Glimmers of hope
Feb. 18th, 2010 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
openspace4life16 days ago, Rep. Donna Edwards (D. Maryland) introduced a bill to pass an amendment to the Constitution denying free speech rights to corporations, countering the recent Supreme Court ruling that essentlially removed all limits to corporate election spending. It definitely has one cosponsor, Rep. John Conyers (D. Michigan), Chair of the Judiciary Committee. Seemingly based only on an unsupported claim at FreeSpeechForPeople.org, the left-wing blogosphere is claiming there are ten other cosponsors; I can't find any independent evidence for this. Still, I really appreciate the fact that someone in Congress is taking seriously the idea that treating megacorporations just like people is wrong.
By the way, an earlier bill by Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-Iowa), proposing a similar constitutional amendment, has no listed cosponsors and may have been outclassed by the less extreme Edwards amendment. Edwards says the government should be able to regulate corporate spending, but explicitly avoids restricting freedom of the press (even for corporations?). Boswell says all corporate political spending should stop, period.
Also, today is the "JP Morgan Chase Social Media Day of Action to End Mountain Top Removal Coal Mining," sponsored by Rainforest Action Network. I may not be quite ready to close my Chase CD account in the middle of its term, but I do applaud any effort being made to end this horribly destructive practice. Even if carbon sequestration were possible in the short term, there would still be a strong argument to ban coal-fired power plants unless we can clean up the extraction process as well.
By the way, an earlier bill by Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-Iowa), proposing a similar constitutional amendment, has no listed cosponsors and may have been outclassed by the less extreme Edwards amendment. Edwards says the government should be able to regulate corporate spending, but explicitly avoids restricting freedom of the press (even for corporations?). Boswell says all corporate political spending should stop, period.
Also, today is the "JP Morgan Chase Social Media Day of Action to End Mountain Top Removal Coal Mining," sponsored by Rainforest Action Network. I may not be quite ready to close my Chase CD account in the middle of its term, but I do applaud any effort being made to end this horribly destructive practice. Even if carbon sequestration were possible in the short term, there would still be a strong argument to ban coal-fired power plants unless we can clean up the extraction process as well.
