Speaker talks power, rule of corporate CEOs

As part of a statewide tour, former Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb spoke at the Cal State Long Beach Soroptomist House on Sunday in an effort to amend the U.S. Constitution to end corporate rule.

As collaborative work with Occupy Long Beach, sponsored by CSULB, Associated Students Inc. and Yes We Can Democratic club, his speech was an effort to abolish “corporate personhood,” the legal doctrine that endows corporation privileges to give limitless donations to campaigns.

“I believe that a corporation can only exist if it serves the public interest,” Cobb said. “It pisses me off that the doctrines of corporate personhood and their limitless donations to campaigns are hijacking our rights to govern ourselves and that they use our legal system to legalize it and tell us it is completely allowable.”

Cobb, an organizer and national spokesman for MoveToAmend.org, is currently touring California giving a speech called, “Creating Democracy & Challenging Corporate Rule,” hoping to enlighten people and to amend the Constitution to end corporate rule and legalize democracy, according to the Website.

During his speech, audience members joined in as he shouted, “Power to the people!”

“Unelected and unaccountable corporation CEOs are not only exercising power, but they are ruling us and making the fundamental public policy decisions that affect our lives,” Cobb said. “We are left with consumer choices or the false economy that make us believe we somehow have freedom and power.”

During the speech, he criticized the current political system and said that it has perverted the essence of freedom. He also said that the framers of the Constitution did not intend to give corporations rights that allowed them to manipulate people’s lives.

“It is in fact genius how the first corporation took private money on a voluntary basis and put it to public use,” Cobb said. “It is a genius idea that they helped facilitate organizing human endeavor. However, the problem comes from the fact that the modern transnational corporation doesn’t actually operate that way.”

Cobb said that all power resides with the people and stirred the crowd to take action to retrieve their own fundamental rights.

“The U.S. Constitution essentially describes that we the people are free and sovereign because we have rights,” Cobb said. “In contrary, the government is created by us, dependent upon us, and thereby has duties, not rights.”

Cobb said that people should have the right to overturn any law that infringes on their rights.

“What we need to do is to stand up and declare to assert our sovereign right to govern ourselves because this is our country, our culture, our government and our constitution,” Cobb said.

Jamie McLaughlin, a senior political science major and president of College Democrats of CSULB, said that people have been inactive for a while and businesses have had a free reign to do what they want.

“I expect David Cobb to really rouse people up and get people excited about taking power back into the political system,” she said. “Now, we are really going to pay the consequences if we don’t take action sooner or later.”