WEBVTT 00:00:03.874 --> 00:00:10.488 - Welcome and thank you for coming this afternoon. I'm Doug Davis, a representative of Move To A Man South 00:00:10.488 --> 00:00:16.787 - Central Indiana. And after Jeff's talk today, if you're interested, we have brochures up here and a 00:00:16.787 --> 00:00:23.213 - sign-up sheet and also a donation envelope, believe it or not. So if you want to give a little money, 00:00:23.213 --> 00:00:28.126 - that'd be great. Our guest visit today is very timely. We have just witnessed 00:00:29.058 --> 00:00:36.572 - the results of a gluttony of spending and influence peddling to the tune of almost $4 billion this last 00:00:36.572 --> 00:00:44.158 - election. And that's $40 million more than was in 2010. And it does not include money on so-called issue 00:00:44.158 --> 00:00:51.455 - ads. So we've seen a lot of money being spent. Jeff Clements is in the forefront of those working to 00:00:51.455 --> 00:00:58.174 - overturn the disasters and anti-democratic decision in Citizens United by the Supreme Court. 00:00:58.978 --> 00:01:06.680 - He's been an assistant attorney general in Massachusetts and is co-founder and current chair of the 00:01:06.680 --> 00:01:14.921 - board of Free Speech for People, a national non-partisan organization working to overcome Citizens United. 00:01:14.921 --> 00:01:22.931 - We're pleased Jeff and his wife Nancy have come here today to speak to us and sign this book. So please 00:01:22.931 --> 00:01:28.862 - give Jeff a warm welcome. Thanks so much, Doug. And thanks to Move to Amend. 00:01:29.378 --> 00:01:36.799 - here in Bloomington, but also all over the country. There's chapters of Move to Amend doing great work 00:01:36.799 --> 00:01:44.364 - in cities and towns all over the country. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. But if you haven't 00:01:44.364 --> 00:01:51.786 - had a chance to check out, there we go. If you haven't had a chance to check out the debate with David 00:01:51.786 --> 00:01:57.982 - Cobb and Jim Bach. David Cobb's one of the co-founders of Move to Amend and Jim Bach. 00:01:58.946 --> 00:02:06.782 - is one of the architects of the dismantling of our campaign finance system. The lawyer who represented 00:02:06.782 --> 00:02:14.770 - Citizens United and others in challenging McCain-Feingold in the campaign finance laws. It's on YouTube. 00:02:14.770 --> 00:02:22.377 - I'm sure you can find it. It's an excellent debate. And I think as elsewhere in the country, except 00:02:22.377 --> 00:02:26.942 - on the Supreme Court, the side of the people is very clear. 00:02:29.794 --> 00:02:37.270 - better argument in terms of how we preserve democracy in this country. So check it out. But I think 00:02:37.270 --> 00:02:44.896 - it was right here, Doug, wasn't it, in Bloomington? Not here in Barnes and Noble, but over at the Law 00:02:44.896 --> 00:02:52.522 - School. If I'm pointing the right way. So that way. Thank you. So what I thought I'd do today in just 00:02:52.522 --> 00:02:59.550 - chatting a little bit about the new book, because some of my friends say when we started this 00:03:06.242 --> 00:03:12.665 - would say, didn't the book just come out? Do we have to buy it again? And someone had the first edition 00:03:12.665 --> 00:03:19.025 - back there. There's the first edition. So it's a nicer color. It looks better. But that's not the only 00:03:19.025 --> 00:03:25.510 - reason. The answer is yes, you have to buy it again. And the answer isn't because Nancy and I have three 00:03:25.510 --> 00:03:31.871 - kids in college, because we're giving all the royalties away to groups like Move to a Man, Free Speech 00:03:31.871 --> 00:03:34.526 - for People, and others 100% for the cause. 00:03:35.490 --> 00:03:42.198 - No, the real reason you have to buy it again is what has happened these past three to four years since 00:03:42.198 --> 00:03:48.906 - the first edition was written. I wrote the book after doing a brief in the Citizens United case, after 00:03:48.906 --> 00:03:55.418 - a career at the Attorney General's office and in private practice, where I saw corporations and big 00:03:55.418 --> 00:04:01.930 - money, whether corporate money, union money, billionaire money, slowly just shrinking the space for 00:04:01.930 --> 00:04:04.926 - democracy, for we the people to have a voice. 00:04:05.250 --> 00:04:12.265 - And I wanted at first to understand how did this happen? Like a lot of us, I think, right? How did this 00:04:12.265 --> 00:04:19.145 - happen in our country? What do we do about it? Those are some of the questions I wanted to answer. So 00:04:19.145 --> 00:04:26.430 - the first edition was really mostly on how did it happen? And some on what we could do about it, but it was 00:04:48.578 --> 00:04:56.311 - spending in elections basically dismantling our voices and so to understand how that happened is what 00:04:56.311 --> 00:05:03.893 - the book is about but now I can say after after three years and the new edition there's a much more 00:05:03.893 --> 00:05:11.475 - hopeful second part of the book which is that Americans know the problem you don't have to convince 00:05:11.475 --> 00:05:15.038 - a lot of people if you're having conversations 00:05:27.266 --> 00:05:34.448 - schools we lose everything that we've worked hard for across partisan lines it doesn't matter this isn't 00:05:34.448 --> 00:05:41.424 - about partisan politics we lose everything and we lose what we promised as a country and I think many 00:05:41.424 --> 00:05:48.674 - many Americans know that this that's the state we're in now where you know despite all the advertisements 00:05:48.674 --> 00:05:52.094 - last Tuesday and all the you know noise about the 00:06:23.810 --> 00:06:29.771 - is what we've seen in America since the beginning of our country. When things get really bad, and we 00:06:29.771 --> 00:06:35.909 - realize there's no one to save us, it's up to us, we do it. And that's what's happening now. And that's 00:06:35.909 --> 00:06:41.929 - also in the book. And there's a whole new chapter called Do Something that allows you to kind of plug 00:06:41.929 --> 00:06:47.890 - in to many different ways you can do something. So I'll get to that. But let me first recap for you, 00:06:47.890 --> 00:06:53.438 - even though you probably don't need it, why we need to do something. Why you're maybe in here 00:06:54.274 --> 00:07:00.174 - lovely Sunday afternoon when you might rather be doing something else why do we need to do all this 00:07:00.174 --> 00:07:06.192 - hard work that people are doing all over the country well I said it's a crisis of democracy and it is 00:07:06.192 --> 00:07:12.210 - and I'd like to sort of outline precisely what I mean by that because I think you know I've talked to 00:07:12.210 --> 00:07:18.228 - some folks here already about just how hard it is to reach across partisan lines you know Republicans 00:07:18.228 --> 00:07:23.774 - Democrats how do we get together on this because when people vote to overturn Citizens United 00:07:26.594 --> 00:07:33.402 - city after city, state after state, 75, 25, 70, 30. But to actually work together across Republican 00:07:33.402 --> 00:07:40.277 - and Democrat lines is hard. And I think it's helpful if we, and I tried to do this in the book, show 00:07:40.277 --> 00:07:47.221 - just how nonpartisan this is. And that doesn't mean kind of in the middle. The crisis is nonpartisan. 00:07:47.221 --> 00:07:54.846 - You know, Republican children and Democratic children are going to grow up in America. That's not what we want. 00:07:56.546 --> 00:08:03.325 - And so the way I look at it is there's the money problem, unlimited campaign spending is one issue, 00:08:03.325 --> 00:08:10.104 - and there's what I call the corporate veto in the courts because the court has created a new thing, 00:08:10.104 --> 00:08:16.951 - constitutional rights for corporations that's been used to strike down even the most modest laws. So 00:08:16.951 --> 00:08:23.865 - let me say what I mean by that. The money crisis in America for our democracy comes not just from the 00:08:23.865 --> 00:08:26.238 - amount Doug mentioned, $4 billion, 00:08:26.466 --> 00:08:33.053 - a midterm election that's unheard of that's a record it's about 30 billion now since Citizens United 00:08:33.053 --> 00:08:39.705 - was decided 2010 and the campaign finance laws were knocked down and that's a lot of money but that's 00:08:39.705 --> 00:08:46.358 - not really what the issue is it is part of the issue but the real issue is where the money comes from 00:08:46.358 --> 00:08:53.075 - and I don't mean like an ideological source or a partisan source or even a corporate source versus uni 00:08:53.075 --> 00:08:55.358 - source I mean from how few sources 00:08:56.226 --> 00:09:03.087 - it comes from. So let's look at some numbers. In 2012, we now have some data. There's always a lot of 00:09:03.087 --> 00:09:10.015 - lag time, and this data will never know because there's so much secret money, the so-called dark money 00:09:10.015 --> 00:09:16.809 - running into the system. I think it's something like 40% in this election last Tuesday of the money. 