Title
Calling upon the United States Congress to defend democracy from the undue influence of corporations by passing and sending to the states for ratification a constitutional amendment which overturns the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and establishes that only human beings, not corporations, are endowed with constitutional rights, and that money is not speech so that regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech and calling upon the Pennsylvania General Assembly to adopt a similar resolution.
Body
WHEREAS, The United States Constitution was conceived during the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787, when our founding fathers gathered in Independence Hall to usher in a new form of government - Of The People, By The People and For The People. Of the 55 delegates assembled in Philadelphia for that convention, all were human beings and none were corporations; and
WHEREAS, The United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights are intended to protect the rights of individual human beings ("real people"); and
WHEREAS, Corporations are not mentioned in the Constitution and The People have never granted constitutional rights to corporations, nor have We decreed that corporations have authority that exceeds the authority of "We the People"; and
WHEREAS, Corporations can and do make important contributions to our society using powerful advantages that government has wisely granted them, but this Council does not consider them real people; and
WHEREAS, United States Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in a 1938 dissenting opinion stated, "I do not believe the word 'person' in the Fourteenth Amendment includes corporations"; and
WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court recognized in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) the threat to a republican form of government posed by "the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that ...
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