(“I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” –Thomas Jefferson – promoted by eli_beckerman)

The Green-Rainbow Party offers the example in Massachusett politics of not accepting corporate financial influence.  As I noted ten days ago, Beacon Hill’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary is holding a public hearing tomorrow, for which I submitted the following testimony today, in support of an effort to amend the US Constitution.

Re: Statement in Support of S772 – “Restoring Free Speech”

I am submitting this written testimony for tomorrow’s public hearing of your committee.  I am an elected Berkshire County representative to the State Committee of the Green-Rainbow Party, whose candidates and party organizations at local and state levels do not accept corporate funding, nor accept funding from corporate lobbyists or from individual corporate officers who hire lobbyists.

S772 is an important first step to amend the US Constitution to effectively address precedents that concerned citizens in most political parties agree is putting our democracy in peril, the most recent of which is the Citizens United ruling.

I urge the committee to take it further.  The preamble to S772 posits that the Citizens United ruling is the ‘extreme conclusion’ of a take-over of the First Amendment by unregulated money influence.  This statement implies that the situation can’t get any worse.  I suggest amending this text, because our history clearly shows that it will get worse without a proactive and purposeful resolve to reject the ideas both of corporate personhood and of money being equated with speech.  It is not enough to take us back to the pre- Citizens United days.

Political fund-raising and spending streams increase in intensity with apparently no relationship to the larger economy, personal net worth, or even the competitiveness of electoral races.  The problem is not only national.

The New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University (NECIR-BU) has recently commissioned some excellent reporting on local and regional issues.  The influence of money in Beacon Hill politics begs for the kind of independent reporting that this group has done.  I hope the sponsors and supporters of S772, who are calling for this important national action, also join me in encouraging the NECIR-BU and similar groups to look further into the dynamics of money in our own local politics.

Thank you for acting favorably on this legislation.