00:09:16.809 --> 00:09:23.871 - That $4 billion can't be traced to where it came from because it's run through nonprofit so-called front 00:09:23.871 --> 00:09:25.822 - groups. But what we do know, 00:09:26.306 --> 00:09:33.730 - you know that's when we saw the super PAC phenomenon another reason we needed the new edition of the 00:09:33.730 --> 00:09:41.228 - book when I first wrote it the 2012 election hadn't happened we didn't have super PACs we didn't know 00:09:41.228 --> 00:09:48.726 - exactly what was happening now we know so of that super PAC money that funded so much of the constant 00:09:48.726 --> 00:09:54.974 - 24-hour seven days a week attack ads in 2012 32 donors that's 32 literally 32 donors 00:09:55.874 --> 00:10:04.773 - contributed is more than all of the donors to both the Romney campaign and the Obama campaign, who gave 00:10:04.773 --> 00:10:13.501 - $200 or less combined. So that added up to hundreds of millions of dollars of so-called small donors, 00:10:13.501 --> 00:10:22.401 - normal, regular people, who sent a check for 100 or 200 bucks to Obama's campaign or Romney's campaign. 00:10:22.401 --> 00:10:25.310 - And most Americans don't do that. 00:10:26.658 --> 00:10:34.912 - less than 5% of Americans give any money at all to campaigns. So we're already talking about a really 00:10:34.912 --> 00:10:43.003 - small pool. So all of that was exceeded, wiped out, by just 32 donors to Super PACs. Another way to 00:10:43.003 --> 00:10:51.257 - look at it is almost all the Super PAC money, well over 90%, came from 3,300 donors. So if you do the 00:10:51.257 --> 00:10:53.118 - math, that's less than 00:10:58.466 --> 00:11:06.160 - So it's very few people, very few sources for a huge amount of money. And so what that does is a number 00:11:06.160 --> 00:11:13.707 - of things. It, of course, makes the politicians dance to the tune of where the money's coming from or 00:11:13.707 --> 00:11:21.549 - just be afraid to dance at all because they don't want to generate, they don't want to, when I say dance, 00:11:21.549 --> 00:11:27.838 - afraid to tackle a big problem or introduce a bill or work for something the country 00:11:28.546 --> 00:11:35.446 - because of the attack ad and the money that will come against them. So they don't do that. They don't 00:11:35.446 --> 00:11:42.346 - want to get those 32 donors mad at them. And of course, it excludes almost everybody. My colleague at 00:11:42.346 --> 00:11:48.840 - Free Speech for People, John Boniface, calls this the wealth primary, similar to what was ruled 00:11:48.840 --> 00:11:55.875 - unconstitutional long ago, the so-called white primary, where in Texas, back in the Jim Crow days, they 00:11:55.875 --> 00:11:57.566 - would have an unofficial 00:11:58.050 --> 00:12:03.558 - whites only primary and then they'd have the candidates and then okay then we'll have the election but 00:12:03.558 --> 00:12:09.173 - the candidates had already been picked to make sure African-Americans would not be represented and would 00:12:09.173 --> 00:12:14.573 - not have a candidate and would not have a vote that was what called the white primary finally struck 00:12:14.573 --> 00:12:19.921 - down by the Supreme Court John Boniface says this says this is like the wealth primary where almost 00:12:19.921 --> 00:12:24.894 - all Americans are excluded and then we get to go and pull a lever on November 4th but that's 00:12:25.218 --> 00:12:31.669 - already been decided in the white primary what issues are going to talk about more importantly what 00:12:31.669 --> 00:12:38.377 - are we not going to talk about you know whether it's climate catastrophe or anything else you know what 00:12:38.377 --> 00:12:45.150 - candidates are so-called viable right there's viable means the ones who are able to please some of those 00:12:45.150 --> 00:12:51.665 - small number of donors into this system so it excludes people and we get this vicious circle of more 00:12:51.665 --> 00:12:53.278 - money from fewer sources 00:12:53.634 --> 00:12:59.755 - Not only do people say, well, why send my $100 in? If Sheldon Adelson could put $93 million in, what's 00:12:59.755 --> 00:13:05.698 - my $100? So people don't participate that way. But more importantly, they don't participate even to 00:13:05.698 --> 00:13:11.641 - vote. So voting rates are going down. They don't participate at even citizens' gatherings like this 00:13:11.641 --> 00:13:17.822 - or any other. Just basic citizenship being eroded and then more money coming in in this vicious circle. 00:13:18.786 --> 00:13:26.494 - I mentioned Sheldon Adelson. I don't want to pick on any one funder because they're on both sides, Democrat, 00:13:26.494 --> 00:13:33.847 - Republican. But let me just use Sheldon Adelson as an example. Casino, mogul, global, casinos in Macau, 00:13:33.847 --> 00:13:41.131 - all over the world. I said he spent $93 million, right? So that was in 2012. He is back this year with 00:13:41.131 --> 00:13:48.414 - his checkbook. And he has been indicating he's going to spend as much or more in 2016, so sure enough, 00:13:48.610 --> 00:13:55.881 - candidates who might run for president are going to essentially audition to this billionaire. And so 00:13:55.881 --> 00:14:03.080 - Molly Ball in the Atlantic magazine was at one of these auditions, these so-called conferences with 00:14:03.080 --> 00:14:10.423 - Sheldon Adelson and some candidates, would-be candidates, potential candidates for president in 2016. 00:14:10.423 --> 00:14:17.118 - She described it in the Atlantic as the Sheldon Adelson suck-up fest in which the candidates 00:14:17.314 --> 00:14:24.248 - like daughters of King Lear, or the cast of Mean Girls, each sought to outdo the others in his fawning. 00:14:24.248 --> 00:14:30.983 - That's what we've come to. And the president of what is the greatest nation in the world, and should 00:14:30.983 --> 00:14:37.783 - be, and could be again, is sort of humiliating themselves and us by this kind of performance in front 00:14:37.783 --> 00:14:44.784 - of billionaires, because they feel they have to. That's what's happening. Corporations, sometimes you've 00:14:44.784 --> 00:14:46.718 - heard after Citizens United, 00:14:47.106 --> 00:14:53.483 - And so the new additions needed for this. Well, corporations really aren't spending much money. They 00:14:53.483 --> 00:15:00.113 - know that Americans get mad when corporations spend money in elections, and we do. So Target spent money 00:15:00.113 --> 00:15:06.806 - in Minnesota and tried to help get a governor elected. People got really mad. There's a boycott of Target 00:15:06.806 --> 00:15:13.246 - all over the country. Great response, actually. Target apologized and said, we won't do that anymore. 00:15:13.246 --> 00:15:15.582 - So then there was this sort of myth. 00:15:16.354 --> 00:15:21.859 - you why it's a myth that corporations aren't spending money in elections because they don't want to 00:15:21.859 --> 00:15:27.530 - anger their customers. Well, a couple of weeks ago at the Republican Governors Association, and again, 00:15:27.530 --> 00:15:33.531 - I'm not picking on the Republicans because this could have happened at the Democratic Governors Association, 00:15:33.531 --> 00:15:39.091 - I guarantee you. It's one of those front groups. And I say that because they spend a lot of money in 00:15:39.091 --> 00:15:44.817 - elections. So where do they get their money? Well, the Republican Governors Association staff, somebody 00:15:44.817 --> 00:15:45.918 - did a coding error. 00:15:46.434 --> 00:15:52.632 - so that documents, which are usually secret, ended up on the public website. So these documents are 00:15:52.632 --> 00:15:59.202 - now public. And it read like the Fortune 500 with their shopping list, essentially. Millions and millions 00:15:59.202 --> 00:16:05.649 - of dollars from some of the biggest corporations in the world. And you know them all. You know, Pfizer, 00:16:05.649 --> 00:16:12.405 - Walmart, Microsoft, you name it. They were on this list. And the millions they had given into the Republican 00:16:12.405 --> 00:16:15.070 - Governors Association, the access that got 00:16:15.778 --> 00:16:21.516 - where how that money is that used just made probably in Indiana all over the country spent and as I 00:16:21.516 --> 00:16:27.598 - said I'm quite certain the Democratic Governors Association has a similar document maybe they have better 00:16:27.598 --> 00:16:33.680 - coders but we haven't seen the document yet but it's a similar practice US Chamber of Commerce is another 00:16:33.680 --> 00:16:39.418 - one where the corporations are putting millions and millions of dollars into our elections and they 00:16:39.418 --> 00:16:44.926 - just don't they we do get mad Americans do get mad when it happens so they're trying to hide it 00:16:45.890 --> 00:16:52.401 - Some of them don't try to hide it. The fossil fuel corporations know that they're not very popular, 00:16:52.401 --> 00:16:58.912 - so they just do it. Chevron just writes big checks. Chevron spent $3 million in a city council race 00:16:58.912 --> 00:17:05.488 - of 100,000 people. A town of 100,000 people, Richmond, California, $3 million. The good news is when 00:17:05.488 --> 00:17:12.389 - a town is that small, people know what's up. TV doesn't work because neighbors are talking to each other. 