In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the U.S. government could not prevent companies from actively supporting political campaigns through direct advertising, effectively giving corporations protection under free speech, something typically reserved for individual citizens. This has paved the way for the creation of giant Super PACs, or political action committees, that spend millions of dollars campaigning for politicians based on the best interests of corporations. At the same time, we have seen a huge uptick in direct corporate contributions to political campaigns. In the 2012 presidential election, President Obama and Governor Romney raised almost $2 billion combined during their campaigns, a large part of which came from companies and the extremely wealthy.
In Corporations Are Not People, Jeffrey Clements details the destructive and far-reaching effects of the Supreme Court’s decision that corporations are people with free speech and other rights. With this decision, the Supreme Court reversed a century of legislative efforts to prevent corporate money from corrupting democracy and upended the notion that the U.S. has a government for the people rather than a government for corporate wealth. Clements contends that unbalanced corporate power has perverted the Bill of Rights and turned it into a charter for corporations. But he claims people can fight back to restore government for the people and save the country. Thousands of people have already started working for the People’s Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.
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