UC’s Napolitano fights for free speech on campuses

Good morning! No doubt we’re all just killing time until the vice presidential debate tonight, so we’ll do our part, starting with a story about the First Amendment. 

With a single op-ed, UC chief Janet Napolitano has become an unlikely ally of conservative and traditionalist critics of the speech-policing movement among campus crusaders nationwide. 

In a Boston Globe op-ed entitled “It’s time to free speech on campus again,” Napolitano unburdened herself of judgments she appeared to have been forming over the past several years in the hot seat of one of the country’s most progressive university systems.

“As president of the University of California system, I write to show how far we have moved from freedom of speech on campuses to freedom from speech,” she wrote. “If it hurts, if it’s controversial, if it articulates an extreme point of view, then speech has become the new bête noire of the academy. Speakers are disinvited, faculty are vilified, and administrators like me are constantly asked to intervene.”

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “While some legislators may find humor in (passing resolutions), taxpayer groups and other critics say they are no laughing matter. They argue that they have become excessive and costly, and that there is little public benefit from them,” writes the San Francisco Chronicle.

• “The push to legalize pot for all has deeply divided the medical marijuana community,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

• “Blocked by lawmakers at the 11^th hour and facing a fiscal emergency, the State Bar of California has gone directly to the state Supreme Court seeking authority to levy dues on thousands of attorneys. The Bar, which filed the request Friday, said it would go out of business early next year without the money generated by the dues. The Bar has about 500 employees and an annual budget of $146 million.” Capitol Weekly has the story.

• ICYMI: CalWatchdog highlights some of the most significant legislation from the most-recent legislative session. 

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December. Although the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture will meet today in Bodega Bay to talk crabs.

Gov. Brown: 

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @change4solar

“A feminist studies professor at a California state university is facing criminal charges after a videotaped run-in with a teenage pro-life demonstrator in which she snatched an anti-abortion sign and appeared to get physical with the girl. 

“University of California at Santa Barbara Associate Professor Mireille Miller-Young was charged with one misdemeanor count each of theft, battery and vandalism in the March 4 incident, Santa Barbara County District Attorney Joyce Dudley announced Friday. The charges came days after 16-year-old Thrin Short and her parents met with prosecutors.”

We’ve come a long way from the Free Speech Movement that started at another UC campus, in Berkeley, 50 years ago. Back then it was leftists insisting on free speech. Now it’s leftists shutting down free speech.

Here’s a video of the recent altercation:

“A religious liberty advocacy group has threatened legal action against the West Covina school district because a first-grade student was allegedly prohibited from distributing candy canes with attached Christian messages on campus.

Isaiah Martinez sought in December to hand out the red-and-white treats to his fellow students at Merced Elementary School, but a teacher threw the boy’s attached religious messages into the trash, telling him “Jesus is not allowed at school,” according to an attorney representing his family.

“The actions of the school district were hostile and intimidating to Isaiah,” stated a letter dated Monday and written to the West Covina Unified School District from a lawyer for the student.

Isaiah’s family is being represented by Robert Tyler, general counsel for Advocates for Faith & Freedom, a nonprofit Murrieta-based law firm that works on issues of religious liberty with a mission to protect America’s foundation on Judeo-Christian principles, according to the group’s website.

The boy’s First Amendment rights to free speech and protection from hostility toward religion were violated, and the family will “be forced to take legal action” if the school district does not respond by Jan. 13, Tyler said.

Superintendent Debra Kaplain replied in a statement:

“The District’s overriding concern was and is to honor and respect the beliefs of all students in matters of religion. To that end, the District strives to maintain neutrality in matters of religion, and to observe students’ rights of expression, in a manner that does not conflict with the rights of other students,” Kaplan said. “During the holiday season, and particularly when young elementary students are involved, this can require difficult balancing.”

Public schools nowadays commonly have courses on Islam. And some friends of mine, when at Edison High School in Huntington Beach a few years back, enacted ancient Egyptian rites as part of a course.

But — allegedly — such “balancing” does not include Jesus, even as the private expression of a six-year-old.

By John Hrabe

California’s chief political watchdog sent the blogosphere into a collective tizzy earlier this year. In April, Ann Ravel, chairwoman of the Fair Political Practices Commission, floated the idea that California become the first government body in the country to regulate political blogs and websites.

