The Supreme Court says money is speech. With the chance of losing the biggest tax break of the new century to Ballot Proposition 1, oil giants ConocoPhillips, BP, and ExxonMobil are making it seem more like money is screech.
The Supreme Court also says corporations are “persons” so, under the First Amendment to the Constitution, oil money is “protected” speech. Consequently the big three can spend as much as they want to shout down all us flesh and blood “people” who support Proposition 1 but don’t have so much $peech at our disposal.
With absentee voting ongoing and the Primary Election almost here big oil has the volume cranked up so high the feedback is almost deafening — disinformation about how three of the most profitable corporations on earth can’t afford to pay Alaskans a fair price for our oil and gas. Repeated over and over and amplified each time, it’s like one of those “enhanced interrogation techniques” the CIA used to break prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Like the CIA, corporate strategy seems to be to turn our brains to mush through this torture, break our resolve, and get us to vote against our own interests.
Except we aren’t trapped in one of those CIA dark sites. We can turn off the TV and ignore the junk mail. In peace and quiet we can remember what Article 1 of the Alaska Constitution says — “All political power is inherent in the people. All government originates with the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the people as a whole.”
The people, not multinational corporate “persons.”
As “the people” we can push back against the growing corporate control of our state government by voting yes on Ballot Proposition 1. By repealing the SB 21 oil giveaway we can help assure we get fair value for our finite petroleum resource.