00:17:12.389 --> 00:17:15.710 - Every Chevron candidate lost. And yeah, so we can. 00:17:16.002 --> 00:17:23.466 - back against this. So that's the problem. It's the money, but it's more importantly the source of the 00:17:23.466 --> 00:17:31.077 - money. It's so small, in such huge magnitude, that it ends up being, and I'll use the word, plutocracy, 00:17:31.077 --> 00:17:38.614 - government of, for, and by the wealthy or the corporations. And for a while coming, I know Bloomington 00:17:38.614 --> 00:17:44.542 - is not the most conservative part of Indiana, but I thought coming into Indiana, 00:17:44.930 --> 00:17:51.250 - You know, can you say words like plutocracy? It's kind of a conservative, down to earth kind of place. 00:17:51.250 --> 00:17:57.141 - But that's true everywhere in America. My wife Nancy grew up in Maine. We go back all the time. 00:17:57.141 --> 00:18:03.399 - Central Maine, North Central Maine, probably a lot like areas of Bangor, lots of other areas of Maine 00:18:03.399 --> 00:18:09.903 - are conservative. They vote Republican. They just elected a Republican congressman up there in the second 00:18:09.903 --> 00:18:13.278 - district. And Governor LePage, a Republican one again. 00:18:13.602 --> 00:18:19.645 - So I was speaking in central Maine a few weeks ago and thinking, like I said, should I use words like 00:18:19.645 --> 00:18:25.807 - plutocracy? And I don't want to, and I think it not because I want to say different things in different 00:18:25.807 --> 00:18:32.028 - places, just like I want to have a conversation with people in vocabulary matters to have a conversation 00:18:32.028 --> 00:18:38.072 - instead of just like, and so I was thinking about that and I opened up the newspaper that morning and 00:18:38.072 --> 00:18:41.982 - the talk was at night and I, it was the Kennebec Journal, an old, 00:18:42.530 --> 00:18:50.272 - newspaper's been around Maine for a hundred years, probably, out of Augusta and the Kennebec Valley 00:18:50.272 --> 00:18:58.324 - area. And I look into the Kennebec Journal just to get the local flavor and, you know, catch up on news 00:18:58.324 --> 00:19:06.608 - up there. And I come across their editorial, not an op-ed, their actual editorial of the Kennebec Journal, 00:19:06.608 --> 00:19:07.614 - conservative 00:19:19.362 --> 00:19:26.646 - this level of campaign spending done by only a few. As income inequality expands, the people who benefit 00:19:26.646 --> 00:19:33.653 - the most from current economic policies are also the ones with outsized influence on those policies. 00:19:33.653 --> 00:19:40.382 - And then the Kennebec Journal said this, there is a name for government by the rich, plutocracy. 00:19:40.382 --> 00:19:47.320 - And they say, and it's not what our founding fathers were trying to create when they guaranteed our 00:19:47.320 --> 00:19:48.638 - freedom of speech. 00:19:48.770 --> 00:19:54.728 - I think this is something anywhere in the country. Americans get it. Boutocracy means government of 00:19:54.728 --> 00:20:00.984 - the rich. It's not a inflammatory insult. It's not something we want. It's not a criticism of Americans. 00:20:00.984 --> 00:20:07.001 - It's a criticism of the system, whether it's being able to participate in our election system fairly 00:20:07.001 --> 00:20:13.137 - and on an equal basis, or when we're told we're not allowed to make fair election laws to get a handle 00:20:13.137 --> 00:20:18.142 - on the system, because supposedly that violates free speech rights of corporations, 00:20:18.434 --> 00:20:26.203 - and billionaires, the money is just like now even citizenship and self-government are sort of commodified 00:20:26.203 --> 00:20:33.605 - into something you buy. That's plutocracy, the result, not the people, the result. So this appalling 00:20:33.605 --> 00:20:41.154 - thing, a few more appalling things, and I'm gonna get to some good names, don't worry, but the problem 00:20:41.154 --> 00:20:48.190 - is this is actually being defended now. Look, if we were looking at a country on the other side 00:20:50.402 --> 00:20:57.214 - their system was funded by a few families, a few corporations, and a few billionaires. We would say, 00:20:57.214 --> 00:21:04.162 - no, you're not a democracy, right? So unfortunately, we now have political scientists confirming this. 00:21:04.162 --> 00:21:11.042 - So there's a study out of Northwestern in Princeton just out. It's called the Influence of Affluence, 00:21:11.042 --> 00:21:17.922 - Martin, Gillens, and Benjamin Page. Most comprehensive look at the data set for how policy in America 00:21:17.922 --> 00:21:20.350 - is actually influenced and created. 00:21:20.866 --> 00:21:28.623 - And their conclusion is this, and I'm quoting again, the estimated impact of average citizens' preferences 00:21:28.623 --> 00:21:36.018 - is at a non-significant near zero level. Ordinary citizens have little or no independent influence on 00:21:36.018 --> 00:21:43.268 - policy at all. Economic elites and organized business interests have substantial independent impact 00:21:43.268 --> 00:21:50.590 - on US government policy. So they're not just like claiming this or making a slogan, this is a result 00:21:55.714 --> 00:22:02.822 - You know, I said people defend all the plutocracy. In response, the Manhattan Institute, one of these 00:22:02.822 --> 00:22:09.790 - big, extremely well-funded kind of groups, says this is no news, no big deal, that rich people vote 00:22:09.790 --> 00:22:17.037 - more often, that they are better informed, and they kind of represent the interests of the middle class 00:22:17.037 --> 00:22:23.518 - anyway. So it doesn't matter if rich people are running the country and everyone else isn't. 00:22:24.578 --> 00:22:31.248 - defense we're asked to live with I think we're we're in real trouble we're basically being told well 00:22:31.248 --> 00:22:37.985 - photography kind of works okay so don't worry about it I don't think Americans want to do that so the 00:22:37.985 --> 00:22:44.854 - problem in the that's that the new edition is trying to show isn't is again something about the effects 00:22:44.854 --> 00:22:51.986 - of the Citizens United decision rather than the legal arguments and all that it's you know just objectively 00:22:51.986 --> 00:22:54.430 - what is the result we can see it now 00:22:55.010 --> 00:23:01.844 - around us and it's how republics have always failed I mean this is this is a textbook sort of systems 00:23:01.844 --> 00:23:08.545 - theory result it's a textbook example of what James Madison called faction of what the founding the 00:23:08.545 --> 00:23:15.781 - founders of the country trying to put together all the checks and balances of the Constitution new destroys 00:23:15.781 --> 00:23:22.750 - republics destroys democracy when you have organized faction and a system that just keeps rewarding and 00:23:23.682 --> 00:23:29.816 - the source of the faction, in this case, money power. You essentially are on a path straight to the 00:23:29.816 --> 00:23:35.950 - destruction of a republic. And that's what we're well into, unfortunately. And that's not even all. 00:23:35.950 --> 00:23:42.269 - I said about the corporate veto. So free speech for people. We're working on some solutions, which I'm 00:23:42.269 --> 00:23:48.525 - going to talk about in a minute. And that's when the clouds are going to lift and the sun is going to 00:23:48.525 --> 00:23:52.574 - shine. Because corporations are people. It's not all about money. 00:23:52.930 --> 00:23:58.882 - So we are in litigation. We're working on solutions, including a constitutional amendment campaign, 00:23:58.882 --> 00:24:05.191 - which I'm about to talk about. But we also fight in the courts, because how we got here was an organized, 00:24:05.191 --> 00:24:11.143 - very well-funded effort to use what Lewis Powell, who I talk about in my book, and we can talk more 00:24:11.143 --> 00:24:17.572 - about him later, talked about using activist-minded Supreme Court justices and massive amounts of corporate 00:24:17.572 --> 00:24:22.750 - money to transform our constitution and our system. That's what we're living with now. 00:24:22.882 --> 00:24:29.071 - So we have to push back in the courts, too. That's what we're doing. And I just want to give you a couple 00:24:29.071 --> 00:24:35.143 - of examples of what we are seeing in the courts since Citizens United. Employees' rights to be informed 00:24:35.143 --> 00:24:41.274 - of the law and to talk about workplace conditions so they could decide whether to organize or not struck 00:24:41.274 --> 00:24:47.287 - down violation of corporate constitutional rights not to speak, not to be required to inform employees 00:24:47.287 --> 00:24:52.542 - of their rights. All of us have been in workplaces. Those workplace notices you see about 00:24:52.834 --> 00:24:58.633 - about our rights as employees. Violation of the Constitution now in this brave new world. Country of 00:24:58.633 --> 00:25:04.489 - origin labeling. You want to support American farmers, you want to buy American beef, your hamburger, 00:25:04.489 --> 00:25:10.001 - whatever. There's a law used to be that said the meat had to be labeled for where it came from. 00:25:10.001 --> 00:25:15.915 - Struck down. Violation of corporate rights. So over and over we're seeing this, and I could give a lot 00:25:15.915 --> 00:25:21.886 - of other examples, but I want to just give two more. In St. Louis, we're in a case where Peabody Energy 00:25:22.498 --> 00:25:28.326 - is the big local, one of the