Bloggers all over the country reacted with outrage, leading Ravel to quickly revise the idea.

“As opposed to asking the bloggers to do it on their sites, which is the most effective option for the consumer, it may be more reasonable and less problematic to require that we get an isolated accounting from the committees,” said Ravel, who interrupted her South American vacation in April to speak with CalWatchDog.com about the regulations.

Five months later, the FPPC will hold a public hearing today to discuss the first draft regulations based on Ravel’s revised idea. To her credit, Ravel listened to bloggers’ concerns and has followed through on her promise to “get an isolated accounting from the committees.” The draft regulations would apply exclusively to campaign committees, which are already heavily regulated by the state. Bloggers would also be excluded from the reporting requirements.

“It was thanks to many of the bloggers who talked to me and emailed me to inform me of those concerns that I was able to fully understand the problems,” Ravel told CalWatchDog.com last week. “While I do not concur that it is unconstitutional to ask bloggers to identify who is paying them for political activity, I understand that to do so might have consequential problems that would be difficult to deal with in a reasonable way that balances free speech and the openness of the Internet with the need for disclosure.”

Ravel said that she continues to believe her initial idea would have withstood any constitutional challenges. Many free speech experts say such regulations of paid political bloggers would fall well within established First Amendment precedents.

“When a blogger is paid to write for a campaign, that’s basically a campaign buying a political advertisement,” UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, who publishes the legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, explained earlier this year. “The Supreme Court has held (in McConnell and Citizens United) that the government may require political advertisers to identify the source of the advertisement. Requiring the blogger to identify his speech as an advertisement paid for by a campaign would be much the same as the identification requirements that had been upheld — it would inform the public about who is actually paying for the speech, and do so at the moment the speech is received.”

FPPC Draft Regulations Apply Exclusively to Committees

Political bloggers won’t have to test their luck in the courts, at least for now.

The blog regulations, as currently proposed by the commission, are strictly limited to campaign committees. “A committee, pursuant to Section 82013(a), must include amounts paid to any person who engages in activities such as the following, on the committee’s behalf,” the draft regulations state. That would put the onus for reporting political blogging entirely on the campaign committees that already file extensive campaign documents with the state commission.

Campaign committees that pay bloggers to provide content for a post, blog, video or social media mention would need to disclose “the amount of the payment, the payee, the name of the person providing services, and the name of the Internet publication, blog or website and the URL on which the communications are published.”

Mixed Reaction from Political Bloggers

Such regulations are likely to sit well with many political bloggers.

“If everyone plays by the same rules, and the FPPC can develop a site where disclosure is a few clicks and keystrokes, then I am fine with it,” Gregory Cole, who publishes at flapsblog.net, told CalWatchDog back in April when the blog regulations were first suggested.

The prolific blogging duo at CalBuzz.com shared a similar view, after reviewing the FPPC’s proposed regulations.

“California’s Fair Political Practices Commission is moving in the right direction in their new draft proposal governing expenditures for paid online communications,” wrote CalBuzz’s Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine. “We’re convinced Ravel and the FPPC are not out to squash free speech or prevent people working in campaigns from using Twitter and Facebook.”

However, CalBuzz would still like to see greater clarification of the types of activities that would trigger the disclosure requirement.

“The regulations should make clear that purchasing advertising from a web site at the standard market rate does not constitute employment of the personnel of that web site, whether the site is published by a stand-alone internet operation or is the online presence of a newspaper, magazine or radio or TV station,” they wrote.

Fleischman and Maviglio: FPPC Shouldn’t Become the Internet Police

But not all bloggers are happy with the draft regulations.

“The FPPC doesn’t have the resources — nor the need — to become the Internet police,” Jon Fleischman, publisher of the Flash Report, and Steve Maviglio, a Democratic political consultant and blogger, wrote in a joint Sacramento Bee opinion piece. “But now the FPPC wants to go where no other state has gone before: requiring anyone who receives payment from a campaign that is posting any content on the Internet to be reported — from a field worker who spends one day of a campaign knocking on doors and tweets about it from her iPhone, to the campaign manager who spreads the word on a blog, to a part-time student paid to coordinate campus volunteers and posts a humorous YouTube video about the ballot campaign he’s working on.”

“It should stick to its knitting and work on enforcing the voluminous campaign reporting rules already on the books, instead of attempting to slow the revolution of online communication that is revolutionizing American politics,” the political odd couple wrote.

