Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It (33 page)

39
. First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 826 and n.6 (Rehnquist, dissenting)

40
. Ibid., 822-23.

41
.
Austin
v.
Michigan Chamber of Commerce,
494 U.S. 652 (1990).

42
. Ibid., 658-659 (1990), quoting
Federal Election Commission
v.
Massachusetts Citizens for Life,
479 U.S. 238, 257 (1986).

43
.
McConnell
v.
Federal Election Commission,
540 U.S.93, 205 (2002).

44
. Charlie Cray, “Using Charters to Redesign Corporations in the Public Interest,” in William H. Wist, ed.,
The Bottom Line or Public Health
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010),
http://www.corporatepolicy.org/pdf/CrayCharters2010.pdf
(accessed June 13, 2011).

1
. Murray Hill Inc., “Supreme Court Ruling Spurs Corporation Run for Congress; First Test of ‘Corporate Personhood’ in Politics,” January 25, 2010,
http://www.murrayhillweb.com/pr-012510.html
(accessed March 24, 2011).

2
. Ibid.

3
. In a comprehensive 2011 poll conducted by Hart Research Associates and Free Speech for People, only 7 percent of respondents thought that the American people were on a “fair and level” playing field with corporations in our political system, 61 percent worried “a great deal” or “quite a bit” that corporations have too much influence and control over government, and 80 percent support a constitutional amendment to overturn
Citizens United
and make clear that corporations do not have the same rights as people. Even before
Citizens United,
barely a third of Americans agreed with the statement “Most elected officials care what people like me think.” Half of Americans who are eligible to vote in elections do not even bother to cast a vote, a bare-minimum effort asked of a citizen in a republic.

4
. Center for Responsive Politics. “Lobbying: Top Spenders, 1998-2011”; U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “Thomas J. Donohue,”
http://www.uschamber.com/about/board/donohue.htm
(accessed July 24, 2011); Tom Hamburger, “Chamber of Commerce Vows to Punish Anti-Business Candidates,”
Los Angeles Times,
January 8, 2008,
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-na-chamber8jan08,0,454295.story
(accessed April 14, 2011).

5
. U.S. Chamber Watch inspected Chamber of Commerce tax and other filings. See its findings at U.S. Chamber Watch, “The U.S. Chamber: A Multimillion-Dollar Shell Game,” 2011,
http://www.fixtheuschamber.org/news/news/inside-chambers-million-dollar-shell-game
(accessed April 14, 2011), and U.S. Chamber Watch, “Beyond the $86 Million Buyout: What Else We Found in the Chamber’s 990s,” November 17, 2010,
http://www.fixtheuschamber.org/tracking-the-chamber/beyond-86-million-buyout-what-else-we-found-chambers-990s
(accessed April 14, 2011).

6
. Ibid.

7
. Trevor Potter, quoted in Drew Armstrong, “Insurers Gave U.S. Chamber $86 Million Used to Oppose Obama’s Health Law,”
Bloomberg News,
November 17, 2010,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-17/insurers-gave-u-s-chamber-86-million-used-to-oppose-obama-s-health-law.html
(accessed April 4, 2011).

8
. Health Care for America Now, “Breaking the Bank: CEOs from 10 Health Insurers Took Nearly $1 Billion in Compensation, Stock from 2000 to 2009,” August 2010,
http://hcfan.3cdn.net/684f3fa81c1e757518_01m6bxg6s.pdf
(accessed March 28, 2011).

9
. Wendell Potter,
Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How
Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans
(New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010), pp. 136-141.

10
. Keith Johnson, “Exodus: Apple Leaves Chamber of Commerce over Climate Spat,”
Wall Street Journal,
October 5, 2009,
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/10/05/exodus-apple-leaves-chamber-of-commerce-over-climate-spat/
(accessed April 14, 2011).

11
. Glenn Spencer,
“Citizens United,
Election Spending, and the DISCLOSE Act,”
Chamberpost,
July 8, 2010,
http://www.chamberpost.com/2010/07/citizens-united-election-spending-and-the-disclose-act/
(accessed April 14, 2011).

12
. Quoted in Ryan J. Reilly, “Citizens United President Enjoys ‘Bitching and Moaning’ over Supreme Court Case,”
TPMMuckraker,
December 1, 2010,
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/citizens_united_president_enjoys_bitching_and_moan.php
(accessed April 14, 2011).

13
. Gerald Mayer, “Union Membership Trends in the United States,”
Federal Publications,
paper no. 174, August 31, 2004,
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1176&context=key_workplace
(accessed April 15, 2011).

14
. Jon Youngdahl, “No Secrets Surrounding SEIU’s Political Contributions” (letter),
Washington Post,
October 21, 2010,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/20/AR2010102004912.html
(accessed April 15, 2011).

15
. Michael J. Carden, “National Debt Poses Security Threat, Mullen Says,” U.S. Department of Defense,
News,
August 27, 2010,
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=60621
(accessed April 28, 2011).

16
. Congressional Budget Office, “Options for Reducing the Deficit,” March 2011,
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/120xx/doc12085/03-10-ReducingTheDeficit.pdf
(accessed March 29, 2011).

17
. Pew Charitable Trusts, “The Great Debt Shift: Drivers of Federal Debt Since 2001,” April 2011,
http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Fact_Sheets/Economic_Policy/drivers_federal_debt_since_2001.pdf
(accessed June 13, 2011).

