Librarians and the Threat to Free Political Speech

Dear Editor,

I have a classification question about Jeffrey Beall’s editorial in your September/October issue about the Citizens United decision: Should I shelve it under Fantasy, Marketing, or simply Propaganda?

Let’s consider Fantasy first. Citizens United was originally a case about accounting, that is, which pot of their money the wealthy nonprofit political corporation, Citizens United, should use to pay for political ads within 30 days of an election. The issue was whether the ads should be paid for using money from a corporate general account or from a political action committee (PAC) account. Citizens United NEVER claimed that its speech had been restricted, much less censored or banned. The corporation simply wanted to use a different pot of money to pay for broadcasting their political movie.

Instead of ruling on the matter of accounting brought before them, the Supreme Court completely changed the case in order to rule on issues that the case did not raise, and some issues that no case had ever raised. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations are now people who are protected by Constitutional freedom of speech, and their MONEY is their speech. This blatantly violated 220 years of American tradition and their own Supreme Court rule, called “judicial restraint”. In an unprecedented case of legislating from the bench, they overturned the last 103 years of American anti-corruption laws and tradition. While Citizens United is a nonprofit political corporation, the Supreme Court applied its ruling to all corporations, profit and nonprofit, commercial and political. They justified this massive purge of laws using a hypothetical case they themselves invented. They have now made it virtually impossible for Congress to fight political corruption because they have now legalized the corruption process. They have taken us back to the days of the robber barons when corporations openly bid for congressional favors and legislation.

The framers of the Constitution, liberal and conservative alike, warned us about the corrupting influence of money. They spent more time discussing it than any other topic. They stated that a democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold through corruption. To quote the original Conservative James Madison, “The growing wealth acquired by [corporations] never fails to be a source of abuses.” And, after all, the original Boston Tea Party was a protest against unfair tax breaks bribed from the Crown by the British East India Company. The United States was founded as a refuge against corporate corruption of government.

For the first time in its entire history, the Supreme Court majority presented NO evidence to support a decision. Their rationale was based solely and explicitly on their personal opinions. This is rather remarkable that five unelected officials should execute nothing less than a Constitutional coup, rewriting We The People into We The Corporations.

The result of Citizens United is that the most common form of corporate bribes - campaign contributions - are now treated as free speech. All laws regulating corporate political contributions have been thrown out. The public no longer even has the right to know which corporations give how much money to which campaigns. Corporate campaign contributions can now be secret. And the court made no distinction between US corporations and foreign corporations.

Corporations are property, not people. Corporations are created by the states and endowed by the states with rights that humans do not have: limited liability and criminal protections, not to mention immortality. Corporations can be bought and sold, humans cannot. Corporations are citizens of multiple countries simultaneously so they have no inherent loyalty to the US. And corporations do NOT represent the personal opinions or ethics or patriotism of their management. Managers are bound by the law of fiduciary duty to put the good of the corporation above their own views. Using the corporation to express their own views is a criminal violation of a manager’s fiduciary duty to the corporation. So by law a corporation ONLY expresses its own corporate views, not the views of human people.

Corporations are property, not people. And money is property, not speech. Granting corporate money unlimited Constitutional free speech is akin to giving guns the Constitutional right to murder. I encourage every American to take the time to read both the majority and minority opinions in the Citizen United case. One is a crock of spit. The other is a brilliant look at the intent of the Constitution, the workings of the legal system, and a scathing expose of the misuse of Supreme Court power. Every citizen should decide for themselves which opinion is which.

Given these rationales for shelving Mr. Beall’s editorial under Fantasy, the implied rationales for Marketing and Propaganda are similar. And I think I know where I should file Mr. Beall’s editorial. Is there a Dewey decimel number for “Wastebasket”?

Jeffrey Beall opines that “Those opposing the decision fear that the quantity of political ads that corporations’ and labor unions’ deep pockets can fund will drown out those with less cash, even though strongly enforced regulations require disclosure of the sponsors of those ads to provide needed context.” - but Jeffrey Beall has forgotten about SuperPacs. Yet another reason to watch the C0lbert Report: http://www.colbertsuperpac.com/

I would like to invite people to check out a Greg Palast's analysis of the Citizens United case.