When CalWatchDog.com spoke with Ravel last week, she confirmed that her top priority was achieving those objectives.

“I want to achieve the purposes of the Political Reform Act — to increase public trust in government with the purpose of engaging people in public life,” she said. “I think that the best way to ensure trust is open information, provided by the government, that is easily accessible.”

Looking past the blog regulations, Ravel also laid out an ambitious set of goals for improving the commission’s website and public disclosure tools.

“I am working very hard to get an online filing and access system, utilizing open source codes, so that everyone — bloggers, news reporters, and the public, can find information and make connections to help them make decisions about their elected officials,” she said.

Note: John Hrabe serves as a senior editor for the Flash Report, which is published by Jon Fleischman.

Previous CalWatchDog.com articles on this controversy:

FPPC chair backs away from mandatory disclosure of blogger payments

Calif. blog regulations could hit Drudge, citizen journalists

Katy Grimes: Only hours after the Democratic National Committee announced that the 2012 platform would endorse same-sex marriage, a group of black pastors came out swinging, and saying that they feel betrayed by President Barack Obama.

“We voted for Obama. We campaigned for Obama. But he has left our founding purposes,” Rev. William Owens Sr., the founder of the coalition of African American Pastors, told World Net Daily. “With all of the problems in America within the black community – education, jobs, business, the economy – with all of our problems, he chooses to get in front of same-sex marriage,” he continued. “That flies in the face of the African-American community.

“We feel betrayed.”

Could same-sex marriage issue fil-A the Dems?

Simultaneously, the Chick-fil-A controversy exploded, but in a good way.

Gay rights activists and other partisan liberals plan a national “Kiss In” at Chick-fil-A restaurants today to protest the restaurant owners’ position on traditional marriage. In a stunt worthy of junior high school antics, organizers are asking all gay activists to show up at Chick-fil-A locations and kiss one other publicly.

The beef is over Chic-fil-A owner Dan Cathy’s recent interview with the Baptist Press.  “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit,” Cathy explained. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.”

After Cathy’s comments were brought to the attention of Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Menino “urged Chick-fil-A to ‘back out’ of its ‘plans to locate in Boston,’” Time magazine reported.

And then Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s last Chief of Staff, stepped in it and said that Chick-fil-A has no place in the city of Chicago.

“Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values. They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values,” Emanuel said, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno stepped in it arm-in-arm with Emanuel, and said he planned to block a permit for Chick-fil-A in a Chicago neighborhood. “Same-sex marriage, same-sex couples — that’s the civil rights fight of our time. To have those discriminatory policies from the top down is just not something that we’re open to,” Moreno said.

It appears that Emanuel shares the God-complex of his former boss.

A sexual proclivity became a political movement

Despite the protests, this has quickly become a free-speech issue.

Gay rights activists and some members of the national media delivered scathing attacks on Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, calling for homosexual activists to “infiltrate” and bully the family-owned company until they renounce their support of traditional marriage.

But as Time reported, “No evidence has been presented to suggest that Chick-fil-A discriminates against gay or lesbian customers or employees. There is nothing to suggest that the company has broken the law in any way.

In his comments to the Baptist Press, Cathy never even mentioned same-sex marriage. He simply said that he and his company supported traditional marriage. “The only issues at play are the personal view of the owner of the restaurant chain and the philanthropic efforts of the private company,” Time reported.

So where does all of this hype and vitriol against supporters of traditional marriage come from? Most supporters of traditional marriage say they don’t care how someone else lives, but they don’t want the gay movement forced on them or their kids, and don’t feel that the government should have any role in the movement.

Many say that it’s not a same-sex marriage or religious issue at stake, but rather they are fed up with the government hassling a business owner for his religious beliefs. It’s none of the government’s business.

Chicago Alderman Moreno announced that while he may have been wrong about trying to stop Chic-fil-A from opening a new location, but now wants Chick fil A to put into writing that it “won’t support any groups with a political agenda, including those with an anti-gay marriage stance” before he’ll consider allowing zoning rights to a Chick fil A restaurant in his ward.

Moreno just doesn’t get it.

“If they’re serious about that, and they’re willing to put that in writing and they’re willing to adopt that. I think those are the grounds where we can move forward,” Moreno said.

