lobbying group they would be violating some of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. This became a constitutional decision because Citizen United argued that parts of this Act were against first amendment rights.
The reason the Act was created in the first place was to give rise to more fair elections; to let all candidates have a fair shot, despite the money they had behind them. As I mentioned before, the public sector is supposed to be void of monied interests to allow a better balance between private and public to take place.
By this vote, parts of the Act were deemed unconstitutional, allowing much greater amounts of money and power to be given to certain candidates during an election. Therefore, votes are no longer decided upon by the people, they are decided upon by the candidate with greater amounts of money. And while you may say, "Kelly that's not true, I still get to vote", I would say, your opinion may be greatly influenced through the powers of persuasion that one with more money has. If you think it's not happening, it probably is.
That fact that so much money can now influence our government and our vote, those with the most money win. So, those with the most money support their own interests and make puppets out of our elected officials. The elected officials are no longer working on behalf of their constituency; rich and poor, they are working on behalf of the corporation that gives them the most backing.
The only way to overturn this ruling and gain some control back to our system for the people is to pass a constitutional amendment. Many states and towns have passed resolutions in favor of this type of amendment, but surprise surprise, the general public does not know about it and therefore it doesn't get the backing it needs. If you want to know more click below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22scotus.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission
http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-citizens-united-v-fec/
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