18
. Bipartisan Policy Center Debt Reduction Task Force, “Restoring America’s Future: Executive Summary,” November 2010,
http://bipartisanpolicy.org/sites/default/files/FINAL%20DRTF%20EXECUTIVE%20SUMMARY_0.pdf
(accessed March 29, 2011).

19
. Chris Hellman, National Priorities Project, “$1.2 Trillion for National Security,” March 1, 2011,
http://nationalpriorities.org/en/pressroom/articles/2011/03/01/tomgram-chris-hellman-12-trillion-for-national-sec/
(accessed August 28, 2011).

20
. Tax revenues came to 15 percent of GDP in 2009. National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, “The Moment of Truth,” December 2010,
http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/sites/fiscalcommission.gov/files/documents/
TheMomentofTruth12_1_2010.pdf
(accessed July 25, 2011).

21
. Congressional Budget Office, “Preliminary Analysis of the President’s Budget for 2012,” March 2011,
http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12103
(accessed March 29, 2011).

22
. Cato Institute,
Cato Handbook for Policymakers,
7th ed. (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2010), p. 279,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb111/hb111-26.pdf
(accessed April 15, 2011); Public Citizen, “Corporate Welfare,”
http://www.citizen.org/congress/welfare/index.cfm
(accessed April 15, 2011).

23
. Chris Edwards, “Agriculture Subsidies,” Cato Institute, June 2009,
http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies
(accessed March 31, 2011).

24
. ProPublica, “Bailout Score Card,”
http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/main/summary
(accessed March 30, 2011).

25
. SourceWatch, “Portal:Real Economy Project,” February 14, 2011,
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Portal:Real_Economy_Project
(accessed September 6, 2011).

26
. Theo Emery, “GE Jet Engine Program Survives House Bill,”
Boston Globe,
May 27, 2011,
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2011/05/27/ge_jet_engine_program_
survives_house_bill/?p1=News_links
(accessed May 27, 2011).

27
. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, “OECD Health Data, 2011: Frequently Requested Data,”
http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0, 3343, en_2649_33929_2085200_1_1_1_1,00.html
(accessed August 1, 2011).

28
. CBS News and New York Times, “American Public Opinion: Today vs. 30 Years Ago,” February 1, 2009,
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/SunMo_poll_0209.pdf
(59% favor government health insurance); Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, “Public Opinion on Health Care Issues,” July 2009,
http://www.kii.org/kaiserpolls/upload/7945.pdf
(single-payer government plan favored by 50%); Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Janet Hook, “Times/Bloomberg Poll: Obama Healthcare Ideas Favored,” October 25, 2007,
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/oct/25/nation/na-poll25/2
(53% want “government-run, government-financed health insurance program that would cover all Americans”); Physicians for a National Health Program, “Where Are We on Reform?” December 31, 2007,
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2007/december/where_are_we_on_refo.php
(54% support a “single-payer health care system that is a national health plan financed by taxpayers in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan”). All sites accessed July 25, 2011.

29
. Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson,
Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), p. 31: Among rich nations, “the U.S. has the highest rate of preventable death before age seventy-five” and has fewer doctors, hospital beds, and nurses per person.

30
. See Olga Pierce, “Medicare Drug Planners Now Lobbyists, with Billions at Stake,” ProPublica, October 20, 2009,
http://www.propublica.org/article/medicare-drug-planners-now-lobbyists-with-billions-at-stake-1020
(accessed March 29, 2011).

31
. Robert G. Kaiser,
So Damn Much Money
(New York: Vintage Books, 2009), p. 309.

32
. Robert Pear, “House’s Author of Drug Benefit Joins Lobbyists,”
New York Times,
December 14, 2011,
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E2DF1430 F935A25751C1A9629C8B63&pagewanted=all
(accessed April 28, 2010).

33
. Pierce, “Medicare Drug Planners Now Lobbyists.”

34
. Kaiser,
So Damn Much Money,
p. 366.

35
. Robert Reich, “The White House Deal with Big Pharma Undermines Democracy, Healthcare Reform,”
Salon,
August 10, 2009,
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2009/08/10/pharma
(accessed March 23, 2010).

36
. Potter,
Deadly Spin,
pp. 68-72.

37
. Ibid., front cover.

38
. Environmental Law Institute, “Estimating U.S. Government Subsidies to Energy Sources, 2002-2008,” September 2009,
http://www.elistore.org/Data/products/d19_07.pdf
(accessed April 20, 2011).

39
. George W. Bush, “President Addresses the American Society of Newspaper Editors Convention,” April 14, 2005,
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/04/20050414-4.html
(accessed April 1, 2011).

40
. Richard Milhouse Nixon, “State of the Union Address (January 30, 1974),”
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3887;
Gerald Rudolph Ford, “Address on Energy Policy (May 27, 1975),”
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3985;
Jimmy Carter, “Address to the Nation on Energy (April 18, 1977),”
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3398
(all accessed April 1, 2011).

41
. “Energy Security: President Reagan’s Message to the Congress, May 6, 1987,”
http:// findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1079/is_v87/ai_5171542/?tag=content;col1;
George H. W. Bush, “State of the Union Address (January 29, 1991),”
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3429;
Bill Clinton, “State of the Union Address (January 27, 1998),”
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3444;
George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address (January 31, 2006)”
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/4461
and “State of the Union Address (January 8, 2008), “
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/01/20080128-13.html;
Barack Obama, “Address Before a Joint Session of Congress (February 24, 2009),”
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/4612
(all accessed April 1, 2011).