big local, they're not local, they're global, but they have a big base 00:25:28.326 --> 00:25:34.444 - in St. Louis. E-Body Energy gets a lot of tax subsidies from St. Louis taxpayers. Well, 30,000 St. Louis 00:25:34.444 --> 00:25:40.272 - taxpayers said, you know, we want to reevaluate this and see if we get a more resilient economy and 00:25:40.272 --> 00:25:46.099 - not just keep paying a big global corporation and hope that they'll stay and maybe give us a job or 00:25:46.099 --> 00:25:50.878 - two. We want to use that money to improve schools, build roads, things like that. 00:25:51.138 --> 00:25:57.264 - So they got on the ballot, 30,000 signed a ballot initiative in St. Louis to vote on their tax money, 00:25:57.264 --> 00:26:03.631 - whether it should continue to be going to Peabody Energy and fossil fuel corporations. Well, they weren't 00:26:03.631 --> 00:26:09.877 - allowed to vote. The vote was blocked, a violation of so-called equal protection rights of corporations 00:26:09.877 --> 00:26:16.364 - and First Amendment rights of corporations. And not only that, the corporate lobbyists went to the Missouri 00:26:16.364 --> 00:26:18.526 - legislature and got the law changed 00:26:18.914 --> 00:26:25.327 - and it's a such a special law classic illustration of what corruption is if one interest one company 00:26:25.327 --> 00:26:31.740 - can get a law that's just for them that's what happened the missouri legislature passed a law saying 00:26:31.740 --> 00:26:38.089 - st louis citizens are not allowed to have a ballot initiative that involves tax subsidies to fossil 00:26:38.089 --> 00:26:44.566 - fuel corporations that's what it said essentially so they did the one two punch corporate veto in the 00:26:44.566 --> 00:26:47.550 - courts plus money corruption of legislators to 00:26:47.714 --> 00:26:54.811 - basically disable even the right to vote about their own tax dollars being used. The other example is 00:26:54.811 --> 00:27:01.839 - to show how extreme this is getting. In Seattle, Seattle voters voted to lift minimum wage to $15 an 00:27:01.839 --> 00:27:08.936 - hour over time. One of the problems of the loss of democracy is wages are going down. We're just like 00:27:08.936 --> 00:27:16.033 - everywhere else in the world now, where global corporations can just drive wages down. And so Seattle 00:27:16.033 --> 00:27:16.798 - residents, 00:27:17.378 --> 00:27:24.130 - you know, finally giving up on politicians doing this, said we're going to do it ourselves. They voted, 00:27:24.130 --> 00:27:30.623 - raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour. It was phased in over time to give business, small business 00:27:30.623 --> 00:27:37.245 - and others, a chance to work and accommodate this new law. Well, it was challenged in court. We're in 00:27:37.245 --> 00:27:44.127 - the court fighting, we're helping to defend the case. But the challenge is that the minimum wage violates 00:27:44.127 --> 00:27:46.270 - corporate constitutional rights. 00:27:46.850 --> 00:27:52.732 - violates corporate free speech rights and corporate so-called equal protection rights under the 14th 00:27:52.732 --> 00:27:58.730 - Amendment. That's the corporate veto. Even if we get a law, even if we come together and we try to get 00:27:58.730 --> 00:28:04.786 - a law on the books through our own ballot initiative process, veto in the courts, just like in Citizens 00:28:04.786 --> 00:28:10.667 - United. So that's what we have to fix. We have to fix this. We have to, I think, dedicate everything 00:28:10.667 --> 00:28:15.326 - we can in our lifetimes, because it's not going to be easy. I didn't come here. 00:28:15.554 --> 00:28:21.426 - there's a chapter that says, do something with lots of great solutions. They're all hard. So just so 00:28:21.426 --> 00:28:27.297 - you know, in case you think you're going to spend whatever it costs to get the magic solution, there 00:28:27.297 --> 00:28:33.285 - is no magic solution. But there are a lot of good ideas. And more importantly, there are examples that 00:28:33.285 --> 00:28:39.098 - they inspired me. They're Americans who never did political stuff, who are now doing things. And so 00:28:39.098 --> 00:28:45.086 - I tell their stories because it inspires me. I think it'll inspire you. And here's what we need to do. 00:28:46.914 --> 00:28:53.779 - And we need to give it everything we got, because this is, as I said, I think one of the biggest crises 00:28:53.779 --> 00:29:00.843 - of our country in our lifetimes. We need to overturn Citizens United. That case cannot stand. It's against 00:29:00.843 --> 00:29:07.444 - the basic American principle of one person, one vote, of political equality. We may not be equal in 00:29:07.444 --> 00:29:14.310 - all kinds of ways, but the promise that we've always made since the North Bridge back in Concord, where 00:29:14.310 --> 00:29:15.102 - we're from, 00:29:15.586 --> 00:29:22.721 - is we come to this as equals as citizens. As citizens, we are equal. That's why we get to vote equally. 00:29:22.721 --> 00:29:29.582 - That's why we have one representative, equal representation. So Citizens United says, no, we're not 00:29:29.582 --> 00:29:36.717 - equal, actually. And I'm going to get back to why we need to overturn it. But I'm not exaggerating when 00:29:36.717 --> 00:29:43.166 - I say that they say we are not politically equal. This is the winning argument from the brief 00:29:45.602 --> 00:29:52.142 - McCutcheon is a case that came right after Citizens United, year two after. That's why we needed a new 00:29:52.142 --> 00:29:58.810 - addition, too. It struck down another law, a campaign finance law, that said in the aggregate, you can't 00:29:58.810 --> 00:30:05.414 - give more than $123,000 to federal candidates for office in a year. So all of you who have been waiting 00:30:05.414 --> 00:30:12.081 - to give $3 million to federal politicians, you are now free to do so, thanks to the Supreme Court. Think 00:30:12.081 --> 00:30:14.494 - about that. That's five times almost. 00:30:14.946 --> 00:30:22.086 - the median earnings of Americans. We often hear $50,000 median household income. That's usually two 00:30:22.086 --> 00:30:29.511 - earners. It's closer to $26,000. So here we have a limit that is five times what people earn in a year, 00:30:29.511 --> 00:30:37.080 - and that's ruled unconstitutional. We're not allowed to have that limit. But here's the winning argument. 00:30:37.080 --> 00:30:43.934 - Contribution limits may not be upheld as a means of limiting disparities in the extent to which 00:30:44.706 --> 00:30:52.154 - different economic backgrounds are able to participate in the political process. Think about that. They 00:30:52.154 --> 00:30:59.530 - say out loud, and it wins, that we are not allowed to have laws intended to enable people of different 00:30:59.530 --> 00:31:06.978 - economic backgrounds to participate in the political process. I'm not paraphrasing. I'm quoting. That's 00:31:06.978 --> 00:31:13.566 - what they say. That won. So we are in a fight for basic American principles. They're wrong. 00:31:14.338 --> 00:31:20.304 - I hope you're all with me, but I don't know that. I hope in question time, if you're not, we can have 00:31:20.304 --> 00:31:26.271 - a conversation about that. But most Americans are, and I would say we are right. And let me just tell 00:31:26.271 --> 00:31:32.412 - you why I say most Americans are. And that'll be my number one what we have to do, which I said overturn 00:31:32.412 --> 00:31:38.496 - Citizens United. So we've now tested this. Move to amend, free speech for people, lots of groups around 00:31:38.496 --> 00:31:42.590 - the country have tested this theory that Americans will come together 00:31:42.978 --> 00:31:48.775 - to overturn Citizens United, to take back our power, to say, yes, actually, political equality is what 00:31:48.775 --> 00:31:54.628 - this country is all about, and we're going to keep it that way in our lifetime. We've tested it through 00:31:54.628 --> 00:32:00.368 - resolutions all across the country calling for the 28th Amendment, constitutional amendment that will 00:32:00.368 --> 00:32:06.221 - reverse Citizens United, that will say, yes, we the people, through our state and federal legislatures, 00:32:06.221 --> 00:32:11.962 - have the right to enact campaign finance laws that get a handle on this. And that corporations do not 00:32:11.962 --> 00:32:12.862 - have the rights 00:32:12.962 --> 00:32:20.205 - human beings in our Constitution. So how is that test going? Well, everywhere people get a chance to 00:32:20.205 --> 00:32:27.592 - vote, it passes by huge margins. That's how we know. It's not just the polls that say 79% of Americans 00:32:27.592 --> 00:32:35.123 - want a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, though that's true. We know we can't always 00:32:35.123 --> 00:32:42.366 - count on polls because we see what they're not always right. But we can count on ballot initiatives. 00:32:43.266 --> 00:32:50.195 - actually have a chance to vote. We know the result. So let me give you some examples. 16 states have 00:32:50.195 --> 00:32:57.261 - enacted resolutions calling for the 28th Amendment. Two of those states were by ballot initiative. The 00:32:57.261 --> 00:33:04.259 - rest were through the legislature. So in Montana, in November 2012, Montana went with Mitt Romney for 00:33:04.259 --> 00:33:11.394 - president. So by all the conventional kind of, you know, what passes for political analysis these days, 00:33:11.394 --> 00:33:13.246 - that's a red stage, right? 