Referencing the suffrage movement in the 1920’s and civil rights supporters in the 1960’s, top Republican leaders are nearing a vote in the House of Representatives to pass a law that would give corporations the right of other citizens, to vote in elections.
Rep. Paul Ryan gave a passionate speech on the floor of the House on Friday in which he argued that since the Supreme Court has affirmed that corporations are people, denying them the right to vote which all other people enjoy, is unconstitutional. “Every person in America has a right to participate in our democracy and just because some may have prejudices against a minority of others, it doesn’t give them the right to deny them their inalienable rights.”
Republican Policy Committee Chairman, Rep. Tom Price argued for support of the Universal Voting Rights Act by challenging fellow Representatives to affirm American democracy and extend voting rights to the only people in America who are now refused them. “The world looks to America to set an example of open democracy. How can we stand as a role model if we pick and choose which people can and can’t vote?”
House Democrats, surprised by the sudden appearance of this bill, were strongly outspoken against it. “Despite what the Supreme Court has ruled and the rhetoric of our friends across the aisle, corporations are not people and they absolutely are not entitled to vote in elections,” said Democrat and House Minority Leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi. “They can’t walk into a voting booth, they shouldn’t be entitled to vote, it’s that simple.”
Republicans insist that by opposing this bill, Democrats are openly attacking the nation’s democracy by trying to suppress the votes of people they know are most likely to vote for Republicans.
“Such anti-democratic views, trying to prevent people from voting instead of seeking to have as many people as possible participating in our elections is a travesty and a betrayal of their positions as representatives of the public,” Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling insisted in Friday’s debate.
The Universal Voting Rights Act is expected to pass in The House in a party line vote and stands a chance of passing in The Senate with several Blue Dog Democrats including Sen. Mary Landrieu, Sen. Ben Nelson and Sen. Joe Manchin breaking with their party and joining Republicans in supporting the bill.
President Obama is expected to veto the bill if passed by Congress but if Republicans win the White House in November, the bill is expected to be revived in 2013 when it could be signed into law.
Some Democrats have expressed concerns that their opposition to the bill will be used against them by the GOP in this year’s elections, to portray them as opposing democracy.
GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney was asked about the bill today at a campaign stop in Milwaukee and affirmed that if he won the Presidency, he would sign it into law. “As I’ve said before and have been attacked for saying, corporations are indeed people and in America, the people choose their leaders. I would absolutely sign a law that granted voting rights to all people, be they living or corporate,” Romney affirmed.
The House vote on this bill is scheduled for next week.
Sorry to have to share this outrageous story with you today…it being April Fools Day and all.
I wasn’t fooled this time but we use to love playing pranks in the lab on April Fools Day. I told you guys before labs are notorious havens for playing pranks and I was a major offender. One of my favorites was when we plastic wrapped this scientists whole cubical on April Fools Day and we told him he was being transferred to another lab.
Then my personal fave was using the autocorrect feature in MS Word. With one technician who always cursed I set autocorrect to type ‘fuck the’ every time he typed ‘the’. And with my boss at the time Abdul, every time he typed ‘Abdul’ it would change it to be ‘Yabadabadul’ which was our nickname for him.
I won’t tell you what we did with liquid Nitrogen because you would cringe but whatever you do if you ever go into a lab don’t accept an M&M from anyone.
Those are very funny, KQ. I’d have to say, scientists sure seem like top contenders for the best pranksters.
ohh KQ the wrapping of the cubicle is bad. my friend and her co=workers stole their bosses keys and moved his car up to a building two away from ours. They never heard a peep from him until he stormed back in the office to call the police. He was really pissed and he was one to play jokes on everyone else. We also hung cigarrette packs from the ceiling of his office.
Corporations have responded to the veto with a big chuckle. Corporations say we have rigged the system so much with big PAC money (Citizens United), our own TV and radio news networks and lobbyists in Congress that we don’t need no stinking voting rights. We simply either fool people to vote against their personal interests with mega right wing propaganda or make politics so unseemly that people don’t vote at all.
“Corporations have started up Super Pacs to support the privatizing of voting. In the future, corporations would like elections to be decided by putting the images of Presidential candidates on the packaging of their products and have the winner declared at the end of the quarter, based on the sales figures of products with a particular candidate’s image on it.
