What will Grayson do next?

By now you are probably familiar with Representative Alan Grayson (D. Fl.).   He is the person who, among other oddities, and, in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary, continues to proclaim that 45,000 people die every year because they lack health insurance.  And the same fellow that filed a complaint with the Attorney General demanding fines and jail time for a central Florida woman who started a web site entitled “my congressman is nuts“.  Grayson’s web site is “congressman with guts.”

It seems that now, he has taken it upon himself to introduce not one, not two, but six different bills in the House seeking to overturn last Thursday’s  decision by the United States Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.  That was the case that held that a federal law prohibiting corporations from using general treasury funds for campaign contributions was an unconstitutional denial of their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.  According to Grayson, that decision is,

a direct threat to our democracy.

Funny, in all my years as an attorney, I’ve never heard another attorney refer to freedom of speech as a threat to democracy.  Personally, I always thought that the absence of free speech was the threat.

Grayson has given the catchy title “Businesses Should Mind Their own Business Act” to one of the six.

That bill would impose a 500 percent excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees or any expenditures on political-advocacy campaigns. [emphasis supplied]

Of course, unions would be exempt.

Another bill would prohibit companies that make political contributions from trading on the New York Stock Exchange, and a third would prohibit corporations that receive federal money from donating to any political cause.  The other three are even more bizarre.

I know Grayson’s bio says he is a law school graduate, but I’m wondering if maybe he was out sick when the First Amendment was discussed.  Or, when it was explained that Congress can’t overrule a Supreme Court decision that was based upon the Constitution, only an amendment to the Constitution can do that.