00:33:13.762 --> 00:33:20.508 - well, on the ballot that day, that very same day, those very same voters had a chance to vote for a 00:33:20.508 --> 00:33:27.523 - Montana ballot initiative that didn't ask for the 28th Amendment, that didn't just say, well, you know, 00:33:27.523 --> 00:33:34.269 - we demand the 28th Amendment. It instructed Montana's representatives to get the 28th Amendment out 00:33:34.269 --> 00:33:41.149 - of Congress to the states for ratification, and not just any amendment. It spelled out the principles 00:33:41.149 --> 00:33:43.038 - of Montana policy were that 00:33:43.778 --> 00:33:50.695 - need a level playing field, political equality in elections, and better campaign spending limits and 00:33:50.695 --> 00:33:57.750 - campaign contribution limits. And it said corporations are creations of the state. They get the rights 00:33:57.750 --> 00:34:04.598 - and duties under state law. They don't have the rights of human beings in the Constitution. So that 00:34:04.598 --> 00:34:11.584 - was on the ballot in November 2012. They voted for Mitt Romney. They voted for this ballot initiative 00:34:11.584 --> 00:34:13.502 - 75% to 25%, not even close. 00:34:13.826 --> 00:34:20.995 - Americans do come together on this over and over again. 200 cities and towns have had ballot initiatives 00:34:20.995 --> 00:34:28.233 - now. All have passed, hasn't lost once. And they're almost always by that margin. Just this last Tuesday, 00:34:28.233 --> 00:34:35.333 - right? We had several in Massachusetts, several in Wisconsin, other towns, maybe some of you know, some 00:34:35.333 --> 00:34:42.366 - of the other states, but it was on ballot initiatives, local ballot initiatives. Once again, 70%, 30%, 00:34:42.754 --> 00:34:49.267 - pass, not close, pass. Americans know we can fix this. So a constitutional amendment, as I said, this 00:34:49.267 --> 00:34:56.035 - is hard stuff, right? We need two thirds of Congress to get it out. We need three quarters of the states, 00:34:56.035 --> 00:35:02.675 - just a constitutional convention strategy, too, that some advocate. But either way, this is hard stuff. 00:35:02.675 --> 00:35:09.315 - But we're doing it. This is how we've done it before. So I have other reforms that I'd be happy to talk 00:35:09.315 --> 00:35:11.614 - about that are also advancing well. 00:35:11.970 --> 00:35:18.721 - But I want to just close with the amendment, because I think a lot of this is, yeah, I get the problem. 00:35:18.721 --> 00:35:25.277 - But if we got to do an amendment, we're lost, because we can't do that. Congress can't agree when to 00:35:25.277 --> 00:35:31.833 - have lunch, let alone get two-thirds to say, we're going to have an amendment. And I want to address 00:35:31.833 --> 00:35:38.843 - that directly, because that was true throughout our history. We've been here before. You think an all-male, 00:35:38.843 --> 00:35:41.310 - unelected senate, senators used to be 00:35:42.562 --> 00:35:48.984 - They used to be all male. And an all-male, unelected Senate voted not once, but twice, two-thirds, to 00:35:48.984 --> 00:35:55.470 - get women the right to vote, the 19th Amendment, and to say, we're going to elect senators now. So all 00:35:55.470 --> 00:36:01.955 - our amendments, everything that we've, every advance we've done has been what, at the time, they would 00:36:01.955 --> 00:36:08.252 - have said, oh, it's impossible. It can't happen. So how do we do it? Well, we do exactly what we're 00:36:08.252 --> 00:36:10.078 - doing now. We do rest of it. 00:36:10.882 --> 00:36:17.266 - on a politician somewhere to write in and save us. We don't count on a Supreme Court fixing itself. 00:36:17.266 --> 00:36:24.096 - That would all be nice. But we have to do the strategy that the founders gave us, Article 5, the amendment 00:36:24.096 --> 00:36:30.607 - process. And so that's why we're seeing it unfolding across the country. In only 36 months, folks, if 00:36:30.607 --> 00:36:37.310 - you think you can't do this, do check out the book. Because I tell the story of people who are doing it. 00:36:37.826 --> 00:36:43.996 - Now, maybe some of you have done it. I know Bloomington is one of the towns that enacted a resolution. 00:36:43.996 --> 00:36:50.046 - It wasn't because the politicians said, oh, let's do this. It's because people like us walked in and 00:36:50.046 --> 00:36:56.036 - said the facts to a city council or to a town meeting or to get a ballot initiative on and said, we 00:36:56.036 --> 00:37:02.087 - have to do this. And they overcame their doubts, their fears, whatever was holding us back to do it. 00:37:02.087 --> 00:37:07.358 - And then they are lifted up by, unlike when you vote and even when you vote for someone 00:37:07.746 --> 00:37:14.288 - win, and nothing happens, or it doesn't get better. When you do this, you see your neighbors, you see 00:37:14.288 --> 00:37:20.958 - people who don't agree with you on politics agreeing with you on this. And it starts a virtuous circle. 00:37:20.958 --> 00:37:27.629 - That vicious circle not only gets stopped, it turns the other way so that you actually feel like, yeah, 00:37:27.629 --> 00:37:34.171 - maybe we won't succeed, but I'm going to go down fighting. And I'm going to go down with my neighbors 00:37:34.171 --> 00:37:35.710 - and friends and family. 00:37:36.290 --> 00:37:42.330 - my crazy uncle, who disagrees with me on everything else, but agrees on this. You start to feel this 00:37:42.330 --> 00:37:48.370 - country isn't as divided. You start to come together as citizens rather than consumers. And we start 00:37:48.370 --> 00:37:54.470 - turning this virtuous circle. And then the next town thinks, oh, that's a good idea. We can try that. 00:37:54.470 --> 00:38:00.750 - But the state says, we can try that. And it works. That's how we got in Congress a vote on the Democracy 00:38:00.750 --> 00:38:05.534 - for All Amendment. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good. A 28th Amendment. 00:38:05.858 --> 00:38:11.722 - was voted it would have been passed if fifty-five votes would pass but that's not enough but we got 00:38:11.722 --> 00:38:17.644 - fifty-five senators to co-sponsor the twenty-eighth amendment had a vote on it something that people 00:38:17.644 --> 00:38:23.508 - say would never happen got through the judiciary committee with approval something people would say 00:38:23.508 --> 00:38:29.606 - would never happen and in september we had a vote and we won that vote we need sixty-seven votes that's 00:38:29.606 --> 00:38:34.590 - only twelve more so this is happening you can help it happen we can do this together 00:38:34.914 --> 00:38:42.537 - And it's not just talk, because we know, you know, I don't think we're worse than our parents, grandparents, 00:38:42.537 --> 00:38:49.601 - great grandparents, who somehow found in themselves the strength and the hope and the vision that we 00:38:49.601 --> 00:38:57.015 - can be better than we are now. And I think I turned to Lincoln, like we all should in dark times, because 00:38:57.015 --> 00:39:04.638 - Abraham Lincoln, of course, presided over the darkest times of America when we almost lost it all in 700,000 00:39:07.138 --> 00:39:13.315 - other over essentially a principle about whether we meant it, are we all created equal? Do we mean that? 00:39:13.315 --> 00:39:19.257 - Are we going to live for that? Are we going to die for that? And yes, we did. But Abraham Lincoln, a 00:39:19.257 --> 00:39:25.199 - year before the Emancipation Proclamation, called for the 13th Amendment. And his words when calling 00:39:25.199 --> 00:39:31.494 - for it are really interesting. He said, you know, it's not enough to imagine better. We have to do better. 00:39:31.494 --> 00:39:34.494 - He said, it's not enough to think anew. We have to 00:39:36.258 --> 00:39:42.170 - And he said, we have to dis-enthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. And that was 14 00:39:42.170 --> 00:39:48.083 - amendments ago, right? 14 of these amendments, I think, these times, when we get about as bad as we 00:39:48.083 --> 00:39:54.113 - can and then somehow come out of it, we get out the other side because we don't know exactly how it's 00:39:54.113 --> 00:40:00.025 - going to unfold. We don't know exactly what policy will work. We don't know if we have the strength 00:40:00.025 --> 00:40:06.174 - of the smarts to pull it off. And most importantly, we dis-enthrall ourselves. And that's where we are. 00:40:06.306 --> 00:40:13.696 - Nobody else is going to save us. The system isn't working. It's not democracy right now. It's more like 00:40:13.696 --> 00:40:21.015 - plutocracy. We disinthrall ourselves, and we act anew, and we save our country. So I think that's what 00:40:21.015 --> 00:40:28.192 - we're doing, folks. Thank you very much. I'd be happy to talk and take some questions, but I want to 00:40:28.192 --> 00:40:35.369 - hear from you too. And check out the book, and let's save our country once again. Thank you. So yes, 00:40:35.369 --> 00:40:36.222 - right here. 00:40:37.634 --> 00:40:45.490 - Thank you very much. Many of us have read the first book and I know we're going to read the second one 00:40:45.490 --> 00:40:53.194 - too. I would like your opinion on the fact that if you look around the room this afternoon, you will 00:40:53.194 --> 00:41:00.897 - see basically a certain age group. Youngsters. Because we've lived it, we've experienced it, we know 00:41:00.897 --> 00:41:02.270 - what's happening. 