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New Mexico Legislature to Congress: Amend Against 'Citizens United'
The Constitution of the United States can be amended in two formal ways: from the top down and from the bottom up.
But New Mexico legislators have found a third way and, hopefully, other state legislators around the country will follow their lead.
The US Constitution is traditionally amended via a process that begins with the endorsement of an amendment by the US House and US Senate and then the ratification of that amendment by the requisite three-fourths of state legislatures. That’s the top-down route. The bottom-up route begins when two-thirds of the state legislatures ask Congress to call a national convention to propose amendments.
But what if a state legislature tells Congress to get moving?
That’s what happened over the weekend, when the New Mexico state Senate voted 20-9 to approve Senate Memorial 3, which calls on the Congress to pass and send to the states for ratification a constitutional amendment to overturn the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC. The Citizens United ruling was one of several that opened the floodgates for corporate special-interest money to overwhelm the political process.
The New Mexico Senate vote, which follows on a January 31 vote by the New Mexico House aligns the state with Hawaii in calling for the amendment. And it gives a big boost to the campaigning by Free Speech for People, Move to Amend, Common Cause and other groups that are working on various strategies to get communities and states nationwide to demand an amendment.
This marks a major victory for the constitutional amendment movement to reclaim our democracy,” says John Bonifaz, executive director of Free Speech for People, the national non-partisan campaign launched on the day of the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision to press for a Twenty-eighth Amendment to the US Constitution to overturn the ruling. “The Citizens United ruling presents a direct and serious threat to the integrity of our elections, unleashing a torrent of corporate money into our political process. The ruling is also the most extreme extension yet of a corporate rights doctrine which has been eroding our First Amendment and our US Constitution for the past 30 years. As with prior egregious Supreme Court rulings which threatened our democracy, we the people must exercise our power under Article V of the Constitution to enact a constitutional amendment which will preserve the promise of American self-government: of, for, and by the people.”
Free Speech for People initiated the New Mexico push, and worked closely with New Mexico State Senators Steve Fischmann and Eric Griego and State Representative Mimi Stewart to advance it. Support came from the Center for Civic Policy, Common Cause New Mexico, the League of Women Voters of New Mexico, the New Mexico Green Chamber of Commerce, El Centro, the Southwest Organizing Project, All Families Matter, the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association, the Native American Voter Alliance, Progress Now and Move On.
The New Mexico move is important, as it comes at the start of a year when activist groups are seeking to ramp up support for an amendment.
“Through Amend 2012, the campaign we formally launched last month, Common Cause helped secure [victories in communities across the county],” says Common Cause President Bob Edgar. “As you know, Amend2012 aims to give voters in as many states as possible an opportunity to make their voices heard now, during the 2012 elections, on the need to overturn Citizens United. Common Cause is working to give voters the tools to put ‘voter instruction’ measures on the November ballot in as many states as possible, either by voter initiative or action by the state legislature. The measures would instruct Congress to adopt a constitutional amendment to make it clear that corporations are not people and authorize campaign spending limits.”
The idea is catching on in the states. And with people who may be in Congress soon.
New Mexico Senator Eric Griego, an amendment proponent in that state, is running for the US House this year.
So, too, is Wisconsin state Representative Mark Pocan, D-Madison, who is co-sponsoring pro-amendment legislation.
Because so many state legislatures end up as Congressional contenders—and members of Congress—the fight to get states to tell Congress to amend the Constitution pays double bonuses. It sends a message and, depending on the election results this year, it could send more champions of the amendment movement to Congress.
16 Comments so far
Show AllNew Mexico rocks! I wonder if having the highest proportion of PhD scientists per capita of the states has anything to do with it?
Meanwhile, the rest of the US continues to sleep.
I think the descendants of the original Mexican inhabitants, and the Native Americans also have input on this. They're not unfamiliar with abuses of power over the powerless, or big outside corporations lording it over people ...
You are absolutely right; the NM legislature is primarily hispanic and NA. Having a well-educated white minority who understand the issues at hand is not an impediment.
Great State! Lived there for 4 years, and still love it ...
The bill was sponsored by an anglo and ten of the twenty votes were anglo.
It's not as lop-sided as you think.
Regardless, it's good to see my state in the news- in a good way!
The majority of posters carried by the Occupy group that I belong to here in Southern Oregon, is about this very issue. Not everyone out here is sleeping.
And besides this issue, another big one they're meeting on right now in Medford, that has attendees from all over the bottom half of the state, including liberals and conservatives, and with law enforcement speakers, and others, is to protest the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act.)
"One step at a time, and the mountain is scaled; one thing at a time, and that done well, is the only sure way, to succeed and excel." ~author unknown~
Sounds good!
II did not see "money is not speech." In this proposed amendment.
Without it, I think this amendment will do little or nothing.
The SCOTUS says that Money is still speech.
1st amendment says Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.
Corporations have lots of money/speech, which can’t be limited in use.
This amendment says that corporations are not people.
If corporations use their money/speech for political purposes, will the SCOTUS decide which amendment dominates?
If so this amendment will not change much.
Respectfully, your post is gobbledygook.
The NM state legislature has voted to petition Congress to overturn the Supreme Ct's abomination Citizens United. By itself, the proposal may not go so far as to say what ultimately needs to be put into an Amendment, "A Corporation is not a Person," but it's a realistic big step. That is, remove Corporate power to simply buy elections anonymously via PACs. And it would trump the SCt.
That's 2 out of 50 states. Keep it rolling! And pay no attention to naysayers.
I'm still worried that this focus on an amendment is missing the bigger picture and isn't going to do the trick.
Citizens United is only the most egregious in a long series of decisions by the Roberts Court that seek to codify and legitimize the slow motion corporate coup of our government that has been taking place over the last few decades. Unless an amendment can be worded in such a way that it nullifies all of those decisions, and stops Roberts & Co. in their tracks, it won't achieve the desired effect.
