We believe at www.movetoamend.org, that it’s even beyond the issue of corporate power. Unelected and unaccountable CEO’s are ruling over us, they are literally making the fundamental decisions that affect our lives on a day-to-day basis. A linchpin doctrine that allows them and legitimizes and legalizes their authority is the doctrine of corporate personhood. Corporate personhood is a doctrine that says a corporation is a person under the constitution with constitutional rights. If any person, corporation or human person, claims that their constitutional rights are being violated, it means that they are arguing in court that some democratically enacted law is an illegitimate law, because it infringes on their core rights. For example, here are some examples of appropriate use: laws that enforced Jim Crow segregation, even though they went through a democratic process, those were illegitimate laws, because they violated the inherit constitutional rights of blacks in the south. Laws that prevented women from voting, were illegitimate even though they went thought a democratic process because they forbid women from exercising their right to vote. Likewise, laws that codified slavery were illegitimate and so the claim of constitutional rights violation is a very serious one, and anytime an actual human being’s rights are violated, I promise you that, David Cobb will be right there to defend that person, whether it’s Pat Buchanan or Dennis Kucinich, doesn’t matter, human beings have constitutional rights, and the government cannot encroach upon them.
CL: But how would your constitutional amendment stop what corporations are doing right now?
DC: Well the point is that right now corporations can go into court and overturn democratic enacted laws attempt to protect the environment, that attempt to protect workers, that attempt to protect our safety and health, that attempt to protect our electoral process, the doctrine of corporate personhood is the argument by which corporate lawyers overturn those laws. So, if we abolished corporate personhood at the constitutional level, took it outside of the authority of courts to overturn our democratically enacted laws, we the people could actually create those laws, and frankly those laws that were once on the books, that, for example, prohibited corporate money in elections, that prohibited corporations from engaging in monopolies and trusts that prohibited corporations from engaging in activities that polluted our air and waters and our streams. You can’t really touch any issue that anybody cares about that today and not find that these large transnational corporations are the root cause of it, and we all know it, from the left and the right and the moderates, everybody knows this. Corporate personhood is the legal linchpin for that power
CL: Let me ask you about the Citizens United case that the Supreme Court ruled on back in January that overturned the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. How did that decision in your opinion make the political landscape worse than it is right now?
DC: In 2008, $5 billion was spent on federal elections, so it’s not as if we had a fantastic electoral process before. Corporate money and the influence of big money interests were already awash. But now, the Court said that the anemic, pathetic restrictions that McCain-Feingold did afford us, were treating corporations like “an oppressed minority,” and therefore they literally overturned that democratically enacted law that was negotiated between the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties, overturned that law, which is in affect the most activist approach that any court could ever do, so they’ve literally opened the floodgates, so the Chamber of commerce, big corporations and unions can spend as much money as they would like to do in independent expenditures.
And let’s make clear, that the Chamber of Commerce alone has a budget a hundred times all unions combined have, and that doesn’t include adding Exxon Mobil, or Monsanto corporation, or any of the other huge corporations most of which the top 500 corporations of the world have budgets that are larger than the GDP’s of over a hundred countries on this globe. The reality is that these corporations are growing too big, too powerful, and we believe that they must be shrunk down to size and a way to do that is to abolish their illegimate claim that they can that is to overturn our democratically enacted laws, and a perfect example of the illegitimacy of that was when the overturned campaign finance laws.
CL: You’re still a member of the Green Party, right?
DC: Yes, I’m very proud of my run in 2004, where Bush tried to steal an election in Ohio the Green Party challenged that and demanded a recount that exposed how these so called black box voting machines, these touch screens literally are subject to election fraud-
CL: Let me ask you about the Green Party. In 2004 you when you ran for President you said “I'm running in order grow and build the Green Party not just in this election cycle, but for the future.” How solid is the Green Party in 2010?