00:41:12.578 --> 00:41:18.976 - Yeah. But our kids, you know, they do understand, but they're not active. They don't understand that 00:41:18.976 --> 00:41:25.437 - they've got to be active like this. It's OK, you're retired, you have time to do this. No, you never, 00:41:25.437 --> 00:41:31.582 - you always have to make time to do this. Yeah. Nothing to do with being retired. Yeah. You know, 00:41:31.582 --> 00:41:37.917 - it's a good, I've been asked that several times. And I, again, like everything else, I don't have a 00:41:37.917 --> 00:41:40.894 - magic answer. But I've got my best shot at it. 00:41:42.882 --> 00:41:51.184 - Nancy and I have three of those younger. They don't come to my talks either. So what I think is, 00:41:51.184 --> 00:41:59.999 - number one, we can't tell them what to do. We didn't listen to the older generation when we were their 00:41:59.999 --> 00:42:08.899 - age either. And I think that's just fine, actually. They will figure it out in their own way, and we'll 00:42:08.899 --> 00:42:10.782 - all be better for it. 00:42:11.138 --> 00:42:18.510 - It's sort of like my view about, you know, we have a lot of groups doing this, we have different strategies. 00:42:18.510 --> 00:42:25.341 - That's always how we win in the end, is people come to it on their own terms, in their own ways, and 00:42:25.341 --> 00:42:32.376 - find their own ways to act. So I actually get inspired by some younger people. They're doing incredible 00:42:32.376 --> 00:42:39.274 - things in lots of ways, but even if we were to ask them to do it sort of like we did it or, you know, 00:42:39.274 --> 00:42:40.830 - more conventional ways 00:42:41.378 --> 00:42:50.017 - It's not actually conventional, but it's morally based and determined. It's not a naive hope. It's a 00:42:50.017 --> 00:42:58.657 - determination. So I often think of Kai Newkirk. Anybody heard of Kai Newkirk? Well, I hope you will, 00:42:58.657 --> 00:43:07.296 - because I first met Kai. He's probably 28 years old. He was out at UCLA. He came to something at the 00:43:07.296 --> 00:43:10.974 - UCLA law school there. I next saw Kai on a 00:43:11.618 --> 00:43:18.152 - video from within the Supreme Court argument. Now, as you may know, there's no cameras allowed in the 00:43:18.152 --> 00:43:24.814 - Supreme Court. Yet, there was a hidden camera. And there is Kai Nuker dressed better than me. He looked 00:43:24.814 --> 00:43:31.349 - like a lawyer. He had a tie on. And he stood up in the middle of an argument of the Supreme Court. He 00:43:31.349 --> 00:43:38.011 - interrupted the argument. And he stood up and said, I rise on behalf of the American people who believe 00:43:38.011 --> 00:43:41.214 - money is not speech. Corporations are not people. 00:43:41.442 --> 00:43:49.104 - overturned Citizens United, and then he was security. He drags him off. You can watch this on YouTube. 00:43:49.104 --> 00:43:56.765 - He knew he was going to get arrested. This was an act of civil disobedience to tell truth to power and 00:43:56.765 --> 00:44:04.203 - to set an example and to spread the word. And he was willing to take the consequences. And it's not 00:44:04.203 --> 00:44:10.526 - just him. He leads a group called 99 Rise, which is about young people rising to not 00:44:11.010 --> 00:44:18.360 - to stand silent anymore. He led a march 500 miles from Los Angeles to Sacramento, 400 something miles, 00:44:18.360 --> 00:44:26.138 - demanding that the legislature, California legislature, vote to put on the ballot a constitutional amendment 00:44:26.138 --> 00:44:33.487 - initiative. Exactly what we're trying to do. He said we're gonna walk from LA to Sacramento, the other 00:44:33.487 --> 00:44:39.838 - side of the state, and we're not gonna leave until they do it. He not only did the walk, 00:44:40.322 --> 00:44:46.365 - led a lot of other young people with them. They didn't leave until the legislature did it, 00:44:46.365 --> 00:44:53.403 - and the legislature did it. Now, that's one another case we're involved in. The court blocked that ballot 00:44:53.403 --> 00:45:00.375 - initiative. But Kai isn't going anywhere, and his group isn't going anywhere. He went on a hunger strike 00:45:00.375 --> 00:45:07.082 - the weeks before the election day for the principle of one person, one vote, calling on other people 00:45:07.082 --> 00:45:09.406 - to pledge. You don't have to fast. 00:45:10.114 --> 00:45:16.312 - pledge to vote for reform candidates who would support a constitutional amendment and the principle 00:45:16.312 --> 00:45:22.820 - of one person, one vote. So there are a lot of young people doing, I think, inspiring things. They don't 00:45:22.820 --> 00:45:29.019 - all have to be like that. So my answer is not usually this long-winded, but it's usually, sometimes 00:45:29.019 --> 00:45:35.403 - I'm asked by young people who do come to the talks. And I think in the end, I say it's up to them. And 00:45:35.403 --> 00:45:38.750 - I think what we can best do is model our own behavior 00:45:39.138 --> 00:45:44.822 - not sort of lecture them about what they should do, but try to do it ourselves and then support younger 00:45:44.822 --> 00:45:50.506 - people when they step up too. Because I think they are stepping up in lots of different ways. It's just 00:45:50.506 --> 00:45:53.566 - not the same way as we might do it. So I'll stop there. 00:46:11.234 --> 00:46:18.636 - of demographics were in the voting pool, did we know? Was it a high percentage of voters? Were they 00:46:18.636 --> 00:46:26.185 - mostly of one yoke or another that voted on this? Yeah. Well, no. I think it was a presidential year, 00:46:26.185 --> 00:46:33.587 - so it's high turnout. It was 2012. And they voted for Mitt Romney. So there were certainly a lot of 00:46:33.587 --> 00:46:40.766 - Republicans in the voting pool. But you actually see this everywhere. Scott Walker in Wisconsin. 00:46:41.026 --> 00:46:48.087 - his hometown passed a resolution last Tuesday by a huge margin. So I think, you know, even in places 00:46:48.087 --> 00:46:55.077 - where, whether it's fracking or anything else, I think people recognize, look, I don't agree about, 00:46:55.077 --> 00:47:02.138 - you know, whatever it is, an energy policy or, you know, I may be a Republican, but I know that this 00:47:02.138 --> 00:47:09.758 - isn't right that billionaires can run the country and corporations have a constitutional veto in the courts. 00:47:10.242 --> 00:47:16.868 - And they will support this. I am confident in almost any demographic. I'm rather amazed by it. Yeah, 00:47:16.868 --> 00:47:23.494 - well, check it out. You can look at unitedforthepeople.org, the number four, and go click on some of 00:47:23.494 --> 00:47:30.119 - the towns that have done these resolutions. And it sets the margin. It doesn't have the breakdown of 00:47:30.119 --> 00:47:36.745 - the demographic. But it's been in red states, blue states, red towns, blue towns. But it's not easy. 00:47:36.745 --> 00:47:40.222 - I mean, that's the thing. And if people get a chance 00:47:40.354 --> 00:47:46.904 - vote on it, you see it. If you try to persuade Republican lawmakers, that's harder. Because then you're 00:47:46.904 --> 00:47:53.327 - into the system instead of giving people the books. Well, I must say, we have a report of Free Speech 00:47:53.327 --> 00:47:59.625 - for People called Across the Isle. You can get it on our website, freespeechforpeople.org. It shows 00:47:59.625 --> 00:48:06.237 - 100 Republicans, leaders in the country, who've actually voted for constitutional amendment resolutions. 00:48:06.237 --> 00:48:10.142 - And we're going to continue to try to be as cross-partisan as 00:48:12.482 --> 00:48:19.907 - sort of create a space for Republicans who want to do the right thing. But the money is a big problem 00:48:19.907 --> 00:48:27.623 - on both sides. But on that side in particular, I think for the reform, it's difficult for the legislative 00:48:27.623 --> 00:48:35.193 - leaders. And they need to hear it from their own constituents, not necessarily Nancy Pelosi isn't going 00:48:35.193 --> 00:48:40.798 - to convince Republican congressmen to vote for this. But their constituents. 00:48:41.474 --> 00:48:49.382 - So we have to reach their constituents through these local organizing efforts. Yes? One of the things 00:48:49.382 --> 00:48:57.212 - I struggled with this September Senate vote was that what they were voting on sort of led to believe 00:48:57.212 --> 00:49:05.352 - didn't go far enough. We were afraid that it was a more degraded amendment thrust than we really wanted. 