and there was a point where especially when the ottoman turks took over were there was a kind of receiving of intellectual fervor in the islamic world and that at this point especially today there was kind of a discouragement and fear of intellectual inquiry and that is his basic thesis. >> we've been talking with richard of the intercollegiate studies institute. >> next, jeffrey clement argues the supreme court citizens united decision was flawed and outlines a plan to reverse it. this is about 40 minutes. [applause] >> thank you again, caroline and michael, for your leadership. i get to warm up the crowd for jeff and i merely had the to do

it because i'm really proud to be here for the american way with all of you because we have a real battle on our hands. saturday was dhaka to year anniversary of the ghastly citizens united decision, and i hope that it actually was the point at which the court went too far and will provoke a public reaction that we can take advantage of to try to restrict the extraordinary explosion of the corporate power that the court has been stepping with smaller steps towards in so many decisions along the way, but the citizens united decision was really extraordinary. it's basically a capsule they did by the candidate mitt romney's comment that the corporations or people. no, corporations are not people, they don't have a soul or

conscious, they are a mechanism by which people organize their behavior. but they are not people, and the way in which the court has given them power creates immense in balance because it can use their corporate treasuries and if you have corporations like exxonmobil that are making billions of dollars a quarter, it's pretty easy to drown out regular folks in the media market, and the other thing it does it sit takes everybody's money the corporation and puts it under the control of the ceo, which is a person often from the 1%. if you believe in that distinction you're given an enormous amount of power to that minority to perpetuate itself. so we have a lot of work to do. we are seeing it in action right now with one of the commissioners called the evil twin's political campaign.

they are out right now and i think that evil twin is a wonderful way to describe them. they are like a campaign only they are supposedly independent, but the same running it, the same message coordinator without being caught. you can pretty much see how that works, but in terms of the evil side of the evil twin, unlimited donations instead of restricted to the campaign, and identified the nation's other than required to be reported in the campaign, and if you get really down, dirty, weill, ugly and why, who cares, nobody is accountable because it is in the can they doing it. there is no ownership, so it really is an awful new appearance in the political system as many people have said on both sides of the aisle. so we've got a bit of a battle ahead of last, but i think it is a really good battle to fight. if we are right and if we are

lucky the citizens united decision will go down in history with plessey versus ferguson as one of the truly awful supreme court decisions, one that later supreme court would come to regret. i will close with two quick points. one is i think that as a lawyer who has done a fair amount of the public practice, that was kind of my thing when i was actually practicing law, there's a bit of a weak underbelly to the citizens united decision, and that is its findings of fact. people who practice the law know that to the supreme court are not supposed to do the findings of the fact. that is what the trial court does. the supreme court looks at it and takes them on the record and then determines if the law has been correctly applied. the supreme court made findings of fact. they made the finding of the fact that unlimited corporate spending and elections does not

create corruption or the appearance of corruption. that is a preposterous finding of facts are and policy. maybe that is a problem that europe's when you have members of the supreme court that have never run for office before. but i think that there was an ulterior motive here. that critical finding of the fact of the wrong as it was was the linchpin for the rest of the analysis. if that finding of the fact isn't there, the entire decision falls to pieces. and so i think we need to be careful about attacking that finding of fact. the previous case of the over will have plenty of the findings to the contrary. legislative hearings have developed plenty of findings and experience tells you the contrary. whether it is the company that comes in and drops $4 million worth in the last minute of the race against one candidate for another anderson was to say that there is no allegiance between the candidate and the company that did that? that's bonkers. it gets worse when you take it to the next step which many

people think about citizens united overlooked. citizens united isn't just dangerous because the corporations will do under citizens united. it is dangerous because of what they will threaten to do. the most dangerous thing under citizens united is the lobbyist going into the congress and i want to recognize congressman tom allen who did a wonderful job representing. [applause] they will come and visit, or they will come and visit me and they will say step into my office come here i would like to show you something. look at this ad and it blows me to bits. and they say we are going to put three or $4 million behind that had come in and we are going to do it through a company that we will make up a name no one will be able to trace it to us and you will have a problem on your hands unless you vote right. you vote with us on this and nobody sees that. you vote against us and its