DC: It’s fantastic. Mitch I actually appreciate you asking the question. The Green Party is getting larger, stronger and better organized with every election cycle, and one of the great untold stories is that the Green Party is growing. And nobody talks about that, but we‘ve run more candidates for office at the local level each election cycle, more candidates, at the local level, get elected. More people join and register in the Green Party every election cycle. By virtually every manner of calculating the objective growth of th Green Party, the Green Party is growing. The one exception to that is the mentioning in the media. The corporate media refuses to acknowledge the reality of the Green Party growth and I think that’s because the corporate media realizes that the Green Party is a legitimate threat to entrenched power, and most Americans are coming to realize that independent media might be actually old style free press, but corporate media is not left-wing, corporate media is not even right wing, corporate media is all about the existing established system.
CL: Look at our current system of politics. It looks like the Republicans are going to do well in November, even though they were thrown out of office in record numbers in 2006 and 2008, it seems like we have a paucity of choices in America, where people have said they were dissatisfied with the GOP the last few years, now the Dems have had full control in the past couple of years in Washington, and now everybody’s tired of them, but there’s no where else, theoretically to go to. There are obviously third parties, or 4th and 5th parties, but they don’t get the attention, nor do we have that many candidates running with those parties. What do you think about our current system?
DC: I want to say this very clearly – we need a multi-party system. We need a Libertarian Party, we need a Constitution Party, we need a Labor party, we need a Green party. All the people should feel they have representation in our government. That’s why we need voting systems like proportional representation, or instant-run off voting, so people can vote for who they want, instead of against what they hate. The voting system is the problem. And if you feel you have to vote against what you hate the most, at least acknowledge the stench. If there is a spoiler problem, it’s only because the voting system is forcing people to feel like they have to vote for the lesser of two evils, whether you’re a principled conservative or a principled liberal this voting system stinks, and proportional representation and instant-run-off voting would not only solve those problems but it would also help to create a more civil and pluralistic society where we would learn to tolerate one another, learn to compromise and negotiate, to do coalition building and do alliance building. Frankly, I would like to do that and I am very proud that movetoamend.org, we have the founder of teaparty.org sign on against corporate personhood. Now David Cobb is definitely not Tea Party member, but I proudly can say that on the opposition to corporate personhood, I stand with many Tea Party members in calling for a Constitutional amendment to abolish that doctrine.
CL: I was wondering if you were aware of Amendment 4 here in Florida, better known as the Hometown Democracy amendment? Which essentially would allow voters to have a County’s comprehensive land use plan?
DC: Absolutely! I am a big supporter. It is an incredible exercise in grass roots democracy, and it’s worth pointing out that ordinary citizens used the initiative process to get that on the ballot. It wasn’t corporate money, it wasn’t paid petitioners, it was actual volunteers using the process the way it was intended to be used, which was citizen legislation to try to actually fight back against entrenched powers. So I know about it, I think it’s exciting, part of the reason I came to Florida is because was to campaign in support of that.
CL: So you’ll be coming to Florida for a week?
DC: Floridians know first hand what it looks like when big corporations and developers try to come in and ride roughshod, and Floridians have a history of fighting back back and I think Amendment 4 is a perfect example of how Florida is really leading the way on this type of creative thinking and remember this: Just as Amendment 4 is an effort to have local citizens able to make those land use decisions, a constitutional amendment would insure that local citizens have the authority to do that. I promise you that if Amendment 4 passes, these big corporations will try to come in and overturn that law. They’ll attempt to argue that their “constitutional rights” are violated in the application of Amendment 4. We need a constitutional amendment in order to secure what I hope will be a victory for amendment 4.
CL: David Cobb, thanks for your time.
DC: You’re welcome, and just a little shout out – any publication that calls itself Creative Loafing is my kind of publication.
David Cobb will be Sarasota on Saturday September 18 from 10am-12 noon at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, 1975 Fruitvale Road. He’ll be in Tampa later that day, at the John F. Germany Library, 900 N. Ashley Drive from 3p.m-5 p.m.
He will also appear at a reception/fundraiser in Pinellas County Saturday night. For more information, write to [email protected].
