Hinesburg will debate borrowing $275,000 to pay for septic system improvements at a mobile home park. Charlotte will discuss building a new sidewalk on the Ferry Road. Richmond voters will decide whether local police should use a military surplus Humvee acquired by the town’s chief.
As usual, the agendas facing Vermonters this Town Meeting Day are long and eclectic.
But when they’re done with all that, these three towns — and 48 others across Vermont — will take up a weightier question: Should the U.S. Constitution be amended to declare that corporations are not people, and to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission?
The resolutions challenging “corporate personhood” are part of a grassroots campaign aimed at blunting the influence of money in politics in the wake of the 2010 Supreme Court ruling. It’s part of a three-prong attack on Citizens United that puts Vermont at the center of a growing national movement.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has introduced a constitutional amendment that would bar corporations from bankrolling political candidates and enshrine the right of legislatures to regulate campaign spending. U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) is backing a companion version in the House. In the state legislature, Sen. Ginny Lyons (D-Chittenden) and 10 cosponsors have proposed a joint resolution urging Congress to amend the constitution to clarify that corporations are not people.
Organizers succeeded in putting the question on ballots and warnings in 51 cities and towns this year. A ‘yes’ vote will put a town on record urging state and federal lawmakers to back a constitutional amendment. The town of Thetford took up the resolution at its town meeting on Saturday and after 15 minutes of discussion approved it 147-3.
Tim Briglin, a financial manager in Thetford who helped get the resolution on the warning, wasn’t surprised the vote was so lopsided.
“Not one person turned me down for getting a signature,” he says. “I had people dropping off petitions at my house and calling me a week later. There’s a lot support for it.”
The full list of towns that will take up the resolution is: Albany, Barnet, Brattleboro, Bristol, Burlington, Calais, Charlotte, Chester, Chittenden, Craftsbury, East Montpelier, Fayston, Fletcher, Greensboro, Hardwick, Hinesburg, Jericho, Lincoln, Marlboro, Marshfield, Monkton, Montgomery, Montpelier, Moretown, Mount Holly, Norwich, Plainfield, Putney, Richmond, Ripton, Roxbury, Rutland City, Rutland Town, Sharon, Shrewsbury, South Burlington, Starksboro, Sudbury, Thetford, Tunbridge, Waitsfield, Walden, Warren, Waltham, Williamstown, Williston, Winooski, Windsor, Woodbury, Woodstock and Worcester.
After introducing her resolution last year, Lyons says she was contacted by a huge number of Vermonters who wanted to know how they could help. She organized a meeting and started the ball rolling for getting it on town meeting warnings, she says. Lyons says she’d be happy if half the towns approved the resolution but cautions, “I have no idea whether everyone who presents the issue at town meeting will effective at relating what exactly it means. I don’t think it’s an easy issue to describe on the floor.”
National issues often creep onto town meeting agendas — Briglin notes that Thetford was the first town to call for impeaching Richard Nixon in 1974 — and inevitably critics say town meetings should stick to local issues. Lyons has heard that argument and counters that the corporate personhood resolution is “more relevant” to Vermonters than most national issues because “it could change our town meeting process. It will change local school board elections.”
“Town meeting has always been rich with debate about a variety of issues,” Lyson says, “not just dump trucks.”
A recent poll from the new polling institute at Castleton State College found broad support among Vermonters for a constitutional amendment. Of the 800 people polled, 76 percent said they “somewhat” or “strongly” favor an amendment that would allow “government to put limits on the amounts that wealthy individuals and interest groups could spend on political campaigns.” Fifteen percent said they somewhat or strongly oppose such an amendment, while 9 percent said they were not sure.
Drilling down into the numbers, the Democrats polled backed an amendment overwhelmingly: 86-10. Independents favored it by a margin of 78-15 and Republicans supported the idea by a margin of 57-23.
Vermont Republican Party chairman Jack Lindley says he’s “pleased that Vermonters are taking time to express a view on the issue — that’s what democracy is all about in Vermont.” But he says corporate personhood is not a “burning issue” in Vermont compared to jobs and economic development. Lindley says amending the constitution is “a pretty heavy lift starting at the Vermont town meeting to get that done.
“I wish them well,” he says, “but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
Asked about the Castleton poll, Lindley downplays the results, saying, “It’s all in how you ask the question. There’s law and precedent and court rulings that make it difficult to take a simplistic question on a poll and make it stand up. The devil is in the details on that particular issue.”
Bill Butler, a self-described “recovering Republican” who helped get the resolution on Jericho’s town meeting agenda, points out that the language is actually stronger than Sanders’ amendment. As written, the senator’s amendment would only apply to corporations and not spending by labor unions and other special interest groups.
“We believe that Bernie’s language is too corporate specific,” says Butler, a jeweler with the Artisans Hand craft gallery in Montpelier. “We are talking about all special interest money — corporations, trade unions, trade associations, lobbyists and wealthy individuals. George Soros and the Koch Brothers.”