“Chick-fil-A may have a pretty good case under the First Amendment if the city uses their religious or political beliefs as a basis for denying a business license or ability to do business in the city.  That is the kind of thing that happens in fascist states,” said Hans von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow and former Justice Department attorney to the assistant attorney general for civil rights.

This issue is not about homosexuality, despite how loud the shrill activists are.  This is only about the First Amendment, and the right to speak openly on a controversial subject, and continue to run your business. Cathy’s comments were deliberately blown out of proportion, despite the very respectful way he expressed what was important to him.

And maybe even worse than the Mayors sticking their noses into Chick-fil-A’s business, is the media’s political spin.

While the left has bee trying to push this as a civil rights issue, and create the image that Chick-Fil-A is oppressing an entire minority group, this controversy is being used to silence the voices of those who don’t agree with the left.

It’s an election year, extremists are running the Democratic Party, with the main stream media in lockstep. However, despite pulling out all of the stops, the average man and woman are showing their support to Chick-fil-A.

And black pastors are spitting mad… things are looking up. And it’s beginning to appear that extremist Democratic Party operatives are the ones who don’t fit in. Chicago values and Democratic values are not the values of most.

By John Seiler

We appreciate our commentators adding to our articles. But the past two days I have spent several hours deleting abusive posts, in particular from one commentator who has contributed interesting, civil comments in the past. He has been banned until Monday. If the abuse continues after that, he will be banned permanently.

In one post, he accused us of “censoring” him, something a “libertarian” organization is not supposed to do. But libertarianism means property rights. CalWatchDog.com is not owned by him, but by the Pacific Research Institute. PRI has hired myself and other editors to set specific standards of journalistic probity, including for commentators. We have done that.

Property rights and free speech mean that this person, or anyone, has a right to set up his own Internet news site, which nowadays can be done for free here or here. We will defend his right to do so.

All of the editors come from newspaper backgrounds, most recently the Orange County Register. I have worked for three major newspapers. We have adapted the common industry practice of allowing wide latitude to comments, especially those that disagree with us, but not abusive comments. This will continue.

In deleting some of the abusive posts, in some cases comment threads have become disjointed. That is unfortunate. But I do not have all day to try to repair the continuity of every thread. This is a shoestring operation that already does a great deal with a limited staff.

We also have gone outside newspaper practice somewhat by allowing anonymous comments. If the abuses continue, we may have to end that, although I don’t want that.

I enjoy the give and take, and many contributors have provided insight and even corrections where we have made mistakes.

But incivility will not be tolerated.

By John Hrabe

Patricia McKeon is the prohibitive favorite to win the 38th State Assembly seat. As the wife and campaign fundraiser of Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, the influential chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, she has built-in name ID and a lucrative fundraising Rolodex. Both are Republicans.

Her frontrunner status has allowed her to avoid public scrutiny. She’s routinely skipped candidate forums and declined media requests. Her campaign consultant told CalWatchDog.com that she is “maxed out going door to door.” But no matter how many candidate forums she skips or press requests she declines, McKeon can’t shake her toughest critic — the anonymous blogger behind the “Really Patricia?” website, whose full URL is: www.patriciamckeonforassembly.com/.

The website has chronicled McKeon’s every move, even detailing minor alterations of campaign photos. And the relentless attacks have had some success in framing the mainstream media’s coverage of the race. Both the Los Angeles Times’ and Ventura County Star’s profiles of the race prominently referenced “the emergence of an anonymous website that lampooned Patricia McKeon” as a defining element of the campaign.

While the anonymous blog is a headache for the McKeons, it could also signal a broader trend brought about by California’s new top-two primary system.  That’s because the top-two primary has, in many cases, expanded the field of competitive candidates. In the past, candidates or independent expenditures that went on the offensive risked turning off swing voters they hoped to court.  However, anonymous websites give candidates a venue of attack that insulates the campaign from voter backlash. The jungle primary free-for-all allows candidates or independent expenditures to point the finger at lesser known, but still viable, candidates.

With two weeks to go until Election Day, two intra-party primary feuds, McKeon’s Southern California state assembly race and a Northern California congressional campaign, have provided insight into this cycle’s use of anonymous online attacks.