"Manchurian Candidates: Supreme Court allows China and others unlimited spending in US elections

In today's Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court ruled that corporations should be treated the same as "natural persons", i.e. humans. Well, in that case, expect the Supreme Court to next rule that Wal-Mart can run for President. The ruling, which junks federal laws that now bar corporations from stuffing campaign coffers, will not, as progressives fear, cause an avalanche of corporate cash into politics. Sadly, that's already happened: we have been snowed under by tens of millions of dollars given through corporate PACs and "bundling" of individual contributions from corporate pay-rollers. The Court's decision is far, far more dangerous to U.S. democracy. Think: Manchurian candidates. I'm losing sleep over the millions — or billions — of dollars that could flood into our elections from ARAMCO, the Saudi Oil corporation's U.S. unit; or from the maker of "New Order" fashions, the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Or from Bin Laden Construction corporation. "

http://www.gregpalast.com/supreme-court-to-ok-al-qaeda-donation-for-sara…

Despite what Mr. Beall suggests, the Citizen’s United case is less about free speech than it is about corporate interests and moneyed elite trying to maintain and solidify their power and influence over the country . In effect, the decision provides corporations with an even larger megaphone (if not a PA system) with which they can broadcast their views/opinions to legislators in Washington, thereby affecting the outcomes of votes in their favor. Ordinary’s peoples’ voices have already gotten drowned out as a result, which I would argue is thoroughly anti-democratic, in that it effectively stifles the free speech or ordinary citizens who don’t have the money or political clout/connections to be heard.

If you’re looking for examples of this phenomenon in action, just take a look at how the banks on Wall Street were bailed out and then compare it to the homeowners with underwater mortgages who were left to fend for themselves. Why did the government give Wall Street money with no strings attached while leaving struggling homeowners largely adrift and on their own? Because Wall Street has the ear of politicians in Washington and ordinary struggling homeowners do not. The Citizens United case exacerbates what is already a huge problem in Washington: the influence of money over politics. The Supreme Court’s decision on the case is a mistake in my opinion, and I see no compelling reason why librarians should support it.

Librarians should support freedom of speech, but that does not mean that librarians must support all speech as equally appropriate in all circumstances. If that were not the case we would be unable to sush our noisier patrons.

Moreover, there is nothing before or after the decision that would prevent a library from collecting anything issued by a corporation. The Citizen’s United decision targeted a very narrow definition of speech performed by a particular constituency during a particular period of time, and conflating it with “free speech” in general, and the people who oppose corporate money in our democracy with “book banners” is, at best, disingenuous.

What this article really demonstrates more than anything is that people who want to comment publicly about Supreme Court decisions should have some kind of background in law. Mr Beall has written some excellent articles on cataloging. He should stick to that.

The Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case is the law of the land. The Court had reasons for its decision. Perhaps the decision merely acknowledges what was already the case about corporate speech. Anyway, it would be very difficult to change it now. But disagreement with this decision is not a threat against freedom of speech.

The speech in question, “Hillary: The Movie” is easily available for $19.95 plus $4 shipping, at the Citizens United website http://www.citizensunited.org/ It may be a good idea for libraries to buy this for their collections, especially in view of the historic importance of this movie.

The easy availability of the movie, however, belies Beall’s contention that “if speech from certain entities is restricted, we cannot make it available to our users.” Beyond the general availability of the movie, the Citizens United decision protected the broadcast of this movie in a certain kind of situation. Perhaps this decision is good for the democratic process or for freedom of speech, and perhaps it isn’t.

But library collections are a different situation from the topic of the decision. It would be silly for a librarian to suggest that libraries should ban this movie from their collections. I doubt any opponent of the decision has made this contrived suggestion.

There is a remote possibility that the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United might be reversed by a constitutional amendment. There is only a remote possibility that the ALA or any other library organization might advocate reversal.

So it seems that Beall is addressing a straw man, unless the point of the article is to allege that it is contrary to librarianship for a librarian to be a member of a group that disagrees with the decision. But it is possible to be a good librarian and disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision.

A corporation, by law, has one mandate: it must maximize profits for the good of its shareholders. Although a corporation may claim to be “saving the planet” or “doing it all for us” or spending money doing some “wonderful things” we should not be taken in: a corporation does these things only because the people in charge feel it will ultimately lead to greater profits for the stockholders. If the decision makers of the corporation decided to give the corporation’s money for causes they truly thought were worthy but would not benefit the corporation, they are supposed to be fired because they are responsible for other people’s investments. The corporate board cannot take money that is not theirs to spend on causes they like personally. Members of the board can do this with their own personal money, but now with the money of the corporation.

