The Levy Analogy

The Levy Analogy
“We Don’t Have Free Speech. We Can’t Afford It”
By Richard S. Galloway,
Founder

A levy is a barrier designed to hold back the destructive power of floods and to protect all those who live and work on the other side. Creating levies to protect its citizens is an absolute requirement of our government. Enormously expensive, only government can create levies for the protection of our common good, virtually everything on the other side – homes, schools, businesses.... If levies fail, all is lost.

To be effective, it must be strong enough and high enough to block the worst flood imaginable. Many of our levies today are old and weak. Designed in earlier times, they are unable to stem today’s floods. They are being undermined by dead tree roots [rotting vegetation] and burrowing rodents [rats].

If you want to fix a levy, you have to fix the whole thing. It’s not enough to make it high enough in one place only to be overtopped in another or to fix one hole caused by “rot or rats” burrowing through it in only one place. It only takes one leak to destroy the whole levy.


Picture this: Imagine Congress surrounded by a levy – a very high, impenetrable wall made of money – with those who provide that money on the “protected” side and all the rest of us on the outside floundering in the flood. We’ve lost our homes, our jobs, our retirement funds… When it comes time for Congress to do the government's work…to create the laws which are supposed to serve and protect the public, who has access and their ear?

We all know who. They are the Wall Street brokers who wrote the toxic mortgages, refinanced them with bogus derivatives, paid the trusted ratings agencies to give them AAA ratings, took their money off the top and left the rest of us holding the empty bag when their house of cards collapsed tearing the world economy apart. They are also the ones who took our bailout tax dollars and then gave themselves $20 billion in bonuses. The list of ways big $$$$ abuses goes on, but you know the rest.

There is a strong levy made of dollars around Congress, but it’s the wrong levy. Years ago, I was with a group of twenty ordinary citizens who had come to Washington at our own expense to plead for our Congressman’s support of a critical environmental protection – something very much in the public interest. I was living in the rural American heartland on a very modest solar-organic farm. In the end we could not compete with agribusiness and had to give up our enterprise, but that's another story.

Rural America tends to have the most lax environmental regulation and enforcement. Waste and chemical companies were bringing their most toxic waste and dumping it on us. Needless to say, we were not happy about this. So as good Americans are supposed to do, we went to Washington to petition our grievances.We were savvy enough to have called ahead to make an appointment and were promised at least fifteen minutes to present our case.

We sat in his foyer for several hours past our appointed time as one after another well-healed lobbyists came in and whispered in the receptionist's ear. They were immediately ushered into our Congressman's office and remained for long periods of time. When we were finally "allowed" in, our Congressman apologized that he was so busy that he could only give us five minutes to present our very complex issue – two of which he spent on the phone assuring what was clearly a business interest that they had his total support.

We ended up with about two minutes to tell him why we were there. At that point he abruptly interrupted our presenter in the middle of a sentence, and rose to usher us out while offering his platitude that he would “look into it.” Okay, that was credible.

That’s how it works and we all know it. The primary issue is – “We Don’t Have Free Speech. We Can’t Afford It.” The recent Citizens United Supreme Court case allowing unlimited corporate funds to buy campaigns and political ads has finally aroused public rage from right to left. According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 76% of Republicans, 81% of independents, and 84% of Democrats opposed this ruling. This uproar gives us the unique opportunity to fundamentally change the way our government works. If the public is energized enough to vote on this basis this fall, that’s enough support to break the power of big money over our country.

Many old and new organizations are already making free speech, election reform, and limiting huge corporate contributions to campaign slush funds one of their issues. Most are insisting on a Constitutional Amendment to fix the problem. The weaknesses are most of them are concentrating their efforts too narrowly 1) on only one group of rats burrowing into the rotting vegetation and undermining the levy. 2) A Constitutional Amendment to change the definition of “corporate personhood” so that it does not include free speech is very difficult and takes a long time. No. That's only one of the many ways they can use their $$$$ to influence politics. When you fix a levy, you have to fix the whole thing or all your efforts are in vain.

First of all, we have to completely tear down the wall of money around Congress and the White House. Only then can we begin to replace it with a levy that protects the citizens of our country from the flood of selfish interests. That’s the job of our government. That’s what the Constitution is supposed to protect. But it's up to us citizens to make them understand that this change is what we demand.

To build a new levy that protects us from the worst flood, we have to concentrate on the whole picture. How? It’s time to break the link between money and free speech altogether. The Bill of Rights protects the citizens’ right to speak our minds without fear of reprisal and to petition our government to redress our grievances without fear of reprisal, to assemble peaceably and the freedom of the press and religion. That’s all! Everything else is based on laws, case studies and court opinions. All of these can be changed through the far simpler legislative process.

The Constitution does not protect the ability of big money to convey its selfish interests in ways that overwhelm the citizens’ voices. The right of free speech is not the same as controlling the delivery of that speech through the ability to buy it. That’s not “free” speech; that’s “bought” speech. When well-healed lobbyists talk about delivering “free speech” to our representatives in ways that substantially control the outcome, that’s normally called a bribe – let’s call a spade a spade. It’s time to take bribes completely out of the process – no leaks in that levy at all.

The reforms we need have to be comprehensive. Because the link between money and free speech is not constitutionally protected, the fix can be accomplished through legislation which redefines free speech breaking this link. By doing so, it makes it possible to implement other reform such as public financing of elections, eliminating big money’s ability to buy propaganda ads on public issues and a host of other reforms that can then be proposed on the basis of the merit rather than the money thrown at our representatives. The success of all other reforms --whether banking regulations, the environment...-- depends on this fundamental issue.

The citizens' speech and votes should be the primary input to their own legislators. That’s how our country is supposed to work. That’s what our founding fathers envisioned. It’s the American way. We can do this if we unite in "one voice" – from right to left – to insist that our representatives do the work we elected them to do. This needs to become “the single touchstone issue” in this fall’s elections. Every candidate – whether Republican, independent, or Democratic – needs to know that they will not get our vote [drown in the flood] if they don’t get on board our boat. We will throw the whole lot of them out otherwise and replace them with candidates who understand what we elected them for.

The polls clearly indicate we have this power – if we can only translate that potential power into votes. If we really want it, we will have be prepared for the fear big money interests will try to use to defeat us – as most assuredly they will. The Internet is the tool we can use without trying to outspend the billions corporations can throw at it. You can be a part. Spread the word. If we want this to happen, our effort needs to begin now. One voice. Nothing less will do. We have to fix the whole levy.

Richard S. Galloway is the founder of the Fundamental Reform Network. This Internet-based clearinghouse is designed to allow the widest coalition of individuals and organization of every political persuasion to unite in support of comprehensive reforms. Its primary purpose is to fundamentally change the way our government works and allowing citizens a meaningful voice in our own government and to fund necessary programs in the public interest.

If you agree with these goals, please sign our Petition

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