Email from a reader
Larry Lessig is still working to push a Constitutional Amendment, but he’s got a new idea that’s really interesting: pass an amendment that doesn’t deny corporations are people, it just says they aren’t citizens. This would go a long way to allowing Congress to prevent unlimited corporate spending – especially by foreign interests – during the last 60 days of a campaign.
Lessig debuted this idea yesterday and says
This is not about suppressing speech; on the contrary, I think we should encourage the broadest range of speech possible. Instead, this is about carefully and respectfully ensuring that our leaders are dependent on no one but the citizens whom they represent.
The ‘person’ who puts on the corporate cloak does so to protect itself from accountability and injury, much as the king’s knights donned armor against the ‘lowly’ foot soldier. From inside these protective walls, such a person issues decrees and such goods as it pleases, sending tax collectors out into the countryside to harrass and impoverish the voiceless citizenry.