$4 million behind that ad starting next august or whatever the date is. that meeting nobody ever sees. there is no accountability but when you open the floodgates you open them also to the threat. so we have to be talking about how long the factual findings are and build that record. and i am happy to say that we have one brief support mentioned in montana earlier. the montana supreme court just made a very clear decision and said we have a record in using very strong language like clearly on limited corporate spending interferes with the election. inevitably it drowns out the voices of regular people that rejected the citizens united decision so it's interesting when you have the state supreme court's fighting back. i'm going to take the liberty of having you here as an audience because i know you are interested in this to make one

final point, and that is unrelated to citizens united exactly, the jury's, injuries are an incredibly important part from a constitutional structure. they are in the constitution not once, not twice, but three different times. the tocqueville describes them as one of the core constitutional elements that protect us from tyranny and a central part of the government. in the other attacks on the system and the other decisions that have supported the corporations, very often the jury has been the target and we let it pass. very few people think of it as an important part of our constellation of rights and government struggle and so i urge you as you think of an organization i know many organizations are represented here, don't forget the jury. every time they make a decision that diminishes americans' right

to a jury der diminishing one of the core elements of our constitutional structure of government. so nobody knows this better than jeff who has written so extensively on this and in such a wonderful way he is a great book, has a great voice, and without further ado i have to run free flight, excuse me, but i give you jeff clements. [applause] >> thank you, senator whitehouse , and thanks to michael and caroline. before senator whitehouse goes too far, i have here -- he already got a book. i sent him a book already so this one doesn't cost as much but it's clearly more valuable. it's the constitution. free speech and it includes the declaration in the gettysburg address. [applause]

senator whitehouse was warming up for me as the band that comes on after springsteen or something. so i'm just going to stay this way for minute. it's not really that kind of book and i will talk about it in a minute, but it is near the end after sort of laying out this history of where citizens united kingdom and where this corporate speech doctrine came from, however it is in the chamber of commerce and among a very select group of the largest corporations in the world to literally transform our social, political and legal structure. i end with quoting senator whitehouse actually. i'm not sure that he read this unless he read to page 142 already. [laughter] because he went to the senate

floor after the bp disaster and it isn't really the right word. bp, the gulf still is much like the massey energy killing of the 29 coal miners in west virginia. and many other things we call maximus and disasters. the consequences of and the unchecked corporate power, on balance between people and corporations, the biggest in the world, and a cutting of the connection between our government and the people and in west virginia several of investigation reports about what happened in the big branch, upper big branch explosion explicitly linked it to the political contributions and activity in west virginia. the 65,000 violations of the law under the mining safety act nothing has been changed. they ran the two sets of books. kennedy calls the mccann the enterprise but they were like a out of control corporation that killed people as a result and on a larger national scale that is

what citizens united is about the endgame of what's happened in west virginia and other places but senator whitehouse took to the floor after the bp disaster and it came out that bp and other executives were literally in bed with government officials who were supposed to be regulating them and this is what he said so it is a reading from the book but it's actually his words because i couldn't find any myself better than this. this is what he said. have we now learn what price must be paid when the wealthy, when this delphi corporate influence are allowed to reach into and capture our agencies of government? i pray let us to learn this, let us learn that lesson i sincerely pray we have learned and that this will never happen again. let us not just pray in this troubled world god works through our human hand. close your perfect human and human heart creates us to love a community through our human thoughts and ideas so it is not enough to pray. we must act. we must act in defense of integrity of this government of

