Tom Steyer Wants To Nullify The Bill Of Rights To Get Other People’s Money Out Of Politics

[Geee]

The Federalist:

Tom Steyer wants to amend the U.S. Constitution to allow the government to regulate religious sermons, tap the phones of the American Civil Liberties Union, seize phone record and Internet search histories on a whim, and give bureaucrats veto power over the content of The New York Times.

 

If that sounds like hyperbole, you need only read the text of Proposition 59, the California ballot measure Steyer endorsed last week. Billed as an attempt to roll back the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the measure is actually far broader and more dangerous: it seeks to eliminate all constitutional rights for incorporated entities—for-profit companies, but also nonprofit groups, labor unions, charities, churches, and any other association given an official government imprimatur.

 

Steyer has focused of late on the ostensibly pernicious effects of money in politics as he pours more money than any other individual into federal elections. But for all of Prop 59’s focus on Citizens United, it never even mentions the separate Supreme Court case that has allowed Steyer to almost single-handedly finance one of the wealthiest political groups in the country.

“The United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights are intended to protect the rights of individual human beings,” declares California Senate Bill 254, which placed Prop 59 on the ballot. “Corporations are not mentioned in the United States Constitution, nor have we decreed that corporations have rights separate from ‘We the People.’”