July 1-7 was "Buy Local Week" in many communities in Ohio and across the nation.
Buying local promotes not only economic self-sufficiency but political self-determination.
Voluntary purchasing of local products or from local merchants unfortunately cannot be coupled with mandatory purchases by municipalities or states of local products or from local merchants. Preferential treatment against big box stores or transnational corporations violates the 14th amendment to the constitution the moment corporations gained corporate constitutional “rights” in the 19th century.
Such assaults against economic self-sufficiency and political self-determination will continue forever until corporate “personhood” is eliminated. The Supreme Court over the last century granted corporations 1st, 4th, 5th and other constitutional amendment protections. The recent Citizens United vs FEC decision permitting corporations first amendment “rights” to invest money from corporate treasuries for political expenditures is merely the latest attack on what’s left of our democracy.
Move to Amend (movetoamend.org) seeks to change the US Constitution to abolish corporate personhood. Corporations are not people. As a member of its national Steering Committee, I invite anyone interested in supporting this cause to join over 85,000 Americans who have signed up to join the effort.
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Perhaps we should start asking questions about the big picture of creating real democracy...
ReplyDeleteDo we need a Referendum For A New Democracy?
Are you concerned about the future of democracy? Do you feel democracy is under attack by extreme greed in countries around the world? Are you sick and tired of: living in fear, corporate greed, growing police state, government for the rich, working more but having less?
Can we use both elections and random selection (in the way we select government officials) to rid democracy of undue influence by extreme wealth and wealth-dominated mass media campaigns?
The world's first democracy (Athenian democracy, 600 B.C.) used both elections and random selection. Even Aristotle (the cofounder of Western thought) promoted the use of random selection as the best way to protect democracy. The idea of randomly selecting (after screening) juries remains from Athenian democracy, but not randomly selecting (after screening) government officials. Why is it used only for individual justice and not also for social justice? Who wins from that? ...the extremely wealthy?
What is the best way to combine elections and random selection to protect democracy in today's world? Can we use elections as the way to screen candidates, and random selection as the way to do the final selection? Who wins from that? ...the people?