ours which has brought light to the world, such freedom and equality to the country cannot allow this government, this is a model are around the world that inspires people to risk the lives and fortune to come to our shores. we cannot allow any element of this government to become the tool of corporate power, the avenue of the corporate influence, the corporate technical and i think senator whitehouse is absolutely right about that. he's inspired people not just to prey on the citizens united case but to act, so thank you for that. [applause] so, we know what citizens united was about and if you are here tonight and many of the folks in the room we have worked closely together over the last few years to overturn citizens united, and i know we are going to with the constitutional amendment or change in the courts that will be driven by the constitutional

amendment campaign. but that's true outside of this room, too. if you go around the country and look at the polling and any sort of measurement, americans are not going to put up with corporations missing in our elections. they are not going to put up with the notion that corporations have the same rights as people. it is -- there is a visceral reaction whether you are a conservative or a progressive for anything in between to that proposition, and that as senator whitehouse it is the opportunity and in some ways citizens united is the opportunity to push back against a doctrine that has already even before citizens united done so much damage in the country. so, my book if i can say a few words about it tells how did this happen, if this is such a reaction of the american people and we have seen that come if everybody knows this is, how could it possibly have happened? was it just a bad day on the court? what happened here?

and unfortunately it wasn't just a bad day. i began the book and 1970's come april, 1970, 20 million americans cannot because the rivers were literally catching on fire, the error was literally killing kids and the elderly because it was so polluted. the land was being destroyed before the super fund, and essentially externalization of the corporate profits, of the corporate cost infected wasn't externalized the corporate cost under the environment was just totally out of control, and it was like other times in american history, 20 million americans, didn't matter what their politics were or otherwise cannot and said this has got to change and now with richard nixon in the white house, again, it wasn't a partisan response, almost within months literally after that and a few short years we had the clean water act, the clean air act, the safe drinking water act, the eastern

wilderness act, endangered species act, the epa created for the first time the american history a total recreations really of the relationship between we the people and how the corporations are going to operate, so democracy was working well and by the way we had the amendments in those years the tax is eliminated, which discriminated against more folks the people of color and voting and the voting age was lowered to 18, 19 to 20-year-olds, so we are going to talk about the amendment, but there is no -- we can't buy this idea that somehow the amendments don't happen. americans have always take into the tool in the democracy has been on the line. but in richmond virginia, lewis powell who was then the chamber of commerce advisor, an executive on the board of directors and about a dozen other corporations reacted a

little bit differently than my reaction as we see as the flowering of the democracy working. he called it an attack on the free enterprise system and wrote a memo in great detail to the chamber of commerce saying the free enterprise system is under attack and he cited ralph nader by name as somehow because the consumer protection issues and the laws that were coming into effect and he called for what he said using activist minded courts to create a corporate rights doctrine in effect to have the corporations come together and find as he said over many years not just a short-term effort, fund over many years a campaign to transform american social political and legal structures to be more favorable to the largest corporations. six months later president nixon appointed him to the supreme court made the same day that he appointed a conservative william

rehnquist and it's interesting how to actually ended up being quite different on the court. lewis powell went on to write for cases in the period of about six years that created something that had never before existed in american history, the idea of the corporate states' rights. the first time was 1978 in massachusetts. the first national bank of boston and the digital equipment corporation. it struck down wall in massachusetts that kept the corporations from spending in the citizen referendum and in some ways it was a preview of the citizens united, and lewis powell had the 5-for decision. the conservative william rehnquist wrote a passionate dissent saying the corporations do not have the same rights as those what he called those that own their allegiance and their existence to something higher than the commonwealth and like the corporation for the creation of the state, and of course you have a progressive the sand as well, but the corporate rights

doctrine for the first time was put into the first amendment striking down the spending law and elections in the referendum votes in massachusetts. he went on to write an opinion striking down the utility corporation from preventing the energy consumption because that would help the shareholders, the policy of the state in the conservation struck down violation of the corporate states' rights on and on. he did for mayor of those and the doctrine was said and it became for the first time a corporate speech right, corporations were like people. they could speak and you go back and read the brief. i quote some of them. they are filed by the washington legal foundation specifically in the chamber of commerce, national litigation project, all of these foundations that worst of up in response to those they didn't exist before. they were created and funded buy exactly what he calls for and they filed a briefing after briefing saying corporations or