The same does not necessarily hold for privately held companies and partnerships.

Therefore, any political speech from a corporation must benefit that corporation’s shareholders in some way and this is the real danger. It conflicts with the ideals of the citizen, who is supposed to have the good of the entire community in mind: including those he likes and dislikes, whether the individual citizen is enriched or not, even sometimes at great personal cost. When you add *multinational corporations* into this mix, it becomes even more complex.

And this comes to the real danger of corporate political speech: advertising has shown that the best way to “maximize impact” on consumers (or read “the electorate” here) is to blanket everyone with targeted ad campaigns. Corporations have the money to do this. We saw this happen at first on the internet with email spam. Spam made email almost unusable until the spam filters were developed, and yet, even now, some people compare spam filters to a type of censorship. There is little reason to believe that corporate political speech may *not* be similar to spam.

Real freedom for citizens should not be confused with the freedom of the law of the jungle. In the jungle, the biggest, most powerful animals rule. The same can occur in our civilized society if we are not careful. Real freedom needs regulations that are handled wisely, otherwise, the so-called “free” average citizen winds up playing the role of helpless victim.

I'm sorry the author feels that Citizens United expanded freedom of speech; it actually put those of us who really are individuals at a distinct competitive disadvantage. He needs to do his homework, but I'm glad for the chance to have read his misinformation. The notion that corporations are "essentially associations of individuals working together" is a canard that needs to be put to rest. This definition makes a corporation like Exxon-Mobil or GE sound like the cooperative grocery on the corner, and nothing could be further from the truth: Corporations - especially multinationals akin to the two I've mentioned - have no local allegiances; they are less interested in what they can put into a given locale than what they can extract from it, social & environmental consequences be damned; they have a proven track record of wrecking local ecosystems and economies before moving on to where resources and labor are cheaper and easier to exploit; they cannot be imprisoned or fined in any way that will meaningfully discourage them from continuing their predatory practices; they live like junkies on tax abatements and feel no need to pay their fair share for public services like roads, public libraries & schools, trash pick-up, and clean water; and and they cannot be jailed or imprisoned for their wrongdoings. Show me a "person" for whom these same outcomes apply. On the flip side: the "speech" of corporations rarely represents the views of even a modicum of their shareholders, but more often the view of their boards and corporate officers (most shareholders care less about the sociopolitical behaviors of the corporations in which they've invested, and more about the "return on investment"); anyone who has ever voted as a shareholder knows how very small their individual voice is (one vote per share) in comparison to corporate officers and those on the board, who have at their disposal the lion's share of the stock, ergo the vote. Corporations that cynically use the whole notion of "person-hood" to promote corporate propaganda disguised as "free speech" effectively drown out other grass roots voices and thereby do untold damage to democracy and the free exchange of ideas which we as librarians ought to be promoting. The final test: when was the last time any library issued a library card - one that you would gladly give to any resident - to a corporation? That's what I thought…

It strikes me as odd that billion-dollar multinational corporations insist on being considered “just another citizen,” but when the tax man comes around they doggedly assert that “corporations are not people.”

Equal to protecting freedom of speech (which I believe this case is not about) is our duty to protect equality. Equal access to information and resources. The Citizens United ruling goes against that and effectively prohibits equal access to representation. A corporate dollar is now worth more than an individual’s vote.

Regarding freedom of speech - yes libraries and librarians have a duty to protect it. This, however, is not about freedom of speech. This is about freedom to buy elections; freedom to control politicians; freedom to eliminate the concerns of the lower classes; freedom to have profits the focal point - the only point - of concern in society. These are freedoms that I believe should not be protected, should not exist and we should definitely not work to protect.

The Citizens United decision is one of the worst things to happen to America and to libaries in recent years.

Jeffrey Beall’s argument is fallacious. Corporations are not people and money is not speech. Corporate media spending is not about political debate, but about the richest special interests drowning out other speech.
For freedom of speech to have any meaning, we must all be able to be heard, not simply billionaire special interests.