Jim Hightower

Should bank robbery be legal, as long as the robbers wear name tags?

Such an absurd concept is at the core of the proposal by Democratic congressional leaders to "restrain" the ability of corporations to steal America's elections. Corporate giants – from Wall Street to Walmart – were unleashed to pull off such robberies by the Supreme Court in an absurd January decree that corporations are "persons" with free-speech rights and, therefore, are entitled to spend unlimited sums of money from their massive corporate treasuries to run their own campaigns to defeat or elect anyone they want.

This is the nuclear bomb of politics, empowering corporations to drop megatons of money on candidates, literally letting this narrow special interest buy our government.

Democrats promised quick action to stop this armed robbery of the People's democratic authority. But – flexing milquetoast rather than muscle – the Dems proposed nothing but a disclosure bill. It meekly accepts the "right" of corporations to steal people's political power – as long as the barrage of corporate campaign ads come with name tags, revealing who's doing the stealing.

Yet, so-called leaders of the party are now even backing off on disclosure, watering down their own milquetoast. First came the NRA, shooting a hole in the bill to let them escape the disclosure requirement. Of course, other entities – from AARP to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – want the same exemption, so it’s fast becoming a non-disclosure bill... and a joke.

Backers say that these exemptions are the "only way" to win enough votes to pass the bill. What wimps! There is another way – Democrats should get out of Washington, where corporate money already rules, and go to the people, rally grassroots America to ram meaningful reform down the throats of these thieves.