David Cobb, a fiery speaker, and former Green Party presidential candidate, is touring California giving his talk "Creating Democracy & Challenging Corporate Rule." This presentation is part history lesson and part heart-felt call-to-action!
Cobb is an organizer and national spokesman for MoveToAmend.org, a coalition of over 160,000 people and organizations whose goal is to amend the United States Constitution to end corporate rule and legalize democracy.
This event is free and open to the general public, donations requested, no one turned away for lack of funds.
Event Details
February 9, 2012
7:00 - 9:00 PM
Carleton Hall
400 West Franklin Street
Monterey, CA 93940
We know the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision has unleashed a torrent of undisclosed corporate and union spending at the federal level. It overturned a century of laws and decades of legal precedent. Common Cause has decided to stand up and take action! Common Cause has joined forces with a number of other organizations to build awareness and educate citizens across the country about the amounts of money corporations are emptying out of their own pockets to to steal our democracy. The goal of this new coalition is to strengthen the voice of the people and prepare to battle these corporations to save our democracy.
So far, we have filed a complaint with the Department of Justice asking for an investigation of Justices Thomas and Scalia for attending a strategy session hosted by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch in Rancho Mirage, California, at the same time the Court was considering the case of Citizens United v. FEC in 2008.
On January 30, 2011, Common Cause, along with over 30 organizations including the California Nurses Association, Courage Campaign, California Labor Federation, Greenpeace, held a peaceful public demonstration to "Uncloak the Kochs" and turned out 1,500 protesters to Rancho Mirage, CA for the Koch Brothers annual meeting. This event in CA had legs - and people all over the country are starting to following the Koch Brothers money trail. From Wisconsin to Nebraska, people are starting to wake up to special interests stealing our elections.
In Los Angeles, we're preemptively stopping the Koch Brothers and other special interests from pushing money into our elections. We are working to strengthen campaign finance laws to keep special interest money at bay with our support of Measure H, which will do two things:
1. Lift the cap on the public finance trust to create a more robust public financing system.
2. Ban prospective private companies with pending bids on city contracts from making campaign contributions.
We are pleased to be standing with LA City Council President Eric Garcetti, City Council members Tom LaBonge, Paul Koretz, Paul Krekorian, Jose Huizar, Bill Rosendahl, the California Clean Money Campaign, the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles, Public Campaign, Public Citizen, the William C. Velazquez Institute and others to pass Measure H on March 8.
All politics is local and we believe that! Ifnot, then when? When Los Angeles succeeds in passing Measure H, we will send an important message that we are taking back our democracy. It does not belong to We the special, well-financed interests. Our democracy belongs to We the People.
Barbara Boxer won by about nine points, but that's not for lack of trying of the right-wing interests to boot her out. Over at California Watch, Chase Davis takes a look at the IEs against Boxer:
The Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United ruling earlier this year helped major corporations and other interest groups spend more than $5 million on California's Senate race without disclosing their contributors, according to independent spending reports analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Ten months ago, when the high court handed down Citizens United, effectively allowing businesses and trade groups to contribute unlimited sums to federal elections, the punditocracy was eager to predict an unprecedented flood of secret interest-group cash that would soon flow into competitive elections nationwide.
Many of those predictions have come true. In the months since, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has emerged as exhibit A in the ruling's predicted consequences, contributing millions of dollars to primarily Republican candidates while taking advantage of new legal covers to keep the sources of its contributions secret. (CalWatch)
In all, there was about eleven million dollars of these direct campaign ads lobbed up against Boxer. You can be the judge on effectiveness, perhaps they did move the needle a little bit. But in the end, I guess it is just as well that this money was spent in California, rather than other races. The Chamber's five million bucks in secret money are the most egregious, and there should be disclosure rules, but the money isn't going to slow without some sort of constitutional amendment to bring our democracy back to, you know, democracy rather than plutocracy.
But in California we have essentially had the Citizens United Scheme for years now. While we have a more robust disclosure system than the federal government now has, we have allowed essentially unlimited independent expenditures in state races. This is of course the reason that you see many races where IEs outspend both major candidates. It is why we have been stuck with a legislature dominated by one interest group or another dating back to Hiram Johnson's era.
It hasn't worked particularly well in California, and Citizens United only added to the inordinate power of the wealthy. With the DISCLOSE act flailing in Congress, don't expect any major changes anytime soon.
Green Gary Ruskin paints a bleak picture of our political future in a post today at Green Change.
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision today in Citizens United may bring an end to democracy in America. It is effectively a corporate coup d'etat.
By striking down a 103 year-old law that prohibits corporate contributions in federal elections, the Court is allowing giant corporations and their massive stores of wealth to purchase elections at all levels of government. This decision will devastate the integrity and moral legitimacy of our government and our elected officials. It will bring more corruption than our nation has known in more than a century.
