Tomorrow, Thursday February 16, presidential candidate Mitt Romney will be the special guest at the Cuyahoga County Republican Party’s Twentieth Annual Lincoln Day Celebration.
As the big spenders are rolling in for the 5 p.m. V.I.P. reception that precedes the 6-8 p.m. dinner at Landerhaven, they’ll be greeted outside by “corporate vice presidential candidates” making their pitch to join Romney’s ticket.
The “candidates” will be costumed members of the Cleveland branch of Move To Amend, a national group lobbying to end corporate personhood. The group says it is “sponsoring the ridiculous public spoof to dramatize the ridiculous notion that corporations, legal creations of government, possess Bill or Rights and other inalienable constitutional rights meant solely for human beings.” It’s targeting Romney for his statement last summer at the Iowa State Fair that “corporations are people, my friend.”
According to the group,
Since Romney believes “corporations are people,” several corporate “persons” will be outside the Landerhaven complex in Mayfield Heights vying to be chosen as his running rate with signs saying “Hey Mitt, If you believe a corporation is a person, pick me as your VP!”
The corporations (i.e. people dressed in costumes of the Goldman Sachs corporation, Halliburton corporation, and Bank of America corporation) will each have bags of cash to catch the attention of the Presidential hopeful. They will make the case for a “balanced” Presidential ticket (human person and corporate person).
The “corporate persons” will be on the corner of Lander and Landerhaven roads in Mayfield Heights at 5 p.m. — Anastasia Pantsios
This article appears in Feb 15-21, 2012.
How stupid.
I remember when Scene was relevant. Sad 🙁
Min2012–This is very relevant, but you must be relevant to understand why.
How appropos! For years America’s been horribly damaged by various court rulings either so short-sighted or so nonsensical the nation still hasn’t recovered from some of them 60 yrs after the fact. Busing was a court-mandated social experiment shoved down our throats that drove those with money into far-flung suburbs leaving inner city schools penniless & almost pure minority. Reversing the ruling came far too late. Now we use 62% more oil simply for suburbanites to maintain their lifestyle away from crumbling big city life- driving as much as 70 min one way to work.
Now this Supreme Court ruling ‘corporations have all the rights of private citizens’ has driven a stake through the heart of our democracy by opening floodgates of cash into elections and making Congress and state offices a bunch of whores selling out to the highest bidders. When you can have literally billions in untracked funding being funneled by a select few (the Koch Bros come to mind as traitors to everything this nation once stood for) every outcome can be bought & paid for and citizen votes negated.
Within weeks of the new ruling more than 20 states s uddenlyhad identical bills shoved through restricting the rights of citizens to vote in ANY election, all funded by these new corporate ‘persons’. Under the new voting rules almost ALL residents of nursing homes will no longer be permitted to vote since NONE have state IDs nor do most have a way to get one. Many elderly born before 1940 lack birth certificates – and the process to get a ‘valid’ state ID is impossible for those in long term care facilities even though they’re of sound mind .
Those in power closed down registry offices in areas that were more for the opposite party & cut public transportation to the new sites. In Cleveland for example, to get a valid ID can take 2-3 days of bus rides to obtain all the papers, get them certified & back to the Bd. of Elections. Some states now have lists of felon names NATIONALLY & then cut anyone who has that name until they ‘prove’ they’re not that person (who may be in a jail out of state!) Oddly – seems it’s usually the person who’s NOT a member of the ‘in’ party who finds out at the voting booth their right to vote is gone.
At the same time laws were rammed thru state after state stripping workers of many rights formerly taken for granted. Trick votes i.e. Ohioians voted ‘against Obamacare’ after vast amounts of untraceable monies pushed the idea there were ‘all those illegal voters who had to be stopped’ [though this’s been proven a pure lie over & over again] & hammered thru the idea those w/o insurance preferred to be that way! Voters were never told part 3 of the referendum ruled ‘no employer can be forced to provide medical insurance for their employees regardless of size’ – meaning companies could legally drop all medical insurance for their employees and leave millions with NO coverage! Tracing the influx of those mega-millions of out-of-state monies proved impossible.
After the Bush Admin in 2001 eliminated federal mandates ensuring only licensed nurses & docs could give meds & ruled each state could opt to make their own rules. After the Supreme Ct ruling the number of states that suddenly began eliminating their laws exploded. Laws which said only LICENSED nurses, doctors, etc could pass meds [THE most dangerous job nurses have, hands down] in nursing homes, rehabs & assisted living facilities were gone. Facilities opted to use aides with as little as 10 days training! However, facilties are still being paid tax dollars as if they had RNs on salary!
In 2009 there were 2.1 million officially reported med errors WITH harm costing taxpayers over 14 billion (Medicare/Medicaid) and 86,000 deaths – HOWEVER homes do NOT have to report the death of anyone 24hrs+ after admission who hasn’t suffered a fall. If the house doctor will sign off on a death, oh well. Few families are rarely told of errors – they’re not even told meds are NOT being given by nurses – and almost none can afford 13 grand for autopsy if they suspect foul play. In Ohio, for example. HB66 not only took licensed nurses out of the med loop it ruled ‘no nurse need be on the premises while medications are passed.” Thus. nobody knows the true death rate because homes aren’t telling. It’s all on the honor system. Some data estimates over 300,000 die in LTC facilities annually d/t errors or failure to receive their meds d/t theft of the meds by unsupervised aides.
Kerry has proclaimed undying allegiance to his corporate masters. He & all the congressional whores deserve to be shown the door. Congress – with a full complement of new legislators(after we recall all incumbents who’ve stated they’d rather see America FAIL than Obama win even a minor ‘victory’ or who’ve sat on their thumbs for countless terms) who’ll pledge to put AMERICA first over minor ideological differences MUST pass a Constitutional Amendment reversing the Supreme Court before we lose our nation forever. It’s already happening: the question for America is do we have enough time?
Marlyn Rosent: Very informative and thought-provoking! I am equally disgusted at the incredible short-sightedness of term limit legislation that was passed at various levels of government as a knee-jerk and emotional reaction at the time. This invites members of these bodies to propose wreckless and irresponsible legislation toward the end of their term with impunity knowing that they don’t have to answer to subsequent criticism. Then, lo and behold, they become consultants and lobbyists. It also disgards the value of wisdom gained with experience and accumulative knowledge by the officeholder of the workings of that office.
love it!!