Summary

House Democrats, led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, introduced the We the People Amendment to overturn Citizens United, aiming to curb corporate influence in elections.

The constitutional amendment asserts that constitutional rights apply only to individuals, not corporations, and mandates full disclosure of political contributions.

Jayapal cited Elon Musk’s massive campaign spending and subsequent financial gains as proof of the ruling’s harm.

Advocacy groups praised the move, calling it necessary to combat corporate power and dark money in politics, but Republicans have not backed the proposal.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    6 days ago

    That would have been useful and a great idea over a decade ago.

    Now it’s just “let’s do this” and nothing will happen. Its too late.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      Yeah even if they did actually repeal it, which they won’t, it’s really closing the stable door after the horse has bolted at this point IMO.

      Because with the current administration, you can say it’s illegal to accept money from so-and-so, and they’ll just go “fuck you” and do it anyway and nobody will will stop them or bring consequences, so … yeah. This is kind of doing time, not talking time.

    • Azal@pawb.social
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      6 days ago

      I mean… that was literally one of the things that Hillary ran on. So… your timeline checks out.

      • glitchdx@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        As we’ve seen though, a woman cannot win against a racist sexist nazi shitbag in the united states.

        Don’t at me (as the young people say), I voted for the woman.

        • Azal@pawb.social
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          6 days ago

          Pretty much. I just always like to point these things out as there’s a nice bit of revisionism amongst the left on “We want this, why didn’t the dems give it to us” while people don’t show up and vote for them, then cry they didn’t show up because “Dems are as bad as republicans.” Which frankly is as bad as the right on their revisionism.

          The 16 election was an attempt to take down Citizens United as well as bring up the Trans Pacific Partnership. The TPP was specifically trying to get the other Asian countries to lock out China in trade to reduce its power. But the right wingers thought “No we want to be hard on China” pulled out of it, and basically left China to look at all the other Asian countries who didn’t have a partnership with the US and bring them to heel.

          Citizens United came about in 2010, during the Obama administration, and specifically that same year Republicans had gained majority in the House, creating a divided congress that meant no laws could get through, especially an anti-Citizens United bill. An executive order isn’t going to fix this one.

          The Left falls into the same fallacy as the Right, they want a strong leader who can “solve all the problems.” Problem is the Right is really good at it because it’s really their authoritarian style. The part that pisses me off is the Right is also really good at showing up at the polls when they matter even if they hate the candidate, as long as it moves the needle one step over to their side while the Left keeps having a lot of voters be all or nothing.

      • GroundedGator@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Only at the end to try and court Bernie supporters. Before that she was mostly silent and won the primary with corporate money.

        • Azal@pawb.social
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          6 days ago

          Y’know what, I’ll bite. It’s been long enough I can’t definitively say whether it came up before or not.

          But that’s a point though, she did move her policy to that of the ones that the Bernie supporters and they still snubbed her and we got Trump.

          So in that we made sure the Left didn’t have a seat at the table because they didn’t bother to show up right after showing they had the numbers and ability to do so, and we got a billionaire man-baby who sucks up to other billionaires and fascist regimes. Good trade.

          I say this as a Bernie voter, but my national vote was still for Hillary. Citizens United and the Supreme Court were on the line, I told other leftists it was on the line, I was told I was overreacting… so call me fucking Cassandra.

          • GroundedGator@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            I was a Bernie and Hillary voter as well. I also failed to convince a number of other Bernie voters that they had to support Hillary.

            She held too far center for too long and a lot of Bernie voters didn’t trust her or the party. Hell, even when she announced a push for an amendment in her first 30 days I didn’t buy it would happen but I also knew we needed to keep Trump out.

            Really I still didn’t trust the party. I still don’t think we have enough progressives and will still do what we need to keep corporate donors happy above the voting public.

            Money is speech and it has the loudest platform.