Butler describes the resolution as “not so much an amendment as a direction, by the people, to begin a national discussion, with the end result being an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It’s like a revolution and nobody dies — a revolution with a fountain pen.”
Poster art by Kevin Ruelle of Ruelle Fine Art in Burlington
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This article appears in Feb 29 – Mar 6, 2012.
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And if EVERY SINGLE ONE of those 51 towns votes that Citizens United should be overturned, you know what happens?
Nothing.
Town meeting voters should stick to town issues. We have three representatives in Washington who absolutely, positively know Vermonter’s position on Citizens United, and don’t need to be told by meaningless, feel-good town meeting votes.
It’s all about awareness. People are beginning to wake up to the fact their politicians are bought and paid for. The more discussion the better.
Hmmm,
if the Vermont Constitution specifies each person pay their fair proportion of taxes, if we amend the Constitution to say corporations are not people, then wouldn’t that mean they don’t have to pay taxes?
Unfortunately, that’s ridiculous. The guilty liberals in Vermont may believe that Republicans are “bought and paid for” but their guys (Shumlin, Leahy, Sanders, and Welch) aren’t, and that just false. With a $4 million warchest supplied by people with Hollywood and Upper West Side addresses, Bernie Sanders is just as “bought and paid for” as anyone else.
There are serious ways to fix a corrupt and broken electoral system. Voting out all Washington incumbents, imposing strict term limits, and not allowing former politicians to lobby, are three ways. A useless kaffee-klatch on Citizens United that has nothing to do with town issues, by a bunch of naive people who haven’t even read the decision and don’t understand all the positive and negative implications of corporate personhood, isn’t one of those ways.
No, what’s ridiculous is a blowhard telling towns they shouldn’t discuss whatever the hell they want to at their town meeting.
Hey now. Y’all leave the personal insults out of it. Thanks.
I agree that corporations should not be able to participate in politics. But that is not the same as stripping corporations of all aspects of “personhood.” If two people form a corporation to own a coffee shop in Burlington, should that corporation not be allowed to enter into contracts because it isn’t a “person”? People have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about when they’re waving their signs about “End Corporate Personhood” and feeling all good about themselves.
The New York Times is a corporation. Should it not be allowed to print editorials because it isn’t a “person”?
And, BTW, anyone who agrees with me that corporations shouldn’t be allowed to participate in political life HAS to ALSO agree that Unions can’t either. Unions aren’t persons anymore than corporations aren’t.
I just voted and was disappointed it was not on the ballot in Bennington. I wanted so much to vote on this issue.
Vt. selectboards have the right to decide what does, and what does not, go on the agenda for town meetings based on whether the board considers the issue germane to town business. But I guess your view that anyone can discuss “whatever the hell they want to” is the law, eh?
I’ll refrain from calling you a blowhard.
And
Did you do anything to try to get it on the agenda? Did Bennington not warn the town meeting agenda ahead of time?
You can add Randolph to the list of towns. It was brought to the floor for a voice vote in the final open segment of town meeting at the Chandler today, and it passed with a resounding yes. Only one person in the crowd voted no. Everyone knows “corporate personhood” is a sham, and this sends a strong message as to where people stand on this issue. It was clear by the vote in Randolph today that this is not a “liberal issue”, as some people like to characterize it. People from all political stripes are pissed to see their elections subverted and co-opted by unlimited corporate cash.
If corporations are people, then it’s about time they start paying the same level of taxes as normal working people, and be held accountable when they commit crimes. Rob a bank and you’ll go to prison, but if you run a “too big to fail bank” and commit massive financial fraud through derivatives ponzi scheme trading, you get a get-out-of-jail-free card. I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes a corporation for committing murder.
What are UNIONS? Beside the largest Democrat donors…
Your argument is based on a false premise because the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” personhood is lost in the noise. The privilege to enter into contract, to sue and be sued, is held by all persons, natural and artificial, as confirmed in Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819, which is long before Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific (1886), Pembina Silver Mining v. Pennsylvania (1888), Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway v. Beckwith (1889), Buckley v. Valeo (1976) or First Natl Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978), all of which (among other rulings) contributed to the foundation for the ruling in Citizens United v. FEC (2010).
Nobody is trying to abolish the corporation or prevent corporations from exercising the privilege to enter into and enforce contracts. Nobody wants the mom and pop shop in your example to be prevented from operating in good faith. The point is that artificial creations of government (ALL legal fictions, including unions and non-profits) should be subordinate to their creators, which is the people as represented by the state. Business owners may have built those businesses but it’s the people who provide the instruments — including limited liability, safe communities, reliable infrastructure and educated workers — that enables them to thrive.
It is “we the people” who have rights, our representatives and bureaucrats who have powers, and every other type of legal instrument that has privileges. That’s what abolishing “corporate personhood” means. Not abolishing corporations altogether. That would just be silly.
http://www.amendmentgazette.co…