Democrats Try to Rebuild Campaign-Spending Barriers

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/us/politics/12citizens.html?scp=1&sq=try%20to%20rebuild%20campaign-spending%20barriers&st=cse

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 11:09 AM
Subject: re: Democrats Try to Rebuild Campaign-Spending Barriers
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   No democratic government can legitimately represent its constituents if those constituents don't share common values and aspirations. To grant corporations equal or preferred influence in our electoral system can only come at the expense of the sovereign People.  Alas, the bills so far proposed to remedy this run afoul of our Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids any state to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws".  What is needed is a constitutional amendment limiting or eliminating corporate personhood.

    Our Founding Fathers had no difficulty in distinguishing between "legal persons" (corporations) and "natural persons" (humans). In our ongoing quest "to form a more perfect union" in the 21st century, we need to legislate what was clear to any thinking person in the 18th.

Barry Levine