All numbers will be verified by Goldman Sachs in a secret smoke filled room.”
Good one, AdLib!
A fair number of people fell for this one yesterday as well:
http://www.the3halves.com/3-news/291-george-w-bush-breaks-from-partisan-politics-endorses-barack-obama-for-2012.html
Now that is a very tall tale, amusing that anyone would buy into Bush endorsing Obama!
WELL DONE AD LIB….
I googled the Universal Voting Rights Act three times using different word combinations (and including the names of the members of Congress you cited).
Like others I did not read all the way to the bottom.
Why? I was so outraged by the end of the first couple of paragraphs and it seemed to so credible that I wanted to read the bill.
Given the legislative agenda promoted by ALEC and the enthusiastic embracing of same by the GOP the article’s thesis was not only logical, but it also seem likely.
After all, the purpose of new voter ID laws is to demobilize certain portions of electorate who are more likely to vote for Democrats, a goal laid out by ALEC founder, Paul Weyrich many decades ago who stated that “I don’t want everybody to vote… Our leverage in the elections goes up as the voting populus goes down.”
It only makes sense to play to the other side of the equation and grant the vote to those more likely to vote for Republicans.
The next step is weighted voting based on wealth.
Hey Murph!
I left very few and subtle clues along the way like this one which is the kind of attack we hear and deliver against Repubs for their voter suppression, I thought it might stand out having them accuse the Dems of the very thing they are guilty of…but in retrospect…don’t they always do that?
The real problem…or scariest realization about trying to imagine something the GOP would do that was ridiculous and over the top…is that they’ve done many of those things already and nothing seems so outrageous now that they would be incapable fo doing it!
They have really gone that far over the Crazy cliff.
AdLib, I fell for it hook, line and sinker, because this is something that GOPers would really try to do. Really, it wouldn’t surprise me. Then I think, if each corporation in America had 1 vote, it really wouldn’t make much difference.
😛
KT…that is what fooled me too.
Ah, but what I didn’t explain is that each corporate office or store in each state will be counted as a separate individual, as will the sub companies they own. So the Starbucks, Walmarts and Chase Banks will have a lot more votes than you!
Heh-heh-heh! (twirls mustache).
Next up: voting rights for hedge funds.
Ad Lib Good summary…it is hard to imagine how far the GOP is willing to go…they have gone so much further than I ever thought they would.
As Biden said a couple of days ago: the GOP used to hide what they wanted to do behind terms like “compassionate conservative”….now they just come right out and declare they are against the social safety net.
When the truth is that unbelievable, how does write an April 1 parody.
It took me a surprisingly longer time to come up with an April Fools joke about the Repubs…my first few ideas were too close to things they actually have done!
If we survive this period in American history and make it to solid ground one day, Americans will look back at this time in horror and shock that the insanity of this GOP even had a chance of winning a majority of votes.
The infamous Hunt brothers already proposed that back in the 1970s. Who knows when THAT will raise its ugly head again?
One benefit might be the idiot rich would have to open the books, PAY taxes on their wealth in order to demand their 25 billion votes. Not sure it would help, but it MIGHT keep them from voting. After all – Chevron paid no taxes. Does this not indicate they can’t vote at ALL? Zero value?
Hah – maybe they will see the unintended consequences of offshoring your wealth at the Caymans and bring it back?
But until that ugly day – one person, one vote does well for us all.
Choice Lady….As I said, the story was a great April Fool because it was so believable. Are suggesting there be a poll tax for corporations? Sure. Any way we can get them to pay their fair share, the better.
As Romney has proclaimed: ‘Corporations are People, My friends.”
Anyone who says that is NOT my friend.
Ha ha ha Aprils fools. A good one but I have a good one too.
My friend Mary and I both worked for the same boss and we were working late one night and got to talking about April fools. We came up with a great one to play on our boss. We looked up a cardholder using the name Bear or Baer or Bayer and actually found one. We gave him a message with the cardholder account and the name Bayer. But……we gave him the number to the Oakland Zoo. You can imagine our faces and his when he called the number and asked to speak to a Mr. Bear. The guy on the other end chuckled and told him he had been pranked.
I never saw Pat’s face get so red. He slammed down the phone and said, Mary Sue in my office NOW! Luckily for us we were able to kid him out of it and he ended up laughing at himself.