00:49:05.352 --> 00:49:09.694 - And it was hard to know, do you go with what you've got 00:49:10.466 --> 00:49:17.056 - you hold back for what you wish for? I don't know, do you have any thoughts? Yeah, I do. So I'm glad 00:49:17.056 --> 00:49:23.581 - you asked that, because I have a lot of thoughts, but I'll try to keep it short. OK. One of the few 00:49:23.581 --> 00:49:30.236 - areas of differences on strategy, or as David Cobb says, David Cobb and I were together in Denver, he 00:49:30.236 --> 00:49:36.761 - says tactics, not difference on goals, difference in tactics for free speech for people and move to 00:49:36.761 --> 00:49:40.350 - amend, is just that. So we supported, we helped write, 00:49:41.730 --> 00:49:48.557 - committee the democracy for all amendment and what it did is it said Congress has the power again to 00:49:48.557 --> 00:49:55.452 - regulate campaign spending to ensure political equality and the states have that right and power what 00:49:55.452 --> 00:50:02.347 - we've always had in this country until recent years and number three that those laws that we make can 00:50:02.347 --> 00:50:09.310 - be different for human beings and corporations in campaign finance spending now move to amends view is 00:50:09.506 --> 00:50:17.591 - that's not enough because it doesn't say corporations don't have constitutional rights. It only takes 00:50:17.591 --> 00:50:25.914 - out the money, the campaign money. And even though it allows corporate money and elections to be limited 00:50:25.914 --> 00:50:33.683 - or barred, it doesn't say corporations don't have any rights under the Constitution. In our view, 00:50:33.683 --> 00:50:39.390 - my view, we should push for the democracy for all amendment and get it. 00:50:40.706 --> 00:50:47.453 - or the next amendment we need. If they come together and we have a chance to get both amendments out 00:50:47.453 --> 00:50:54.267 - of Congress in one, we should take it, push for it. But that won't necessarily happen. And I think if 00:50:54.267 --> 00:51:01.214 - we try to control the exact order, we may lose a historic opportunity. And let me say why I think that. 00:51:01.214 --> 00:51:07.894 - If you look at history, we do these things, there's sort of two views. I think move to a man's view 00:51:07.894 --> 00:51:10.366 - is like, we're going to work so hard 00:51:10.466 --> 00:51:17.857 - The amendment's got to be perfect. But the other view, my view, which I'll try to support with some 00:51:17.857 --> 00:51:25.396 - evidence, is no, what we're doing is creating an amendment moment in American history. We're creating 00:51:25.396 --> 00:51:33.009 - the different alignments, the different alliances, the different, we're kind of disrupting the current 00:51:33.009 --> 00:51:39.070 - system by lifting people up to be self-governing citizens, and then the amendment 00:51:40.994 --> 00:51:48.001 - You know, the final thing. It's not the first thing. So the Senate passed that amendment I talked about, 00:51:48.001 --> 00:51:54.674 - women's right to vote, only because they had to. The people had already changed the country by that 00:51:54.674 --> 00:52:01.680 - point. So in my view, if we do the work to create an amendment moment, you don't get just one amendment. 00:52:01.680 --> 00:52:08.620 - It's not like one shot and it's over. You create an opportunity for all kinds of reform. So let me show 00:52:08.620 --> 00:52:10.622 - the evidence I said I'd give. 00:52:10.914 --> 00:52:17.359 - almost never come with just one right instead what happens is the country is in a whole Americans come 00:52:17.359 --> 00:52:23.742 - together to lift us out and we get three or four amendments at once because it's not just one problem 00:52:23.742 --> 00:52:30.187 - right corporate corporate power is not exactly the same although it's related to the money problem and 00:52:30.187 --> 00:52:37.070 - if we had two amendments that may be just fine so let me show you some examples the Constitutional Convention 00:52:37.070 --> 00:52:39.198 - came out with the Constitution 17 00:52:39.458 --> 00:52:44.495 - 87 out of Philadelphia. And they thought they were done. And the American people said, no, 00:52:44.495 --> 00:52:50.195 - not good enough. Where's the Bill of Rights? We did 10 amendments to do the Bill of Rights. Only a few 00:52:50.195 --> 00:52:56.173 - years later, 1795, the Supreme Court ruled that bondholders can hold states in the federal court. Americans 00:52:56.173 --> 00:53:01.763 - did not like that at all. That was not part of the deal. And we got the 11th Amendment. So there was 00:53:01.763 --> 00:53:06.910 - this sort of ferment around the revolution where Americans felt like, no, we make the rules. 00:53:06.910 --> 00:53:08.958 - It's a democracy. We make the rules. 00:53:10.082 --> 00:53:15.927 - So that has happened over and over and over again. So after the Civil War, of course, it wasn't just 00:53:15.927 --> 00:53:22.176 - one amendment. It wasn't like we had one chance. We abolished slavery at the 13th Amendment. 14th Amendment 00:53:22.176 --> 00:53:28.195 - guaranteed equality and due process for every citizen. The 15th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote. 00:53:28.195 --> 00:53:34.155 - And of course, it wasn't like, oh, you do the amendment and everything's perfect. But it does give you 00:53:34.155 --> 00:53:38.206 - the power to start working to get there. But we did three amendments. 00:53:39.106 --> 00:53:45.505 - And it wasn't just like in the trauma of the Civil War, the last Gilded Age, much like our own turn 00:53:45.505 --> 00:53:52.160 - of the 19th century into the early 20th century. The Supreme Court was striking down minimum wage laws. 00:53:52.160 --> 00:53:58.943 - They had given railroad corporations and other corporations rights. They were striking down worker safety 00:53:58.943 --> 00:54:05.726 - laws. It was very much like our times today, great concentrations of wealth and power, not much democracy 00:54:05.726 --> 00:54:07.710 - effectively. So what do we do? 00:54:08.482 --> 00:54:14.281 - amendments in ten years and of course that's not all we did but we created the moment that allowed for 00:54:14.281 --> 00:54:19.911 - constitutional that is that one was prohibition so we'll put that aside because that got overturned 00:54:19.911 --> 00:54:25.654 - with another amendment but think of the others the Supreme Court struck down the income tax said that 00:54:25.654 --> 00:54:31.566 - that violates the the constitutional rights of rich people essentially again it was like confusing money 00:54:31.566 --> 00:54:37.534 - with democracy we enacted us an income tax was struck down by the Supreme Court constitutional amendments 00:54:37.762 --> 00:54:43.523 - overturned that decision. And that would have been hard to do. They did it. Overturned that decision. 00:54:43.523 --> 00:54:49.397 - Supreme Court said women have no right to vote. Struck down, overturned with a constitutional amendment 00:54:49.397 --> 00:54:55.045 - in that period. The third one was the election of senators that I mentioned. Because the system was 00:54:55.045 --> 00:55:00.806 - so corrupted that literally they were passing out bags of cash. A Montana senator, a guy named Clark, 00:55:00.806 --> 00:55:06.737 - even bought his Senate seat. Literally gave ranches and bags of cash to state legislators to get himself 00:55:06.737 --> 00:55:07.358 - appointed. 00:55:07.650 --> 00:55:13.636 - openly, and it's so disgusted the American people. We did constitutional amendments that say, we're 00:55:13.636 --> 00:55:20.161 - going to elect senators from now on. We're going to be in charge of this process. So those three amendments, 00:55:20.161 --> 00:55:26.326 - in the space of 10 years, did it again. Between 1961 and 1971, we forget our lifetime, for some of us. 00:55:26.326 --> 00:55:32.432 - Our lifetime, we did three amendments, four amendments, actually, in 10 years. The three of them were 00:55:32.432 --> 00:55:35.006 - about this very issue, political equality, 00:55:35.426 --> 00:55:41.025 - representative government. So one amendment overturned the poll tax. This poll tax was being used to 00:55:41.025 --> 00:55:46.735 - prevent African-Americans and poor people from being able to vote. The Supreme Court said, that's just 00:55:46.735 --> 00:55:52.390 - fine. Nothing wrong with that. The American people said, yeah, there is something wrong with that. It 00:55:52.390 --> 00:55:58.156 - violates political equality. We get a constitutional amendment to overturn that. The Supreme Court said 00:55:58.156 --> 00:56:04.254 - young 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds can be drafted and sent to Vietnam and war. It doesn't violate the Constitution. 