The American Experiment in Representative Democracy Comes to a Tragic End

Any illusion that the United States of America is still a functioning democracy (representative or otherwise) was shattered today by the Supreme Court's unprecedented extension of the legal fiction of corporate personhood.

The legal fiction of corporate personhood began in order to enable people to sue corporations (early corporations were used to avoid or limit owner liability - among other things). The extension of this fiction to entitlement to first amendment rights only shows how disconnected American jurisprudence has become from concern with anything resembling popular justice.

The Supreme Court's decision has essentially rendered all previous campaign finance reform completely obsolete. Furthermore, it has made it nearly impossible to design meaningful future campaign finance reform (i.e. it would now likely require a Constitutional Amendment). At this point, even across-the-board single term limits would not be effective enough to staunch the huge power that has been placed in the hands of the corporate coffers. With our access to mass media for sale to the highest bidder and the deepest pockets relieved of even the pretense of regulation, the lobbying corruption that we have seen up to this point in our history will pale in comparison to the wholesale purchasing of elections which is about to begin.

I wish that I could have written this headline as a joke for the Onion. I wish that I was just overreacting to the importance of this decision. Unfortunately, neither of these is the case. I realize that we are in the middle of a national debate on health care, and in the middle of a financial crisis, and that there are two wars going on, but this decision and its implications are more important than these other considerations. I urge you to immediately max out* your withholding allowances on your paycheck to reduce your withholding tax as much as possible (you can put the money aside in case you need to send it in later, or in case you need it to finance the revolution). Write your Senators, your Congressmen, your friends in the media and let them know that you have done this and why. Tell them that you refuse to send more of your hard earned money to support a government that is no longer of the people, for the people, and by the people. Tell them that you will start sending money again as soon as the corruption problems are fixed.

I realize how this sounds. But no meaningful healthcare reform, no meaningful financial regulation, no meaningful end to this war on terror, no meaningful peace or prosperity will be possible for us if we do not end corporate influence in our government. It is clear that even the presidency has been stripped of any meaningful power, our elected leader with a 60 vote majority in the Senate and a majority in the House has been unable to effect even modest progress. Our democracy is broken. It is owned, lock stock and barrel, by powerful interests whose first wish is to maintain their own wealth and power. Wherever their concern for the people lies, what is clear is that it is low on their list of priorities.

I want to leave you with a few thoughts as you consider this message:

Gandhi said that, "non cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good." I would not argue that the people in Washington are evil any more than I would argue that corporate shareholders or CEO's are evil. What are evil are the consequences of their actions. These actions come from places of ignorance and from a lack of wisdom. Life, for many of them, is just a large game of Monopoly, and we are only pieces. But we must refuse to be their pieces. We must stand up and claim proudly our human rights, our common human brotherhood and sisterhood. We must educate them by bringing the best of ourselves, the best our our religious traditions and prophets, the best of our wisdom, and the best of our knowledge. With these things it is our responsibility to craft a new world order, to develop new systems of governance where wisdom and merit determine leadership, not charisma and wealth.

Our current system of government does not even meet the Carter Foundation's guidelines for fair elections. Let's change that.

Eric Hepburn

* Please select a withholding level that works for you. The goal is to have a significant impact on the revenue stream to get the attention of the media and the government. The goal is to not cooperate. The goal is peaceful change. Most people have a range of withholding that they can legally claim, the strategy (for now) is to get a critical mass of people to pick the highest number of allowances that they can justify and to publicize this choice and the reason behind it. Even if you already withhold the minimum, write a letter, talk to a friend, find a different way to engage in nonviolent noncooperation with what you find unjust.

For your own research on this topic I recommend:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p505.pdf - IRS publication on withholding

http://www.nwtrcc.org/practical1.html - War Tax Resistance Organization, good summary of possible penalties etc.

P.S. I have considered the idea of producing a 'stock letter' but those only tell the people who receive them that you are kind of serious (I took 2 minutes to add my name and hit send). Write in your own words what you want and expect from your elected officials in order to achieve a meaningful elimination of corporate influence over government. When I get my own letter(s) finished, I'll post them here in the open.

P.S.S. There is also a petition asking for a Constitutional Amendment at the Public Citizen website (a consumer advocacy nonprofit): http://www.citizen.org/