{"id":11982,"date":"2010-01-26T07:20:04","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T14:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=11982"},"modified":"2010-01-26T07:21:22","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T14:21:22","slug":"coercion-is-not-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/01\/coercion-is-not-free-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Coercion is not free speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_11983\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignright\" style=\"max-width: 120px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11983\" title=\"Fischmann, Steve\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/Fischmann-Steve.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"120\" height=\"160\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steve Fischmann<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Last week\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission\">U.S. Supreme Court ruling <\/a>removing restrictions on corporate and union political advertising\u00a0under the guise of free speech flies in the face of every democratic principal I hold dear.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0court says dollars you invest in corporate securities or\u00a0union dues\u00a0can now be used to support any political cause that the management of\u00a0that organization chooses \u2013\u00a0no matter how strongly you disagree! Since\u00a0your savings are probably largely\u00a0invested in pension and diversified funds,\u00a0you don\u2019t even have control over\u00a0which corporations\u00a0divert your money to\u00a0their political message.<\/p>\n<p>This amounts to coercing you into\u00a0supporting political\u00a0views you do not hold.<\/p>\n<p>Corporations that do not have the right to vote,\u00a0and\u00a0may be majority\u00a0controlled by\u00a0foreign investors, will now have increased power to dominate\u00a0public political debate at the expense of\u00a0the individual citizens our government was formed to\u00a0protect.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-9859\" title=\"Guest column\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Guest-column1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"120\" height=\"60\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Each of us\u00a0deserves maximum control of\u00a0how our money will be spent for political causes. That is the essence of free speech and democracy. To achieve this, we must re-establish clear distinctions between political and commercial organizations.\u00a0Political action committees\u00a0that take contributions from individuals\u00a0are the appropriate\u00a0voluntary\u00a0vehicle\u00a0for combining money for political ends.<\/p>\n<p>Backdoor coercion through public corporations, unions and other business associations has no place in our democracy.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmlegis.gov\/lcs\/legdetails.aspx?SPONCODE=SFISC\"><em>Fischmann<\/em><\/a><em>, a Democrat, is the state senator for District 37 and a retired Fortune 500 corporate executive.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week\u2019s U.S. Supreme Court ruling removing restrictions on corporate and union political ads under the guise of free speech flies in the face of every democratic principal I hold dear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[107,116],"class_list":["post-11982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-roundhouse","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}