persons, corporate speakers and other terms that had never existed in the wall before, corporate speakers, corporate voices come over and over so the doctrine was set, and it struck down a host of the laws bid for citizens united and from public health environmental, financial regulation laws, disclosure about ingredients in your food, the genetically modified trucks, it's illegal in every democracy in the world except ours. it's illegal to use it all and here because the money issues that we see in the domination of the corporate power in washington through the fda, it was legal. vermont passed a law and i tell a story that a dairy farmer that worked to get this, 65-year-old named dexter randall and he put together a group called rural vermont and they worked and they worked. he opposed them every step of the way and they got the law that said if you have milk,

butter, cheese, ice cream and many dairy product that comes from cows and has been treated with this genetically modified growth hormone it's illegal everywhere else in the world because of the health risk disclose its, small disclosure on the label so that people can decide if they want to use that. it struck down, the violation of the corporate speech right, this time they didn't want to say -- they didn't want to disclose where they came from and it was struck down and i talked to dexter randall to see how this hollows of and undermines and just breaks the spirit of democracy. the court opinion says vermont's law was unconstitutional and the people of vermont trample on the rights of other people, so this is about a power struggle, a power struggle of people against

the big organized corporate power, and the citizens united i sometimes call it in the playoff season when i see the patriots are doing so well it's really an end zone and dance for the corporate power grab. it's a celebration and they easily said right out loud what has been going on for a long time before citizens united and not just in the campaign finance which is the corporation's are just like people and we can't regulate them differently than we regulate people and that is catastrophic i think to the american democracy. interestingly its catastrophic to the american economy. we have a thousand business leaders that come out working with the american sustainability business council and for democracy calling for an amendment because they know essentially pay to play government business is not good for the competitive and healthy economy. it's used by the biggest

corporations in the world to throw out the political process to get a favorable policy that is the opposite of efficient and innovative favors. the old from the last generation, the fossil fuel corporate wealth rather than the new business that's trying to start up, so it's that in so many ways and i know you all know that, so i won't belabor that, but that is the toxic doctrine that lies behind citizens united the need to overturn, and because it is a constitutional doctrine there is no debate among the american people about should we give corporations the power to invalidate the law? there was never any debate about that. was over 40 years into our constitution by the activist courts and its interest in the phrase that's being used in different ways than we hear it sometimes today. and so the way to respond is to the constitutional proposition essentially. we have been faced with a proposition that we are asking to be accepted or not,

corporations or people coming and if we accept it i think we are going to turn over a broken democracy to the next generation and fortunately i don't think people accept it but those are the things. it's a constitutional struggle. we have had them before in our history, and it's what we have now, so the way that we resolve these kind of things through the article 5 of the constitution which is the amendment process and the constitutional amendment talks about the people's rights amendment, several versions of that and people for the american way has been such as good allies on this and the common cause of the public citizen and many others to build this campaign across the country for the constitutional amendment that reverses the citizens united and reverses the notion that corporations have the same rights as people and reverse the notion that the elections are a marketplace where the riches get to play and a spectator or

consumer, that is the kind of national the date and the cause that we have to take on and it is hard. we need a two-thirds of congress and the states to ratify but it's no harder than the other 27 amendments, and i think the question is we will succeed if our best is correct the country is ready, willing and able to do this in this time and the best for me i look back at and i think what my kids in the next generation, and i think it is the long-term debt to be the test whether we survive the government as a people, but i think backwards a lot about the other 27 amendments and people bestowed upon us a democracy that works. there's a lot of hard work and so in the progressive era which is much like ours in some ways coming out of the gilded age and activist supreme court corporatist activists created

