Name: 市民連合対FECの物語（2011年 (The Story of Citizens United v. FEC (2011))
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T04:36:43.000Z
Duration: 8 min 51 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

In season 1 of The Story of Stuff, we looked at a system that

程度の副詞

creates way too much stuff, and  way too little of what we really want.

Now we're going to start looking at  the stories behind the Story of Stuff.

That's where we'll find ways  to turn this situation around.

"Bad for you, bad for America!" "He'll put us back on track."

"... ran our state into the ground, now he wants to  be your senator."             "Stand up! Say No!"

"Stand up and say no!" "Bad for you, bad for  America!" "Vote for this guy!"  "Vote for this guy!"

Why is it that every election season, it becomes  impossible to hear the facts over all these

And if it seems the problem is only getting worse, that's because it is.

In 2010, they decided that  it'd be just fine

for corporations to spend as much money as they want telling us who to vote for.

why are corporations telling us who to vote for?

This is a democracy, you know rule by the people?

I'm a person. You're a person. And Chevron?

So shouldn't elections be  all about what people want?

Good Jobs. Safe products. Healthcare. Responsible Government.

It turns out that the vast majority of Americans want to see a lot more done on all of these things.

But what people want will take a backseat as long as corporations can spend millions

Oil companies have gotten politicians to block laws protecting our climate.

Manufacturers have pushed through trade agreements that gut product safety and help ship jobs overseas.

Insurance companies have been the first ones consulted on health reform and giant corporations

Maybe that's why all kinds of people - Republicans, Democrats, Independents --  are totally frustrated

with our government.  (Angry Crowd yelling)

But it's time we got smart and realized that the heart of our problem is not that we have bad

lawmakers. We have a democracy in crisis.

85% of Americans feel that corporations  have too much power in our democracy

Hey, that's a majority. So let's get together  and take our democracy back from corporations.

It's the first and most important step in making real progress on all the issues

So how did "we the people" lose control  of our democracy to begin with?

Some of them owned businesses.  Some of them worked for businesses.

Still, there were just people. Then people invented  something entirely new -- the corporation.

These legal entities exist independently of the people who own them.

If a corporation does something that gets it into trouble, the owners can say, don't blame me,

blame the corporation. I'm just a shareholder!

When the United States came into existence,

corporations were easier to keep in check.

the government would grant them charters for a specific short-term project, like building a

Once they fulfilled their purpose, they were disbanded.

But over time, the law changed and corporations no  longer had to be turned off once their project was

And that's how the modern corporation was born.

Today's corporations have evolved to have something very dangerous in their¬†programming.

Unlike people, who are driven by all kinds of motivations --

doing the right thing, love for family, their country, the planet --

publicly traded corporations are now¬†required, by law and the markets, to pursue one single

No, really, that's what the law and the markets demand.

Imagine a friend saying "The only thing I really care about is money."

Not someone you'd want to leave your kids with, or your democracy for that matter.

Yes, it is people who run these corporations

If they prioritize anything at all over maximizing profits, they're outta there.

Can corporate leaders do good things like give to charity or try to be more green?

Sure. But not if it conflicts with maximum profits.

And since their humble beginnings, corporations have grown huge.

53 of the 100 biggest economies on earth are now corporations.

So corporations have a  single-minded profit motive.

easily dodge the blame for any harm they cause.

That makes them tricky to share a country with.

If we want them to serve us and not the other  way around, they need some basic ground rules.

And that's where the government comes in,

setting rules to keep things fair and safe and to protect society from

Now if their main objective is to maximize profit, do you think corporations are content

No, of course not.  They want to write those rules.   0:05:10.879,0:05:13.639 But who is supposed to write the rules in a democracy?

That's why one of the corporations' key  strategies for sneaking into our democracy

is saying they should have the same First Amendment rights as real, live people.

And that's exactly how they won that 2010 Supreme Court case known as

In that case, five members of the Supreme Court decided that it's unconstitutional

to put any limits on how much money corporations can spend influencing elections.

Why? They said these limits violate the first amendment guaranteeing free speech.

Obviously our founding fathers who wrote  the first amendment were trying to protect