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Date: Tues, 30 Mar 2010 19:10:51 -0800
From: The Pen <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Which End Of The Horse Did The Supreme Court Decision Come From, Throwing Our Elections Open To Corporations?
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Today we resume with our 7th installment in the series body slamming 
the Supreme Court decision declaring our country the United 
Trans-Global Corporations of America. 

But first, the new Independent Voters movement is growing quickly. 
The Facebook page (which anyone can read, even without a Facebook 
account) has over 3,000 fans already, in just the first week. Most of 
all we need MAXIMUM participation from our progressive political 
friends on Facebook so our voices will be heard here. So especially 
if you are on Facebook already please go there and become a fan. 

[Facebook] Independent Voters page: 
http://www.facebook.com/Independent.Voters 

We have also set up a fabulous new inter-navigation resource and we 
need you to submit ALL your activist links on ANY site anywhere, 
independent candidate sites, issue advocacy sites, existing third 
party sites, bring it all. Just click on the Hub tab on the page 
above, and get the code for the linking button and you will 
automatically get a listing on the new hub. If you want to associate 
a special description for your link submit the simple form on that 
page. 

And we are now also streaming the posts (at least the first 140 
chars) from the new Independent Voters page to Twitter as well. 
Follow this Twitter account and we will AUTOMATICALLY follow you back 
to boost your own followers, and you can participate in the 
discussion this way: 

@iVoters 

As we mobilize long term against the Supreme Court outrage, we are 
focused on distributing as many of the "Corporations Are NOT The 
People" bumper stickers as possible, with over 15,000 out the door so 
far (mostly entirely for free), and we have shipped all the bulk 
packs requested too. 

To get a free bumper sticker (if you haven't requested yours yet) 
just submit this page. If you can make a donation of course this is 
what makes it possible for us to send free bumper stickers to those 
who cannot make a donation right now. 

Free Supreme Court Bumper Sticker: 
http://www.peaceteam.net/bumper_stickers.php 

For those who want to organize locally, packs of 25, 50 and 100 are 
available for a modest price (just enough to keep the initiative 
going) at 

Bulk Supreme Court Bumper Stickers: 
http://www.peaceteam.net/bumper_stickers_bulk.php 

OK, so here we go again. A Supreme Court decision is supposed to be 
the words straight from the horse's mouth. But the one in the 
Corporations United case calls into question which end of the horse 
it came from. 

Where we last left our villains on the Supreme Court we were talking 
about how Kennedy, besides his own fact finding errors, had built his 
entire decision on misreading the actual holdings of the cases he was 
citing, relying instead on dissents (often his own) and dicta (stray 
language) which are NOT supposed to take precedence. 

Central to Kennedy's specious analysis is his quotation OUT of 
context (opinion at p. 30) of this language from the Belloti decision 
putatively rejecting 

"the proposition that speech that OTHERWISE would be within the 
protection of the First Amendment loses that protection simply 
because its source is a corporation." 

Here WE emphasize the word "otherwise" in this passage because it is 
pivotal and the only one that really matters. Kennedy would read this 
rejection, of the hypothetical proposition stated, as a declaration 
that corporations have unlimited and ABSOLUTE First Amendment free 
speech rights. The Belloti decision held NO such thing. It says here 
only that corporations have SOME free speech rights, subject to other 
limitations provided elsewhere. 

And indeed elsewhere in the Belloti decision it in fact expressly 
limited itself to the issue of whether corporations can participate 
in a debate on POLICY issues in public discourse. The issue of 
whether corporations can without any regulation or restriction 
participate in CANDIDATE advocacy, in particular within 30 days of an 
election, as per the statute overturned by Kennedy's outlaw decision, 
by Kennedy's own admission (opinion p. 31) the Belloti decision did 
NOT "address". 

Here's what Belloti actually says about the intended scope of its 
holding. 

"... our consideration of a corporation's right to speak on issue of 
general public interest implies no comparable right in the quite 
different context of participation in a political campaign for 
election to public office." [435 US at 788, n. 26.] 

Whoop, there it is, as they say in the legal biz. The Belloti 
decision concerned only whether a corporation could weigh in on the 
merits of a referendum on a public policy issue. To explode that into 
a destruction of all reasonable restraints on untoward corporate 
influence on candidate elections is for Kennedy to play terrorist 
with our entire infrastructure of jurisprudence. 

All this may have escaped Kennedy's horse blindered attention in 
arriving at his perverse result, but it sure did not escape Justice 
Stevens, who precisely pointed all this out in his dissent at p. 52. 
Nobody disputes that corporations have at least some First Amendment 
rights. Otherwise corporate advertising in ALL forms would be banned. 
But here Kennedy engages in a unilateral refusal to read the words in 
the Belloti decision for what they actually say. 

In short, Belloti EXPRESSLY precluded the interpretation Kennedy 
would give it. This is beyond reckless, it is beyond irresponsible, 
it is beyond dishonest, it is Orwellian, and coming from the mouth of 
a Supreme Court justice ... it is criminal. 

Likewise, in his deliberate misapplication of the Buckley case 
Kennedy's citation of vague language disapproving of restricting "the 
speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the 
relative voice of others" is no more availing (opinion p. 33) to 
decide an issue he HIMSELF admits Buckley did not "consider" (opinion 
p. 29). 

This is not about seeking to "enhance" the voice of citizens 
vis-a-vis corporations. It is exactly because corporations have 
overwhelmingly so much more financial power RELATIVE to individual 
citizens that Congress has passed reasonable regulations on them. And 
over the decades the Courts have affirmed these regulations over and 
over, to keep the voice of actual citizens from being drowned out, 
which regulations Kennedy now so unrighteously overturns. 

Seven parts in this series already, and are we done yet ripping this 
heinous decision to legal shreds? Not even close. Next up in this 
series, the drop kick hypocrisy of Kennedy's First Amendment 
absolutism as applied on behalf of corporations only. 

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed 
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible. 

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at 
http://www.millionfaxmarch.com/in.htm 

Or if you want to cease receiving our messages, just use the function 
at http://www.millionfaxmarch.com/out.htm 

usalone386b:364698 


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