38^th assembly race defined by anonymous website

CalWatchDog.com contacted the “Really Patricia?” blogger to get his or her perspective on the motivation for the website, online anonymity and the fear of political retaliation. “Strangely, I personally have not yet faced any threats, but that may be because the McKeons may not have figured out who I am yet,” the anonymous blogger told CalWatchDog.com.  “I run the site because I am a conservative Republican and am disgusted by the ethical murkiness of the McKeons and their lust for personal power and financial gain. No one has the guts to stand up to them and tell the truth about it.”

The blog can be credited with pushing two major developments in the campaign. In February, National Journal reported that Patricia’s state campaign had collected roughly $35,000 from “federal lobbyists, lobbying firms, and their employees, as well as military contractors and executives in firms in the defense and aerospace sectors.” A day before the National Journal story, the anonymous blog had an analysis of McKeon’s campaign disclosure statement, including several defense industry contributions.

The second media controversy propelled by the blog was the endorsement flap involving Republican State Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Moorpark. Strickland pulled his endorsement of lifelong friend Scott Wilk, a community college trustee and small businessman, in order to endorse McKeon’s candidacy. The anonymous blog published several posts on the topic and reappeared after a two-month hiatus to reignite the endorsement storyline.

McKeon filed complaint with district attorney

So, who is this mysterious blogger? In January, Patricia McKeon filed a complaint with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office to find out. Her complaint alleged a possible violation of state election rules against cyber-squatting. At first, the complaint was enough to prompt the blogger to pull the plug on the site.

“Consequently, I have consulted with a lawyer and have been assured that they have no legal grounds on which they could actually win a case,” the blogger wrote via email. “I am exercising my 1st amendment right in a political area and they are public figures.”

Free speech experts echoed the blogger’s interpretation of the law. “Generally, a website launched by someone not directly affiliated with a campaign, made up of opinion or parody, enjoys full protection as free speech,” explained Ken Paulson, president and CEO of the First Amendment Center. “An internet service provider wouldn’t typically pierce that veil of anonymity absent a court order, and that’s not likely if the content is unflattering, but not defamatory.”

The anonymous anti-McKeon blogger says that a complaint has been filed with the site’s domain registrar for failing to provide accurate contact information. Ultimately, the Los Angeles County DA’s office declined to open a criminal investigation into the matter. When asked about the complaint, McKeon’s campaign consultant Joe Justin said, “With an economy in shambles, there is no place for this type of lame politics of personal destruction.”  The phrase “politics of personal destruction” was popularized by President Bill Clinton during his impeachment hearings.

“Risks with speaking out”

Anonymous attacks and whisper campaigns aren’t political innovations. “Anonymous political speech is a long-held American tradition and is protected under the First Amendment,” said Paulson. “When the signers of the Declaration of Independence sent that historic document to King George, they didn’t sign it.”

Paulson added, “There are risks with speaking out, and anonymous speech helps preserve the free flow of ideas in a democracy.” Although the First Amendment protects anonymous political speech, online tracking programs and greater public and private surveillance make it harder to pull off. Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, believes the heydays of anonymous activity may be behind us.

“There is an architecting of the world that makes remaining anonymous more difficult,” he said. Nevertheless, Tien says there are a number of reasons why a person might want to remain anonymous. “An Islamic activist or Christian activist or a gay rights activist might worry that their speech will get them in trouble.”

Tien also referenced the Supreme Court’s precedents involving anonymous political activism. In NAACP vs. Alabama and its companion case, Bates vs. City of Little Rock, the court protected the right of political organizations to keep their membership lists private. The unconstitutional laws, which were at issue in the cases, were designed to discourage people from supporting the civil rights movement.

“There is a role for anonymous political activity: the civil rights movement depended on it during the 1950s,” said John J. Pitney, Jr., a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College. “But legal and ethical issues arise when it is nothing more than an off-the-books tactic of a political campaign.”

LaMalfa campaign’s off-the-books tactic

A Northern California congressional race offers a case study in those legal and ethical concerns from “off-the books” campaign tactics. Mark Spannagel, the chief of staff and campaign aide to State Sen. Doug LaMalfa, R-Oroville, was recently identified as the publisher of an attack website targeting former Republican State Sen. Sam Aanestad.

Aanestad filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission against LaMalfa for numerous violations of federal election law. Among the worst alleged violations, the website falsely attributed its contents to a lesser-known Republican candidate, Michael Dacquisto. The Redding Record Searchlight reported, “The site initially posted with a disclaimer at the bottom, “FREE THINKERS FOR DACQUISTO,” according to a screen shot submitted by the Aanestad campaign.”

