You Really Should Have Been There

You should have joined volunteers on the corners of Jefferson & Larkin in Joliet, IL, on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, who stood in the cold for hours supporting Movetoamend.org to inform our fellow Americans about the effects of corporate money on politics.  

I mean you really should have been there to let the public know that on the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's insane 5-4 decision, Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, concluding that corporations are people and money is free speech, has really created problems for the entire democratic process, and, thus, the ruling needs to be amended.   

Unprecedented amounts of money is pouring into candidate's coffers. The sources of the money remain unknown.  (Unknown, that is, to the public, but very clear to the candidates.) The money could have corporate origins.  It could be drug money for all anyone knows. Or it could have foreign origins.  Who knows? Only the candidates know who they are now VERY obligated to because they have been bought with these outrageous sums of money.   

A byproduct of this Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. FEC, is that any candidate currently in office who is not getting these scads of money must now spend more time soliciting contributions than actually serving the people who voted him/her into office. It is a lose/lose proposition.   

Are legislators going to serve those who gave them the money or those who voted for them because of the ads purchased by the money?  

Think about it. Are your needs as an American citizen being met? Does your State Representative/Congressman care more about Grover Norquist, to whom (s)he promised to never raise taxes, than you?  Does your legislator refuse to raise taxes on the richest Americans while sticking it to working Americans?  Could this be due to the fact that the wealthiest Americans have donated huge sums of anonymous money to a campaign that pulled the candidate up from oblivion?  Do not imagine for a moment that there are no strings attached when anonymous donors hand out their cash!  

Is this the way our government should work? Should America sell democracy to the highest bidder? If your answer is, "No" then, you REALLY SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE to inform the public about the outrageous Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. FEC, that we must amend before our democracy ceases to exist.   

Although you missed the opportunity to educate the public about the effects of corporate money on politics, it is not too late to sign the petition to amend Citizens United v. FEC at Movetoamend.org. 

Midge Allman