Thom Hartmann: Your Boss Can Tell You To Campaign for Todd Akin - or You're Fired!

[thomhartmann]

So, next time you're in a job interview - and you get to the end of it, and the interviewer asks if you have any questions for him or her about the company - here's what you should probably think about asking: "What are your company's politics?" That might sound like an odd question - and maybe not the sort of impression you want to make in a job interview - but it could save you a lot of problems farther down the road. That's because - according to a group of commissioners on the Federal Election Commission - corporations - your employers - can force you to campaign for certain politicians - whether you like it or not. They can even fire you if you choose not to. In other words - a corporation can force you to spend your day phone-banking for - say, Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin. Or canvassing around the neighborhood for...I don't know...Michele Bachmann. Or standing on the side of the street with a sign telling people to vote for David Duke!

Now I know this sounds crazy. Don't we as employees have a right to be free from coercion in the workplace - especially when that coercion pertains to our personally held political beliefs? You would think so - but not anymore in this post-Citizens United world. Now - the rights of corporations - like the right to use their employees as cogs in their corporate political speech machine - trump your rights as an individual in the workplace - a corporations right to free speech has become more important than your right to free speech! According to FEC regulations and laws under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 - it is illegal for a corporation to force an employee to donate money or fundraise on behalf of a political candidate. But when a case came before the FEC recently of a union corporation forcing its employees to engage in other political activity that didn't involve donating or raising money - but instead phone-banking and canvassing - the FEC ruled that it's A-OK.

At least - Three Republican commissioner on the FEC rules that it's legal. Their statement read: "[The] independent use of its paid workforce to campaign for a federal candidate post-Citizens United was not contemplated by and, consequently, is not prohibited by, either the Act or Commission regulations."In other words - since Congress hasn't passed any laws addressing this particular issue - corporations can force employees to work on political campaigns for whomever the corporation decides - and if you don't like it, you're fired. Meanwhile - three Democratic members on the FEC pointed out the absurdity of this decision. In a separate statement - they wrote: "After Citizens United, UPW had every right to expressly advocate for its chosen political candidate...Nothing in Citizens United suggests, however, that the Court intended to expand the rights of corporations and unions at the expense of their employees' longstanding rights to be free from coercion and to express or decline to express their own political views."

Yet - that's exactly the decision we're headed now. It's been more than two and a half years since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision handed our elections off to the elite corporate and billionaire donors. And to this day, we're still hearing of even more disastrous consequences from this insane Supreme Court decision. From the rise of SuperPACs - to dark money groups - to the exponential increase in negative ads - to the emergence of political oligarchs like Sheldon Adelson, Foster Friesse, and of course the Koch brothers - Citizens United is turning our democracy into an oligarchy.

And now this. Now we have this ruling by three Republican FEC commissioners that corporations have more rights than you as an actual human person do - and that corporations can coerce you - under the threat of losing your job - to campaign for Mitt Romney or whoever the CEO likes the most - to hell with your concerns or pollitics. If you don't think we're living in a corporatocracy, folks - then you're eyes just aren't open. This latest decision should be a warning sign to us all that if we don't mobilize and get active to snatch our democracy back from the hands of the corporate elite - then we're all doomed. Time to overturn Citizens United - and then go a step further to make sure corporations don't hijack our political institutions again by saying once and for all - corporations are not people - and money is property - not speech. It'll take a constitutional amendment to make this happen - so get to work and go to MoveToAmend.org.

The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann on RT TV & FSTV "live" 9pm and 11pm check www.thomhartmann.com/tv for local listings

[SheilaT]

1. I sincerely hope that if an employer of mine

were ever to try to require me to donate or campaign on behalf of ANY political candidate, even the ones I already favor, that I would tell them "No" and if necessary, leave the job.

[Sand Wind]

2. wtf ?

This country is going strange.

[salib]

3. Unfortunately, this is the logical conclusion of allowing money into politics in the first place

Citizens United is not a required pre-requisite.

E.g., say you are an employee of a PR firm, and that firm is hired by the Romney camp. Should you be allowed to say "no" when you are expected to be "campaigning" for Romney. Or, perhaps it is a phone bank company and employees do not want to canvass for Romney?

Fundamentally, we need public funding of elections and volunteer labor for candidates.