Even an amendment that does overturn the far right agenda of Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy will still not strike at the heart of the problem, which is that we have a rogue Supreme Court that couldn't care less about the Constitution they have sworn to uphold.
There are no such things as words which cannot be misconstrued. The Bill of Rights is not the problem. The First Amendment is already as clear as can be, but the Roberts court managed to utterly pervert its meaning. I doesn't strike me that any amendment, no matter how wisely worded, can address the real issue of Supreme Court justices who attack our Constitution.
So I think we need a mechanism to rein in errant courts. It can't be the sort of rash thing that Newt Gingrich proposed, of summarily dumping judges that partisans like Newt don't like. It would have to be a more collective and measured process, some sort of nationwide review mechanism which, if a sufficiently high barrier is overcome, would not only overturn decisions which are clearly unconstitutional, but would result in censure of and eventual dismissal of Supreme Court justices that prove to be recidivists who refuse to refrain from violating our Constitution. With such a mechanism in place, at least 4 of the 5 right wingers on the Supreme Court would have been removed by now and our Constitution would be safe from corporatist takeover.
agree wholeheartedly with your advice...there are no two ways about it.. the country has to be taken back from those that have been positioning themselves (over the past many years) to take over the power structure...
Although not presented as eloquently as your post, I've mentioned the need for this very thing in previous threads. This court bypassed the will of citizens in installing Bush; it's looked the other way while civilian leaders gave the MIC the nod on torture. It's blithely ignored the dissolution of checks and balances on the "unitary executive," and not blinked at the NDAA. All this, as wealth accrues to the 1% and more and more citizens struggle to survive. All this while through amazing games of graft and corruption, the citizenry was placed on the hook to bail out the high stakes gamblers posing as Wall Street's cogniscenti. This is an AWFUL court, one as far removed from the premise of justice as BP is from environmentalism.
And on a somewhat related note, given the operations of Universal Justice, on Truth-out there's a story today about a massive wave of radioactive debris, Nature's Express Mail, heading over from Fukushima to the U.S. West coast. Perhaps this is payback (long-delayed karmic blowback) for Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Like a morality play, what's on view is the truth that those who play fast and loose with exceedingly dangerous substances, generally have no control over the long-term ramifications (or should I say reverberations) of such actions.
leeches!!!
There is something dark and ugly brewing not just in the US, but in the UK, Canada, many European countries and definitely throughout Europe and Africa, and its the seizure of control of nations and economies by a tiny percentage of their populations. As a group, this "elite" tend to be cosmopolitan and international (or Multi-national) in their outlook, and are more at home with another of their class from a differing culture, than they are with a "peon" from their own culture. They have effectively engaged in class warfare for over 60 years and are responsible for the near-collapse of our financial system, corrupt as it is.
The secret is this, (keep it to yourselves though or everybody will want some); FIRST - control the government (from a distance though, you can't be too obvious) and do it through MONEY! Greed is everywhere and mankind is the most avaricious of creatures. A jumped-up egotist (think Gingrich) can be bought by a rich Jew like Edelman and sent off in the direction Edelman wants. Congress, consisting as it is (with few exceptions) of jumped-up nobodys is easily purchased. Some groups, like the Israelis, figure out how to buy Congress with its own (or rather OUR own) money!
SECOND: Control the Judiciary. It may take 60 years, but if there is a plan and it is followed, a nation's judiciary can be "selected" through a process of non-co-operation and disruption to filter out the good judges and preserve the bad. The fool, Justice Thomas is an example of this. The judicial coup-d'etat that placed Bush II in the White House, and the Citizens United decision are example of the payoff to be had whereby entire elections can now be legally, and secretly, paid for. Controlling the Judiciary in this fashion ensures that there is never a level playing field or a penalty to be paid!
THIRD - Enfeeble the masses. This is accomplished gradually and is done not with the rack, cat-o-nine-tails or torture chamber. Its done financially. Gradually the wealth of the masses is drained from them. One small bank fee, cable TV charge or municipal levy or entitlement cut-back at a time, right up to the reduction of the ENTIRE working-class offspring of an ENTIRE generation into LIFETIME peonage by charging for a college education, at a vastly inflated cost, and very kindly "lending" the aspiring students the means toward self-enslavement. Student loans now total over 1 TRILLION DOLLARS, and growing. Twenty to thirty percent of college graduates will not appreciably improve their economic standing after graduation because of the lack of decent jobs for graduates, but will still be held to repayment of their 30 or 40 thousand dollar debt, from minimum-wage earnings. Congress has already done the bidding of the lenders and removed student loans from bankruptcy proceedings - they literally CANNOT BY ESCAPED! The children of the rich will not suffer this fate.
You will notice one commonality in the above. Nothing can be or has been done to the masses except it was approved in one way or another by Congress. - Whores for the most part these last 60 years, who have sold us out for their own enrichment. If we can control our own elections, from the nominating process forward, we can bring this corrupt system to a screeching halt. That means - GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS! Publicly finance our elections and get rid of our "TWO" party system,because its been a "ONE"-party system for many years.
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That's why "Change We CAn Believe In" Obama's policies are identical to "mission accomplished" Bush II's policies - its tweedledum and tweedledee and the MSM pretends for us that its a real contest.
Overturning Citizens United will definitely help, but getting private money out of our political system will help even more!
Most of these posters have much more faith in our government processes than I do. At this point appealing to an institution as corrupt as our US Congress to reform our government is laughable. How do you thinkthese members of the millionaires club got elected in the first place? These elites will not respond to polite requests and if they see we are serious aboout changing how this counttry is run, they will quickly clamp down on it.