Pelosi – Amend the First Amendment

Posted by Tina

Nancy Pelosi wants to silence some Americans so that her supporters will have an advantage.

Pelosi is
proposing an amendment to the First Amendment guaranteeing free speech. Her goal is to block corporations from spending or speaking out during elections. The amendment is an overt act to restrict political speech for those who work in the corporate business world while making speech for those who participate in unions and tax-exempt organizations much stronger. I doubt if the proposal will go anywhere given the Supreme Court’s ruling on political speech and corporations, however, the goal for introducing this idea is troubling and wrong.

Progressives have always tried to silence others to achieve political advantage. They continue to block voter ID laws using both intimidation and the courts. They use the labor board to intimidate corporations and push for union advantage. They demonize some groups and lift up others. If we did alter the First Amendment to block corporations from political speech what other groups might find themselves in the crosshairs of progressives? Certainly the NRA or any other group they find objectionable.

The Citizens United case settled the question of corporate political donations.

This is exactly why Pelosi wants to this amend the Constitution. It would be wise at this point to review the Citizen’s United decision:

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing the majority 5-4 opinion, noted several key but not fundamental issues in Citizens United. Among them was that the First Amendment, expressing a broad principle that prohibits the government from discriminating between corporations and the news media, consequently, if only implicitly, prohibits the government from exempting newspapers, books, broadcast advocacy and blog sites from a law that suppresses the speech of individuals or entities not favored by the law. Newspapers, networks, and book and blog writers would have an unfair advantage over gagged corporations. To allow that power, would ultimately lead to the regulation or suppression of speech of the formerly exempted.

Kennedy also wrote that the broad protection of the principle behind the First Amendment applied to all individuals, either as persons or collectively in any association, such as a corporation, and that the government could not discriminate between individuals and associations. The identity of a “speaker” is irrelevant and should not carry an arbitrarily assigned stigma or prejudice against such associations. The fact that a group of individuals expressed a position on a candidate or an issue and happened to be expressing it under the aegis of a corporation, or spent money to express such a position or granted another entity (such as Citizens United) the funds to express that position, is irrelevant. The principle applies to all individuals, singly or in groups.

Corporations, the Court asserted, are groups of individuals, and the agreement of those individuals on specific issues, and the leave they grant to a corporation to speak for them on those issues, should not prejudice such an arrangement. The First Amendment does not allow the government to impinge on the right of those individuals to express themselves in such a manner.

President Obama raised and spent an unprecedented amount of money in the last election. His largest donor was the University of California. If we remove all corporate donations from his list of top donors his remaining top donors are all university related: University of California followed by Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia. Unions also were big contributors. Andy Stern of the SEIU boasted about his union’s large contribution to the 2008 Obama campaigne:

“We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama — $60.7 million to be exact — and we’re proud of it”

It could be said that the theme of this administration has been “picking winners and losers”. If this nutty amendment is given the opportunity to become law, the game called free political expression will be over. It will have been sacrificed on the alter of fairness as defined by the redistributing, winner and loser president and his minions in the progressive movement.Those who scream about leveling the playing field are not interested in fair competition; they are interested in silencing anyone who disagrees with the extreme progressive agenda.

Just say no to the Pelosi amendment and stand behind free speech for all Americans!