the so-called looker doctrine and used the due process clause to strike down things like child labor laws and maximum hours and again the republicans, democrats that came together because it was about the public interest and overturn those doctrines, took on the supreme court and won and they did for amendments in the space of ten years. dated four in ten years. one was kind of dumb. it was in the provision. [laughter] would think of the other three. women got the right to vote. we take for granted of course of it amazingly that was a struggle for decades and they won. women got the right to vote. they got elected the first time, senators used to be appointed by a back room increasingly corrupt process in the state legislatures. senators directly elected, and you think this one is hard,

they've got a progressive income tax. so imagine carrying the campaign for the constitutional amendment saying we want to have an income tax and they won and they reversed the supreme court which has held that no congress doesn't have the power to the power to have the federal income-tax there was a decision that we overturned by the people in the constitutional amendment campaign. so i hate to say it but we have no excuse because they've done it before and if we don't do it, shame on us. the people want this done. we've done polling 79% of the american people support a constitutional amendment and republicans, democrats, independents to overturn citizens united. there's resolutions and it's a great page of the website that sews all the resolutions of the country from l.a. to new york to portland oregon to the towns and cities in between. we have had the ten meetings in new england, massachusetts and in our smaller towns and ten came together last year and

passed by overwhelming margins again like all the other resolutions, 75% condemning citizens united, calling on congress to send an amendment to the state for the ratification. we've got the business community calling for it. we've got everything that it takes to get an amendment done with this american consensus that something is deeply wrong and can't be fixed with tinkering. it's a structural problem because it's an -- it's been injected into a war constitution and needs a sort of renewal of democracy with a set of amendments so either one amendment or to perhaps one giving after the corporate power and the other is the idea that money is, so i think we can do. i know many people in this room have done a lot of work on it and they want to be giving that if they don't think we are going to win. so, for those that are not convinced yet i hope he will join us. thank you. >> to my publisher, thank you.

the book was intended as a pamphlet almost given it's not a big fancy hardcover, it tells the story of what happens and then it has to open links and the proposed resolutions of things you can actually use. feel free to repel an issue it to your neighbor and say let's get this revolution moving. they are on the free speech for people web site as well as checkout united for the people with a number four which is a constellation of all the people doing this work and i know we are going to win. with that i will be quite so we can open up and have discussions and questions. thank you very much. [applause] >> the large banks have the lobbyists in the industrial complex as the two lobbyists for every congressman.

this -- they can do that without the support decision. so where does this -- where do you see what does this do -- clearly the american people are the only group that doesn't have the lobby group in washington. >> that is a really good question. the question is we have this huge lobbying problem. so in between elections come in between you have got billions of dollars spent on the corporate lobbyists, military-industrial complex, what is the amendment do for that? short answer is the amendment alone doesn't do as much. the question is whether we will be like the progressive era or others where the amendment is a way to carry the conversation about the underlining propositions of the country, and with that i think we will have a wave of reform because we make the argument that we have a structural problem that we need to fix government of the people was losing.

we are not going to get it if we don't do a set of fixes. the amendment i don't propose as the only thing or the thing that will fix it all. there are three steps, the logging problem is number two. so, we need a constitutional amendment, the campaign finance law the end of lobbying reform. even jack abramoff now that he is out of jail is calling it a bribery, and it is, legalized bribery, so we don't have to stand for that. if we try to fix it now, we get an argument that the corporations have speech rights to send the $2 billion on lobbying and here and that gets to the third piece is reasserting the corporations serve the people or not vice versa. but these are corporate charters from the state law, the privileges like the limited liability, perpetual life, instead of the advantages that we want them to have for economic purposes, but become with the burdens and responsibilities and rules we can make including stop