00:56:04.450 --> 00:56:10.666 - constitutional amendment said yes it does and we did a constitutional amendment to give District of 00:56:10.666 --> 00:56:16.883 - Columbia residents who had no representation some representation so even in our lifetime we had you 00:56:16.883 --> 00:56:23.162 - know the ferment of the 60s it wasn't it had pros and cons but it was a democracy moment where we it 00:56:23.162 --> 00:56:29.565 - wasn't just like oh we get one amendment it's like we need a lot of things to be fixed and we fix them 00:56:29.565 --> 00:56:33.854 - not everything and now it's our turn I think so I think from my view 00:56:34.082 --> 00:56:40.163 - We have to not have this scarcity attitude of, oh, no, we're only going to get one chance. We are going 00:56:40.163 --> 00:56:46.185 - to do what we're entitled to do and govern this country as citizens. And we're going to fix what needs 00:56:46.185 --> 00:56:52.032 - fixing. And if we have a chance to overturn not only Citizens United and the Buckley versus Vallejo 00:56:52.032 --> 00:56:58.229 - that says money is just power and voting, we should seize it, overturn it. Because that's like exercising 00:56:58.229 --> 00:57:03.550 - our democracy muscle, right? If we get one amendment, it won't be like, oh, that was nice. 00:57:03.714 --> 00:57:09.163 - go home, they'll be like, whoa, we know how to do this. Let's do the next one. So that's my answer to 00:57:09.163 --> 00:57:14.666 - that question. How about one more question, if there is one? And then I'll be happy to stay around and 00:57:14.666 --> 00:57:20.275 - talk. Yes, Jim. I have a question. Thank you for your talk, by the way. Thank you. And thank you, Nancy, 00:57:20.275 --> 00:57:25.617 - and from you for your visit. Great to be here. Thank you. I have a question about the five justices 00:57:25.617 --> 00:57:31.120 - on the Supreme Court. Do you feel free to dispense constitutional protections and decorations when the 00:57:31.120 --> 00:57:33.310 - issue of court conversion has never been 00:57:33.762 --> 00:57:43.243 - argued squarely in the Supreme Court. Forget about 1886. It was a fraud. And this is not just my opinion. 00:57:43.243 --> 00:57:52.545 - This is what Bill Rehnquist said. Why is that? Because there's no argument for corporate constitutional 00:57:52.545 --> 00:58:01.758 - rights that is not embarrassing. And they don't like to be embarrassed, so they kind of hide the ball. 00:58:02.370 --> 00:58:08.664 - I think literally, I'm not kidding. I mean, I did a debate out in Utah, in Salt Lake City, the law school 00:58:08.664 --> 00:58:14.899 - at the university there. And I outlined, I don't have time to do it in answer to this, but I essentially 00:58:14.899 --> 00:58:20.659 - outlined just how absurd it is to say corporations are people or persons under the Constitution. 00:58:20.659 --> 00:58:26.656 - As a lawyer, you cannot honestly get to that answer without just saying, well, we kind of need it to 00:58:26.656 --> 00:58:29.150 - be here because it would be inconvenient. 00:58:29.826 --> 00:58:35.801 - And that's not good constitutional jurisprudence, right? There's a lot of things we might think, well, 00:58:35.801 --> 00:58:41.719 - it would be better if we did it. But you can't twist the Constitution to do that, even if you thought 00:58:41.719 --> 00:58:47.520 - that, which I don't think so. So instead, they hide the ball, like they did in Citizens United. And 00:58:47.520 --> 00:58:53.437 - they use euphemism. My book, I have sort of a chapter on this technique that they use. And at the top 00:58:53.437 --> 00:58:58.078 - of the chapter, there's a Hugo, Victor Hugo quote about how metaphor is a thief 00:58:59.874 --> 00:59:05.558 - use of metaphor can do such damage. And that's what they do. They don't say corporations have rights. 00:59:05.558 --> 00:59:11.241 - They say all speakers have rights. They don't say corporations literally, they don't actually say the 00:59:11.241 --> 00:59:16.869 - words corporations are people in the Citizens United decision. They just act as if they are and then 00:59:16.869 --> 00:59:22.665 - apply the law as if they were true. So that's the technique they use. And you're right, Bill Rehnquist, 00:59:22.665 --> 00:59:28.348 - a conservative, when you're talking to conservative folks and they say, oh, this is some lefty thing, 00:59:28.348 --> 00:59:29.630 - tell them to check out 00:59:30.050 --> 00:59:37.192 - Barry Goldwater conservative from Arizona, Bill Rehnquist, who dissented in all the cases I talk about 00:59:37.192 --> 00:59:44.195 - in this book about when this new version, not back to Santa Clara, but this new corporate rights era 00:59:44.195 --> 00:59:51.128 - we have, he dissented in those cases. He warned that republics fail if we confuse human beings with 00:59:51.128 --> 00:59:59.102 - corporate entities. And so you're absolutely right, Jim. There's very, very weak arguments for corporations having 01:00:00.962 --> 01:00:07.367 - Don't let lawyers or law professors or anyone sort of intimidate you about this. It's not like there's 01:00:07.367 --> 01:00:13.709 - some secret magic to constitutional interpretation that we regular people just don't get somehow. No, 01:00:13.709 --> 01:00:20.114 - it's sound constitutional interpretation would not give rights under the Constitution to corporations, 01:00:20.114 --> 01:00:26.394 - not just because it's wrong as a matter of law, but because it's dangerous. It's exactly the kind of 01:00:26.394 --> 01:00:30.622 - faction that I mentioned with James Madison. It's dangerous to him. 01:00:30.786 --> 01:00:38.095 - entities of the state that are now global. I mean, the money moving through global corporations is bigger 01:00:38.095 --> 01:00:44.989 - than the gross national product of a lot of countries. And to say that they are political citizens, 01:00:44.989 --> 01:00:51.953 - just like us, is very dangerous in a republic. So Bill Rehnquist got it. Other conservatives got it. 01:00:51.953 --> 01:00:59.193 - Liberals got it. Americans get it. So I think, you know, I know we're right on that. I think we're going 01:00:59.193 --> 01:01:00.158 - to change it. 01:01:04.226 --> 01:01:11.025 - So thank you, you have a question here, one last one. How do you spell Rehnquist? Rehnquist, 01:01:11.025 --> 01:01:18.702 - R-E-H-N-Q-U-I-S-T. And just for background folks, he was the Chief Justice before Roberts, Chief Justice 01:01:18.702 --> 01:01:26.232 - Roberts. And in fact, Citizens United, the only reason it happened is Chief Justice Rehnquist died and 01:01:26.232 --> 01:01:32.958 - Sandra Day O'Connor, another Arizona conservative, retired. Sandra Day O'Connor had written 01:01:33.346 --> 01:01:41.532 - final decision that came out the exact opposite way at Citizens United only six years before. She retired, 01:01:41.532 --> 01:01:49.334 - replaced by Samuel Alito. Chief Justice Rehnquist died, replaced by Chief Justice Roberts, and we got 01:01:49.334 --> 01:01:52.318 - where we are. So, R-E-H-N-Q-E-U-I-S-T. 01:02:11.362 --> 01:02:18.464 - legislators and tell them this is what we want? Or do we go to the Supreme Court and tell them this 01:02:18.464 --> 01:02:25.850 - is what we want? Or do we go to all? We go everywhere. So free speech for people. We have a legal team. 01:02:25.850 --> 01:02:32.952 - We're looking for cases that will go to the Supreme Court. And we'll keep going and going and going 01:02:32.952 --> 01:02:39.486 - until we win. But we cannot leave it to the lawyers anymore. Lawyers have had their chance. 01:02:40.930 --> 01:02:47.850 - We're doing our best, but we will not do this unless we have a national involvement of all the American 01:02:47.850 --> 01:02:54.704 - people. And that's what the Constitutional Amendment is about. And for that, go to your local leaders, 01:02:54.704 --> 01:03:01.358 - go to your local folks, whether they're in churches and anywhere where people gather and find a way 01:03:01.358 --> 01:03:08.146 - to put it before the body for discussion. Go to your local legislators. Go to your state legislators. 01:03:08.146 --> 01:03:10.142 - So we have to do all of that. 01:03:10.562 --> 01:03:16.841 - So check out Move to Amend and talk to the folks here who are organizing that kind of response. Because 01:03:16.841 --> 01:03:22.878 - I think we can't just leave it to a strategy, well, let's get to the Supreme Court and somehow hope 01:03:22.878 --> 01:03:29.337 - they'll come back with a better answer. We actually tried that. One of the reasons Montana was so inflamed 01:03:29.337 --> 01:03:35.555 - about this is Montana had a law that went back 100 years that's kept corporate money out of elections. 01:03:35.555 --> 01:03:39.902 - They defended that law after Citizens United. We helped them defend it. 01:03:40.098 --> 01:03:46.465 - went up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had a chance to fix this. And they slapped Montana down, 01:03:46.465 --> 01:03:52.528 - struck down all the state laws, too, and said, Citizens United's the law of the land. So this court 01:03:52.528 --> 01:03:58.591 - won't fix Citizens United. There's no sign that we're going to get a better court any time soon. We 01:03:58.591 --> 01:04:05.140 - have to go to the legislators. We have to go to our local people. And we have to get loud and get organized 01:04:05.140 --> 01:04:09.566 - and push back until we win. But you can also write to your Supreme Court 01:04:10.370 --> 01:04:16.115 - I'll give you his address. Thank you. Yeah, so seriously, talk, share addresses, share ideas. Talk about 01:04:16.115 --> 01:04:21.696 - it here, because the best thing, I promise you, the best thing is organizing locally and working with 01:04:21.696 --> 01:04:27.551 - people in your community, because you know who your state reps are. You know what people have done before. 01:04:27.551 --> 01:04:33.186 - We're just more powerful that way. And that's happening across the country, as I said. You could count 01:04:33.186 --> 01:04:38.713 - on it. I mean, don't feel you're alone. Americans all over the country are doing this. I've seen it. 01:04:38.713 --> 01:04:40.190 - I describe it in the book. 01:04:40.738 --> 01:04:46.846 - people are doing hard work to get this done. So thank you very much. Check out the book. I'll stick around.