Citizens United Petition delivered to Carson City leaders
A petition representing over 213 concerned Carson City constituents (including 8 business owners) and 1661 other Nevada residents was presented to the Carson City Board of Supervisors on Thursday, December 6.
The petition asks the Board to join over 300 cities and 11 states in passing a resolution that supports a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision which opened the flood gates for unlimited outside spending in all political elections.
The petition was delivered by four Carson City residents (Janette Dean, David Zahrt, Robert Gonzalez, and Sandi Whittaker) and one Genoa resident (Gim Hollister) who asked the Board to review their information packet and consider voting on a resolution at their next meeting on Thursday, December 20. After the presentation, Mayor Bob Crowell thanked the presenters and said, "We'll see where this goes." Nevada residents can still add their names to the ongoing online petition at the Sign On website.
An excerpt of the 12-6-12 public comments from the beginning of the board meeting is below and a video is available at the online Carson City Board of Supervisors Meeting Archives.
"I'd now like to take a few moments to explain the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling briefly. The ruling, which barely passed by a vote of 5 to 4, is a grave infringement upon our representative democracy because it has allowed, and continues to allow, for-profit corporations as "associations of people" and anyone else, such as wealthy billionaires and even foreigners, to spend unlimited amounts of money on U.S. elections outside of official campaigns (contributions to candidates still have dollar limits, fortunately).
Since 2010, in the wake of the Supreme Court's unwise decision, unlimited outside spending has had an enormous influence on American elections at the federal, state, and local levels including important judicial elections. Unions are also allowed to spend unlimited amounts, but we must all wisely recognize that they do not have nearly the same amount of resources or the same profit motives as corporations or wealthy industrialists.
In fact, important research that we've included in our petition package from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and Open Secrets, both nonpartisan organizations, shows that in our 2012 election cycle, direct union spending did not even reach 1 percent of outside spending and indirect union spending in Super PACs was less than 10 percent.
It is crystal clear that unlimited outside spending on elections by wealthy industrialists and corporations, either through Super PACs or in their non-profit front groups, is a dangerous threat to our representative democracy which could become, in no short time, a representative oligarchy. Many races were very close this past election and, with several important victories in some states and judicial races, spending by those with profit motives is only going to increase unless We the People stand up now for ourselves and our country.
We are asking the Carson City Board of Supervisors to therefore support a constitutional amendment that would prevent for-profit corporations and wealthy individuals from having the legal right to "buy" our American democracy by overwhelming political elections with communications that advance their political desires and interests by telephone, by mass-media advertising, by paid canvassers, and by other means yet to come.
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