Political Quotes

“May I follow up on the points that Senator Merkley made. The comparison he made to the constitutional change that took the Senate from election by State legislators to direct election by the people is very much a model for what is happening here. There was a desire to get the vote away from the special interests and put it in the hands of the actual people. Here it is a desire to get the spending, the money behind the vote, out of the hands of the special interests and back to the people. What Citizens United did was to go backwards, open the flood gates of special interest money, and allow it to be secret. Try to put ordinary voters up against that kind of a force. It is not fair to ordinary voters. It is not right. In some respects it puts the right they are taking up inside out, and that is the right of freedom of speech. I think we all have seen the four freedoms, the posters by Norman Rockwell. Perhaps the most famous of those posters is the one of the fellow in the tan windbreaker jacket, a thin guy. He is standing up tall surrounded by people, clearly at a townhall meeting. Why is he standing and what is he doing? He is speaking. He is having his say. The way Citizens United worked out, they are basically saying we do not have a constitutional right to speak. We have a constitutional right to listen. We have a constitutional right to listen when big money speaks. It is essentially a shut-up-and-listen-to-the-big-money version of the first amendment.…”