He got me a few years later when he had all my customer service staff start calling in sick on April fools. Of course, like him I did not connect it and went to tell him the bad news……..April Fools then he bought me a drink after work and said we were even LOL. I loved working for that bank. We found a baggie of cocaine in the women’s bathroom one day…….no we did not snort it.
Sue, that sounds like a very cool crew to have worked with.
Reminds me of the prank I pulled on a coworker and it involved the zoo. We dressed up a nerdy coworker in a suit made out of bacon and gave him a package to deliver, telling him the guy he was delivering to was deathly afraid of bacon.
The package was addressed to Mr. Bengal Tiger c/o The L.A. Zoo. Man, we really missed him when Aprils Fools day came along the following year.
Yeah, AdLib – that’s kind of a one-time joke, right?
What a loss. All that bacon. Gone.
Yep, you can only play that prank on someone once but it’s worth it just to see the look on his face.
We did mourn afterwards for the bacon…it was aged but still so young.
Man that is bad 🙂 but I am laughing. Yeah we did have a cool crew. It was the 80’s and after work meetings at the bars were all the rage. Everyone was friends. The EVP was my mentor and he was just as accessible as my friend across the way from me in her cubicle. I still talk with most of those people all the time. It was funny we had a real close relationship but worked together really well.
I thought it was just me, thinking that co-workers used to be closer back in those days. I remember some after work drinks and such back then.
Now with so many people telecommuting, you may only see a few co-workers every month or so. And drinking with people over the phone just loses something.
No it was different back then. Even when I worked at WFB it was the same. We used to get together after work nd do lots of different activities. Same almost when I worked at Visa. I was on the east coast alot and people there were more personal. I went out with many of them, dinners at their homes meeting their families it was different. I telecommuted but only one day a week and my staff had to come in two days a week.
Maybe the era of Wii and Facebook made socializing less frequent?
You may be right. I know my grandson either wants to be on xBox live or FB these days. It seems like he changed as soon as he turned 12
I have been getting such things all day – so I actually HOPED LIKE HELL this was another one!
Thanks for a beautifully written send up – scarily possible, and eerily accurate. I could “hear” those things being said by the Right!
Thank you SO much for ending our anguish at the end though. It just MIGHT have been true!
CL – I wanted to make it as convincing as possible and I enjoy Aprils Fools Day pranks but I’m not sadistic enough to let people twist in the wind for too long. I’ll work on it!
ADLIB! YOU JERK! This is an April Fool’s day Joke! You got me!
😆 😆 😆 😆
My brain had been weaken from reading all that crap on that Liberty Link!
Heh! That’ll teach you to read any other site on April Fools Day!
I was helping out Sherlock! But, I had to get out of that site because I was afraid my computer would get a virus of Tea Party!
Oh, and how about all those foreign owned Corporations?? Or corporations with a percentage of foreign owned stock? How many votes will China get????
And what if corporations run for office?
“Senator Goldman Sachs argued for all financial regulations being repealed while Congressman Walmart proposed new legislation that would privatize voting and take place at local Walmarts.”
BTW…April Fools!
I caught it above! You got me though! I guess I deserved that???? I do have two large dogs, AdLib!
AdLib, I think this will have the Occupy Movement up in arms! This is the stupidest thing! Okay, do they have a picture ID? Are they over 18 yrs of age? Do they have a driver’s license? Oh, can we see their birth certificate?
It’s almost unbelievable…in fact…
Hey AdLib, I wonder just how this would work, in practice. Would the CEO of a corporation be the “one,” who goes into the voting booth? How many people from any particular corporation would be allowed to vote?
This needs to be stopped and Citizen’s United needs to be repealed, ASAP. I’m not quite sure how that could be accomplished, but it does need to happen.
There’s a hint at the bottom of the article…
I would hope that wholesale civil war would break out in the Board Rooms of America as the top level execs fight to the death to BE the ficitious person.
NEVER forget that Nelson Bunker Hunt and his brother, William Herbert Hunt (those cute little 1970s silver scammers) proposed that everyone get as many votes as they have dollars in the bank. Think what the megacorporations – fictitious persons – could do with that! One person, one vote is sooooo socialist in their eyes!