Is a dirty trick worthy of a federal case? After all, the founding fathers commonly employed anonymous attacks and pseudonyms to make their case. We asked Barry Pruett, chief legal counsel for the Aanestad for Congress campaign, to explain why the Spannagel stunt is any different from historical examples of anonymous political speech.

“The Silence DoGood letters and Federalist Papers were anonymous and discussed and analyzed the philosophical nature of the rule of law in a limited government and the concepts of federalism,” he said.  “Neither of these historical documents sought to defame and libel an oral surgeon anonymously and for personal gain like Doug LaMalfa’s fake website.”

There are also campaign finance disclosure requirements that come into play. “It gets murkier if someone inside a campaign launches an attack website because there are expenditure disclosure requirements,” said Paulson. “That’s an accountability matter rather than free speech.”

Government regulators ready to step in

The growing trend of anonymous attacks hasn’t escaped the watchful eyes of government regulators. In the state of New York, two bills are pending that would “virtually do away with anonymous online postings by requiring Web administrators, upon receiving a complaint, to take down any comments to which the writer has not attached his or her name,” writes Gene Policinski, senior vice-president and executive director of the First Amendment Center.

Earlier this year, California’s political watchdog sparked an online uproar after floating the idea of a new disclosure requirement for political blogs. Ann Ravel, chair of California’s Political Practices Commission, declined to comment for this story because the agency may be forced to deal with complaints from the websites in question. However, from our interview with Ravel back in April, she shed some light on her views about the use of anonymity in campaign websites.

“The idea is not to go after anonymous blogs,” Ravel told CalwatchDog.com in an April interview. “There needs to be the ability for people to post online anonymous speech that is grassroots without retribution.”

For now, at least, the anonymous attacks will continue.

At issue is the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision.

In January 2010, the United States Supreme Court  reached the landmark decision which reaffirmed that the First Amendment did in fact, prohibit the government from restricting political expenditures by corporations and unions. The Court stated that political contributions are a form of free speech, and should not be regulated or narrowly tailored by the government for its own interest.

One of the outcomes of the Citizen United decision was the creation of Super Committees and SuperPacs, which may accept unlimited contributions from individuals, unions, and corporations.

Despite the Supreme Court stating that the First Amendment “must protect corporations and individuals with equal vigor,” California Democrats  passed a resolution this week urging Congress to amend the Constitution, and limit corporate contributions to political PACs.

Out of the Ashes…

Thursday, the Assembly voted 48 to 22 to pass Assembly Joint Resolution 22 which calls on Congress to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

However, arguments and floor speeches by Democratic legislators only addressed corporate contributions – Democrats in the Assembly never mentioned union contributions. Democrats said that AJR 22 wasn’t just a resolution, but was part of a national movement to limit and control corporate political contributions.

AJR 22, by Assemblymen Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, and Michael Allen, D-Santa Rosa, is one of 13 resolutions seeking to overturn Citizens United. Wieckowski said that with his resolution, California will be part of a “grassroots movement that believes corporations are not people and money is not speech,” a quote made famous by David Kairys, the civil rights law professor who warned that the decision would unleash “a new wave of campaign cash and adds to the already considerable power of corporations.”

A recent favorite phrase of Democratic Assembly Speaker John Perez is similar: “Corporations aren’t people until Texas executes one.” Perez made the statement at a labor caucus meeting at the recent Democratic convention.

All of the other 13 resolutions seek to overturn the decision in different ways. Some of the resolutions also claim that corporations are not humans; others would seek more Congressional power to regulate campaign contributions and expenditures more narrowly.

Wieckowski stated that the ruling opened a floodgate for unlimited corporate donations, which he said he opposes. “We’ve had a distortion of the political process because of all the money flowing into politics,” said Allen.

The bill analysis states: This measure would memorialize the Legislature’s disagreement with the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and would call upon the United States Congress to propose and send to the states for ratification a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and to restore constitutional rights and fair elections to the people.

Republicans who opposed the resolution said that the opposite should happen – that government imposed restrictions should be removed from political campaign contributions, and complete disclosure and transparency about who is contributing should be required instead.

“What is a corporation? A corporation is an assembly of people,” said Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Hesperia. “If you’re regulated by the government, don’t you have the right to address your government?”

MAR. 23, 2012