How to take our country back...

All around the country, in fact all around the world, people have joined the individuals in New York who are part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. I hesitate to call it a movement because "movement" implies something is going in one direction or another while the Occupy Wall Street groups seems to be headed in 10 or 15 different directions at once. So if any of them are looking to stand up for something instead of just being angry at something I am offering my assistance by proposing that everyone support a three step process for taking our country back.

Step one, End corporate personhood. Corporate personhood is a legal concept, technically (and I am not making this up) a "legal fiction", that states that corporations are people and have the same rights as people in out country. Yes I agree, this is completely ridiculous but it is true. In 1886 the US Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people and are entitled to the rights you and I are. So when a case came before the Supreme Court charging that laws against corporations funding or supporting political campaigns were unconstitutional the Supreme Court had to look at the earlier court's ruling and agree. If corporations are people then they should be able to support political campaigns just like anyone else. I am dismayed by this ruling but I can see why the Justices ruled the way they did. So now we need to fix the problem set up by the Supreme Court back in 1886 and the only way to do this is a constitutional amendment. This amendment would state that only individuals are granted rights under the US constitution and that no organization is entitled to the rights provided for in the constitution. Step one complete.

Step two, Reform campaign financing. I'm not talking doing something minor here, I am talking a major overhaul.

*Only registered voters will be allowed to donate to political campaigns. No corporations, no unions, no political action committees, no civic groups, not even political parties. If you can't vote then you can't donate.

*Individuals can only donate to candidates they can vote for. I live in Tennessee, I can see no reason why I should be able to donate to the campaign of a candidate running for the governor's office in Idaho.

*The maximum donation is $500 per election cycle per candidate. This would allow everyone to donate up to $500 per candidate in every election they can vote for. Heck they could donate $500 each to two candidates running against each other if they want to, but only $500 per candidate per election cycle.

These changes would go a long way to making each of our votes count and would take the influence of big money out of campaigns and out of running our government. The wealthy would still have their say, but they wouldn't be able to shout over everyone else with their money.

Step three, End all lobbying. We must eliminate the system of citizenship by proxy that is currently transforming our nation from a democratic republic to an oligarchy. Each of us has one vote we should each also have one voice. You could contact your elected representatives as often as you want, you could encourage others to contact their representatives as well, but no one could speak for anyone but themselves. A CEO should not be able to spend any more time with the President or a senator than I can, if nothing else we should be equal in political representation and the CEO should not be able to hire people to speak for his or her interests. One vote, one voice.

Steps 2 and 3 require that step one happen first but if we the people could yell and scream loud enough that these three things happened we the people would be in charge of our government once again.