My open letter to my Congressmen ... http://www.facebook.com/notes/ashley-super/open-letter-to-congress/280048789737 January 31, 2010 To:U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley U.S. Senator Tom Harkin Rep. Leonard Boswell Re:The state of my government, economy, people and values Dear Senators Harkin and Grassley, Rep. Boswell, I am writing you, MY esteemed representatives in Congress as the INDEPENDENT Iowan I am and one that actually votes for you or not. Read carefully. I understand that Congress will start hearings on Campaign Finance reform this week in Senate Rules, House Judiciary and House Administration. Like with religion, we need total separation of business and state. The designation of corporations (even multi-national corporations) as "persons" which started in 1886 is just proof of how our legal system, the Constitution, the courts have always been tools of the wealthy classes. Regulations should protect the level playing field and 'the people' from the greedy. I feel many regulations today unfortunately do the opposite. This issue is more important than any other issue since it greatly adversely affects the fair debate of all other issues. For example, Massachusetts folks tried Health Care Reform that forces them to buy junk insurance. They don't like it. They're waiting for Single payer. Everybody in. Nobody out. Medicare for All. Corporate Insurance companies just want to soil the process, pit Dem v. Rep and avoid anything that makes sense for America. Another example is the influence Big Banks have on you and regulations (or lack thereof) which was a direct cause of the recent meltdown in our economy, for which the people still are suffering (not the banks). But both Parties are awash in corporate cash and deserve to lose. Until then, the people loose. Simply put: Greed ---> Corruption in Government ---> Corporatacracy ---> elimination of true Free Enterprise and the milking of taxpayers and of the poor. If there is anything that is uniting the TEA Baggers and Progressives it is corruption in government. The recent SCOTUS Citizens United v. FEC decision is our rallying cry. If we, the people, thought our government was corrupt before, now a lobbyist can tell any of you officials: “if you vote wrong, my company will spend unlimited sums explicitly against your re-election. We have got millions we can spend advertising for you or against you — whichever one you want." (The gun to coerce my Congress whether fired or not). My only gun is this message and my vote. The corporatist, anti-voter SCOTUS decision is so extreme that it is galvanizing a grassroots effort to enact a Constitutional Amendment to once and for all end corporate personhood and curtail the corrosive impact of big money on politics. Even a 1st grader knows that corporations are NOT people and money is NOT speech! Slavery is the fiction that people are property and “corporate personhood” is the fiction that corporations are people! Unlike humans, they don’t serve as soldiers, serve Jury Duty; they can neither be incarcerated nor committed when they become a danger to others (as often they do). We can and must at least prevent them from the legal black mailing and corrupting of you, our elected officials. Even our News Media is against us Americans on this. Reference recent editorials by the Des Moines Register... http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100124/OPINION03/1240305/1035/archive/Roses-&-Thistles-A-new-epidemic-The-fear-of-information where they criticize Rep. Boswell for protecting our democracy. Later the Register criticized our President for lying when he said of the decision in the State of Union address, “will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections." http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100130/OPINION03/1300315/1035/archive/This-scolding-crossed-the-line What the Register (a corp. itself) fails to report is that Newspapers stand to gain from the ruling with unrestricted flood of full page ads by corps to influence our vote (that gun to coerce Congress). I admire Rep. Leonard Boswell’s continued courage and his stand on this issue... http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100130/OPINION04/1300311/1035/archive/Corporations-could-drown-out-the-people If you care anything about us voters, our democracy, whether we citizens can ever trust our government and news media, if you want to prevent the dangers of Corporatacracy (tomorrow’s fascist state), then I implore you to support amending the Constitution to take away personhood from corporations once and for all AND get serious about campaign finance reform AS WELL AS implementing ETHICS rules with teeth and reforming FAR to protect fair & open competition. I am interested in knowing your stand on these issues. Thank you for listening to a voter. A personal reply would be appreciated (not just the usual party line dismissal) Ashley Super, Des Moines, IA Precinct 96

ROck on Ashley. I am a delegate too! Ill see you at state!

I am a delegate to the Polk County Democrat Convention March 13th. I am also on the Platform Committee. The following resoultion was passed unanimously at my Saturday's caucus. We need rallys with signs at both the Dem and Rep county and state conventions. WHEREAS ‘for-profit’ corporations through lobbyists and large campaign contributions unfairly influence our elected officials and endangers all other progressive resolutions; and WHEREAS corporate greed is turning our elected officials into corrupt stooges at the expense of ordinary citizens, harming any trust in government; and WHEREAS, on January 21, 2010, the US Supreme Court, in a split 5 to 4 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress overturning a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for their own campaign ads. The ruling threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states. Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting from the main holding, said, "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation."; and WHEREAS the First Amendment to the United States Constitution was designed to protect the free speech rights OF PEOPLE, NOT CORPORATIONS; and WHEREAS, for the past three decades, a divided United States Supreme Court has transformed the First Amendment into a powerful tool for corporations seeking to evade and invalidate democratically-enacted reforms; and WHEREAS, this corporate takeover of the First Amendment has reached its extreme conclusion in the United States Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Citizens United v. FEC; and WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC will now unleash a torrent of corporate money in our political process unmatched by any campaign expenditure totals in United States history; and WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC presents a serious and direct threat to our democracy; and WHEREAS, the people of the United States have previously used the constitutional amendment process to correct those egregiously wrong decisions of the United States Supreme Court that go to the heart of our democracy and self-government; Be It Resolved: WE STRONGLY SUPPORT COMPREHENSIVE CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND LOBBYING REFORM VIA CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT SO AS TO RETURN GOVERNMENT POWER TO ‘THE PEOPLE’ AWAY FROM CORPORATE GREED; TO RESTORE THE FIRST AMENDMENT AND FAIR ELECTIONS TO THE PEOPLE.

add me as a friend, find me on facebook and lets get this train a rolling! We have got a long way to go and a short time to get there!!!