StampStampede


Click to enlarge – it still won’t be worth more!

1) money is not speech; and Why do we need a constitutional amendment declaring that: 2) corporations are not people.

Well, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling under Citizens United has gotten a lot of coverage this election season, and for good reason. Unlimited donations by billionaires and corporations to SuperPacs have drowned out the voice of ordinary Americans…

Alternatively, a constitutional amendment has been drafted that would require all federal elections to be funded exclusively through public money. When some people first hear of the idea of public funding of elections their immediate reaction is “What? No way I’m going to give those politicians even more money.” But the reality is that the amount of money needed would be less than $2 Billion. That’s about .02% of the federal budget. It could be paid for by closing offshore tax loopholes for corporations.

But the big thing is “You buy ‘em, you own ‘em.” Right now elections are paid for by corporations and the super rich. And politicians do what the people who paid them want. When “we the people buy ‘em, we own em” and the politicians do what we want…

It’s important to note that no other major democracy in the world allows for the unfettered spending on elections by private individuals or corporations. Most countries allow for relatively small contributions from individuals and beyond that public dollars are used to pay for elections. Sure, wealthy individuals and large corporations still wield undue influence in those societies. But the only chance any of us have of government acting as a counterweight against that undue influence is to ensure that politicians need our support more than they need the support of a tiny percentage of wealthy individuals.

Every little bit helps. You will not be breaking the law by using your own personal stampstampede stamp to decorate our currency. You will be passing along a message to everyone who gets that dollar bill after you. Yes, other denominations are cool.

This stamp and several others are sold at cost to keep the campaign rolling. Click the link in the article and see which design suits your personal sense of humor. I like this one – it fits my cynicism.

One thought on “StampStampede

  1. R. G. Repke says:

    This whole “corporations-are-people” business dates back to a Supreme Court case in 1886: Santa Clara County v. So. Pacific R.R.
    It was NOT a judicial decision to begin with but simply a headnote to the decision document added by a court clerk or someone. There was never any debate, trial, or anyting else regarding the issue which wasn’t even ABOUT corporations-as-people. But the U.S. Supreme Court in those days was even more corrupt then than it is now–if that’s possible. Roberts is and always has been a corporate whore, Thomas is the conflict-of-interest king, Scalia is sliding into dementia, Alito is simply an ideologue, and Kennedy is a lemming. Why hasn’t the Supreme Court ever come under the kind of fire the executive and legislative branches are always subject to? The justices are just as wary of public opinion as any other politician but for the most part, everybody (except the Occupy movement a couple years ago) seems to consider the Supreme Court sacrosanct. As far as I’m concerned, they are simply cheap shyster lawyers-in-drag bought and paid for by the same billionaires and corporations who have purchased most of the other politicians in D.C.–or at least enough of them to block any progressive moves in the other branches of government.

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