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Occupy Wall Street: Crafting A Constitutional Amendment To Stop The 1%

This is a guest post on Citizens United by Greg Colvin, who is a partner at the firm Adler & Colvin. It was originally published on OurFuture.org.

We've seen the signs and heard the chants: "Abolish Corporate Personhood!"

I'm very sympathetic to the cause of reducing the power of big business corporations to control our government, our economy, our consumer culture, our society, and our lives. We can't have democracy without a major shift of power into the hands of the people.

But would an amendment to remove all rights of corporations from the US Constitution accomplish that? Would there be unintended consequences?

There are two problems with a constitutional amendment that abolishes corporate personhood. One, it does too much, and two, it does too little.

As Zuccotti Park is Cleared, Congress Moves to Gut Financial Reform

In the dead of night November 14, the movement to hold big banks accountable for their crimes took two major hits. Occupy Wall Street activists were swept from Zuccotti Park as radical members of Congress moved to gut funding for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and advance a series of shocking proposals to roll back financial reform.

Walker Recall Gets Underway with Pajama Parties and Sabotage

The effort to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker begins today, and organizers and volunteers are readying their clipboards to begin collecting more than half a million signatures throughout the holiday season. But as volunteers celebrated the launch at midnight "recall-themed" pajama parties, the many challenges ahead were underscored by a deliberate, grinch-like cyber-attack on a key recall website.

Koch's Americans for Prosperity Fails in Effort to Smear Critic

An effort by the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP) to brand a frequent critic as a "liar" has been contradicted by a recording of the alleged deceit. AFP has not issued a retraction.

On November 8, Americans for Prosperity published a blog post on their website titled "Lee Fang Lies: The Real Face of 'Think Progress.'" Fang is a researcher and blogger for Think Progress and has written many articles about the Koch brothers, including about their business practices and lobbying efforts, and about their role in manipulating the Tea Party.

Insurers are Recycling a Front Group to Cheat Us Out of Benefits

The special interests seeking to gut those portions of the health reform law that would be of greatest benefit to consumers clearly believe there is no such thing as historical memory in Washington.

Fear handleWhy else would they bring one of their old front groups out of the storage locker, with just a single new word added to its name? A front group designed to persuade Americans that what they might have thought was in their best interests really isn't after all.

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