Agenda - 02-21-2012 - 4a - Laserfiche WebLink

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DRAFT ~E~- ao~a- oa ~ ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS RESOLUTION SUPPORTING AN AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION TO CLARIFY THAT CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE AND MONEY IS NOT SPEECH Whereas, Government of, by, and for the people has long been a cherished American value, and We The Peoples' fundamental and inalienable right to self-govern, and thereby secure rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed in the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence; and Whereas, Corporations are human-made, legal fictions created by express permission of We The People and our government, and are not and have never been human beings, but rather are rightFully subservient to human beings and governments as our legal creations, and Whereas, Corporations can exist in perpetuity, can exist simultaneously in many nations at once, and can concentrate vast wealth which allows them to corrupt the political process in order to gain special privileges and to wield coercive force of law to overpower human beings and communities, thus denying We The Peoples' exercise of our Constitutional rights, and Whereas, the recent Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission Supreme Court decision that rolled back the legal limits on corporate spending in the electoral process creates an unequal playing field and allows unlimited corporate spending to influence elections, candidate selection, policy decisions and sway votes, and forces elected officials to divert their attention from The Peoples' business, or even vote against the interest of their human constituents, in order to ensure competitive campaign funds for their own re-election, and Whereas, Large corporations own most of America's mass media and use that media as a megaphone to express loudly their political agenda and to convince Americans that their primary role is that of consumers, rather than sovereign citizens with rights and responsibilities within our democracy, and this forces citizens to toil to discern the truth behind headlines and election campaigning, and NOW THEREFORE BE lT RESOLVED that we, the Orange County Board of Commissioners stand with the Move to Amend campaign and communities across the country to defend democracy from the corrupting effects of undue corporate power and support amending the United States Constitution to establish that: 1. Only human beings, not corporations, are endowed with constitutional rights, and 2. Money is not speech, and therefore regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech. This the 21St Day of February 2012. 5 Bernadette Pelissier, Chair Orange County Board of Commissioners