corrupting our politicians and publics so we would need a set of statutory always be read the constitution is it a code where we can fix right out of the statute but if we win and carry the campaign to the country we will have those debates and that is why we need to clean up the swamps in the capitol in the lobbying and everything else. yes, right here. >> you did a nice job synopsizing the politics involved. as lawyers we can argue about it but since we know the corporations are creatures of the state's who defined the law as you just said, explain to us the legal theory that enables the supreme court to tell the states with the intent by writing their moly. >> is a great point. there she is. i was going to say thank you again because i gathered some of that in the brief that i did

with acs and in my view how the supreme court did it is by asking us to accept a whole bunch of metaphors that isn't true and it's a corporate speech before, the corporate speaker, the corporate voices. if you read citizens united, remember this taken citizens united, congress has a set of rules for corporations and for human beings. the only issue before the court of the citizens united is the rule about the corporations. that was the question. is the congress allowed to distinguish between human beings and corporations? you would think the starting point for the judge looking at that question is what is a corporation? you won't find. there is no explanation of what a corporation is. there is no examination of why the congress would have made a different set of rules for corporations than people, and instead you just get this government cannot discriminate against different speakers, government can't punish what

justice kennedy calls a disadvantaged class of persons. so we win if we just dismiss and say we don't want to talk about that of course, we want to talk about the real thing. with the corporation is the state so it comes with the will of the state. states have the authorities to decide what you get when you get a corporate charter. this is an old story in america and we use to do better actually at keeping an eye on these tools that we handed out at the state secretary offices. they used to have the 20 year limits and after 20 years he would have to come back in and say what you do with the public view of the privilege of the corporate charter again. they have the charter laws still in existence in every state in the country. we've petition to the free speech for people and ask the attorney general and the him in delaware to provoke the corporate charter of energy that i talked about a few minutes ago because of their legality. that is the standing of the corporate charter is to reduce

the crimes and illegality or even the immoral purposes and i share with that. the charter is supposed to be revoked so it is preposterous the supreme court is able to tell the state these things the states created these to able to make rules about some of the state can't make rules about it anymore so i was really glad to see montana pushing back. we did a brief in the montana supreme court case and if you haven't read the supreme court case in montana, it's wonderful. the 5-2 decision upholding the practices act which bans corporate spending and elections and so when we did a brief people said you are wasting your time and the citizens united the court can't possibly go against citizens united the court did and the interesting thing is as senator whitehouse is showing the record it is corruption due to the corporate money but the interesting thing is the dissenters said we have to follow citizens united and then went on at length to see how bad

and how long citizens united was ending with the irony is unlike people, corporations can't go to hell. so it is a street talking pushback. >> the state laws are still in effect. >> it's been used. >> any corporation, if you look many of them come out of delaware digit got a corporate charter. the charter revocation. >> over the last time it was in the tobacco litigation which is where i first talked. unfortunately they didn't revoke the charter of the new york attorney general revoked the charter of the to non-profit corporations that were used in the tobacco conspiracy. the senate for tobacco research and the tobacco institute and those charters were revoked and its litigated as a part of the settlement of the case.

but again on the progress of zero which i would cite as our example of people doing our job as citizens, the ohio attorney general went after the charter of the standard oil company revoking that and they went after the sugar trust corporation's at the monopoly of the sugar companies, the problem is the corporations can go and in corporate and other state, so it is a lack of a problem that led to the corporations and delaware actively in the end. >> i'm not saying those are the first tools and responses that the dust them off and use them again. it's the spirit that we need to be remembered that i think we need to realize we are in in this century. we've got these old 20 of 19th century structures in the global corporations with the charters

out of state. why is that which should be really reinventing not just renewing our democracy but reinventing the selected corporate entities that work well rather than against people and these are for the benefit corporations the seven states have now done that. senator jaime roskam of maryland has carried it in maryland. so i think there is a lot of interesting alternatives to the old corporate charters that have been used to take privileges and rights without any responsibility and burden. >> you can hang out afterwards and we can sign books. >> any other questions? herd enough? ready to join the amendment campaign. okay. thank you very much. [applause] >> visit booktv.org to watch any

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