Title
Dept/ Agency: Offices of Municipal Council/City Clerk
Action: ( ) Ratifying (X) Authorizing ( ) Amending
Type of Service: Supporting
Purpose: Support for efforts to pass an Amendment to the United States Constitution related to campaign finance reform.
Additional Information:
Sponsor Rice
body
WHEREAS, the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights are intended to protect the rights of individual human beings ("natural persons"); and
WHEREAS, corporations are not mentioned in the Constitution and The People have never granted constitutional rights to corporations; and
WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court recognized in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) the threat to a republican form of government posed by "the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporations political ideas"; and
WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission(2010) reversed the decision in Austin, and presents a serious threat to self-government by rolling back legal limits on corporate spending in the electoral process allowing unlimited corporate spending to influence elections, candidate selection, policy decisions and sway votes; and
WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court held in Buckley v. Valeo (1976) that the appearance of corruption justified limits on contributions to candidates, but it wrongly rejected other fundamental interests that the City Council finds compelling such as creating a level playing field and ensuring that all citizens, regardless of wealth, have an opportunity to have their political views heard; and
WHEREAS, money is property, it is not speech; and
WHEREAS, Article V of the United States Constitution empowers and obligates the people o...
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