TESTIMONIES AT SHAKER HEIGHTS, OH, DEMOCRACY DAY
Shaker Heights City Hall and via Zoom | September 13, 2021
Summary
Those who testified provided examples of how big money in politics and the granting of Constitutional rights to corporate entities are corrupting our democracy:
• Ohio citizens and municipalities are losing their right to self-governance because of the collapse of home rule. This situation is increasingly important because the Ohio General Assembly is more and more the tool of corporate interests, especially the oil and gas industry. A prime example is that municipalities and counties lost the right to ban or levy fees on plastic bags, which are made with a byproduct of the state’s vast fracking interests. Although the ban is set to expire in January 2022, many in the majority want to make the ban permanent, without regard to environmental harms.
• Dark money from 501c4 organizations lines the coffers of candidates and issues up for a vote by Ohioans and the General Assembly. Not only did First Energy dump massive amounts of money into the campaign to push through HB6, but a 501 © 4 organization known as Ohioans for Energy Security sought to squelch the signature collecting effort to put the bill on the ballot and place ads to scare people away from signing signatures or voting for the bill by claiming that the Chinese government would take over our energy grid.
• Nowhere is Big Energy’s power more obvious than in the oil and gas industry’s desire to put lipstick on the pig that is their uncontrollable production of radioactive waste that they call “brine” and promote as a viable substitute for road salt.
If we had a truly representative democracy which demanded full disclosure of the dangers of products and enacted laws that benefit the health, safety, and welfare of people, nature, and future generations, how could this toxic, radioactive waste be spread in our environment? It is the power of corporations which have been granted constitutional rights– and the corrupt officials who advocate policies that benefit them (in this case oil and gas companies) – that allow this to happen. Things are even worse with this issue because there are currently two bills in the legislature – HB 282 and SB 171 – which are designed to grant ‘processed’ oil and gas brine as a‘commodity’.
• County governments and private companies profit from the incarceration, monitoring, and deportation of immigrants legally seeking asylum. Profits are also made through mark-ups on food, clothing, and bedding in jail commissaries; exorbitant fees for phone and video visitation; high immigration bonds that must be paid in their entirety and surcharges on lending services; charges on individuals for remote monitoring and ankle bracelets if they win release; and charter deportation flights or commercial plan tickets if they lose their cases. It is wrong for governments and private companies to profit from inflicting pain and misery.
• Partisan gerrymandering supported by PACs, SuperPACs, and dark money groups has silenced the voices of thousands of Ohio voters – and continues to do so to this day. In the 2010 election, 53 of Ohio’s 99 state House districts were Democratic and 44 were Republican. After the November 2010 election, Ohio lost two House seats due to population loss, and the state legislature shifted to a Republican majority, which redrew maps in 2011 to produce 40 Democratic and 59 Republican districts. This map was ruled unconstitutional because of partisan gerrymandering, and state Republicans were told to redraw the maps in 2019. Despite years of effort by the LWV, Common Cause, and other civic groups, the 5 Republican members of the 7-member redistricting commission produced maps in September 2021 that virtually define gerrymandering, creating a 2/3 majority in both houses.
Is it mere coincidence that 2010 was the year that the Citizens United ruling opened the floodgates for virtually unlimited campaign contributions? It’s not hard to believe that money from PACs, SuperPACs, and dark money groups has inclined the supermajority in the General Assembly, and the majority on the redistricting commission to listen more closely to their big donors – many of them oil and gas interests – than the people of Ohio.
• As gerrymandering and attacks on home rule close off avenues for Ohioans to have their say through legislation, laws are also being instituted to quash protests. SB 33 makes it a felony to commit, aid, or abet any protest at “critical infrastructure” and/or pipelines anywhere in the state. The bill is modeled after ALEC’s “Critical Infrastructure Protection Act” which was intended to suppress the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline 5+ years ago. Oil and gas interests have decided that the best way to avoid criticism for using disproportionate force is to snuff out the spirit of activists before it can become a flame.
• The use of the “red box” thwarts the intent to prohibit the coordination/communication between campaigns and SuperPACs which was incorporated into the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling to brush aside concerns about the corruption of democracy by unlimited campaign contributions. The red box was used in the campaign of Shontel Brown for the nomination to take the position of former US representative Marcia Fudge. On Ms. Brown’s website there were quotes by three SuperPACs, and next to the quotes was a red box with a link directing the SuperPAC and anyone else to documents about how to fund her campaign. The SuperPACs, funded in large part by people connected to the fossil fuel industry, spent $2 million to amplify the messaging in the quotes. She came from behind to win the nomination.
• The rights of citizens and municipalities may continue to be extinguished unless all corporate constitutional rights are abolished. For example, a lawn care service could refuse to disclose toxic chemicals in their lawn treatments by appealing to its First Amendment right NOT to speak. Efforts by Shaker Heights city council or residents (or those of any another community) to require city inspection of a corporation to protect workers and the environment could be challenged as a violation of that corporation’s Fourth Amendment privacy rights. Efforts to protect homeowners from a company digging or drilling under private homeowners could be challenged in court as a violation of the corporation’s Fifth Amendment takings rights to lost future profits. Efforts to provide preferential treatment of locally owned businesses over a chain store that sends profits outside the community could be challenged in court as a violation of that corporation’s Fourteenth Amendment equal protection rights.
• Ohio pension funds invested with private equity funds are subject to high fees and deliver poor performance. Problems linked to private equity include rising rent and evictions, increasing toll roads, killing a national $15 minimum wage, surprise medical bills, and fueling climate change.
• Employer-based health insurance is not only an issue of the unemployed. Employed people deal with high expenses and the constant changing of health insurance plans. And how much money could the U.S. government and taxpayers save if we could eliminate the overhead of Medicaid and Medicare by allowing a system of Medicare for all who want it or simply universal health care coverage. Although the Affordable Care Act plans will remain an option under the Biden administration, it may be attacked in the future.
All the above point to the loss of representational democracy because of the principle that money is speech and the granting of constitutional rights to corporate entities. Complete testimonies are below.
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